Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bousted Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

My Lords, the party opposite claims that education was transformed during its period in office and that this Bill will undo many of the gains made. In the short time I have available, I would like to set some of the record straight. During that period I was general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers and, from 2017, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, which represents 500,000 members—teachers, leaders and support staff—who, as many Members in this House have affirmed, are the professionals who teach and support our children and young people, and I commend their work today.

Under the party opposite, there was the scandal of “the forgotten third”—the third of all 16 year-olds who failed to get a grade 4 at GCSE English and maths. Under the party opposite, they were denied the help and support they so desperately needed in order to take their place as productive members of society. They were condemned to endless resits of GCSE English and maths, with very low pass rates, unable to get an apprenticeship or to access other routes into training and learning to turn their fortunes around. The party opposite left the most deprived young people stranded. As the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said recently, there are now 750,000 youngsters under 25 who are permanently unemployed. That is a disgrace, and it happened on the watch of the party opposite.

Money talks. Figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies show that, from 2010 to 2020, spending per pupil in England fell by 9% in real terms. That had huge consequences for the education that schools were able to provide and was compounded by a huge rise in child poverty. But, shamefully, schools serving deprived communities saw the biggest fall in funding of all schools, of 14%. The party opposite professes to care for the most disadvantaged, but in practice during this period it reduced the amount of support needed by the most vulnerable children and young people.

Then there is the party opposite’s apparent alarm at the measure contained in this Bill that all children and young people, whichever school they attend, should follow a broad and balanced national curriculum. The current curriculum in England’s schools is one of the narrowest in the OECD, both pre 16 and post 16. Since 2010, there has been a dramatic and worrying decline in the numbers of pupils studying arts subjects—a 73% decline in GCSE entries for design and technology, 45% for drama and 41% for music. That is why this Bill’s provision of a broad and balanced curriculum for all pupils is absolutely necessary. It is their entitlement. “Broad and balanced” does not mean an overstuffed curriculum; it should, and I am sure will, allow for specialism and appropriate choice. This is a wholly welcome measure.

Then there is the teacher supply problem, which has become a crisis confected by the party opposite. I am chair of the University College London teaching commission looking at this issue. It is shameful that the most deprived children, who most need to be taught by qualified teachers, are the most likely to be taught by teachers who are not qualified in the subject they are teaching—temporary and unqualified teachers. That is why it is so important that all who teach in our schools have, or are working towards, qualified teacher status. This is a social justice issue.

For the party opposite, which reduced spending in schools in such a savage way in real terms over a decade, to support unfilled places throughout the country in order for academies to determine their pupil intake is, frankly, unbelievable. How much more taxpayers’ money would be needed to support this wasteful idea? Surely this is a prime example of an ideology that supports structures, not standards.

The Bill is ambitious. It is positive for all our children and young people. It is proportionate and necessary. I fully support it and commend it to the House.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bousted Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 22nd May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Longfield (Lab)]

Perhaps I might add a few thoughts from my experience. As Children’s Commissioner for six years, I found that the greatest level of responsibility was around children in care, and I looked in detail at the experience of children in care throughout that time. One of the things that was absolutely clear to me was that the ability of local authorities to focus on early intervention diminished hugely during that period. The amount that was spent on early intervention halved during that period, while the amount that was spent on crisis doubled. You do not need to be a great mathematician to realise that the more you spend on crisis, the less you will have for early intervention.

At the heart of Josh MacAlister’s review and recommendations, which were incredibly and extensively consulted on with people at all levels, from expert practitioners to leaders of children’s services and care-experienced people themselves, was that we had to move and reset the system towards early intervention, and do so boldly in a timely manner, because it was unsustainable for the public purse to do anything other. As important, if not more important, is that more children were being left without support.

Everyone needs to be alert at any time to the consequences of any move towards increasing harm for children. What we now know and have known for some time is that more children are coming to harm now because they are not getting that support early, so it is absolutely essential that there is an urgency about that. As I said on Tuesday, those directors of children’s services that I speak to want to see that change urgently and are very much in line with the proposals that are being put forward. There will always be things that directors of children’s services will want to amend locally and test out—that is absolutely right—but what they want to know is that there is a framework nationally for them to work within and clear guidance. So, it is so important that this is here. That is not to say that those individuals will not have their own expertise in delivering.

When there are experts involved in delivering these expert practitioner roles, they are actually going to use their judgment all the time. It is not going to be about process; it has to be about children and about those families. Anyone who is just following a process because the process is there is not the expert practitioner in that role that we have the ambition for. They are going to be looking at children’s lives and responding to individuals, but at the heart of it, we have to move boldly forwards, to—

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

Boldly go?

[Baroness Longfield (Lab)]

Yes—I apologise for that on many levels. We have to move forward at pace, but also with confidence and determination, while also checking along the way that we are giving support where it is needed.

Finally, we need to ensure that investment is there, but we have to get to the point where we are investing money to prevent rather than to just pay the costly bills when things have got to acute status.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, having read both these amendments, I think it is reasonable to ask the Government what resources are required. When it comes to teachers, we have often dealt with the question of what is required and, if it is a new skill, how they will acquire it. Having enough awareness to call in an expert is another thing we have often talked about in other fields—I certainly have on special educational needs.

If you do not have that training in place, it is a matter of where you go to get that support. Asking for that is one of the things we should do here. I hope the Minister will give us a reply that at least starts to push us towards looking to where these resources are and, more importantly for the people on the ground, where they can look to for support and help, or be trained to do so. Without that linkage, people who are only now being brought into this process on an official basis will fail if they do not know what they are doing.

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

My Lords, I was not going to speak to this amendment, but I have to say that the idea that schools have not been at the centre of child protection and safeguarding over the last 20 years is just ludicrous. Under the last Government, the central grant to local authorities decreased by 40%. Real-terms school funding decreased by 9%. In that period, schools became the fourth emergency service as children’s social work, child protection and all the safeguarding systems around the child were absolutely decimated by austerity.

Schools have become extremely good at identifying children in need of safeguarding and protection. They have become extremely good at providing information, support and training to their staff, and they did this very well at a time when the last Government were reducing real-terms support to schools. They have had to become experts in child safeguarding and child protection because the other services that should have been there to work with schools simply were not. Multi-agency professional teams, legally responsible for working with schools to support them to protect children, will strengthen child safeguarding and child protection. CPD, or professional development, is always helpful, but the idea that schools need extensive CPD on this, that they have not been doing this, and that it will be a new thing to them is, frankly, ridiculous.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

Although I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, about schools becoming very good at child protection in recent years, there will be a cost to engaging in this activity. I support my noble friend Lord Agnew and his point about the cost for schools. All schools are facing a very severe funding shortfall, and I am concerned that they will have to make a lot of redundancies. None of us wants to see that but schools are telling me that it is the only way they will be able to balance their budgets. If the Government’s worthy target of getting 6,500 new teachers into the profession is a net figure of leavers and people coming into the profession, then redundancies will make them miss that target. I support the point about money being needed to support this activity.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bousted Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 23rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I rise in support of the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Cash on a national strategy to promote the health, development and school readiness of all children from birth to the age of five. I agree with everything that has been said in this Committee on this subject. The Minister will know that I will always take an opportunity to rise in support of what we will eventually come to: a national strategy for schools, sport, health and well-being.

But, as my noble friend Lord Young highlighted, this should not be just at primary or secondary level. It is vital also to think about this in the context of early years intervention. I see the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, in her place—she is a passionate champion for children and has done an amazing amount of such work in her life. The Centre for Young Lives emphasises the importance of the expertise in this Committee in looking at the early stage of development and focusing not on a postcode lottery of accessibility to services but on a national strategy and trying to bring together all the good work that is under way.

In that context, the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, would normally also talk about early years activity and the importance of physical activity for young children’s development, promoting play and an active lifestyle, building physical literacy, enhancing learning readiness and encouraging habits that can be sustained throughout life. Getting confidence into young children through physical activity is vital. I commend to the Committee the work done by many organisations specialising in early years physical activity programmes—Early Movers comes to mind. It has highlighted that there has been a decline in physical activity among young children, and its work therefore brings our attention to that decline. The Youth Sport Trust’s Healthy Movers recognises the importance of providing training and resources for early years staff to support physical and emotional well-being in young children. There are many other organisations—Hidden Talents, Tiny Tots Yoga and BBC Tiny Happy People—all offering different programmes.

The common denominator among Committee Members this evening on this subject is that we really do look to see whether it is possible to bring together a lot of the evidence of best practice in a national strategy. I urge the Government to look at that carefully, because the benefits of early physical activity are undeniable. Improved physical development is the first. Enhanced cognitive development is undoubtedly a benefit. Social and emotional development comes from building confidence, teamwork and social skills. Long-term health is critical in early years intervention. A focus for those early years is important, as are outdoor activities that match those objectives, such as walking, playing in the park and exploring nature, as well as indoor activities such as dancing, playing with blocks, messy play—finger painting with rice—and using climbing frames. These are all important components of early years activity, and we need to structure those activities. That is where Sure Start was so good, as my noble friend Lord Young said. It showed that one could bring all this together and that it was possible to have a strategy that focuses on best practice for all young people, rather than, as I say, having a postcode lottery whereby some were the beneficiaries of the many charities and initiatives.

I have made a short intervention on this, but a really important one on the wider strategy, as far as I am concerned. I hope that the Minister will be able to say that the Government are thinking about responding positively to try to bring together all best practice, in the interests of all our young people, because there is no doubt at all in my mind that the issues and objectives that I have set out should be universally available, and I very much hope that through this Government they will become so.

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, was not here at the beginning of this debate, so she has asked me to say that it is really important that there is good liaison between education and health.

I really feel that I am in a bit of a parallel universe. We are being told about the importance of integrated early years help, and we had such a programme with the Labour Government, which was enormously successful. Yesterday, I read an Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis that showed that it reduced hospitalisations for mental health among 12 to 14 year-olds by 50%, and that it

“improved the dimensions of school readiness—communication & language and problem-solving”.

It was most effective in targeting the most deprived communities—so the stories about how the children who needed it most were least likely to get it were not true. The first 700 Sure Start centres were set up in the most deprived areas—and, actually, there was a lot of work that showed that it was the universal element that made it so important.

It is like a parallel universe, when we know that, during the period from 2010 to 2024, there was an exponential rise in child poverty, which is at the root of lack of school readiness and childhood illness, as well as family dysfunction. Nine children in every class of 30 on average will be living below the official poverty line, and that exploded under the coalition and previous Governments as a result of austerity. So, absolutely, yes, we need an integrated approach—but I sometimes feel it might be helpful for the Opposition to acknowledge what their role was in destroying that provision, which was there for the most deprived and for all children and young people.

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for giving way. I want to clarify, certainly from my own perspective and what I said, that there was full acknowledgement of how successful the Sure Start programme was—and I understood that to be the position by consensus across the Committee. So I am very sorry that the noble Baroness feels that she is living in another universe, but it is not the intention of anyone here to cause dissent on an issue on which it is so important to have consensus. I think that everyone who has intervened in this debate has been coming from a very good place.

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

I absolutely acknowledge that, but it is important to note that such a provision was available and was defunded. The number of centres was decimated, which has had long-term consequences that noble Lords have been so clear about: the effect on the poorest children of that poverty of provision. I think that is really important to note.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I feel the need to move on. I very much support early years strategy, and I particularly appreciated the speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool and Lord Young of Cookham. I remember a mother and her three year-old daughter. The mother had never learned how to speak to her daughter, who had no speech and had never heard anything from her mother. They were invited to join what was almost certainly Sure Start in north Kensington and, three months later, hand in hand, near Christmas, they danced down the steps of the preschool, singing carols together. That place closed—and this is one of the sadnesses that we have.

I very much support what the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, said, because I have a granddaughter who at five was said to be stupid. Thank goodness she changed school; she was found to be dyslexic and, I am glad to say, she got a good degree at Edinburgh—but with a great deal of help. To identify children at an early stage, long before they go to school, would make the most enormous difference. It did to my granddaughter, who was extremely unhappy at her first school, because she kept being told she was stupid, and she was not stupid at all. She is one of countless children who are not identified at one stage early enough.

Dare I ask the Minister whether it is at all possible that this Government, from the party that produced Sure Start, which was so excellent, could think one day, when there is a little bit more money, they might reintroduce it again?

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bousted Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

I am only repeating what was in print; I do not know why. Clearly, when one looks at the academies, one can see the tremendous success and improvement to education to the benefit of children in this country. Control of schools by central government clearly and empirically is not the answer, so I hope the Government will listen to my noble friend Lady Barran, whose dedication to this sector I salute, and agree with her amendments.

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not want to prolong the debate, but I have to answer the charge that it is simply the academies that are improving standards in education, and maintained schools are not. Research in the area does not show that to be the case. Since 2017, I think, the Education Policy Institute has had a yearly look at the performance of academies and state schools. Last week I looked at the one for this year and, although I cannot remember the exact figures, the general conclusion was the same that it has been every year: there are some very good academy chains and there are some poor academy chains; there are some very good maintained schools, and some are doing less well. When you look at the results in the round, there is no premium, overall, for the academy sector.

The noble Lord may shake his head, but I will happily write to him with the research. I do not want to prolong things, but I just could not sit here and take that remark again. I thought we had discussed it over dinner; now I am saying it in the Committee so that it is on the record. It is simply untrue to say that all the improvement is in one sector of schools and that there is no improvement in maintained schools. That simply is not the case; the evidence and the research simply do not support that.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I shall briefly talk generally about all these amendments, which I and my party are not supporting. I ought to declare an interest as a governor of the King’s Academy, Liverpool. I was there at the beginning, when academies were started for a particular reason by the then Labour Government in very deprived communities and were then seized on by the coalition Government, including by David Laws from my party. We would sit through endless meetings, where there were always attacks on the maintained sector, about how wonderful the academies were. I never, during those early days—or even recently—heard the noble Lord, Lord Nash, who is not in his place, or the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, who is not in his place, say, “This academy is doing a really good job but, guess what? This maintained school is doing a really good job”. I never heard any criticism of any other academy. People can nod their heads, but if you look at the record, that was the case.

I remember us pushing, for example, that we should inspect multi-academies. Oh no, we could not do that. I remember trying to suggest that we have an external look at the finances of multi-academy trusts—“Oh no, you can’t do that”. Thank goodness, we have moved on considerably since those days, and I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, because, during her time as Education Minister, she went to visit maintained schools, and her language and the language of her party has changed considerably. I very much appreciate that. If there is a breach—I am not sure how serious or how weak the breaches are—the Secretary of State should be looking at it and making the final decision. It should not be just left to the academy or the multi-academy trusts themselves.

One recalls that “Panorama” documentary about how proprietors of academies—it was a limited number, thank goodness—were ensuring that some of the work for their academies was going to companies that they owned and that were their own companies. So a repair or construction company would get the work from that academy. It would not go out for tender. There was a big scandal on “Panorama” about it. If that is wrong, action needs to be taken. I do not know what these breaches are, or how serious or wide they are, but it should not be just left to the academy to sort out. It should be sorted out by the Secretary of State and by her Minister in the House of Lords.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Bousted]

447A: Schedule 3, page 128, line 24, at end insert—
“1A In section 120(1)(a), after “teachers”, insert—“(aa) academy schools Chief Executive Officers’ pay,””

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

My Lords, I am aware that it is very late at night indeed. I have waited a long time to bring the amendment but, anyhow, it is not a long speech. The amendment is very simple. It makes one addition to the Bill, and that is to bring chief executive officer pay, usually of a multi-academy trust, but it might be of a single academy trust, under the remit of the School Teachers’ Review Body. This is a necessary step to advance the good use of public money in the provision of education for the nation’s children.

As we know, this is, or at least it was, a cross-party concern. My noble friend Lord Agnew is not here, but when he served as Academies Minister in the last Government, he was highly concerned about the apparently exponential rise in the pay of multi-academy trust CEOs. Indeed, so grave was his concern that, on two occasions, I think, he wrote to the chair of trustees of MATs that were awarding what he considered to be excessive pay rises to their CEOs and called them into his office to meet them and hear the justification for the awards. If he were here, I would have assured my noble friend that I would have very much liked to be a fly on the wall at those meetings.

In 2018, my noble friend wrote a letter to the chairs of academy trusts in England saying:

“I want to emphasise the priority that I attach to the responsibility you and your boards have to ensure that your executive teams manage their budgets effectively and deliver the best value for money. This is particularly important when looking at the pay of your senior leadership teams”.


He added that the then chief executive of the Education Skills and Funding Agency had written to a number of single academy trusts where remuneration for a trust employee was over £150,000 and he would be writing to all MATs where this applied too. He added:

“I believe that not all boards are being rigorous enough on this issue. CEO and senior pay should reflect the improvements they make to schools’ performance and how efficiently they run their trusts. I would not expect the pay of a CEO or other non-teaching staff to increase faster than the pay award for teachers”.


In 2019, my noble friend Lord Agnew wrote again to the chairs of boards of trusts in a letter headed “Excessive High Pay to Employees”, requiring information from those trusts on the salaries and bonuses paid to individuals in those trusts earning more than £100,000. This might not happen too often, so it is perhaps a little noteworthy that I entirely agree with my noble friend. I entirely agree that the pay of CEOs and other non-teaching staff should not increase faster than the pay award for teachers. But my amendment is more conservative than that, with a small C. It would simply put the pay of MAT CEOs and single academy trust CEOs within the remit of the School Teachers’ Review Body, as is teacher and school leader pay.

I gave evidence to the STRB for over 20 years, both as general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers and the joint general secretary of the National Education Union. The process of giving evidence is rigorous. STRB witnesses are required to submit detailed written evidence to the board on the pay awards that they feel are necessary and just for teachers and leaders. The evidence takes into account the relative pay rises of other workers in the public and private sectors, the state of recruitment and retention in the teaching profession and a host of other wage economy evidence. The STRB then holds in-person oral sessions where witnesses are required to elaborate and build on their written submissions. The review body then considers all the evidence it has been given, including evidence from the Department for Education, and makes a recommendation to the Government which the Government must then decide whether or not to accept. All this amendment would do is put in place the same rigorous arrangements for CEOs of single and multi-academy trusts.

This is a necessary step because there has been an inflationary spiral in CEO pay. Schools Week, the trade newspaper, conducts an annual executive pay investigation, which this year included 1,800 trusts. What this analysis found was that the gap between the CEO and other staff in multi-academy trusts is widening the pay gap. Sixty-four CEOs earned more than £200,000 a year. Five multi-academy trusts registered increases of over 20% or more in CEO pay. Now these pay rises may be justified. The problem is that the taxpayer does not know the reasoning behind them and we do not have an agreed definition of what the job description of a CEO is. How is it different from a head teacher? What is the job weight and how is it weighed by the boards, by the governing bodies?

The danger in a lack of appropriate regulation of CEO pay was well articulated by Sam Henson, deputy CEO of the National Governance Association, who remarked that salary benchmarking for CEOs was

“in some cases, leading to inflationary spirals”.

He added that the benchmarking exercises

“don’t come with an accompanying narrative on how this deals with the massive pressures the sector is under, namely money being … in short supply, ongoing recruitment and retention challenges, and insufficient accountability”

for this role.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 447A withdrawn.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bousted Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th September 2025 Lords Chamber

I removed my proposal to oppose Clause 55 standing part of the Bill as a matter of good process, but Amendment 454 builds on Amendment 452 as it would give scope for schools to appeal against arbitrary decisions on admissions. What really matters is that the admissions authority—in most cases, the school—is a good centre of learning. Any decision to tamper with the judgment being made by those running that good school should be required to keep this principle at the centre of thinking.

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

My Lords, I oppose Amendment 452, which has just been put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, which would limit local authorities’ interventions in admissions to situations where the admissions authority had failed to meet its admissions obligations or had behaved improperly.

Local authorities have a statutory responsibility under Section 14 of the Education Act 1996 to ensure that enough school places are available in their area for every child of compulsory school age. The provision in the Bill to create a duty on schools to co-operate with local authorities to enable them to carry out their place-planning duties as required by law and to co-operate on SEND inclusion and school admissions is entirely necessary and reasonable. It ends the nonsense of academies being allowed to set their own pupil numbers without regard to the number of pupils in the catchment area.

Multi-academy trusts are no longer outliers; they run over 46% of primary schools and 83% of secondary schools. The Government have a duty to ensure that local authorities, on which the legal requirement to provide school places falls, are able to do so. This must require local authorities and multi-academy trusts to work together to ensure that place planning is done effectively and cost-effectively. That is particularly important now, as we are experiencing a decline in the birth rate which is affecting primary places and will affect secondary places. The sustained rise we have seen in pupil numbers since the early 2010s has now been reversed. The number of pupils in England’s school system overall decreased in January, dropping by more than 59,000. Primary numbers have been falling for several years now, but secondary numbers are due to peak in 2027 before falling as the population bulge moves out of compulsory education.

These pupil demographics require co-ordinated place planning. We cannot have a situation where local authorities are legally responsible for providing places for pupils but have no powers to direct the majority of schools in their area, which are academies, to co-operate on place planning, admissions and exclusions. We cannot leave local authorities with the responsibility, but without the authority, to require co-operation on these legal duties.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, it is a delight to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted. She may be pleased to hear that I have advised my noble friend on the correct pronunciation of her name.

I did not hear very well when we were here last week, but the word “devil” was mentioned. Having checked Hansard, I see that the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, seemed to think that when we had some dealings in the Department for Education, I thought she was doing the devil’s work in working for unions. I could not possibly think that—I always found her the most charming person to deal with—and, as opposed to the devil’s work, I commend the unions on doing what seems to me the Lord’s work in their campaign on smartphones. I look forward to talking to them about that. I welcome the noble Baroness back from her sojourn in the Arctic this summer, and I hope she is finding the atmosphere in the Labour Party at the moment somewhat less glacial than she found it there—although in the current circumstances, maybe not very much so.

I rise to support the amendments in the names of my noble friends Lady Barran and Lord Agnew. Life in the real world teaches one that the benefits of competition are that strong organisations survive and expand, and weak ones demise. While I accept that there may be remote communities where the availability of these schools is essential, as an overriding policy in schools, allowing competition has been proven to be a good thing. Take for instance the London Academy of Excellence in Stratford, which resulted in a rising tide lifting all boats. Apart from its own excellent performance, it has had a dramatic effect on the performance of the other sixth forms in the area. Good schools must be allowed to expand. To not allow this is to deprive children of their benefits, and they certainly should not be forced to shrink.

Turning to my noble friend Lord Agnew’s amendment, local authorities clearly have a conflict of interest under the proposed admission provisions. Surely there must be a right of appeal, as set out in his amendment. I also support my noble friend Lady Barran’s Amendment 502YC, as highly performing schools should be given the freedom her amendment asks for.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bousted Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 18th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, where did it all go wrong? I can look back to those halcyon days where, in primary schools, there were two lessons of PE a week timetabled, and PE covered a whole range of activities, from gym work to games and swimming—children regularly left school being able to swim 20 metres —and after-school sports competitions. In secondary schools, sport was thriving. As we have heard, that was beneficial for the well-being of children and young people and important for their health, with regards to obesity, and for teamwork, working together and understanding each other.

This is not something that can be laid just at the hands of the present Government. In fact, the present Government, in a former iteration, did a great deal of work on sport. People will think that I am a member of his fan club, but the Blair Government brought in some of the most radical proposals on sport that this country has ever seen. Whether it was a mixture of Covid, the recession or whatever, it all suddenly—

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

I am sorry, but I have to interject here to say that the narrowing of the curriculum and the teacher supply crisis was a direct result of austerity, teacher pay falling by 12% in real terms and chronic underfunding of schools, all of which were initiated during the coalition and continued until 2024.

Children absolutely deserve a rich and balanced curriculum, but that becomes much more difficult if they are not being taught by teachers qualified in the subject area but by unqualified teachers. The teacher supply crisis started and became acute during the previous Government. When we have this debate, we cannot ignore the practical consequences of chronic underfunding, chronic undermining of the profession and, from the start of the coalition, a policy of attacking teachers and leaders as being responsible for falling school standards.

There was also a deliberate narrowing of the curriculum through the EBacc to a range of academic subjects, which has meant a precipitous decline in arts and drama and a shorting of the experience that children get in physical education.

I am sorry, but I must put all that on the record. My friend the noble Lord is rightly asking these questions but he is coming up with a different set of conclusions.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, before the noble Lord continues, I do not recognise, luckily, the dystopian view that he has given. The primary school that both my children were at and the school where I now teach are full for before-school, lunchtime and after-school activities. I put on record in this Chamber that my daughter’s girls team won the under-15 Hackney cup.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bousted Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 28th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, regarding the amendments by my noble friend Lord Storey, research has shown no correlation between the pay of the CEOs of multi-academy trusts and the schools they have responsibility for. I hope the Minister can say whether there will be a mechanism to look at the pay of some of these highly paid officials and what responsibilities they have. There could be cases where people have responsibility for eight to 10 schools but get paid more than people with responsibility for higher numbers. That does not seem fair or right. I know it is late, but I thought it important that I raise this point on behalf of my noble friend.

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

It is really late, but I tabled a similar amendment to this in Committee. Unregulated CEO pay is becoming an ever greater problem in the sector. Last year the policy think tank EDSK called for mandatory CEO pay scales capped at £263,000, with fines for those who did not follow that. The National Governance Association has said that the growing gap between CEO pay and that of other senior leaders—and, I would also say, teachers—risks undermining the collaborative leadership essential to school improvement. I hope the Government will look at this serious problem, which demands action.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bousted Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

The greatest regret for me, as someone who has been heavily involved in education, is that there was a very bad philosophy of taking education away from the support and encouragement of local authorities. There was the suggestion that they were not delivering well, so we created more and more academies in the hope that they would do well. Education needs to return to local places, and Amendments 198, 199 and 230 are trying to reorganise our education system so that it not only imparts knowledge but draws out knowledge from every child. When that happens, schools will thrive.

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak against Amendment 199, and I am following the very wise words of my noble friend Lady Morris in doing so. I just do not understand how this amendment would allow the management of school places and the good use of taxpayers’ money. Year 7 places in the capital, London, are expected to fall by 7.6% in the next five years and reception places by 6.4% in the next four years. That means that those schools will see altogether about a £45 million cut in their budget. That cannot just be left to chance.

There needs to be a way of managing the school population, ensuring that taxpayers’ money is well spent and that children are placed in schools that are viable and have enough pupils that they can be offered a full curriculum. We do not want the situation in Northern Ireland, where the grammar schools fill up and the secondary modern schools are left with completely variable roles year on year and are unable to offer a full curriculum or to give the children in Northern Ireland who most need it the education they deserve.

Amendment 199 would take market forces to a ridiculous level and would mean that the Government and the local area could not manage school places to ensure a broad and balanced curriculum for each child. That would be particularly the case with the new curriculum, which will be broader and more balanced and is long overdue. It is important to reject Amendment 199 because there needs to be a mechanism for the most vulnerable children.

I am afraid I have to disagree with the former chief inspector. Everyone knows there are certain schools that do not take the children with special educational needs that they should, and that other schools are then dumped on since they have to take far too many children with profound special needs, to the real detriment of those children and other pupils in the class. Everyone knows that in reality, that happens. The noble Lord, Lord Nash, is nodding—it is true.

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

Can the noble Baroness say at what point I said that there were schools which did not take children? I do not think I did.

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

If that was the case, let me apologise for saying that. They have got better at inclusion, and the noble Baroness is quite right to upbraid me on that.

However, it is really important that there is a power to direct schools to take pupils in order that they get an education. Secondly, we need a way of organising an admissions system which allows all children within the locality to have a viable education with a full, broad and balanced curriculum.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, some of the points the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, makes are important to consider. But let me remind the House that, over the years, Governments of various political persuasions have said how important it is that there is parental choice. They have encouraged parents to look at a school’s results, to read its prospectus, and to visit the school. Sometimes it is done by word of mouth. Sometimes those parents even look at how the children behave at the bus stop while they are waiting to go home of an evening.

I guarantee that nearly every single person sitting in this Chamber wanted the best possible school for their child. There were Members of different political parties who espoused strong views on this issue but, when it came to their own children, they often chose a school which was not in the local catchment area or was not the school the child was subscribed to go to. In some cases, they chose an independent or private school. The body politic has encouraged the notion of parental choice. We know that, as pupil numbers rise, this puts all sorts of pressures on schools and becomes very hard to deliver in all sorts of ways.

I am sorry to go on about Liverpool, but it is my home city and I learn lessons from it. I remember in the late 1960s and the 1970s, the then council decided to build two brand new state-of-the-art comprehensives: Paddington, in the inner city, and Netherley, in the north. They were built as 12-form entry schools. They had fantastic facilities: drama, you name it. The parents preferred the small secondary schools with three-form and four-form entry. Various Secretaries of State wrestled with this problem as the numbers dropped and dropped. I remember going to see Shirley Williams, then Secretary of State for Education, and saying, “Look, Paddington comprehensive is now only a two-form entry school. Why not make it into a tertiary college?” She said no, and I used to tease her about that decision. This is not an easy thing to do. We know that primary numbers are declining—the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, gave the figures. In Liverpool, we can already see that even so-called popular primary schools have spare capacity.

How do we sort this problem out? The answer is not to try to be the professor of admission numbers, chopping numbers off here and adding them there. Sadly, we have to do what we promised parents: we have to let them decide. The answer is not to say that we are going to make a particular school survive—as in the case of Paddington—by reducing the form entry, or, in some cases, closing a school so that children have to go to another particular school. That is not the answer at all.

I hate to say this—I never thought I would say this in my political career—but I think we have to let educational market forces take their course. If we believe in, and have promised parents, parental choice, we have to allow that. To say that we should cut the form entry—the PAN—of so-called popular schools is not the solution. Actually, there are academies that are not popular. Let us not think that all academy schools are going to gain from this. I know several academies—I will not name them—where numbers have dropped dramatically. Again, that is because of parental choice, and that is probably the right thing. So when it comes to this amendment, I will have to hold my nose but I think it is probably the right thing to do.

On Amendment 198, the noble Baroness, Lady Morris—as always—said what we on these Benches think. I say to my noble friend Lord Addington that I have never understood off-rolling. I can see children being taken off roll because their parents want to move or want to take them out of the school. I can see off-rolling when a pupil is permanently excluded from school. I can see off-rolling where a child has special educational needs which cannot be met at the school. But I cannot understand how schools were allowed to off-roll pupils for no particular reason at all. There are examples of where parents were given advice by schools which was not the right way to progress. I just think that off-rolling should not happen at all. In fact, I said to my noble friend Lord Addington, “Why do we need to review the practice? Isn’t the practice just not allowed, and we move on?” I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bousted Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Wednesday 25th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, with this reinstatement of her original Amendment 102. I speak as the chairman of an academy trust; I have faced the dead hand of the bureaucratic tidying-up exercise. To the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton: just last year, it was suggested that we restrict our PAN at two of our best schools, so that failing schools nearby could be kept going. The inconvenience of having to enact cuts to their own schools, faced by local authorities in particular, is such that it is much easier for them to go after another body that has to bear the financial burden.

I accept that the letter, which arrived amazingly at the 11th and a half hour last night, makes some attempt at compromise. If the Government were serious about protecting improving schools, however, they would go with the amendment that is being proposed.

I can tell your Lordships’ House how hard it is to improve previously failing schools. The Minister may be interested to know that failing schools already receive a huge subsidy in what is euphemistically called “lagged funding”. In the year following a falling roll, they receive the full amount that they were been paid in the previous year with more children. The opposite effect occurs for improving schools with rising rolls. So this year, we are educating nearly 240 children for free in my trust, which is nearly £1.5 to £2 million. Next year, that will be 300 children. The question, then, is how difficult does the noble Lord want to make it to improve previously failing schools?

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

My Lords, I stand to support the Government in their attempt to create a situation where there is an adequate regulator for school admissions. At a time of greatly falling rolls, particularly in primary, this is especially important, and even more so when there is going to be a much broader curriculum as a result of the curriculum assessment review. It will be important that all schools can teach this broad curriculum. To do so, we need to have children in those schools. As I said in Committee, the problem with schools that simply expand is that very good schools can be left unable to operate.

I also have a question for the Liberal Democrats on the opposite Benches: in Committee, they supported the opposition to the local authorities having a say as an admissions adjudicator. The last Lib Dem election manifesto of 2024 promised parents and the public that local authorities would be given the power and resources to act as strategic education authorities for their area. This included responsibility for place planning, exclusions and administering admissions, including in-year admissions and SEND functions. I simply ask whether that is still the Lib Dems’ position. If it is, will they be supporting the Government’s position?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, on these Benches we share the concerns expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, about the rigidity of the Government’s approach to trying to control school uniform costs. Indeed, we would have been quite happy if he had wanted to bring back his previous amendment unchanged. We also warmly welcome the Government amendment in relation to children with allergies in school, and I echo the remarks made by others across the House to recognise the incredible work of the Benedict Blythe Foundation—in particular, Benedict’s mother Helen—that has culminated in this amendment today.

My Motion L1 simply supports the rights of parents and pupils to attend the school of their choice and get the best possible education in an area. We understand the financial pressures faced by schools that are dealing with falling rolls, but the way to address them is not by reducing choice, nor by cutting places in the most popular local schools. Furthermore, if the Government are to be successful in closing the disadvantage gap, which we all want to see, they will need these schools and should not be shrinking them.

In the letter that the Government sent to Peers last night, they set out the principles they intend to follow in the updated regulations and School Admissions Code. I accept that the Government have moved and have tried to clarify their position. It is a pity that this arrived so late and that there has been no time to discuss any of this with Ministers, despite having requested meetings since early February. I am very open to discussing further with Ministers but, as drafted, I do not think that the proposed wording is as watertight as the intent of my Motion. In particular, the language of “long-term sufficiency” seems to give more wriggle room than is needed. At this stage, it is also hard to see the point of the measures in the Bill, given the statement that we have just heard from the Government. The Bill’s own impact assessment is clear that it will limit the ability of good schools to grow. We are in a bit of a muddle of policy-making now, with a different position in the Bill, a different position in the letter, and a different position in the White Paper.

As long ago as the 2002 Labour Party conference, the former Prime Minister Tony Blair asked:

“Why shouldn’t there be a range of schools for parents to choose from? Why shouldn’t good schools expand or take over failing schools or form federations?”


This remains a relevant question today, more than 20 years on. I only wish that the Government would listen to the views of their former leader, whose reform laid such important foundations on which subsequent Governments have built, and which have contributed significantly to rising school standards. The fundamental principle that we have set out in earlier debates on school choice is a crucial one, and it should not be eroded.