Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Order. With the exception of the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, there will be an immediate four-minute time limit.

I call the Chair of the Education Committee.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to the Lords amendments to the Bill that are of most interest to the Education Committee, following our scrutiny work on the Bill and in relation to a number of other subsequent and ongoing inquiries.

I welcome the decision to place the expansion of the entitlement to free school meals in the Bill. The Education Committee welcomes that expansion, which will increase the number of children who can benefit from a nutritious hot meal in the middle of the day. Combined with the roll-out of free breakfast clubs, it will substantially reduce the scourge of hunger, which harms children’s health and holds back their learning.

My Committee has recommended that the Government introduce auto-enrolment for free school meals. The use of universal credit data, which the Government already hold, would make auto-enrolment much easier to achieve. I urge the Minister to ensure, by implementing auto-enrolment, that no child misses out on the meal to which they are entitled.

I welcome the introduction of a requirement to notify health and education services when a child is placed in temporary accommodation. I have seen at first hand many times in my constituency the destabilising impact of temporary accommodation on children’s lives. It is usually the worst quality accommodation and is the most likely to be overcrowded, damp and mouldy. It is often far away from school and friends, with no space to do homework, and brings the constant underlying insecurity of not having a permanent home. It can have profound consequences for children’s health and education, and the new duty to notify is an important first step in ensuring that children can be supported.

[Chris Vince]

I declare an interest, as a member of the Education Committee and a former teacher. I thank the Chair of the Committee for her passionate speech. Does she agree that it is hugely important that teachers are aware when young people in their care are in temporary accommodation, because of the huge impact it can have on their education, as she has suggested?

[Helen Hayes]

I agree with my hon. Friend entirely. So often we hear from teachers that they recognise a drop in a student’s engagement or performance, but without understanding why.

I welcome the introduction of the new requirements on allergy safety in schools. As the parent of a child who had unexplained allergies in early childhood, I understand some of the fear and anxiety that parents experience when entrusting a child with allergies to a formal setting. There is anxiety about whether allergens will be properly managed, and anxiety about what will happen if their child experiences an allergic reaction. The new requirements will ensure that there is more consistency, improve knowledge and introduce better protocols for managing allergies in schools, so that parents and schools can have more confidence.

I turn to Lords amendment 17 on siblings and foster care. In the Education Committee’s inquiry into children’s social care last year, we heard directly from young people with recent experience of the care system. They told us about the profound impacts of sibling separation. Sibling relationships are very important for looked-after children, who often have experienced trauma and broken relationships with their parents and other family members. Yet far too often, siblings are separated by a care system that struggles, due to funding and lack of capacity, to deliver child-centred care. My Committee was shocked to discover that the Department for Education gathers no data on sibling separation. That is a first and necessary step in seeking to reduce it.

I appreciate that the Government are not yet content with the wording of the amendment on sibling contact, but I urge them to find a way to incorporate stronger requirements for sibling contact to be prioritised and maintained before the Bill reaches the statute book. It is a small change concerning something that should happen anyway, and has the potential to make a big difference to vulnerable children in the care system.

In the short time that remains to me, let me mention just two other matters. The first is the amendment relating to school uniform costs for families. I know what a strain those can be for families who are struggling with the cost of living, and I welcome the Government’s efforts to limit the costs, but I urge the Minister to give a further assurance about the risks of the high costs of specific items. I encountered an egregious case in my constituency, in which a child from an extremely low-income background had been given a place at a school but was told that she could not attend unless she had the appropriate blazer, the cost of which was £100. I hope the Minister can give an indication that the guidance for schools will be strengthened in this regard.

I support robust measures to protect children from social media harms, including raising the age of digital consent and a ban on some social media apps for under-16s, and I support a statutory ban in schools.

[Freddie van Mierlo (Henley and Thame) (LD)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Helen Hayes]

I will not, because of the time limit.

However, there are important differences of opinion between stakeholders on the best ways in which to regulate young people’s access to smartphones and social media, so I consider it right for the Government to consult. I welcome the amendments that will allow legislation to be introduced without delay. It would be helpful if the Minister could give some assurances about the timescale for the introduction of legislation following the consultation, which I believe will be necessary.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

World Book Day

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered World Book Day.

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Hobhouse. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this debate. I am tempted to dedicate this debate to every parent or carer whose child has ever announced that they wanted to go to school for World Book Day as the Very Hungry Caterpillar, Flat Stanley or the tiger who came to tea; who has looked optimistically at their floor mop late at night, wondering whether it would pass as a Harry Potter broomstick; or who celebrated quietly when their child’s costume of choice was a more modest “Where’s Wally?” or Mr Bump.

It is important to be clear at the outset, however, that while dressing up for World Book Day is a source of great joy and excitement—sometimes accompanied by a degree of last-minute panic—for children and parents across the country, and for the commuters who get to appreciate the wonder and creativity of the costumes during the morning school run, that is not the core purpose of World Book Day. It is also important that any dressing up to mark World Book Day is done in an inclusive way, so that no child misses out on the opportunity to dress up because of a lack of resources or parental time.

[Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)]

I want to celebrate our local libraries and how much they give to our communities. Castle Donington library hosts not only a uniform swap but a dress-up swap, which is so important for affordability. Libraries are also working hard to tackle the literacy crisis that we face, as just one in three children aged eight to 18 say that they enjoy reading in their spare time. Will my hon. Friend join me in thanking libraries in North West Leicestershire, many of which are run by volunteers, for their dedication and the abundance of good that they give back to our communities, not just on World Book Day but week in, week out?

[Helen Hayes]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. World Book Day is a collaboration between lots of different organisations across our communities, and libraries are central to that.

This year, we mark the 30th anniversary of World Book Day, which was first celebrated in 1996. Although it was founded by UNESCO, it was based on an idea from Pere Vicens, a prominent Spanish publisher from Barcelona and a former president of the International Publishers Association. He and his colleagues were reacting to the notion, common in the early 1990s, that books would be obsolete within 25 years. Their idea was to promote the Spanish tradition of giving books and roses on St George’s day, 23 April. That date did not work so well in the UK, as it regularly clashes with the Easter break, so we mark World Book Day on the first Thursday in March—today, in fact.

This year, World Book Day takes place during the Government’s National Year of Reading, which is supported by the National Literacy Trust and other partners. I pay tribute to the parents, carers, teachers, support staff, early years practitioners, librarians, bookshops, authors, illustrators, publishers and others across the country who support and facilitate the celebration of World Book Day in numerous and ingenious ways.

[Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)]

On that point, I invite my hon. Friend to pay tribute to my constituent Hayley Slack. She wrote the book “Little Coffee Cup”, copies of which are printed entirely on recycled coffee cups. Does my hon. Friend agree that such an innovative approach to book writing and publishing encourages young people not only to read, but to think about sustainability?

[Helen Hayes]

That is a wonderfully creative way to engage children, not only in reading but in a wider and important area of learning.

I pay particular tribute to the schools and public libraries across my constituency of Dulwich and West Norwood; they are going above and beyond this week. I also pay tribute to the wealth of independent bookshops with which my constituency is particularly blessed, including the Paper Cat children’s bookshop, where I recently had the privilege of meeting the Gruffalo in person, and to the brilliant Stepping into Stories children’s literary festival, which goes from strength to strength each year.

The core purpose of World Book Day is to promote reading for fun. World Book Day is the UK’s largest reading for pleasure campaign and is run by a charity of the same name. World Book Day is a delivery partner for the National Year of Reading. This year it is encouraging children to “Go All In” for World Book Day. The charity distributes 23.5 million £1 book tokens annually—sent to every UK primary school, plus secondary schools and nurseries on request—which children can exchange for a book from a selection chosen with the input of children and publishers.

World Book Day is enormously successful. In 2025, 91% of UK children aged five to eight took part in a World Book Day activity, and 93% of UK adults are aware of the event. A quarter of children on free school meals said that the first book they owned came as a result of the World Book Day £1 book tokens.

This is important because reading has such enormous benefits. A child who is read to at ages one to two scores more highly in reading, spelling, grammar and numeracy skills at ages eight to 11. Reading for pleasure at ages 10 to 16 has a substantial positive effect on vocabulary, spelling and maths performance by the age of 16. Children who are read to frequently at age five are over half a school year ahead in reading performance at age 15 compared with those who are read to infrequently or not at all.

For children growing up in poverty, being read to daily at age five is significantly associated with a greater chance of avoiding poverty in adulthood. The Education Committee, which I Chair, has heard that reading for pleasure is a “driver of social mobility” and an “anti-poverty strategy”.

Reading helps develop children’s vocabulary. Studies have shown that the language used in books is more complex than spoken language, helping children learn more words and get used to more complex sentence structures. Reading has been shown to help develop empathy, especially towards stigmatised groups. Professor Jessie Ricketts, professor of psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London, said that reading allows children to learn about things outside of their own experiences. She said:

“When we pick up a book, there may be characters and environments that are not part of our lived experience. That is particularly important for people who are not moving around much and may not have access to those things.”

Shared reading in the early years improves emotional closeness between child and caregiver. It lifts the parent’s mood, increases warmth and reduces stress, enabling the sensitive and nurturing interactions that young children need to thrive.

Reading also helps children with their cognitive development. Reading with young children helps develop their attention and memory skills, and learning to read helps develop the area of the brain responsible for processing language. Evidence from neuroscience states:

“There is clear evidence that learning to read shapes the brain, resulting in the tuning of an area specialising in word processing”.

Yet despite this huge range of benefits, the number of children reading for pleasure—choosing of their own volition to read when they have a choice about how to spend their time—is declining.

The National Literacy Trust’s annual literacy survey 2025 found that the percentage of children and young people who enjoy reading is at its lowest in 20 years, with just one in three children and young people aged eight to 18 saying that they enjoy reading in their free time. That is a decrease of a third since 2005. Fewer than one in five children and young people aged eight to 18 read something daily in their free time in 2025. The decline is not evenly distributed across all demographics. Girls are significantly more likely to read for pleasure than boys. In 2025, 39% of girls aged eight to 18 said that they enjoy reading, compared with just 26% of boys.

Reading for pleasure also declines as children get older. Among children aged five to eight, 63% say that they enjoy reading, declining to 47% of eight to 11-year-olds, 30% of 11 to 14-year-olds and 29% of 14 to 16-year-olds. The situation in England is substantially worse than internationally, with the most recent progress in international reading literacy study in 2021 finding that 29% of English pupils said they “very much like” reading, compared with the international average of 42%.

Children’s reading patterns are not established in a vacuum. It is striking that a recent BookTrust survey found that 70% of parents and carers said they face challenges in sharing books with their child. That rises significantly to 75% for those parents on low incomes.

It is in that context that the Education Committee is undertaking an inquiry on reading for pleasure. We are exploring why there has been a generational shift in reading for pleasure and what can be done to reverse the trend. We are looking across the sector to assess the role of schools, early years settings, libraries, parents, authors, publishers and more, and we are looking at the different groups of children and families who are least likely to read for pleasure and how they can be supported to read more.

So far, the inquiry has received around 180 pieces of written evidence and has held two oral evidence sessions during which we have heard from academics, charities and experts. I would like to put on record my thanks to children and their teachers from Mulberry Canon Barnett primary school, who came into Parliament today to talk to the Committee about their experiences of reading.

The evidence we have received cites a number of possible reasons for the decline in reading for pleasure. Barriers to children’s reading for pleasure include an increase in recreational screen use. Onyinye Iwu, a children’s author and secondary school art teacher, said that her pupils told her,

“we have TikTok. What’s the point?”

As she continued,

“You’ve got TikTok, you’ve got Netflix, you’ve got the film coming out, so why would you read the book?”

We also heard that the focus on reading proficiency and an overcrowded curriculum can mean that reading for pleasure is seen as a “nice to have”, crowded out of the everyday practice of some schools. A Department for Education survey found that 21% of parents of secondary-aged pupils and 14% of parents of primary-aged pupils said their children were too busy with homework to find time for reading.

We have heard that cuts to library services and school libraries have limited access to books. Local authority spending on public libraries decreased from £1.5 billion in 2009-10 to £673 million in 2022-23, followed by a slight increase the following year. The Great School Libraries campaign found that there were 10% fewer libraries in secondary schools between 2019 and 2022, and that 15% of secondary schools had a library but no budget at all for it. I warmly welcome the Government’s commitment to ensure that every primary school has a school library by the end of this Parliament and to provide funding for secondary school libraries.

The lack of a quiet reading environment due to overcrowded housing and reduced community provision is also making a difference to the reading habits of children from the lowest income backgrounds. The evidence also points to a decline in reading among adults, leading to less shared reading with children and less role-modelling of reading by adults. The Reading Agency found that only 53% of UK adults now read regularly for pleasure, compared with 58% in 2015. Children are more than twice as likely to report seeing parents relax by watching TV than by reading. Luke Taylor, senior researcher at the Centre for Social Justice, told the Committee that it is particularly important for boys to see men reading, and highlighted a lack of male role models as a factor in the lower levels of reading among boys.

It is also important that children can find themselves in books. Children from minoritised communities are particularly likely to say that they do not see themselves in what they read. Only 24% of children’s books published in 2024 featured a racially minoritised character. Onyinye Iwu said that although there was a boom in ethnically diverse books in 2020, it has not been sustained.

The Committee also reviewed evidence on what works to get children reading. We have heard that connecting reading to children’s interests is important. The National Literacy Trust survey found that two in five children and young people were motivated to read when material related to a favourite film or TV series, or matched their interests or hobbies. Debbie Hicks, creative director at the Reading Agency, told the Committee that tying reading in with interests such as sports, music or science, technology, engineering and maths can offer

“really familiar entry points for reluctant readers.”

Our witnesses spoke of the need for “mirrors and windows” to ensure that children are represented in books while also being exposed to different cultures and experiences. Onyinye Iwu said that there has been a “big jump forward” in the availability of books with diverse characters and stories, but a much narrower range of authors is still being regularly highlighted and promoted in shops and in the curriculum. Witnesses spoke of the need for children to have genuine “choice and agency” over what they read. The National Literacy Trust survey found that a quarter of children said that being free to choose what they wanted to read was a motivating factor.

The Committee has heard that children with special educational needs and disabilities, especially those with dyslexia, can struggle to access traditional texts. Ellen Broomé, the chief executive officer of the British Dyslexia Association, said that dyslexic children can find reading

“difficult, exhausting and something they avoid”

and that they can have

“feelings of failure and embarrassment and stigma around their reading.”

The evidence that we have received has emphasised the importance of accessible texts for children with SEND and ensuring that read-for-pleasure initiatives are inclusive.

We have also heard that seeing reading as a social activity is a motivating factor for children. Children are motivated to read by social factors such as having opportunities to discuss books with their peers or—as we heard from children at Mulberry Canon Barnett primary school this morning—to act out the story in class or have the opportunity to continue or finish the story themselves. Professor Jessie Ricketts highlighted the special importance of social factors for teenagers, as they are

“very much guided by what their peers think”

and often do not see reading as a social activity.

There is much to be learned from World Book Day for the encouragement of reading for pleasure all year round. Professor Teresa Cremin told the Committee that teachers should aim to

“spread World Book Day practice…throughout the year”

by supporting children to read in their own time and to develop the habit of reading. She said:

“If you had a rich reading pedagogy in your classroom, every day is World Book Day. Every day I am trying to support you 32 as readers. It is my job...not an occasional piece”.

Jonathan Douglas, chief executive of the National Literacy Trust, and Annie Crombie, co-chief executive of BookTrust, told the Committee that events such as World Book Day have “immense value” in creating a buzz of excitement around reading and making partners on the ground feel that they are part of something bigger. However, they highlighted the need for that to be built on a wider infrastructure of reading activity throughout the year.

The Education Committee will make our recommendations to the Government later this year. The benefits of reading for pleasure for children and adults are enormous; they speak directly to some of the most significant challenges that children and young people face around mental health and wellbeing and the impacts of screen time and social media. Reversing the decline must therefore be an urgent priority.

I will end by once again thanking everyone who is involved in supporting this year’s World Book Day and the National Year of Reading. Whether they are marking World Book Day by dressing up as their favourite character or simply curling up in a corner with a good book, I hope they enjoy the day.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Hayes]

I thank all hon. Members who contributed to this debate. It has been a consensual debate, celebrating the power of World Book Day and the benefits of reading.

It has also been an enlightening debate, in which we have learnt about the poetic talent of the hon. Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin), which he should be congratulated on. We have learnt about the Cyclops costume of my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow), which he has mentioned previously in the Select Committee. We are all very anxious to see it in real life. We have heard from the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) about how a whole career can be built on World Book Day costumes, and from my hon. Friend the Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer) about the book she wrote. Congratulations are due to her on her success in getting Dunstable the recognition it deserves.

It was lovely to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson) about the benefits of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Many years ago, I spent a summer at Drumchapel, and it is lovely to hear that the community there has benefited from that brilliant initiative. We have heard about literary traditions on the Isle of Wight, and the benefits of reading for communities across the country, including in Northern Ireland.

This has also been a serious debate, in which we have recognised that reading is a powerful part of our toolkit for tackling many of the serious challenges that our children face, from closing the disadvantage gap to improving mental health and wellbeing. We will take those lessons forward from the debate, with a commitment to spread throughout the year all the good practice and benefits of the fun and excitement of World Book Day, as we continue to grapple with the challenge of how we support more children in getting back into reading for pleasure.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered World Book Day.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Education Committee.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

Concerns raised in recent weeks about plan 2 student loans, including unilateral and unexpected change in the repayment terms and repayments based on the consumer prices index, are about the promise of higher education: whether working hard for an undergraduate degree really does result in a good quality of life when graduates face 30 years of student loan repayments on these terms. In the light of these escalating concerns, can the Minister tell the House what discussions he has had with the Treasury on this issue, and when we can expect to see the work that he promises to make plan 2 loans fairer for students?

[Josh MacAlister]

I know the Chair of the Education Committee is looking at these issues and the Government will be very interested in that work. We will set out the details of our work soon. My hon. Friend is right to highlight how transformational higher education can be. I would not want any young person outside this place who is listening to this debate to take away from it that they should not make every step forward to follow their talents. The Brit awards were just a few days ago and including some brilliant British talent, many of whom were on creative arts courses at university.

Student Loan Repayment Plans

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair today, Ms Lewell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal) for his powerful opening speech and for securing the debate. I declare an interest as a mum of two students who are currently in higher education.

I want to acknowledge the strength of feeling among graduates with plan 2 loans and the material impact that current loan terms and the planned freeze in the repayment threshold are having on them. The generation of graduates with plan 2 loans studied between September 2012 and July 2023. They are the same generation who have found themselves increasingly locked out of the housing market, unable to put down roots in their community, and squeezed by the cost of living and the cost of renting in particular. Plan 2 loans add unfairly to those cost pressures.

If the promise of education is that if you work hard, do well and get a good degree, then that degree will be a passport to increased earnings and a good standard of living, that promise is not being fulfilled for far too many in the plan 2 generation. I believe there is an urgent need to look at the value for money of student loans. We need to do that for the plan 2 generation, but also for the generation of young people who are considering university. We need to recognise that students from the lowest-income backgrounds are most likely to be deterred by the perception that university is not good value for money because of the impact of the loans.

I share concerns about unilateral changes in payment terms; that does not meet the standard of fairness that we would expect from any other lender. I share concerns that loans are linked to a measure of inflation that the Government do not use as the basis for other calculations.

However, in short, the solutions are not straightforward. The Education Committee is currently undertaking work on the funding of higher education institutions, and its headline conclusion is that they are very fragile. The proposals made by the Leader of the Opposition this week are entirely untenable, and I reject in particular her war on arts degrees, which will always have an important place in our education landscape.

Nurseries and Early Years Providers: CCTV

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support for all my campaigns throughout the years. He has hit on a point I will definitely comment on. However, as he said, we cannot put a price on a child’s safety.

I said that I have been a public servant for 15 years, but I have been involved in the world of politics for 25 years, and I know that campaigns and legislation cannot be done on a whim. We have to look at all sides of the argument, which is why I spoke to a lot of the nursery managers and early years practitioners in my constituency before the debate to ask what they thought about a mandatory policy of installing CCTV in nurseries.

Legitimate concerns were raised, and I want to discuss them because we need to be aware of the obstacles we will face if we want to implement this policy. One of those legitimate arguments concerned price and diverting resources. Another question was whether someone would end up exploiting what we were trying to do to safeguard children. For example, would the CCTV be hacked? Would someone use artificial intelligence on that material in a manner we would not want and distribute it illegally? Those are legitimate concerns, which I will address, because if we want to change the landscape, we have to tackle the obstacles head-on, including the one the hon. Gentleman mentioned.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for all the work she is doing, particularly on behalf of constituents who have been so badly traumatised by their recent experience. I am grateful to some of those parents for recently meeting the Education Committee privately to discuss the change they wish to see. On Tuesday, my Committee will hold a public oral evidence session to explore safeguarding in early years settings. Does my hon. Friend agree that in addition to practical measures like compulsory CCTV, which can strengthen safeguarding in nurseries, we need to explore the operation of the inspection and accountability framework in the early years, so that every parent can be sure that when they entrust their precious child to an early years setting, they will be safe?

[Tulip Siddiq]

I absolutely agree. As elected officials, we must ensure that we protect our constituents and that when they trust a nursery or childminder with their children, they know they are doing the right thing.

I have some examples in which CCTV has helped to secure convictions, but I warn everyone that the details are quite distressing. The first is the very sad case of Genevieve from Tiny Toes nursery in Greater Manchester, which some people will have read about. While being placed down to sleep in the nursery, Genevieve was tightly swaddled in a blanket. She was strapped face down on to a bean bag without being checked by nursery staff. The nursery worker responsible was convicted of manslaughter using the CCTV footage obtained from the nursery. The footage also disproved the nursery worker’s claim that she had checked on Genevieve every few minutes, and later led to the conviction of one of the perpetrator’s colleagues for the deplorable neglect of four other babies. Tiny Toes nursery, where Genevieve was killed, was rated “Good” by Ofsted five years earlier, but the trial heard evidence suggesting it was run shockingly. On the day Genevieve died, only two members of staff were looking after 11 babies. The previous weekday, there were 16 babies—far in excess of the 1:3 ratio for under-2s in England. If Ofsted had watched the CCTV footage, it would have picked that up.

Key Stage 1 Curriculum

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I thank the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for introducing this debate, and the 106,082 people who signed the petition, of whom 182 are my constituents. I pay tribute to the campaigners, who are here today, for their important work on this topic.

There is a huge body of evidence that demonstrates the paramount importance of play in early childhood. When my two-year-old next door neighbour visited for tea over the Christmas recess, he announced as he stepped through our door, “Where are the toys?” If any of us has any doubt about the paramount importance of play, that is a particular experience that he was looking for on his visit and looks for wherever he goes.

I pay tribute in particular to the work of PEDAL—the centre for research on play in education development and learning—which is a part of the faculty of education at the University of Cambridge. PEDAL is dedicated to amassing evidence on the importance of play and is developing a wealth of resources for practitioners in all aspects of childhood. PEDAL highlights the important role of play in developing relationships and secure attachments for young children, in supporting physical and mental health, good development, learning and communication, and in building good foundational social relationships.

I have had the privilege of visiting many early years settings and primary schools in my constituency and across the country, and I have seen many brilliant examples of play-led learning, particularly in the many schools that that now have forest school programmes that give children the opportunity to go into the outdoors and learn from each other and the natural environment, outside of the formal classroom. The best teachers and early years practitioners make play a part of the curriculum, and work to make all learning fun.

This topic is relevant to aspects of the Education Committee’s current and recent work. We are midway through a big inquiry into the evidence on what makes for good support across the early years. We have undertaken some work to scrutinise the curriculum and assessment review—a topic I will return to—and last year we undertook a major piece of work on SEND, focusing on creating inclusive learning environments for all children and looking at the evidence on the very high number of children who are being failed by a system that is not properly geared to meet their needs. As part of that work, we identified transition points in education as requiring particular attention as the Government consider SEND reform. The transition from the early years foundation stage to key stage 1 is important in that respect.

We are also undertaking work on child poverty. Although play is important in education settings—in formal settings—in early childhood to reduce the attainment gap, access to high-quality play experiences in communities is also vital. My constituency is in the eye of the storm of the housing crisis, with so many families with young children who are not adequately housed and are living in overcrowded, cramped accommodation. For those families in particular, being able to access high-quality play equipment in their local community close to home is vital to their children’s development.

I will briefly pay tribute to a much-loved and much-missed Member of this place, the late right hon. Frank Dobson, who was passionate about play. Under the previous Labour Government, he helped to deliver a step change in investment in play equipment in our communities, and he continued to correspond with me about this topic until he was very near to the end of his life. The erosion of council funding under the Conservative Government for 14 years of course made it harder for councils to keep pace with investment in this space, and in recent years we have seen too many examples of play equipment that has fallen behind best practice and even fallen into disrepair.

I welcome the curriculum assessment review and its focus both on restoring creative subjects to the heart of the curriculum and on reducing the burden of assessment. These are important reforms and they are very welcome. Of course, the curriculum is a framework; it does not dictate individual lesson plans or teaching methods. Consequently, I hope that as the Government continue to develop the guidance around curriculum reform, there will be creative responses to these reforms that give some prominence to play, particularly in key stage 1.

Finally, I will highlight a conversation I had recently—last week, in fact— with the Estonian Education Minister. As we know, Estonia’s education system achieves excellent outcomes. In the early years, it focuses almost entirely on the social and emotional development of children in early childhood as the foundation for more formal learning. The Estonian Education Minister told me, “School is tough in Estonia. We expect children to work really hard. We give them a great deal of content. But they do that on a foundation in the early years that means that they are good co-operators and collaborators with their classmates, that they are good at working in teams, and that they are good at managing their own emotions to engage with learning to the fullest extent.”

This Government have an ambitious programme of reform for education, and a clear commitment both to making childhood better across our country and to investing in the services that support children, particularly in their early years. I hope that as the Government bring forward more detailed guidance to support these reforms and move towards the publication of the schools White Paper, which we expect shortly, the work of the petitioners on the topic of play in the key stage 1 curriculum will be at the forefront of their thinking. Play is important for children’s development, for their engagement in education and for discovering a lifelong love of learning, and the evidence to support that view is very strong.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

Last week, the Education Committee heard from the chief regulator at Ofqual about the demand for GCSEs in both Ukrainian and British Sign Language. He stated:

“There is no legal obstacle to a new awarding organisation that is not currently recognised to deliver GCSEs coming forward and asking to be recognised… That could happen.”

Given the strength of demand for GCSEs in both Ukrainian and British Sign Language, what is the Minister doing to identify, encourage and equip organisations—outside the four main awarding bodies for GCSEs—to step up to deliver these important subjects if there is continued reluctance from the existing exam boards?

[Mr Speaker]

That was another good way of crowbarring something in, but I call the Minister.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Education Committee.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

This morning I visited the Nido Volans Centre, a specialist college in my constituency, and enjoyed a delicious cup of tea made by two students, Marco and Jason. Nido Volans means “Fly the Nest”, and the college provides education and training on independent living and employability skills for young people with special educational needs and disabilities up to the age of 25. Will the Secretary of State join me in celebrating Natspec’s The Power of Specialist FE Awareness Week, and will she assure me that the Government’s SEND reform proposals will fully recognise the vital role of specialist colleges and the need for sustainable funding, so that every young person who can benefit from a specialist college placement has access to one?

[Georgia Gould]

I should very much like to celebrate this week, and I agree about the importance of access to specialist colleges and helping children into work. I have visited specialist providers and seen how proud headteachers are to be helping children into supported internships and helping them with their next steps. They are doing incredibly important work. Our schools White Paper examines how we can help children with special educational needs to thrive into adulthood.

Care Leavers

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sally Jameson (Doncaster Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Today marks the first sitting day of National Care Leavers Month, and what a way to begin. I am grateful for the opportunity to come to the Chamber and talk about the challenges facing young people once they have left children’s social care, and I very much hope that this month Members from across the House can join together in the spirit of raising awareness of these challenges and working together to bring forward solutions. I welcome the fact that the Minister was the chair and author of the independent review into children’s social care over three years ago. I know that he feels deeply about this area and I am sure he will bring a wealth of experience to his role on the Front Bench.

The theme of National Care Leavers Month 2025 is “Rising as Me: Overcoming challenges, transforming, and finding your identity”. The ages of 16 to 25 are a formative time in the lives of many young people, and care leavers should have the same opportunities to enjoy and explore this period; instead, many face a cliff edge of support and services.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Care leavers need support; they need the state to deliver for them when family is sometimes not there in the way that it is for many young people. Does she agree with me and my Select Committee that we need to iron out the differences in support for care leavers across the country and that we should have a national offer for care leavers so that they can rely on support wherever they are in the country?

[Sally Jameson]

I completely agree. As we move through this debate today, I think a theme that will shine through is the need to get rid of what is often a postcode lottery for care leavers.

I want to recognise some of the good work that the Government have already done in this area. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill marks an important step forward in ensuring that support for care leavers endures beyond the age of 18. I welcome the requirement for local authorities to publish a full care offer for care leavers, which will offer clarity and direction. I know that there is already some good practice from my own council in Doncaster, with comprehensive offers of support, including the Staying Put and Staying Close initiatives.

Children’s Social Care

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Fourth Report of the Education Committee, Children’s social care, HC 430, and the Government response, HC 1350.

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dr Huq. I am grateful to the Liaison Committee for granting time for this debate on the Education Committee’s report on children’s social care and the Government’s response. I am particularly pleased that the debate is taking place on the eve of Care Leavers Month, a time of more intensive focus on children’s social care and the support provided to care leavers.

The inquiry was launched by our predecessor Committee in December 2023 to take a comprehensive look at the children’s social care system as a whole. It was interrupted by the general election, but the new Committee decided that the work was too important to drop, and agreed to progress the inquiry to a conclusion. In total, the Committee held eight oral evidence sessions. We heard from a range of experts across the sector, and I am particularly pleased that we held an oral evidence session with four care-experienced young people, who spoke powerfully of their experiences of children’s social care and their hopes for reform.

Children’s social care comprises a set of vital services that support some of our most vulnerable children. Those services include early help and support for families, safeguarding, the care of looked-after children, support for disabled children, and a range of other services. They encompass some of the gravest responsibilities of the state, yet we know that they are under intense pressure.

The erosion of funding, combined with increasing need, has resulted in a situation in which many services are struggling to deliver in a way that is genuinely child-centred. All too often, looked-after children are placed far from home. The outcomes for care-experienced young people are shockingly poor. In 2022, the current Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), who was responsible at the time for the independent review of children’s social care commissioned by the previous Government, said that the system was in need of a total reset.

Although the situation is very serious, that is in no way to deny the extraordinarily hard work and commitment we see among those who work to support children in the care system, and I pay tribute to them at the start of the debate. Social workers, support workers, advocates, foster carers, kinship carers and many others step in to support the most vulnerable children and to try to deliver a secure and solid foundation for their childhood.

However, our inquiry found that many of the problems highlighted by the independent review of children’s social care persist and, in a significant number of cases, have worsened since the review. Witnesses criticised the piecemeal approach to reform, which has focused on new short-term initiatives in a small number of areas, rather than comprehensive change.

There has been a rising need for children’s social care over the past decade. The number of looked-after children has risen by over 20% in the past 10 years, standing at 83,630 in 2024. Over the same period, the rate of looked- after children has increased from 60 to 70 per 10,000 children in the population. The number of section 47 inquiries per year in response to child protection concerns has risen by 57% over the past decade.

That rising need has been in direct correlation to the erosion of funding for early help and support services, such as Sure Start, which played such a critical role in preventing families from reaching crisis point. That is leading to a severe shortage of placements for children in care. In 2024, 45% of looked-after children were placed outside their local authority, and 22% were placed over 20 miles from home. The inquiry heard distressing accounts from care-experienced young people who had been placed far from home. One young person had experienced racism for the first time when she was placed in an area with a very different demographic from her home area. Another had had to get up at 4 am and take long-distance trains to school while on a respite placement because her foster family were on holiday. Another had chosen not to pursue higher education, having experienced such frequent moves during her time in care.

There is an acute shortage of foster care placements. The need for 6,500 new foster carers in England has left local authorities over-reliant on expensive private children’s home providers, despite evidence of disgraceful profiteering in parts of the sector. We found that some local authorities do much better than others at keeping their looked-after children close to home and avoiding the spot purchasing of expensive and often poor-quality private residential places. Our report recommended that the Department publish a national sufficiency strategy for children’s social care and require all local authorities to develop and publish strategies for reducing the number of out-of-area placements.

The Department’s response states:

“While we do not believe a national sufficiency strategy would be responsive enough to children’s needs at a local level, we are working closely with the two RCC”

—regional care co-operative—

“pathfinder areas and supporting improved placement commissioning and forecasting”.

I would like to press the Minister on that. The purpose of a national sufficiency strategy would be to give the Government additional leverage in ironing out the significant variation in practice between local authorities. Local authorities should be adopting best practice on the provision of care placements. We know that some do that really well and therefore have very few children who are not in the borough. Without a national strategy, however, it is hard to see how the Government can grip the extent of the variation.

In response to the severe shortage of foster carers, we recommended that the Department put in place a national fostering strategy and consult on introducing a national register of foster carers. The Department’s response states that it is

“considering the potential costs and benefits of a national register of foster carers”,

but it does not commit to a national strategy.

For many years now, the only method of foster carer recruitment has been advertising, but that is simply not delivering. The conversion rate is shocking: only 6% of people who express an interest in fostering put in an application to do so, and only 32% of applications are eventually approved. That tells us that we need a more comprehensive approach that seeks not only to drum up interest but to seek proactively to address some of the barriers to fostering, particularly those in relation to housing, and to deliver better support and respite arrangements for foster carers.

The inquiry heard about the crucial role played by kinship carers, who step in to look after a child within their network of family or friends when the child’s biological parents are unable to do so. We heard from a young person who described kinship care as

“a loving, caring, beautiful environment where I felt nurtured and valued”.

Kinship care is often the best arrangement for children whose parents cannot look after them, as it helps them to maintain secure attachments within their family. However, the Committee also heard about the financial struggles faced by kinship carers, including the fact that 67% of children in kinship care live in a deprived household. Kinship carers act out of love, but they should not be forced into poverty for doing so. Our report recommended that the new allowance for kinship carers should be on a par with the allowance for foster carers, and that entitlements to kinship leave should be included in the Government’s review of the parental leave system.

The Department’s response states that the parental leave review will look at support for kinship carers, but it does not commit to setting the kinship allowance at the same level as support for foster carers. I press the Minister to look carefully at that. There are much higher costs, both to children and to the public purse, when a kinship arrangement breaks down and a local authority has to fund a foster placement or a children’s home placement for a child. Kinship carers are the unsung heroes of children’s social care, and they need to be properly supported.

Our report concluded:

“It is unacceptable that the continuation of the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund was not announced until 1 April 2025, leaving families and children uncertain about the future of their support.”

We recommended that the Department end the annual cliff edge of uncertainty faced by adoptive families and make funding for the adoption and special guardianship support fund permanent. We also expressed our concern about the decision to limit the funding per child within the ASGSF and recommended that the Government keep a very close watch on the impact of that decision and reinstate the previous level of funding rapidly if there are significant adverse effects. The Department’s response confirmed that funding for the adoption and special guardianship support fund has been committed for 2026-27, but it did not commit to making the fund permanent.

Our inquiry heard that outcomes for care-experienced young people are far worse on many measures than for their non-care-experienced peers. That is a shocking indication of the failures of the children’s social care system. Some 39% of care leavers aged 19 to 21 are not in education, employment or training, compared with 13% of all young people aged 19 to 21. Only 15% of care leavers go to university by the age of 19, compared with 46% of children who have not been in care. Approximately one in four—perhaps more—of the adult prison population has been in care, and between 30% and 50% of homeless people are estimated to have spent time in care.

Our inquiry heard about the financial difficulties faced by young people on leaving care. One young person, Jake Hartley, had to use food banks and borrow money to pay bills after turning 18. Louise Fitt told us that she had to drop A-levels after turning 18 due to the need to work and support herself financially. She said:

“I always wanted an education, but I had to sacrifice that because I have to eat, I have to have a roof over my head; that is so important. We should not have to choose between that. We should be allowed to study if we want to… It is not nice being left on your own at 18 to go into the adult world and to figure it out.”

The report recommended that the Department for Education develop a national care offer to harmonise support for care leavers across the country. In response, the Department stated that it had launched a new website

“which brings together all relevant information in an easily accessible format.”

I want to press the Minister on that point. Care leavers should not face a postcode lottery for support. There is simply no justification for that. A website with information about the inconsistent support available in different areas is not the same as a national care offer. My Committee is clear that the Government should commit to a national offer to ensure that no care-experienced young person falls through the cracks and that care-experienced young people can feel confident to move, go to university or take up employment without feeling that their aspirations are constrained by worries about whether they will be supported.

Our report also expressed concerns about the Government’s proposal to reduce support through universal credit for those aged under 22 who are care experienced, and recommended that care leavers be exempted. In its response, the Department said that

“no decisions have been made yet”

and that it would

“consider consultation feedback before implementing any changes.”

As the Government prepare to consider welfare reforms, I urge the Minister to make the strongest representations to his colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions and the Treasury on this issue. It would make a huge difference.

We are concerned by the Government’s refusal to commit to a number of our recommendations. We recommended that the Department implement the recommendation of the independent review of children’s social care to develop universal standards of care that apply to all children’s homes, including supported accommodation, ensuring that children in all settings receive care where they live. In its response, the Department stated:

“Rather than prioritising development of a single universal set of standards, we are focusing on options for updating some of the most out-dated National Minimum Standards to ensure they reflect the latest ambitious goals we have for children and to bring them into better alignment with more recently developed standards.”

I urge the Minister to look again at that recommendation, which would represent greater ambition for the quality of accommodation and support that children receive.

The Committee recommended that the Department introduce national eligibility criteria for disabled children’s social care. The Department responded that it was waiting for the Law Commission’s recommendations on disabled children’s social care and would “set out any plans for reform in due course.”

Whatever the outcome of the Law Commission’s work, it is vital that the postcode lottery currently experienced by families with a disabled child is addressed.

We recommended that the Department take forward the recommendation of the independent review of children’s social care to introduce an opt-out model of independent advocacy for all children in care. In its response, the Department said that it would

“introduce new National Standards for Advocacy for Children and Young People and revised statutory guidance on Providing Effective Advocacy for Children and Young People Making a Complaint under the Children Act 1989 in 2025.”

I know that this topic is very close to the Minister’s heart. I urge him to go further than the response indicates and look at how access to independent advocacy can be maximised for all children in care.

We welcome the Government’s commitment to family group decision making in relation to children on the edge of the care system, but we recommended that the Department clarify the specific model of family group decision making in statutory guidance to ensure that best practice is followed in all local authorities. In response, the Department said:

“It is a local authority’s decision on which model of FGDM will best serve the families they support after considering the evidence.”

I urge the Minister to look again at producing guidance for local authorities. Family group decision making is a very effective tool for driving better outcomes for children, but only if it is properly understood and rigorously implemented. There are risks in an approach that does not guarantee the quality of this work.

Finally, the Committee recommended that the Department put in place a strategy for supporting children and young people at risk of extra-familial harm. The Department emphasised that it had strengthened the multi-agency response to extra-familial harm through updated statutory guidance. I encourage the Minister to pay further attention to this work. Extra-familial harm is a growing cause of children entering the care system, particularly as teenagers, and our evidence points to systems that are not joined up and are often ill-equipped to protect children from threats outside the home. Indeed, our evidence says that removing a child from their home can harm them further, rather than protecting them from the threats they are experiencing that do not come from within their family network.

By intervening in the lives of children and families through children’s social care, the state exercises some of its gravest responsibilities. The stakes are very high and the consequences of failure can be catastrophic, but there are also huge rewards if we get things right. More families would be able to thrive together, and more children would be able to overcome adverse childhood experiences and thrive in education. Disabled children would be able to access education and opportunities on an equal footing with their peers.

Even more importantly, the effectiveness of this work is fundamental if the Government are to meet some of their other challenges. If the Government are serious about tackling homelessness, or about tackling the intense crisis in the criminal justice system, they must also be serious about the outcomes for children in the care system. This work is of the utmost importance and my Committee supports the Government in their mission to break down the barriers to opportunity and to create a country in which every child can thrive.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Hayes]

On the work on extra-familial harms, what engagement is the Minister having with colleagues in the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government? That very much reflects my perspective as a constituency MP and the heartbreaking cases I have seen in my constituency, where a family needed to move due to an extra-familial harm to a child. The social housing system is unable at the moment to protect the family’s tenancy rights. What happens is that families then move into temporary accommodation, and the whole stability of their life unravels as a consequence. In the previous Parliament, I put forward a proposal under the name Georgia’s law, which was named for one of my constituents who experienced exactly that, with utterly tragic consequences for her family. I wonder whether the Minister might pick that up with colleagues cross-departmentally.

[Josh MacAlister]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising what sounds like the very important idea for Georgia’s law. I would be really delighted to hear more from her about that. If there are aspects that I can take forward with Ministers in other Departments, I will do so.

Regarding information sharing, we are making big changes to set the expectations in different systems, so that they can confidently share information. We have a single unique identifier that enables that to happen. Those pilots are under way at the moment, and the Bill will allow for that.

We want to see support for care leavers that is consistent and strong. The Bill includes national Staying Close support, and we will set out soon more details about what that support should include and the expectations across the country for it. It will help care leavers to live independently, but I stress that one of the changes that I would like us to see as a Government is a shift away from always talking about getting care leavers to the point of independence, because what they actually need from the care system is not independence, but inter- dependence, connection, a sense of belonging and love. That should be the driving purpose of both care and the leaving care system. Many of the things we are trying to provide through a state function are much more naturally provided through organic family networks.

Specifically on the question about the Government’s recent announcement of support for higher education, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase, we will guarantee the maximum maintenance support for care leavers going to university, without a means test. That change, announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education at the Dispatch Box last week, has been widely welcomed.

Ofsted inspections will, and have already started to, provide a dedicated grade looking at the experience of care leavers, which means that there will be a focus on that.

On the question of the adoption and special guardianship support fund, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase and the Front-Bench spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset, I am attracted to my hon. Friend’s idea about wider support. There are options for wider support. I met adopters and adoption support staff myself in recent weeks, and especially during National Adoption Week, and there are a number of options. I want to bring forward a longer-term plan for the ASGSF, to provide confidence and certainty, and I want to continue speaking to Members of this House, but also to members of the adoption community and to special guardians, who are part of that community. We will come back with more detail on that issue, but I recognise the importance of what it provides.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Hayes]

I thank all hon. Members for contributing to this debate on a Thursday afternoon. For the benefit of anybody watching these proceedings externally, I should say that Thursday afternoons are a challenging time for hon. Members, when many of them have constituency commitments. The debate has therefore been characterised by the quality of the contributions, but not necessarily their quantity. It has been consensual and constructive, and it is important that we have brought the issues affecting some of the most vulnerable children in our country to the attention of the House.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk (Euan Stainbank) for sharing his experience of pursuing, at a local level, making care experience a protected characteristic. Important work is going on in many local authorities on that theme, and I look forward to undertaking further work in the Education Committee to look at the evidence coming from local authorities that have implemented that approach of the benefits that it brings. I too pay tribute to Terry Galloway for all of his campaigning work in that area.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey), and pay tribute to him for the contribution he makes to the Education Committee. We are lucky to benefit from his experience of senior leadership in his local authority and his lived experience—they are valuable for the work of the Committee. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury), who also spoke powerfully based on his lived experience, and we have benefited from him bringing it to the debate.

Finally, I thank the Minister for his response. The Select Committee is pleased to see him in his place, with the depth of experience and commitment that he brings to this area of policy. We look forward to continuing to scrutinise work on it and to seeing some of the announcements he made bear fruit in the lives of children and young people across the country.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Fourth Report of the Education Committee, Children’s social care, HC 430, and the Government response, HC 1350.