Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. He was an outstanding Education Secretary who enormously improved literacy and numeracy in primary schools, but what endears him to me is that his two grandsons are going to the University Technical College that I established in Sheffield for a high-quality technical education. We now have another one on the outskirts. This Bill threatens the existence of UTCs, but I will come on to that in a moment.

Clause 47 is very radical. It would mean a major change of power in this country. The clause makes this a constitutional Bill, because it gives powers to the Secretary of State and the department that the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and I never had and never wanted. It moves all the power from local areas to the centre. There has been no consultation on this. There have been no research papers. It has just been plucked out of the air and added to this Bill. I think it is very harmful indeed.

Schools have done very well by being academies. I established the first early ones in the 1980s. When I introduced the national curriculum in the 1980s, my Permanent Secretary said to me, “You can’t instruct schools to follow it and you can’t tell them to do it. You can make suggestions and recommendations”. This was because, since 1870, schools have been run by elected local school boards, by local authorities and now by multi-academy trusts. All the powers of those trusts are now being transferred by Clause 47 and other clauses to the department and the Secretary of State, giving them powers that I never had and which never existed.

When there is a huge change like that, with no checks and balances, there is usually consultation. There should be, but there has been no consultation on this. I do not believe this measure was in the manifesto of the Labour Party. It is a major constitutional change and we have to think very carefully about it. The schools that I promoted do not follow a national curriculum—or a Gove curriculum. We recruit a lot of 14 year-olds. In the first week, they spend two days a week learning with their hands, learning how to use tools and machinery or going to the computer room to get their data skills or to the design studio to improve their communication and learn about laser printers and 3D printers—the greatest invention since the 19th century. They are not following the national curriculum or a Gove curriculum. They have their own curriculum, and they are very successful. If we have to follow the national curriculum, we will have to become bog-standard comprehensives. That is simply not acceptable. I will certainly ask the Government to think again about this.

When you have such a huge constitutional change as that, there is usually consultation. People are asked about it. There has been no consultation at all on this enormous change of power, so there should certainly be consultation. I am reasonably confident that the Government will be sympathetic, because we are exempt at the moment from both the Gove curriculum and the national curriculum. When our students start at 14—most of them do—they spend two days a week in a workshop learning to control tools and machines. Some, as I have already said, go on to data or design skills. But this is not going to be allowed if the Bill goes through as it is.

I have some optimism, if I may say so, because although we have not discussed curriculums for 14 years, the Secretary of State herself has visited one of the best UTCs, in Durham—it is one of the best schools in the north-east of England—and the Minister who is replying today has visited the Aston UTC. The head of the Aston UTC was actually taught by the Minister, and she inspired him to go into education and be a head, so it was a very moving meeting. It was also interesting that she was given an eye test by the school. Although the school concentrates on the motor industry, last September it introduced optometry, and it was able to give her an eye test. She passed it. We now have lots of other students who want to study that.

I am saying to the Minister that there should be flexibility. We have had exemption from the national curriculum and from the Gove curriculum, and I very much hope that she will be able to ensure that we will still have exemption. She will not remember—she was not in the House when it happened—but the last Conservative Government brought in a Bill, which the noble Lord, Lord Addington, just mentioned, to give huge powers to the Secretary of State in the Department for Education. There was an unusual alliance between the noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Storey, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, who then headed the Cross-Benchers, and they defeated the Bill. This is the Department for Education trying to do it in a different way.

In fact, I am optimistic that the Government will realise that the exemptions we have enjoyed in the past will have to be enjoyed in the future.