Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Schools have faced so many other pressures with exams, results and Ofsted judgments, that saying “And you’ve got to shove citizenship in here, but you’re not really going to get rewarded for it” is not going to work. The direction has to come from the centre.

It is interesting that this group of amendments has been so rich and apparently so varied. Actually, what it does is talk about education that prepares students for life, not just for exams or jobs but to be citizens, members of communities, neighbours and possibly parents, and it prepares them to have healthy bodies while they are doing that. That is the only point I will make on the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, who made her point powerfully. Physical education has been totally downgraded, and that has to stop and be reversed.

In responding, I have to start with the suggestion from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that respect for the environment was “twaddle”. I looked it up in the dictionary. Among the definitions were “trivial” and “foolish”. I am assuming that the noble Baroness understands that she had to breathe to be able to deliver that speech. That relies on plants, algae and cyanobacteria to generate the oxygen to allow her to breathe. So that label is obviously incorrect. I will leave that there.

I turn to Amendment 220, which the proposer, the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, has not yet introduced. Schools do need practical and lawful guidance, but forcing the Government to bring that guidance in on the day that the Bill becomes an Act will inhibit schools’ ability. The guidance was always intended to be non-statutory, including when it was first published in draft by the previous Government. I acknowledge that we have not yet heard from the noble Baroness, but I do not think that, in Committee, we heard any explanation of why the guidance needs to be statutory.

I will speak very briefly on the two amendments that I actually signed. Amendment 208 has been very ably spoken to by others; I am just going to make one additional point. This is about providing relationship and sex education to persons of 16 and 17 in education. Your Lordships’ House chose to call for a ban on social media for under-16s. We do not know where that will end up, but, if the ban comes in and, assuming it works, young people at 16 start accessing a whole range of previously banned material, surely, they will need the help of education and support to be able to work through, process, understand and think about that. So we should think about how those two things fit together.

The other thing is that the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, knows that I have backed her Private Member’s Bill at least twice previously. She introduced it very clearly. The one thing I will add is that, in terms of education for life, we ask schools to create more space in school time in particular for cultural and social education, but where are they going to find the time? That assembly time could be a really useful time and, if that is preparing people for life—developing cultural interests, developing artistic interests, developing a love of the theatre or a love of music, all things that help people prepare for a rich and satisfying life—that is what we need our schools to be doing much more of.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I shall very briefly add my support to Amendment 243C and, in doing so, declare my interest as a member of the board of the London Marathon Foundation. As we have heard, schools play a crucial role in the formation of lifelong activity habits, but they need to be properly supported, both to provide more opportunities within school and to ensure that what they offer meets the needs of the various interests of young people and children, to make sure that they fully engage with physical education. A national strategy would give schools the structure they need to guarantee consistently high-quality physical education, as well as help them build partnerships with community sports organisations, creating pathways that link school-based activity with accessible opportunities outside school.

In its recent submission to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee’s inquiry into community and school sport, London Marathon stressed the pressing need for national and local government, schools, governing bodies and charitable and commercial organisations to align behind tangible shared objectives to get children and young people active and, most importantly, keep them active. By mandating the publication of a national strategy for physical education and sports in schools, this amendment will be an important step to delivering just that.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Tuesday 17th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I have attached my name to Amendment 165, but as three noble Lords have already spoken to it, I will be brief. I declare my involvement with the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Households in Temporary Accommodation.

Here is one stat to feed into our debate. In the year to September 2024, 80 children who were in temporary accommodation died, and the figures from the National Child Mortality Database from 2019 to 2024 show that, for children who died, temporary accommodation was listed as a causal factor in their death in 74 cases. That obviously speaks to the GP issue.

Many noble Lords—I can see quite a few in this Chamber—take part in Learn with the Lords, the House of Lords education programme. We have many new Members of the House, so I want to take this chance to commend to all the newer Members who may not know about it what a great programme it is. One of the things we are doing is taking news about the House of Lords out around the country into schools, but it is also a chance to encounter and speak to teachers and head teachers, and share with them what we are doing here in your Lordships’ House and get their reaction.

I have not got permission, so I will not identify the person too clearly, but in the Midlands I was speaking to a head teacher at a school serving a very deprived area and I told her about this amendment, and she just went, “Yes!” Many people might think that surely the school will already know, but children and parents may feel that this is a cause of shame. There is no reason why they should, but none the less, the reality is that they may well feel it is a cause of shame, and go to great lengths to try to hide the fact. So it is important that the school, as well as the GP, be notified.

As we have had a huge outbreak of agreement, I shall briefly express my reservations about Amendment 119, about boarding school places. Joy Schaverien, the therapist, wrote a book, whose subtitle is The Psychological Trauma of the “Privileged” Child, reflecting on the impact of boarding schools on British society. Indeed, we might all reflect on their impact on our politics, but that is a subject for another day. She identified issues of abandonment, bereavement, captivity and disassociation associated with boarding schools.

I am sure that boarding schools today would say that things are different now from what it was like in the old days, but we are still talking about an institutional environment. That, by definition, is what a boarding school is. It is not a home environment. I would not say that there would never be a case where a boarding school might be an appropriate place for a child; there may be cases in which that is the best option available, given the overall circumstances. But I have trouble with the idea of offering it to all looked-after children at secondary age. I do not think that is the appropriate approach.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I add my support to Amendment 134B, in the name of my noble friend Lady Sanderson. As she said, it seeks to build on the Government’s commitment in Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive to look at options to reform the planning process to enable providers to more easily set up homes where they are most needed and to support the delivery of small children’s homes.

To pick up another issue that noble Lords across the Committee have raised on this group of amendments, I should add that that paper also noted that the lack of appropriate and affordable homes in the right places for children means that we are seeing a worrying trend in the rise of the use of unregistered provision.

The CMA’s 2022 report on the children’s home market outlined a number of issues with the current planning system and specifically recommended that the Government do what my noble friend suggests in her amendment, and consider

“whether the distinction, for the purposes of the planning regime, between small children’s homes and domestic dwelling houses should be removed”.

The CMA concluded that the easing of planning restrictions would lead to both an increase in number and a better geographical spread of children’s homes.

On the basis that the Government have accepted this recommendation and say that they are considering options, I look forward to hearing from the Minister how government thinking has developed, particularly in relation to further planning reforms in this area. Can she outline where, if not in this Bill, they may be intending to take their action?