Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register, in particular as the founder and chairman of an academy trust with 11,000 children and 18 schools.

In the short time I have available, I will focus on one specific area in the schools Bill. In Part 1, I broadly agree with the move to improve scrutiny of home education—it has become a very worrying issue. Many parents, clearly unable to educate their children, are taking them out of school and we cannot do anything about it. The Government are to be commended on their action, and we will no doubt get into the details as the Bill progresses.

However, if unaltered, the schools part of the Bill will plunge the English education system back into the badlands of 20 years ago, before the previous Labour Government had the courage to begin the reforms that we had built on. I will focus on one area: the watering down of academisation of failing schools. The proposals introduce ambiguity on whether a failing school should be academised. This will present a “get of jail” card for the incompetent management of those schools. Organisations rot from the head down: schools do not fail because of the teachers but because of the people who manage them. Having taken on at least nine failing schools in the last 12 years, I can say, very simply, that the academy trust I founded employs hundreds of teachers who today do a magnificent job under good leadership. Previously, those schools were failing children on an industrial scale.

In defence of this retreat, the line trotted out by the Government is the marvellous new concept of RISE teams: 65 people brandishing clipboards who will run around the country offering advice. If only the Government would listen to those who have tried this before, they would save time, money and, most importantly, not repeat something that has failed comprehensively in the past.

Under my stewardship in the DfE, we had a national leaders of education programme—does that not sound wonderful? RISE teams are just a reheated version. NLEs did not work because there is no line of accountability for the failing school to act on the advice they are given. More often than not, implementing the advice will require strong leadership, such as changing staff structures or bringing budgets into balance.

Do not just take my word for it. In 1998, the last Labour Government did something similar: the beacon schools initiative. The names get ever better, do they not? In that case, the laudable aim was to get high-performing schools to share best practice to raise standards. It was abandoned in August 2005 because there was a lack of clear evidence that the initiative improved weaker schools. My question to the Minister is: what has changed 20 years on? Certainly, human nature has not changed. If weak managers can avoid a reckoning through procrastination without penalty, that is what they will do. It is the Damoclean sword of consequences that will drive change in failing schools.

It is important to say that I do not tolerate failing academies either. Many will know; they had interviews without coffee with me when I was the Minister. The current Government have not addressed this. They have not even seen fit to appoint an Academies Minister, despite them now educating over 80% of secondary children and 40% of primary children.

Addressing failure does not need legislation but just a spotlight on such failures and strong calls for accountability. In my home county of Norfolk, at least two academy trusts have just received financial bailouts from the DfE which should have come with a requirement for mergers or a clear-out of that failing management. That has not happened. This is where the Government’s energy should be directed.

I fear that, as we go through this Bill, a theme we will come across often is that the Government are in essence condemning children to a failed education. It seems they are not prepared to allow the hard edge of intervention to sweep out mediocrity and failure. Those children get only one chance, and we are about to imperil that chance for tens of thousands suffering in badly run schools.

As we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Harris, the Government are simply introducing a two-year delay. Of course, most of those failing schools are in areas of deprivation, so the communities that the Government claim on their Benches to represent will be the ones thrown under the bus, under a senseless ideology. Unless the Government start to listen, I expect this Bill to face a stormy passage as we pit ideology against the interests of children.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

I support this amendment, and I hope to illustrate to the Government that this proposed purpose clause will help them and will be of benefit to the debate in reaching an effective and clear Bill. Like the noble Lord, Lord Meston, I do not have a Second Reading speech; I am focusing only on this amendment.

The noble Baroness on the Government Back Bench, the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, for whom I have the greatest respect, and other noble Lords seemed to be saying, “We don’t need no education Bill purpose clause”. I suggest that many Bills, including this one, would benefit from a purpose clause. It provides clarity, as the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, said, and the ability to check each clause against it to ensure that they would indeed meet the purpose of the Bill. It also provides needed clarity to the debate.

The principle can be seen in any organisation that is trying to think through a change in direction and how to implement it. It starts with the strategy, which is the purpose. Having decided the strategy, it moves on to the tactics—the other clauses are the tactics that fulfil the purpose. Otherwise, you are not quite sure why a whole range of clauses are there. You cannot fit them into the overall plan; there is no strategy, there are only tactics, with the ability for people to cram all sorts of things into a Bill that do not actually meet whatever that strategy was.

The purpose clause, as written, is not controversial. If a further clause in the Bill does not meet purposes (a), (b), (c) and (d), then it can be more swiftly disposed of or amended so as to meet whatever the Bill’s purpose is—which is of course for the Government to decide and accept. However, a purpose clause goes beyond that. Such a clause on the front of the Bill will, for that regrettably small part of the electorate who will read this Bill, provide clarity as to what on earth those hundreds of pages are up to. As we all know, any Bill is quite difficult to read. As the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, just pointed out, the Bill becomes much clearer with a purpose clause. For those tasked with the unfortunate duty of implementing the Bill, to know what they are trying to accomplish will reduce the horrors of compliance.

The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, spoke about outcomes and having active verbs in the purpose clause. Active verbs lead to outcomes, and my noble friend Lord Balfe pleaded for outcomes, not process, to be the Bill’s purpose. In this House, we very often seem to focus on process—how something is going to be done—rather than outcomes: what on earth we are trying to achieve.

I meant to say when I was addressing the good remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, that he should be comforted by the fact that around half the amendments that he complained were taking up so much time in the football Bill came from his side of the House. Therefore, as to his reprehending the length of time—which I also had to sit wearily through—when one points a finger forward, there are three fingers pointing backwards.

My noble friend Lord Balfe, in pleading for outcomes, put his finger on what is wrong with a Bill without a purpose clause. Whatever outcomes the Government wish to achieve, let us know what they are, let us be able to test the Bill against those proposed outcomes, and let us have this purpose clause, as my noble friend Lady Barran has advocated.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I speak in support of the purpose clause, in particular, subsection (1)(a) and (c), improving

“the safety and wellbeing of children”,

and improving

“standards”,

to

“remove barriers to opportunity”.

I also refer to my interests in the register.

As the Minister will have gathered from some 188 pages of amendments, there are serious concerns with the Bill. I am sure she will dismiss many of these as distractions, but I want to assure her that having spent nearly 15 years trying to improve the education of young people, mostly from areas of deprivation, and therefore the opportunities for them, that is not my purpose.

I first give credit to the Government for tackling the issue of kinship care. The educational outcomes for children in care are shockingly bad. If there is any cohort of children in our society that has been dealt a cruel hand, it is those children. Kinship care is often an obvious and decent solution; however, many of these children have been traumatised by several years in severely dysfunctional families, and the task facing the new carer is formidable.

That is why I have always been such a strong advocate for offering boarding school places for those children. Not only does this provide a safe and stable environment but it has shown a dramatic improvement in their outcomes when the data has been analysed. In December 2017, when I was the Minister responsible for this, we launched the boarding school partnerships service. The aim was to link local authorities with the relevant children’s charities and boarding schools themselves.

I will not repeat the data cited by the noble Lord, Lord Nash, on the Royal National Children’s SpringBoard’s Care-Experienced and Vulnerable Children programme, or indeed the comments from the Nottingham University report. However, there is one statistic that he did not mention. Not only are the outcomes for children in boarding care compared to those for a similar cohort extraordinarily higher but the costs are of a magnitude lower. In the sample that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, talked about, the cost for the cohort going into boarding schools was £3.6 million versus £8 million when they were retained in foster or residential care. The additional and perhaps even more important advantage is that it takes pressure off the kinship carers, as the intensity of their role is reduced. Common sense would suggest that this route would make it a much less daunting task. Indeed, how many times in politics do we get a chance to use an innovative measure that is both much cheaper and far more effective than the opportunities being pursued at the moment?

The national curriculum seems to be a wholly unnecessary imposition on a sector that has spent more than 10 years developing curricula that work for their schools and the communities that they serve. It is extremely important to clarify to everyone in this Chamber that every school in England has an obligation to deliver a broad and balanced curriculum; it is not a free-for-all. This is a fundamental tenet of any Ofsted inspection in all phases of education.

Having experienced at first-hand almost dozens of inspections over the years, I know that, in every instance, Ofsted requires to see the materials used and asks teachers to give them feedback on the effectiveness of them from a teaching point of view. In the case of the academy trust that I founded, we have painstakingly built an all-through curriculum for all phases. It has been colossally expensive and time-consuming, but it is working. Children arriving from feeder primary schools into our secondaries make demonstrably faster progress, as they are on a familiar path. In our maths curriculum, we have developed a 70-block building stack which goes from year 2 up to A-level.

Here is a summary of what an Ofsted report said about the curriculum in a recent inspection of one of our schools:

“The school’s curriculum is ambitious. The knowledge pupils need to know to succeed in the future is set out clearly and in a logical order. As pupils, including those with special educational needs … progress through the curriculum they use what they have already learned to understand new information”.


However, it also pointed out weaknesses. That is why, although the school got an overall “Good” with an “Outstanding” for personal development, it did not get an “Outstanding” judgment across the board, and we have addressed those perfectly fair criticisms.

Last year, that school had one of the biggest improvements in its Progress 8 score in the country. When we took it over, it was in such a mess that a campus capable of educating over 1,800 children was down to educating 400, such was its abandonment by the local community. As I speak today, the confidence has returned to the extent that a whole new school building is under construction, and I thank the Minister and her department for that.

My point is: why tear that up? A far more sensible approach would be to require any school failing an Ofsted inspection on its curriculum to then be required to follow the curriculum imposed by the DfE—deal with the 20% at the bottom of the system and do not drag the good ones down pointlessly.

I turn to admissions with the local authorities. I completely accept that there needs to be proper joined-up thinking between local authorities and schools, which should of course include academies. However, it must be for the right reasons and not for the administrative convenience of the local authorities. By that, I mean forcing outstanding schools to reduce their pupil admission numbers just so a failing local authority school does not have to bite the bullet in addressing its own failures.

That happened recently in one of my trust schools in Norwich. Norwich is a zombie zone for primary education. Some 19 of its 24 primary schools last year failed to achieve the national standards at key stage 2. We run two of the five that did. One of them is an outstanding school, but we were asked to halve the pupil admission numbers. The only way a school can do that is by merging year groups with a commensurate drop in standards, as teachers try to teach across an excessively wide age range. We were able to decline that request, but under this new legislation it will be a different story. That was one more act of self-immolation in the battle to raise standards.

Turning to qualified teachers, I believe that this terminology is a complete misnomer. Apparently, someone with a subject-specific degree in, say, maths or science is less qualified than someone with a degree in a different subject than the one they are teaching—but that is fine, because they completed a nine-month course which it is almost impossible to fail. In 2023, only 8% of applicants failed to gain qualified teacher status, and mostly because they dropped out. How can that make any sense? We keep hearing from the Minister how she trusts “great headteachers” and “brilliant schools”; if that is the case, why can she not trust them to hire the people they consider will have the best chances of success for their children?

That is before we get into the reality on the ground, which is that it is becoming increasingly harder to recruit teachers. The rates of exodus from the profession seems to be accelerating, particularly among younger teachers. The Government have even admitted that, in the past few weeks, their much-vaunted additional 6,500 teachers, paid for from the tax on private schools, is proving virtually impossible to achieve. This is just another example of what sounds like a convenient political slogan bearing no relation to what is going on in the real world.

I will end on this point. We continually hear from the Government about all the wonderful things they will do, but their words are in complete contrast to what they are actually doing. It is the cruellest of ironies, which I simply cannot reconcile in my own mind, because the people who will suffer are the children in the poorest communities, where it is extraordinarily difficult to hire good teachers. I thought that a Labour Government sought to represent these communities, but I see nothing in this cheap political manoeuvre that will in any way help those disadvantaged children.

I understand that Ministers are surprised by the level and range of pushback on the Bill, but they should not be. It was rammed through the Commons over Christmas—without a Green Paper or a White Paper and without any consultation—in a Chamber with literally hundreds of new and inexperienced MPs who were not equipped to give it proper scrutiny. That scrutiny now falls to us. The Government should not play fast and loose with the futures of millions of children, who get but one chance for their education. I urge Ministers to show some humility over the next few weeks in the passage of the Bill and adopt, as government amendments, many of the practical and useful suggestions that have been tabled. If we are to be ignored, rest assured that the avalanche of amendments will continue, as I, for one, will not go down without a fight.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, on these Benches we very much believe that there should be an independent and suitably trained person; that is really important to us. We also appreciate that if this amendment were agreed—I do not know the timescale of training people up—there might have to be some transitional arrangements. It slightly jars with me that the party adjacent to me does not necessarily believe that teachers should be fully qualified—you can have unqualified teachers—but on this issue it wants a suitably trained person. In any situation where young people are involved, it is important that the person who is training or teaching is qualified and has the right skills.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. Clearly, the family decision-making groups are extremely important, and we are discovering them rather late in the day. I could have said this on any of the other amendments involving family groups, but this one particularly caught my eye because of the emphasis on an evidence-based approach. The Scottish Government have had this for nearly 10 years, which gives us a tremendous opportunity to learn from the successes and failures they have experienced over that time. How much contact has the Minister had with her Scottish colleagues to learn from the best and the worst, and what has she taken from that to put into this Bill?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The fifth group we are debating comprises only one amendment, but we have had some useful contributions. However, quite a few of the arguments that I would make in response to this group were those that I made earlier in response to the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Armstrong on the need for evidence-based practice and on the use of proven approaches such as that of family group conferencing. I will repeat some of the points I made and respond to some of the particular issues that have arisen.

On the last point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, I do not know the extent to which we have reviewed the experience in Scotland, but as we discussed earlier, we have looked extremely carefully at the research carried out by Foundations that we talked about earlier and the recommendations and approach that it brought forward.

I agree with the intention behind this amendment that we should ensure that family group decision-making follows an evidence-based approach and is co-ordinated by trained facilitators. That is very important, and I liked the intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on this point about qualifications, and in this particular context he has identified a little discrepancy in the position of some noble Lords opposite.

The noble Earl, Lord Effingham, refers to the LGA saying that it thought that we should make it clear in guidance what that evidenced-based approach is. I wholly agree with him and the LGA, and that is why we will use statutory guidance to set out clear principles of practice, building on the evidence from successful models, such as the family group conference approach, to ensure that all families are offered quality family group decision-making. That includes people being trained to do it.

On the point about independent co-ordination, I made the point earlier that while I think that in the vast majority of cases it is right that there is independent facilitation, there might be circumstances where the family want the process to be run by a social worker who is somebody they have a very strong ongoing relationship with.

On the point about private family time, it is obviously an important potential part of the process that the family have the opportunity together, with appropriate preparation, to consider what would be appropriate for them, but here as well there could be circumstances—the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, referred to the issue of domestic abuse, for example—in which it would not be appropriate to leave only the family to lead that decision-making if there were fears that there was a dynamic within the family that perhaps made it important for there to be somebody else as part of that process. I think people could envisage a situation in which that happened.

This is not to say—I think this charge was made earlier —that the Government take a laissez-faire approach to the way in which family group decision-making is developed. We do not want to see a thousand flowers bloom, as was suggested by my noble friend Lady Armstrong earlier on; we want to see the right evidenced-based flowers blooming. In order to make sure that is the case, we will be very clear in the statutory guidance about the approach that needs to be taken when organising family group decision-making. I hope I was clear about that earlier on.

There is also a need to ensure that suitable people and resources are there, and that is why the Government have committed to an uplift of £13 million for the children’s social care prevention grant for 2025-26, which will be used to support the rollout of family group decision-making across the country for all families on the edge of care, including for recruiting or training extra staff to facilitate that process. On the basis of those assurances, I hope the noble Earl will feel able to withdraw the amendment.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 22nd May 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

34: Clause 3, page 4, line 14, at end insert—
“(7A) The local authority must provide the resources to enable continuous professional development training to be provided to all teachers and teaching assistants with responsibilities for supporting vulnerable children that interact with multi agency child protection teams.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that schools have the resources to meet their statutory commitments.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, this is really a probing amendment. I am the first to admit that this is not an area in which I have deep expertise, but my questioning comes from the angle of the impact on schools and is on how much time and cost would be involved.

I understand that Clause 3(4) amends Section 16J of the Children Act 2004 to require safeguarding partners—local authorities, police and health—to ensure that multi-agency child protection teams are adequately staffed. This includes representation from education. Schools themselves are not made statutory partners, but safeguarding partners must secure the participation and representation of education and childcare agencies at both operational and strategic levels in local safeguarding arrangements.

I also understand that the legislation does not impose new direct financial obligations on individual schools. The duty to ensure that teams are sufficiently staffed falls on the safeguarding partners, not the schools themselves. However, I presume that schools will incur some indirect costs related to staff time for participating in safeguarding arrangements, meetings and training. How will this change from the current arrangements? What additional obligations are likely to occur?

I listened carefully to the Minister’s point on the new money for implementation—£270 million. I respect the fact that she cannot give any clarity on long-term funding until the spending review in a few weeks’ time, so I do not have an issue with that. However, if we take that money—£270 million—and assume that even half goes to schools, when of course it will be a fraction of that, it is only £6,000 a school. I will come on to this in a minute.

I understand that the Government are planning to provide guidance to support implementation and that safeguarding partners are expected to tailor arrangements to local needs, which may help manage additional burdens on schools. When will that information be available? This is important because of the need for schools to budget. Unforeseen burdens are particularly likely in schools in areas of high deprivation, which are seeing the backwash of so much suffering of vulnerable children. The point, of which I hope the Minister will be mindful, is that we have only 1,265 hours a year of directed time for our teaching cohort, so every hour doing something other than teaching is salami-slicing away our ability to provide good education. Something has to give.

The other area I am puzzled by—this, again, is my ignorance—is these pilots that have been running. I have been trying to find some feedback on these pilots but have not been able to find anything. The Commons Select Committee raised this issue of a lack of clarity, so can any be provided? My noble friend Lady Barran said that some of these pilots had received extra money to juice them up and get more participation, which is great, but will that be rolled out more widely?

I am very worried about this because, as noble Lords know, we are facing something of a financial bloodbath in the school sector. If we have to start hiring supply teachers to enable ordinary teachers to be released to go to safeguarding meetings, these costs will hit us. Can the Minister give us a timeline on the implications for schools and assure us that schools will have sufficient time between the publishing of the guidance and the setting of their budgets? For example, we really need to set our budgets in April to go live in September, because that tends to be when teacher recruitment goes on, as people resign and are appointed. I hope the Minister will understand where I am coming from. I acknowledge that I have a lot less knowledge of this sector, but I am worried about the backwash into the school sector. I beg to move.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to support my noble friend Lord Agnew of Oulton’s amendment. The example that he gave of teachers and teaching assistants, as cited in his Amendment 34, could obviously be replicated for many other agencies, with a valuable contribution to make to multi-agency child protection teams and wider safeguarding activities, including local drug and alcohol services, mental health services, domestic abuse services, housing associations and more. The key point here is that practitioners need to feel confident about how to engage in the process and how any information they share will be used, confident that it will not put anyone at risk and, as my noble friend so ably put it, confident that they have the time in their working day to be able to participate responsibly. From my own experience, I know we make assumptions at our peril about how confident even statutory agencies are in some of these areas, so any programme that promotes safe and effective partnership work is to be commended.

My Amendment 38 seeks to understand what capacity the Government think will be needed on the ground and what guidance they plan to give for this. The Bill says in Clause 3, page 3, lines 16 to 21:

“Arrangements … must include the establishment of one or more multi-agency child protection teams … for the purpose of providing support to the local authority in connection with the discharge of its duties under section 47 of the Children Act 1989”.


In Clause 3, page 3, lines 27 to 31, it says:

“A multi-agency child protection team is to consist of … at least one of each of the persons mentioned in subsection (4), and … such other persons as the local authority considers appropriate after consulting the other safeguarding partners”.


My cracked-record question is this: what does this mean in real life?

I am sure that the answer to this is no, but, as written, it could mean that Birmingham has one team and Rutland has one team. I am sure the Minister will reassure me that that is not the plan. Even smaller local authorities, particularly rural local authorities, have multiple child protection teams already, so adding one more will not be that useful to them if they have multiple existing teams that need that multi-agency engagement.

When I led the charity SafeLives and we did the rollout of multi-agency risk assessment conferences around the country, we gave estimates to every area based on evidence of realistic case loads, resource requirements and so forth—and we had rather less influence than the Government do. My challenge to the Minister is: if a small charity can do that, surely the Government can do something similar or work with the ADCS or the LGA to develop appropriate clarity and guidance. I would be very grateful if the Minister could explain the Government’s plans.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I am glad that the noble Lord reinforced my point—I think I am in big trouble with my son for having outed him in this debate. I am glad to hear that other excellent teachers have experienced this training. The noble Lord makes a very fair point. I will certainly go back to my colleagues in the department and say that, in reality, if we want people to be trained and updated on Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance, and if we expect that to happen at an inset day at the start of a school year, it would be a good idea if the guidance was there in time for them to be able to do that. That is a fair request.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

I thank the Minister for her answers. I reassure her that I was not trying to suggest that this is a whole new scale of undertaking for teachers. My noble friend Lady Barran was right: I was trying to understand the scale of it, because this is a big and complex Bill. The Minister was helpful in saying that her son, who is dealing with this on the front line, feels that one inset day will be sufficient for the kind of familiarisation that will be needed. I am not trying to put words in her mouth. I am trying to say that, in my experience, a Bill of this complexity will need quite a lot of CPD for our teaching cohort—that is where I am coming from.

We have a specific amount of time available, because of the 1,265 rule, which, again, we will work to. Every hour that is taken away from what teachers are doing at the moment is one that has to be filled. I take absolutely at face value what the Minister has said, and I am encouraged that she has in her immediate life someone who can give her front-line experience. I genuinely mean that, because that is where I am coming from. I tabled this amendment because head teachers in my academy trust had asked me to clarify the situation. It was put forward with the best of intentions.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 12th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 83 seeks to address what is currently a series of gaps in the information that we have about the effectiveness of the virtual school head role. Clause 6 extends the statutory duties of the VSH role to children with a social worker and children in kinship care. The question is whether it needs to be put on a statutory footing and what resources are necessary to implement it effectively. As I understand it, we do not yet have the evidence that confirms the positive impact of that role, nor the emergence of value for money.

I take your Lordships to the interim evaluation, which was published in 2024. On page 11, it states:

“The evaluation of Phase Two follows a broadly cyclical pattern of data collection and analysis, alongside ongoing analysis of secondary national datasets … We assumed that there would not be only one way of providing effective support and that the aim at this stage was to support shared learning about potentially effective practice, rather than to conduct an effectiveness trial … The final report for this evaluation … will test whether there are any early signs of progress at aggregate level in attendance, persistent absence, suspension and permanent exclusion”.


I suggest to the Minister that the policy document for the Bill seems to overstate the impact. That policy document says:

“The evaluation of the extension shows early signs of improved educational outcomes … with several local authorities reporting improved attendance, reduced exclusions and enhanced collaboration between education and social care services”.


I am concerned that trends in attendance could be influenced by a range of other factors apart from the presence of the VSH. We therefore possibly have correlation rather than causation. I may have misunderstood things, but can the Minister please correct me if I am wrong?

I hope the Minister will look sympathetically at my amendment. It seeks to fill the evidence gap, both in terms of impact and in terms of resources, before extending the role of VSHs still further. Otherwise, the Government are at risk, in my opinion, of expanding and even diluting the impact of a role without the evidence that clearly demonstrates that it really can make a difference. I hope the Minister will look at this amendment sympathetically and in the spirit in which it is drafted.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 82 would provide further opportunities for children in kinship care to have access to boarding school places where appropriate. The Government should be applauded for their commitment to raising the profile of kinship care as a vital part of the ecosystem for children from broken families. As we heard earlier in the week from the noble Lord, Lord Russell, there are more than 150,000 children in kinship care in England. Kinship carers are unsung heroes, without whom it would be almost inevitable that the care system would buckle.

For most of Part 1 of the Bill, I have taken a back seat as I do not have direct expertise in the many complex areas that it seeks to tackle. However, for this proposal I was the Minister responsible for boarding schools, both state and private, when at the DfE. Noble Lords participating in the Bill will know what a huge task confronts kinship carers when taking on children, more often than not from broken homes and carrying the emotional scars of the unhappiness that has emanated from this breakdown. We have heard how the level of support for kinship carers is patchy at best and often almost non-existent. For many potential kinship carers the prospect will simply be too daunting, even if they might be the best solution in a given set of circumstances.

That is why I am so keen to give much more oxygen to the prospect of offering boarding school places to children in kinship care. Where it works for the child—and, of course, this is not always the case—it can provide a vital partnership to the carer in the upbringing of the child. At the simplest level, the day-to-day caring responsibilities for the kinship carer are reduced to around 16 weeks a year from 52 when boarding school is providing a home for the balance of the time.

I believe it is a dramatically underutilised resource. There is an unexplained squeamishness across many directors of children’s services to use it more. However, when I was the Minister in the area in 2018, we published a small longitudinal report showing just how impactful it could be. By coincidence, it was work led by Norfolk County Council, where I live, and the results were remarkable. We at the DfE then jointly published the report—it is no longer available on the DfE website, which is a shame. I urge the Minister to not only read it—I can send her a copy—but ask officials to put it back up again.

In essence, it tracked 52 vulnerable young people for between two and five years. Over that time, 33 of these young people were able to come off the risk register completely following placement in boarding school. Dr Claire Maxwell, who contributed to the report, then a reader in the sociology of education at UCL, highlighted three specific benefits. First, the setting can provide amelioration from risky emotional and physically stressful situations—for example, a circuit breaker from a local gang culture. We heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, a moment ago about the number of children from care ending up in prison—it is appalling. Secondly, there is improvement of educational outcomes. Thirdly, it is a more cost-effective solution than other forms of care intervention. Dr Maxwell’s view, and that of charities in the sector, was that successful boarding placements can help strengthen families experiencing significant difficulties. The longer school day that is part and parcel of boarding school life can provide a form of round-the-clock care and is part of the reason for the improved emotional and educational outcomes.

In this study, the 52 children were placed in 11 different boarding settings, a mixture of state and private provision. Some 21% of these children achieved a formal GCSE qualification in maths and English—above grade C, in old money. This compared with a national looked-after children pass rate in that year of 17.5%. These are not dramatic differences, but put alongside the substantial reduction in the numbers being removed from the risk register, it makes for a very positive story. This study also compared costs against more institutional forms of care beyond kinship. At the time of writing the report, the Norfolk Boarding School Partnership had an average cost between £11,000 and £35,000 a year, compared with £56,000 for a looked-after child in a normal or more standard setting. This translated into a saving of £1.6 million over four years for this group.

Obviously, kinship care is more affordable because carers get less support, but my argument is that if boarding was offered to potential kinship carers, the take-up would be much higher, therefore reducing local looked-after children costs. Today, the Royal National Children’s SpringBoard Foundation offers bursaries for looked-after children attending private boarding schools. We know that the educational outcomes for looked-after children remain way below the national average, and this is not a silver bullet—but, combined with the other benefits, as I have outlined, I believe it is a vital additional tool in the box to support these vulnerable children who never chose this harsh route into life. I hope the Minister will support me by agreeing to my amendment to provide more awareness of these opportunities.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I was pleased to be asked to speak to Amendment 82 by my noble friend Lord Farmer, who is unfortunately not able to be here today. As well as the evidence I will refer to, I was in your Lordships’ House back in 2014 when my noble friend gave his maiden speech. A Conservative Party treasurer perhaps brings a certain stereotype to mind. However, you could have heard a pin drop, as a globally successful metals trader spoke of being a young teenager in a chaotic home with an alcoholic single mother. But he went to the boarding house at the state-run Wantage Grammar School. It rescued him.

It made me reflect on the role of boarding schools. I was born and bred in Oakham and I have had to deal for many years with the annoyance of, “You’re from Oakham? So you went to Oakham School, then?” “No”, I reply, “there is a state comprehensive as well in the town, called Catmose College”—which was rated “outstanding” in every category in an Ofsted inspection in 2024, if noble Lords will forgive the shoutout for my state school.

This testimony by my noble friend is supported by the 2023 study by the University of Nottingham’s School of Education, commissioned by the Royal National Children’s SpringBoard Foundation, which found that children in or on the edge of care who attend state boarding or independent schools experience significant educational and financial benefits. They are four times more likely to achieve good GCSE passes in English and maths and five times more likely to pursue and succeed in A-levels, leading often to higher education. The study estimates that, for every 100 children attending boarding schools, lower social care costs and increased future earnings mean there is an economic return on investment of approximately £2.75 million. The report stated that, when vulnerable children in boarding schools were interviewed, they said such opportunities were life-changing.

This amendment would also make it significantly easier, as my noble friend Lord Agnew outlined, for kinship carers to step forward to offer a home to a child who might otherwise enter the state care system. Not every family will want or be able to house the child 24/7, 365 days a year. That can be a daunting task. They know of course that their own children will be greatly affected, and their house might not be big enough for that extra child. Kin altruism can be greatly aided and encouraged when a child can be educated in this way in the state boarding sector, giving the carer breathing space to attend to all their other responsibilities, while knowing that the child is safe and cared for in the state boarding sector. I hope the Minister will look at the evidence carefully in relation to this matter.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 17th June 2025 Lords Chamber

This is not only a safeguarding failure but a financial and moral failure. Without a clear commitment from the Government to phase out unregistered provision, children will continue to be placed in these unsafe, inappropriate settings. Wales has already taken steps to end the use of unregistered accommodation. I suggest that there is no justification for England being left behind.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 119 would provide further opportunities for looked-after children, or those on the edge of care, to have access to boarding school places where appropriate. The principles of this amendment are the same as those of my Amendment 82, on children in or going into kinship care, except that the financial benefits may be stronger for non-kinship care. For example, kinship carers who care for children under special guardianship orders or child arrangement orders are not automatically entitled to the same financial support as foster carers. I do not want to repeat word for word everything I said on Amendment 82—both the Ministers present were in their places at the time—but I will give a brief summary.

Noble Lords participating in this Bill know the huge task that confronts carers when taking on children who are more often than not from broken homes and carrying the emotional scars of the unhappiness that has emanated from this breakdown. This is why I am keen to give so much more oxygen to the prospect of offering boarding school places to children in or on the edge of care. I gave the example of the report carried out by the Norfolk local authority in conjunction with the DfE when I was the Minister responsible for this area. I will not repeat everything that was said, but one of the most important pieces of data was that, of the 52 children who were tracked during the three or so years over which this study was carried out, 33 came off the at-risk register. That is the most tremendous result, and I suspect there are not many other examples of particular types of care delivering such a significant improvement in the welfare of those children.

There are two other advantages, one of which is financial. The costs are substantially lower than that of the foster care or care home route. Also, the educational outcomes in this study were better for the children than the national figures. This is one of those rare moments when a policy can deal with three problems at once and not cost any more money. Therefore, I am very hopeful that the Government will consider the amendment.

We heard on Amendment 82 the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, in Liverpool. A tremendous amount of the noble Lord’s career has been spent in education. I am very keen to bring cross-party support to this, so I was very encouraged that he was supportive.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

Regarding cross-party support, I am willing to indicate support, but I want to clarify a point the noble Lord makes in his amendment about a boarding school place

“in a state secondary school in their local authority area”.

Can he tell us that such schools exist in every local authority area? If they do not, how would this be put into practice?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, there are around 35 state boarding schools in the country, but there are also a number of private boarding schools that are ready to provide support, which is why I mentioned the Royal SpringBoard scholarships and bursaries that are available. I completely accept the noble Lord’s point—that people need to be kept, wherever possible, near their homes—but we need flexibility. We must not make the perfect the enemy of the good. If there is a good boarding school place that is reasonably accessible to the child’s home, but more importantly to the foster carer or kinship carer, then that is what matters. But I take onboard what the noble Lord said.

In her summing-up of Amendment 82, the Minister spoke about stability of setting, and she was very right. The Norfolk study showed that there was a very strong correlation between improvements in those children’s well-being and the length of tenure. The study showed that three years of continuity made a tremendous difference. I hope the Minister will consider this amendment.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, before speaking to my Amendment 129, to which the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and my noble friend Lord Storey have added their names, I first add my very strong support for Amendment 144 by the noble Lord, Lord Watson. I am sorry that I did not manage to add my name to it; it deals with such an important issue.

I was shocked to read a report by the Children’s Commissioner, which said that last September, there were 775 children in unregistered homes, including children under the age of 10, children who had spent over two years in those homes and children in entirely inappropriate unregistered settings such as caravans. Staggeringly, the average cost was over £1,500 a day, with an estimated total annual cost to local authorities of over £400 million. As the Children’s Commissioner said, and I very much agree with her, the use of these homes is a national scandal. Vulnerable children are being failed. We would not allow it for our own children, and we simply should not allow it for those for whom the state is corporate parent. Therefore, I very strongly support phasing out unregistered accommodation.

My Amendment 129 is closely linked to the discussion we had on the first group about children being placed far from home. It would amend

“the sufficiency duty to prevent children being moved far away from home”

when that is not in their best interests. We heard a lot of the arguments in the previous group, and I will pull out a few specifics.

In recent years, there has been a marked and shocking rise in the number of children in care who are moved far away from their support networks and communities. Last year, more than a fifth of all children in care were living more than 20 miles away from home. That might not sound far but, frankly, that is a long way from family and local support networks. In addition, more than 3,000 children were living more than 100 miles from home—that is 4% of all children in care—and more than 800 children under the care of English local authorities were living in Scotland and Wales. Although I accept that there may be legitimate reasons why children in care are moved far from home—safeguarding, preventing them being exploited or harmed, or their being moved to wider family networks—far too often it is simply because of a lack of appropriate local options.

As highlighted by the charity Become in its Gone Too Far campaign, being moved far from their family, friends and schools can have a significant and long-term adverse impact on children’s relationships, mental health, well-being, sense of identity et cetera—the sort of things we discussed in our last session on relationships.

Clearly, local authorities across the country have faced a number of challenges recently—that is why we have just had the discussion about regional care co-operatives —particularly in ensuring that there are the right number and type of homes in their local area to meet the needs of children under their care. The current sufficiency duty is not fit for purpose, and there is a lack of accountability and oversight regarding the extent to which sufficiency is being fulfilled.

That is the reason for tabling this important amendment, which seeks to strengthen the sufficiency duty by requiring local authorities to plan, commission and deliver provision and to take “all reasonable steps” to ensure that children in care remain living within or near to the local authority. The amendment builds on recent reforms by the Welsh Government, and we would very much benefit from taking it forward.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 19th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

For a number of years, when the noble Baroness’s Government were running things, I was always concerned about the issue of Jobcentre Plus mentors, who are hugely important in this area, and was trying to probe to find out what training they had. I never got a straight answer, and never found out whether they were equipped with the tools to do the work, particularly in this area.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott’s amendment on jobcentres. I hear the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, about resource stretch, but from my own experience of this in my academy trust, we have about 50 looked-after children, and I require a report on them to come to every one of the trustees’ board meetings. It does not cost anything, but it just gives a little bit of focus to these very vulnerable children.

The same could apply in jobcentres; it just needs an asterisk by the person’s name so that when the advisor is talking to him or her, they can use a little bit more empathy and maybe ask a couple more questions about the status of that child. I strongly support my noble friend and hope that the Government will support her amendment as well.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 23rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, I had not planned to speak to this group of amendments, having tabled an amendment that we will debate in the following group. But as I have interests in the founding of Parent Gym and in the early years in particular—about which I hope to speak later—it would be remiss of me not to add a few comments, given some of the very esteemed contributions made in this debate.

I support all the amendments in the group with the exception of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, for the reasons that have been outlined. My noble friend Lord Bethell touched on an important point in his intervention: we have a real issue around the different types of parenting and families, from those who are aware of the dangers to their children to those who deploy smartphones as substitute childcare. I fear that all the evidence—as very eloquently put by my noble friends Lady Jenkin and Lord Nash, who cited at length the reports and data around all this—show us that there are families who do not have the resource or means to engage in this daily battle.

I declare another interest: I am on that front line daily with my 14 year-old daughter; I hoped that she might have been here this afternoon, but she has conveniently not made it. It is a daily battle. What children will tell their godparents, when you are not around to hear it, is that they actually agree that you are right and that they wish they did not have their phone. They wish that phones did not exist and that they were not part of their life; they want them because their peers have them.

The report by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, published last week, has very notable commentary about the safety of some of the girls who were groomed by gangs. She talks with real concern—it is in an early section, for those who have not read the entire thing, as I have—about the fact that online activity means that we no longer know what is going on for children. We literally do not know who is in their bedroom at night. Who are they engaging with? Who can forget the case of Molly Russell—the terrible case that an Instagram post led to? There is one place where we can surely assume our child should be safe: at school. It is not an unreasonable request that we, as a society, look seriously at this to care for the health and safety of our children.

I am very aware of the comment by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, but it is the opposite to asking schools to police the use of phones. I completely empathise with the concern about asking schools to do more, but this is removing from them the need to police phones. It gets them off the premises, or at least locked up within the premises, so that bullying cannot happen online, grooming cannot be going on, boys who are being recruited into county lines cannot be harassed or intimidated while they are meant to be learning at school, and on it goes. Your Lordships have heard plenty from others on the various points.

I end on another note. Let us look at what the people who invented these things are doing. We all agree; no one has disagreed with the fact that they are addictive—we all feel it every day. What do the people who invented them to be addictive and who use behavioural science and neuroscience to do that, do with their children? They have screen-free schools—completely screen-free, incidentally: no tablets or laptops—and screen-free homes. What is China doing? It is hoovering up our children’s data to understand everything about our society and drive their behaviours in the most destructive way possible. If you ask AI, “If I were China, what would I do to destroy the West?”, the answer is exactly what it is doing: to destroy and undermine the mental health of whole generations of people. What does China do with its children? It gives them one hour a day, and it drives them to watch science and maths videos. I support these amendments.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I was not going to speak on this group—I was a minute or so late, for which I apologise. I wanted to hear the arguments of those who oppose Amendment 177 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and I will just address a couple of those.

I think the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said that we cannot warn children of the danger of smartphones if they are not using them in schools, but let us be more realistic. The school day is only seven or eight hours, and there are 52 weekends and 15 weeks’ holiday. They are going to use these awful things, whatever we do. But at least schools provide a safe space if they cannot use them—we heard the point from the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, about not being mugged on the way to school. I see it in my own schools where, although we have bans, the kids get around them. If they have hair similar to that of the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, how do we know whether they have AirPods in their ears? With the so-called magnetic pouches, you can buy a disabler on the internet to get rid of it. The list goes on and on.

I agree with the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that you cannot uninvent them, but they are very toxic. We look back on tobacco and sugar, yet we are allowing these things to go on while people cogitate, when it is so obvious that we should be bringing a much more vigorous ban of these devices into schools as soon as possible. I support the noble Lord, Lord Nash.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, we have heard some very powerful speeches this afternoon, particularly from the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, who talked about a world health crisis. I was also taken by my noble friend Lord Addington, who talked about the importance of technology for special needs. I am going to be brave and agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hampton: I want to see children talk to each other, and I want to see them play in schools.

I remember being absolutely—I cannot find the adjective to describe it. During our debates on the Online Safety Act, we were remembering the young girl, Molly Russell, who took her own life after being groomed online, and her brave father sat below the Bar for the whole of that debate. I thought what a brave parent he was, to sit through that and listen to what had happened.

I do not know whether any of your Lordships saw “Question Time” last week—I do not tend to watch it these days—when one of the questions was about smartphones. A young man of 18 or 19, who had ADHD, pleaded with the panel to ban smartphones. He said, “I am addicted to them—I cannot stop myself using a smartphone. Please ban it”. I thought, “Wow! What a brave thing to say on television in front of everybody”.

Whatever we do, we have to make sure it works. It is no good us passing laws which do not actually work. I remind noble Lords that children who are under the age of 13 are not allowed to use social media. That ban does not happen. I had children at my school who were seven and eight who accessed social media. Whatever we agree, it has to work. My great fear in this whole debate is that it will not work, and people will find ways around it. So I plead with the Government—indeed, with everybody—to have a realistic streak in what we do.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 3rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

We hear again and again in this Chamber great concern about the number of pupils who are not in school, attending lessons or getting the education that they need. It is really striking that, in nearly all these cases, pupils are from disadvantaged communities. Pupils are being sent home, threatened with exclusion and put into isolation because of their hair. We must say that teachers and pupils can cope with people having different coloured hair and having different haircuts. If we are to get serious about education for all, we should absolutely not exclude pupils because of their haircut or hair colour.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I am taking a slightly different approach with my Amendment 200, which relates to school uniform policy.

It is important to recognise that a tiny minority of schools use the cost of uniforms as an unpleasant instrument to screen out children in poor families—I am not in denial of that. However, that relates to perhaps 1% or 2% of the 20,000 or more state schools. Nor am I in denial that we should do something about it. A lot has been done, which I will come to in a moment.

Nevertheless, the solution proposed in this clause is heavy-handed and bureaucratic. It is a classic example of the dead hand of the state intervening in an entirely impractical way to cause more harm than good. Does Whitehall really know how many branded items a school would like to use? Where does the magic number of “three” come from? For example, schools encouraging sport and competing with others are trying to foster an identity, and branded sportswear is a basic part of that. Have the bureaucrats found out how much a branded iron-on logo costs? A quick search of the internet suggests that you can buy them, custom designed, for £1.16 each.

How can we do this? I refer to my interest as the chairman of Inspiration Trust. Let me quote some of the bullet points from our uniform policy:

“We will make sure our school uniforms … are available at a reasonable cost … Provide the best value for money for parents/carers. We will do this by … Carefully considering whether any items with distinctive characteristics are necessary … Limiting any items with distinctive characteristics where possible. For example, by only asking that the blazer, worn over the jumper, features the school logo … Limiting items with distinctive characteristics to low-cost or long-lasting items, such as ties … Considering cheaper alternatives to school-branded items, such as logos that can be ironed on, as long as this doesn’t compromise quality and durability … Avoiding specific requirements for items pupils could wear on non-school days, such as coats, bags and shoes … Keeping the number of optional branded items to a minimum, so that the school’s uniform can act as a social leveller … Avoiding different uniform requirements for different year/class/house groups … Avoiding different uniform requirements for extra-curricular activities … Considering alternative methods for signalling differences in groups for interschool competitions, such as creating posters or labels … Making sure that arrangements are in place for parents to acquire second-hand uniform items … Avoiding frequent changes to uniform specifications and minimising the financial impact on parents of any changes … Consulting with parents and pupils on any proposed significant changes to the uniform policy and carefully considering any complaints about the policy”.


It is all there—I am sure, in large part, just following the DfE guidance. Your Lordships will see a similar approach on most of the larger academy trusts’ websites. The bit missing is the cost, but, according to the Schoolwear Association, uniform costs have undershot inflation by 34% in the last three years. According to the House of Commons Library, the cost of a secondary school uniform in 2014-15 was £232 for a boy, while today it is around £94. Great progress has been made—that has been driven by guidance, which is a good thing.

However, does this really need a central government mandate? In the last three years, my chief executive has not had a single complaint about uniform costs—that is for over 11,000 pupils in 18 schools. Let us say that something has to be done, but, rather than a top-down Whitehall diktat, we suggest that the members mechanism that the Labour Government themselves originally conceived be given the task. The extraordinary power of this structure and the protection of stakeholders’ interests is not well understood by many DfE officials. For noble Lords not familiar with it, I should explain that, in essence, members of an academy trust act as the proxy shareholders—a trust, of course, does not have shareholders, as it is a charitable entity—but they sit above the trust board and have certain enshrined rights and responsibilities. The problem at the DfE was that officials had allowed the two groups—members and trustees—to become intermingled. This undermined the whole point of a separate body being able to step in when governance failures by the trustees occurred.

It is reasonable that the chair of the trustees and one or two others are members, as long as the members who are not trustees are in a majority, which is now the case. At the moment, members have several key powers. These vary slightly depending on the time of the creation of an academy trust. The original trusts set up by the Labour Government gave more protection to “sponsors”, as they were putting in £2 million of their own money to take on the school. However, the following key responsibilities apply to the vast majority: appointing and removing trustees; appointing and removing members; amending the articles of association, subject to legal and regulatory restrictions; directing trustees by special resolution; appointing auditors; and safeguarding governance, which I stress. Members must assure themselves that governance is effective and intervene if it is failing. These powers ensure that members can intervene if the trust governance or performance is inadequate, but their involvement is otherwise minimal. Members must always act to further the academy trust’s charitable objectives.

The solution would be to add a specific requirement for members to monitor costs of school uniforms and report on it in the annually audited accounts. The members are already answerable to the DfE. Noble Lords will see from those six key responsibilities that I listed that it would be logical and straightforward, if prescribed, to add something specific—such as overpriced uniforms. “Directing trustees” and “safeguarding governance” are there to protect children if a trust is badly run. Overpriced uniforms are part of bad management; it is as simple as that. Noble Lords will have seen from the statement on its website that the Inspiration Trust already deals with most of this. However, adding something simple such as, “The members of the trust have scrutinised and approved our uniform policy and its cost”, would close the loop.

It is important to mirror the governance oversight in local authority schools, as nearly half of primary schools are not academised. This can be done by requiring directors of children’s services, or DCSs, to assume the same responsibility as that set out for members of academy trusts. There is separation between local authority governing bodies and DCSs. This would give consistency across the English state system.

When the Prime Minister was elected last year, he said that he wanted to lead a Government who would “tread more lightly” on people’s lives, but here we have primary legislation that seeks to do exactly the opposite and control lives from Whitehall in a rigid, top-down way.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, I fully understand the Government’s desire to limit the cost here, but I support the principle behind most of these amendments, particularly those of my noble friend Lord Agnew and the noble Lord, Lord Hampton. The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, made an excellent point, which was supported by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, that if uniform is not standardised, parents with students who can afford it may well “show off” through the clothes which their children wear. That is why we ban trainers in the schools in the multi-academy trusts that I chair, and why they are banned in most schools. We want all our children to feel equal.

As the Minister previously responsible for the school cadet programme, and as for the point that my noble friend Lord Young made, if the clause works as he says it does, this would seem to me an obvious and easy give by the Government. I hope that the Minister can reassure us on this point. As for the amendments from the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Bennett, I thought they made an excellent case for more, rather than less, uniform, because that would be the easiest way to regulate and monitor what it is made from.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

I thank the noble Lord for that intervention, and I very much understand the point that he is making. However, the issue is what happens to that material once it is inspected. How does the home education officer make a judgment on it? Most of them are not teachers—in fact, I suspect very few are. Do they go to an outside source, or do we set up some great panoply of mechanisms to decide whether those materials are appropriate?

At the moment, we have a different situation. The current position, as I understand it, is that, where authorities have cause for concern, Sections 437 to 443 of the Education Act 1996 provide for steps to be taken if it appears that there is very little or no education in place for a child, or if the local authority has no information about any education arrangements. I understand that in most, possibly all, local authority areas home-educating parents provide an annual report to the local authorities, rather than providing materials that will be judged in isolation.

I think that we should leave the law where it is. As I understand it, the attitude of the best local authority home education officers is that they build relationships; they are happy with most of the people, but can then concentrate on the problem areas—because there are problem areas—within the home education sphere. Imposing new duties such as this would add burden, bureaucracy and frustration to authorities and parents alike. We should concentrate on improving that relationship, not making it more burdensome.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Nash’s Amendment 279. It suggests a very mild tweak to the proposed legislation, largely because he is respectful of the majority of parents who do a good job in home education, which I completely agree with. However, I see at close quarters the impact of home education in deprived communities where the parents have limited education themselves and little interest in it. They are clearly unable to educate their own children and yet, when they are withdrawn from schools, there is nothing a school can do. These children are being thrown to the wolves and, as the Minister has said, the numbers are escalating.

My noble friend Lord Nash talks about a trend over the past 10 to 15 years but, according to the NSPCC, the number has increased by 186% in six years. In 14 local authorities, it has quadrupled in that time. These are not all middle-class, educated parents, but we have no idea who they are.

In 2021, the House of Commons Education Committee’s Strengthening Home Education report made a number of recommendations. Perhaps the most important was that the DfE should provide

“a set of clear criteria against which the suitability of education can be assessed, taking into account the full range of pedagogical approaches taken in EHE”—

elective home education—

“as well as the age, ability and aptitude of individual children, including where they may have SEND”.

The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel, a government-sponsored group, produced a number of recommendations on home education in its May 2024 report, and many of these mirrored the report I have just mentioned. The report refers to 27 referrals received between August 2020 and October 2021, involving the deaths of six children and a further 35 suffering serious harm, including physical neglect, physical abuse and sexual abuse. There are many other good recommendations, but, as they do not fit this specific amendment, I will not list them. I recommend these two reports to any Peer interested in this vexing subject.

My noble friend’s amendment would provide a very light-touch review point. Bona fide parents would not be negatively affected. On the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, I say that the amendment is extremely light touch, but it would move the situation from what is currently a complete black hole to at least give us some indication of children’s well-being.

I want to finish with the case of Sara Sharif. Many noble Lords will know about it, but I will remind the Committee. A 10 year-old girl was withdrawn from her primary school in April 2023 under the pretext of home education. This occurred after teachers noticed bruising, which she had attempted to conceal beneath her hijab. The school referred their concerns to social services, but, after being taken out of school, she became invisible to safeguarding agencies. Neighbours reported hearing constant crying and screaming. She was murdered by her father and stepmother. They were convicted in December last year. The lack of school oversight allowed this to happen undetected. I respect the good work that most home-educating parents do, but it is for cases like hers that I support Amendment 279.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Government for taking this issue on and for being aware of the problems that we face. I also recognise that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, was on to this in her role as Minister as well.

I have met hundreds of home educators and considerably more have contacted me, and most of them do an amazing job. Noble Lords ought to know that some of the home educators who have contacted me by email have been concerned about what has been going on and given practical examples of that. We need to get a balanced picture sometimes.

If we really want to understand this issue, I note that the noble Lord, Lord Meston, makes the point in his amendment that 39,000 children are missing—we have no idea where they are. The Government want to tackle that head-on. Imagine a society that says to those who want to remove their children from the education system that that is fine—just do it—but we will not keep any records and we will have no idea what you are doing at home, and will leave you to get on with it. Can you imagine that?

Can you imagine a situation where fundamentalist religious groups set up unregistered schools and we have no idea what is happening in them, except occasionally when some of the teachers working in them report to the authorities the appalling behaviour of staff? Ofsted has on many occasions tried to close those schools down, but they re-emerge as home education settings—

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Longfield (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 450 on managed moves, as well as Amendment 453, which is in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey.

The amendments concern a group of children who are literally moved between schools. At the moment, they are pretty much out of the spotlight and are not in any way accountable within the system. Mine is a very practical amendment: it seeks to provide a framework that is consistent, fair and transparent, so that we do not lose these children. It would ensure that we know where they are and that the moves are in their best interests. Managed moves relate to permanent changes of pupils on a school registration where the move is not the result of a permanent exclusion, transfer to a special school, school closure or movement between educational phases. They are currently unmonitored and unregulated in many areas.

While some local authorities have very strong protocols and partnerships that mean that managed moves operate well, the lack of appropriate guard-rails, to ensure moves between schools are in the best interests of the child, has allowed some problematic practices to emerge. In the current system, frequently neither the local authorities nor the Government know where, or even if, the child is being educated following a managed move. The Who is Losing Learning? report this year uncovered a deeply concerning trend: it estimated that, for every child that was permanently excluded, there were 10 more invisibly being moved around the system behind that. There are also reports that, sometimes, children can almost be traded between different schools and systems within this process. Some children will spend a lot of time out of school as a result, and others are moved time and time again.

The solution proposed in my amendment is very practical. It would bring managed moves in line with suspensions and exclusions. It proposes that they are put through the existing fair access protocol and that local authorities report on its use to the Department for Education. This would subject managed moves to a collaborative peer review and set out what knowledge and oversight the appropriate local authorities and the Department for Education have. It would be important that discussion of, and application to, the fair access protocol should happen before the move is initiated, to ensure that the child’s education does not get disrupted as a result.

We want local authorities to keep good records, as we must be clear on where responsibility lies for that child as they move between schools. We also want a stipulation that this does not apply to a child when they move from one school to another because of a change in the child’s residence. There is a real need for a definition of managed moves and for all those managed moves then to be reported back to the department, with an annual report on the numbers and nature of those moves.

There is an opportunity here to draw on the really good practice that occurs in many areas and to create a standardised approach that would be fair, transparent, accountable and, ultimately, in the best interests of the child. This speaks to the ambition that we all have for increasing opportunities for all children while also strengthening inclusion—that is what we all want to see. The provisions are practical and doable, and I look forward to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I speak in support of my Amendments 452 and 454, on the control of admissions into schools. This is a fraught issue for parents trying to get their children into excellent schools that lack sufficient places, so rationing—that unpleasant word—has to apply. Where the shortage of places is structural, outstanding schools can be and are supported to expand their facilities. In my trust, we have an outstanding school that started out with us in special measures over 10 years ago. It has nearly doubled its cohort size over that time, and I am grateful to the local authority and indeed to the DfE for supporting that expansion in physical terms. This year, it was the highest-performing secondary school in Norfolk at GCSE, and I am incredibly proud of the staff who have achieved that. But, more relevant for this legislation, it shows that the system can work well and responsibly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, we have seen some of the most significant improvements in outcomes for pupils in our free schools, with schools such as Michaela and Ark Greenwich in London, Eden girls and boys, part of the Star academy trust in Birmingham, and the Mercia School in Sheffield, to name but a few, achieving remarkable results. I know that my noble friends Lord Harris, Lord Nash and Lord Agnew are very likely to add to that list of exceptional free schools that they have been part of creating.

Free schools have been a mechanism for the injection of new ideas, new energy and improving models of education into the state system. Free schools respond to parental and community demand; they provide parents with choice over their child’s education and they have driven up standards. Free schools are usually part of a strong multi-academy trust that has a track record of delivering high-quality education and the back-office capacity needed to support smooth and financially sustainable operations across HR, finance, IT, premises and more. Local authorities do not have and never have had the same capacity and ability to provide tailored support to schools.

The reason for the change in policy in the Bill to allow local authorities to open free schools in future is given in the policy summary, which says that the measure better aligns

“local authorities’ responsibility for securing sufficient school places with their ability to open new schools”.

Again, to loop back to the previous group, on which the Minister did not commit to write—I am sure that her officials noted my request for data—can she share the evidence that there really is a gap in their ability to secure sufficient school places and cite any instances where a local authority has been unable to meet its sufficiency duty as a result of a lack of applications from suitable trusts to establish a new free school? Certainly, during my time in office, there were always multiple applications for new presumption free schools, both mainstream and special schools.

My worry is that this is an example of bureaucratic tidiness being prioritised over outcomes for children. The English system is not tidy: we have voluntary-aided schools, voluntary-controlled schools, foundation schools and many other models. On paper, it might look messy, but we have still been able to rise significantly up the global league tables because we focused relentlessly on outcomes over bureaucracy. This clause feels like we are putting a bureaucrat’s diagrams first—even, I add before the Minister growls at me too much, a bureaucrat with a big heart and a lifelong commitment to children. All of this will change—and to the detriment of pupils.

It will also create higher costs for the Government. In an interview with Schools Week in April, Rachael Wardell, the new president of the ADCS, said, on the range of new responsibilities that councils will be given in the Bill, that

“part of our ongoing dialogue with government is going to be about, if you want us to do these things, then we’re going to need to be resourced accordingly”.

Can the Minister give an estimate of the additional funding needed for local authorities to fulfil their new duties, including in relation to free schools?

This proposed change creates a fundamental conflict of interest for the local authority. It will both invite proposals for a new free school when one is needed and be able to propose one itself, and it will then decide which proposal to approve. That is hardly a system designed to build confidence. We are told that, where it puts forward its own proposal, the Secretary of State, through the work of the regional directors, will be the decision-maker; however, this introduces an additional layer of work and, dare I say it, bureaucracy in a system that is currently working reasonably well. Organisations such as the New Schools Network have been critical in supporting trusts, establishing free schools and building capacity in the sector. We therefore think that the change in policy created by Clause 57 is a fundamental mistake and unnecessary, and I hope that the Minister will think again.

My Amendment 480 seeks to unblock the pipeline of free schools, which have been put on hold since the election. I think that 44 free schools are on hold, including some that bring high-quality 16-to-19 education to areas of very high deprivation, such as those with a high percentage of white, working-class boys, which the Secretary of State has recently focused on. Surely this is a way to demonstrate that focus and unlock those applications now.

The Government have, so far, spent twice as long reviewing the free schools pipeline as it took to open the first 24 free schools in 2010. The time between that election and the opening of free schools was 142 days; in contrast, the time between this Government’s announcement of the review in October 2024 and today has been about 288 days. Overall, it feels like the whole programme has been delayed, and I hope that the Minister can reassure the Committee that this is not the case and put some numbers on how many places will open in the next three years, in both special and mainstream schools.

Finally, I express my support for Amendment 481, in the name of my noble friend Lord Agnew, which would bring greater transparency to the accounts of maintained schools. I am sure that my noble friend, like me, is tired of being told that there is not enough transparency around academies, even though there is actually no financial visibility for maintained schools. I beg to move.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I will address my Amendment 481. This group is a bit of a mixed bag, but I think that my amendment is relevant and important, as it seeks to level the playing field by ensuring that there is a high level of financial governance for local authority schools compared to academies. Yet again, the credit must go to a previous Labour Government for setting out such strong foundations to underpin the governance of academies; comparing academies and local authority schools is like light and day.

I have a reputation for being something of a martinet when it comes to the disciplined management of school finances. Various people have made fun of me over the years, which does not trouble me in the least, because every pound I have saved from wasteful and poor management in schools is then available to go to the front line in improving the education of children. The Minister might even want to call me a bureaucrat, because I have been so assiduous in that part of the system. I would love to see the overall schools budget at a much higher level, but that will not happen given the parlous state of our country’s finances. We therefore have to work with what we have.

In the meantime, the level of accountability and visibility of LAs’ oversight of their own schools is murky at best. An academy trust has to complete a full external audit of its finances within four months of the close of the academic year—that is, between 31 August and 31 December. The accounts have to be filed with Companies House on that date. At that point, the full record of the trust’s financial affairs is available for public scrutiny for the year ending only four months earlier. You can get that information on any trust in England with about four clicks of a button. There is a red list in the DfE—I hope the Minister has seen it —of any trust that misses this deadline. When I was there, any trust more than a month late was immediately placed on a risk register. If schools’ managers or trustees cannot get the money right, how can they ever get the education right? It really is that simple.

But what visibility is there for local authority schools? There is virtually nothing that is easily accessed. Even as the Minister for the school system, I found it an endless battle to get this sort of information. Although LAs would complain frequently about not having enough money, they were rarely forthcoming about how they were spending what they had. This is a very unacceptable state of affairs. If we look at some key categories of oversight and compare the levels of transparency, I hope noble Lords will see why this very unbalanced situation needs correcting.

First, there is the accountable body. For academies, it is the board of trustees and the members sitting above that. The DfE Academy Trust Handbook sets the rules. These board members and the members themselves are on every academy’s website. For local authorities, they are their own accountable body—and try talking to that person.

Secondly, there are audited annual accounts, which I have already explained. But there are no requirements for anything similar for local authority schools. It is even worse that the average frequency of an internal local authority audit of its own schools is about every three years, and it is virtually impossible to see a copy of those reports. I failed consistently when I was in the department.

Thirdly, there is internal auditing. For trusts of a certain size, this is another annual requirement. For noble Lords not familiar with the term, an internal audit is not exactly as it says on the tin. An internal audit is conducted by external specialists but looks at different areas of schools’ operation beyond straight finances, such as deep dives into cyber vulnerability, payroll, the condition of the school estate and so on. There is no such requirement for local authorities.

Fourthly, there are financial returns. Academies are required to submit annual accounts to the DfE and indeed a three-year budget forecast. They also need to demonstrate compliance with their chart of accounts. For local authorities, again there is no standard national chart of accounts, and they are not required to submit three-year forecasts.

Fifthly, there are monthly management accounts. Academies are required to ensure that the chair of the board of trustees sees these at least four times a year. My noble friend Lady Barran actually reduced it. I had it at six, but she was right; my bureaucratic obsession probably had got the better of me. But this is not required for chairs of governors in local authority schools.

Sixthly, there is related-party transaction reporting. Academies have to comply with specific rules, such as needing independent authorisation from the DfE for larger sums. It was £20,000, but my noble friend—she might correct me—lifted it to £50,000. Again, there is nothing like that for local authority schools.

Seventhly, there is the publication of salaries. Academies have to disclose all salaries above £100,000, but local authority schools do not. This is required only for LA officers at LA level. Estimates I have seen indicate that there are over 1,000 staff in local authority schools across England who exceed that threshold, so any defence that it is not a material number of people in receipt of public money does not wash.

Eighthly, there is website reporting. Academies are required to publish their audited accounts on their website. There is no requirement for local authorities to publish their school accounts.

Ninthly, there is the accounting officer. Academies have to appoint an accounting officer with—I stress—personal responsibility for accurate and timely reporting. No such thing exists in local authority schools.

Given that LAs are facing an unprecedented financial squeeze, with some virtually bankrupt, such as Birmingham, there should be no excuse for them not to up their game. The costs—which will of course be the reflexive defence for not doing anything—would be trivial against the improvement in the spending going on inside the LA schools and would be recouped many times over the cost of the audit fee.

Every time I have taken over a local authority school, we have eliminated hundreds of thousands of pounds of wasteful expenditure, which is then focused on teaching. In every secondary school inside my trust, because of the very tight financial management, we have been able to extend the school day by three hours a week. If a child spends the full five years of his or her education in one of those schools, it is the equivalent of receiving another year’s education. That is what is at stake here. Norfolk is not a well-funded local authority; it is about middle ranking. We are not getting any handouts. It just shows you that, if there was more rigour in the system, it would make an enormous difference to the children in our country.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Wednesday 25th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, with this reinstatement of her original Amendment 102. I speak as the chairman of an academy trust; I have faced the dead hand of the bureaucratic tidying-up exercise. To the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton: just last year, it was suggested that we restrict our PAN at two of our best schools, so that failing schools nearby could be kept going. The inconvenience of having to enact cuts to their own schools, faced by local authorities in particular, is such that it is much easier for them to go after another body that has to bear the financial burden.

I accept that the letter, which arrived amazingly at the 11th and a half hour last night, makes some attempt at compromise. If the Government were serious about protecting improving schools, however, they would go with the amendment that is being proposed.

I can tell your Lordships’ House how hard it is to improve previously failing schools. The Minister may be interested to know that failing schools already receive a huge subsidy in what is euphemistically called “lagged funding”. In the year following a falling roll, they receive the full amount that they were been paid in the previous year with more children. The opposite effect occurs for improving schools with rising rolls. So this year, we are educating nearly 240 children for free in my trust, which is nearly £1.5 to £2 million. Next year, that will be 300 children. The question, then, is how difficult does the noble Lord want to make it to improve previously failing schools?

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

My Lords, I stand to support the Government in their attempt to create a situation where there is an adequate regulator for school admissions. At a time of greatly falling rolls, particularly in primary, this is especially important, and even more so when there is going to be a much broader curriculum as a result of the curriculum assessment review. It will be important that all schools can teach this broad curriculum. To do so, we need to have children in those schools. As I said in Committee, the problem with schools that simply expand is that very good schools can be left unable to operate.

I also have a question for the Liberal Democrats on the opposite Benches: in Committee, they supported the opposition to the local authorities having a say as an admissions adjudicator. The last Lib Dem election manifesto of 2024 promised parents and the public that local authorities would be given the power and resources to act as strategic education authorities for their area. This included responsibility for place planning, exclusions and administering admissions, including in-year admissions and SEND functions. I simply ask whether that is still the Lib Dems’ position. If it is, will they be supporting the Government’s position?

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Monday 20th April 2026 Lords Chamber

The presumption is that we must prioritise what is best for children. That often translates into the most popular schools and how well they support children with special educational needs and disabilities—something that the Government do not want to damage. The principles of prioritising the quality of education and protecting parental choice need more than the Government have set out, given the conflict of interest that local authorities face.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I support Motion C1 from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. I emphasise to the Minister that schools with falling rolls receive enormous support at the moment through lagged funding. They receive payment for pupils whom they no longer have, for at least a year.

On the other side of the coin, for those of us who are trying to improve previously failing schools, the opposite applies. We are part of something called estimated funding. Under the current Government—I respect the difficult financial position—estimated funding is zero funding. To add to that, they are proposing a new system, with an adjudicator who can make the decision to go to an improving school—as happened to us before this legislation was proposed—to reduce the size of the PAN. It was administratively convenient for the local authority to do that, because it would have suffered no financial harm itself.

The noble Baroness’s Motion strengthens the protection. We are still left with uncertainty in how the adjudicator process would work and how long it would take, and whether we should budget for increasing roles or not, pending some decision which will take I have no idea how long. I urge your Lordships to support the noble Baroness’s Motion to bring some common sense to this.

[Lord Gove (Con)]

My Lords, I support the points made by my noble friends Lady Barran and Lord Agnew. We are approaching the end of our consideration of this legislation, which comes as we all reflect on the huge gains that have been made by English schools in the last two decades. Improvements in schools in England have not been matched by schools in Scotland or Wales. This is not because students in Scotland and Wales are less intelligent or teachers less motivated but because the reforms that were introduced under Tony Blair and sustained during the coalition years and thereafter had two principles at their heart: greater autonomy for the front line and support for good schools to expand, so that their practice could be adopted by schools that were performing less well and so more students could benefit.

Of the two final elements that we are considering here, a government cap on the number of labelled items of school uniform that a school can require of its students is a preposterous piece of micromanagement, driven by the worst sort of virtue signalling. It is designed to convey that the Government are on the side of the poor, even as the measures on planned pupil admission numbers restrict the access of poor students to the very best schools.

When it comes to school uniform, we know from the voices of head teachers on the front line the benefits that an effective school uniform policy can have in contributing to ethos, discipline and a sense of inclusivity when our society is increasingly tribalised and polarised. Rather than listen to the testimony of head teachers—including the country’s very best head teacher, Katharine Birbalsingh, who has pointed out the folly of this policy—the Government insist that the best way of helping the poor is price capping and telling head teachers that they know better. All the evidence of history flies in the face of the course that the Government are setting. The fact that we have an absurd question about whether or not there should be an overall price cap or a price cap on particular items just shows the folly of going down this micro-interventionist line.

The second element that we are debating is pupil admissions numbers. I am grateful to the Minister for acknowledging that there are reasons why we should take account of quality and of the wishes of pupils and parents, but the most effective way of doing so is by not capping the growth of good schools. This legislation allows the Government and their agencies to cap the growth of those good schools to keep less-good schools open and provide a less-good education in the name of bureaucratic and local government convenience.

The purpose of school reform is to give pupils a better education, not to make life easier for bureaucrats or head teachers who are not performing their responsibility. Once again, I wonder what the point of the last two decades of education reform was if the current Government are going to look at those two decades, when politicians across parties were united in increasing autonomy at the front line and helping good schools to expand, and diminish the force of both those changes. It is not too late for the Minister, who played a very distinguished role in the Governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, to say to the current Prime Minister and the current Education Secretary that it is time to learn the lesson from those who went before, rather than repeating the mistakes of a socialist and interventionist past.