Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Second sitting)

Darren Paffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

We will have one final, brief question—hopefully with a brief answer—from Darren Paffey.

[Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)]

Q The Bill seeks to move on from a fixation on structures and get back to outcomes and wellbeing. If I have understood your earlier comments, you welcome that. Do you think the Bill will sufficiently break that link between a child’s background and their future success? Do you believe that the measures will move us closer to that?

Dame Rachel de Souza: I am delighted with the measures for vulnerable children. I am hopeful for the measures on the schools side, but we need to see a bit more of a vision before I can answer. What is that system going to look like? My recommendation would be focusing on how, in local areas, we can build up and strengthen our local authorities so that they can be the champions of children, particularly vulnerable children, and convene the trusts and the schools so that everyone can work together to share their expertise. If we do that, we will have a great shot at it, and I think it could be really good.

[The Chair]

That brings us to the end of this session. I know there are other Members who want to get in; I will try to call you during the next session.

Examination of Witnesses

Sir Martyn Oliver, Lee Owston and Yvette Stanley gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Finally, Darren Paffey. We have about 90 seconds left.

[Darren Paffey]

Q Clauses 13 and 14 make provision for the financial oversight of care providers, and clause 9 looks at better regional arrangements for accommodation. What are your views on how effective that will be in improving provision for the care of children?

Katharine Sacks-Jones: As I said earlier, these are welcome measures. There is very little oversight of the providers at the moment, so a number of measures will improve that oversight. The missing piece is that if you do not tackle sufficiency, the power imbalance will still sit in the hands of the providers who provide the majority of homes for children. Greater oversight needs to come alongside improving sufficiency. One way to do that is to have a national strategy, which is missing at the moment. We think the Bill is an opportunity to introduce that.

[Darren Paffey]

Q To what extent does the regional co-operation deal with sufficiency?

Katharine Sacks-Jones: I think there are benefits to be had in regional commissioning. We are concerned to ensure that provision for children is not then condensed in certain areas of a region, which could mean children still being moved great distances. We would like to see a safeguard in the Bill around not moving children far from home unless it is in their interest, to go alongside the new regional co-operation arrangements.

Lynn Perry: I echo some of what Katharine said there. There has to be a focus on outcomes for children in care, and in particular for all providers to be able to demonstrate that they are taking the sort of steps that Katharine describes, which would lead to better outcomes for children. We need to recognise that with 80% of existing provision being provided privately, any sudden exit might also cause some challenges for children. So, the sufficiency piece is really important, but we need to rebuild what I reluctantly describe as the market, to provide care for children in a different way. That will take some time.

[The Chair]

I understand that this session should run until 3.15 pm.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds]

Q How do you keep it affordable and make sure it is not a barrier?

Rebecca Leek: School uniform is generally very affordable. You are asking a primary school, so we do not have blazers, but certainly it is very affordable. It has never been an issue. We also give away free uniform. I think there are problems in the Bill with the uniform wording.

[Darren Paffey]

Q I want to pick up on the previous point about the curriculum floor. I wonder whether the panel agree that the opportunities of a broad, balanced curriculum that is modern, engaging and offered regardless of the badge and branding over the school door should be available to young people everywhere. Would you consider that a good thing, or would you consider the Bill—as I think Rebecca described it—a reactive, retrograde step?

Rebecca Leek: I do believe that a broad entitlement for children is really important. What I am concerned about is that, first, we do not know what will be in the national curriculum and, secondly, schools sometimes need a little bit of flexibility to maybe not do a couple of subjects because they are addressing something that has happened within their school community over a couple of years or months or a term.

I had a school in south Essex in a trust that I led where we needed to reduce the curriculum for a little while. It was post covid. You may say, “Well, that was covid,” but we do not what is coming. I needed to work with some children in key stage 2 on a slightly narrower curriculum to really help them with their maths and English so that they would be able to access secondary school. That is what we decided to do, and it was an academy school, so I had the freedom to address that. I think that it was a moral duty for me to make sure that they got those core skills, so that they would be able to access a broad and balanced curriculum in the secondary.

I am just very worried about there being these kind of concrete bricks. If there is permissiveness and agility within it, then that is fine. I do agree with the concept of an entitlement for children to a broad and balanced curriculum.

[Darren Paffey]

Q I think we all recognise that there are sometimes staffing issues in particular curriculum areas, but if something gets taken out of the curriculum, particularly at secondary but sometimes at primary, does that not risk equating to a freedom to shut off that opportunity for future generations of children? I know from having taught modern languages that when you lose those staff, you end up not replacing them, and you do not replace the subject on the curriculum. Is that not a risk?

Rebecca Leek: It is a risk. Basically, sometimes schools have to do things that are a bit of an emergency, or to handle a crisis situation. We do not have a factory line of ready-prepared teachers that are already available. We also have fluctuations in pupil numbers. Some years we have to put together years 2 and 3, sometimes we have to put together years 4 and 5, and then the next year we have to put together years 2, 3 and 4 because of the pupil numbers. So we just have to have a certain level to be able to work around. We do not want headteachers to always be worrying in the back of their heads, “Am I allowed to do this? Am I not allowed to do this?” There just needs to be a certain level of permissiveness.

What I say in my headteacher assembly at the end of year 6 is that I want to give all my children a travelcard to all zones in London. I do not just want to give them a zone 1 and 2 travelcard. We all believe that as school leaders, but sometimes we just have to focus on one thing, or we have to do some crisis management, so there has to be some agility within the system.

Jane Wilson: Can I comment? I think Ofsted has played an important role in that. As a serving inspector, part of the work I do on every inspection is to look at whether the curriculum is meeting the needs of the children; that where modifications have been made, they are appropriate; and that the curriculum the children are receiving is of equal quality to the national curriculum. So I think Ofsted, with the work it is doing, is already enabling that oversight of curriculum entitlement across the country.

[The Chair]

Thank you to the witnesses for the evidence you have given—sorry for the interruption in the middle of it, but we cannot help that.

Examination of Witness

David Thomas gave evidence.