Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Review

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness the Minister may be surprised to hear that, having read the review, my initial thoughts are positive—a view that echoes what many in the education, care and children’s charity sectors are saying. She knows that there is a “but” coming, but I will delay that for the moment.

The Statement says that it is proposed to establish a new single, national special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision system across education, health and care. That is welcome. But there is not a great track record of government departments working together. Too often, there is a silo mentality in the Civil Service, which is long established and often insurmountable. That cannot be the case in terms of this review or it will fail in its aims.

There are three key challenges that the SEND reforms need to address. The first is poor outcomes for children. The second is that navigating the system is often a traumatic experience for families, with many left to reach crisis point before getting meaningful support. The third concerns not delivering value for money. How was it that the £1 billion deficit in the dedicated schools grant, referred to by the Secretary of State yesterday, was ever allowed to happen? He spoke of being ambitious for young people, but where has that ambition been for the past 12 years? Where was that ambition when he was Minister for Children and Families? The Secretary of State cannot disown the legacy of 12 years of Conservative Governments, which have left us with a broken, adversarial and aggressive system that is letting down young people and often leaves families in despair.

So who is responsible for the £1 billion shortfall? The answer is central government, which I suspect is why the DfE appears to want to introduce a funding agreement, or contract system, with local authorities to secure provision. Where else have we heard about funding agreements with the DfE? With academies, of course—so this would be more of the inflexible rod of central government. Will any new system be successful if local endeavour, creativity and innovation are ironed out of it?

A vicious cycle of late intervention, low confidence and inefficient resource allocation is driving the challenges for effective SEND provision. The current system does not prescribe in detail exactly who should provide and pay for local services, leaving it to local agreement and First-tier SEND Tribunals. Similarly, delivery of alternative provision is inconsistent across areas and schools. As a result, parents, carers and providers feel that they have no choice but to seek EHCPs and, in some cases, specialist provision, as a means of legally guaranteeing the right and appropriate support for children and young people. The Government’s reform simply must do much better than this in terms of the support given to parents of children with special educational needs.

It may or may not be a coincidence that the 13-week consultation that the Secretary of State launched yesterday will reach its conclusion at the end of June, which is around the time when the independent review of children’s social care is due to report. That would be entirely appropriate, as the SEND review cannot be seen in isolation—and I do not believe that the Government do see it in isolation.

Early intervention is essential in correctly identifying needs, but the current system often prevents that. All too often, local authorities need to spend on non-discretionary services, such as child protection, taking money away from preventive services like children’s centres. The barriers that prevent children from having their needs met as early and as close to home as possible must be removed.

We welcome the recognition in the Green Paper of the importance of building expertise and leadership in SENCOs. This would dovetail with the Government’s proposals in the skills Bill for SEND to be an integral part of initial teacher training. Perhaps the Minister could confirm that that is how she sees it as well. However, many children with complex and interrelated physical, health and learning needs, such as those with cerebral palsy, autism or communication difficulties, require a specialist approach to education which is provided by professionals with expertise and a deep understanding of their condition and how it impacts on their learning and development.

The reforms that emerge following the consultation should ensure that the best possible use is made of prompt specialist expertise to enable vulnerable children with disabilities to be identified and assessed early, opening the way to delivery of the optimum level of support throughout their education so that they can reach their potential. It is important that alternative provision—too often hidden away—is included in the Green Paper. We also welcome the integrated role and the recognition of the need to improve oversight of AP placements.

The role of colleges in supporting SEND students is understated in the Green Paper, which is contradictory given that the aim of the reforms is to create a system that serves young people all the way through to age 25, from childhood to adulthood. Colleges are a lifeline for students with SEND, many of whom have struggled at school but thrive in a college environment. Many students with EHCPs progress to their local college where they are supported into independence and often into work. Can the Minister say what the DfE sees as the role of colleges in their provision for SEND students and what resources will be made available to support that role?

Resources is, of course, the but. All of this is dependent on the provision of adequate resources and on that score, I fear the mood is more downbeat. I have already mentioned the DSG deficit; the Statement mentions £1.4 billion of capital spend on high needs between 2023 and 2025. Presumably, this is to increase capacity and places within schools. It averages out at roughly £60,000 per school on a one-off basis. Will the Minister say how the Government imagine that capital spend flowing?

Finally, the Secretary of State also says in his Statement that there is to be an additional £1 billion in the current financial year for children and young people with high needs, but then what? Is that figure to be consolidated in the high needs budget? The families of children with special needs of all kinds deserve to be told.

No matter the Government’s good intentions in terms of SEND and AP provision, without the resources to ensure a system that is fair, joined-up and effective from an early point in a child’s life, little will change for those families that so desperately need support for their children.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, first I remind the House of my declared interests in this field: I am dyslexic; I am president of the British Dyslexia Association; I am a long-established user of assistive technology and chairman of a company that provides that across the education and working sector.

The best thing about the system is acceptance of the problem. In the current system, you are advised to get legal advice to get the best results. If ever there was a definition of failure, that is it: people cannot get the help they need from the mainstream system which the law dictates unless they have legal support. There really is no bigger condemnation, and I congratulate the Minister on bringing forward something that recognises that. The system we have has not worked. It has not worked for a variety of reasons, mainly, I feel, because the school process, whereby schools take money out of their budgets to support individual pupils, is counterintuitive to the school. They can take £6,000 out of their mainstream budget to support a pupil, but not put £6,000 into training staff to meet the recurring needs.

We talk about pupils with a commonly occurring condition, but I agree that this is not the full package: there is a range of subjects and most people who come into this category have a cocktail of conditions. If they are lucky, with good parents—the tiger parent—fighting for support, a bit of resource, they generally get a decent result, even if they have to pay lawyers. If they do not have that, they get a bad result and will end up in alternative provision. Can the Minister give me some idea about how those who will initially be below the threshold for intervention needed for the plans will get help and support? I cannot see how that will occur.

The noble Baroness will say something positive about SENCOs, which is good, but it requires more than that. It requires a recognition strategy caused by having good teachers, teachers with knowledge, in place to identify and get help in early. Because we all know that is the way it works: identify early, get strategies in place, get structure, and there is less resistance from the pupil. How will we do that with this system? How will we make sure that the system knows what it is doing when somebody starts to fail? Are we going to have a degree of flexibility built into this national plan?

Why can I never remember the exact name of the phonics system? It is specialist synthetic phonics. The Government say that the phonics system is suitable for everybody; guess what? The British Dyslexia Association, the biggest individual group, says it does not work for dyslexics, so we will need an alternative provision of teaching and how to implement that throughout the system to get the best out of the biggest cohort. It is not the only cohort, but it is the biggest. How will we do that? How will we make that work if we do not have a degree of flexibility built in and do not address the fact that certain people will always struggle?

We cannot ignore what happened yesterday. Apparently, 90% of pupils in this country are going to reach literacy standards. I have already identified 10%—and that is a conservative estimate—of those who will have extra problems with reading and writing. We can also stick on 5% or 6% who are dyscalculic. But wait, look at the good news—some of them are included in the first 10%, so they actually have multiple disability problems. It is called “comorbidity”, but I think that “co-occurring” sounds better. You can stick dyspraxia and autism in there, and they are just the hidden disabilities. How will we achieve this unless there are people who can identify early, and not take it to this system of struggling identification? I quite understand that the Minister may well be able to make it less legally driven, but there is a danger that it will go back there.

I hope that the Minister can give us some idea about guidance. If the Government want to achieve their high literacy levels, how about someone who word processes by talking and listening to their computer, as opposed to just tapping the keyboard? That is available to everyone. I know that the Minister has had some experience with this; she is the first Minister I did not need to show this technology to.

A slightly more flexible approach will get far better results here. If the Minister can assure us that, with guaranteeing standards, they agree with that flexibility, all things are possible. If we go back to saying, “No, this is the way we should do it”, and having conflicting stories, we will just have failure—it may not be quite as bad, but we will still have failure.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their remarks and acknowledge the opening positivity of the noble Lord, Lord Watson. I genuinely believe that the reason his initial response to the review was positive—“buts” permitting—was because my ministerial colleagues and officials in the department have worked really closely with parents, carers and young people with disabilities. This review has been co-created with them, and we thank them enormously for their time.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, rightly highlighted the adversarial system which we face today, with parents feeling forced to go to a tribunal to get suitable provision for their children. We really believe that our plans will lead to much greater transparency about what is available for their child in their local area, and much great clarity about how it can be provided. We very much hope that, combined with our offer around mediation, parents will feel that their voices are heard—and heard early—and that their child’s needs can be met, ideally, as close to home as possible.

Both noble Lords rightly stressed the importance of early intervention, and I am sure that they also share our aspiration in terms of quality and consistency of provision. It is really striking—for example, when comparing local authorities and the percentage of children with an education, health and care plan who end up in a specialist setting—that the same child is six times as likely to end up in a specialist setting in one part of the country, compared with another. That spreads through the system, including those without an EHCP. We hope that one of the building blocks for earlier intervention will be clarity. This clarity will be achieved through new national standards which will set out which needs can and should be met effectively in mainstream provision, and the support which should be available there without the need for an education, health and care plan. It will also provide guidance on when a child or young person does need an EHCP and whether they need a specialist placement. I am sure that the House shares our concern not just for those children who are diagnosed late, but those children who are never diagnosed at all and do not get the support they need.

We also hope that reinforcing the provision that exists in mainstream schools for children with special educational needs and disabilities will help with early intervention. Our ambition is that we should have a truly inclusive education system so that mainstream provision, supplemented by targeted support when it is required—by which I mean those specialist interventions for children but also pastoral interventions—will allow them to thrive in a mainstream setting. We also want timely access for those with more complex needs to specialist support or placements in alternative provision.

We are trying to balance the work we are doing in consulting on and planning a system that works more effectively for young people with not waiting to make sure that the funding that the noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred to, gets to young people through their local authorities as quickly as possible. We are investing more in this system than we ever have. In 2022-23 the high-needs budget will be £9.1 billion, and it is set to increase further over the coming years. Therefore, we have made our commitments in revenue funding but also, critically, in capital funding, providing up to 33,000 additional places for children requiring specialist provision.

Looking to the future, the review proposes a system of funding bands and tariffs so that people better understand the level of future funding they can expect to receive. We will move to arrangements for funding schools directly, rather than through the local authority funding formula, but that will obviously take some time to implement. We also think that improvements in the quality of provision will be driven by the local inclusion plans, which every area will prepare in a multiagency way with their health and social care and education partners, and, critically, with parents and carers. That in turn will be reinforced by local dashboards, so that we have real transparency across the country about what is working, what needs more attention and how we can learn from one another.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred to the 2014 reforms and the need to have really effective implementation. We are absolutely aware of the need to learn lessons from 2014. We are setting up a special delivery board, which will oversee the rollout of these policies. We are also establishing a £70 million change programme for this work so that we can test and refine proposals before we scale up.

In response to the noble Lord’s question about further education settings, we absolutely agree that they are an incredibly valuable resource for young people with special educational needs. Our proposals will allow FE settings to be absolutely clear about the support that they are expected to deliver for young people. We continue to work with stakeholders in that sector so that our proposals are shaped by their expertise.

On the questions from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, regarding dyslexia more broadly and the use of technology, it is fair to say that there is a range of views about the use of phonics for children with dyslexia and the right place for technology. I would be very glad, if the noble Lord would be interested, to arrange for him to meet colleagues in the department so that we can give the points he raised the time that they deserve.

In closing, the Government are ambitious for all our children. For children with special educational needs and disabilities, as for every other child, we are determined to build an education system where they can get the right support, in the right place, at the right time.

Schools White Paper

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I will pass on my noble friend’s very warm words to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State. I am glad that she appreciates the White Paper. I agree with her wholeheartedly about what parents want. I was lucky enough to spend some time with a group of parents yesterday while visiting a school in Newham, where 94% of the children have English as an additional language. The mothers and fathers to whom I spoke were all crystal clear about how important it was for their children to achieve.

In relation to my noble friend’s specific questions, the Education Endowment Foundation, which we fully endowed through, and announced in, the White Paper, provides us with the academic rigour in terms of evaluating different interventions across the education system, so that teachers, school leaders and MAT leaders can feel confident in the interventions that they use. All that we have suggested in the White Paper has been supported and recommended by the EEF. In relation to excluded children, if my noble friend will bear with me for another day, we are taking the Statement about the special educational needs and alternative provision Green Paper in this House tomorrow, when I will be delighted to talk about that in more detail.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, there is a great deal in this White Paper on special educational needs and teacher training. Indeed, teacher training is the main thrust of it. Then we talk about 90% literacy. Some 15%—or 10% if you are being conservative—of the population are dyslexic. Another 5% are dyscalculic. If you put the other “disses” in there, you have a great pot of people who are going to struggle in the classroom. How, unless you have a major investment in special educational needs, are you going to hit that target? Or are we going to do something very sensible such as saying that if somebody communicates through a computer coherently—every computer that you buy now has a built-in voice-operated section and read-back facility—we will count that as being literate? If we are, we can achieve it. If not, we are basically going to break the back of people achieving an unrealistic target if it is still with a pen and paper. If the Minister can give me an answer now, it will help the rest of the debate today, and the debate on the Statement tomorrow.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I hope I can give the noble Lord a fuller answer tomorrow, when we talk about the SEND Green Paper. But in terms of this document talking a lot about children with special educational needs and disabilities, that is intentional. We are absolutely clear that the best place for the majority of children with special educational needs is in mainstream education close to their home and their friends. We need to make sure that mainstream schools are a safe, welcoming, supportive and effective environment for those children. We have looked at and tried to model the interventions that are set out in the White Paper to see how we can reach the targets that we have set out. As the noble Lord knows, however, currently only 22% of children with special educational needs reach the expected standard, compared with an average at key stage 2 of 65%—so it is well below what we need to get to.

Schools: Creative Subjects and the English Baccalaureate

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

At the risk of repeating myself, we have announced that we will publish a cultural education plan together with DCMS, working jointly across government, which is the right way to approach it. We will shortly announce our national plan for music education. We are doing a lot of work and continue to invest around £115 million per year in cultural education.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister has told us on numerous occasions that the Government like to listen to employers. When Netflix representatives came to speak to my group, I asked them what they wanted in trainees and whether they wanted people with more English and maths. They looked blankly at me and said, “No, that’s not what we are looking for. We want more rounded people.” Will the Government follow their own mantra and make sure they talk to the big employers, who do not seem to want what the Government are offering?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government work extremely closely with employers. Our T-level programme was developed with over 250 employers. I would ask the noble Lord why we are seeing such huge international investment in our film and creative industries if we are not providing the talented people they need.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Addington Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Thursday 24th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, this House carried an amendment in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, who cannot be in his place today, concerning universal credit conditionality—this has been referred to several times—but it was not accepted when the Bill was considered in the other place.

If the Government are to achieve their levelling-up ambitions and enable individuals to secure better-paid employment with improved prospects, then it is essential to achieve greater integration of the support provided for skills development and training by the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham wishes me to say that, on these Benches, we are most grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Stedman-Scott and Lady Barran, for their very constructive and helpful meeting with the right reverend Prelate and their subsequent letter setting out how this better integration is being actively pursued, the range of provision open to universal credit claimants seeking to retrain, and how work coaches are able to exercise appropriate discretion when applying universal credit conditionality rules.

I know that the right reverend Prelates the Bishop of Durham and the Bishop of Coventry—the latter now in his capacity as lead bishop for FE and HE—welcome the opportunity to contribute to the consultation on equivalent or lower qualifications, which will engage Peers in more detail, along with the outworking of the detail behind the lifelong learning guarantee. In the light of these assurances, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham is content not to press the matter.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, as we all struggle through this slightly unfamiliar process, the amendment I have down was inspired by the letter we got from the Secretary of State. I was told, as the noble Baroness has said, that we do not need to do it because the occupational standards will cover it. Great. But what really made me table the amendment was the body that the Government consulted: the Universities’ Council for the Education of Teachers.

My declaration of interest probably comes in here. I am president of the British Dyslexia Association, and my various other interests are on the register. I spoke to that association—the biggest group involved here—which also covers dyscalculia. It has had no contact with that body—and it is giving the advice. Dyslexia is the biggest of the groups involved, but it is not the only one. Dyscalculia is right up there, along with dyspraxia—that is all those beginning with “dys-” covered—and then there is ADHD, autism and the others. Those are the main, non-obvious groups that will occur in an ordinary classroom. This is what the duty was aimed at. Are those doing the teaching capable of understanding the needs of the people they are teaching? Are they giving advice and creating strategies, so that the people they are teaching actually succeed in what they are doing?

All I am talking about is making sure that the duties we have are acknowledged, and jolly good too. We are so well prepared for these duties that we have a growth in law firms making sure they are enforced throughout the education system. The law is so clear and so well provided for that for parents—tiger parents—the best way of getting through the education system is by paying lawyers to make sure they get through.

It is a mess. It is said that you cannot impose standards, but if you are part of the standards, you can update them, and this duty can be updated as well. We are dealing with about 20% to 25% of the cohort—probably more in further education. These are people who do not get the plan. They have a problem that means they will probably underachieve and not handle the classroom well. Expecting the teaching workforce to have a clear understanding of this is not too much to ask.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Addington]

At end insert “and do propose Amendment 21B instead of the words so left out of the Bill—

21B: After Clause 19, insert the following new Clause—
“Employer-led occupational standards for further education teaching
The employer-led occupational standards for further education teachers must include a working knowledge of how the most commonly occurring special educational needs will affect students in the normal educational and training environment within an institution.””

[Lord Addington (LD)]

I beg to move and wish to test the opinion of the House.

Education (Careers Guidance in Schools) Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 4th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, it is rather daunting to follow the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who has been described today as the don in this field of career education by someone on his own side. I have not disagreed with him much on this subject and I do not think I did at all today. He says he does not care about reputation, at the age of 87; I think we will use his reputation when he reaches 88 and 89 to try to put some pressure on the Government on this.

The Bill is a good but small thing. It takes a step forward and deals with some of the historical anomalies and oddities of academies that we are constantly dealing with. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, is absolutely right about the attitude, “We cannot do this because it is an academy”—but this is supposed to be a universal education system. We go back and forth on this all the time, and a Bill that at least sets that precedent—regardless of its primary purpose—is taking a step forward. Mark Jenkinson, who is watching us very astutely from just outside the Bar, may have set a precedent he did not look to set.

On making sure that there is more advice on careers guidance, I am struck by one thing: you really cannot start talking about this early enough. The term “careers guidance” might not be right for primary schools—“lifestyle choices” might be better—but I am reminded of what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said about conservative changes: if something is already there, at least people will have a rough idea of what you are saying. We can spend our entire lives reinventing the wheel; if we want to make some small changes, we might get a term that we know and then slightly adapt it. Stereotype-breaking is essential, to make sure that people actually know what is going on.

This is a very odd time; now, we have to get people not just to aspire higher but to think laterally. The level 4 and 5 executive shortage in our country, which was probably done no favours by saying that everybody should go to university to get to level 6, so they then have to de-skill in certain subjects, has been going on for decades and has been made slightly worse. We must think differently. That means we need informed people not only giving information but interpreting it. Those who made that point were right—“Here is a list of facts; read down the list”, but what do the facts mean? What are the options? What steps do I take, and what support is there to enable me to take them?

I had a nagging suspicion that I would end up agreeing with everybody; I discern that I will clearly have to read my noble friend Lord Shipley’s report, and not just the executive summary. I am not sure I should thank him for that.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

We have made it very simple to read by having lots of illustrations. There are about 30 illustrations, which is very unusual for a Select Committee report, because we thought that now people—particularly with all the government press conferences—look at charts and understand the issues very quickly. It will not be too demanding for the noble Lord to look at the pictures.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Addington (LD)]

I walked into that, didn’t I? I thank the noble Lord. I turn to the next report I will have to read, from my friend the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. Special educational needs are an area which will put greater demand on staff. We are talking about 20% to 25% of the population. If you have a problem accessing forms of education because of special educational needs—an effect which I think we can agree applies here—you will need to apply things differently. I remind the House of my interests in this and as a dyslexic who uses such things as voice operation, having gone through how it applies; with every technological advance, you will have to learn how to apply it.

I reiterate to the Government one more time: if they insist that people have to pass English and maths in a written, pen-and-paper test, they will effectively be countering their argument. The recent announcements on access to higher education and other things go counter to their own legislation. If the Government have time, to get some idea while we are going through this about how that guidance will appear would be really helpful—and how we make sure it is coherent and holistic, transferring people to better options and continuing to give them the basis to transfer afterwards. I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, who said that people will no longer be in the same job for life. We must try to get that flexibility and knowledge built in.

This Bill is a good step forward. I encourage all noble Lords to get behind it and make sure it gets on to the statute book, but it is only part of the process. It sets the precedent for making sure that all schools, regardless of how they were founded and when and in which piece of ridiculous or great legislation—depending on your point of view or how much it has annoyed you recently—in our universal system have a universal system of supply. It sets a precedent for making sure you know that what happens both in your local environment and down the road, even if it is a long road, is also available, and that you might have to transfer between them. These are all important things. We must make sure that it is coherent throughout.

I hope the Minister can also give a small assurance that we will make sure that, when looking at all forms of providers throughout this legislation, we apply with sanctions, for the reasons raised earlier. It would be interesting to get a little nod towards that.

Can the Minister give us a coherent assurance that we will make sure that we invest in the people who deliver? Without that, this legislation does not really matter. Will there be another series of lists and another tier of teachers who have gone through the A-level system giving advice about what could be done to get to level 4 via a T-level—which, once again, we do not understand yet properly? That will not help. We need people who are properly trained, because training is the important bit. Unless it is of high quality, we may as well give up and go home now.

Higher Education Reform

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, in May 2019, the then Prime Minister, Theresa May, launched the report of the Augar review. That was a long time ago, and it feels like a very long time ago. I wish I could say that the time has been well used, but let us have a look at what has been put out in this report.

First, there are changes to student loans. From the academic year 2023-24, the interest rate on loans will be changed to RPI for everybody, which is interesting, because Ministers keep telling me that RPI is no longer an official statistic because of concerns over its methodology. I can only assume that, somehow, it is not good enough when you are paying money out to benefit recipients but it is fine when you are taking money away from students. If only the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, were here, I think he would have something to say about that.

Secondly, it reduces the repayment threshold to £25,000 and increases the repayment term to 40 years—much of a working life. For those on the current loan scheme, the repayment threshold will stay at the current level until 2024-25, which, given the current inflation rate, is quite a bit of fiscal drag. The effect of these measures together is highly regressive, hitting the lowest earners the hardest.

Paul Johnson of the IFS said this about it:

“looked at from the point of view of progressivity, redistribution, winners and losers, the reforms look truly horrible. Low-to-middle-earning graduates could be made about £20,000 worse off over their lifetime by the changes; the highest earners could benefit by £25,000.”

The equality analysis published alongside the consultation document said that

“among new borrowers, the largest proportional increases in lifetime repayments will be from lower earners … by 174% for those in the 4th decile”.

Meanwhile,

“the highest lifetime earners among new borrowers will experience large decreases in lifetime repayments (down 26%)”.

Why have the Government chosen to reform the loan system in a way which so profoundly benefits higher earners and hits those on lower incomes?

If noble Lords are wondering what the attraction of this particular approach is, it is perhaps worth mentioning that, thanks to a quirk of government accounting rules, these changes make the public finances look quite a bit better, but only in the short term. The IFS says that it will take about £1 billion off the cost of the student loan scheme, but:

“We expect the budget deficit to fall by about £5 billion in 2023 as a result of the changes, with subsequent hits to the deficit further down the road as new loans accumulate less interest.”


It finishes, drily:

“This will please the Treasury.”


Indeed it will.

However, this will not please many people because the pain does not fall equally in other ways. The equality analysis says that women, disabled people, some ethnic minorities and those from certain regions are likely to face increased lifetime repayments. Men gain and women lose. On average, men will repay around £5,500 less and women will pay £6,600 more. The IFS notes a remarkable comment:

“the taxpayer cost of funding men’s student loans will actually increase as a result of the reform … the saving on women’s student loans alone is greater than the total at £1.6 billion.”

Women students are not only paying for the reduced cost to the Exchequer; they are paying for the men’s changes as well. The Minister will doubtless say that this discrimination is not intentional, it is just that women earn less. But the Government know that women earn less across their lifetime. So, having known that, can the Minister tell the House what consideration was given to the differential impact of these proposals before deciding on them?

The Government are also consulting on other measures, including reintroducing government controls over student numbers. But not just by a global figure; they are consulting on whether to control them by sector, provider, subject, level or even by mode of study. Are the Government planning to do all of them? Might they do them all? Could the Government conceive of a world in which the Secretary of State could decide that physics is in but history is out? Could he close down the music department at Lindchester University completely? Could he decree that all computing is going to be done in FE from now on? This may not be their plan, but there is no way to tell from the documents published what their plan is. So could the Government give the House some hints?

They are also consulting on minimum eligibility requirements, including an option of requiring level 4 or above—that is a grade C in old money—in maths and English at GCSE. I found it quite hard to work out the numbers affected, because the tables in the equality analysis are quite confusing, but the Minister may be able to shed some light on that. I am pretty sure this will have a differential effect with regard to region and disadvantage.

It is not just about access to university; it is about access to the loan book. The Minister can confirm that presumably a student whose parents—or who themselves—could pay fees upfront has no problem, but then what happens to the more than half of pupils eligible for free school meals who will leave education without GCSE maths and English? Can the Minister tell the House what work has been done to look at the effect of such a plan on poorer children and young people from deprived areas?

There is also a proposal to limit funding for foundation years—and yes, once again this has differential effects. The equality analysis says that

“mature students and black, Asian and mixed/other ethnic minority groups … may be at greater risk of reduced access to HE and choice of provision”.

This is all really very disappointing. Augar was launched amid concerns about fairness and affordability for students, but those are clearly not the drivers at the heart of this response. The loan reforms are regressive and will hit lower-earning graduates. Rather than focusing on raising standards in schools and in HE, they risk penalising those who already find it hardest to get on through education.

Meanwhile, there is nothing on living costs for students, nothing to boost efforts on widening participation and nothing on the timing of admissions—except after a very big think they have decided not to do anything at all about post-qualification admissions. The consultation on the lifelong learning entitlement is still really vague. There is quite a lot on the how but not very much on the what, and certainly not on the why.

We have waited a thousand days for a response to Augar. That is roughly the length of an undergraduate degree, I reckon—you could probably do a PhD in that time; it is pretty much three years. After all that time, where is the strategic plan? Where is the vision for a strong, diverse higher education system that could help all of our young people and students to fulfil their potential? This feels like a missed opportunity. I hope the Minister can persuade me otherwise.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, this is a very odd Statement because it suggests one or two nice things but does not really give us much detail. As the noble Baroness has just pointed out, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, is missed on this one. His intellectually honest toe-caps have gone into the ribs of many of us here and the Government Front Bench has actually felt them on many an occasion. A student finance system that celebrates going from 23% repayment to maybe half is a weird thing. Why do we still persist with this loan system? It is seen to be financially failing—unless creating a form of junk bond at the end of it is the aim. There will be not quite so much junk; that would seem to be about the essence of it.

If we are looking at how we get further education better into the system by giving better bonuses for lifelong learning—a suggestion of something that might be better in the future—we have to get people to go on the courses. What are we doing about careers guidance that would improve what people know about this? The first thing you will have to do is to train teachers, who are, let us face it, predominantly graduates, and we all know that what we did is right—if you do not come from that group, then you are very much in a minority—as we “stick to nurse”. Where is the training to make sure teachers are giving the right information to people or at least stand half a chance of so doing?

This has not got any easier with the introduction of T-levels and the removal of BTECs, which provided a series of fairly established ways of finding your way into higher education and the level 4 and 5 qualifications which are mentioned. We need some clear guidance to get this through and see how they are going to all tag in together. At the moment, I would say that it is an optimistic mess. We are not quite sure what the Government are expecting. It is going to be better, and it just might be that, after my entire lifetime, in relation to people at levels 4 and 5—I think it is technician-level qualification—we might be starting to address that, but we are doing it in a very chaotic way. The paths into education have fundamentally changed over the last couple of years, and they have changed in an incoherent manner.

To come to the last point, which the noble Baroness also touched on, if we have a special educational needs review taking place, why are we putting in a requirement for English and maths, which are the things that certainly the group I come from—that is, dyslexics—find difficult? It is 10% of the population; stick in dyscalculia, and that is another 3%, and those are conservative figures. Why are we making it so much more difficult for this group to get on to that pathway? When it comes to adult entrants into education, we are getting rid of BTECs, which were the way in, and we are saying that people have to have two A-levels. If you want later entrants—if you want entrants after having done, say, a level 4 course—why are we putting this in? It does not make any sense. Can we have some coherence about this?

Reading this as it stands, the Equality Act might have quite a lot to say about it. I have mentioned only two groups; others are available. Can we get some coherence around this? At the moment, the Government have waved a few ideas at us. The repayment structure may be slightly better for the Treasury, but I do not think it makes much difference to anybody else. Can we please hear what the Government are really about? If they are going to limit the amount of money we waste on the repayment structure, they have set themselves a very unambitious target.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness and the noble Lord for their remarks and their questions. The noble Baroness rightly focuses on issues of fairness and access to higher education. The Government have tried to balance fairness to students with fairness to the taxpayer. Currently, a great proportion of the subsidy that the taxpayer makes towards higher education is funded by those who did not have the benefits of that higher education themselves. Students going to university have the advantages of their degree throughout their working lives.

Our estimate is that, over the course of their degree, the average graduate will borrow £39,300 from next year. Today, the average graduate would repay £19,500, and under the new proposed system, they would repay £25,300, so there is still a tremendous subsidy for the average graduate. The noble Baroness focuses on those who are more marginalised and are lower-earners, and she will be well aware that below £25,000 there is no repayment at all.

The noble Baroness also talked about the consultation around limitations on student numbers and minimum-entry requirements. This is, as she well understands, very much part of our drive towards having higher-quality courses. The numbers affected by the consultation—and I would stress it is a genuine consultation; we genuinely want to understand how stakeholders feel about this—and affected by proposed GCSE requirements would be less than 1% of students, and around 1% for the suggested entry requirement at A-level.

The noble Lord focuses on the barrier that that may present to those with special educational needs, but I would respectfully suggest it is also a tremendous barrier for everybody not to have English and maths at a basic level, since they are such an important entry requirement for almost every job. There are not many jobs in this country that you can do if you cannot read, write and add up. That is why the Government have extended their support, so that students can retake English and maths for whatever reason that might be.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, will the noble Baroness give way for a moment? If you have got a disability, it means you have trouble doing it. You have legal requirements that say you are not supposed to discriminate and there are other ways around it. For instance, voice operation—which is available as a standard item on every computer for English. If you are not going to bring that into the system—which would have been a perfectly valid answer—why are you excluding them?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

There is absolutely no intention to exclude at all. The department is heavily focused on trying to improve outcomes for pupils with special educational needs and the noble Lord will be aware of the enormous range of outcomes depending on which school a child with the same disability or special need goes to. We want to equalise those, so it should make no difference where a child goes to school in terms of their outcomes.

If I may continue, the noble Baroness questioned what we were doing in relation to foundation years. I did not quite follow her argument. We are consulting on reducing the maximum fee and loan limits for foundation years, from the current just over £9,000 to £5,197, and that is to bring it in line to be the same amount as an access to a higher education diploma. We hope it will make those foundation years—which are an important access route for those who may be more disadvantaged to get into higher education or potentially for mature students—more accessible.

National Tutoring Programme

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 24th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness about the importance of oracy. My understanding is that there is some discretion, so that tutoring can be tailored to the individual needs of the child.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, can the Minister give us some indication of the bureaucratic costs of delivering these courses outwith the schools? Surely, it would be better if the schools were co-ordinating these from their own resources?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

To repeat myself, 230,000 out of almost 300,000 tuition courses are being delivered by the schools themselves.

Higher Education: T-Levels

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 24th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

In response to the last part of the right reverend Prelate’s question, I say that we would be delighted. We are already hosting a number of round tables, particularly with higher education providers, and would be glad to widen that circle and learn from his expertise and that of others like him. We are working hard to engage with the sector directly. We are providing support and resources so that students can find the course that is right for them.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that we need a better picture of universities— 115 is the figure I had found as well—that might sometimes offer only one or two courses? Students need a better picture of what they are signing up to and what they are removing themselves from if they take the T-level option. Will the Government look at how A-level options can work with the T-level, as they currently do with BTECs?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

To the best of my knowledge there are no plans to look at the noble Lord’s second proposal, because a single T-level is equivalent to three A-levels, so it would perhaps be unrealistic to do that. We are obviously in the very early stages of T-levels. We currently have 11 T-level options, I think. There was some confusion in the early stages about some of the content of those courses and how that translated to universities. However, we remain optimistic about the potential of T-levels.

School Openings: January 2022

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I associate myself with the sentiments of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, about the tragedy in Tasmania. Could the Minister give us some idea of the lessons the Government have learned from the last series of lockdowns, when schools were not there? What strategy will we implement? We know that if you happen to have a house with lots of digital conductivity and devices, you are fine. What capacity is there if children do have to spend time away from the classroom? We want to get kids into schools but we cannot always guarantee it. What are plans B, C or even alpha?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am not sure that the House would want me to go through all the plans, but the top line we have learned—I think we knew this before, but we know it more vividly now—is that the safest place for children is to be in school. On digital connection, we have distributed more than 1.35 million devices to ensure that children can be connected to education remotely, but we also funded the Oak National Academy, which is providing excellent online resources that can be used both in a classroom and at home.

Alternative Education

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

With regard to the Timpson review, where the noble Lord started, one of the vehicles through which we will deliver on all of the recommendations that we have accepted in the Timpson review will be the SEND review, which, as the noble Lord knows, we plan to deliver in the spring. We have already established behaviour hubs with funding of £10 million. We have included training in the early career framework around behaviour and we are clear in all our guidance that off-rolling students with challenging behaviour is unacceptable.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, the link between special educational needs—particularly undiscovered special educational needs—and children being excluded is very well established. When we get this review into SEND, how much work has been done in identifying what is needed in teacher training and professional development to spot at least the most commonly occurring conditions? Will that be a key part of the review and will this be taken into account when looking at what will happen to the high numbers of pupils who are being excluded?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord is right. About 83% of children in alternative provision have special educational needs and 24% of them are on an education, health and care plan, compared with 4% in the wider population. We will be looking at all the best evidence and research to make sure in the SEND review that we deliver for these children who, for the most part, have had a difficult start in life and we need to support them in the best way we can.