Education Settings: Autumn Opening

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Department for International Trade (Baroness Berridge) (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords for welcoming, as we all do, the fact that children will return to school in September. It is the case that many children have been in school during the period of lockdown. With about 20% of vulnerable children in school, there are over 1.6 million children in school. In relation to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, we share his concerns about the progress made over many years on the attainment gap between those children on free school meals and their peers. That is why the £350 million section of the £1 billion catch-up premium is for tutoring directed to disadvantaged children.

On the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, the guidance strikes a balance between giving schools a framework in which to operate, which has been set in collaboration with Public Health England, and providing school leaders with the flexibility they need, given the multiplicity of school buildings around the country. The overarching principle in the guidance is that schools should seek to reduce the number of contacts between children and staff. It refers to achieving this through keeping groups separate in bubbles and maintaining distance between individuals. It is anticipated that the main thing that will reduce the risk for primary school children—who, of course, will not maintain social distance—is keeping groups separate. For older children, it is about maintaining distance between individuals; a year group can be the bubble for older children who, hopefully, will comply more readily with the instructions from their school leaders.

We appreciate that transport will be an issue in this regard, particularly in rural areas. The Government are advising cycling and walking and have invested £2 billion to promote this as a means to get to school and otherwise, but we recognise that it is a challenge. The guidance has therefore drawn a distinction between public transport and dedicated school transport. The most significant difference is that, while the current guidance is that the one metre-plus rule applies on public transport, it will not apply on school transport. The recommendations are that—if possible and within reason—the bubbles of pupils within school should be maintained on the school vehicle, and there should be queuing, cleaning and hand sanitisation.

As the noble Lord outlined, we recognise that there are particular issues relating to siblings and school transport, and further guidance will be published on this. However, I think it is widely recognised that the balance now is very strongly in favour of the need for children to be back in school for the sake of their health and well-being. We have carefully considered the risk of transmission of the disease—we know that, thankfully, most children are less susceptible to serious symptoms—and the balance is overwhelmingly in favour of most children returning to school.

On reorganisation, to which the noble Lord referred, class sizes can now return to normal, as I have outlined, and spaces used by more than one class can be cleaned. Until the end of the summer term, in addition to other funding we have made available exceptional funding to cover costs of up to £75,000 per school. This is to cover such things as being open during the holidays, providing vouchers other than through the central system and, of course, cleaning costs. Of the £14.4 billion extra cash over the next three years that was announced, £2.6 billion will be made available this September through the dedicated schools grant. That is in addition to the £1 billion catch-up premium.

We are, of course, concerned, as are many parents, about lost education, particularly for those children who will sit their main examinations—GCSEs and A-levels—next year. As of 2 July, Ofqual has published consultation proposals on a range of possible changes which we realise may have to be made to next year’s examinations. The overriding aim, as with this year’s examination results, is that the arrangements are as fair as possible and give appropriate recognition to children’s achievements. I invite the noble Lord, Lord Watson, to respond to this consultation, which contains a raft of different options to ensure that students can be confident in their results.

On track and trace, there is confidence that this system is up and running. Tests will be available for staff, pupils and their households and, obviously, local health teams should be notified where people test positive. We are distributing a small number of home kits, as the Secretary of State for Education outlined, which people can take home if they develop symptoms on school premises. I am happy to confirm to the noble Lord, Lord Watson, that there are no grounds for his suspicion that the £1 billion is not new money: it will be in addition to the core schools budget. The year seven premium to which he referred is not relevant to the £1 billion, because that is now included in the national funding formula. The £1 billion is in addition to the national funding formula money that I have outlined.

The questions from the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on children’s attendance in school are incredibly important. All the statutory obligations on schools to record attendance and any authorised or unauthorised absences will be in force as of September. It is important that we have that information; during this period we have published the statistics on how many children have been in school. As regards the broad, ambitious and balanced curriculum that we have outlined in the guidance, we believe that it is feasible for schools to look at how they will alter the priorities with which they will teach certain aspects of the curriculum. For instance, in maths, it is more important that young people get arithmetic skills than that they potentially learn Roman numerals. Therefore we leave it to schools to do that. We anticipate that the schools will be teaching to the curriculum by the summer of next year, but we have allowed them that flexibility.

Indeed, the statistic in terms of catch-up through the tutoring service—six to 12 weeks—is evidence-based and, as regards the catch-up premium, we have made available information from the Education Endowment Foundation to help schools use that money wisely. I can reassure the noble Lord that we have published guidance for special schools. Of course, they have to do many more individual risk assessments for pupils, but they have the benefit of smaller groups, and they will potentially be impacted by the changes to the shielding guidance that will happen on 1 August.

However, I share the noble Lord’s concerns about any children missing from our schools. He will be aware that the department carried out a consultation on proposals to introduce a registration scheme for children who are home educated. I assure him that we will publish that consultation response soon and that during this period, as well as Ofsted’s obligations to investigate safeguarding, it has also been acting on any intelligence it has received about any unregistered settings. It is supported by us to conduct such visits if it believes that there is an unregistered setting, and it continues to act on that intelligence. The noble Lord is probably aware that in recent years there have been a number of successful prosecutions. The department takes it very seriously, particularly in terms of safeguarding and the provision of education, if anyone is operating an unregistered educational setting.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

My Lords, we now come to the 30 minutes allocated for Back-Bench questions. Can questions and answers please be brief, so that I can call the maximum number of speakers?

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[Baroness Berridge]

My Lords, in relation to the funding that is needed, as I have outlined, there are many pots of money. There is of course the regular £2.4 billion of the pupil premium.

Over 200,000 laptops were ordered because we need to be flexible in these coming circumstances, and eventually we purchased 230,000 in order to have that flexibility.

In relation to excluded children, AP settings are expected to be open and have been open because we have wanted them to have some face-to-face contact with all their students. I pay tribute to those settings, many of which have kept in touch with those vulnerable children during this time.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The noble Lord, Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale, has withdrawn his name, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, will my noble friend join me in sincerely thanking all those teachers who have worked, many of them solidly since the February half-term, through the Easter holidays, not least to teach the children of front-line workers and those with special needs? On the subject of laptops, of those 230,000 how many have actually been delivered and how many are being effectively used right now by students?