Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Mendelsohn Excerpts

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

[Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)]

My Lords, we have had some excellent speeches from the former Education Ministers present in the House, as well as from the Front-Bench spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and my noble friend Lady Chapman. They focused on tissues around governance and some of the practical issues in Part 1, which are significant. I hope the Government are willing to engage in discussion on these matters.

Like many others, I am concerned at the overwhelming lack of evidence that the Government are a better allocator, that MATs are inherently good or are governed in the right way, or that contractual arrangements will be highly beneficial. Like many in this House, I have been a governor and trustee of schools, and I find it hard to believe that the recruitment of even more trustees will be hugely beneficial, when the real challenge has been finding quality head teachers. I am also concerned by the idea that the enforcing of a contract by the Secretary of State is an attractive recruiting sergeant for those in governance for MATs. There are a lot of practical issues that we need to address in this Bill, and I hope the Government will be open to looking at these as we go through Committee.

I will now address Part 3 and Part 4. I was pleased to see the provisions to establish a register of children not in school and on new regulations for unregulated settings or unregistered independent educational establishments. I congratulate the Government on addressing this long-overlooked area, and I offer them my strong support. I admire those who home-educate, and I know that they will be able to continue to do so even if the provisions in this Bill become law; many of their concerns are simply unfounded. These provisions are utterly necessary, and they need to be fit for purpose at the beginning. We have to deal with one of the realities: the organised denial of the rights of children by groups and intuitions, whether from closed or other communities, is the challenge the Government have to meet here.

The powers needed to remedy these measures need to be extensive and Ofsted needs to be supported, as the perpetrators have become very used to using the existing legal framework—and lawyers—to protect themselves from scrutiny and any remedial action to protect children who, for example, may not even be taught English. We should have no truck with the notion that human rights are being infringed when parents decide not to equip their children to have opportunity in the society in which they live. My concern is whether the definitions and provisions in the legislation are fully effective against a deliberate and determined attempt to evade them, and whether sufficient thought has been given to enforcement measures that can be effective in discouraging disobedience and ensuring appropriate sanctions.

I hope also that the Government will look at where other decisions that they have made may impact on these; for example, they have recently changed the planning arrangements so that now, under the class F classification, a community-use classification can be used for a church as well as a school, which means that any religious establishment, for example, can transfer to a school immediately. This opens up a huge lacuna in the law and the implementation of it to address the issues with which we are concerned.

I am particularly pleased that the balance has been struck by focusing on the role of education providers, not just on fining the parents—many of whom will never have declarable or visible means to pay. However, we should be live to wilful attempts to evade these measures, including organised efforts such as those undertaken by a few communities and groups during the periods of high restrictions during Covid. I hope that the Minister will consider helpful amendments that could assist in this effort, such as a more general anti-avoidance provision, or even, for example, a specific provision that allows for Ofsted to make a determination as to whether an attempt was made by organisers to increase or create a tapestry of providers to make it appear that the amount of hours taught would not require any of the institutions to qualify as the providers of the majority of time of educational provision.

Consideration should also be given to whether measures to deal with inappropriate classifications of institutions as informal educational settings can be used, which may include after-school clubs. Will the Government also consider more stringent measures to enforce fit and proper tests for trustees and institutions, which could include that those who are found to be organising should by default be no longer able to serve as directors or trustees in companies or charities? Further, organisations involved in this process should face swift action from the Charity Commission, by appointing managers, the revocation of charity status and significant investigations to ensure that charity status is not accorded to those involved in helping, assisting or facilitating disobedience.

I am very happy to support the Government on these measures and I hope that they are sufficiently robust to deal with any and all attempts to deny children the education that they deserve.

Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Mendelsohn Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

I should like briefly to add my support to these two very sensible amendments, which would stop unscrupulous unregistered schools circumventing the law and speed up the inspection process.

[Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 171C and 171D. I strongly support the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, as well. I think she has a very correct estimate of the challenges and has presented some situations that are rather familiar in how they will be used to try to circumvent the Bill. I express my thanks to the Minister for her courtesy and for the time with her and her officials to discuss the matters raised in these amendments.

Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Mendelsohn Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 18th July 2022 Lords Chamber

I hope the Minister will reply supportively to my Amendment 100, and also take on board some of these very important amendments to make school attendance orders reflective of the situation that people find themselves in.

[Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 97A, 118J and 118K.

We have to remind ourselves that the issue of unregistered school settings and the claim that some people are home schooling in order to send children to such settings is a problem that we have long had. Many people here will remember that Section 96 of the Education and Skills Act 2008 was established specifically to make sure that such settings were deemed unlawful. Unfortunately, we found that the law was so difficult to enforce that we have had a massive increase in the number of unregistered school settings, creating much more of the problem that we have had to deal with. Indeed, there have been only three prosecutions, and the first one took 10 years to take place. The number of schools that have been reported to Ofsted exceeds, I believe, a thousand. Hundreds have been identified by Ofsted but have been very difficult to deal with. Enforcement has been so poor that many schools deregistered to unregistered schools to avoid any form of regulation because they felt that they could operate in that way.

The position has been very clear. Departmental advice for collaborative working between the Department for Education, Ofsted and local authorities in March 2018 stated:

“Over recent times, we have seen a rise in the number of institutions operating outside the regulatory regime as unregistered independent schools; this involves a criminal offence and conduct that may be putting children at risk of harm, denying them a suitable education, and limiting their life chances. Tackling unregistered independent schools is a priority—and one that involves joint working and collaboration.”


Unfortunately, even in those times it was very clear that the provisions available to Ofsted, local authorities and the Government were very weak. That is why these measures in the Bill have been so warmly welcomed.

However, there are issues on which I am still trying to probe the Government and encourage them to think of creative ways in which to draft measures. It would be a tragedy that, 15 years after we thought we had solved a problem that had existed for decades beforehand, we were in the same position, in that the provisions were insufficiently flexible and strong to make sure that the law is properly enforced and that that which is meant to be outlawed is so done; and that if it were seen to be unable to be enforced effectively, we would have to wait another 15 years in order to do that.

Amendment 97A tries to deal with those who are enablers of the use of unregistered educational settings and who do not take a formal role in the structure of that educational setting. Such people may provide a facility or other forms of support, be that a location or funding that goes towards individuals who are providing these skills, but they structure it in a way that does not make them culpable in any way as an educational institution. I believe that the Government are missing a trick if they do not deal with those people who help these things continue.

Amendment 118J seeks to give Ofsted a more general, anti-avoidance power. This would allow it to join the dots in situations where its intelligence and information, in matters raised by a parent or parents in this situation, make it clear that it can take a broader view of how these institutions may well be operating or trying to operate once their structure has been changed to try to find loopholes in the law.

Lastly, Amendment 118K would establish a process to review the Act and its operation and to encourage reporting to the House, particularly on this measure—I suspect there may well be a clumsy error in the drafting, for which I apologise in advance. The intent is to try to focus on this area so that the expertise and views of local authorities and others involved in education, especially Ofsted, can be collated by the department so that we can review whether or not these measures are being successfully enforced and we are achieving the outcomes that we so desperately want for the safeguarding of children.

Obviously, I will not push these amendments to a vote. They are there to try to encourage the Government to think again as the Bill goes through its passage in another place on how additional measures could be introduced to make sure that we make this the final time we have to legislate on these issues.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

The amendments in this group have attendance at their core, and nothing is more important. In addition to being directly related to physical health, the attendance of learners in school is affected by well-being and mental health, and by attitudes towards learning and schooling. My noble friend Lord Hunt and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, made some important points regarding children with medical conditions. The interrelationship between attendance and general well-being is considered so strong that attendance has often been taken as a measure for well-being in previous data collection. We know that attendance has a strong impact on learner outcomes, standards and progression. I can tell you from first-hand experience that examination outcomes strongly correlate to attendance rates.

Amendments 118J and 118K, proposed by my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn, seek to deal with the current gaps in legislation, addressing important issues surrounding attendance and its promotion by educational institutions, and would require a review of any avoidance of the legislation as it develops, which we support.