Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, at speaker 32, it is already quite challenging to find something new to say, and my sympathy goes out to the speakers towards the end of this debate. I am sure we will be tolerant if they find themselves repeating something that has already been said.

I very much welcome the maiden speeches today of my noble friend Lord Mohammed and the noble Lord, Lord Biggar. They will both bring great talents and skills to this House, and we look forward very much to hearing them speak in future. I have to say that in the heady days of the coalition Government, I was the education Whip to the noble Lords, Lord Hill, Lord Nash and Lord Agnew. I am delighted to see that I did not manage to put them all off education entirely, and to see them back speaking on this Bill.

A Bill calling itself “Children’s Wellbeing” should surely merit the support of all of us, but there are elements in the Bill which the Government have included which are going to be contentious. I mention to start with, in Clause 4, the consistent identifier. I thought that this was proposed many, many years ago. The simplest solution obviously seemed to be the NHS number, which is given to every child at their birth, which would follow them to school and enable local authorities to be mindful of children who disappeared off their radar. The lack of a consistent identifier across services impedes joined-up and responsive support. It makes it much harder to match records and share information confidently and safeguard children who are in touch with multiple services. It is possible that migrant or asylum or Traveller children may not have that number, but they jolly well should do, because they will have as much need as anyone else of healthcare and education to give them a better start in life than they had at the beginning.

My noble friends will be talking about different areas where we have concerns, but I raise the issue of the national pay rules, which will be extended to academies, many of which have different pay and conditions. We argue strongly that teachers in further education colleges should have at least as good pay and conditions as those in schools. FE teachers have demanding schedules and wide-ranging responsibilities. For too long, they have been underpaid and, indeed, overlooked, as they appear to be in this Bill.

We would like to see stronger partnerships between colleges and schools, because many 14 to 16 year-olds move to colleges if they find that schools do not meet their needs and their choice of study is better catered for in colleges. Some have been excluded from schools, some are home-educated but find colleges can enhance their homeschooling, and there are any number of those with special educational needs and disabilities and those who have become disengaged from mainstream education who find their way to college.

FE has always welcomed practitioners. I entirely endorse the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, in saying that the shortage of practitioners of practical subjects means that insisting that they have a teaching qualification will be incredibly negative. It will make recruitment even more difficult in subjects where we really need those skills to be taught—subjects which will be of benefit to the economy. What steps will the Government take to improve pay and conditions for further education staff? Can the Minister assure us that FE staff will not have to have a teaching qualification if there is a shortage in their specialist subject and there is a great need for their skills?

My noble friends will talk more about home education, breakfast clubs and school uniforms. Like the curate’s egg, these provisions are good in parts.

However, it is difficult to have this debate without the curriculum review. Our House of Lords committee in the last Session found that the current curriculum was not fit for purpose: it did not prepare young people for life and work and state schools had often given up music, dance and drama—the creative arts—which are great contributors to the economy as well as great factors in children’s well-being. What is being done to provide all children with the possibility of excelling at something, especially those for whom the academic curriculum is challenging and a constant source of failure?

This is a wide-ranging Bill. With all the expertise in the debate today and in your Lordships’ House, I am sure we will give it a thorough going over and I hope that it leaves us in better shape, because our children deserve no less.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 3rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

Amendment 204 not moved.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

I must alert the Committee that, if Amendment 205 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment 206 for reasons of pre-emption.

Amendment 205

Moved by

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, my hope is that this amendment has been rendered unnecessary by the Government’s plan for school profiles, so I will speak to the principles of it rather than the details. For parents, admissions information is of great importance. If they are looking around for a school for their child, they need an understanding of which schools they have a chance of getting them into. The admission rules and outcomes from those rules are vital information for parents.

Local authorities used to publish a booklet every year setting out exactly that—what the rules were and what the outcomes had been—but the more that academy schools have grown, the less that has become the practice. I ran off the booklet for East Sussex—where I live—senior schools. Out of the 20 or so schools available at secondary level, full admissions information is available only for four of them. The others just say, “Contact school”. Although there is supposed to be a system whereby schools provide local authorities with the information they can put in their schools booklets, this is no longer happening.

East Sussex is by no means an outlier. This is common. The system for providing parents with easily accessible schools admissions information has broken down. If, as part of the forthcoming school profiles, we are to have proper school information available on the government website and if, as with the other excellent information that they provide on that website, it will be available in electronic form in bulk, then we have solved this problem. I hope that is the answer. If not, we must do something to get back to the position we all thought we were in. I beg to move.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I have not had much input into the Bill, which colleagues with much greater knowledge of the issues than me have covered so ably, but I have tabled two amendments in this group, Amendments 452A and 452B. Refugee and asylum-seeking children and those on resettlement schemes may be among the most disadvantaged in our society. They may be accompanied, but the adult or adults with them may be as traumatised as the children. I should like any child in the asylum process or with refugee status, irrespective of whether they fall under the category of unaccompanied asylum-seeking child, to be treated as worthy of special treatment. This is unlikely to open the floodgates, but it would help some very needy children who otherwise would fall outside the criteria. I hope the Minister will be able to look kindly on these modest amendments.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 18th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Layard (Lab)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to everyone who spoke in this excellent debate. The noble Lord, Lord Macpherson, got us off to a good start on the economics, which is, of course, a central part of this—but economics can appear to look just at the whole economy rather than at the fates of individuals. Ultimately, of course, the economy is about the fates of individuals and especially the fates of these young people who are headed for lives of such poverty and also, in many cases, inactivity, at a cost then to the rest of us.

I am very grateful for what I think was the main theme, which came out of almost all the contributions—from the noble Lords, Lord Deben, Lord Storey, Lord Hampton and Lord Addington, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Barran, Lady Wolf and Lady Coffey. It is that we have taken our eye off the needs of these young people at the lower levels of skill. How do we get people to levels 2 and 3 as the top priority for the use of the levy money? What has been happening, as we know, is that the levy money has been increasingly diverted, I would say, to supporting older people—often existing employees—and to higher levels of qualification. That would be all right if it were not being diverted from the needs of young people, whom employers have increasingly been turning their backs on. That is what we have to reverse, and it requires a major policy decision by the Government and the setting up of a major administrative structure to reverse this whole trend. I think it is encouraging that the survey by the CIPD showed that employers are up for this if some leadership and support is given to make it come about.

We are worried that the levy is being diverted. We should revert to the principle that its main purpose is to get people up to levels 2 and 3—when it comes to levels 4 and above, there are many other potential sources of funding. There is obviously the student loan. It is not so obvious that essentially the taxpayer, through the levy, is funding higher-level education for people taking levels 4 and 5 or degree apprenticeships at level 6, when most of those studying at levels 4 to 6 are on student loans or alternative sources of funding. Obviously, if the employer wants to get a bright young person quickly, they can contribute to the cost. We must re-establish the idea that the central—the first—overriding claim on the levy is young people doing levels up to level 3.

I am very grateful to the Minister for what she said and for the sincerity of her concern about all this. We would very much like to meet and see how this can be carried forward and, in the light of that, for the moment I would like to withdraw the amendment.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

I thank the noble Lord, but we are debating Amendment 483A, so I need to ask the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, to withdraw that first.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Monday 20th April 2026 Lords Chamber

This reflects the intentions of the noble Baroness’s amendments, the concerns that have been expressed directly to me by the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, and the Government’s concerns. It will allow us to support schools in creating the calm, focused and safe learning environments that we all want to see. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

My Lords, in calling Motion A1, I must inform the House that, if it is agreed to, I will not be able to call Motion A2 by reason of pre-emption.

Motion A1 (as an amendment to Motion A)

Moved by