Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Nash Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 13th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I want to raise a point probably connected to the comments of my noble friend Lord Baker, which may help my noble friend the Minister. I raised on the first day in Committee the consideration of the legal vehicle that we are dealing with here, which is potentially affected when you move from the bilateral to the unilateral, and any implications for not just charitable status but the role of charity trustees, as well as that of company directors, as in most cases these are charitable companies. I know that my noble friend intends to write to me, but it may be that the comments that follow from that have a connected purpose to what my noble friend Lord Baker has said in relation to any effects on the charitable purpose as well as the vehicle. We are dealing with a legal entity, and the implications for that need to be fully considered in the change from a bilateral contract to the unilateral situation that my noble friend proposes.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a chair of an academy trust and as a trustee of the Education Policy Institute.

I shall give a little background on trustees and their role and recruitment. When I became an academies Minister in 2013, it was clear that the very good initiative started by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—who I see is not in his place—to find academy sponsors, such as myself and my noble friends Lord Agnew and Lord Baker, had been put very much on the back burner by officials in the rush to academise; it took a very long time to warm these people up and it was a long process. I said I did not care how long it took to warm these people up; we must have this process. I did not care if we got chucked out of government and the Labour Party came back in and used all the people that we had found—good luck; it is a very noble purpose.

As it happened, we did not find too many nutters like myself and my noble friend Lord Agnew who were prepared to go from a standing start to being full academy sponsors in one move, but we found hundreds, if not now thousands, of people who were prepared to go on the boards of multi-academy trusts as non-executive directors, pro bono, to serve a very good public purpose. I wonder how many we would have found if they knew they could be chucked out by the DfE at its whim.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, it is really something for me to say that I agree with most of the noble Lords opposite on this. It is a very odd Bill and a very odd process that we are going through today.

One question that comes to mind when we look at all these amendments is this: could the Minister give us a rough idea where the Minister’s power to make a decision without consultation has been increased or decreased? If there is anywhere that that power has been decreased, I would be very glad to hear about it. But if it is only the case that “We will make something without going through a consultation process”, surely that shows up one of the major flaws in the Bill.

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[Lord Triesman (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 169. I express my gratitude to both Ministers on the Government Front Bench for a very helpful conversation. In the course of what they will say, they may well be able to allay some of the anxieties that I have expressed about the position of adopted children in the past. I greatly appreciated that, and want my appreciation recorded.

Amendment 169 is not about the big issues on admission which we have been discussing, although I completely associate myself—if I can pick just one of my noble colleagues—with my noble friend Lady Morris about geographic and local coherence in the arrangements we make. This amendment may appear to be a small and detailed matter by comparison, but I can assure the Committee that it is of the first importance to the small number of people who are impacted by it. Amendment 169 addresses the difference in educational access and assistance experienced by children adopted from care internationally, contrasted with those who are adopted from care in the United Kingdom, and the impact of these differences on their education and life prospects.

I declare an interest as the proud father of a quite exceptional adopted daughter who became part of our family on the third day of her life and is a great blessing. When I first spoke about this matter in the House, she was 10; she is now 13 and, until the discussion I had today, it appeared to me that nothing had moved forward in those three years of her life. However, I think that we will hear something rather more different today.

Adopted children face many challenges which are well documented. Many have special needs, some far greater than others, and, in many cases, because some spend years in care before finding a loving family home, they experience many of these difficulties to a very great extent. The care they experience is of very mixed quality, especially abroad, and they carry that experience alongside the fundamental experience of loss of attachment throughout their lives. There are multiple studies in the leading peer-reviewed journal, Adoption & Fostering, which most Members of the House will feel establishes the facts beyond dispute. The impact on these children has also been largely experienced by children from particular countries: China, India, Thailand, Ethiopia, Guatemala and some from Russia. As your Lordships will easily detect, the impact of discrimination has therefore been far greater on children of colour.

The scheme of intercountry adoption is regulated by the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in respect of Intercountry Adoption 1993. It was ratified by this country, among the then 24 EU members, and it says that all children adopted from care overseas should have the same rights as those in the receiving countries. There was nothing at all unwilling about our participation, and I note that David Cameron was in the forefront of making all kinds of adoption, here and abroad, easier. I hope that in the course of this discussion, we will hear about changes being made to the School Admissions Code, so that it will require local authorities and other admissions bodies to give the same top priority for pupil places to children adopted from state care in this country.

In case it is not well understood, although I suspect that it will be, I add that most of the children who are adopted from overseas, once they are adopted, come here and become United Kingdom citizens. The question on their parents’ minds will be, “Why on earth would they have worse prospects than comparable United Kingdom citizens?”. It is acknowledged that this would be discrimination between kids adopted here and overseas, and it would violate the 2010 Equality Act which states in terms that there must be no discrimination in school admissions based on country of origin.

The data is strong. While I will not delay the Committee for long, it is always worth trying to use an occasion like this to underpin why the changes are necessary. Some 94% of peer-reviewed papers show adoption to be correlated with lower academic attainment and related behaviour problems. This is clear among very young children and gets clearer with age—it is most acute among teenagers. Of the issues faced by children, trauma around attachment and anxiety about the loss of attachment are absolutely distinct and significant in all the research. Some 80% of adopted children express profound confusion and anxiety at school; two-thirds report that they are bullied. Neither they nor their parents feel, in an overwhelming proportion of cases, that they have had an equal chance. To underline the point as thoroughly as I can: adopted children are 20 times more likely to be excluded than their classmates. In the first three years of primary school, they are 16 times more likely to be excluded. None of these data are spurious; they all meet high levels of statistical significance and confidence.

I was very grateful to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said a while ago about the role of parents, because I feel that I am talking about the same thing. It is inevitable in these circumstances—and I believe quite rightly—that parents have the central role. It is not a mainstream role for national or local government for obvious reasons, but I know first-hand that parents pay the closest attention to the attributes in the pool of school options in front of them. Parents are the ones who interact with the schools and local authority. I promise you that, as a parent, you come to know which schools are most attuned to social and emotional trauma issues, can sponsor and encourage executive functioning for your child, know about providing sensory diets to regulate behaviour and grasp the implications of neurological divergence. You form self-help groups of parents grappling with these issues where you learn a lot and enjoy a lot of support. You get to know—because you have to—where there is specific training and knowledge of attachment trauma and where the head teacher and specialist staff really know what they are doing, as distinct from knowing what they should be doing. It is the way in which you choose the mission-critical path for your child and it does not rely then on good luck in admissions. It is parent engagement and decision-making at its clearest.

Many schools are excellent at many other things, but they are not all necessarily excellent at everything and may not be excellent at this vital thing which I am describing, which could determine whether your child joins that absurdly high number of kids who get excluded or bullied, underachieve or are profoundly miserable. It matters not one whit to you whether your child was adopted from here or abroad.

I look forward to what the Minister will be able to say but, having commented on the Ministers in this House, I say that much of the running on this was made by Nick Gibb when he was Schools Minister. He told local authorities in December 2017 that they should include children adopted overseas for priority admission to schools identified by their parents to give the kids the best chance. Unfortunately, a significant number of local authorities would not take that advice from the Minister for Schools, which I think was very sad. But we are now in a position where we have a ministerial team that will, and I sincerely welcome that. I also welcome that there will be further thought on the pupil premium plus, which is also very significant for this group of students, and hope there will be further comment on that.

It turns out that we did not need, as I thought for some years we did, primary legislation to achieve the things that I think can be described by Ministers today. I welcome that for a very straightforward reason that is not all that much to do with personal experience, although of course that does bear on me. I welcome it because kids get one chance, and kids who have difficulties need all the help they can to take that chance. It is up to us to give it to them.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, in this amendment. I have great respect for people who adopt. I personally support a wonderful organisation called Hope and Homes for Children, which has closed many orphanages in eastern European countries and allowed the children to be effectively adopted—it is not quite the terminology that most of these countries use. I took the Children and Families Act through your Lordships’ House, which was very substantially about improving adoption arrangements. I remember the noble Lord raising this point with me when I was a Minister. It seemed a no-brainer then and it seems to be so now, and I very much hope that my noble friend the Minister will support him in making this amendment.

I would also like to speak briefly on the point about academies fixing their admissions arrangements to their advantage, which has been mentioned. As a rule, this is unfair. There are some schools—schools of different types, actually—which have rather complicated admissions arrangements and one sometimes wonders whether they are deliberately complicated. But, as I say, I think it is unfair on the vast majority of academies and multi-academy trusts.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

It is pleasure to follow the recent speakers, particularly my noble friend Lord Triesman. That was an exceptional speech and his personal experience really gave us food for thought. I echo what the noble Lord opposite said about people who take that life-changing decision for themselves and their families to adopt. I too am looking forward to what the Minister has to say in response.

I would also like to support my noble friend Lord Hunt and others in their desire for the Government to commit to the existing position on no new grammar schools. We understand that the Prime Minister is in generous mood with his Back-Benchers at the moment, and it would be a real shame for a change to the current rules to be made in that context. We are concerned about that, given some of the comments referenced by others, and want to make sure that it does not happen.

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[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, this is an important question, but, again, I would be looking for the output, not the input—in other words, when asking whether teachers should be qualified, it is the quality of the qualification that matters. At the moment, it is a nine-month course without any validation at the end. We have the Teach First initiative, which was pioneered very successfully by Labour, which is six weeks of training. Looking at parts of the economy where we are desperately short of good teachers—take a subject such as computer science, for example—I would say that you could bring those sorts of people into teaching for a couple of years, because they might want to put something back in an initiative similar to Teach First but then go on to a different career.

So, if we are worrying about the quality of teachers, we must be careful that this is not just about some formal qualification. It is about how good they are and, particularly in response to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, it is about how good they are at enthusing children in the classroom. I think we have moved into a new and very difficult game post-Covid. Children were learning across screens remotely on and off for two years, and the skills needed to enthuse and engage children in that way have changed, rather than just standing in a classroom. So, I am sceptical, but this is an important point, and I am glad that we have the chance to debate it, because this is exactly what a Schools Bill should be doing.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

I support my noble friend. I say to the noble Lords, Lord Knight and Lord Blunkett, that if a teacher has been teaching in the private sector for 20 years and is well qualified in their subject—through university and through practising it for 20 years—are we really going to make them take a course for nine months, at the end of which there are no exams, so that they are qualified to teach? I think we need to be a little more flexible about this.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

Just to add to that, I think there are—or there used to be—ways for teachers moving from the independent sector to the state sector which were far less than nine months.

I take the point about a subject like IT. I absolutely agree with the amendment: teaching is a profession, and all the evidence internationally shows that the better qualified the teacher, the better the achievement for students. That is what this is all about. But if the problem is that, in a fast-moving world, there are a set of skills such as IT that people need to come into education to deliver, there needs to be another way of meeting that need and getting those people in rather than saying to the whole of the school system that teachers do not have to have a qualification. This is not being used to get people with specialist IT skills into schools to help children. It is being used by headteachers and schools where they cannot get staff with qualifications in front of children in classrooms, so they go for those without qualifications.

Although I share with the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, the wish to get the latest skills into the classroom without making people do a year-long PGCE, we just need a bit more creative thinking in order to make that happen. It cannot be that we go back to a profession that not only is not a graduate-level profession but is not a qualified profession at all. The message that gives is something that none of us who are committed to the education of children ought to support.

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[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with everything that the noble Baroness said; I congratulate her on saying it.

May I express the hope, which I think is in the interests of many people, that we might finish these clause stand part debates before the dinner hour? Every morning, as I leave my apartment to come to the House of Lords, my wife waves me away with the comment, “Don’t speak too much.” So I do not expect to elaborate again all the points that the noble Lord, Lord Knight, made. In fact, I do not intend to move my stand part notices for Clauses 8 to 14 at all because they use exactly corresponding words in the funding agreements. Clauses 16 to 18 are exactly the same; I do not intend to move my amendments on them in order to accelerate the movement of the House.

I will say a just few words on Clause 5, which gives the Secretary of State the power to give directions rather than advice. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and I did not have that power. I would not seek it. No Minister has had it since 1870. I do not believe that it is right for Ministers to interfere with the actual management of schools at the local level.

Clause 6 gives the Secretary of State the right to get involved in schools’ financial matters and the running of schools. Again, I do not believe that that is the right function for the Secretary of State.

Clause 7 is a significant clause because it is the one that allows the Secretary of State to appoint a new board, governor and governing body. Ministers have never had this power. In fact, the noble Lords, Lord Agnew and Lord Nash, operated the whole problem of failing schools very effectively by using funding agreements. I recommend that their practice should continue, and that this measure should not be attempted in the Bill.

That is all I have to say. I hope that we will be able to proceed quite quickly.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, I appreciate that my noble friend the Minister is in a difficult position; I am sure that she is reflecting greatly on the points that noble Lords across the House have made. However, as we are here, I will make a few further points. Some of them might be a bit technical; I apologise if that is the case.

On Clauses 5 and 7, I should say at the outset that, as my noble friend Lord Baker said, when I and my noble friend Lord Agnew were Academies Minister—for a combined period of seven years—neither of us felt at any stage that we did not have enough shots in our locker or enough in our armoury to deal with difficult trusts. We feel that Clauses 1 to 18 are unnecessary, which is why we have joined our noble friend Lord Baker in trying to strike them out.