Schools: Special Needs Pupils

Lord Bishop of Worcester Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right about the success of appeals, but I point out that just over 2.3% of all decisions went to appeal. Although the success rate is very high, the level of appeals is perhaps lower than the House might believe from the media. We are currently trying to test a range of measures that will mean that the quality of decisions—and, crucially, the confidence that parents can take in those decisions—is improved. That includes testing a single national education, health and care plan template and guidance, testing multiagency panels to improve the quality of and parental confidence in decision-making, and resolving disagreements quicker by strengthening mediation.

[The Lord Bishop of Worcester]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a parent who had to fight hard for an EHCP for his child. It is not only in deprived areas that it is very hard to be awarded an EHCP; it is certainly true in Worcestershire, where a large proportion of applications are turned down. As I was fighting through mediation, I was told by a health professional, “Remember, John, only pushy parents get EHCPs”, and that seemed to be the case. Does the Minister agree that this is shameful? Does she also agree with the LSE that the basic problem is that more money needs to be put into the system?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I tried to address some of the points that the right reverend Prelate raised in my answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins. We definitely do not want a world where only pushy parents get an EHCP; we want a world where the children who need an EHCP get one. On funding, this Government have massively increased the high-needs budget; it will be worth over £10.5 billion by 2024-25, a 60% increase on 2019-20. We are also committing significant capital to expand the number of special needs places.

Independent Schools

Lord Bishop of Worcester Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I remind the noble Baroness that teacher numbers are at an all-time high. I do not deny that there are recruitment challenges, but it is important to be fair about the context. I also remind her that pupil funding next year will be at an all-time high in per-pupil terms. I refer her to the recent results of our pupils in the international leagues tables for both reading and maths, and the dramatic improvement in their performance over the last 14 years.

[The Lord Bishop of Worcester]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interest as president of the Woodard Corporation, one of the largest Christian education charities in the country. The noble Lord, Lord Black, drew attention to the partnership between Brentwood School and other schools in the area. That is built into the very DNA of the Woodard Corporation, with 12 private schools, six academies, 12 affiliated maintained schools and overseas schools, as schools work well together. Does the Minister agree that this mixed model, which values co-operation between different providers, is a very good one that benefits all children? Does she agree that it would be good to encourage such a model?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolutely agree with the right reverend Prelate. I know of a number of independent schools and their local state schools that are considering just the sort of arrangement that he described.

Schools: Data, Digital and Financial Literacy

Lord Bishop of Worcester Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Our Online Safety Bill goes a long way to addressing the concerns that the noble Lord rightly raises, but I should like to reassure him that some of that is also reinforced by the work that we are doing at every key stage in our schools.

[The Lord Bishop of Worcester]

My Lords, recently I had the privilege of serving on your Lordships’ Communications Committee. What came through consistently in our inquiry into the effects of technology on the creative industries was the need for creative and artistic literacy as well as digital literacy—we need STEAM, not just STEM. I speak as a former scientist deeply committed to science and technology. Does the Minister agree and, if so, what can the Government do to enable that, given their reluctance to review the national curriculum and prioritise arts more?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate raises an important point. Certainly, when I was talking to a number of young people recently, they raised exactly the same issues as he does. I do not think that there is any resistance at all from the Government about the importance of a STEAM curriculum; we talk a lot about STEM, but we also talk a lot about our vibrant and incredibly successful creative industries. Our commitment to the teaching workforce has been that, during this period of recovery post Covid, there will be no changes to the national curriculum.

Children in Care

Lord Bishop of Worcester Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The department is grateful for the work that the Royal National Children’s SpringBoard Foundation does and works closely with it. My noble friend makes a good point. A child in care obviously faces a wide range of challenges starting from their early childhood, as the noble Lord, Lord Laming, pointed out. Therefore, the role of the local authority in supporting children in all those aspects is critical.

[The Lord Bishop of Worcester]

My Lords, the quality of life of children in care is clearly a matter of grave concern, but I wonder whether the Minister is aware of the Children’s Society latest The Good Childhood Report, which suggests deep concern about the continuing decline in the well-being of children generally. As expected, the current cost of living crisis is having a significant effect on families: 85% of parents and carers, the report suggests, are very concerned about the future. The Children’s Society report suggests ways forward. Is the Minister aware of them? Faster rollout of mental health support, a permanent boost to social security lifelines and extended help with school lunches are among them. Will the Minister comment on that?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As a department, we look at all those options, but on the one hand we need to recognise the extraordinary challenges children faced particularly through Covid—particularly teenagers while their schools were closed—but we also need to acknowledge that we are in an economy with more opportunity and more job opportunities than ever before. I think we need to be empathetic to their experience but also optimistic for their futures.

Schools White Paper

Lord Bishop of Worcester Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her remarks. On academisation, she will be aware that the picture is very different in secondary and primary education. About 78% of secondary schools are now academies compared to about 38% of primaries. She questions their performance. Our emphasis has been very clear. We are talking about creating strong trusts and we are building on the experience of the existing strong trusts. If all children did as well as pupils in the top-performing 10% of trusts at key stage 2, our results nationally would be 14 percentage points higher, going from 65% to 79%, and would be 19 percentage points higher for disadvantaged pupils. I know the noble Baroness shares my passion and the passion of my colleagues in the department for supporting particularly those disadvantaged children.

On Oak Academy, far from deskilling teachers, we are going to make the most enormous investment in teachers in terms of teacher training opportunities and continuing professional development at all stages of a teacher’s career. We are aware that, particularly in primary, individual teachers are writing lesson plans from scratch. Oak Academy is by teachers, for teachers and of teachers. It is there as an option for teachers. Again, I know the noble Baroness shares our concerns about teacher workload. One way we can support teachers is by providing them with the best-quality curriculum to draw from.

[The Lord Bishop of Worcester]

My Lords, I echo the noble Lord, Lord Storey, in his thanks for the White Paper. In doing so, I declare my interest as president of the Woodard Corporation. In expressing gratitude, I appreciate in particular how the White Paper recognises the vital role the Churches have played in the educational landscape of this country for more than 200 years and that it sets out how the role needs to continue to be enabled in the future development of the school system. I will focus on two questions regarding the move towards the fully academised educational landscape set out in the White Paper and invite the Minister to agree that it requires two key things.

First, it requires significant investment of resource to make that transition possible. The Church of England is the largest provider of academies, with over 1,500 of our schools having already converted, but that still leaves two-thirds of our schools waiting to become academies. This will require time and resource for the conversion process, as well as strong, new trusts to be formed to enable that transition. Recognition that MATs must grow to a sustainable level of about 7,500 pupils means thinking carefully and strategically about small rural schools and how a funding model can work for them, to enable their vital education to remain at the heart of communities, particularly rural communities, across our land.

Secondly, I hope the noble Baroness can give assurance that legislation will be introduced to ensure that the statutory basis on which the dual system of Church and state as partners in education, which has been in operation since 1944, securely translates into the contractual context in which academies are based, so that the sites on which schools are situated can continue to be used for the charitable purposes for which they were given. So, in expressing thanks, I ask the noble Baroness to assure us that these things will be addressed and secured in order to ensure that Church schools can approach this new future with confidence.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for his questions. I also extend my thanks to Church schools but also to all schools that have been working in the most difficult circumstances, particularly in the second half of this term, with the pressures that Covid has placed, once again, on their staff. I can, I hope, reassure the right reverend Prelate that we will be protecting the faith designation of diocesan schools on a statutory basis as we move forward with our plans. We are providing funding to support academisation and to make sure that schools, particularly schools in the most entrenched areas of educational underperformance, are funded to join strong trusts.

On small rural schools—to go back to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, about feeling local—perhaps there are no schools more local than small rural primaries, which often play a really important part in their community. We will be putting a great deal of thought into this and look forward to working with the right reverend Prelate’s colleagues at the diocesan education board in thinking through how we can deliver this in a way that supports small rural primaries.

Adoption Support Fund

Lord Bishop of Worcester Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Worcester]

My Lords, I add my congratulations and thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, for securing this debate. I declare an interest: mine is one of the 50,000 or so families who have received support from the adoption support fund. I am immensely grateful for that support. It came at a very difficult time after the death of my wife, my children’s adoptive mother, six years ago, when they were very young. It was invaluable. That is the most important thing I have to say this afternoon. It is a privilege to be able to speak from first-hand experience as an adoptive parent and as someone who has benefited immeasurably from the ASF. I am no longer in receipt of the fund but I offer my heartfelt thanks—to the Government for this excellent initiative, to the all-party parliamentary group for its excellent report and to Home for Good, the wonderful charity involved in compiling that report. I add my voice to those asking for the ASF to be continued after the spending review so that others are able to access the crucial help that it gave us.

Being an adoptive parent has brought me untold joy, but the great demands of being such a parent need to be recognised and appropriate support given. My children are not among the three-quarters of adopted children who, according to the Department for Education, have been removed from their birth families because of abuse and neglect. That heartbreaking statistic brings home how vital it is fully to comprehend the necessity for support of the sort we are discussing. That said, it is also crucial to be aware that all adoptive children will face challenges as a result of what adoption specialists term “the primal wound”—being separated from someone to whom they have been attached, not just psychologically but physiologically in the womb.

It is not surprising, therefore, that adopted children and young people are statistically more likely to be involved in the criminal justice system and to need mental health support; the complications that some adopted children face at school and at home are very great. We should note that—as the noble Lord, Lord Russell, intimated—any such support will enable considerable long-term savings for the Government in the future by reducing the child’s likelihood of exclusion and engagement with the police.

Feedback from parents and children who have accessed the scheme, like me, has been overwhelmingly positive. According to the Adoption Barometer survey, 94% of those who received support from the fund are likely to apply again in the future, with four out of five parents who accessed it saying that it had a significant positive impact on their child and family situation. Such positive feedback makes it clear that for many parents the fund is a vital service. As the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, noted, the charity Investing in Families reported that 79% of parents state that the fund is

“meeting a need which cannot be met elsewhere”.

Mental health and family support should be easily accessible to all children and parents, but in this case the vulnerability of the children in question means that the fund is a vital source of support, not only for the health, happiness and well-being of the child but for the parents, many of whom are unprepared for the realities of the complexity that often surrounds the adoption of a child. Many parents go into adoption full of good will but without the skills or training to support their child, and may have only basic knowledge of their child’s background or psychological history.

The ASF not only equips children with the tools to help to look after their own mental health and process their past but equips parents will the skills and confidence needed to support their child. As a mental health practitioner in East Sussex explained, nearly all the parents they came into contact with

“underestimated just how demanding some of these children’s needs were and found themselves at a complete loss on how to parent such challenging behaviour.”

However, the practitioner went on to say:

“Once the family receive therapeutic services it opens up all kinds of opportunities for them. In addition, family life can slowly return to some ‘normality’ once adoptive parents have the skills, knowledge and support for their child.”


The adoption support fund has been found in multiple surveys to prevent or reduce the risk of adoption breakdown. It hardly needs to be said that such breakdown is devastating for everyone involved, particularly the children.

As one might expect, and as the noble Lord, Lord Russell, observed, there is room for improvement in the operation of the fund. Most significant is the impact of long waiting lists, coupled with a general lack of knowledge of its existence. However, it has been working well. In anticipation of this debate, I was in touch with a very experienced and well-respected clinical psychologist in Worcestershire, Dr Kim Golding, who has been working with and supporting families of looked-after and adopted children for over 30 years. She is an expert in the sort of therapy that we received, dyadic development therapy, an excellent and effective intervention. She states that she has witnessed at first hand

“how this fund has helped these families get the support that they need.”

Dr Golding stresses the importance of understanding the needs of adoptive families, not just the children in question. When many think of adoption, they envision a fairytale ending to a story. The reality is of course very different. As she observes:

“Adopting a child from care means adopting a child who comes with a history of trauma, separation and loss of birth family. The impact of this experience is felt by the child and all family members. This can make the parenting of this child extremely challenging. Ordinary parenting does not come near to meeting the complex needs of a child who is grieving the loss of previous parents (birth and foster parents); who has learnt not to trust in the parenting that they are now receiving and who anticipates that they are going to lose this too, often with a sense of identity formed around them being a bad kid who somehow deserved what has happened to them. This can lead to a range of challenging behaviours”


and vulnerabilities. Dr Golding stresses the need for “wraparound support”, where packages of intervention are focused on, rather than single instances of therapy or counselling. The nuanced history of many children in care and adoption means that there are no easy fixes. She says:

“Interventions are needed in a timely manner and for as long as needed”,


and should involve a range of teams and specialists working in collaboration to create and implement a package of interventions for families. She states:

“The impact of trauma does not resolve quickly, and it can reassert itself at critical developmental stages throughout a child and adult’s life.”


This longer-term intervention should be supported and recognised as vital.

Additionally, as I have intimated, Dr Golding says:

“Such therapy will only be helpful if the support needs of the whole family are also met. Therapy and support is needed for the whole family and not just the child.”


As a judge observed at the time of our first adoption, conception is often a biological accident but adoption is always an act of love. That act of love is undertaken by adoptive parents for the child on behalf of all society. They deserve the support of all society as they live it out.