Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Nash Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the chair of Future Academies. I strongly support the child protection measures in the first part of the Bill, and I commend the Government for bringing them forward. The addition to this part that I would like to see is a ban on social media before the age of 16—no measure could enhance our children’s well-being more than this.

I support the measures in Part 2 on home education, but I have one major concern. Ten to 15 years ago, there were probably 20,000 to 30,000 children being home educated, many by parents perfectly capable of doing so—the so-called home education lobby. These are not the children or parents I am concerned about. There are now probably up to another 100,000 children apparently being educated at home, many of whom are not receiving any suitable education, or any education at all, and some of whom are involved in gangs and crime. Particularly for children not known to social services, how is the local authority to know that they are not receiving a suitable education without a right of inspection?

I am sure LAs would not use this power very often—many would not be staffed to do so—but I think they should have it. If an LA was, for instance, to sample 100 children and find that the vast majority were not receiving a suitable education, it would throw the whole issue into higher profile. While Sara Sharif had previously been under a CPP, she does not appear to have been so at the time of moving into home education.

On the part of the Bill on schools, it seems most odd that the Labour Party, having invented the academy movement—albeit building on the CTC reforms introduced by my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking—now seems intent on dismantling it, despite the obvious success of the academy and MAT movement in the substantial increase in the performance of our schools. Rather, the Labour Party should be taking the credit which it deserves; it was a brilliant piece of innovation. Why is it determined to deny future children the benefits that the academy freedoms have brought? There are quite a few failing schools that are academies, but then 82% of secondary children attend academies and MATs have taken on many failing schools, often quite recently. It can take many years to turn some of these schools around.

I am quite sure that the RISE teams will be ineffective. It is obvious from past attempts to bring consultants in to turn around schools that they just do not work. They have no skin in the game, they are temporary and they have no direct real authority—the complete opposite to a MAT.

I am concerned about the clauses taking micromanaging powers to the centre, which I do not think are necessary, the overriding of funding agreements, which are contracts—never a good look for a Government—the ability for LAs to change hands and, of course, the sledgehammer Henry VIII clause. From this, coupled with the weak academisation intervention powers the Government are now adopting, it is pretty clear that, if the Government pass this legislation, they are setting themselves up for endless litigation and judicial reviews. Good luck with that.

The Government have rushed out this legislation on schools without any material consultation directly with teachers and school leaders, from whom I sense no desire for it. I remember our Prime Minister saying outside No. 10 that he was going to tread lightly on our lives. Well, this part of the Bill is not going to tread lightly on the lives of working people in academies, who are already substantially disturbed by having to balance their budgets, and I strongly believe it is going to work against the interests of children and parents. The Government would be well advised to scrap it and start again.

If not, there will clearly be many amendments to the Bill, put forward in the spirit, I am sure, of a genuine attempt to improve it. When I took the Children and Families Act through your Lordships’ House, we made over 170 amendments, including many I accepted from those now on the Government Benches. I hope the Government will take a similar constructive approach.