Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting)

Debate between Catherine Atkinson and Darren Paffey

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Darren Paffey]

What I agree is, that if someone is not performing up to scratch, the response should not be to remove the qualification for everyone else, but to deal with that individual teacher and drive up standards within the school. That is once again, completely common sense.

[Catherine Atkinson]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we train our teachers for a reason? Would he agree that parents expect their children to be taught by qualified teachers for a reason? Would he agree that some of the dismissive attitudes that we have heard from Opposition Members are insulting to the professionalism of our qualified teachers?

[Darren Paffey]

I fully agree that it is deeply concerning that qualified teacher status is so unimportant to them. However, it is unsurprising that the profession is in the state it is and feeling utterly undervalued after the last 14 years. I simply do not understand why qualified teacher status in all schools is such a low priority for some.

The hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston mentioned that is the prerogative of good headteachers to have that freedom. Would he therefore logically suggest that it is the freedom of every hospital director to decide whether someone is suitably qualified to carry out surgery, or would they ask for an independent agreed common framework of training and qualification for surgeons? I suspect, and hope, it would be that. The response, as I have said, to the recruitment and the shortage issue is not to lower our ambitions.

I think back to the evidence session in which we heard from Sir Martyn Oliver—His Majesty’s chief inspector at Ofsted—who actually said that appointing a non-qualified teacher to role was a “deficit decision”. Those were his words, not mine. He said that it would not be his first choice, no matter how well it worked, and that non-QTS staff should supplement fully qualified staff, not replace them. I ask the Opposition to reflect on that.

This proportionate, reassuring measure is restoring common sense. It is once again restoring the value of teaching as a profession, alongside the other measures that have been taken on teacher pay, teacher prestige and investment in schools, although those were certainly not taken in recent years.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Catherine Atkinson and Darren Paffey

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Catherine Atkinson]

Q We have seen the number of children in care rising really significantly. Looking at the child protection measures, the kinship clauses and the family group conferencing, what do you feel the overall impact of Bill will be on the numbers of children in care?

Jacky Tiotto: It is difficult. We have primary legislation in the Children Act 1989 that says that, in this country, we think the best place for children is growing up in their family or with relatives. When the 30-year review of the Children Act happened, people still signed up to that; this Bill definitely reminds us and provokes that intention again.

The difficulty is that the formality around protecting children is burdensome, rightly so. So in my view some of the construction of this has to be a bit more thoughtful about the children who are going to do well in their families and the children who are not going to stand a chance and need, quickly, to move to permanence and to other places.

Residential care is not doing particularly well for children with very special needs. We struggle to recruit foster carers because the resources around them are not there. It is the shape of what is around those other places, not residential care, that needs to be elevated, in order to reduce the number of children coming into care. Just having family group decision-making conferences or kinship alone is not enough; I do not know anyone saying it is.

I do not know how many of you are familiar with the chief social worker paper from a few years ago called “Care proceedings in England: the case for clear blue water”. A very good, strong case was made for, “Don’t come into court with children where it is going to end up either with them back at home or with a supervision order that gives no statutory power to the local authority. Come into court for the kids that really need a care order and protection and to go somewhere.” We could revisit the extent to which that is an effective situation.

A third of children who come into family proceedings now either remain at home or go back home. I make no judgment about that, but a third of children going through family proceedings is expensive. We need to think about what the point at issue was and what was needed at the time. Will the serving of that order deal with the problem at the time? Often, what has gone wrong in child protection will not be solved by just making a court order, particularly a supervision order. I could be here for a long time on that, but that is another Bill, probably another day.

[Darren Paffey]

Q The Bill proposes a number of measures on illegal children’s homes and a topic you have already mentioned a couple of times—deprivation of liberty, when that does not necessarily need to be in a secure children’s home. What are your reflections on how effective that is going to be in terms of protecting vulnerable children? Do you foresee in particular any impact on family court proceedings if there is now a different outcome in terms of what judges can decide?

Jacky Tiotto: I do not think so, in terms of the strengthening of section 25 of the 1989 Act so that other accommodation can be used that is not a secure children’s home, but I think there is a gross underestimation of how intensive it is to look after those children. That is not just a today thing—it has been coming for 20 years, when we stopped running children’s homes in local authorities, really. The provision of the accommodation in the way that the Bill sets out is good but, as I said before, the issue is about who runs it and how much the staffing costs are for running very specialist provision—