Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 2
Monday 20th June 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Whitaker]

97D: Clause 48, page 41, line 26, at end insert “gender, and ethnicity,”
Member’s explanatory statement
Inserted section 436C relates to the content of children not in school registers. This amendment is to ensure that data on the ethnicity and gender of such children is recorded adequately so that disparities can be kept under review.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the long-overdue register proposals and pay tribute to the persistence of my noble friend Lord Soley. I also commend the Department for Education’s Schools Bill fact sheet, which sets out the rationale calmly and comprehensively. Of course, with any new system there are adjustments that we can consider, but it will be a huge improvement to have registers for all the reasons my noble friend Lord Soley enumerated in the previous group and for the large proportion of Gypsy and Traveller children who have dropped out of secondary education because they feel it is not a place where they can thrive and some of whose parents struggle to educate them. Then there are those children who are not being educated at all, except by gangs and county lines—an increasing number, according to the police. Registers will be vital here.

In moving Amendment 97D, I shall also speak to Amendment 109A in this group. I am grateful for the support of my expert noble friend Lord Knight of Weymouth, even if he is only here in spirit. The point of adding gender and ethnicity in Amendment 97D is to ensure that the full facts of drop-out from school are captured in the knowledge that local authorities have of what is happening to the children in their area. There are disproportionate numbers of children from some ethnicities who abandon school and even, among a few communities, a tendency to withdraw girls, particularly from secondary school. The reasons can include prejudice and bullying, particularly evident in the case of Gypsy and Traveller children; misunderstanding and ignorance of cultural norms; and lack of positive liaison with parents. Unless the size of these problems is known, and they must be known on a national basis from each local authority, factually and quantitatively, remedies are unlikely to be tailored to the cause.

Amendment 109A respects the Department for Education’s own data protection and audit report of February 2020 concerning the safeguarding of data. Although the information officer’s conclusions in this report apply to the department itself, they are equally relevant to local authorities whose procedures vary from area to area in their competency in safeguarding data. I hope for a positive response from the Minister and, indeed, from your Lordships. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

If I may, I will include the answer to that question in a letter to the noble Lord.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

In her very careful responses, the noble Baroness the Minister clearly recognises that there are very wide differences between the children who are not in school. Some are well educated and nobody wants to curtail that—adjustments may be made, but this is not thought to be a large percentage. An unknown number, but it is estimated to be a very large number, of children are not well educated; I suggest that the register needs to be primarily directed at these children. There are all sorts of reasons why they are not well educated. I will not go into them at this hour of the night but, for example, the schools are illegal or extreme, or the parents are at work or cannot educate the children; there are all sorts of reasons.

The Minister’s responses to our questions aimed at making the register more precise—more exactly tailored to what we all need from it while not curtailing the freedom of parents to educate their children at home well—seem mainly to relegate the details to regulations. For the reasons already given in earlier debates, there are problems with this; we have difficulty with it. However, for the time being, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 97D withdrawn.