Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 436ZB in my name. I remind your Lordships of my education interests, particularly as the chair of the Council of British International Schools. I thank Emily Konstantas, chair of the British International Schools Safeguarding Coalition and CEO of the Safeguarding Alliance, for her assistance with these amendments. She has given me ample evidence of two safeguarding loopholes that we are seeking to close with these amendments.

First is the problem that under current legislation the Teaching Regulation Agency can act only where misconduct occurs in England. This means that it is not possible for a teacher qualified in England who then commits an offence overseas to have that included on the register. Indeed, our experience is that there is not even any means to report the offence to the TRA that the individual is a risk to children.

International schools routinely use prohibition checks upon recruitment of teachers, so this loophole is significant for them. If an individual has committed an offence in a school in one country and then goes to another, that offence is not picked up by the prohibition check. Therefore, as it stands, prohibited individuals can exploit international mobility to avoid scrutiny and teachers dismissed abroad for misconduct can return to England or elsewhere unchecked. With pupils placed at risk in this way, the integrity of the profession is undermined. My amendment simply applies the teacher misconduct regime to anyone who has at any time been qualified to teach in England and thus closes the loophole.

The second problem is the growing practice of prohibited individuals legally changing their names between organisations and across countries to evade scrutiny and justice. I am concerned about the scenario where an individual has been convicted for an offence and then changes their name. They may then train and qualify as a teacher under the new identity and with a teacher reference number attached to that name. My amendment seeks to insert reasonable efforts to investigate name changes when the Secretary of State investigates disciplinary cases. I hope that my noble friend the Minister—and I associate myself wholly with the comments just made by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, in respect of her reappointment—agrees that these loopholes must be closed and will amend the Bill accordingly. I beg to move.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I add my support to Amendments 436ZA and 436ZB in this group, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Knight. I declare my interest as honorary president of COBIS which, as the noble Lord said, is a member of the British International Schools Safeguarding Coalition.

As the noble Lord set out, these amendments would close an important safeguarding loophole by extending the jurisdiction of the Teaching Regulation Agency to accept referrals of misconduct committed by UK-qualified teachers working overseas, and strengthening prohibition checks to ensure that individuals cannot exploit name changes to evade detection.

Prohibition checks are essential to identify individuals banned from teaching due to misconduct, safeguarding concerns or professional incompetence, and yet none of these misdemeanours committed at international schools overseas can be referred to the TRA. Indeed, as the noble Lord stressed, the current system does not even provide an option for them to report such concerns to the TRA online, creating a clear gap in the information that it holds. The loopholes in the current system mean that a teacher who is returning to the UK, for instance, and should have been referred to the TRA due to potentially serious child welfare issues committed overseas cannot be reported and so no prohibition order can be made. As a result, the individual would pass the statutory check, which schools rely on as evidence that an individual is safe to work with children. In practice, that could mean a teacher dismissed for misconduct abroad would have a clear result on their prohibition check and could subsequently be hired by a school in England that had no idea of their previous behaviour and allow the teacher to resume teaching.

I am sure the Minister agrees that this situation is clearly unsatisfactory and should be addressed. I hope she is able to accept these sensible amendments, which are supported by the Safeguarding Alliance and six UK Government-recognised British school associations and would undoubtedly help further strengthen the UK’s reputation as a global leader in safeguarding.

Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Committee stage
Tuesday 26th November 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, this is part of a range of amendments all essentially about reporting and, as he accurately described, any number of us were wrestling with how to get something that looks like Skills England into the Bill. A way involved a reporting requirement— I was not allowed to mention Skills England in my amendment—in which I lifted some of the detail in paragraphs (a), (b), (c) and (d) from statements that the Government have made about Skills England and what they want it to be able to focus on and achieve. Hence the amendment lists:

“identification of skills gaps … the provision and funding of training to meet the skills needs of employers; … the development of occupational standards; …work with regional and local bodies to improve the skills of the workforce in England”.

I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, for managing to get in something around the green skills agenda, which I tried to get in in my amendment but failed to draft it as skilfully as he clearly was able to do in order to get that in. I also support having a specific mention of the responsibilities in climate legislation and its relationship to green skills.

As I understand it, IfATE has a requirement to report to Parliament annually. It does so well and has shown its success, so the capacity is there, assuming that IfATE’s capacity will successfully transfer into the executive agency. So I do not see this as onerous, and it is important that we as Parliament should receive a report on the additional things that IfATE does not currently cover that would be covered by Skills England.

It is, incidentally, important for Parliament to have an opportunity to scrutinise the really important work that Skills England will be able to do. The annual report is a common mechanism that we all use when we are trying to get a little more traction for Parliament, but I think it is merited in this case. I hope that, reflecting on this group and the next, which is also about reporting in slightly different ways, the Minister will be able to give some consideration as to whether this is a relatively straightforward crumb of comfort to give some of us who have been slightly anxious about the absence of Skills England in the legislation.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 35 in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran, to which I have added my support. Although we have only just started this debate, the range of reporting requirements set out in amendments in the group and mentioned in the speeches we have already heard is because we are all concerned about the lack of detail and statutory underpinning for Skills England currently in the Bill. We share concern that there needs to be greater clarity and purpose for the organisation in the legislation. It is certainly that lack of detail about the way the Government will decide their strategic priorities and create new technical qualifications, where IfATE has previously acted independently and consulted with employers and businesses, that is the rationale behind the amendment I am speaking to now.

The amendment is an attempt to understand how the Government will make these decisions and mandate Skills England to publish the process it intends to follow. I hope that, in her reply, the Minister can provide some further detail and reassurance to the many in the sector who are rightly concerned by the uncertainty that the Bill is creating—about the lack of detail, in particular, on what were previously established and well-understood processes. In order for Skills England to have the effect that we all hope, the decision-making process it undertakes and uses to decide which sectors will receive new technical education qualifications needs to be transparent, robust and retain the confidence of employers, training providers and, of course, the students themselves.

I hope that, in addition to Amendment 35, the Minister will give careful consideration to Amendments 23, 31 and 36 in this group, which, if adopted as a whole, would bring some much needed further clarification and credibility to the work of Skills England from the outset and, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, just said, provide a suitable opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny of its work.