Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Barran]

That it be an instruction to the Committee of the Whole House to which the Schools Bill has been committed that they consider the Bill in the following order:

Clauses 1 to 3, Schedule 1, Clauses 4 to 7, Schedule 2, Clauses 8 to 44, Schedule 3, Clauses 45 to 51, Schedule 4, Clause 52 to 62, Schedule 5, Clauses 63 to 69, Title.

Motion agreed.

Industrial Training Levy (Construction Industry Training Board) Order 2022

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2022 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Barran]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Industrial Training Levy (Construction Industry Training Board) Order 2022.

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

My Lords, as the Committee will no doubt appreciate, the construction sector is broad and a significant part of the UK economy. It is responsible for delivering infrastructure and large construction, including transport, energy, social infrastructure and commercial buildings. It is also responsible for delivering new housebuilding and for the repair, maintenance and improvement work needed for existing buildings and the built environment.

The traditional image of the industry and its workers is shifting. New technologies are enabling more efficient and modern methods of construction. We recognise the role that construction plays in reaching the UK’s net-zero targets, which the House passed into legislation in 2019.

This is a broad sector, as I said, and it is a large and growing one. It is valuable to our economy, currently contributing £155 billion, which represents 9% of our national gross value added. It is also valuable economically due to the large number and wide range of employment opportunities that it provides, many of them well-paid, highly-skilled roles offering excellent progression opportunities. It is valuable to the individual too; it employs 3.1 million workers, 813,000 of whom are self-employed.

In research conducted by the Construction Industry Training Board, known as the CITB, the Construction Skills Network forecast indicates that the sector will grow at an average rate of 4.4% across 2021-25. Skills interventions will be critical in meeting existing and future construction labour market demands and addressing skills deficits. New and existing workers will require interventions to retain, retrain and upskill as new regulations and technologies are introduced.

It is a broad, growing, and valuable sector, but it is a fragmented one too. Small and medium-sized enterprises make up more than 99% of all businesses, of which the majority are micro-businesses. It relies heavily on subcontracting and self-employment. This fragmentation creates long-held disincentives for employers to train and develop their construction workforce. This goes to the heart of what the CITB was created to do.

Established in 1964, the CITB is, at its core, industry led, and it exists to encourage the provision of construction training. It has a clearly defined role in identifying construction skills needs and plays a part, with others, in addressing them. It provides targeted training spend, as well as grants to employers, to encourage and enable workers to access and operate safely on construction sites, drive up skills levels and incentivise training that would otherwise not take place. It supports strategic initiatives to help to maintain and develop vital skills in the industry and to create a pipeline of skilled workers. It is developing occupational standards and recognised qualifications so that skills are transferable and increase productivity.

In all activity, the CITB is working in ways that will support the construction sector to develop an environmentally sustainable future, supporting the Government’s ambitions towards net zero. Over the coming three-year levy period, the CITB expects to raise around £502.2 million to invest in construction skills.

The recent 2021 levy order was for one year, not the usual three years. That order was more unusual still, as the levy rates that it prescribed were reduced to 50% of those prescribed by the three-year 2018 order. This was to accommodate the CITB’s decision to allow levy payers a payment holiday in response to cash flow pressures the industry was facing during the first Covid lockdown.

I now turn to the details of the draft order, and I thank the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for considering this draft legislation. This three-year 2022 order returns to the levy rates prescribed by the three-year 2018 order—0.35% of the earnings paid by employers to directly employed workers and 1.25% of contract payments for indirectly employed workers—for businesses liable to pay the levy. However, the industry, having been consulted on the CITB’s delivery strategy and levy rate, supported the retention of the higher exemption and reduction thresholds for small employers contained in the 2021 order. Construction employers with an annual wage bill of up to £119,999—previously £79,999 in the 2018 order—will not pay any levy, while still having full access to CITB support.

It is projected that approximately 62% of all employers in scope of the levy will be exempt from paying it. Employers with a wage bill between £120,000—previously £80,000 in the 2018 order—and £399,999 will receive a 50% reduction on their levy liability while also receiving full access to CITB services. Approximately 14% of all employers in scope of the levy will receive a 50% reduction. Maintaining the increased exemption and reduction thresholds seeks to acknowledge and ease the budgetary pressures on SMEs.

The CITB has consulted industry on the levy proposals via the consensus process required under the Industrial Training Act 1982. Consensus is achieved by satisfying two requirements: that both the majority of employers likely to pay the levy, and employers that together are likely to pay more than half the aggregate levy raised, consider that the proposals are necessary to encourage adequate training. Both requirements were satisfied, with 66.5% of likely levy payers in the industry, which between them are likely to pay 63.2% of the aggregate levy, supportive of the CITB’s proposals.

This order will enable the CITB to continue to carry out its vital training responsibilities, and I beg to move.

[Lord Jones (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her helpful and informative introduction to a welcome order of importance to our national economy and, indeed, to our future. I also acknowledge the ever-present commitment, conscientiousness and insight of my noble friend Lord Watson. I declare my interest in the register as president of the Engineering Education Scheme Wales, the EESW.

Page 2 of the order refers to consultation with Scottish Ministers, and I ask how and when consultations with Welsh Assembly Ministers took place. In the Explanatory Memorandum in paragraph 10.1, reference is made to a small group of employers that advised on the 2022 to 2024 levy orders. Will the Minister name the employers in the small group and describe the process? If the answer is not immediately forthcoming, perhaps she might write. Where in all this was there a place for trade unions? Was the TUC considered in any way?

Will the Minister expand on the role of technical colleges in the training of apprentices? Concerning apprentices, what role does a Minister play in relation to college trusts and boards? Surely these colleges have a huge and beneficial role. I have in mind here paragraphs 7.2 and 7.3 of the very helpful Explanatory Memorandum.

At paragraph 7.4 there is a more serious statement, which I will quote:

“The construction industry contributes 8.6% of the UK’s gross domestic product, employing over 2.5 million people. However, there remains a serious and distinct market failure in the development and maintenance of skills in the construction industry: the trading conditions, incentives and culture do not lead to a sufficient level of investment in skills by employers.”


I thought it was very helpful to see that paragraph in our papers, and surely it is to the credit of the Government that it was put in. It is of huge importance, and I am sure the Minister will respond.

What special and urgent initiatives is the Minister undertaking on the basis of that serious paragraph? What policy stimuli are under way? Are not engineering apprentices of great national importance—for example, in our aerospace industry and the Ministry of Defence? How does a Minister liaise cross-departmentally to seek ever more and ever better apprenticeships?

I note the 21 November impact assessment and its self-evident helpfulness. Look, for example, at the figurative illustrations—figures 5 and 6—at paragraph 36. First, figure 5 shows the estimated CITB levy payable by employers in England, Scotland and Wales in 2018 versus 2022—that is, the changes. In this, general building, civil engineering and housebuilding come out on top, with £20 million for housebuilding. Why are the Government not pushing harder for housebuilding?

Secondly, figure 5 shows the levy paid by nations in 2022: some £149 million in England, £13.6 million in Scotland, but only, I note, £4.8 million in Wales. Will the Minister tell us what is going on in Wales? For certain, the Welsh Assembly and Government have a good record; all my compatriots are good payers, as I am sure the Minister would agree. Will she please comment and explain? Is it simply that the money that Wales pays is based on population only? But why so little?

Thirdly, in figure 6, it is good to see the brickie and the pointer itemised. The pointer puts the icing on the brick cake. Is the Minister prepared to agree? What are the Government doing to get more brickies and pointers? They are absolutely vital in housebuilding and they are in very short supply, which leads to bottlenecks. The Government want, in the most positive way, more housing built, but here is a bottleneck around the brickie and the pointer. We need many more in the industry, so how hard are the Government negotiating with the employers? Do they pressurise the chief executive officer of the CITB for more brickies and pointers?

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Properly resourced, the CITB is positioned to focus on that delivery. I wish both the organisation and the industry it represents well. I hope that we will be presented with further progress in the development of skills and an industry with greater diversity when we are asked to consider the next draft levy order in three years’ time.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions to the debate. I will attempt to cover the questions asked but I will of course write on any that I cannot answer at the Dispatch Box.

Before I go any further, the noble Lord, Lord Watson, highlighted the difference between the 2.5 million employees cited in the Explanatory Memorandum and the 3.1 million that I referred to in my opening remarks. The figure of 3.1 million comes from the Office for National Statistics and represents a wider definition of construction that includes the built environment and manufacturing. The figure in the Explanatory Memorandum is an estimate of the CITB-relevant part of the total. I hope that clarifies it for the noble Lord.

The noble Lord, Lord Jones, shared his deep expertise in the sector and asked a number of questions in relation to Wales. In line with the requirements of Section 88 of the Scotland Act 1988, we consulted Scottish Ministers—the noble Lord pointed this out—who confirmed that they are content with the levy order. The Welsh Assembly has also confirmed its support for the order.

The noble Lord asked why the contribution for Wales appears to be so small. The levy is charged to in-scope employers based on their wage bill, so it is possible that there are fewer or smaller such employers in Wales and this is reflected in those figures. The noble Lord also asked how much of the levy will be distributed in Scotland and Wales. The split in income and expenditure between England, Scotland and Wales is not something that the CITB generally measures or reports on.

The noble Lord asked about engagement with the unions. Obviously, it is up to the CITB as to who it engages with. It is the legislation that controls who can actually vote on the levy proposals.

The noble Lords, Lord Jones and Lord Storey, challenged whether the Government are doing enough with our investment in training, qualifications and skills in this area. We have already put in place a wide range of opportunities for adults to gain the skills that they need for employment and are ensuring that people have opportunities to study by delivering on the Prime Minister’s lifetime skills guarantee. The provision of skills, in construction in particular, is supported through a number of routes, including courses available through further education colleges and independent learning providers, with funding of more than £1.3 billion from the adult education budget. Noble Lords will be aware that we introduced construction T-levels in 2020, as an alternative vocational route into the sector, and are continuing to develop skills boot camps, which offer free and flexible courses of up to 16 weeks, funded through the national skills fund.

As noble Lords observed, apprenticeships remain a key route into this industry. There are currently over 640 high-quality, industry-designed standards available, and we aim to continue to improve and grow apprenticeships, so that more employers and individuals can benefit from them.

The noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Storey, rightly focused on the lack of diversity in the construction workforce. Obviously the CITB is not responsible for the construction workforce, but it has an important role in facilitating skills opportunities to help the industry strive towards a workforce that reflects today’s society. It undertakes a wide range of initiatives and activities; it works with industry and other partners to try to attract a diverse pool of new entrants into the industry and to promote construction careers. I share the hope of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, that in three years, when we debate this instrument again, the make-up of the sector will look very different from where it is today.

The CITB is funding the training of industry construction ambassadors on fairness, inclusion and respect, who contribute to a dedicated industry project which creates resources for employers to promote and celebrate best practice across the sector. It is also funding a digital resilience hub, which is a free and accessible tool that brings together mental health resources for those working in the construction industry. Finally, it is funding the on-site hubs that support individuals to become employment-ready and site-ready to take up opportunities in construction. Their target is to support underrepresented groups, including women and those from black, Asian and other minority-ethnic backgrounds, to secure sustainable job outcomes. It is fair to say that representation from those groups remains disproportionately low. The CITB continues to work with partners to try to address that.

The noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Storey, questioned the value of the CITB and raised some of the criticisms that have been lodged against it, and asked whether there would be an alternative model for funding skills development in the construction industry. The Government seek to evaluate the rationale for and effectiveness of its arm’s-length bodies through a programme of regular reviews, and that includes the ITBs. In 2017, the review of ITBs confirmed that there remains an ongoing need for a central skills body and recommended that the CITB should make stronger efforts to address the skills gap and market failure within the industry. That included the requirement for the CITB to lead on emerging needs, such as supporting the Government’s ambitions for housing.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

I mentioned earlier that the impact assessment shows that 75% of employers, when asked, said that they wanted the current scheme to continue. Is it not unthinkable that, with that kind of backing, the Government might move away from the current model?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Obviously I cannot predict the future. I can only repeat what the review of 2017 said, on which basis the Government are moving forward. The review showed that there is an ongoing need for a central skills body and, as the noble Lord says, employers support it.

Following that review, the CITB’s implementation of its three-year transformation process, Vision 2020, has helped to make it a more focused and more agile partner to industry, and, as a result of the initiative, the CITB has implemented new governance structures so that industry voices are at the heart of decision-making, has launched new funding systems to allow employers to have easier access to support—the noble Lord, Lord Storey, referred to bureaucracy being a barrier to accessing support—and has moved to an investment model based on strategic commissioning. As I noted, the industry has expressed concerns about the performance of the CITB, but we are confident that it has worked hard to increase industry involvement in its strategic planning to address those concerns.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, asked about the funding model and exactly what it pays for. The levy provides an investment in skills through a redistributive and collective fund, and it provides value through strategic initiatives that benefit the whole industry—I have referred to some of them already—such as attracting new entrants, identifying common standards and common training solutions, encouraging the transferability of skills, quality control of training provision, leadership and project management development, and collaborative behavioural training programmes.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson, asked about the relationship between the amount of levy that is paid and the grants that an employer might receive. We believe that employers receive value for money, but they do not expect to receive a direct financial return via the training grants that is equal to the levy that is paid. As I mentioned, the levy is an investment in skills through a redistributive and collective fund that benefits all employers.

The noble Lord, Lord Jones, asked about our housebuilding targets. One of the priorities from the DfE to the CITB for 2022-23 is providing support to the industry to meet our ambition to build 300,000 homes each year.

There continues to be the collective view across the sector that training should be funded through a statutory levy system and that that system should be used to contribute to a pool of skilled labour, now and in the future, for this critical sector. There is a firm belief that without the levy there would be a serious deterioration in the quality and quantity of training in the construction industry, leading to a deficiency in skills levels and in capacity. That would create particular challenges in the current economic environment, when skilled workers are needed to deliver the infrastructure projects required to meet the environmental challenge of reducing the UK’s carbon emissions to zero by 2050, as well as all the other ambitions that we have referred to in relation to other infrastructure and housebuilding projects.

Motion agreed.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Thursday 7th April 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Barran]

That this House do not insist on its Amendment 15B, to which the Commons have disagreed for their Reason 15C.

15C: Because the timetable for the rollout of the reform programme for post-16 qualifications should not be delayed further and the additional requirements would introduce unnecessary burdens.

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

My Lords, I am pleased to be back in the Chamber to discuss the Bill as it reaches its conclusion.

After listening to debate from noble Lords a fortnight ago—the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, in particular made a speech that spoke to his own experience, which I profoundly respect—I have come to this House with an announcement and clarifications that I hope will address the main thrust of those concerns. We are taking a pragmatic approach to our reforms as they are implemented and will continue to do so. We have already made important changes after listening to the arguments made in this House.

Last November, the Secretary of State announced an additional year before funding would be withdrawn from qualifications that overlap with T-levels. We have also removed the English and maths exit requirement from T-levels, but we do not think that a further delay will benefit providers, awarding bodies, employers or students. We know that stakeholders need clarity on the timescales for implementation, and we are continuing to support them in the rollout of T-levels. The announcements I am making today should give further assurance that the Government are undertaking their reforms in a measured, evidence-led and sensible manner and that any further delay is not necessary. We want to get on with delivering the Bill and our reforms to technical education qualifications.

My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education sent a letter to noble Lords. In that letter, he set out the Government’s position that many applied general qualifications, such as BTECs and other similar qualifications, will have a continuing and important role to play alongside A-levels and T-levels. To be approved for funding in future, qualifications will need to meet new quality and necessity criteria.

I want to make it clear that students will be able to take applied general-style qualifications, including BTECs, alongside A-levels as part of a mixed programme. We are not creating a binary system. Our aim is to ensure that students can choose from a variety of high-quality options, of which A-levels, T-levels, BTECs and other applied general-style qualifications will all play their part.

We have already begun our reform process, having confirmed that around 1,800 qualifications have low or no enrolments and will therefore have funding removed from August 2022. Our next phase of reforms will be to consider qualifications that overlap with T-levels. I know that noble Lords are all interested to see the provisional list of qualifications that overlap with waves 1 and 2 T-levels. I want to be absolutely clear to your Lordships today that through this process we expect to remove public funding approval for just a small proportion of the total level 3 offer, including BTECs. This will be significantly less than half. We expect to publish the provisional list in due course. There will be an opportunity for awarding organisations to appeal a qualification’s inclusion on the list to make sure we have applied our overlap criteria fairly. Our final phase in this process will focus on the quality of the wide range of other qualifications available.

I now turn to the commitment the Government are making in the light of the previous debate on the Bill in this Chamber. We want to ensure that we have the best evidence when considering whether to continue funding qualifications. As such, I can now guarantee that employers will have the opportunity to say if they believe qualifications support entry into occupations not covered by T-levels. This will mean that we have the strongest evidence to support decisions through the overlap process. It is important that there are no gaps in provision and that we retain the qualifications we need to support progression into occupations that are not covered by T-levels.

I was pleased in the previous debate to hear the support across the House for T-levels. Just as T-levels are being introduced in phases, we are also taking a phased approach to removing funding approval from qualifications that overlap. Let me reassure your Lordships that qualifications that overlap with T-levels introduced in 2020 and 2021 will not have funding approval removed until the academic year 2024-25. Similarly, we can guarantee that no qualifications will have funding approval removed because of overlap with T-levels being introduced in 2022 and 2023 until the academic year 2025-26. In this way, we will make sure that no existing qualification has public funding approval withdrawn before the relevant T-level alternative is available. Our reforms will ensure that all students have high-quality options that support progression to employment or further study, including higher education.

As I have said previously, we have put in place significant investment in T-levels, as well as support for the sector, to help providers and employers prepare for them. We are confident of their success and will continue to carefully assess the progress of our reforms to ensure that no student or employer is left without access to the technical qualifications they need. We will also continue to publish regular updates and evidence as part of our annual T-level action plans, which can be found on GOV.UK.

I have also heard loud and clear from noble Lords the concerns about reforms for disadvantaged students. Our impact assessment recognises that students who take qualifications that are more likely to have funding withdrawn have the most to gain from the changes. That is because in future they will take qualifications that are of higher quality and meet the needs of employers, putting them in a stronger position to progress on to further study or skilled employment. But we want to go further and continue to gather evidence to ensure that our reforms across both technical and academic qualifications are working as we intend.

In particular, the unit for future skills, as announced in the levelling-up White Paper, will make sure that across government we are collecting and making available the best possible information to show whether courses are delivering the outcomes that we want—helping to give students the best possible opportunity to get high- skilled jobs in their local areas. Today’s announcement and assurances are a clear statement from the Government that employers will play a valuable role in the process to determine overlap with T-levels and that we have mechanisms in place at all stages of the qualifications review to make sure that our reforms are evidence-driven and employer-led, levelling up opportunities for young people across the country.

 We have come here with an understanding, a sensible compromise, and a decision that I hope noble Lords will support, as this legislation has support across all parties. It will allow us to start transforming the skills system for the economy and people across the country. I beg to move.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister. She is renowned in this House for her courtesy and willingness to listen and on this occasion she has done so in an exemplary manner. I know other Members of your Lordships’ House will, like me, appreciate the fact that she has been prepared to have considerable discussions behind the scenes, to talk with her Secretary of State, to ensure that the all-Peers letter sent out today from him adheres to the understanding that has been reached and that her statement from the Dispatch Box is, as I would expect, complementary to and exactly in line with the letter.

I thank my noble friend Lord Watson for his incredible patience with me over the past weeks. I really appreciate that. I understand that his young son is on the Steps and he is very welcome. I would also like to say how much I personally appreciated the support of noble Lords on Amendment 15B. Throughout the passage of the Bill, from Second Reading, Committee and Report right through to the beginning of ping-pong two weeks ago, we have had all-party consideration and support for high-level, top-quality, vocational and technical provision, including the introduction of T-levels. Concerns expressed have been heard and understood. If I might say so, we have done a good job in this House in making this a better Bill. The phasing in and timetabling of the reform and change are now in a much better place. As the Secretary of State’s letter said and as the Minister reiterated from the Dispatch Box, this is led by evidence, and with agreement of further evidence, which should be gathered to ensure that these reforms are delivered in the right way.

The topping and tailing of the Secretary of State’s letter is a reiteration of the standard lines to take, but the centrepiece of the letter is real progress, as the Minister already indicated. On that basis, it is really important that we accept the consensus that has been agreed, that we understand that when you are winning you give way, and that we continue the agreed programme in a sensible dialogue. All of us will have consideration of what “overlap” really means and how it is handled. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady McGregor-Smith, will have heard very clearly the discussions in this House and the statement from the Minister this afternoon. It is welcome that we are no longer going down a binary route, that we are allowing people to take A-levels as well as advanced qualifications such as BTEC, that we understand the needs of individual learners, that we appreciate that people mature in different ways and learn in different ways, and that pedagogy does not demand that one size fits all. I am appreciative of both the Government and this House for the way in which they have been so supportive. Thank you.

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[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, it has been a long and winding road with this Bill, stretching back over 10 months from the position that we find ourselves in today. There is very little to add to what noble Lords have said in the last 20 minutes or so, but of course that does not mean that I will not make an attempt at it.

It is very pleasing that we have reached this position because, when the Bill arrived here, it was skeletal in form and many noble Lords made the point that it would be fleshed out only through secondary legislation. I do not think that many find that an acceptable means of legislating, given the restrictions on scrutiny that it entails. But we have had some fleshing out. We have the lifetime skills guarantee—albeit from only level 3 upwards—which will be introduced in 2024. We have the lifelong loan entitlement, which we know a bit more about and which is out for consultation at the moment; it will not come into play until 2025. There are also other consultations ongoing on level 2 and level 3 qualifications, so there is still quite a lot out in the ether and what will finally emerge is for the future.

I echo the points of noble Lords, particularly my noble friend Lord Blunkett, about the discussions into which the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, and officials entered with us in the last few days. They have been productive.

I was slightly disappointed to get a message this morning from someone in the higher education sector who said that they were disappointed that the fight against BTECs being defunded, had fizzled out. Being a fairly forthright Scot, I replied that this was, shall we say, not quite the case. I have also had messages about the extension to 2024 and the clarity that will be provided in the documents that the Minister referred to—the Secretary of State’s letter and the table. I am not sure whether the table has yet been distributed to noble Lords, but it will be. It sets out the defunding process. The main point, as the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, mentioned, is that when this started, it was said that only a small range of BTECs would survive. We have now come not quite full circle but some considerable distance, with only a small range of BTECs facing defunding and in certain circumstances, as the Minister outlined. That is very much progress, and we welcome it.

To echo the noble Lord, Lord Baker, T-levels will ultimately be a success—we want them to be and they will be; it is a question of time. In our discussions earlier in the week, the Government’s target was 100,000 T-level starts in 2024. That is quite ambitious, given that we have only 5,000 at the moment, but I wish them well. Equally, I welcome that for those young and not so young people for whom T-levels are not appropriate for whatever reason—there are many reasons why that might be the case—there are other options remaining open to them, not least the route into higher education, which has been, as many noble Lords have said, very important. I am pleased that we have got to this. As my noble friend Lord Blunkett said, the Minister has been very helpful in that regard.

The noble Lord, Lord Baker, deserves considerable credit. Through his efforts, the clause bearing his name from the 2017 Act has been beefed up and will carry much more weight and be much more effective than it has hitherto been, with the ability of providers to be brought into schools. There will be much less likelihood of head teachers saying, “No, no, we don’t need that actually. Most of our young people are going to university, we don’t really need to hear about apprenticeships or any form of technical education”. That is wrong in any situation and is now much less likely.

The question of careers education is important. The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, mentioned it, and I am very proud to say that there is a young man—my son Thomas—sitting on the steps of the Throne who is about to enter senior school. By the time he reaches 16, I hope that these reforms will have bedded in and he will have many options open to him and his cohort, enabling them to make informed decisions on how their lives will pan out, whether through further education, higher education, apprenticeships or whatever. I very much hope that that will be the case.

I do not really have anything else to say, other than that the Bill is in a much better state than it was when it arrived here. Many noble Lords have played an important role in getting us here, and I have to say that the Government have been willing to listen and act. It is important that this Bill is a success. The futures of many young and not so young people depend on it, and the future economy of this country depends on it. I hope it will succeed.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, this Bill has been with us for a while and I know that noble Lords are keen to start their Easter break, I hope with their families. I thank noble Lords for their very generous words on the work that we have done in government, with officials and with many of your Lordships to get the Bill to where it is now. I hope that it will deliver on all our shared aspirations in this area.

I shall try to respond briefly to the questions from my noble friend Lord Johnson regarding parity of esteem. Without wanting to play with words, we are aiming for clarity of esteem—although I am not sure whether that exists. We want to have a range of high-quality options for young people. We want them to be absolutely clear which ones work for them, which are suitable and which offer the right path forward. Of course, that is underpinned by parity, but we need clarity as well, because that has been lacking in the past. In relation to his second point, we also need absolute clarity for providers. There is an enormous job still to be done to communicate the value of all the different options that young people will be offered.

In response to the noble Lord, Lord Watson’s correspondent, and the fight against BTECs fizzling out, I think we could agree that the fight for quality is certainly not fizzling out in any way. I am not sure there ever was a fight—but anyway.

Before closing, I thank all noble Lords here today, many of whom have contributed to debates throughout the passage of the Bill. I pay particular tribute to the Front Benches, to the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Storey, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Sherlock, Lady Wilcox and Lady Garden. I say two things to the son of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, who is sitting on the steps of the Throne. I share the aspirations of the noble Lord that our reforms are bedded in, and I hope that his son and all his classmates will have a great range of opportunities. I also remind him that what he sees in this House today is the tip of the iceberg of the work that the noble Lord and his colleagues have being doing over the last few months to get this Bill to where it is.

I also thank the many former Education Ministers and Secretaries of State in this House whose insights we have benefited from—my noble friends Lady Morgan, Lord Willetts, Lord Baker and Lord Johnson, my noble and learned friend Lord Clarke and the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. I also say special thanks to my noble friend Lady McGregor-Smith. She has been a great mentor and helped me to understand how this Bill will work in practice.

I also thank my noble friends Lady Penn and Lady Chisholm for their support. I thank the Bill team officials who have worked on the Bill—Kady Billington-Murphy, Ellie-May Morris, Emma Sisk, Lois Clement, Georgia Scoot-Morrissey, Charlotte Rushworth, Katrina Leonard-Johnson, Catherine James and Stephen Wan. I especially thank Jessica Clark in my private office, who has been an exemplar of calmness under pressure.

Motion A agreed.

Education: Multi Academy Trusts

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Wednesday 6th April 2022 Grand Committee

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

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Lingfield for securing this important debate and congratulate him on his vision, so long ago in the mid-1980s, in the work he proposed at the time. As we all know, it is still a work in progress but this Government are committed to delivering on it.

As noble Lords have said and as set out in our recently published White Paper, our mission is that by 2030, 90% of children will leave primary school having achieved the expected standard in reading, writing and maths, and that at key stage 4 the average attainment in both English and maths will increase to grade 5. Currently, the average for children at key stage 2 is 65%, and for children with special educational needs it is around 22%. As my noble friend Lady Berridge pointed out, that is unacceptable and it is that on which we need to focus. I also thank her for her kind words, and possibly the best ministerial handover breakfast that either of us will ever have.

Strong multi-academy trusts—I stress “strong”—are absolutely central to achieving this ambition. Our priority is to extend their impact across the whole country, particularly in areas of high need. We want to remove barriers to conversion for all types of school, while strengthening the system in regulation and accountability, and making sure that every actor in it has a clear role. We believe that this will level up standards and ensure that every child has the best possible opportunity to succeed in the future.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson, gave examples of how we would do this that related to chapters 1 and 2 of the schools White Paper, I think. He rightly said that this is done by having great teachers for every child, and the Government entirely agree. He also said that it is done by having a really strong curriculum based on evidence and supported by excellent behaviour and attendance—those are my words, not the noble Lord’s, but I do not think that he would disagree. As your Lordships are aware, that is supported by the parent pledge.

I must correct the noble Lord’s statement—forgive me if I do not quote him accurately—that the department picked a headline and then picked the facts to meet it because we had already conceived the policy. I give the noble Lord my word that I worked really hard with excellent officials on that and that is just not the way that we did it. We started with the targets that we wanted to achieve and looked at the evidence for how they could be delivered, and that is what your Lordships see in the White Paper.

We know that this matters so much because teachers and staff in all schools, whether maintained schools or academies, have been working tirelessly, particularly over the last two years, to achieve excellent outcomes for children. Trusts have been able to support teachers in schools where that challenge is greatest. The noble Baroness, Lady Blower, questioned why we referenced the seven out of 10 sponsored academies. Those were schools that were inadequate—many of them were failing for many years, as my noble friend pointed out—and had failed several children in the same families. We put that in bold because the successors of 434,000 children who were in inadequate schools are now in good or outstanding schools. Some 600,000 children in this country are still in inadequate or double-RI-plus schools. We are absolutely determined to make sure that we see an end to that.

On the NEU research that both the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, referred to, I note that the noble Lord, Lord Watson, used the term “manipulate figures”, and I hope that he might retract that statement. I would be delighted to meet with both noble Lords. We are preparing a formal response to that paper, as we believe that there are misunderstandings, at best, within it. The claims are based on selective data and misrepresent the published evidence. As I say, we are preparing a full response for the NEU, and I would be delighted to take both noble Lords, and any other noble Lord, through the data that we used in putting together our proposals.

As I have said, we want all children to be educated in strong trusts, but we know that the system remains mixed at present, and many of our best schools operate alone. On my noble friend’s point about single-academy trusts, I say that they have so much to offer the system, with their leadership and innovations, and we want that to be shared across schools that do not currently benefit. Whether that comes from a single-academy trust or a maintained school, our focus is on quality, and we need some of those trusts to grow. Those that fall short of our expected standards need to be replaced with much stronger ones.

We want to ensure that every pupil is educated in a strong trust, and we set out the five key characteristics of a strong trust in the White Paper: first, that there should be a high-quality and inclusive education; secondly, that there should be sustainable school improvement; thirdly, that there should be training, support and opportunities for teachers throughout their careers; fourthly, that there should be strong strategic leadership and governance; and fifthly, that there should be effective financial management.

In his speech, my noble friend thoughtfully explored the question of the size of multi-academy trusts. We are not pursuing size for its own sake, but if we think of our priorities in terms of educational outcomes, the hierarchy is a well-supported workforce, strong governance and financial efficiencies. We must have educational performance as the first and we believe it cannot be done without a well-supported workforce and strong governance. We are not pursuing size for its own sake. My noble friend is right that there are some great smaller trusts. Equally, I do not recognise some of the data that he referred to about the largest trusts, but I am more than happy to sit down with him to go through this. If I can name two of our best trusts, at the risk of offending others that deserve to be named, the Harris Academy Trust and the Star Academies Trust both have outstanding results and have done remarkable work in terms of school improvement. I am wondering whether some of the data that my noble friend is looking at includes schools that were recently failing and have just gone into those trusts, because they have done a lot of the heavy lifting—not just those two, but others—in turning around very weak schools.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, and other noble Lords referred to CEO pay. We take it extremely seriously. There are two issues that we need to think about, as I said in our response to the noble Lord. One is the absolute figure. I do not know whether the right metric is to look at the Prime Minister’s salary, and we have to be careful because often the figures quoted include pensions and other benefits and are then compared with salaries. There is, of course, an issue about absolute levels, but there is also an issue about value for money. On that point, the largest trusts offer much the best value for money. If you look at CEO pay or overall leadership pay per pupil, they offer the best value for money. We now have trusts which have responsibility for 75,000 children. We need to get the best people to lead them.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, talked about the importance of local. We heard it loud and clear, not just from your Lordships but in our engagement with schools ahead of the White Paper. We are very clear that that is extremely important. The data from the 2021 National Governance Association report showed that 76% of trusts have a local committee for each academy in their trust and a further 12% have a local tier of governance which oversees a group of academies, so 88% of trusts already have some form of local governance in place, but we agree that it is important. To clarify, as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, asked, we are not forcing schools into trusts.

My noble friend asked about the incentives in relation to rural primaries. It is that ability to collaborate, share resources and make a more resilient network of schools. I was lucky enough last week to visit the Old Cleeve First School in west Somerset, which has a grand total of 91 pupils and is part of the West Somerset Academies Trust. The people there gave me two examples—one in relation to the national tutoring programme. As a stand-alone school they would never have been able to participate, but they were able to share a member of staff across three schools in the trust. They also talked about the career opportunities for their staff, which would normally be very limited in a school like that, where you have two forms learning together—so a very small staff team, which is able to move to other parts of the trust.

I would like to set the record straight in relation to the remarks made about the curriculum. Some trusts have a curriculum which they expect all the schools and their trusts to follow; others will give schools in the trust more flexibility. There is really a range—so it is wrong to describe it as such; but I am interested, and I hope that after the debate I will be able to talk to your Lordships about the impact on workforce. On the one hand, we know that the workforce is under pressure but, on the other hand, we have pushed back, and it is something that could save teachers so much time if they have a well-sequenced curriculum to work from.

I cannot accept the point about a lack of transparency on accounts. There is so much greater transparency in the academy sector than there is in the maintained sector.

My noble friend Lady Berridge talked about the importance of focusing on disadvantaged children. I agree with her absolutely; that is why she will have seen that we are targeting a particular investment in educational investment areas, those local authority areas with the highest need and the most entrenched underperformance of schools. I thank her for the welcome for the consultation, which I think she did a great deal of work on, on being able to require schools that have had two judgments below good from Ofsted to join a multi-academy trust.

I thank my noble friend Lady Fleet for all her work in the area of music education, particularly in relation to the national music education plan, which she and I are both looking forward to being published—and not just published but seeing implemented in schools across our country. My noble friend gave some excellent examples of MATs that are really using music as part of the curriculum to great benefit. Certainly, our understanding is that many music teachers might find themselves working in isolation in individual schools, and working in a MAT can be a real benefit in continuing professional development, sharing resources, adding capacity to their teams and giving opportunities for progression.

We also believe that lengthening the minimum school week will benefit some of the curricular and extracurricular enrichment activities.

My noble friend Lady Berridge talked about the risk of capital and use of data in weaker responsible bodies with poor buildings. We have significantly improved our data on the condition of the school estate, including through the condition data collection. Its successor programme, CDC2, will visit every school again in 2026. We also ran a pilot of a capital adviser’s programme in 2021 to test how professional advisers could support trusts to manage their estates more effectively, and we will consider how that can be rolled out further.

My noble friend asked an important question about how long it takes and what the average time is to transfer a school into a trust. I shall write to her on a number of questions. On that issue, I am not sure that the average is really meaningful. The majority of schools are moved in a reasonably straightforward way, then there is a tail of schools, which are extremely difficult and may go on for many years. That is clearly unacceptable, which is why we have set up two MATs—the Falcon Education Academies Trust and the St Joseph Catholic MAT—which can act to hold those schools on a temporary basis until a sponsor is found.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

The Minister is talking about schools moving into MATs. Both the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, and I asked why schools cannot move from one MAT to another or move back into the maintained sector, if they feel it is in their interests to do so.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I have got that, although I am well out of time—but the noble Lord has given me permission to overrun. We are going to consult on the ability under certain circumstances for schools to leave a MAT, if they feel that there are good reasons for that; it is something that we will consult on and explore in some detail.

I am well over time, and I shall write to your Lordships on any questions. In closing, the White Paper is the start of a journey towards a stronger and fairer schools system, with children benefiting from high standards in all areas of the country. It is a journey that will depend on us supporting and empowering our greatest leaders in education; it will depend on us working with parents to make sure that their children achieve their potential wherever they are born, and it is probably the most important journey that any of us will take.

Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Review

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, first I remind the House of my declared interests in this field: I am dyslexic; I am president of the British Dyslexia Association; I am a long-established user of assistive technology and chairman of a company that provides that across the education and working sector.

The best thing about the system is acceptance of the problem. In the current system, you are advised to get legal advice to get the best results. If ever there was a definition of failure, that is it: people cannot get the help they need from the mainstream system which the law dictates unless they have legal support. There really is no bigger condemnation, and I congratulate the Minister on bringing forward something that recognises that. The system we have has not worked. It has not worked for a variety of reasons, mainly, I feel, because the school process, whereby schools take money out of their budgets to support individual pupils, is counterintuitive to the school. They can take £6,000 out of their mainstream budget to support a pupil, but not put £6,000 into training staff to meet the recurring needs.

We talk about pupils with a commonly occurring condition, but I agree that this is not the full package: there is a range of subjects and most people who come into this category have a cocktail of conditions. If they are lucky, with good parents—the tiger parent—fighting for support, a bit of resource, they generally get a decent result, even if they have to pay lawyers. If they do not have that, they get a bad result and will end up in alternative provision. Can the Minister give me some idea about how those who will initially be below the threshold for intervention needed for the plans will get help and support? I cannot see how that will occur.

The noble Baroness will say something positive about SENCOs, which is good, but it requires more than that. It requires a recognition strategy caused by having good teachers, teachers with knowledge, in place to identify and get help in early. Because we all know that is the way it works: identify early, get strategies in place, get structure, and there is less resistance from the pupil. How will we do that with this system? How will we make sure that the system knows what it is doing when somebody starts to fail? Are we going to have a degree of flexibility built into this national plan?

Why can I never remember the exact name of the phonics system? It is specialist synthetic phonics. The Government say that the phonics system is suitable for everybody; guess what? The British Dyslexia Association, the biggest individual group, says it does not work for dyslexics, so we will need an alternative provision of teaching and how to implement that throughout the system to get the best out of the biggest cohort. It is not the only cohort, but it is the biggest. How will we do that? How will we make that work if we do not have a degree of flexibility built in and do not address the fact that certain people will always struggle?

We cannot ignore what happened yesterday. Apparently, 90% of pupils in this country are going to reach literacy standards. I have already identified 10%—and that is a conservative estimate—of those who will have extra problems with reading and writing. We can also stick on 5% or 6% who are dyscalculic. But wait, look at the good news—some of them are included in the first 10%, so they actually have multiple disability problems. It is called “comorbidity”, but I think that “co-occurring” sounds better. You can stick dyspraxia and autism in there, and they are just the hidden disabilities. How will we achieve this unless there are people who can identify early, and not take it to this system of struggling identification? I quite understand that the Minister may well be able to make it less legally driven, but there is a danger that it will go back there.

I hope that the Minister can give us some idea about guidance. If the Government want to achieve their high literacy levels, how about someone who word processes by talking and listening to their computer, as opposed to just tapping the keyboard? That is available to everyone. I know that the Minister has had some experience with this; she is the first Minister I did not need to show this technology to.

A slightly more flexible approach will get far better results here. If the Minister can assure us that, with guaranteeing standards, they agree with that flexibility, all things are possible. If we go back to saying, “No, this is the way we should do it”, and having conflicting stories, we will just have failure—it may not be quite as bad, but we will still have failure.

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

My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their remarks and acknowledge the opening positivity of the noble Lord, Lord Watson. I genuinely believe that the reason his initial response to the review was positive—“buts” permitting—was because my ministerial colleagues and officials in the department have worked really closely with parents, carers and young people with disabilities. This review has been co-created with them, and we thank them enormously for their time.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, rightly highlighted the adversarial system which we face today, with parents feeling forced to go to a tribunal to get suitable provision for their children. We really believe that our plans will lead to much greater transparency about what is available for their child in their local area, and much great clarity about how it can be provided. We very much hope that, combined with our offer around mediation, parents will feel that their voices are heard—and heard early—and that their child’s needs can be met, ideally, as close to home as possible.

Both noble Lords rightly stressed the importance of early intervention, and I am sure that they also share our aspiration in terms of quality and consistency of provision. It is really striking—for example, when comparing local authorities and the percentage of children with an education, health and care plan who end up in a specialist setting—that the same child is six times as likely to end up in a specialist setting in one part of the country, compared with another. That spreads through the system, including those without an EHCP. We hope that one of the building blocks for earlier intervention will be clarity. This clarity will be achieved through new national standards which will set out which needs can and should be met effectively in mainstream provision, and the support which should be available there without the need for an education, health and care plan. It will also provide guidance on when a child or young person does need an EHCP and whether they need a specialist placement. I am sure that the House shares our concern not just for those children who are diagnosed late, but those children who are never diagnosed at all and do not get the support they need.

We also hope that reinforcing the provision that exists in mainstream schools for children with special educational needs and disabilities will help with early intervention. Our ambition is that we should have a truly inclusive education system so that mainstream provision, supplemented by targeted support when it is required—by which I mean those specialist interventions for children but also pastoral interventions—will allow them to thrive in a mainstream setting. We also want timely access for those with more complex needs to specialist support or placements in alternative provision.

We are trying to balance the work we are doing in consulting on and planning a system that works more effectively for young people with not waiting to make sure that the funding that the noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred to, gets to young people through their local authorities as quickly as possible. We are investing more in this system than we ever have. In 2022-23 the high-needs budget will be £9.1 billion, and it is set to increase further over the coming years. Therefore, we have made our commitments in revenue funding but also, critically, in capital funding, providing up to 33,000 additional places for children requiring specialist provision.

Looking to the future, the review proposes a system of funding bands and tariffs so that people better understand the level of future funding they can expect to receive. We will move to arrangements for funding schools directly, rather than through the local authority funding formula, but that will obviously take some time to implement. We also think that improvements in the quality of provision will be driven by the local inclusion plans, which every area will prepare in a multiagency way with their health and social care and education partners, and, critically, with parents and carers. That in turn will be reinforced by local dashboards, so that we have real transparency across the country about what is working, what needs more attention and how we can learn from one another.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred to the 2014 reforms and the need to have really effective implementation. We are absolutely aware of the need to learn lessons from 2014. We are setting up a special delivery board, which will oversee the rollout of these policies. We are also establishing a £70 million change programme for this work so that we can test and refine proposals before we scale up.

In response to the noble Lord’s question about further education settings, we absolutely agree that they are an incredibly valuable resource for young people with special educational needs. Our proposals will allow FE settings to be absolutely clear about the support that they are expected to deliver for young people. We continue to work with stakeholders in that sector so that our proposals are shaped by their expertise.

On the questions from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, regarding dyslexia more broadly and the use of technology, it is fair to say that there is a range of views about the use of phonics for children with dyslexia and the right place for technology. I would be very glad, if the noble Lord would be interested, to arrange for him to meet colleagues in the department so that we can give the points he raised the time that they deserve.

In closing, the Government are ambitious for all our children. For children with special educational needs and disabilities, as for every other child, we are determined to build an education system where they can get the right support, in the right place, at the right time.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

Can I ask my noble friend the Minister what the plan is for teachers to be able to identify children with special needs, particularly at an early age—as early as reception, where I feel things often start going wrong? It is also about being able to give parents support when they come forward, when they feel that there might be a problem with their child.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend raises an important point. She is right that early years education, even before reception, has consistently been proven to be absolutely fundamental to strengthening a child’s readiness for school and educational potential over their life, as well as for wider educational outcomes. We propose to increase the number of staff with an accredited level 3 SENCO qualification in early years settings to improve the special educational needs and disability expertise in those settings by up to 5,000 additional practitioners.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Watson has had a good deal more time to look in detail at this Green Paper than I have, but I look forward to some conversations about it with the Minister. My question follows rather well from those of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness opposite. One issue about early intervention is that there is a paucity, not to say an absence, of the study of child development in the initial stages of teacher training and education. Frankly, if teachers are not exposed to that in their period of training, they will be ill equipped to recognise these difficulties early in their career. I implore the Minister to have a little look at initial teacher training and education, just to make sure that everything that we are saying is consistent, so we really can address the needs of all children.

Having said, that, we have had two Statements on education in two days—it is great, is it not—and there is a great deal to welcome in this Green Paper. However, we must all acknowledge that there is much more to do for children and young people with special needs and disabilities. We all, I hope, acknowledge that the challenges are not new. As it says in the Green Paper, the pandemic has exposed and exacerbated pre-existing difficulties. Some of us in this Chamber who have been teachers will know, and will have been having an uphill struggle in saying, that there is enormous unmet need and enormous challenges. However, the Green Paper also helpfully says, on page 13, that

“We need a system where decision-making is based on the needs of children and young people, not on location”.


That is absolutely right. If a child has a need, it should be met.

It may be that the standardisation of the education and healthcare plan will help with that, and it may also help, as I think it suggests in the Green Paper, with some elements of reducing staff workload. But however much we have the ambition, the lived reality for children and young people has to be, as the book says, that they get the right support at the right time, so I applaud that.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

Is the Minister absolutely confident that there will be sufficient funding going forward? I have one specific question. Why is it that the special schools with alternative provisions will be free schools, when it is very clear that local authorities will have a significant role to play in the delivery of these improvements? Why can they not be commissioners of providers of schools?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

In answer to the noble Baroness’s second question, they could potentially be presumption free schools. However, as she knows, all new schools are free schools. On early childhood development—this was not her question, but just to clarify—content on special educational needs and childhood development is part of the initial teacher training curriculum. I am extremely interested in early childhood development. As the noble Baroness knows, I ran a domestic abuse charity for many years, so I am looking forward to a longer conversation with her on that.

In relation to funding, the noble Baroness will know that we have moved fast to try to meet the increase in funding needs, which have gone up by 40% over the past few years. It has been an unsustainable situation, and we have worked hard with local authorities to try to manage the pressures they are under. We hope that this approach will mark a step change in the funding that is required and how it is spent.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I should declare an interest having chaired the National Mental Capacity Forum in recent years; I have just finished doing so.

I want to ask about the children and young people with severe learning difficulties. I seek assurance that their plan towards adulthood includes looking at the strengths they have to maximally support them in their own decision-making and, where possible, ensure that they have adequate capacity to choose someone to hold lasting power of attorney in future for financial, health and welfare decisions. It is awful when they suddenly reach their 18th birthday and their parents find that they can no longer take decisions and have not made adequate provision ahead of time. Many of these young people have enough capacity, when carefully supported, to take the decision because they know what they need and who they trust to take decisions for them. It is much safer than leaving it up to fate later on.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a very good point. Given that this is a consultation, I really encourage her to share that as part of her consultation response so that we can take it into account in our plans going forward.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, following on from the noble Baroness, I do not think that the Minister entirely answered the point about initial teacher training. What is being done in such training to ensure that every new teacher is equipped to recognise special educational needs? There is early and accurate identification of need, but they can do that only if they are trained to recognise the different types of disability that children might have.

The other thing I want to ask about concerns the new statutory SEND partnership. How will this plan differ from the plan that is in existence at the moment for children’s health and care plans? Can the Minister explain that too?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I understand why the noble Baroness talks about initial teacher training, although she will be aware that it is outwith the scope of this Green Paper. Our wider vision for teachers is that they should have opportunities for professional development at every stage of their career, whether that is initial teacher training, early career development or beyond. We will consult on creating a SENCO NPQ, which will give teachers who wish to develop in that area an opportunity to do so.

The noble Baroness also asked about the new approach. Some of the difference will be around clarity. First, the new approach brings together special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision. As the noble Baroness knows, one of the things the pandemic high- lighted was the number of children in AP with special educational needs and disabilities, so we want to bring those together. We want absolute clarity around standards of provision and on roles and responsibilities. We also want much clearer accountability and the partnership to work in a coherent way, including with the partners I mentioned in response to an earlier question.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, returning to a theme that has been at the centre of our discussion, the Early Years Alliance did a survey of its providers in preparation for the Green Paper. It found that three-quarters of them had seen an increase in the number of children with formally defined SEND over the past two years, while even more—84%—believed that they had children whose needs had not been identified formally but were clear to them. The survey covered a really disparate group of nurseries, pre-schools and childminding professionals. Some 40% of them said that they get no extra funding now; 87% of them said that they do not get enough funding to meet the quality of care they believe is necessary; and 56% of them said that they had had delays in getting funding. Is the Minister really confident that there is enough in this Green Paper, with the reorganisation and redrawing of boundaries and responsibilities being put on local authorities, to address these issues? Do we not need massively more resources to be put into this stage, which the paper identifies as absolutely crucial?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government are putting significantly more resource in. I absolutely hear what the noble Baroness says but I hope she also accepts that we have little consistency in how we identify children with special educational needs and disabilities. Of course, their needs are at varying levels and require varying levels of funding to address them. Just from visiting mainstream schools, I know that there will certainly be great variations in the percentage of children identified with special educational needs. Sometimes that is because of great early intervention that has addressed and dealt with their needs; other times, it is because of poor intervention; other times, there are different reasons. However, every local authority will attract a funding increase of at least 12% per head for their two to 18 year-old population in 2022-23, with some local authorities seeing increases of up to 16% compared with the previous year. I hope the noble Baroness acknowledges that we are really committing money to sort this out.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of the National Society, which leads the Church of England’s education work.

I hope the Minister will be pleased to hear that, in response to yesterday’s Green Paper, the Church of England has established a national network for SENCOs at primary and secondary levels, partly to get their opinions on how we should respond but also to offer development in future. However, I want to continue to pursue the early years question. Understandably, this is about education and social care. The first 1,001 days of life are the most crucial. Nothing here refers to the development of family hubs and the work of health visitors in the pre-two context, where some discernment ought to be available. Can the Minister comment on the join-up between the development of family hubs and the really early years?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I start by asking the right reverend Prelate—I am sure I speak on behalf of my ministerial colleagues as well—to share how warmly we welcome the creation of the networks. We very much look forward to their contributions to the consultation. In relation to family hubs, he is absolutely right that they are critical to this task of early identification. Obviously we have already announced our plans on family hubs; we are excited at the potential for multiagency working so that we can identify and support as early as possible. As the right reverend Prelate knows, family hubs support the whole family through to when the child reaches maturity; whether it is early or a bit later, they are there to help.

Foreign Languages: Economic Value

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and declare my interests as co-chair of the All-Party Group on Modern Languages and as vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Linguists.

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

My Lords, the Government believe in the importance of languages and welcome the report’s findings on removing language barriers to benefit the economy. We support language teaching through the recent modern foreign languages GCSE review, the MFL hub programme and the Mandarin Excellence Programme, among other initiatives. We are considering the report alongside other available research and exploring other ways in which we can expand the pipeline of fluent speakers to meet the country’s future needs.

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, the Mandarin Excellence Programme has shown that high standards can be achieved in state schools without impinging on other priority subjects, so will the Government launch an equivalent programme in one or more of the other three languages which could result in economic benefits? Secondly, given the finding that in specific sectors such as energy, services and mining other languages matter at least as much as English in reducing trade barriers, will the Minister undertake to speak with colleagues in the Department for International Trade and the Treasury to identify how language skills can be improved and funded in these sectors?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government welcome the results of the report, which do indeed highlight the notable achievements of the programme to date. We continue to explore how we can provide greater support for the study of other languages. Regarding the Department for International Trade, the noble Baroness will be aware that we recently announced a refreshed export strategy, Made in the UK, Sold to the World, giving UK exporters support services to seize the opportunities secured through our trade agreements. This is focused on market barriers such as language. I am happy to talk to colleagues there and at the Treasury, as the noble Baroness suggests.

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)]

Has my noble friend seen the evidence given just a few days ago by a former British ambassador to Moscow to a Lords committee, in which he lamented the decline of foreign language skills in the Foreign Office, especially Russian? Does she agree that it is quite important that diplomats who represent the United Kingdom in and promote exports to foreign countries should be able to understand and speak a foreign language? Can she therefore tell the House what progress has been made to improve foreign language skills in the Foreign Office?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolutely agree with my noble friend. The FCDO has some 800 specially trained linguists qualified in 46 languages, operating in 111 posts around the world. This figure includes almost 80 heads of mission.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, speaking other languages is very good for warding off Alzheimer’s, as well as playing a significant part in international trade, which is the point of this Question, so it is a win-win. Are the Government still serious about ensuring that the UK can compete on a global stage post Brexit? If so, how will they measure the success of the measures they are taking to ensure that the woeful decline in modern language learning stops and is turned around?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I do not have time to answer the noble Baroness’s question in full, but I remind her that the uptake of French GSCE is slightly up between 2017 and 2021, Spanish is up very substantially from 85,000 students to 109,000, and 41,000 participants in the Turing scheme, 48% from disadvantaged backgrounds, have been allocated funding this year.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that a diplomat or business person trying to negotiate in a foreign language which they have not mastered can be dangerous, but nevertheless a basic knowledge of the language can ease the path to good negotiation?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolutely agree with the noble Lord. Indeed, returning to diplomats, more than 70% of FCDO staff in speaker slots, which require language skills, now have a valid exam pass in their target language compared to 39% in 2015.

[Lord McDonald of Salford (CB)]

My Lords, Willy Brandt put it best when he said “If I am selling to you, I will speak your language, but if you are selling to me dann müssen Sie Deutsch sprechen.” Clearly, German manufacturers got the point because this century Germany has been one of the two most successful manufacturing exporting countries in the world. Why is this fundamental truth so elusive to British exporters?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think it is not elusive to British exporters. There are a number of mechanisms for improving our competitiveness on the world stage; language is one of them. However, English is a global language in the way that Deutsch ist nicht.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, developing the point just raised by the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, in the European Union two-thirds of adults of working age can speak more than one language, yet two-thirds of Britons cannot hold a conversation in a language other than their mother tongue, so I am sure the Minister will be as concerned as I was to see the latest figures on A-levels in modern languages decline by a further 5% between 2017 and 2021. Yesterday, the schools White Paper pledged a network, I think it was called, of modern language hubs with CPD for teachers of those languages, yet the numbers of those teachers are falling. Will the cuts made last year by the Government in bursaries for language students, from £26,000 to £10,000, be reversed to support the development of those modern language hubs?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

We were very pleased to announce in the schools White Paper the network of modern foreign language hubs. We are also increasing the languages bursary to £15,000 for 2023 to incentivise candidates. In 2020-21, the number of postgraduate modern foreign language trainees increased by 300 to 16,087.

[Lord Morgan (Lab)]

My noble friend’s reference to native languages stirs me to point out that, while I of course totally agree with the Question and with the Minister’s replies, there is far more to modern languages than simply improving the terms of trade. There is the question of deep cultural enrichment and, in these islands, understanding the culture of these islands more deeply. As someone who was brought up bilingually in Britain, I think that is important.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolute agree with the noble Lord and that is why I referred to the Turing scheme, which we hope will be part of creating that richer picture of the world we live in.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister cited a statistic for the success with French and Spanish, but they are languages of the EU, with whom our trade has fallen, according to the Dutch Government, by 14% in the three months to January compared with two years previously. I wonder whether the Minister can say something about our success in teaching the languages of those new markets in which we are going to succeed.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, referred to the Mandarin Excellence Programme, but I point out that, as the noble Baroness understands, French and Spanish are very widely spoken outside the EU.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, the Erasmus programme was reciprocal, so tuition fees were not paid. In my noble friend’s experience, how many European universities have waived tuition fees under the Turing programme to enable UK students to apply without paying tuition fees?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I do not have that data to hand and I am not sure whether it is yet available, given the newness of the Turing scheme, but I will write to my noble friend to clarify that.

Schools: Creative Subjects and the English Baccalaureate

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey]

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

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

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

[Lord Storey (LD)]

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

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

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

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, despite what the Minister says, the message clearly being sent out via EBacc to teachers, parents and children is that creative subjects are of lesser worth, a message independent schools are ignoring. Is the Minister aware that there is five times greater spend on music in independent schools than in state schools, including academies? Does the Minister agree that this is bad for levelling up, bad for education and bad for our future economy, a key aspect of which will be the creative industries, as independent schools know full well?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The department does not track the expenditure on these subjects in independent schools. What the department is committed to, and restated in the schools White Paper yesterday, is that every child should have a rich cultural education, and we will be publishing a new cultural education plan jointly with DCMS next year.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness’s credentials regarding personal commitment to these issues are impeccable, both in this role and the role she held previously at the DCMS; however, the evidence is against her. As the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, has just said, there is an impact not only on students in schools but on the workforce both within education and in the creative industries more widely, as there is a decline in the numbers of people prepared to take forward qualifications in music, drama and other creative subjects, Does she worry at all that the much-vaunted creative industries, of which she and her colleagues frequently speak with pride, will be suffering over the coming years as a result of these policies?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question and her kind remarks but I just cannot accept what she suggests. As she points out, we have thriving cultural and creative industries in this country. We have enough teachers entering initial teacher training for art and design and drama, well above our recruitment targets. We are committing more funding in T-levels, in media, broadcast and production, and in craft and design, so I think we are building the platform for our creative industries and our children to thrive.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, are the Government not deeply concerned that their own official data shows that the number of hours of music taught in years 7 to 13 has fallen sharply in the last 12 years? In view of this and of comments of the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and others, is it not all the more important that independent schools work closely with their maintained sector colleagues to increase still further the 655 music partnership schemes from which students in both sectors benefit so greatly?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

We very much welcome the partnerships from the independent sector in music and many other areas, and my noble friend is right to highlight them. However, we also have a responsibility and an ambition to make sure that our children have a strong music education, which is why we will be publishing our updated national plan shortly.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Does the Minister agree that, if we are to create a world of resilient workers in the next generation, we need to look at how we create these people through a resilient education system? We are in a bigger crisis than we believe. We need to reinvent a holistic form of education, because that is how the world’s businesses are going.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord raises a large, broad and important issue. Of course we need a resilient education system and resilient children, and in the announcements in our schools White Paper and the special educational needs and disability Green Paper published this morning, we have set out exactly how we plan to do that.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, I taught creative subjects for over 30 years and, as principal examiner for A-level theatre studies for much of that time, I saw a wealth of talent studying this subject across the UK. It is essential that we promote the creative arts in our schools. They nurture well-rounded students and bring a breadth and depth to their learning. In hard cash terms, according to DCMS analysis, the creative industries contribute almost £116 billion a year to the UK. If, for example, the current decline in A-level music that many noble Lords have mentioned continues, this subject could have zero entrants in 10 years’ time. What, if anything, are the Government doing to reverse this appalling decline?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

At the risk of repeating myself, we have announced that we will publish a cultural education plan together with DCMS, working jointly across government, which is the right way to approach it. We will shortly announce our national plan for music education. We are doing a lot of work and continue to invest around £115 million per year in cultural education.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister has told us on numerous occasions that the Government like to listen to employers. When Netflix representatives came to speak to my group, I asked them what they wanted in trainees and whether they wanted people with more English and maths. They looked blankly at me and said, “No, that’s not what we are looking for. We want more rounded people.” Will the Government follow their own mantra and make sure they talk to the big employers, who do not seem to want what the Government are offering?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government work extremely closely with employers. Our T-level programme was developed with over 250 employers. I would ask the noble Lord why we are seeing such huge international investment in our film and creative industries if we are not providing the talented people they need.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, would my noble friend care to reflect on the importance of citizenship education in levelling up and creating a country at ease with itself? Will she join me in regretting that yesterday’s White Paper said nothing about citizenship education at all?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Citizenship education is absolutely a core part of what we deliver. In defence of the White Paper, we were setting out the major new elements of our plan for the next several years, but citizenship remains a core part of it.

[Lord Cashman (Lab)]

My Lords, first-hand experience of the arts can be life enhancing and life changing. Therefore, will the Minister encourage her department to do all it can to ensure that background and income levels are not a barrier to physically accessing the arts?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

To the extent that it is within my gift, I will do my best.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, last week, the Incorporated Society of Musicians published a report entitled Music: A Subject in Peril?, based on a survey of more than 500 music teachers. Some 93% of respondents said that the EBacc and/or Progress 8 had caused huge damage to music in schools, resulting in courses not running and music departments shrinking. What reassurance can the Minister give that the refreshed national plan for music education will address these issues and that teachers will be consulted on it before it is published?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The national plan has been developed with an expert panel, of which the noble Lord is aware, and that panel consulted extensively during its work—through forums, surveys and other mechanisms—with teachers, students, parents and other experts. We very much look forward to its publication.

Schools White Paper

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not doubt the commitment of the Minister to equality for all children. However, in responding to the White Paper, the National Children’s Bureau comments that too many children still live in poverty. That must be addressed for education success to follow. The White Paper has left many in education underwhelmed and, as my noble friend Lord Watson said, it has left our schools underfunded.

In all the years that academisation has been an option, only 44% of schools have taken it, some voluntarily, often with inducements, and some not. No solid evidence can be adduced that academy status per se equates to better outcomes for young people. School leaders have declared that total forced academisation would be a distraction, so why does the Minister think that politicians know better than school leaders?

With one in six children reporting mental health difficulties, an opportunity to reassess assessment and the curriculum should have been taken. The potential for centralisation of pedagogy through Oak Academy is a problem. It looks like deskilling our teachers, with talk of “delivering” lessons. While the White Paper is about England, will the Government take the opportunity to learn from the very good practice in evidence in Scotland and Wales, including on school governance, curriculum and assessment?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her remarks. On academisation, she will be aware that the picture is very different in secondary and primary education. About 78% of secondary schools are now academies compared to about 38% of primaries. She questions their performance. Our emphasis has been very clear. We are talking about creating strong trusts and we are building on the experience of the existing strong trusts. If all children did as well as pupils in the top-performing 10% of trusts at key stage 2, our results nationally would be 14 percentage points higher, going from 65% to 79%, and would be 19 percentage points higher for disadvantaged pupils. I know the noble Baroness shares my passion and the passion of my colleagues in the department for supporting particularly those disadvantaged children.

On Oak Academy, far from deskilling teachers, we are going to make the most enormous investment in teachers in terms of teacher training opportunities and continuing professional development at all stages of a teacher’s career. We are aware that, particularly in primary, individual teachers are writing lesson plans from scratch. Oak Academy is by teachers, for teachers and of teachers. It is there as an option for teachers. Again, I know the noble Baroness shares our concerns about teacher workload. One way we can support teachers is by providing them with the best-quality curriculum to draw from.

[The Lord Bishop of Worcester]

My Lords, I echo the noble Lord, Lord Storey, in his thanks for the White Paper. In doing so, I declare my interest as president of the Woodard Corporation. In expressing gratitude, I appreciate in particular how the White Paper recognises the vital role the Churches have played in the educational landscape of this country for more than 200 years and that it sets out how the role needs to continue to be enabled in the future development of the school system. I will focus on two questions regarding the move towards the fully academised educational landscape set out in the White Paper and invite the Minister to agree that it requires two key things.

First, it requires significant investment of resource to make that transition possible. The Church of England is the largest provider of academies, with over 1,500 of our schools having already converted, but that still leaves two-thirds of our schools waiting to become academies. This will require time and resource for the conversion process, as well as strong, new trusts to be formed to enable that transition. Recognition that MATs must grow to a sustainable level of about 7,500 pupils means thinking carefully and strategically about small rural schools and how a funding model can work for them, to enable their vital education to remain at the heart of communities, particularly rural communities, across our land.

Secondly, I hope the noble Baroness can give assurance that legislation will be introduced to ensure that the statutory basis on which the dual system of Church and state as partners in education, which has been in operation since 1944, securely translates into the contractual context in which academies are based, so that the sites on which schools are situated can continue to be used for the charitable purposes for which they were given. So, in expressing thanks, I ask the noble Baroness to assure us that these things will be addressed and secured in order to ensure that Church schools can approach this new future with confidence.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for his questions. I also extend my thanks to Church schools but also to all schools that have been working in the most difficult circumstances, particularly in the second half of this term, with the pressures that Covid has placed, once again, on their staff. I can, I hope, reassure the right reverend Prelate that we will be protecting the faith designation of diocesan schools on a statutory basis as we move forward with our plans. We are providing funding to support academisation and to make sure that schools, particularly schools in the most entrenched areas of educational underperformance, are funded to join strong trusts.

On small rural schools—to go back to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, about feeling local—perhaps there are no schools more local than small rural primaries, which often play a really important part in their community. We will be putting a great deal of thought into this and look forward to working with the right reverend Prelate’s colleagues at the diocesan education board in thinking through how we can deliver this in a way that supports small rural primaries.

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, the Secretary of State deserves the warmest congratulations, with the ministerial team and all those officials and others who have been involved in Opportunity for All: Strong Schools with Great Teachers for your Child. I suggest that anyone who thinks there is excessive focus on English and maths should consult parents. Parents want their children to read and write; parents know the world is difficult; they know that numeracy and now digital skills are critical. They know that a good education is the passport for the future, and the most disadvantaged parents know that quite as much as the most affluent. I really like this White Paper for its coherence, its ambition, its relative simplicity and its evidence base. How many times have we all heard head teachers saying, “I’ve had so many documents come through that I have to read—I’ve got to teach my school and do everything else”? Somebody once said to me, “I’ve given the documents to my husband to read because I just don’t have time to read it all.” This is accessible and approachable.

Children spend around 15,000 hours at school; the same amount of time as they spend at home. Professor Sir Michael Rutter, the architect of child psychiatry, wrote a book, Fifteen Thousand Hours, with the team at the Maudsley, comparing the output of 12 secondary schools in Southwark. They found that the brightest children at some schools were doing worse than the least able children at another school. This is about teachers, about expectations and about rigour. For those of us who want to see what can be achieved, we can only celebrate again the extraordinary results at the Brampton Manor Academy. This year, 89 young people got Oxbridge offers—ethnic minorities, school meals, first generation university.

I have so much to say, I had better be quick. I have two questions I want to ask. Will the Minister say a little more about the Education Endowment Foundation; and will she say just a bit more about excluded pupils? They are a really vexed problem. They can be disruptive in a class aiming for high standards, but we do not want them to fall out of the system, so I very much hope she will address that.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I will pass on my noble friend’s very warm words to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State. I am glad that she appreciates the White Paper. I agree with her wholeheartedly about what parents want. I was lucky enough to spend some time with a group of parents yesterday while visiting a school in Newham, where 94% of the children have English as an additional language. The mothers and fathers to whom I spoke were all crystal clear about how important it was for their children to achieve.

In relation to my noble friend’s specific questions, the Education Endowment Foundation, which we fully endowed through, and announced in, the White Paper, provides us with the academic rigour in terms of evaluating different interventions across the education system, so that teachers, school leaders and MAT leaders can feel confident in the interventions that they use. All that we have suggested in the White Paper has been supported and recommended by the EEF. In relation to excluded children, if my noble friend will bear with me for another day, we are taking the Statement about the special educational needs and alternative provision Green Paper in this House tomorrow, when I will be delighted to talk about that in more detail.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, there is a great deal in this White Paper on special educational needs and teacher training. Indeed, teacher training is the main thrust of it. Then we talk about 90% literacy. Some 15%—or 10% if you are being conservative—of the population are dyslexic. Another 5% are dyscalculic. If you put the other “disses” in there, you have a great pot of people who are going to struggle in the classroom. How, unless you have a major investment in special educational needs, are you going to hit that target? Or are we going to do something very sensible such as saying that if somebody communicates through a computer coherently—every computer that you buy now has a built-in voice-operated section and read-back facility—we will count that as being literate? If we are, we can achieve it. If not, we are basically going to break the back of people achieving an unrealistic target if it is still with a pen and paper. If the Minister can give me an answer now, it will help the rest of the debate today, and the debate on the Statement tomorrow.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I hope I can give the noble Lord a fuller answer tomorrow, when we talk about the SEND Green Paper. But in terms of this document talking a lot about children with special educational needs and disabilities, that is intentional. We are absolutely clear that the best place for the majority of children with special educational needs is in mainstream education close to their home and their friends. We need to make sure that mainstream schools are a safe, welcoming, supportive and effective environment for those children. We have looked at and tried to model the interventions that are set out in the White Paper to see how we can reach the targets that we have set out. As the noble Lord knows, however, currently only 22% of children with special educational needs reach the expected standard, compared with an average at key stage 2 of 65%—so it is well below what we need to get to.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, one of the themes that the White Paper majors on is listening to the voices of parents and making sure that they are heard. However, More Than a Score and Parentkind today put out a survey from YouGov, showing that 80% of parents think that SATs do not provide useful information about a child’s progress; 95% say SATs have a negative impact on their child’s well-being; and 85% do not consider SATs results when choosing a school. Only 1% of the members of the National Association of Head Teachers thought that key stage 1 SATs should go ahead this year; 3% thought that key stage 2 should go ahead. The White Paper is on the bigger, longer-term issues, but are we not seeing, both in terms of the Government’s determination to push ahead with SATs and in terms of the focus on academic targets and testing in this White Paper, a push to schools to more and more teach to the test in a narrow range of subjects? Are we yet again not listening to parents and not listening to pupils? I take the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, about pupils spending 15,000 hours in school. We have the unhappiest children in Europe. We are failing our children, and focusing just on tests in a narrow range of subjects is a big part of that. Will the Government think about the happiness of our children?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government think a lot about the happiness of our children. We worry a lot about the children who are in underperforming schools, and where their life chances are being held back because of the nature of the education they receive. This is why we are focusing our education investment on areas of really entrenched under-performance. The noble Baroness shakes her head, but 54% of children in secondary schools in Knowsley today are in schools which have been judged more than twice as requiring more improvement. That is what will turn around our children’s life chances, and that is where we are focusing.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for the answers she has given. I welcome the ambition of the Government’s policies as set out in the White Paper. I will look at the statistics they have provided with some care. Are such statistics in a White Paper run past the UK Statistics Authority—not just the figures, but the conclusions drawn from them? It would be useful if we could be told.

I hope I will be forgiven if I suggest, for those with long enough memories, that the support expressed in the White Paper for well-managed families of schools delivering high-quality and inclusive education, coupled with the encouragement in the White Paper for LEAs to establish their own strong trusts, might be taken as an attempt to recreate the achievements of the Inner London Education Authority after many years. Of course, the fear of many people is that academies—particularly when we have multi-academy trusts—lead, in effect, to the privatisation of the education service. The distinction between an MAT and a commercial organisation is often hard to discern.

My first question for the Minister is, what are the Government going to do to ensure that all academies, whether SAT or MAT, operate with a social purpose? My second question, given the emphasis on what parents want from education in the previous question, is, what role do the Government want for parents in the governance of academies? There is a reference in the White Paper to a review of the governance of the system, but it is notable that in the document, The Case for a Fully Trust-Led System, there is only one reference to parents, and then only as passive observers. Should the Government not do more to enable the participation of parents in school governance?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am really puzzled by the image the noble Lord paints of multi-academy trusts representing privatisation. They receive exactly the same funding as any other state-maintained school, and they are inspected in exactly the same way. The majority of them are charities. I am not sure quite where privatisation comes in. What we see in the best trusts—and perhaps this is behind the noble Lord’s question—is that they use the resources from the taxpayer intelligently, in the interests of the child. I will give an example from the north-east of England. I recently visited a trust which, through better procurement, was able to reinvest those savings in dedicated tutoring for all their students. I do not know where the noble Lord’s concern comes from, but I genuinely think it is misplaced.

I turn to the noble Lord’s second point, about trust standards. We will be working with this sector. There is not a lot of detail in the White Paper because we want to co-create those standards together with the sector, and we look forward to reporting back more on that in the future. This would, of course, include the role of parents.

Schools: Extremism and Intolerance

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Godson]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the reporting in “The Trojan Horse Affair” podcast, published by the New York Times on 4 February; and what steps they are taking to prevent extremism and intolerance from gaining a foothold in schools in England.

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

My Lords, we remain absolutely committed to keeping children safe from extremism. We provide online resources and fund networks of practitioners to support schools to promote shared values and build resilience to extremism. We also take action against those in the sector who express extremist views. The Government’s response at the time of “Trojan horse” rightly focused on whether the alleged events and behaviours actually happened. A number of independent reports confirmed that they did.

[Lord Godson (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her Answer and pay tribute to her great diligence in having subjected herself to listening to all eight hours of the New York Times podcast on this subject. I did not intend to subject her to a cruel and unusual punishment when I originally decided to ask the Question. Will she join me in paying tribute to the whistleblowers of all communities in Birmingham who played their part in bringing these most important allegations to public attention? Many of these people have been harassed by the New York Times in the years since the revelation of these allegations. Connected to that, will she give some sense to the House of the progress made on the independent report undertaken by Peter Clarke, former head of the counterterrorism command on the Trojan horse affair at the time, and the progress made on his 15 recommendations in this regard?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government recognise the very important contribution that whistleblowers make. We have had anonymous reporting lines since 2015 and established an online reporting system in 2021, which is available to those working in the sector and to the general public. I hope I can reassure my noble friend that we have made good progress on implementing Peter Clarke’s recommendations. To give the House some examples, we have strengthened the Ofsted inspection framework so that its inspectors are now required to assess how well schools protect pupils from the risks of extremism and radicalisation, and to promote fundamental British values. We have pursued action against those who may have breached teacher standards and taken action against those involved in the management of schools. We continue to assess whether other areas of the country could be similarly vulnerable, and we have a dedicated counterextremism function in the department to consider allegations.

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that extremism arises from claims that the one God of us all has human prejudices and is more favourably disposed to our particular faith, as opposed to others’, no matter how we behave towards others? Does she further agree that the teaching of RE in schools should emphasise ethical commonalities, which are much greater than the smaller area of conflict-producing differences?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord asks a rather profound first question, which I might need a bit more time to think about. On his second point, the principles that underpin fundamental British values, which are now taught in every school, include diversity, tolerance, mutual respect and the rule of law.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, the report by the independent review of the Prevent extremism strategy was due to be submitted to the Home Office in September. It was then put back to 31 December, and it still has not been published. Will the Government tell us whether they have received the report and whether they will commit to releasing the strategy before the summer Recess to ensure that the UK’s counterterrorism strategy is fit for purpose?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My understanding is that the independent review of Prevent is ongoing, and we will consider its findings in due course.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, at least 6,000 children are being educated in unregistered illegal schools where they are exposed to extremist, intolerant, homophobic and sexist literature. As the Government indicated, can the Minister confirm that legislation will be included in the May Queen’s Speech to increase powers for Ofsted to bring illegal schools into registration, and to introduce a register of home-educated children, so many of whom attend illegal schools? If not in May, then when?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness will understand that I cannot anticipate the Queen’s Speech, but I absolutely share her deep concern about the risks faced by children who are in unregistered schools. The Government have said that at the next legislative opportunity, we will seek to address some of those weaknesses. I can confirm that the Government are committed to a register for home-educated children.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, do the Government recall that one of the schools in the Trojan horse scandal is actually called the Al-Hijrah School, thus extolling not only Muhammad’s journey from Mecca to his takeover of Medina, but his massacre there of 600 Jews in one afternoon, after which his religion went on to conquer most of the known world. Does not the name say it all?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I really cannot comment on that; I will leave it to the noble Lord to decide for himself.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, the safety of children is paramount and whistleblowers often provide a very important service, but it is known that the then Secretary of State for Education had been informed that counterterrorism police had determined that the Trojan horse letter was bogus. None the less, he went ahead by citing the letter when instituting major reforms in Birmingham, through which teachers lost their jobs and schools were closed, and changes in national education policy resulted as well. Can the Minister say whether the Minister in question—who is now, of course, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up—has faced any consequences of those actions and whether the changes he instituted as a result will be revisited?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I do not think that the then Secretary of State or any subsequent Secretary of State should in any way apologise for their relentless focus on safeguarding children and the safety of those children. The alleged events and behaviours were confirmed in a number of independent reviews and an independent tribunal.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, can the Minister confirm that what was subsequently uncovered by several Ofsted reports, two separate inquiries by the Department for Education, Birmingham council and multiple court judgments was that there was no organised plot but that a small cluster of Birmingham schools, including three run by an academy trust, suffered from a range of issues—poor governance, a lack of child protection safeguards and a failure of leadership? Does the Minister agree that what millions of Muslim families in this country want most of all is for their children to have a good education, to be integrated and not to suffer the consequences of this incident?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness that the vast majority of Muslim families in this country want exactly what she described. I have had the pleasure of visiting a number of excellent faith schools of all faiths, including Muslim schools, which comply with promoting fundamental British values, as all in your Lordships’ House would agree.

[The Lord Bishop of Birmingham]

My Lords, will the Minister commend the people of Birmingham for their extraordinary efforts since 2014 on cohesion and attempting to learn lessons from this very complicated event, as we have heard in your Lordships’ House today? Will she particularly commend them for the United Nations rights reporting school award, which has been applied for every year and is now awarded to 51% of primary and secondary schools in Birmingham, compared with only 18% across the country? Will she commend these actions and others, and ask for them to be replicated around the country so that we might live as one people?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank the right revered Prelate for his question and for pointing out the success of integration in primary schools; I am happy to share in his welcome of that.

[Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)]

As the right reverend Prelate said, it is a complicated situation, but the podcast itself—the reporting as per the original Question—was at times quite worryingly skewed. Does my noble friend think that schools are doing enough to challenge extremism, or, as a result of this podcast, are they afraid of being labelled racist?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend is right that these are very sensitive issues, but challenging intolerant, racist or discriminatory views should be seen as part of a school’s wider anti-bullying and safeguarding duties. Actively promoting British values means that any opinions or behaviours that contradict them need to be challenged. I hope my noble friend will be reassured that a survey in 2021 showed that 87% of school leaders reported feeling confident that their school could facilitate conversations around extremism and radicalisation.

Education (Careers Guidance in Schools) Bill

Baroness Barran Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 25th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, we welcome the Bill and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, on continuing the good work of the honourable Member for Workington. I particularly welcome the fact that the Bill includes academies, which is an important aspect of increasing its chances of reaching the maximum number of children to begin their preparations for a career and the world of work. For so long we have been told that academies are often literally a law unto themselves, and the terms of their funding agreements mean that in many aspects of their provision they cannot be told what to do. The Bill demonstrates that in fact they can and that all that is required is a stroke of the Secretary of State’s pen. A precedent has thus been created.

I will not rehearse the powerful arguments advanced by my noble friend Lady Wilcox at Second Reading on the need for effective, regular, independent careers guidance. However, I feel that I have to draw something to the attention of the Minister—if her eyes roll as I start this, frankly, I would not be surprised, because it is about the consistency of government policy again. Yesterday I raised with her the fact that the Levelling Up White Paper talked up mayoral combined authorities at the same time as she was advancing a government position that effectively talked them down in terms of local skills improvement plans. We had the Chancellor talking up the need for an apprenticeship levy review just a month after the Government had voted down a Labour amendment in another place asking for just that. This Bill talks about year 7; it lowers the start of career guidance from year 8 to year 7. Yesterday the Minister said:

“We question the value of provider encounters in year 7, before those students can act on them”.—[Official Report, 24/3/22; col. 1139.]


That is what this Bill does. I may not be alone in being not just perplexed but slightly irritated at the Government’s apparent inability to present consistent policy. It is absolutely right that year 7 should be where it starts, but it was right yesterday in our discussions on the skills improvement Bill as well and I very much regret that that was not accepted.

Finally, the concession on the skills Bill that the Minister made this week in respect of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and his clause, shows that the Government have finally determined that they will make careers guidance more effective and meaningful and they are supporting it further in this Bill. That is why we welcome the Bill and look forward to it becoming law.

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

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Lucas for bringing forward the Bill and I thank all noble Lords who have participated in its passage through your Lordships’ House.

If I may, I will clarify the reference to Hansard that the noble Lord opposite made. When I said that students were not able to act on those encounters, that was not encounters in relation to careers advice but provider encounters with colleagues from further education colleges—UTCs. That is an important distinction to make.

This simple but effective Bill will ensure that all pupils in all types of state-funded secondary schools in England are legally entitled to independent careers guidance throughout their secondary education. That means high-quality support for every single child in every single state secondary school in every single local authority in England, without exception. It will fulfil a commitment in the Skills for Jobs White Paper, reaching over 600,000 year 7 pupils each year.

I am enormously grateful to my honourable friend the Member for Workington for his work on this important Bill and I congratulate him on ensuring that it passed through the other place. I know that the whole House will be grateful for this move to extend access to independent careers guidance, which will be widely welcomed. The Government are committed to supporting schools across the country to develop and improve their careers provision. The Bill is one step forward in ensuring that our young people receive high-quality careers guidance from an earlier age.

Bill passed.