Schools White Paper: Every Child Achieving and Thriving

Lord Hampton Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend is right that the White Paper proposes a different approach to how we fund disadvantage, recognising that a “yes or no”, free school meals analysis of whether somebody is disadvantaged does not really get to the heart of the nature of that disadvantage. We will consult on that in relation to the money that schools receive for the pupil premium and for the disadvantage factors within the national funding formula, some of which would relate to children with SEND but is not specifically about SEND. The £4 billion additional funding for SEND will be allocated in the way I outlined in my first answer.

On the point about local authority trusts, it is the objective of the White Paper for all schools to be part of a trust. We are clear that, in some cases, there may not be existing trusts that could take on a school. For that reason we will also allow local authorities to set up trusts, but it is not the intention to recreate local authorities through trust provision. That is the reason for the particular arrangements for local authority trusts.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government. As a teacher, I think this is an amazing document and I look forward to talking about it a lot more. Something I particularly love about it is the high expectation of families. A question that comes to me—one of many—is that it talks about experts at hand, wrapping professionals around mainstream settings. I love the fact that the schools are becoming the experts, but it is pretty light on detail. Can the Minister be a little more specific about how this is going to happen?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I am glad that the noble Lord recognises the emphasis on families and the relationship between schools and parents. An important element of the White Paper recognises, as I know the noble Lord does from his teaching career, that although teachers make a phenomenal difference to how children succeed, many other factors outside schools also impact on that. That is why this builds on a range of other activities, including those to support children to arrive at school ready to learn and our efforts to tackle child poverty, and brings stronger expectations on schools to ensure that they develop better home-school agreements and communicate consistently.

On the point about experts at hand, this is where I was talking about the additional funding that will enable some of those experts who, I am afraid, are currently spending too much time carrying out assessments or are in excellent special schools but are not able to offer that expertise out to schools, to develop it. Yes, there is work to be done on the design of how that happens, but this is considerable investment to deliver an average of 160 days to secondary schools precisely to get that support to children without them having to go through the torturous process of getting an education, health and care plan.