Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

2nd reading & Lords Hansard - Part two
Monday 23rd May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a high-quality debate with insightful contributions from all sides of the House and a wealth of experience and expertise displayed. Schools and universities across the UK have been profoundly impacted by the pandemic. It is well documented that there is a disparity in the impact between schools in deprived areas and those in the most affluent areas.

I will begin by remarking on the excellent points made by my noble friend Lady Chapman, where she noted the essence of this Bill. There is more to say about what is missing than about what is there. We wanted to see an ambitious, substantiated plan to support our children’s pandemic recovery, but sadly it just is not there. Where are the proposals to improve teaching standards or to tackle the absolute exodus of burnt-out school staff? Where are the measures to equip our students with the skills they will need in the industries of the future, in an ever-more globalised and technologically advanced economy? This Bill does nothing for these crucial aspects of our children’s learning and is a huge missed opportunity. Education and skills will be a critical pillar if the Government are serious about their latest slogan of levelling up, and from the Bill before us, I am not sure that they are. The Bill focuses on structures, not standards. Right now, struggling schools do not need new regulation and new responsibilities: they need more teachers, better mental health support and buildings that are not falling down.

Many points were raised by your Lordships. There were concerns about the opaque nature of the governance of academies, in particular the idea of an all-powerful centre and satellite schools noted by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. There was an interesting idea that young people clearly consider the environment as part of their rights and values, as indicated by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, in the amendment he proposed, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham was absolutely right to assert that we should not sell our children short, as seems to be the case throughout the Bill.

I agree with my noble friend Lord Blunkett when he says with experience and eloquence that the crisis in teacher recruitment and retention is nothing short of scandalous. The Bill is a lost opportunity, with the missing element of accountability. The noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher and Lady Berridge, both alluded to the importance of legislating for children who are home educated.

My noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley—who, incidentally, gave me the largest pay rise I ever had as a teacher—wisely noted that the Bill is trying to redress the coalition agreement, and that academies are no more successful than any other type of school. She asked how the Government and Civil Service are best placed to determine these matters—where is the evidence? Ofsted does not inspect them, and they do not follow the national curriculum. She noted that we need to determine what makes a good school and replicate that.

The noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, is a former Tory Education Secretary of State who did not give me a pay rise but did give me Baker days, which was a welcome addition when we could stop, think, renew and learn as we went along in a sometimes frantic career. His comments were frankly astounding. He said that, since 1870, previous Secretaries of State for Education have never had such sweeping powers as the current Secretary of State is looking to assume in this Bill. It is worth repeating his words:

“We have to be very aware that this is … a real grab for power by the Department for Education”,


which

“has never run a school … but now it is going to take complete control”.

My noble friend Lord Knight of Weymouth raised the important possibility of what future Secretaries of State might do with the powers that they grab in the Schools Bill of 2022.

My noble friend Lady Bakewell raised some extremely concerning matters regarding approximately 6,000 students in the education system who attend unregulated schools, where little attention is given to secular education and LEAs seem reluctant to intervene. These matters must be clearly addressed by this Bill.

My noble friend Lord Hunt also commented on the power grab idea put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Baker. He further reminded us that we should acknowledge the excellent work that goes on in our maintained schools across the country. He was quite right to point out the financial concerns regarding academies, notwithstanding parents being unable to review the financial status of such schools and the increasingly excessive payments to head teachers of these establishments.

My noble friend Lady Blower was as detailed and incisive as ever with her points on the Government’s casual use of data and the complete reversal of social justice in funding terms.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, made some extremely concerning and important points regarding data and its unregulated use.

My noble friend Lord Watson gave a really detailed and insightful speech. He helped me greatly during the passage of the skills Bill in understanding the process of your Lordships’ House. He too noted the Government’s obsession with academies, which appears to be driven by ideology rather than evidence. In terms of home education, he also noted that child safety and the rights of the child must be paramount.

I will reiterate what Labour’s children’s recovery plan would deliver: small-group tutoring for all who need it; breakfast clubs and after-school activities for every child, as we have in Wales; quality mental health support for children in every school; continued professional development for teachers to improve teaching and learning; and targeted extra investment from crucial early years to further education to support children and young people at risk of falling behind.

I conclude that there are some welcome proposals in the Bill, but it has completely the wrong priorities. As the Bill progresses through your Lordships’ House, Her Majesty’s Opposition will be looking to work with the Minister and colleagues across the House to address our real concerns throughout the scrutiny process and will aim to ensure that the Bill can be the best it can be. Our children and young people deserve nothing less.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I am struggling to think of the collective noun for former Cabinet Ministers that are going to address the Committee—probably a “clutter” of them, behind my noble friend.

I shall speak briefly. I pay tribute—and noble Lords can imagine what I stepped into in the department following my noble friend Lord Agnew. We were left with a hard rump of cases. One thing that I do not think has been mentioned so far—and I approach this mainly as a lawyer—is the nature of the vehicle that is the multi-academy trust. It is a charitable company, but of course there were so many of them that the regulation from the Charity Commission in 2014 was passed to the Department for Education to make the Secretary of State the chief regulator.

In terms of the hard rump that is left and the issues that we need to deal with, it is because of the nature of the legal vehicle that there is a very high bar for intervening, as the Charity Commission sometimes does, in a company or charitable company, when one of the issues that you may need to sort out is that the governance has gone wrong. I hope that my noble friend the Minister can answer that point. Is there something here that we have not discussed—it might be the nature of the legal vehicle that we are using—that has actually led to some of these issues and leaves you with a hard rump that you cannot get at? The Academy Trust Handbook was renamed because it covers not just money—it covers essentially governance and safeguarding, and health and safety was also put into it, so it was clear to the sector that these were the rules and framework that it needed to work to.

The second point that I want to reiterate—it was made by my noble friend Lord Nash—is that it is a very important move to move fundamentally from a bilateral arrangement, where both parties have to consent, to any type of unilateral arrangement. I know that the issues have been well addressed by other noble Lords about the nature of those powers. When you have that consenting arrangement of the contract between two parties, it is also talking to the value of the service that the other contracting party is delivering. Overwhelmingly, these single academy trusts and MATs are doing a great job; they are abiding by the contract. However, with that hard rump, you need to intervene. As I often used to say in the department, why do I seem to have more power if the computer I bought from John Lewis goes wrong than I do if the education of children is being failed by them not delivering in accordance with the contract?

My final point—and I have not had the privilege of meeting my noble friend yet about the Bill—is, faced with this situation, if the Government are considering pausing, what is the view of the MATs sector? It is now sitting there with the prospect of this legislation and a unilateral situation. There are MATs on very old contracts that need changing. What would they choose, if they were given that choice—progressing with this legislation or agreeing to a new form of contract? Most of these issues to do with articles of association and new forms of contract have been dealt with, due to the noble Lords who preceded me. Is there now an issue that now needs addressing? If those MATs will agree to new contracts and go on to new terms and conditions, is that not also a way that my noble friend the Minister can look at, now that the sector is seeing what an alternative would be for them, if they insist on not having proper separation in their governance or not having the new agreement? That may be a pragmatic consultation that we could have with the sector at this stage of the Bill.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

We have had an excellent debate from so many noble Lords. I shall try to be concise, because so much has already been said. This group of amendments again seeks to put safeguards around the power that the Secretary of State has to make on standards for academies, and seeks information from the Government about what lies behind this taking of broad powers. Colleagues have spoken to the damning Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee report, which takes such issue with powers in this Bill. I shall not tread over old ground, but I wanted to note what other noble Lords have said, such as the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher on the Henry VIII powers. “We don’t want Parliament involved”—what a blow to democracy that is. My noble friend Lord Hunt spoke eloquently on the unacceptability of these matters in relation to the report, and the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, reminded us that this report was personally forwarded to the Secretary of State.

The noble Lord, Lord Baker, took us back to the 1870s, and how the department has never done these things before, and the glaring omission in the proposals of the social context of a school. My noble friend Lady Blower reiterated the nature of the power grab, and reminded us that a national service, locally delivered, was the aspiration at the beginning of our teaching careers, but the local dimension is no more. It speaks to a worrying trend across government, denying Parliament the opportunity to deal with matters in the Bill in favour of shoving something through via statutory instrument later down the line, once they have worked out what they want to do. It is not even the cart before the horse—it is the cart before the cart.

I ask the Minister with sincerity, in trying to understand the rationale behind this power grab, what is the reason for this approach? Has the detail of the specific measures the Secretary of State would like to take not been fleshed out? Perhaps it has been. If so, is it controversial, at an increasingly controversial time for the governing party? Is it meant to give some wriggle room in response to political or media pressure to act in an unforeseen area, so it buys the ubiquitous “get out of jail” card, if the public reaction—like so much public reaction to the Government these days—is hostile?

I struggle to understand why Parliament and parliamentary scrutiny will not be given the chance to debate the rights and wrongs of what the DfE intends to do. I understand that the White Paper is meant to give colour to some of these questions, but its offering is limited on many of the concrete measures that the Secretary of State may or may not be looking to impose. It hardly needs me to remind the House that this Government will not be in power for ever, as has been noted by the noble Lord, Lord Addington—and some may say the sooner the better, in the light of the current state of our countries. But these powers will be there for others to wield in future, or indeed repeal, if the Government are determined to push this through despite the strong voices that we have heard today to the contrary.

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[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, it is interesting to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, because I do not entirely agree with her characterisation of what is going on in schools. I believe that there is a level of mental distress among our children and young people. I am sure it was exacerbated by the pandemic but I think it has been there for a very long time.

I was originally going to stand up only to say that there are lots of things schools can do in response to this issue without pathologising it, which is of course not desirable; I absolutely would not want that to happen. I do not really see that characterisation of schools becoming full of therapists. Frankly, all of our teachers’ time is taken up with doing the stuff that Ofsted tells them they must do, without also being therapists.

However, it is really important that we have extremely well-staffed CAMHS available to all our schools because it is perfectly clear that teachers cannot diagnose actual mental illness. Nor should they—that is not their role at all—but nor can they necessarily decide what level of intervention needs to be made by either them or anybody else if they think that a child has some kind of mental health difficulty. I would be happy for CAMHS to be not just a place to which children go—incidentally, if they are late for their first meeting, they sometimes do not get a second one because CAMHS are so busy—but a facility available to teachers not to deal with their own mental health but to make a proper, professional decision about whether a child is in some kind of mental health distress. The fact is that teachers are not trained or equipped to deal with this, but we are seeing quite a lot of it.

So I do not disagree with everything the noble Baroness said, but I do think there is a pronounced role for CAMHS and that, in most of the areas with which I am familiar, they are not sufficiently well staffed and resourced to ensure that they can respond to teachers’ issues and directly, face to face, to young people’s issues.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 22 and 37 in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Chapman.

This group of amendments covers the other side of the argument—the matters for which the Secretary of State should be compelled to set standards to ensure the highest possible educational experiences for our children and young people. We have heard admirable intent from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and others around mental health, SEND and extracurricular activities. Education should not and cannot be just about grades; the whole needs of the child must be considered.

I spent the vast majority of my teaching career working in areas that were not central to the dictates of the national curriculum: the performing arts and creative subjects that gave a wealth of support and experience to children’s learning. Above all, the pupils enjoyed what they were doing, which enhanced their learning and their overall mental and physical health. I have former pupils who have graced West End stages, both front and back of house, and I am very proud of them; but I have hundreds who are not in the entertainment business and who always remind me of their enjoyment of drama lessons and their roles in school productions when they see me in person or via social media.

At lunchtime today, I spent half an hour in our education centre with a group of year 12 pupils from a school in Edgeware. One of the many interesting and searching questions they asked me was, what drives me as a politician and what do I stand for? I was able to say to them, very honestly, that my public service has always been about them—children and young people—and ensuring that they get the best possible start in life with the highest-quality teaching and learning across the whole of the UK, in all our nations and regions.

It was good to be back in a room full of engaging and inquisitive minds on a Wednesday afternoon. I would not want to do it every Wednesday, but it was very good to be back with year 12 again. The teacher texted me afterwards to say how much they had enjoyed it and how much they had revised their view of what the Lords is—so I hope that I did some good for us all—and that they saw that politics can be a force for good, despite the current world view of us here in Westminster.

Our proposal of powers to set standards for work experience and mental health, at the same time as us tabling limits on the Secretary of State’s powers, speaks to the inherent contradiction in this Bill that we are working around. The Government have not put in the Bill the outcomes that they are looking for, whether benign or otherwise. If they settle on imposing standards on academies, that is one thing, but if so they should include these on work experience and health. The Government have given us a vague list of standards which the Secretary of State “may” regulate for. We are flying blind and attempting today to fill in the gaps as best we can. If the Government are intent on this sweeping approach, it is imperative that these issues are included, but we would prefer a strong list of standards that the Secretary of State must regulate around, and using a narrow list already identified in existing education legislation would be helpful to teachers and the Secretary of State alike.

To reiterate, we want the best for our children and young people. That is why we say in Labour’s Children’s Recovery Plan that we would deliver breakfast clubs and new activities for every child, quality mental health support in every school, small-group tutoring for all who need it—not just 1%—continued development for teachers, an education recovery premium and, as we have already done with a Labour Government in Wales, we would ensure that no child goes hungry, by extending free school meals over the holidays, including the summer break. That is a definite set of policies, not a vague list as identified in the Bill.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has said, we have exchanged our telescopes for microscopes and got on to a discussion about the indicative list provided in Clause 1(2). These amendments seek to expand the academy standards regulations, including what those regulations may cover.

As we have debated before, a key part of what this Bill seeks to do is taking existing academy standards set out not in regulation but elsewhere, bringing them together and subjecting them to parliamentary scrutiny. I assure noble Lords that, in each of the areas that they have raised, it is not necessary to amend the Bill for those standards to be included in the future regulations; this is already provided for. However, we also have the other side of the balance to strike in protecting those freedoms that academy trusts have to innovate and make decisions about how they best deliver education for their pupils. Through existing legislation, statutory guidance and their present funding agreements, academy trusts must already meet requirements in each of the areas that noble Lords have proposed. We will seek to replicate those in the standards regulations but that is not the end of the Government’s commitment or work in those areas. It can be delivered in multiple ways, as I will try to set out in my response.

First, Amendments 8 and 37 both raise the important topic of mental health. I agree that schools play a vital role in safeguarding pupil mental health and well-being, which is captured principally by how they carry out their wider duties on the curriculum, behaviour, SEND and safeguarding. Our statutory guidance on these issues sets out how mental health should be factored into what needs to be taught in health education, through to identification of social, emotional and mental health needs as part of the SEND code of practice and information on supporting mental health as part of the Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance.

We have also issued non-statutory guidance to support all schools, including academies, to take effective action, including on whole-school approaches to mental health, behaviour and the effective use of school-based counselling. The noble Baroness, Lady Blower, talked about the importance of access to CAMHS for schools and the pupils within them, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, placed this discussion in the context of some of the health reforms in the Bill that we took through in the last Session. They are both absolutely right, and I undertake to write to him on the involvement of educational institutions in areas’ ICBs and ICPs.

This goes to the heart of saying that setting the academy standards is not the sole route to or the end of the conversation about the importance that the Government place on an issue or the effective intervention we can put in place to support it. A big part of mental health is about investing more money into NHS children’s mental health services, as we have done. We have announced an additional £79 million towards that and have invested an additional £70 million to build on existing mental health support in education settings.

Several noble Lords talked about pupils’ mental health during the pandemic and its effect on them. Our recent State of the Nation report shows that children and young people’s well-being is gradually improving from the impacts of the pandemic. That highlights the link between regular school attendance and positive well-being, in demonstrating how critical face-to-face learning is.

Another specific action we are taking is a commitment that was part of the NHS long-term plan to increase the number of mental health support teams in schools and colleges to cover approximately 35% of pupils in England. I believe we are ahead of target on that. This is just to say that we can make standards in this area under the legislation as it is written. We will seek to replicate the standards that exist for academies as they are, but we completely understand the importance of mental health as an issue and this is not the only way in which we will address it.

Amendment 9 brings the welcome opportunity to focus on special educational needs and disability. The Government are just as ambitious for children and young people with SEND as for every other child. Again, I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that the academy standards regulations will reflect existing requirements on academy trusts, including those on SEND. For example, the Children and Families Act 2014 already requires mainstream schools to use their best endeavours to secure the special educational provision required by a child or young person, and there are provisions in funding agreements that require academy trusts to ensure that their academies meet the needs of individual pupils, including those with special educational needs and disability. Academy trusts must also have regard to the special educational needs and disability code of practice, which requires there to be a qualified teacher designated as the special needs co-ordinator in each academy. All these requirements will be reflected in the academy standards regulations.

The Government recently published our SEND and alternative provision Green Paper, which includes a proposal to introduce national standards for the support that should be available for children and young people with SEND. As the noble Lord, Lord Addington, knows, that proposal is currently out for consultation, and responding to that is the best vehicle to progress policy on these important matters. Should the outcome of the consultation determine that new national standards on SEND are required, we would consider including them in the academy standards regulations, as the Bill is drafted.

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Moved by

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport]

28: Clause 1, page 3, line 10, at end insert—
“(9) The Secretary of State must publish—(a) an annual report on the exercise of the powers under subsection (1), and(b) an annual impact assessment on the exercise of those powers.(10) Before exercising the powers under subsection (1), the Secretary of State must consult relevant groups, including parents, teachers and governors, on the use of such regulations.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would require the Department for Education to seek the views of groups including parents, teachers and governors on how academy regulations are implemented, and then allow sight and scrutiny of the use of the new powers.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, this group is another trying to put safeguards around the Secretary of State’s powers to set academy standards. In the absence of proper parliamentary scrutiny mechanisms, industrious noble Lords have sought to add their own. My amendment would require the DfE to consult parents, teachers and governors on how the regulations are implemented and then allow sight and scrutiny of the use of the new powers by way of reporting and assessing the impact that use has had.

For such a sweeping change to a crucial area of social policy, we believe that this amendment is proportionate and only right to allow meaningful public scrutiny. If the Secretary of State is overreaching or, equally, not doing enough to intervene in a specific case, it would allow that to become public knowledge and the public, expert stakeholders and parent groups to make the case for change.

My Amendment 83 would subject to the affirmative procedure the Secretary of State’s power to give any person they choose responsibility to judge an academy’s compliance with standards. Such a large empowerment, with the potential to place all-important judgments with anyone that the Secretary of State wills is surely worth giving Parliament sight of, and anyone involved in the process of proper scrutiny and democratic accountability should have little problem agreeing to the amendments. I thus beg to move.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly welcome my noble friend’s amendment. I, along with my noble friend Lady Blower, have a number of other amendments in this area.

I want to encourage the Minister to say something about this. Clearly, she has heard all our concerns about Clauses 1 and 3. I just want to suggest that one way through may be to consider the super-affirmative procedure for dealing with the issue of standards. We debated earlier the issue that even an affirmative instrument allows us only a debate. The advantage of the super-affirmative procedure is that it allows both Houses of Parliament opportunities to comment on proposals for secondary legislation and recommend amendments before orders for affirmative approval are brought forward in their final form. The idea of the super-affirmative procedure is that those orders are implemented in enactments where an exceptionally high degree of scrutiny is thought appropriate—for instance, for the scrutiny of certain items of delegated legislation made or proposed to be made under Henry VIII clauses.

Take my noble friend Lady Chapman’s earlier amendment, in which she sought to replicate the standards in relation to independent schools and said that, basically, this would give a much more explicit set of standards to work on. If you combine that with the super-affirmative procedure, you might achieve a greater and more effective way whereby Parliament could scrutinise what the Government seek to do. However, I really do not think that simply having regulations is the way to do it. I urge the Minister to consider this procedure as one way through, because it would give Parliament an opportunity to comment on the draft regulations and the department an opportunity to go away and consider it before coming back with the substantive order. In some ways, this would be a very good way to deal with some of the issues in this Bill.

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[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, this group of amendments seeks to apply additional procedural requirements to the use of the powers in Clause 1. I have heard again your Lordships’ concerns about the centralisation of power over academies with the Secretary of State but, again, we want to do this so that we have a regulatory system which is more transparent and accountable to Parliament than the one which we currently have.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, invites me to consider carefully the super-affirmative procedure. The spirit of the regulations is that they will be subject to the affirmative procedure each time they are laid, allowing Parliament the opportunity to scrutinise, debate, and vote on them. We recognise the importance of consulting representatives from the sector on regulations and, as I have said before, the Government will always undertake a consultation on the regulations prior to them being laid.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, referred to the report and impact assessment on the exercise of the powers. The Secretary of State will of course consider very carefully the likely and actual impact on academy trusts of any standards set out in the regulations.

Turning to Amendment 83, I say that Clause 1 is not designed to increase burdens on academy trusts, and that includes burdens associated with regulatory compliance. Clause 1(7) allows the conferral of the Secretary of State’s regulatory functions to another person. It is important that we ensure that the right accountability arrangements are in place. In some cases that will be ensured by Ofsted and Ofqual. It is already the case that the Secretary of State can delegate responsibility for some elements of regulatory compliance, such as in relation to the monitoring of exams and other assessments. The provisions in Clause 1(7) ensure that this can continue to happen under the academy standards framework. I therefore invite the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

The Minister noted that the Government want a more transparent and accountable way forward, but this whole debate has seen strong arguments from all sides of the House, from former Secretaries of State, in direct opposition to this view. I hope that the Minister has been listening, as I am sure that she has, but the story continues, as do the probing amendments and the demystifying of what on earth is going on here, while wanting the central purpose to remain the raising of standards for young people. With that in mind, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 28 withdrawn.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 13th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Bristol]

My Lords, I rise to speak in place of my noble colleague the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, who cannot be here today, to his Amendment 33 and to declare his interest as chair of the National Society, and also to speak against Amendment 34A.

Amendment 33 to Clause 3

“ensures that the religious designation of church schools could not be removed by secondary legislation.”

The Church of England provides 4,700 schools, so we take seriously our vision that we are deeply Christian and serving the common good. This vision is for the whole community but is built on the firm foundation of the character of our church schools, which is central to that vision. I again pay tribute to the Minister for the way that her department has valued this character and worked with us to ensure that it is safeguarded in this legislation. We believe that this amendment strengthens that intention and provides a further safeguard.

A necessarily broad approach is undertaken in this Bill in applying legislation for maintained schools to academies through amending regulations. While we can appreciate the need to do this, it is unusual to see primary legislation which enables power to be applied or disapplied by secondary legislation. This short amendment would ensure that the “religious designation” of

“schools could not be removed by secondary legislation.”

I appreciate that Clause 3(3) provides for the protection of the status of an academy “with a religious character” by prohibiting regulations for

“arrangements for collective worship and the provision of religious education”.

However, these are just some of the outworkings of the religious character of a school, and we believe that this additional safeguard is necessary to safeguard the very designation of its character. It would be inappropriate to allow secondary legislation to have such impact on the designation of character of so many schools. This is a significant issue for our schools, and I will be listening with interest to any assurances on this topic that the Minister can provide.

I want also to speak against Amendment 34A. While I support this amendment in principle, as drafted it does not include stakeholders in the list of relevant bodies for consultation. Church schools are not included, but they represent a third of the sector and therefore should be included in the consultation.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

We see that this group concerns the Secretary of State’s power to make regulations for any education legislation to apply to academies. Thus, some may see this as redressing the balance between academies and the maintained sector.

I am speaking to our amendments, beginning with Amendment 34A, which prevents the Secretary of State using these

“powers to apply or disapply education legislation”

until they have been consulted on with

“headteachers, governors, academies, and pupils”.

I will pick up the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol’s point, which could be a useful addition, so I thank her for raising it with us. Of course, consultation is the key to good governance and, if there is a sense of imposition from a distant central source, then legislation will never be as good as it could be or implemented in the way it should be.

Furthermore, our Amendment 35 removes the Secretary of State’s power to apply legislation

“relating to further education colleges to academies”

by removing “further education” from “the definition of ‘educational institution’”. As it stands, these clauses signal a further power grab, empowering a future Secretary of State unilaterally to remove religious designation from a faith school, as noted in the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham’s Amendment 33.

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[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Tempting as it is to take power into my hands and give the noble Baroness the answer straightaway, she knows very well that this is something we need to agree more broadly within the department. As soon as that is done, of course I look forward—that is an understatement—to updating the House.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

Before the Minister sits down, I just ask a simple question: when?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I must explain to the Committee that I am not able to give a firm date on that today, but as soon as I am able to, I will update the House.

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[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

Just to add to that, I think there are—or there used to be—ways for teachers moving from the independent sector to the state sector which were far less than nine months.

I take the point about a subject like IT. I absolutely agree with the amendment: teaching is a profession, and all the evidence internationally shows that the better qualified the teacher, the better the achievement for students. That is what this is all about. But if the problem is that, in a fast-moving world, there are a set of skills such as IT that people need to come into education to deliver, there needs to be another way of meeting that need and getting those people in rather than saying to the whole of the school system that teachers do not have to have a qualification. This is not being used to get people with specialist IT skills into schools to help children. It is being used by headteachers and schools where they cannot get staff with qualifications in front of children in classrooms, so they go for those without qualifications.

Although I share with the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, the wish to get the latest skills into the classroom without making people do a year-long PGCE, we just need a bit more creative thinking in order to make that happen. It cannot be that we go back to a profession that not only is not a graduate-level profession but is not a qualified profession at all. The message that gives is something that none of us who are committed to the education of children ought to support.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to follow my noble friend. She is absolutely right: this is about profession.

My Lords, we asked to de-group this amendment from that of my noble friend Lord Knight, because it is such an important issue and deserves its own debate. Our Amendment 36 would remove the exemption teachers in academies have from needing to have QTS but gives a grace period until September 2024 to give schools and teachers sufficient time to adjust. We felt that this is a sensible way forward. The amendment redresses the opt-out given by former Prime Minister David Cameron and Secretary of State Michael Gove when they removed that need for academies to have QTS in 2012.

Since that time, there has been a decade where children and young people have been taught in academies by unqualified staff. We would assert that in recognition of the preparation teachers have to undergo, the term “teacher” should be reserved solely for use by those with QTS and that a person in training—or indeed, a specialist or person qualified in IT—should have a different designation. This amendment would ensure that, in future, all pupils in every school were taught by a qualified teacher.

When I was looking at the background to the debate today, I looked at what the Sutton Trust had said. It is a research institution that fights for social mobility so that every young person—no matter who their parents are, what school they go to or where they live—has the chance to succeed in life. In its seminal report, What Makes Great Teaching?, it said that the quality of the teacher is the most important factor in academic and non-academic attainment. We have heard from other noble Lords previously in Committee about the importance of leadership and a justification of the enormously inflated salaries enjoyed by heads within academy trusts, but the Sutton Trust research firmly places the attainment factor in the hands of the teacher in the classroom. Those of us in your Lordships’ House who have had the privilege—indeed, it is a privilege—to work in this profession would no doubt agree.

The research defined effective teaching as that which leads to improved student achievement and focused on six common components that should be considered when assessing teaching quality. First is pedagogical content knowledge. As well as a strong understanding of the material being taught, teachers must also understand the ways students think about the content, be able to evaluate the thinking behind students’ own methods and identify their common misconceptions. These are all areas covered in training teachers towards QTS. It is not just about having the knowledge and content of the subject itself; you have to have knowledge and understanding of how children learn in order to convey that knowledge. The research further identified the quality of instruction, classroom climate, classroom management—which I was very good at, as your Lordships might guess—teacher beliefs and professional behaviours, all of which impact on the quality of education.

I also looked at research by the University of Oxford’s Nuffield College from 2019, which found that pupils are more likely to be taught by unqualified teachers in academies than in maintained schools. It concluded that this widens class-based inequality because schools with more pupils from lower socioeconomic backgrounds tend to hire more teachers without QTS, and that in secondary schools

“this relationship in academies is almost double that in LA-maintained schools, revealing a role for academies in widening class-based inequality in access to qualified teachers”—

which seems like levelling down, rather than levelling up.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 2
Monday 13th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, I have two points. My tendency is to support Amendment 41 but, after hearing what my noble friend just said about the direction of travel, maybe that is sufficient. I find the idea of widely dispersed academies problematic. In the White Paper that came before the Bill, in paragraph 131 on the size of trusts, the Government say:

“we will limit the proportion of schools in a local area that can be run by an individual trust.”

This is a genuine question: how does that fit together with the debate we have just had?

My second point relates to Amendment 55. I heard what my noble friend Lady Blower said, raising the issues of parents being faced with a decision about which they have not been consulted. We sort of had an answer from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chichester, speaking on behalf of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, but the Church needs to take a more understanding approach to this issue. We have a case in point: a group of parents were faced with the reality of their school being moved from an academy into a multi-academy trust with a Christian ethos. In principle I am against Church schools, but that is not the point here. The point here is whether those parents should have some input before that decision is reached. I find it impossible to believe that someone would argue in principle against consulting parents about this major change in the way that their school is run.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a wide group of amendments. I shall speak first to Amendment 49, which says that, within a year, the Secretary of State must consult on whether the Bill is adequate enough a mechanism to enable schools to either de-academise or leave their trust. Once a school joins a MAT, it is trapped. We need to empower schools to leave failing MATs or those it has irreconcilable differences with. Where else in society would it be impossible to get out of an unsatisfactory agreement? No other organisation would be tied in this way to a compulsory contract with no get-out clause.

In our Amendment 94, we ask that the Secretary of State must report yearly on the financial health of academies, including any measures necessary to address disparities, especially over financial reserves, and that academies must state their intentions for the use of reserves over £250,000. Too many academies are sitting on reserves of millions of pounds. Notwithstanding the points made by my noble friend Lord Knight about reallocation and GAG—I had not heard that acronym before, but I will not forget it now—we need to encourage academies to be transparent about this. If they are saving for a huge capital project and can justify it, it is an acceptable way forward, but these institutions cannot be cash cows. Money needs to be invested for pupil benefit.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for asking those questions about the good things that we are doing in Wales, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for raising them initially. RE becomes RVE in Wales this September—religion, values and ethics. There is a great deal to learn from what the devolved nations are doing.

The place of religion and belief in the education system is incredibly complex—the debate this evening has demonstrated that—coming from a time when our society was much less diverse and much more religious than it is now. The amendments are targeted at ensuring that children of no faith do not miss out if they opt out of collective worship. They should not have to sit at the back of the classroom while everyone else is in assembly; they need a meaningful alternative provided for them during this time. These are admirable aims, to ensure that cultural education is balanced and non-exclusionary; in a modern and increasingly secular society, where children are exposed to all kinds of things, particularly in the online sphere, it should be a right that we promote. We should provide an excellent opportunity to discuss a variety of topics and issues. It is important to break down stigmas, and non-religious children in faith schools should not be made to feel left out if they opt out. The Government should think carefully about how to encourage this here. The amendments and the work in Wales are a way forward to do this.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for this thoughtful debate, as we reach the end of our second day in Committee. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, rolls her eyes at me. She may have anticipated that, while I shall not quibble with the wording of her amendments, I shall disappoint her in my response. I also wanted to tell the noble Lord, Lord Knight, that he is making me increasingly jealous of the time that he spends on the Orkney Islands, and the celebrations and reflections that he gets to do there.

I turn first to Amendment 53, in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher and Lady Whitaker. The Government view collective worship as central to life in a school with a religious character. The right to withdrawal from collective worship is also important, as it provides choice for families as to whether or not their children participate. The amendment seeks, where children are withdrawn from collective worship, to provide an alternative assembly aimed at furthering the spiritual, moral, social and cultural—SMSC for short—education of pupils in schools with a religious character. The Government do not believe that the amendment is necessary, as all state-funded schools are already required to ensure the SMSC development of their pupils. Collective worship is one way to promote SMSC education, but there are areas of the curriculum in which schools can meet this requirement, such as religious education, history and citizenship.

On Amendment 54, when children are admitted to a school with a religious designation, their parents are aware of this and expect it to be part of the school’s ethos and culture. The Government support the right of such schools to provide religious education that aligns with their religious character. We therefore believe that there is no need for the amendment. I am unaware of significant demand from parents who withdraw their children from religious education to have this replaced by education representative of a wider range of religious and non-religious beliefs. There are many examples of academies with a religious designation taking care to ensure that their provision, to some degree, reflects a diversity of religions. We also expect schools to promote fundamental British values, which includes encouraging mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs, including non-religious beliefs. While acknowledging that the intention of this amendment is to widen choice in the teaching of RE, we believe that it is unnecessary because RE will likely already include the concept of non-religious world views.

Amendment 56 relates to academy schools without a religious character. Again, the Government believe this amendment is unnecessary because RE may already include the concepts of religious and non-religious belief. On religious belief, academies without a religious designation must already teach RE, reflecting the fact that the religious traditions in Great Britain are, in the main, Christian, and must take account of the teachings of the other principal religions in Great Britain. On nonreligious belief, this can be covered within RE. There is no obligation for schools to give equal time to the teaching of each religion or the teaching of nonreligious worldviews.

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, asked me two specific questions. On the point about not giving equal time to nonreligious worldviews, we are talking about the same judgment, but I shall write to him on the specific point, and on the point relating to Wales—although, if I understood him, it might rather reflect the devolved nature of education in Wales rather than a different legal approach. I shall reflect on Hansard and make sure I write.

On Amendment 57, collective worship is important in encouraging pupils to reflect on the concept of belief and its role in the traditions and values of this country. The right of withdrawal from collective worship provides families who do not want their children to participate to withdraw from it in whole or in part. As I have set out, there are already plentiful opportunities for schools to further children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural education regardless of religion or belief. This includes holding nonreligious assemblies, so the Government do not believe that this amendment is necessary.

Amendment 58 would repeal specific sections from the Schools Standards and Framework Act 1998. This would have the effect of removing statutory freedoms and protections regarding the recruitment, promotion and remuneration of teachers by reference to their religious practice, belief or knowledge at academies with a religious character. The Government support the freedoms and protections associated with academies with a religious character, including their freedoms to continue to appoint, promote and remunerate their teachers and deal with their employment with reference to the relevant religion or religious denomination. The Government do not intend to change this position for any school with a religious character, including academies. We continue to provide equivalent protections for academies to those available to maintained schools.

As I say, I thought this was an interesting and reflective debate, but I am afraid that the Government do not agree with the amendments tabled by noble Lords. I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, will withdraw her amendment.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Wednesday 15th June 2022 Lords Chamber

I like that this amendment brings some semblance of accountability at some level—which has been so absent from the academy system. It is very weak accountability; a Secretary of State standing up, as we have said before, would be responsible for any number of schools in one way or another. But at least someone would stand up in this House, the other House or both, and justify their decision about the future of our children in a particular local area, which the people living there and the people whose children go to the school may not agree with. The Minister will have the opportunity to explain the benefits couched in the terms of whether it is for the benefit of the children’s education. Let us hope the Ministers are as enthusiastic about consultation and local involvement as we would hope they are and, even more, that they show their enthusiasm for democratic accountability by ensuring that Amendment 63 is agreed to.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, if I can beg the Committee’s indulgence for a second, it is my birthday today.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear!

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

For the second successive year, I am here in the Chamber debating an education Bill. At least when I taught, I could leave at 4 pm.

For the avoidance of doubt, this group is about consultation. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Blower for proposing such a sensible way forward and reminding us of the value of governing bodies. We are supportive of the thrust of these amendments, which would give a greater voice to parents and staff and consideration to the local context and challenges. A struggling local authority may want to offload a school that is not equipped to academise yet—or indeed at all—so we cautiously note the government amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, which requires consultation with appropriate persons before this can happen.

However, we have a genuine question about why this consultation can be carried out after a local authority’s application, as noted by my noble friends Lord Hunt and Lady Blower. It cannot possibly be meaningful, and it looks as if it is a done deal. It is another example of the cart before the horse. Many times in this Committee we have mentioned the word “consultation”, so we need to put it in the correct context and the appropriate order.

I will speak specifically to our Amendment 63, and I thank my noble friend Lord Grocott for his support. It aims to be proportionate. If the Secretary of State intends to accept an application for academisation and the school’s governing body opposes it, the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a Statement explaining how academisation will benefit children’s education—it is as clear, simple and straightforward as that. Over the coming days, this whole debate will be about the benefit to children’s education.

These amendments speak to the Bill’s general approach of imposing academisation in a top-down fashion on schools, children and parents. If a governing body is opposed, the Secretary of State must give robust consideration to, and justify the case for, approval. After all, they are the arbiters of the community, and parents, teachers, governors and children will have a much clearer insight of the situated context of the school and the wider community issues than—with the greatest respect—a Whitehall official. Many great plays have been written about the disruption caused when a stranger enters a community and the chaos that subsequently unfolds.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, the amendments in this group are concerned mainly with rights of consultation and consent when a local authority intends to apply for an academy order on behalf of a maintained school.

The picture drawn by your Lordships of some kind of Machiavellian plan to impose multi-academy trusts on schools is not a fair representation of how the Government propose that the system should work in the future. I will come on to specific examples, but, in response to the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, on academies coming in and being imposed, I say that they are imposed because those schools have failed children—both noble Lords know that that is the case. When schools are judged to be inadequate, as was the case with the school that the noble Baroness referred to, academies come in to turn them around because they are failing children. I will leave it there, but I think that it is fair to set the record straight on that point.

Amendment 60, in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, would require a local authority to obtain the consent or support of the governing body of a school where it is proposed that the school join a strong trust. I will also refer here to Amendment 63, in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Chapman and Lady Wilcox. As the noble Baroness described, it would require the Secretary of State to lay a Statement before Parliament if they approved an application for an academy order against a governing body’s wishes. There is a requirement in the Bill for local authorities to consult a school’s governing body before applying for an academy order. We expect that local authorities and schools will have open discussions about the principle of joining a trust and which trusts schools might join.

Although we hope that any applications for academy orders would have the support of the local governing body, there may be genuine circumstances where agreement cannot be reached with individual schools. Whether the local authority includes such schools within its plans will depend on whether it is prepared to continue to maintain those individual schools.

The decision on whether to approve an order will rest with the relevant regional director. When considering local authorities’ applications, regional directors will of course take all relevant considerations into account. These will include the views of governing bodies, local authorities and other stakeholders—and, of course, the likely impact on children’s education. The regional director’s decision would be made public. Against this background, I do not believe that the additional requirements proposed in these amendments are necessary.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Humphreys (LD)]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow my two noble friends. I wish to speak to Amendment 85, in the name of my noble friend Lord Storey, to which I have added my name. This amendment requires that the funding formula be accompanied by an impact assessment on state-funded schools in rural areas.

I live in a rural area of north Wales and, like other noble Lords, fully understand the vital importance of rural schools for their communities. If schools are forced to close, young families will not move to an area and this is not conducive to building the thriving, forward-looking rural communities that we wish to see. Rural schools are also an important employer. Even a small school with a handful of teachers will provide a range of other jobs—for example, in administration, caretaking, cooking and teaching assistance—that would be lost if the school closed. Crucially, as with other services, pupils should be able to access their schools within a reasonable travel time.

However, children in rural areas across England, such as Devon, are being short-changed and taken for granted by this Conservative Government. With the challenges ahead of us as education recovers from the pandemic, we cannot allow such children to be left behind in its wake. Why do I believe that children in rural England are being short-changed and are in danger of being left behind? According to the House of Commons Library, schools in Devon receive £345 less per pupil than the national average across the UK. This difference in funding obviously has an impact on school budgets, which needs to be analysed and recognised through an impact assessment. Any adverse impact of the funding formula on staffing and the quality of education provided, for example, needs to be assessed and addressed.

So much can be done to help rural schools. An impact assessment could help point the way forward, to fund schemes such as those my Liberal Democrat colleague Kirsty Williams implemented in Wales when she was Cabinet Secretary for Education. I know that this Schools Bill does not apply to Wales because education there is devolved, but I cite it as an example. In government, Kirsty Williams introduced a rural schools strategy, including a £2.5 million per year grant for rural and small schools to be used for improving digital technology, supporting collaboration between schools or providing administrative support in schools—

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

If I may intervene, much as I laud Kirsty Williams, who was a Liberal Member of the Senedd, that was under a Welsh Labour Government of which she was the sole Liberal Member. I dealt with her a great deal as the education spokesperson. I make that point in case the Committee is not aware.

[Baroness Humphreys (LD)]

I think I clearly said that she was the Cabinet Secretary for Education—perhaps I should have said under a Labour Government. She also introduced a presumption against closure for rural schools and, for the first time ever, a definition of a rural school. I am sure similar strategies are happening in England, but there is obviously scope for other schemes to be highlighted.

Impact assessments are an important part of our decision-making process. They set out the objectives of policy proposals and help us with facts and figures to evaluate them. The impact of the funding formula on the funding of rural schools needs such an evaluation so that we can understand whether the formula works for them and meets their needs. I hope the noble Baroness can tell me that there will be an impact assessment of the funding formula for future stages of this Bill.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 2
Wednesday 15th June 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport]

87: Clause 33, page 30, line 3, at end insert—
“(11) Within the period of one year beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must publish an assessment of the impact of this section, which must include analysis of the distribution of funding by geographical location and comparative deprivation.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would require analysis of the changes made to the National Funding Formula that remove the role of local authorities in allocation.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, we degrouped the amendment because, although it was related to an earlier group, we wanted a specific ministerial response on this policy choice to remove local authorities from the allocation. To fully evaluate the changes, the public will need—and indeed deserve—a robust analysis of how they affect the funding by region when we know that there are already huge disparities in how different areas have been funded, as was alluded to in the previous debate. Indeed, in some cases, this has worsened over the duration of the pandemic. We cannot have this change just happen without detailed analysis and democratic scrutiny. Recent examples, such as the woeful implementation and less than satisfactory delivery of the National Tutoring Programme, clearly demonstrate that monitoring, evaluation and scrutiny of the implementation of policies are key drivers of success.

The DfE has acknowledged that there is a critical question over whether there would continue to be merit in local control of certain aspects of mainstream school funding, and we would argue that there is such merit. But what does the profession say? I will quote Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders. I am sure that my noble friend, although she is not in her place, will agree with me that ASCL is not the most revolutionary of trade representative bodies. Nevertheless, he says:

“While we support the direction of travel, our bigger concern is that there is not enough money being put into the system in the first place. The cake is too small, no matter how it is sliced. We recognise that the government is currently investing more money in schools but we do not think this is enough to repair the damage done by years of underfunding and we are concerned that much of the new money will be simply eaten up by rising costs. This is even more critical because of the havoc wreaked by the pandemic and the pressing need for significant investment in education recovery.”


So if not this amendment—as I predict that the Minister cannot agree to it today—what are the Government’s future plans to assess these impacts? I beg to move.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, I totally support the amendment moved by the Front Bench. If this change in the system of funding schools goes ahead, it is essential that an assessment along the lines proposed is made.

However, I question the need for—indeed, am deeply opposed to—Clause 33 and Part 2 as a whole. I am against the proposal for a hard national funding formula, fundamentally because I am a believer in local education authorities—LEAs—as a matter of principle. My noble friend Lord Knight is not in his place, but he said that everyone would be raising their hobby-horse, and this could well be mine. I am in favour of a seamless education system that works for local people through their local representatives. I am prepared to accept that there is scope for debate on the structure of LEAs. Personally, I have a predilection for bodies of sufficient scale which have significant financial and organisational autonomy—basically, a service that is run democratically and is responsive to local voices. Unfortunately, the trend over the last 40 years has been the other way: centralisation and financial restrictions.

I have re-read the debates that have brought us here and it is my view that no case has been made for a hard formula. Some figures are quoted showing what might be thought were gross discrepancies in what individual schools were receiving in financial support, but without providing the context within which these figures have been reached, it tells us nothing. We are also told that the new system will provide “a consistent assessment,” as if that in itself was sufficient justification, when in my judgment it will be consistently bad. In truth, a close reading of the White Paper tells us that it

“supports the expansion of … trusts.”

What we have here is little more than a by-product of the move to full academisation.

I am against a hard formula in principle, but I am also against it in practice, because it will not achieve a workable or effective outcome. I endorse the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, during the last debate, where the problems were made clear.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I see the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, is tempted to answer the question. The figures I referred to were from 2017. I am happy to set out in a letter to the noble Lord more of the reasons for the differences, but I suspect, being familiar with the subject, he knows what some of them are. To date, no area has seen a reduction in nominal terms in its funding. One reason why we intend to implement this over a longer period is to avoid any disruption to local funding. As I am sure the Front Bench opposite would say on my behalf, it will depend on the total quantum of funding committed to our schools.

I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Chapman and Lady Wilcox, for Amendment 87 and for their unerring focus on ensuring that all children have a fair chance to realise their potential. The introduction of the national funding formula in 2018 was a historic reform to school funding, replacing what we believe to have been an unfair and out of date system.

The national funding formula already calculates funding allocations for each school, which, as I mentioned in the earlier group, are publicly available and, with these, the calculations used to determine funding allocations for local authorities. In the current system, individual schools’ final allocations are then determined through 150 different local formulae. The direct national funding formula will mean that every school is funded through the same national formula, with only specific, local adjustments. That will achieve this Government’s long-standing ambition that funding is distributed fairly, and means that parents, school leaders and governors will have assurance that their school is funded on the basis of the needs and characteristics of their pupils, rather than where the school happens to be located. The intentions of the reforms are not to lead to changes in the distribution between geographical areas, but within them.

Similarly, this change should not impact how much funding the formula directs overall towards socioeconomic disadvantage. Instead, it should ensure that each school, in each local authority, receives a consistent amount of deprivation funding based on their pupil cohorts.

I want to reassure noble Lords that we are committed to levelling up opportunity to make sure that all children have a fair chance in life, wherever they live and whatever their circumstances. We are specifically targeting funding towards disadvantage. Through the national funding formula, we are allocating £6.7 billion towards additional needs, including deprivation, which is a sixth of available funding. In addition, we are directing other funding sources towards disadvantaged pupils, including the pupil premium which is rising to over £2.6 billion this year, and the school supplementary grant which includes a further £200 million targeted towards deprivation. We are also allocating over £200 million to support disadvantaged pupils as part of the holiday activities and food programme. This means that, altogether this year, we are allocating £9.7 billion towards pupils with additional needs, including deprivation.

For the 2022-23 academic year, the Government have committed around £500 million through the recovery premium and £350 million through the national tutoring programme, through which 1.5 million courses have been started so far to support the children whose education has been most impacted by the pandemic, with a particular focus on disadvantaged pupils.

By introducing the national funding formula and replacing the previous postcode lottery, we have a funding system that is much more responsive to changes on the ground. School funding is allocated based on current patterns of deprivation and additional needs across the country. It means that pupil intakes that have similar levels of deprivation, such as Liverpool and Wolverhampton, or Calderdale and Coventry, are now receiving similar levels of funding per pupil. The redistribution of funding seen since the introduction of the national funding formula reflects that the funding system has been catching up with changes in patterns of relative deprivation.

As we have discussed at length, the principle of transparency has underpinned our reforms to the school funding system. As I have said, we publish information annually on the national funding formula. We are committed to publishing the impact of transition on individual schools and on different types of school every year. I would also like to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who is not in his place, that this does include the factor weightings which he questioned in the last group. Based on this, it is already possible to see the geographical distribution of funding and how that changes year on year, and what support the national funding formula offers for deprivation. We will continue to review the impact of the national funding formula in terms of meeting policy objectives, such as supporting schools to close attainment gaps. In addition, we want to ensure the information we publish is as helpful as possible and we are currently consulting with schools and the wider sector on what published information would be most useful for them.

I hope this has persuaded your Lordships that the national funding formula will continue to distribute funding ever more fairly, based on the needs of schools and their pupil cohorts. I therefore ask the noble Baroness opposite to withdraw her Amendment 87.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her reply. Nevertheless, our concerns remain, and much of what my noble friend Lord Davies has discussed is worthy of support. But in terms of our specific amendment, our call for a robust analysis still stands, together with detailed democratic scrutiny of the funding formula, and concerns around the removal of local authorities in allocations of funding still apply. However, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 87 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I am very grateful for the support of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, for the amendment on the free school meals grant. My Amendment 90, also in the name of my noble friend Lord Storey, addresses the similar issue of inflation for the pupil premium.

I listened carefully to what the Minister said earlier about the extra financial support the Government were giving to the disadvantaged. I will read Hansard carefully tomorrow to recall the exact numbers, but the principle is that this amendment would increase the pupil premium in 2023-24 from the 2022-23 level by £160 per primary pupil and £127 per secondary pupil, before pegging it to the consumer prices index and the inflation rate thereafter. It would also increase the pupil premium plus sum made available to children in care by a similar amount. This is a probing amendment to ascertain the Government’s intentions in respect of the pupil premium, and of the free school meals grant and the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lady Humphreys.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, the 7p increase to infant school meals announced yesterday by the Government has generally been received as inadequate. Labour’s amendment compels the Secretary of State to review food standards every three years and to consider quality, nutritional value and value for money. As noted, the Government rejected Henry Dimbleby’s advice to extend free school meals to 1 million more children in need and to raise the grant schools get in line with rocketing inflation. Schools are already reducing meal sizes to afford their obligations. Will the Minister say what the Government’s plans are to help avoid children going hungry? Have they done any analysis of what inflation is doing to the amount of food schools are able to provide and the adverse effects when this gets smaller and smaller?

I shall give the UK Government some good ideas and positive direction on what the Welsh Government are doing on these matters. From September, some of the youngest children in primary schools in Wales will begin receiving free school meals. Our First Minister said:

“no child in Wales should go hungry and … every child in our primary schools will be able to have a free school meal.

We are facing an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis. We know younger children are more likely to be living in relative income poverty, which is why the youngest of our learners will be the first to benefit.


This cost-of-living crisis is being felt by families all over Wales, extending free school meals is one of a number of measures we are taking to support families through this difficult time.”


I sincerely urge the Minister to reflect on these proposals and see whether there is the political will to do something similar for English children.

In terms of what we can practically do in the meantime, our amendment would ensure that food standards are reviewed regularly and would weigh up value for money with quality and nutritional value. All the evidence suggests that children cannot learn when there are hungry. Acting on this fundamental principle is surely an all-round win for the Government.

We know that governmental focus has drifted from children in care too. In March, it was revealed that the National Tutoring Programme, referred to earlier, no longer had to ensure it was reaching two-thirds of the most deprived pupils. The requirement that two-thirds of pupils in the programme must be from disadvantaged backgrounds was in place for a reason: there is strong research evidence that poorer pupils have been the biggest losers from the pandemic, seeing greater attainment losses than their peers.

For the purposes of political balance, as I have quoted my First Minister, I shall now quote what the Conservative MP Robert Halfon, who chairs the Education Committee, said about the National Tutoring Programme:

“The Government must ensure Randstad shapes up, or boot them out. The catch-up programme must be shown to be reaching disadvantaged pupils and this data must be published.”


So there is cross-party agreement that we must ensure that disadvantaged pupils are at the front and centre of our thinking in all aspects of educational provision, especially in the critical area of school admissions. As was debated on Monday, we cannot exclude pupils and operate a soft selection policy as it is unfair and frankly immoral.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I turn first to Amendment 89 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys. As the noble Baroness said very eloquently, providing free school meals to eligible children is very important to this Government. We spend around £600 million per year making sure that 1.25 million infants enjoy a free meal under the universal policy. The per-meal rate was increased last year and the Secretary of State recently announced a further £18 million, increasing the rate to £2.41 per meal, which has been backdated to April this year. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, stressed the importance of supporting children in the early years, particularly post the pandemic. He is absolutely right.

Under the benefits-related criteria, the Government provide a free meal to around 1.9 million more children. For 2022-23, funding through the free school meal factor in the national funding formula is increasing to £470 per eligible pupil. In recognition of cost pressures, after the national funding formula rates were set the department provided extra for core schools funding for 2022-23. Core schools funding for mainstream schools, which includes benefits-related free school meals, is therefore increasing by £2.5 billion, compared with last year.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 20th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, given the way in which she champions the Roma community.

I support all the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Shipley and those from the Labour Front Bench. They indicate the important role of further education colleges in our education system. They link to the demand for young people in schools to be aware of all the possible programmes of learning available in colleges at an early enough stage to be able to make informed choices about future work and study opportunities. It is really important that colleges be funded at the same level as schools and that college teachers and tutors should be paid at the same level. It is quite wrong that college pay should be lower than school pay.

Amendments 171A and 171B would ensure better continuity of education. Too often, FE has been the forgotten element in our education system, but it is a vital part of the options available to young people, as it spans school, vocational options and university provision. I hope the Minister will be able to reassure us of the value the Government place on the FE sector, and perhaps indicate the parts of the Augar review—whatever has happened to that?—which concern FE that the Government intend to implement.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, we support the principle of Amendment 171B. There are currently many barriers to further education institutions working effectively with academies and MATs, and it is apposite that this is being raised. Funding further education appropriately continues to be a prime issue, as noted by several noble Lords. Schools are more often part of the solution, not the problem, so we need a concerted, cross-government commitment to improving the life chances of young people in our most marginalised and deprived communities and addressing the root causes of underperformance, as noted by my noble friend Lady Whitaker.

Our Amendment 171R obliges the Secretary of State to consult on and establish access to further education for all schoolchildren aged 14 to 16 within one year of the Bill’s enactment. We understand that the Minister has discussed the matter of academies working effectively with FE organisations, and I wondered whether she could update the House on any progress made on identifying and unblocking the barriers to working together.

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[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

As my noble friend Lord Knight expressed, we support the fundamental right for home education. Interesting practice is evident in a variety of settings. However, checks and balances need to be present in the system. I echo what others have said in paying tribute to my noble friend Lord Soley, who told me earlier today that he began this work in 2017.

I also echo the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, about local authorities having to assume these extra responsibilities without appropriate funding, and remind the Government that local government finances are paper-thin and cannot continually absorb extra responsibilities.

Eventually, the Government have acted on concerns around the increasing number of children receiving an education outside the classroom. We have talked about them missing out on the many benefits that a school environment brings. An old education professor of mine once said that education is “caught not taught”. I eventually got to understand what that meant, because learning and socialising with other children is very important, as are safeguarding issues.

For some children, home schooling can be a positive experience. The calls for a register for all home educators, as my noble friend Lord Soley pointed out earlier, have been around for at least the last five years, to ensure that children are receiving a suitable education in a safe environment, as well as the tools and flexibilities that that register would bring to check on a child’s home schooling.

I cannot see how we can argue with the fact that these are vital safeguards in helping to ensure that children are not being taught in unsuitable or dangerous environments. We support these school register measures in general, but we also recognise, as has been discussed in the debate, that there is a need to balance the concerns of some stakeholders.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to the debate and acknowledge particularly the work of the noble Lord, Lord Soley, in making sure that the issue of children who are not in school is addressed effectively. I thank him very much for his remarks.

Before addressing your Lordships’ amendments, perhaps I might say something about the tone of the debate. It is absolutely the right of the House to challenge what the Government are doing, but, as a number of your Lordships pointed out, there are parents who are incredibly anxious about their children and the implications of these measures. The approach of the Government is as the noble Lord, Lord Soley, said and as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, suggested: we are there to support parents. I wrote down terms such as “criminalisation”, “colluding”, “demonised” and “attacking”. The Government are doing none of those things. I just ask your Lordships, out of respect for the parents who listen to this debate, who are worried about their children, to be fair in the challenge that is put to the Government and not to suggest that any of those things are in the Government’s mind, because I can absolutely assure noble Lords that they are not.

Amendment 172 from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, seeks to require the Government to complete a review of their policy on children not in school, considering less intrusive measures and the financial cost of implementation. We believe that this is an area that is long overdue for reform to ensure that the rights of children are upheld.

We have had many reforms to the school system over recent years but home education has not been addressed. The registers are not just about those who are being home educated. They are for all those children who are not in school full-time. I think that the noble Baroness was unfair when she suggested—my words, not hers—that this is a one-size-fits-all process. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey said, once local authorities know where children who are not in school full-time are and what kind of education they are getting, they can then focus their attention on those who are not receiving suitable home education and who are missing out in a range of different ways. It will mean that in future local authorities will know this information for all children.

It is important that it is a fundamental right of a child to have a good education, which is in their best interests. The rights of parents to choose how to educate their children are upheld by the Government, but the right of the child for their parents to operate in the child’s best interests are paramount, as set out in the law. If the noble Lord, Lord Laming, were here, I am sure that he would put that point more eloquently than I can. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, we know, not least from correspondence cases, whether from parents or teachers, that there are instances where some children who are not in school have not had a proper education.

I absolutely recognise the three groups that the noble Lord, Lord Soley, described and that is how we are approaching this. But our problem is that we do not know how widespread the situation is of children who are not getting a proper education. That is the problem that these clauses seek to address. We do not even know how many children are in home education; how many are ostensibly in home education but are not receiving a proper education; or how many are not receiving anything at all. That is not acceptable and as a nation we need a better grip on this, for the good of the children themselves and to make sure they all receive the education that is their right.

The measures in the Bill were consulted on in 2019 as part of the Children Not in School consultation, which received nearly 5,000 responses from parents, local authorities and other interested groups, so we do not believe that a further review would be beneficial. Our published response to this consultation and our policy statement outlined why the legislation is needed to promote the welfare and education of children not in school. The consultation also considered the financial implications, since we used the consultation to ask local authorities about the costs.

We know that registers are not a panacea, but they will help us to identify the children who are missing out, and the process of addressing that and getting them a proper education can then begin, while, of course, upholding the principle of choice for parents in the education that they feel is best for their child. I thank the noble Baroness for having arranged for me to meet parents the other day and I hope we can work across the House to reassure those parents who are concerned.

With Amendments 97A and 97B, my noble friend Lord Lucas raises important clarification points about eligibility for inclusion in the register, as well as parents’ ability to withdraw their children from school to home educate should they choose. I reassure my noble friend that the Bill already ensures that only those children ordinarily resident in an area would be eligible for registration within a local authority register. It remains the case that parents do not normally need the permission of the school or local authority to home educate. Agreement needs to be sought only in exceptional circumstances, such as when a school attendance order is in force.

The noble Lord, Lord Knight, proposes in Amendment 97BA that no child who is registered at a school should be included on a local authority register. It is critical for the registers to include those children who are not receiving education full-time as a registered pupil. The main exception to this, which we intend to provide for in regulations, is where a registered pupil is receiving some education outside of the school, at a non-school setting but arranged by the school. In that case, the school is still responsible and accountable for the provision, but in other cases, where the provision is arranged by third parties, it is important that the children are included on the register so that the local authority can be assured that, taken together, the provision for the child adds up to a suitable full-time education. This should ensure that children do not fall through the cracks and miss education when not attending school. We will set out further exceptions in regulations so that children who are regularly absent from school for short amounts of time are not included in local authority registers.

My noble friend Lord Lucas raised valuable points with Amendment 97C around the importance of parents having sufficient notice to understand what is expected of them in relation to the registers. The Bill already includes a power for the Secretary of State to make regulations setting out how local authorities are to maintain their registers and how they will publicise them. This will be supported by statutory guidance, setting out operational details on how they should implement their registers, which could also include guidance on assistance to parents.

Amendments 122B and 130B, tabled by my noble friend Lord Lucas, are about the importance of ensuring that children who are entitled to receive alternative provision are within scope of the parental duty to provide information for the registers, as well as the support duty. These children will be excepted from the parental duty if they are receiving full-time education through a Section 19 arrangement, as local authorities will already have the required information available to them. Otherwise, it is important that these children should be on the register; for example, where they are in receipt of some part-time alternative provision which is supplemented by home education. The local authority will need to assure itself that, taken together, the provision for the child adds up to suitable full-time education. Similarly, local authorities have existing obligations to ensure that these children are receiving adequate support to promote their education. I hope that this reassures my noble friend that there is not an escape hatch, as he described it.

Amendment 129AA, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, would require a local authority to consider any views expressed by an independent expert when considering how to respond to a request for support. It is already the case that, when taking its decisions, a local authority must consider all relevant information that is before it, including information from independent experts. Our statutory guidance will add further clarity as to what factors local authorities should take into account when discharging their duty to provide support. We will be consulting with local authorities and other interested parties, certainly including home educators, prior to the issuing of the guidance.

Amendment 132A, tabled by my noble friend Lord Lucas, would require non-maintained special schools and independent schools to provide information prescribed in regulations to the Secretary of State, and for this information to be added to the national pupil database. Existing legislation already allows for regulations requiring non-maintained special schools and independent schools to provide information to the Secretary of State, and already enables the collection of information from all non-maintained special schools. This is done via the termly pupil level school census.

Additionally, independent schools, like state-funded schools, are required to notify their local authority when new pupils are admitted, and to provide all the information that is held on their admissions register to the local authority. They are also required to notify the local authority when a pupil’s name is deleted from the admissions register and of details including information that they hold about the pupil’s current address and destination school. Therefore, local authorities already have access to the pupil-level data about those at independent schools that they need to maintain a children not in school register. Data from non-maintained special schools and from independent schools, where collected, is also already included, and made available from the national pupil database.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, I just want to clarify or ask a question. At the moment, we have a system in which social services or child protection agencies, quite rightly, are the part of the state that intervenes in those terrible cases where we suspect that a child is being abused. Is he not concerned if, through its education role, the local authority now has to do that job? That is almost the implication. In schooling, we have the phrase “in loco parentis”: the idea is that parents entrust their child to teachers and the education authority, because they say that “You educate them, but we parent them.” Is there not a danger of posing a conflict between parents and children in this competition of rights? For the majority of the time, that is not a problem. Even when it is, the appropriate body would be social services. I am worried about education being dragged into what is effectively social services. Keeping an eye on kids is one thing; it is not the same as being social workers with their expertise.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

Sorry, I was just waiting, because every time I have tried to stand up someone has spoken. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, reminded me that I should declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association—hard won and well deserved, I think.

We have heard a fascinating debate with a wide range of views. It is the first time that I have had the pleasure of listening to the noble Lord, Lord Wei. We could have so many discussions about Finland and Teach First, but he was really quite amazing at contextualising the Bill at the beginning of his remarks. It is very interesting that he comes from his Government’s perspective, but he put us firmly in the context of what he saw that is wrong about it. That is what we have been talking about over the past five days. I appreciate those comments.

Most home-schooling parents are, of course, wonderfully motivated and they deserve our full support, but we need to safeguard children. To pick up the right of appeal issue from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Knight, we have an excellent local authority model in the form of school admission appeal panels, comprising independent individuals with no links to the local authority. They give impartial judgments on children’s admission to schools. So, there are good models out there.

We know that, under the Education Act 1996, parents are responsible for ensuring that the education provided is sufficient, full-time and suitable to age and ability. They can choose to employ private tutors to assist them—there is no requirement, of course. Learning can take place in different locations and is not limited to the child’s home.

We have not mentioned Covid during this debate, which caused a huge increase in home schooling. The Association of Directors of Children’s Services estimated that the number of children being home educated at some point during 2020-21 was 115,542. That is a 34% increase on the 2019-20 total. It further remarked that in many cases, home schooling

“does not seem the most appropriate route for the children concerned.”

So, concerns have been raised. This has been a long debate, so I will draw my comments to a close. We are therefore keen to follow this register’s impact as it is developed and implemented across England.

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have a couple of amendments in this group. My noble friend covered the government arguments on this subject clearly under the previous group. I expect to come back at her in one form or another when I have the time to analyse the detailed timescale she is looking at—in other words, the whole distance between a worried local authority saying that a child is not being looked after properly and being able to enforce, and how that all works together. But I shall not move my amendments at this time.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a technical question and compassion for parents who are often struggling to deal with vulnerable children must be factored in. These amendments are intended to simplify the immediate duty to one of registration, leaving it to the local authority then to inform the parents of the other requirements and increase the timescale to accommodate additional responsibilities on parents. School days are used to exempt parents from having to disrupt holidays to provide the required information. These all seem sensible alternatives to what is currently proposed by the Government. I conclude by asking the Minister what analysis lies behind the Government’s choice of a 15-day period in these proposals.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, again, I thank my noble friend Lord Lucas, the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, represented tonight by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn, for Amendments 120, 120A, 121, 122 and 122A. As debated with your Lordships earlier this evening, the relevant period has been set at 15 days to minimise the amount of time that children are potentially not in receipt of a suitable education and to allow local authorities to use their powers effectively. Therefore, extending this timeframe could reduce local authority visibility where, for example, a child might be missing education, and prevent them quickly redirecting their resource, where a child ceases to be eligible for registration, to those children and families still eligible. As I said in the earlier group, our approach to this has been to look at the total length of the process and consider the balance between the requirements placed on parents and providers with the rights of the child to access a suitable education as quickly as possible. As I said, the amendments would increase that from 51 days to 120 days, and I am sure all the former teachers in the Committee will be able to convert that into a term or more in a nanosecond. That is the reason we would resist these amendments.

Turning to Amendment 124 from the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, the response time for providers has been set to 15 days for similar reasons—so that local authorities can be sure that their registers are accurate and they are discharging their duties effectively to ensure that children are in receipt of a suitable education. By extending the timeframe, local authorities would not be able to identify where certain children are receiving their education or, at worst, if they are attending unsuitable settings such as illegal schools.

Finally, turning to Amendment 134: we consider extending the 14-day period unnecessary, as a person served with a warning notice is already able to extend their period to respond to 28 days if they provide notice that they will be making representations. Therefore, I would ask the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, to withdraw her Amendment 120 and other noble Lords not to move theirs.

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[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I have in Amendment 143G a very simple provision that, on acquittal for breaching a school attendance order, that particular school attendance order dies—no ifs, no buts. Surely, natural justice mandates that the court’s decision is respected for that specific attendance order.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, the general thrust of these amendments is to make school attendance order conditions easier for parents by, for example, increasing the information handover period, compelling consideration of the child’s relevant medical conditions—looking at the child holistically.

An important factor that has not had enough mention is that of the impact of poverty on attendance. Poverty affects school attendance for a variety of reasons, and in the third decade of the 21st century some children are unable to attend school because their parents cannot afford fuel or travel costs, or they are more likely to be absent with sickness as their families cannot afford heating or hot water, or to provide a healthy diet.

For some children, not having the right uniform and missing breakfast are barriers to them setting foot in school. Children are having to take days off school due to unwashed, ill fitting or shabby clothes. This often leads to bullying, which is a huge concern when children are unable to dress like their peers and have poorer-quality clothing, shoes and school bags. I have seen and experienced these issues first-hand as a barrier to attendance, and teachers themselves often provide for children in these desperate circumstances. It cannot be right that in a society as wealthy as Britain, we still have children living like this. Poor attendance adds to the inequalities that they face.

We know that schools are often the first point of contact when dealing with such inequalities, so it is important that we have the correct resources and tools to deal with them. Our Amendment 144 ensures that schools’ attendance policies consider how to support staff who have been given new responsibilities for implementing the policies. This whole Bill will give hard-pressed teachers even more responsibilities, so we require recognition of that and to get them the support that they deserve in those areas.

Naturally, none of these measures will increase the resources for education, financial or physical. In the debate on Monday, I noted to your Lordships the paper-thin state of local government finances, and schools are finely balanced within that equation. Such an increase in monitoring and evaluation of attendance policies will be yet another job for an already hard-pressed member of the senior management team in a school. I have served in that capacity for decades; it is an extremely stressful occupation. This is one reason it is increasingly difficult to recruit heads and deputies in the secondary sector.

Our Amendment 146 will mandate the Secretary of State to produce a breakdown of those fined to allow assessment of disparities and compel them to consider the measures to address this. If we examine the data, attendance fines and fixed penalty notices are vastly skewed towards women, who are more often caregivers, and less affluent people, who are more often dealing with truant children. The Secretary of State should be forced to recognise this injustice and tackle it. I pose the question: where is the levelling-up agenda here?

I must stress that we do not disagree with this clause in principle. I set out earlier that we must ensure that the children at greatest risk attend school regularly, but I must press the Minister on what her department’s hard evidence is—whether behavioural science or otherwise—that fines will increase the information given or get more absent children into school. Children with poor attendance need support and staff need the resources to help them deal with it.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank my noble friend Lord Lucas, the noble Baronesses, Lady Wilcox, Lady Chapman, Lady Brinton, Lady Bennett and Lady Garden, and the noble Lord, Lord Knight, for their amendments in this group. I shall speak to Amendments 136 to 143, from the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, and Amendments 136A and 137A, tabled by my noble friend Lord Lucas. We have worked closely with a group of local authorities in developing the timeframes set out in the Bill. As we discussed in previous groups on school attendance order timeframes, we want to ensure that the school attendance order process is as efficient as possible, so that any child not receiving a suitable education is placed in adequate provision swiftly and can benefit from the full-time education to which they are entitled. 

Amendment 143D, tabled by my noble friend Lord Lucas, would bypass the existing procedures under the Children and Families Act 2014 and associated secondary legislation for amending an education, health and care plan. Clause 49, as drafted, does not prevent a parent seeking to have the name of a school changed or removed from their child’s education, health and care plan, in line with the existing process and timescales set out in the Act. Following that process, a parent may apply for the school attendance order to be revoked as normal.

I thank my noble friend Lord Lucas and the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, for their Amendments 140A, 143A and 143C. If local authorities were required to revoke orders simply on the grounds that a child has moved to a new area, the continuity of the child’s education and the local authority’s duties to safeguard children—and to satisfy itself that every child is receiving a suitable education—would be impeded.

When a child leaves the local authority area, including, as in the example given in Amendment 140A, to move to Wales, we expect both local authorities to work together to co-ordinate and facilitate the movement of children and parents subject to school attendance orders. We expect local authorities to facilitate this swiftly and efficiently, given the importance of ensuring that all children have access to suitable full-time education, in line with their common-law obligation to act within a reasonable timeframe. We will set out further details on this issue in future guidance.

On Amendment 143E, tabled by my noble friend Lord Lucas, I assure him that school attendance orders already apply only to children of compulsory school age. This is included under new Section 436J(4), introduced through this Bill.

On Amendments 143G and 143H, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, and my noble friend Lord Lucas, Clause 50 as drafted already allows the court to use its discretion to rule that a school attendance order ceases to be in force in the event of an acquittal for breaching the order. This discretion is valuable, as there may be circumstances where there are clear reasons for the order to remain in force.

If the court finds that a parent has had their child registered at the school named in the order, they would find the parent not guilty of the offence, but there may be individual factors making it important for the child to continue attending that school and, therefore, for the order to remain in force; for example, if there had been a previous pattern of school attendance orders being required in respect of that child.

Amendment 143IA, tabled by my noble friend Lord Lucas and the noble Lord, Lord Knight, would create duties on Ofsted to oversee local authorities’ exercise of their functions in relation to electively home-educated children and school attendance in a way that encourages a positive relationship between the two. As your Lordships have heard me and my noble friend say several times this evening, that is absolutely our goal. Ofsted already covers both elective home education and children missing education as part of its children’s social care remit; local authorities are held to account in relation to those functions.

On school attendance, through recently published attendance guidance, which we intend to put on a statutory footing through the Bill, local authorities are expected to provide attendance support to pupils who face barriers to attendance prior to considering any legal intervention. As I said earlier, in response to the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, it is “support, support and support” before there is any kind of enforcement. We understand that the reasons children may not be attending school are often very complex and support is almost always the right answer.

On Amendment 137D, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, local authorities are already required by law to take account of relevant factors when making decisions, including on preliminary notices. They should have the necessary in-house expertise to make these decisions but, as we have heard from the noble Baroness, that is not always the case. If local authorities do not have the expertise, they are able to consult an external expert. Parents are able to ask local authorities to take account of expert advice when making decisions, and the local authority must consider this external evidence and any other relevant considerations in line with public law.

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Moved by

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport]

145: Clause 53, page 57, line 23, at end insert—
“(f) the extent to which mental illness has contributed to truancy, and how mental health will be considered in developing the policy.”

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

Good mental health is fundamental to thriving in life. I knew it from the other side of the tracks. My dear, late mother suffered greatly with mental health throughout her life, so I grew up and grew old trying to deal with it. It made me much more aware of what it means. I always used to say that if my mother came into school or wherever wearing a plaster cast on her arm, they would know that she had a broken arm. However, they did not know that she had a broken mind. At times it was extremely challenging. It made me a better person, more understanding and very aware of mental health issues.

More than one in 10 children aged 10 to 15 say they have no one to talk to or would not talk to anyone in school if they felt worried or sad. This is the same proportion of children who have a diagnosable mental health problem. Research shows that 50% of mental health problems are established by the age of 14 and 75% are by the age of 24. Young people in the UK today are dealing with high levels of stress due to a variety of issues.

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Returning to the point on mental health, I hope that I have provided a better picture of what we are doing and how we have thought about our actions in this area. With that, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, can withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her reply. Picking up on the glasses point raised by my noble friend Lady Morris and in the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, I remember that we had a huge influx of Roma children to Newport a couple of years ago. Ensuring that they got their eyes tested was very much part of what we did for them—it opened up a whole new world and we kept a spare pair of glasses in school for them. We had about 150 children in one fell swoop. It was a great idea and I have seen it work in practice.

The new guidance to which the Minister refers will no doubt be welcomed, if there is specific awareness of mental health issues. I note her response regarding Ofsted and the comments from other noble Lords, but I still think that there are opportunities that could be developed. We indeed want to hold the Government to account for improving and developing the approach towards mental health matters; it is about playing catch-up, and this is not going to go away. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendments.

Amendment 145 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 171Z on mandatory reporting. This is an area I am very interested in, having started my career in a sports setting, not least because I have a Private Member’s Bill in the queuing system that seeks to address the issue. Having the chance to debate this as part of the Schools Bill was an opportunity not to be missed, and perhaps is the first step in addressing this serious issue.

I thank Tom Perry from Mandate Now for his support on this issue over the years and for his advice on what is required in various settings. If the Government were minded to accept this amendment, it would send out a strong message that they are listening and have an interest in protecting children and young people. I and many others having been debating this for a long time and, over the years, we have been given many reasons why this is not possible to bring in: the cost; that it puts people in a difficult situation when having to report; and that there are other mechanisms which can be used. None of these seems a particularly adequate reason. I have also been told that, if mandatory reporting comes in, the number of cases will rise—well, of course, they will. However, we know from other jurisdictions that those cases stabilise over time.

The fact that this legislation exists in 86% of Europe may not be enough to convince some that it is necessary, but this is also about increasing knowledge and understanding. Schools are a place that have reasonable contact with young people. I am very interested in hearing the Minister’s response. I do not want to pre-empt it, but I suspect that it might include her saying that it will be difficult to do this in a school setting without doing it in a wider setting. If that is the case, I look forward to support of my Private Member’s Bill when we get the chance to debate it.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, these amendments give us another opportunity to talk about the important issue of safeguarding. It is an issue that has fallen between the cracks of the ambiguity we have dissected and discovered in our debates on most clauses of this Bill. The fact that there have been so many probing amendments in Committee speaks to the level of uncertainty in the House about dealing with such a vaguely worded Bill bereft of ideas and vision for making a better educational opportunity possible for all children and young people.

I acknowledge that the DfE has published an updated version of the statutory safeguarding and child protection guidance for schools in England, Keeping Children Safe in Education, which will be implemented this September. That contains important new guidance, not least the new paragraph setting out that

“children may not feel ready or know how to tell someone that they are being abused”.

It also includes the recommendation that

“governors and trustees receive appropriate safeguarding and child protection … training at induction”,

and then at regular intervals afterwards.

Nevertheless, there is always more that could be done. An old headmaster of mine used to say, “The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement”—I seem to remember he had it printed on a T-shirt. In a previous debate, my noble friend Lady Chapman mentioned the MacAlister review, which proposed that schools be made a statutory partner. The review said:

“In too many places the contribution and voice of education is missing from partnership arrangements, and so schools should be included as a statutory safeguarding partner”,


which we have also proposed as an amendment in another group. Would it be worth the Minister giving an update on the Government’s progress on working through the review’s recommendations, and is becoming a statutory partner something that the DfE is likely to accept?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, turning first to Amendment 150, I hope I can clarify for the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, a stop boarding requirement is discretionary but can only be supplemental to any suspension of registration which may be imposed in relation to an independent educational setting. Day students are therefore protected from a risk of harm in the first instance by the suspension of the institution’s registration. The intention of these powers together is that all students in an independent educational institution, both day and boarding where applicable, can be protected more effectively from serious risk from harm.

The noble Baroness asked me a number of specific other questions, which I will do my best to write to her on.

On Amendment 171Z, in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Grey-Thompson, schools and colleges are already under legal duties to exercise their functions to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. This includes having regard to Keeping Children Safe in Education, statutory guidance which is clear on the role all staff have to play. Children and young people who attend a school or college are afforded protection through these provisions. In all cases where concerns about the welfare of children are identified, Ofsted will pass the information on to the relevant police or local authority to take appropriate action to ensure the safety of children cared for at the registered provider.

As we set out in March 2018, in response to the reporting and acting on child abuse consultation, there was no clear evidence to show that introducing a mandatory reporting duty would help keep children safe, and therefore the case was not made for a mandatory reporting duty. We are keeping this under review, and as noble Lords have referenced, we are awaiting the final report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which is expected this autumn.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, raised the MacAlister review. I believe we have addressed that in previous groups. The Government will be publishing an implementation plan by the end of year, to consider all of those recommendations.

With that, I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, will withdraw her amendment.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Tuesday 12th July 2022 Lords Chamber

Schools across our country are now teaching the eight academic subjects that were agreed in 1904. We are not moving our schools toward what is needed in this day and age, but specialist schools are a way of doing it.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, our Amendment 44 would remove the exemption that teachers in academies have from needing to have qualified status, but it gives a grace period until September 2024 to give schools and teachers time to adjust, which we feel is a sensible way forward. It redresses the opt-out from 2012, when David Cameron removed the need for academies to have QTS. Since that time, there has been a decade where children and young people have been taught in academies by unqualified staff. We assert that, in recognition of the preparation teachers must undergo, the term “teacher” should be reserved solely for use by those with QTS and that a person in training should have a separate designation. This amendment would ensure that all pupils in every school were taught by a qualified teacher.

The quality of the teacher is the most important factor in academic and non-academic attainment. Those of us in your Lordships’ House who have had the privilege of working in the profession would surely agree. Teachers need pedagogical content—knowledge—as well as a strong understanding of the material being taught. They must also understand the ways students think about the content, be able to evaluate the thinking behind students’ own methods and identify students’ common misconceptions. All these areas are covered in training teachers towards QTS: it is not just about having the knowledge and content of the subject itself; teachers must have knowledge and understanding of how children learn in order to convey that knowledge. There is quality of instruction, classroom climate, classroom management, teacher beliefs and professional behaviours, all of which impact on the quality of education experienced by our pupils.

The Government need to match the ambition of Labour’s national excellence programme. We have plans and visions for education: we will recruit thousands of new teachers to address vacancies and skills gaps across the profession; we will reform Ofsted to focus on supporting struggling schools; and we will ensure that the best, fully qualified teachers are in our schools by providing teachers and headteachers with continuing professional development and leadership skills training. This amendment would begin to address these current failings in the system.

Our Amendment 45 would mean that all multi-academy trusts were subject to Ofsted inspection. We want there to be more accountability for the decisions taken at MAT level, including the necessary interventions when there are failures within the trust. We recognise that Ofsted “summary evaluations” of MATs were introduced in 2018, but these are done only with trust consent. They offer no gradings, do not cover every trust and do not target those causing concern. Recent updates to the guidance on those inspections should help to broaden their remit and increase their volume. However, Ofsted itself has highlighted the need to go further, noting the “peculiarity” of not inspecting MATs on their governance, efficiency and use of resources.

The Labour Party proposes in this amendment that MAT inspections should include a proper assessment of leadership, governance and safeguarding arrangements. We also support the amendments moved by my noble friend Lord Hunt, which address the issue of “proper consultation”. Parents and staff need to be consulted at the beginning of any process. Additionally, we offer our support to Amendment 10 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, which would require a proprietor of two or more academies to establish a local governing body for each academy in its care, with a role for local authorities, parents and carers.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am attracted by the noble Baronesses’ Amendment 45. From a parent’s point of view, I think it is key that information should be available on what a multi-academy trust is about: what is its style, what are its beliefs, what atmosphere is it seeking to generate in a school? Within the structures of a multi-academy trust, particularly one that is strongly centrally controlled, this makes a great deal of difference to a school. In judging whether your child will flourish in and be supported by a school and will have their particular character and ambitions celebrated by a school, knowing how the multi-academy trust looks at things—not just the head teacher it has in place at that particular moment—is a really important part of the judgment. To have some narrative on that from Ofsted strikes me as being the best practical way of getting that information out to parents.

I am also attracted by the amendment proposed by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. I have not seen, in my experience of running the Good Schools Guide, schools groups that successfully embrace schools of a really different character. Schools groups are human organisations; they need to have a philosophy of life, a way of doing things, and to have within them schools of radically different philosophy poses great challenges. I cannot recall an example of that being done successfully. Usually, one philosophy or the other comes to dominate, and that produces, in those schools that really do not belong with that philosophy, a lack of tone and performance which reduces their value to the children attending them. This is a really difficult thing to do well, and therefore I support the safeguards proposed by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington.

The Government have the whip hand in the end. They are providing the money and can push something through against opposition. If it is ridiculous, they will not find themselves in an Ampleforth situation, because they are the paymasters. However, I think the decision to push a specialist school into a generalist trust is one that ought always to be taken with a great deal of care, and that is what I think the noble Duke’s amendment would produce.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

I have several things in common with the noble Lord, Lord Storey. One is that I also chaired the SACRE in Newport; the other is our teaching careers.

The aim of Amendment 30 is to ensure that cultural education is balanced and non-exclusionary. In a modern society where children are exposed to all kinds of views, particularly online, it could provide an opportunity to discuss a variety of topics and issues. I recognise that a variety of opinions have been expressed, not least by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and my noble friend Lord Murphy. How can I possibly not defer to the former Secretary of State for Wales? As the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, pointed out, the laws on religious education have been reformed recently in Wales. It has seen an explicit reference to “philosophical beliefs” included and a change from “religious education” to “religion, values and ethics”, with the removal of the parental opt-out. With all that in mind, I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on these issues.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. I also reiterate the Government’s thanks to the right reverend Prelate, on behalf of my noble friend, for his constructive work with the department to ensure that we get these issues right in the Bill and achieve the shared aim that we all seek.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, set out, Amendment 30 in her name seeks to add to the Bill a duty on academy schools without a religious designation to teach religion and worldviews. The amendment also provides that this teaching must be objective, critical and pluralistic. The Government believe that this amendment is unnecessary because it places into primary legislation what is already in academy trusts’ funding agreements about teaching religious education. As my noble friend Lady Barran has set out, over the summer we will undertake the necessary policy work and engagement with the sector to bring back revised clauses on academy standards, as well as the intervention and termination provisions. To achieve this, the regulatory and commissioning review that we launched on 29 June will consider, alongside other matters, academy trust regulation as we move towards a fully trust-led system. It is through those clauses that we will seek both to establish the principles on which academy standards will be based and to ensure that any powers sought provide a more clearly defined and constrained regulatory approach.

By contrast, this amendment would introduce a new requirement on academies to teach worldviews and dictate the nature of the religious education curriculum. We have been clear that, although that work is being undertaken, the aim none the less is for the first set of standards regulations largely to consolidate existing requirements on academies, not place more burdens on them or interfere with their freedoms. This amendment would do both.

However, I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and others that worldviews can already be taught as part of religious education. Indeed, on SACRE, to which he referred, the policy remains that academies and agreed syllabus conferences—I think we are talking about the same thing there—are the places that currently propose locally agreed syllabuses for RE in maintained schools; academies have their own process. The Government believe that they should be free to determine their own approach to the teaching of RE.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Mann, that, as I said, existing provisions already allow worldviews to be taught as part of religious education. They also allow for other religions to be taught in maintained schools, not just Christian views. There are also other opportunities in the curriculum—for example, through PHSE lessons—for what he is looking for. The Government believe that schools already have flexibility to determine the curriculum that they think appropriate. They also have an explicit flexibility that can include non-religious worldviews as well as religious ones. Therefore, we do not think that there is any need to specify that further in the Bill; indeed, doing so would contradict our approach on earlier parts of the Bill in terms of going away, looking at academy standards and consulting the sector over the summer.

However, I should say to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, that, as I said before, our intention is for those standards to replicate in the first instance existing standards, which would not then change RE by widening it explicitly to include worldviews—although that is already provided for. It would also not specify the nature of how RE should be taught, which we think is best determined at the local level.

I hope that I have addressed the noble Baroness’s points. I know that I will have disappointed her but I will wait to hear whether she wants to move her amendment when it is reached.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 2
Tuesday 12th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, starting with Amendment 62, it was one of those amendment where I proved, once again, to myself that I could not be in two places at once and came in halfway through last time. It is one of those amendments where I am unhappy about the fact that it needed to be moved. It is a group of lobbies, effectively, coming together saying the system does not work and that we have not got round to fixing it. I know the Minister will tell me, when she replies, that there is a review looking into special educational needs at the moment, but will she take on board and feed back that we actually have a postcode lottery about where there is support and where there is not? There is no arguing about this: it just is. If it were possible to transform the circumstances from the good authorities to the bad ones, that would be fine and we would have much less of a problem.

Something else that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has picked up on is that, unless people have an EHC plan, the chances of their getting help are so much more reduced. When we passed the Children and Families Act 2014, we assumed there would be a gradated approach of support and the EHC plans would be reduced compared with the number of statements. This has not happened, because we have identified more problems. There was a gross underidentification—this much we do know—probably not in these particular groups because most people can spot if someone cannot hear or see, but with other problems it is more difficult. Without an EHC plan, it is a struggle, and if people fall behind, they have higher needs and they go to the lawyers. One thing that should be borne in mind with this amendment is that we are in an environment where one of the greatest growth departments in the legal profession is people dealing with the educational system to get support. That says, clearer than anything else I can think of, that there has been a failure. I was on the Committee of that Bill and I did not see it coming, but it has happened.

We need some indication of how better allocation of support will come. This is not a big argument about “Are they or aren’t they?” or whether we need a heavy diagnosis of things such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, attention deficit disorder or the rest of them. It is something that is comparatively easy to spot, so I would hope we can get some idea what the Government’s thinking is. I appreciate that the review is still going on, but if we can get some kind of idea of what they are thinking about on these conditions, it should take some of the pressure off.

My noble friend Lady Brinton’s amendment, once again, goes back to the Children and Families Act 2014 and is something of a no-brainer in my opinion. If someone with medical training such as a doctor—a specialist doctor, often—says “Don’t do it: it will be detrimental to their health or difficult” and then someone in the Department for Education says, “But we want to do something else”, I am sorry, but health comes first. Children cannot learn if they are unhealthy, or if they are struggling with their health or if they are worried about it. That much we have proven. It is essential that we bring into the Bill some way to give greater clarification that, when a medical need is identified, the school or education environment must react correctly—that is agreeing with it unless they have very good grounds. If noble Lords can think of some examples of where this would happen, or where a school might have that capacity, I am all ears.

On the general area of mental health, having talked about some of the other issues here in special educational needs et cetera, we know that stress enhances mental health conditions. Let us face it: schools now are expected to pass more, and Governments of all sides have encouraged that. Anybody struggling with that process is immediately under stress, so it is not that surprising if we are discovering that many more stresses or mental health conditions—and we do spot them now. We are looking for them and if you look for things, you find them.

If you want to find an environment where people have incredibly low attainment and very high mental health needs, look into a prison system: the scholars of the group will have left school at 14 and virtually none will have secondary education. That is often because they cannot cope with it or are not succeeding, or it may be because of their background. I might be going to the worst-case scenario early, but it hones minds on to these areas. We need to get in and spot this.

If some financial support is found here or from government generally, that may well help with money in the long term, because departments should work together. They find it incredibly difficult to do it because there are Chinese walls. Everybody says, “We’re going to have a committee that works together.” Two Ministers meet once in a blue moon, then forget about it and find another priority so as to avoid it; that is the experience many Ministers have described to me, not just in education or health. If we do not get some better way of giving some active support, we are going to miss these problems and they will become acute later on.

I look forward to hearing what the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, is going to say on this group, but these issues are ongoing. I would hope, on Amendment 107, that the Minister will simply tell us how it is to be better done. I understand that the others have a more complicated web of interaction, but I hope that we will get some positive guidance—or see the way that the Government’s minds are working, or were at least working a few weeks ago.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, this is my first opportunity at the Dispatch Box after the vote we took last week on changing the hours of the House of Lords. I am so glad to see that all those people who were so clear about staying after the dinner break are here—not.

Good mental health is fundamental to be able to thrive in life. I spoke in Committee about the experience of growing up with a dearly loved mother who suffered so wretchedly from mental illness and the limiting effects it had upon her quality of life. She was extremely proud of my achievements but could never fully engage in them, due to the debilitating effects of her condition.

Current research shows that 50% of mental health problems are established by the age of 14 and that 75% are established by the age of 24. Young people in the UK today are dealing with high levels of stress, due to a variety of issues. The DfE’s annual report State of the Nation 2021 noted that reductions in average levels of well-being occurred most clearly in February 2021, when schools were closed to the majority of children, before recovering towards the end of the academic year.

In this context, we have therefore introduced two amendments. First, Amendment 114 would compel the Secretary of State, whoever he or she may be, to consult on the current provision in place to support children’s mental health and well-being in schools. Our second amendment, Amendment 115, would compel the Secretary of State to publish an annual report on: how the mental health of children in academies and maintained schools in England affects, and is affected by, their schooling; actions being taken by schools to improve pupil mental health; and the extent to which schools are working with local National Health Service and voluntary and community sector providers, as noted by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham.

I have previously drawn your Lordships’ attention to the fact that mental health is not mentioned in the Bill. We have debated over many days and have made—people who have been here for years tell me—gigantic changes to this Bill by comparison. We have debated school structures, while one in six of those aged between six and 16 have a probable mental health issue. This is a priority area for Labour. We would guarantee mental health treatment for all who need it within a month and hire at least 8,500 new mental health professionals. But a creaking National Health Service cannot do this alone.

The focus should be on prevention. Schools play a vital role in this area with a maintenance of general welfare and resilience throughout a child’s time in education, rather than acting only at times of crisis when it is too late. It is an acute crisis, and recognising that is an essential tool to learning and welfare. We need to intimately understand the drivers of the problem and give targeted support to tackle it. Both Labour amendments are urgently needed.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I will start by responding to Amendment 62 and thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for this amendment. As he said, we have previously discussed these issues in Committee. As he knows, local authorities have existing duties to identify children and young people in their area who have special educational needs or disabilities—SEND—and to work with other agencies to keep under review the adequacy of provision available to meet their needs. The department supports local authorities in doing so.

I acknowledge the points the noble Lord made, but they are best addressed by our wider reforms to the SEND system. I reiterate that high needs funding is increasing by £1 billion in the current financial year to a total of £9.1 billion. Local authorities have flexibility in how this funding is used, particularly and including to support those with sensory impairments. Separately, pupils with additional needs also attract additional funding through the schools national funding formula, which includes proxy factors for SEND. I reassure him that this will continue under the direct national funding formula. This additional needs funding equates to £6.6 billion in 2022-23 and is not dependent on whether a child has an education, health and care plan. I take the noble Lord’s point about those who may have sensory needs not having education, health and care plans, but there is also additional needs funding in place that is not dependent on those plans being in place.

As the noble Lord, Lord Addington, referenced, the Government recently published their SEND and alternative provision Green Paper, setting out ambitious proposals to improve the experiences and outcomes of children and young people with SEND. He referred to a postcode lottery, and he will know that the Green Paper includes a proposal to introduce national standards for how needs should be identified, assessed and reviewed, as well as the support that should be available for children and young people with SEND, including those with sensory impairments. That is currently out for consultation until 22 July, and we do not want to pre-empt the response.

The noble Lord talked about the litigiousness of the current system, and I agree with him. One of the aims of our reforms is to address that by having clear expectations across the country for parents and children. We hope to reduce that side of the system and take things forward in a more collaborative way.

Turning to Amendment 63, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for their amendment on statutory funding for mental health support in schools. Schools can play a vital role in supporting young people’s mental health. However, as we have discussed previously, tackling this issue cannot be the responsibility of schools alone, and it is not a school’s job to provide specific or specialist treatment interventions.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 18th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 97A, 118J and 118K.

We have to remind ourselves that the issue of unregistered school settings and the claim that some people are home schooling in order to send children to such settings is a problem that we have long had. Many people here will remember that Section 96 of the Education and Skills Act 2008 was established specifically to make sure that such settings were deemed unlawful. Unfortunately, we found that the law was so difficult to enforce that we have had a massive increase in the number of unregistered school settings, creating much more of the problem that we have had to deal with. Indeed, there have been only three prosecutions, and the first one took 10 years to take place. The number of schools that have been reported to Ofsted exceeds, I believe, a thousand. Hundreds have been identified by Ofsted but have been very difficult to deal with. Enforcement has been so poor that many schools deregistered to unregistered schools to avoid any form of regulation because they felt that they could operate in that way.

The position has been very clear. Departmental advice for collaborative working between the Department for Education, Ofsted and local authorities in March 2018 stated:

“Over recent times, we have seen a rise in the number of institutions operating outside the regulatory regime as unregistered independent schools; this involves a criminal offence and conduct that may be putting children at risk of harm, denying them a suitable education, and limiting their life chances. Tackling unregistered independent schools is a priority—and one that involves joint working and collaboration.”


Unfortunately, even in those times it was very clear that the provisions available to Ofsted, local authorities and the Government were very weak. That is why these measures in the Bill have been so warmly welcomed.

However, there are issues on which I am still trying to probe the Government and encourage them to think of creative ways in which to draft measures. It would be a tragedy that, 15 years after we thought we had solved a problem that had existed for decades beforehand, we were in the same position, in that the provisions were insufficiently flexible and strong to make sure that the law is properly enforced and that that which is meant to be outlawed is so done; and that if it were seen to be unable to be enforced effectively, we would have to wait another 15 years in order to do that.

Amendment 97A tries to deal with those who are enablers of the use of unregistered educational settings and who do not take a formal role in the structure of that educational setting. Such people may provide a facility or other forms of support, be that a location or funding that goes towards individuals who are providing these skills, but they structure it in a way that does not make them culpable in any way as an educational institution. I believe that the Government are missing a trick if they do not deal with those people who help these things continue.

Amendment 118J seeks to give Ofsted a more general, anti-avoidance power. This would allow it to join the dots in situations where its intelligence and information, in matters raised by a parent or parents in this situation, make it clear that it can take a broader view of how these institutions may well be operating or trying to operate once their structure has been changed to try to find loopholes in the law.

Lastly, Amendment 118K would establish a process to review the Act and its operation and to encourage reporting to the House, particularly on this measure—I suspect there may well be a clumsy error in the drafting, for which I apologise in advance. The intent is to try to focus on this area so that the expertise and views of local authorities and others involved in education, especially Ofsted, can be collated by the department so that we can review whether or not these measures are being successfully enforced and we are achieving the outcomes that we so desperately want for the safeguarding of children.

Obviously, I will not push these amendments to a vote. They are there to try to encourage the Government to think again as the Bill goes through its passage in another place on how additional measures could be introduced to make sure that we make this the final time we have to legislate on these issues.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

The amendments in this group have attendance at their core, and nothing is more important. In addition to being directly related to physical health, the attendance of learners in school is affected by well-being and mental health, and by attitudes towards learning and schooling. My noble friend Lord Hunt and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, made some important points regarding children with medical conditions. The interrelationship between attendance and general well-being is considered so strong that attendance has often been taken as a measure for well-being in previous data collection. We know that attendance has a strong impact on learner outcomes, standards and progression. I can tell you from first-hand experience that examination outcomes strongly correlate to attendance rates.

Amendments 118J and 118K, proposed by my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn, seek to deal with the current gaps in legislation, addressing important issues surrounding attendance and its promotion by educational institutions, and would require a review of any avoidance of the legislation as it develops, which we support.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, the fourth group of amendments relates to school attendance orders and independent educational institutions. I thank my noble friend Lord Lucas and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for Amendments 87 and 89. However, we are concerned that these could work directly against the child’s best interests by increasing the time that a child could spend in potentially unsuitable education. We do not regard the issuing of a preliminary notice as an extreme penalty that warrants such justifications for issuance. We believe that a local authority should be able and required to take steps to determine the suitability of education being provided where there has been insufficient or inaccurate information given.

The local authority is already legally required to consider all relevant factors in determining whether it is expedient for a child to attend school, including whether it is in the child’s best interests. I hope that reassures the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, who tabled Amendment 91. To reiterate, “expedient” in this context means that it must be

“advantageous; fit, proper, or suitable to the circumstances of the case”

for the child to attend school. Of course, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, said, it will almost always be in the child’s best interests to attend school if they are not receiving suitable education, but there may be cases in which it could be argued that another solution would be better for the child—for example, if the child is physically or mentally too unwell to attend school.

On Amendment 96, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, we have been clear through our recently published school attendance guidance that local authorities are expected to work closely with other services and partners, such as health services. Paragraph 79 of the guidance—I am worried that the noble Baroness is at home saying to her screen, “But who gets to paragraph 79?”, but I know that she will get to it—says that local authorities are expected to

“Build strong relationships with a range of services and partners that can help with specific barriers to attendance and how to access them.”


It then lists services that local authorities are expected to work with, which include health, children’s social care and youth justice services, to which the noble Baroness referred. I know she is concerned about what happens in cases where the guidance is not followed, and I am happy to write to her to set out our response to those situations in more detail.

As already mentioned, government Amendments 71 and 72 would prevent the school attendance order process being triggered where parents simply do not know the information required.

With regard to Amendment 88, tabled by my noble friend Lord Lucas, I must reiterate the importance of local authorities remedying the situation for any child who is not receiving a suitable education, in the shortest time possible. The introduction and reduction of timeframes in the school attendance order process will help achieve this. However, I remind the House that, as my noble friend mentioned in earlier debates, even with the timeframes set out in the Bill, a child could still potentially be without suitable education for a period of at least 51 days, without extending this any further.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that regional schools directors are civil servants. I am sure my noble friend the Minister will confirm that there are no proposed changes to that. During my tenure they were all directly answerable to me on behalf of our Secretary of State. I tried very hard to ensure that we had a mixture of skills in that group.

When I was the academies Minister, the national schools commissioner had been a teacher, then a headteacher, then the chief executive of an academy trust, so he had a very good understanding of the whole culture. We had another very good regional schools commissioner who had been the head of local authority social services and so on, but we also had permanent civil servants. My mission was to bring them all together. They all reported to me, and we met as a group regularly so that there could be a transfer of ideas between them. I do not think there are any plans for that to change.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, I am speaking to the two amendments we have in this group: Amendments 118G and 118H. I thank my noble friend Lady Lawrence for making some extremely salient points which I will refer to subsequently.

To the noble Lord, Lord Storey, I would like to explain that Amendment 118G will require every academy to follow the national curriculum. We have the list of things we would like to talk about because of the inherent contradictions we have found in this Bill. We have been trying to work around them and are attempting to fill the gaps as best we can. As the Government were clearly intent on a sweeping approach, we felt it was imperative that those issues be included in the national curriculum.

Amendment 118H would compel the Secretary of State to

“work with the devolved administrations”,

as noted by my noble friend Lady Lawrence, to launch and publish a review into teaching about diversity in the curriculum and

“to ensure that teaching of British history includes but is not limited to … Black British history … colonialism, and … Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade.”

The English education system could learn a great deal from Wales in this matter. Our new curriculum will be launched this September. The new mandatory elements of the curriculum, in particular the teaching of the experiences and contributions of people from minority backgrounds, will broaden the education of every child in Wales so it better reflects the experiences of the whole population of Wales. Educating young people about the experiences and contributions of minority ethnic peoples in Wales, past and present, will promote lasting change aimed at tackling broader inequalities within society. I urge the Minister to support this aspect of our range of amendment suggestions.

In conclusion, we also support Amendment 101 proposed by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, and other noble Lords. The values of British citizenship should include important elements, not least democracy and the rule of law—an important lesson learned by some Members of the other place in recent weeks.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, for explaining her amendment to us. I am liberal rather than post-modern; I believe in the objective being one united society where we are all equal, rather than in the fractured values which her amendment proposes. It is really important that what we teach in schools covers all our experiences and all the threads that make up the UK. The English ought to learn a great deal more about the Welsh and Scots, for a start.

One of the fundamental problems, illustrated in the dispute with OCR over its poetry curriculum, is that we have allowed our examination system to become far too narrow. Yes, a thread of the undisputed greats in literature ought to run through things, as well as the thread of our history that used to consist of learning the names and dates of kings but is actually rather more interesting. Within them are the stories of us all—and that really ought to be us all.

To manage that within a school curriculum, you need a lot more freedom than we allow people at the moment, not less. We should not have a national curriculum that says, “These are the five things that you must teach”, but one with the ability to stretch broadly, bring things in and illustrate them and, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, enrich people’s local experience with things that mean something to them. I support the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, in his endeavours.

My noble friend Lord Sandhurst will know that I am very much with him on his amendments, and I am delighted to find myself with the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, in what he is asking for. The noble Lord says that he is surprised to discover that the Lords is cool. For those of us who come from the west, we walk in every day past a notice that says, “Peers entrance”. Indeed they do. The problems he outlines remind me a lot of what goes on with sexual abuse in schools. The answer is to face it, look at it and really be interested in, not afraid of, what is going on. We should be confident that we do not want it to be that way. We should not expect quick solutions so that we can forget about it, but know that this will take us a good long while to sort out and that it has some deep roots. I would really like to see the Government take some steps in the sort of direction the noble Lord proposes.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 2
Monday 18th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 118D would mean teachers in all schools would be

“required to have, or be enrolled on a course such that they are working towards, qualified teacher status”

before September 2024. I have spoken extensively previously about teachers without QTS having less pedagogical training and less subject knowledge than their qualified colleagues, although I do note the Minister’s previous replies to this on several occasions. However, I firmly believe the Government need to match the ambition of Labour’s national excellence programme. This amendment will begin to address these current failings.

Amendment 118E would mean that, within a year of Royal Assent, the Secretary of State, whoever he or she will be, would have to ensure that

“every … school is working towards establishing a breakfast club, able to provide a free breakfast to every pupil who requests one”.

Yet again this evening, the UK Government could learn from what the Labour Government are doing in Wales: providing free breakfasts in primary schools has been an integral part of the wider work the Welsh Government have done to improve food and nutrition in schools maintained by local authorities since September 2004.

Finally, Amendment 118I would mean that, within six months of Royal Assent, the Secretary of State would have to

“consult on and launch a school children’s pandemic recovery plan”.

The consultation would include:

“free breakfast clubs … extra-curricular activities for every child … provision of … in-school mental health counselling staff … small group tutoring … ongoing learning and development for teachers, and … an education recovery premium”.

This may include uplifting the current premium rate by 10%, increasing the early years pupil premium to match the premium rates for primary school pupils, and expanding the secondary age pupil premium to include pupils aged 16 to 18 and children with child protection plans. There is so much to do but this amendment clearly sets out the difference between what a Labour Government would do for the children and young people of England compared with what little they are now receiving and will continue to receive under this Conservative Government.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I was for a short time a governor—the noble Baroness is looking at me as if I am doing something wrong—of our local primary school. I remember at a governors’ meeting that one of the teacher-appointed members of the governing body was the English teacher. The only trouble was that he could hardly speak any grammatical English. I wondered often—and spoke to the headmistress about it—how good he was at teaching English.

Two other amendments are being considered in this group, both in the names of my two noble friends on the Front Bench. I support both of those. It is not easy to set up breakfast clubs and the like at primary schools. You have to stretch teachers to provide those services but when they can be provided, they are of enormous assistance and enable parents to go and get on with their lives—nothing could be easier. It also ensures that children start with a good breakfast.