Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Wolf of Dulwich Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as deputy chair of governors at King’s College London Maths School, which is a high-achieving 16 to 19 academy. We are very grateful to this Government and previous Governments for their support, and we are aware that the school’s existence, and that of other university maths schools, was made possible by academy freedoms.

In that context, while welcoming much of this Bill, I echo concerns raised by other noble Lords about reducing these freedoms. Academies’ funding agreements already give the Secretary of State major powers, so I do not really understand why, for example, the Secretary of State needs major new statutory powers to intervene just because they are satisfied that the proprietor of an academy is “likely” to breach a relevant duty at some unspecified time in the future. I hope very much that we will return to this in depth in Committee and get some clearer understanding of why these powers are being introduced.

My main concern is the Bill’s emphasis on ensuring that teachers are all qualified—which of course does not in any way refer to their mastery of their subject but only to whether they have a teaching qualification. The vast majority of teachers, including in academies, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, pointed out, and in the independent sector, do have teaching qualifications, and these play a very useful role in preparing people to teach effectively in many contexts. However, I have spent a large part of my life working on skills and vocational education, and I am concerned that this direction of travel is misguided and potentially harmful for vocational and technical subjects. These are, obviously enough, best taught by professionals with first-hand knowledge of their occupation and extensive practical experience. Over decades, I have seen many professionals, craftspeople and experienced practitioners inspire young people and teach them effectively, not only by giving them particular skills but by transforming their attitude to learning and to their futures.

Some people like that will, in mid-life, switch to full-time teaching and do a teaching qualification, typically in further education, but many will teach part-time and for a short period, and we need more of these people. Moreover, the more the labour market demands their skills, the harder and harder it becomes for schools or colleges to hire expert practitioners, and the more important it becomes to find ways of encouraging them to do some teaching and not place barriers between them and our classrooms.

This is not, as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, reminded us, a Chamber full of people who believe that all education should involve highly academic, non-practical subjects—indeed, rather the opposite. I know that many noble Lords will have memories, as I do, of past educational reforms that set out to make more varied technical options available in schools. All too often these failed and were undermined because of a total lack of expert staff. Drafting in qualified sports teachers to teach leisure and tourism, or qualified biology teachers to deliver engineering, is not where we should be, but all too often it is where we have ended up.

Fourteen years ago, I published a review of vocational education for the Government. At that point, under the Education Act 2002, schools could bring in experts. However, one of my recommendations was that the Government should:

“Clarify and evaluate rules relating to the teaching of vocational content … Many schools believe that it is impossible to bring professionals in to demonstrate … even part of a course without requiring the presence of additional, salaried teaching staff”.


This was not true, but, sadly, many schools thought it was. In recent decades, academy freedoms have made far more schools aware of their freedoms. I really worry that we are pushing in the wrong direction on this one and that we will come to regret it.