Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

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.