Education Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Laming]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 33 I shall speak also to Amendment 100. Looking around the Room and seeing the vast experience that is seated here, I realise that the link between Amendments 33 and 100 may be slightly unusual. Therefore, I begin by offering the Committee an apology and the feeble excuse that I have been waiting for some time for a minor operation on a troublesome tooth. Those who are more experienced than me calculated that the day when Amendment 100 would come before the Committee would be the very day that the surgeon was wielding the knife. Therefore, I am extremely grateful to those who have helped me and been so understanding, particularly the House authorities, who have been very helpful. I am grateful for the support of the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Whitaker, and the noble Lord, Lord Low, who is unfortunately out of the country today.

I also thank the Minister, who wrote to me on this topic. The Committee will not be surprised to hear that his letter was characteristically thoughtful. I appreciated it greatly. However, I regret to say that I did not find it altogether persuasive. That is because Clauses 4, 30 and 31 strike at the very heart of the proper development of children and the responsibilities that we all have, particularly the education services. The Committee will have noticed that the Bill removes the duties placed on the education services by the Children Act 2004 to co-operate with local authorities in promoting the well-being of children and young people in their area. These clauses could not be more comprehensive in their intention. They specify that they extend to schools, governing bodies, proprietors and FE institutions; they are indeed comprehensive. They make clear that, in future, these bodies will no longer even have to have regard or contribute to local plans for the well-being of children and young people.

In every inquiry that has followed a tragedy to a child with which I am familiar, two key messages have permeated every report like the lettering through a stick of rock. The first is that in future each service, including education, must greatly fulfil its particular responsibilities to promote the safety and well-being of each child. The second is that each service must develop the skills to work successfully across organisational boundaries and share information at an early stage. If any noble Lord, but particularly the Minister, can recall a report that does not repeat those lessons, I would be extremely glad to hear of it.

However, this is not just about reports. In every serious case review with which I am familiar—and there are getting on for 100 a year—these same messages are repeated to the point of tedium. Indeed, I recall a seminar in which a senior police officer said with some feeling, “Every time I have sat down to review what has happened to a child, the pattern has always been the same; as each service begins to put what it knew about the child and the family on the table, the meeting became quieter and quieter until someone said, ‘Well, if only we’d known that we would have acted much earlier’”—but of course in those situations it is generally too late for the child.

This is more than about keeping a child safe. We need to place child safety in the wider context of our and the education services’ responsibility to have the wider vision of promoting the proper development of every child. I hope the Minister will take the time to read again some recently published national reports on matters such as childhood obesity, children acting as carers, sibling care, teenage pregnancy, online grooming, drug and alcohol abuse, children with disabilities and those with special needs—to mention just a few. The unbroken thread through each of these reports is this: all these children are of the age to be in the education services, which have a responsibility for each and every child.

Only last week Mr Lansley, the Secretary of State for Health, went out of his way to make it absolutely clear that in the new arrangements that are being proposed for the National Health Service, the specific responsibilities placed on the health services—not just to safeguard children but, as he put it, to promote their welfare—will continue. In fact, if Amendment100 is acted on, the education services will be the only key services to be excluded from these activities. What is more, it just so happens that the education services are the only services that are universal to every child.

Earlier this week Mr Maude talked about teachers’ strikes, and he went out of his way to say that schools not only teach but carry out important wider childcare functions. The Minister in our House did a brilliant job, if I may say so, answering a Question on Monday. Perhaps I may read out his answer rather than my own text. Only yesterday in our consideration in this House of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, the Government introduced amendments to promote the police’s responsibilities with regard to the well-being of children.

The development of children’s plans and children’s trusts under the Children Act 2004 were designed specifically to place the well-being and the promotion of care of children in this wider context. In the letter which the Minister sent to me, he said that the Bill simply reverts to the earlier position. I urge the Government not to do that and to accept that exhortation and hope have proved to be inadequate ways of ensuring that all the key agencies, but particularly the education services, fulfil their unique responsibilities.

If we remove the duties placed upon the education services, as the Bill promotes, it will give not only a huge message to the education services but a negative message to all the other services that have to play a key role in all this. I know, because of my experience with Members of this House, that this House has a great concern for the well-being of children in general. I very much hope that if the Minister cannot agree to the amendments, he will at least be willing to meet some of us to discuss this so that we can consider the matter more roundly. I beg to move.

[Baroness Whitaker]

By adding my name to the amendment in this group, which was moved and spoken to with such authority and experience by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, I want to draw attention to a particular group of children where the role of local authorities and others in areas conducive to education—family issues, justice, mobile families—knowledge of the social services is crucial. If there are problems here, children may be disrupted and may drop out of school. Gypsy and Traveller children are particularly vulnerable to the combinations of circumstances that lead them to drop out. Their drop-out rate is far higher than any other group—very, very much higher. School alone cannot easily know all the factors behind this.

So if you want to give these children a better chance, a fair chance, and a chance that is comparable with that of other children, schools need to co-operate with local authorities over well-being. It must be done without exception and it must be a statutory obligation. Of course, it applies particularly in the harshest measure—exclusion.

The Minister referred in his closing speech at Second Reading to local authority children’s services. He said that they had,

“a critical role in the early years”.—[Official Report, 14/6/11; col. 773.]

Why stop at the early years? The need is just as great in later years. The Government’s White Paper on teaching says that local authorities have a role as “champions” of vulnerable pupils. Local authorities cannot exercise this role if schools choose not to co-operate with them. I support the amendments.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I am happy to find myself in my more natural position of supporting amendments rather than throwing four anchors astern. I pay tribute to the eloquence and passion of my noble friend Lord Laming and the experience on which that has been built. At Second Reading, I asked a specific question, which was that if there was a possibility of permanent exclusion—and it is included twice in the relevant clause in this legislation—there had to be a plan B. If any pupil is permanently excluded, there is a major problem that we cannot afford to put out into the wilderness without knowing the direction of travel that society ought to, and will want to, take.

The noble Lord, Lord Laming, has given us one possible solution to this—and I should like to think further about the details of Amendment 100—but there must be a solution, a plan B, and we need to know. If someone is permanently excluded, not simply from school but, as mentioned in Clause 2, from a pupil referral unit, we have a problem. What is plan B?