Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Blackwell Excerpts

2nd reading & Lords Hansard - Part one
Monday 23rd May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blackwell (Con)]

My Lords, I mention my interest as the governor of a specialist music school. There is clearly much to debate in the Bill, but I will focus on two areas of provision: grammar schools and home education.

I welcome the safeguards in the Bill for existing grammar schools, but I regret that it is not taking the opportunity to open up the development of new grammar schools. There are now just 163 grammar schools, in 36 LEAs, which means that children in 75% of England do not have access to a free academic school. I recognise that there are of course conflicting views on how much better children of high ability do at grammar schools, but you do not need statistics to appreciate that these children are stretched and motivated when they are in a cohort of children of a similar standard and that this allows the teacher to move at a faster pace and cover more material.

But it is not just about academic progress. What those who have not experienced these schools often fail to understand is the lifting of aspirations and confidence when those from less privileged backgrounds are in an environment and social mix where they can be encouraged to aim for the top. A top stream in some comprehensives may be able to replicate this, but most do not have enough children at that level. Sadly, this is most likely to be true for schools in deprived social areas. So, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, once observed, the elimination of grammar schools has replaced selection by ability with selection by postcode. If you are a talented child living in the wrong postcode—in the 75% of local authorities without grammar schools—your chance of getting the top-class education that you deserve has been taken away.

Of course, critics say that selection unfairly favours the children of middle-class parents. That may be true, but those children will benefit from their parental support in any system. That is no reason to take away the opportunity for high-ability children from less advantaged backgrounds to at least have a chance of gaining an education that can transform their lives.

Just to be clear, I am advocating not the return of compulsory 11-plus but simply the availability of free academic schools for anyone with the ability to apply to them. This is similar to the German gymnasium schools, for example, which operate so effectively. I do not understand why, in this country, it is rightly regarded as acceptable to single out the highest youthful talent in, say, football, swimming or drama and give it special support, while it is regarded as divisive to provide the same special support to children with academic talent. These are individuals who may go on to take valuable leadership roles in society.

The new Labor Prime Minister in Australia summed up his philosophy as:

“No one held back. No one left behind.”


That would be a good subtitle for the Bill. Expanding access to grammar schools is an important aspect of ensuring that our brightest children are not held back. I hope that it might be possible for the Government to go further on that aspiration.

The second area that I wanted to touch on is the provisions for home education. An estimated 80,000 children are not in school and are being educated at home. For the record, I note that that number includes some of my own grandchildren. Although the law puts the responsibility on parents to ensure that their children get an adequate education, it is of course important to ensure that these children are actually getting that and that the freedoms of home education are not being abused. So I strongly support the introduction of a simple register that, for the first time, would enable us to know who these children are. But I am not sure that it is appropriate for the Bill to say that a child can be taken out of a school and placed on that register only if the school agrees. It may be that a conflict with the school is the primary reason for choosing home education.

I fear that the Bill then goes too far in enabling local authorities to prescribe and collect detailed and potentially intrusive information about the means and methods by which parents are providing this education. If a local authority judges that the curriculum or teaching methods do not conform with its view of how children should be educated, it would then have extensive powers to require the child to attend a regular school. That provision leaves many parents worried that their existing freedom to choose how they educate their children will in practice be denied.

I recognise this is a difficult balance, but I urge the Minister to listen to the arguments on this and consider whether it might be better to monitor the output from home education rather than giving LEAs powers to control the inputs—for example, having an advisory service with home visits that can make informed assessments about whether each home-educated child is making the progress expected. If there are not adequate resources to do this for every child, parents could perhaps be required to provide an annual report setting out what progress the child has made, which might highlight specific cases where inadequate or unconvincing reports raise concerns.

I suggest that the Government need to review these provisions in the Bill carefully to ensure they do not go too far in giving local authorities excessive power to impose conformity on the freedom that is there for those who want to challenge conformity.

Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Blackwell Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blackwell (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of Amendment 112A, which relates to a point that I raised at Second Reading. As the noble Lord, Lord Soley, said, there has to be a check on parents to avoid those who might abuse the freedoms. The local authority may be the right place to do that but the merits or otherwise of home education versus school education, and the structure of the curriculum, can end up as matters of educational doctrine. If a local education authority takes a view that starts as biased against home education and the freedoms within, it may well take a view that is prejudicial to the parents, in the way in which my noble friend Lord Lucas said.

There has to be a right for parents to go to some appeal process, whether in the form of the amendment or the ombudsman proposed by my noble friend Lord Wei. It may well be that the objections to the way in which the local authority runs its schools is the primary reason why somebody wants to educate their children separately. To have that education authority then be judge and jury over whether the child is being given an adequate alternative education just allows one set of educational doctrines to run roughshod over other people’s rights.

I completely accept the need for checks on parents but, as others have said, my noble friend the Minister needs to think about how, when the Bill comes back, there can be proper provision to deal with this matter—whether in the form of the amendment or something similar.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I may have omitted to declare an interest as chair of the Department for Education stakeholders’ group and other similar interests listed in the register. If so, my apologies.

I have added my name to Amendment 143I in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I should make it clear that it is the increase in fines and custody that I have difficulty with. It might be better to do away with fines altogether.

I am heartened by the statement in the department’s factsheet that

“The government does not intend to criminalise parents”


in respect of school attendance orders. But Clause 50 does not achieve this aim.

When I was a magistrate, I recall cases of parents who, with the best will in the world, simply could not control their children. They were rarely parents who could manage the fines prescribed. As for the custodial option, the Farmer review emphasised how

“disruptive and costly short sentences are to family life”

and ties. What does the imprisonment of a parent do for a child’s attitude to school?

There are deep reasons for school refusal that should be investigated, as I also recall from my time as a teacher. Different means to ensure the essential participation in education that children must have must be developed, and indeed in some schools are adopted, but in this time of a cost of living crisis, at least we should not increase the penalties, which can be justified in very few cases.

In conclusion, I take issue with the “hammers and nuts” of the noble Lord, Lord Wei. The nut of not being in school is a very large nut indeed. Of course there are parents who educate their children well and who are going to have no trouble with a register, although I quite understand that there needs to be some clarity, but children who are badly educated or not educated account for a much larger number. It may be that noble Lords do not come into contact with these children very often. In other debates in this Committee, we have spoken about where these children are and why they are not educated. It would take a lot of time to go through this, but it is a much larger number than the number of children who are well educated. We really must do something about this. That is why the register is a good idea.