Early Years Provision: Bell Review
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The right reverend Prelate is absolutely right to identify that disadvantage —in fact, special educational needs impact on children at a very early stage in their development. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education, alongside the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, is absolutely committed, through the work of the child poverty taskforce, to looking at precisely how we break that link between poverty in childhood and the ability to make the most of your life later on. That will include elements of the benefits system as well.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)
Taking my noble friend back to the question on recruitment, will she consider that a number of the people who will be needed in the workforce are currently in full-time education? Quite a lot are at school, and many are studying BTECs—for example, in health and social care—which can then lead them into careers in childcare. Can she say whether the Government intend to go on supporting the BTECs that will take these young people towards the childcare sector? What else are the Government doing to encourage young people currently in education to see it as a good career path for them?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
We are carrying out a short qualifications reform review precisely to identify the qualifications where there are particular needs for learners or for the economy—in this case, childcare. Unlike the previous Government, we are saying that where we can see for both those reasons that there is a particular need for qualifications, we will continue to fund them in the system. As I identified earlier, we are also supporting the development of a T-level, which will provide a very good and rigorous route for young people into the childcare sector. Also, through the “Do Something Big” campaign we are encouraging more people to consider a career in early years and childcare, which can have such an enormous impact on children’s lives.
Schools: Mental Health and Poor Attendance
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts(4 months ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord is right that there is a considerable problem with access to child and adolescent mental health services, at a time when one in five eight to 16 year-olds have a probable mental health disorder, it is suggested, and are seven times more likely to be absent for extended periods of time. When the median wait for these services for children is 201 days, there is clearly more that needs to happen. Alongside access to mental health professionals in all schools, my colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care are also committed to recruiting an additional 8,500 mental health staff, with a priority for enabling them to work with children and young people.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)
My Lords, will my noble friend the Minister comment on what further work the Government plan to do specifically for young people with spectrum disorders, such as autism and ADHD? They can do well in mainstream schooling, but often do not because their needs are not recognised soon enough, and they can then present with mental health disorders on top of their spectrum disorders. What is being done to help teachers understand how to manage those children and keep them in the classroom, which is often not easy?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend is of course right. There are a whole range of reasons why children may be absent from school. Special educational needs and particular disabilities, as she identifies, are a key reason. That is why, in a system that is not properly serving children, this Government are committed to improving that and working to ensure, across the whole spectrum of special educational needs and disability, that children get the support they need to remain in mainstream schools. As she also rightly says, teachers are getting the support they need, along with other staff within the school, to both identify and then support those children, so that they can achieve and succeed in a way that will be an important foundation for the rest of their lives.
King’s Speech
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts(4 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure and privilege to be speaking from these Benches again. In doing so, I remind the House of my relevant interests as a member of Middlesex Learning Trust, a patron of the Artis Foundation, and an adviser to the Backstage Trust.
I congratulate my noble friends on the Front Bench today, and all their colleagues, on their new appointments, and I wish them well as they take forward the ambitious programme outlined in the gracious Speech. I particularly congratulate my noble friend Lady Smith of Malvern on her excellent maiden speech. Like others, I am sad that we are losing the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly—this was all unexpected—but I am very glad that we have not lost the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, whose work in office has been so deservedly praised. I hope she is glowing from that praise as this debate continues.
Concision is the order of the day, so I will make my points concisely. First, as another member of the pre-legislative committee that looked at the previous Government’s draft mental health Bill in 2022-23, I am glad to see that a new Bill is planned that will incorporate a lot of what that committee recommended. It will be challenging to find the necessary resources, financial and human, but the proposed changes to current legislation are long overdue and much needed.
I welcome the inclusion of the children’s well-being Bill. In taking forward the proposed review of curriculum and assessment, I hope that despite warnings from my noble friend Lady Morris the Government will make good on their declared intention to restore arts subjects to their proper place in the curriculum. I also support everything said by the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, on how engagement with the arts outside the formal curriculum can contribute to the well-being of all students from early years to A-level.
Much of the arts sector is already extensively involved with education—just look at what is being achieved by the RSC and many other organisations, large and small—but it is doing so in an increasingly precarious funding environment. The recent successful championing by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay—he is not in his place today—of tax reliefs for the performing arts is one of the few bright spots on a darkening horizon for the sector, and I hope my noble friend can confirm that they will be maintained. However, the current crisis in many local authorities, and the reduction in support for Arts Council England over the past decade, has already done serious damage. This is another problem that will not be easy to solve when there are so many calls on scarce resources, but we ignore it at our peril.
The plan to increase teacher numbers is also welcome. Recruitment and retention remain critical issues, but there is also huge pressure on school budgets, partly as a result of the underfunding, or non-funding, of recent pay awards, which is resulting in staff reductions in some schools. This needs urgent attention, which I hope it will get from my noble friends.
Finally, I hope that we can now look forward to a less adversarial relationship between government and the education sector. Over the past few years there has been too much hostile rhetoric, although never, I hasten to add, from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. We should, of course, have high expectations of our schools and their leaders, and they must be held to account. But let us also trust them, support them and acknowledge what it takes to do what they do.
In the gracious Speech, the Government have set out a bold programme that I am proud to support. Delivering it will require courage and determination, because, despite recent appearances to the contrary, politics is not actually a branch of the entertainment industry, entertaining though it can sometimes be. It is a complex, contradictory, unpredictable and deeply serious business within which setbacks and even occasional failures are inevitable. However, in the words of that great master of concision, the playwright Samuel Beckett:
“No matter. Fail again. Fail better.”
Onwards and upwards, my Lords.