Children and Families Bill
Lord Nash Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, in what she was saying. I was rather taken by the government amendment because of its involvement of parents, children and young people themselves, but I could not see the follow-through. What we are looking for is an interrelationship between the legislation, the code and how it is applied and then how that is reported back, so that you have a virtuous circle and you can measure against what you are attempting to do.
In order to do that, you have to have absolute transparency. That is why I am also concerned about the phrase,
“it expects to be available”.
Unless families know with absolute clarity what is available and have some idea of what the local authority might be planning to make available—that might be what the “expects” is trying to achieve—how can they be engaged in a debate with the local authority in some sort of forum to move things forward in an innovative way? Being involved in two charities that work nationally, I know how very different the provision is across the country, but I still have grave anxieties about setting minimum standards, having also worked in a local authority that was strapped for cash in the 1970s, where we looked for any area of legislation where we could move back and save money. At this time, as I have said several times in this debate, we have to be absolutely open with families about what is and is not available. It is only if they are absolutely clear about that within the constraints of the finances that are available that they will be able to campaign, if you like, for an alternative that would better meet their needs. I encourage the Minister to look again at the phrase, “expects to be available”.
I find it far more difficult to know how I would vote on any of the other amendments, recognising the sheer complexity of the discussion that we have been having. I happen to have more faith in local authorities, and believe that if they have the opportunity and the resource they will do their best for the people that they want to serve.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, this is our first opportunity after the Recess to consider Part 3 of the Children and Families Bill. This is a good time to reflect on how far we have come in taking forward our shared ambition of a new framework for supporting children, young people and their parents—one that raises aspirations, improves outcomes and enables young people to prepare successfully for adult life.
On 17 December, the House passed a number of government amendments responding to important issues raised by noble Lords in Committee. These amendments will include disabled children and young people without SEN in key provisions of the Bill and ensure that local authorities exercise their functions with a view to securing that they identify both children and young people with SEN and disabled children and young people, and that health bodies inform the child’s parents and local authority where they are of the opinion that a child under compulsory school age has or probably has a disability. Local authorities will exercise their functions with a view to ensuring the integration of education and training provision with healthcare provision and social care provision for children and young people with SEN and disabled children and young people where they think this would promote their well-being, including in relation to their participation in education, training and recreation. Local authorities and their partner commissioning bodies making joint arrangements for the commissioning of education, health and care provision for children and young people with SEN will be amended to include disabled children and young people. Local authorities will keep under review all the education and training provision and social care provision for disabled children and young people and consult disabled children and young people and their parents when doing so. Local authorities will arrange for disabled young people and the parents of disabled children to be provided with information about matters related to disability—I have also tabled an amendment, which we shall come to later, to extend the requirement to cover children themselves as well as their parents—and local authorities will include disabled children and young people both in relation to the information to be published and in developing and reviewing the local offer and in publishing comments.
The definition of disability applied in relation to these government amendments is that in the Equality Act 2010. Since I have already given an undertaking to strengthen the links to the Equality Act duties in the SEN code of practice, they will sharpen the focus on those duties considerably. The code of practice is, of course, statutory and the guidance it provides cannot be ignored.
These changes followed a government amendment in Committee requiring schools to make arrangements for supporting children with medical needs, including children with long-term medical conditions, about whom noble Lords had particular concerns. These changes have improved the Bill and will improve provision for children, young people and families.
We have now had an interesting debate on accountability for services and the local offer. It is an important issue, and one on which a range of views was expressed in Grand Committee. I would like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Low, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Howe, Lady Hughes, and Lady Jones, for their contribution today and for bringing their experience into this debate.
I think it is important at the outset to reflect for a moment on the purposes of the local offer and on how the provisions in the Bill, the draft regulations and the draft SEN code of practice have been developed. The Lamb inquiry highlighted the need for parents to have clearer information about the support available and how decisions are made. Brian Lamb was clear that greater clarity and transparency reduces conflict and builds trust. That is why the SEN Green Paper proposed the local offer.
Since the Green Paper, we have worked with our local pathfinders and others to develop the statutory framework for the local offer. From this work, we know that local services will be much more responsive to local needs if local offers are developed with children and young people and their parents. This is precisely what we provide for in the Bill.
I appreciate the concerns that have prompted Amendment 25E, which was tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, on the review of education and care provision. I understand why she is seeking the publication of an action plan if the education and social care is deemed insufficient. I also understand her wish to ensure that local authorities address any shortcomings, but I think that Clause 30 rather than Clause 27 is the right place to address these issues, and I will say more about this shortly.
The provisions in the Bill will ensure that children and young people with SEN and disabled children and young people and the parents of children with SEN and disabilities are involved in improving provision where it is insufficient. Local authorities must consult and involve them when reviewing local provision, but I believe that the detailed mechanics of how local authorities work with local people and those providing services for them to improve provision are best left to the local authority—I take the point the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, has just made—if we are really to secure services that are responsive to local needs.
As many noble Lords have mentioned, there is a government amendment in this group—Amendment 33C —which I would now like to explain. Local authorities must publish comments from children and young people with SEN and disabilities and parents of children with SEN and disabilities about the local offer, including comments about the quality of the provision available and about any provision that is not available. We make it clear in the draft SEN code that when local authorities publish their response to comments they should include the action local authorities propose to take. However, in view of the concerns raised in Committee I have tabled Amendment 33C to make this explicit in the Bill.
This amendment will add a requirement to Clause 30(6) to make it absolutely clear that local authorities cannot simply publish their response to comments but then ignore them. They must say what action they intend to take. This will provide even greater transparency and help to improve local accountability. As with every other part of the development of the local offer, children, young people and parents will be involved in discussions with local authorities about the action they propose to take.
“( ) children and young people in its area with special educational needs, and the parents of children in its area with special educational needs;( ) children and young people in its area who have a disability, and the parents of children in its area who have a disability;”
“( ) a person in charge of relevant youth accommodation—(i) in which there are detained persons aged 18 or under for whom the authority was responsible immediately before the beginning of their detention, or(ii) that the authority thinks is accommodation in which such persons are likely to be detained;”
Lord Nash
My Lords, I rise to move the group of government amendments starting with Amendment 27A. These amendments will strengthen provision for children and young people with special educational needs in the youth justice system. Provision for young offenders has been the subject of considerable debate during the passage of this Bill, both in this Chamber and in the other place. This is an issue that we must get right. Evidence suggests that nearly one in five young people in custody has a statement of special educational needs. I offer my sincere gratitude to the noble Lords who have pursued this matter, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. I have benefited considerably from his expertise in this area, and I pay tribute to his tireless efforts to secure better outcomes for those with SEN in custody.
I also offer my thanks and appreciation to the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and my noble friends Lord Addington, Lord Storey and Lady Walmsley, all of whom have contributed valuably to this discussion. I have considered all representations on this issue very carefully, and I am now pleased to bring forward a series of amendments that will considerably strengthen protections for this vulnerable group.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has tabled Amendment 50, which I support, removing Clause 70 of the Bill, which currently disapplies Part 3 of the Bill to children and young people in detention. The Government’s amendments would replace Clause 70 with new provisions after Clause 65, which would enable education, health and care assessments to take place for a detained child or young person; require home local authorities and health service commissioners to use their best endeavours to arrange the special education and health provision specified in a plan during the period in custody; and require relevant youth custodial institutions—that is, young offender institutions, secure children’s homes and secure training centres—to co-operate with the home local authority when arranging support for young offenders with SEN. These changes will ensure that needs are identified and assessed at the earliest opportunity, that the best possible support is provided to young people in custody, and that there is a single point of accountability before, during and after their period in detention.
The first clause affected by this group of amendments is Clause 28, hence our consideration at this time. However, in the interests of clarity, I will firstly explain the substantive amendments that we would introduce after Clause 65. The point at which a child or young person is first detained is a crucial opportunity to identify special educational needs. Amendments 47B and 47C would allow the custodial institution, and the detained person or their parent, to request a full, statutory education, health and care assessment from the detained person’s home local authority. Under our amendments, a home local authority must also determine whether to conduct an assessment when a detained child or young person has been brought to its attention by someone else—for example, a professional working with the child or young person. This will support early identification of needs; it will also make best use of the time that a young person is in detention so that an assessment can get under way and support be put in place immediately upon release.
Amendment 47D would extend the right to appeal to a detained young person or a detained child’s parent when they were unhappy with a local authority decision not to carry out an assessment or a decision not to make provision following an assessment.
Amendment 47E would require a child or young person’s home local authority to use its best endeavours to arrange the special educational provision specified in the EHC plan while they are in custody. This is a strong and robust statutory duty, requiring the home local authority to do everything in its power to arrange the specified provision, or provision corresponding as closely as possible to it, or other appropriate provision while the individual is detained. Placing this duty on the home local authority will provide continuity and stability that is not present under existing arrangements. It will significantly improve accountability and ensure that, wherever a child or young person is detained, there remains a single point of accountability and a single contact for their families. It also creates a strong incentive for the home authority to arrange the best possible provision, as it will remain responsible for that child or young person throughout their period of detention and afterwards when they return home.
Amendment 47E would also create a parallel requirement for a detained child or young person’s health services commissioner to use its best endeavours to arrange the healthcare provision specified in an EHC plan. Where a child or young person is detained in custody, the relevant health services commissioner would be NHS England. This is a new duty, which would require the health service commissioner to do everything in its power to arrange the specified provision, or provision corresponding as closely as possible to it, or other appropriate provision while the individual is detained.
Amendment 27A to Clause 28 and Amendments 33HA to 33HK to Clause 31 would require relevant secure institutions—young offender institutions, secure children’s homes and secure training centres—to co-operate with the local authority. These amendments will require governors of young offender institutions or those in charge of other establishments in the youth secure estate to work with local authorities to deliver the best possible support for those in custody. These new statutory requirements will give local authorities the backing they need to ensure that custodial institutions play their part. This also reflects the Government’s ambition to place education at the heart of youth detention, set out in the Transforming Youth Custody consultation paper.
In addition to these substantive changes, we have also made a series of technical supporting amendments to Clauses 36 and 48, and to Schedule 3. These supporting amendments also include adding a new clause, “Application of Part to detained persons”, which includes a regulatory power to apply further provisions to detained people. These regulations, along with a revised section within the code of practice, will allow us to set out more detail about how we expect these new duties to operate in practice, and the relative roles and responsibilities of each party.
Amendments to Schedule 3 make consequential amendments to the Education Act 1996 to reflect the fact that these new provisions would replace existing provisions in England, but not in Wales. The Government, in consultation with the Welsh Ministers, would have the power to amend provisions by regulation. This package of amendments represents a much more robust statutory framework for detained young people, which responds to the valuable contributions and issues raised by noble Lords, for which, as I say, I am extremely grateful. I beg to move.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, I begin by thanking the Minister for his courteous words in his introduction. I feel that we are almost there on children in detention, but not quite. I fear that some work remains to be done to ensure that the intent outlined in the Government’s amendments is brought to pass. I am very grateful for the many meetings and discussions which have resulted in the amendments that the Minister outlined, which make my Clause 70 stand part debate irrelevant. However, both as a former soldier and Chief Inspector of Prisons, I admit to remaining unease, fuelled in particular by proposed new subsection (4) of Amendment 47E, which requires a home local authority to,
“use its best endeavours to arrange appropriate special educational provision for the detained person”.
Those words seem far too weak to ensure that anything actually happens.
I refer to the intent behind my Amendment 49, which—despite much of the content having been, like my stand part debate, made irrelevant by the government amendments—remains very much extant in intent. To me, “best endeavours” is too weak because it leaves too much open for too many individuals to interpret to allow consistent provision of what is intended. Therefore, I plead guilty to falling back on a concept that underpins consistent provision of what is intended in the Army, namely duty. In the long-term interests of young people with special educational needs, quite apart from the best interests of the country as a whole, I can see no reason why, rather than leave such provision to chance, a duty should not be put both on a local authority to arrange that provision be made for an EHC plan to be continued in custody, and on places of detention to deliver what is required in such a plan. That is what it appears that the Government intend, because proposed new subsection (1) of Amendment 47C states that a home local authority must secure that an EHC plan is prepared for a detained person. Unfortunately, though, as I have bemoaned on many previous occasions, such an intent is unachievable because the Ministry of Justice cannot guarantee to deliver what is arranged, prepared or required.
Unlike any other operational organisation such as a school, hospital or business, the Prison Service makes no one responsible or accountable for the treatment and conditions of any group of people in custody such as women, children or young people. Not only is the governor of any place of detention not bound to continue any practice that was in place when he or she took over, but alone determines what is or is not appropriate and will or will not be provided. Having campaigned unsuccessfully for 19 years to have this changed, and having seen far too many promising initiatives and developments dropped—wholly wrongly and unnecessarily—I suggest that if the Government mean what appears to be the intent of this group of amendments they must do something about the wording in proposed new subsection (1) of Amendment 47C and proposed new subsection (4) of Amendment 47E because, as set down, they are incapable of securing anything. I put it to the Minister that neither the Government nor any local authority should feel comfortable that the Ministry of Justice at present lacks the means of ensuring EHC plan provision in places of detention. Therefore, not least to ensure the credibility of government legislation, he should be seeking other means of securing it.
I turn to the code of practice, which has been mentioned many times during the passage of the Bill and is currently out for consultation. At present, certainly to a lay man such as me, the code appears to be a vast document, full of “musts”, without any specification about who is to deliver them or oversee their provision. The Minister has often emphasised the store the Government set by the code, and I therefore ask him whether he sees it as the vehicle by which the problem I have outlined is to be remedied. If he does, I ask him whether he will reconsider the wording in the government amendments and tell the House, probably at Third Reading, exactly how the code of practice will be worded so that provision of EHC plans is secure. I understand that NHS England is responsible for contracting provision of the healthcare part of any plan from an appropriate local provider, but I would be grateful for information on how exactly that is to be secured. I use the word “security” deliberately because local authorities, which are responsible for the continuation of any provision after the release of anyone from detention, will have a vested interest in the quantity and quality of the provision of what they are told that they must secure, but over whose provision they have virtually no control. In other words, as I said at the start of my contribution, we are nearly there but I suggest that we need one last shove before we can feel certain that provision of what the Government want is secure.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, Amendment 48A is in my name. The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, made the point, also made in the amendment, that hidden disabilities—my interest in dyslexia is very well known in the House—are, by definition, difficult to spot. We also know that they are grossly overrepresented in all sections of the prison and youth justice systems. My amendment suggests that there should be some duty on those institutions to try to identify people in them with such disabilities. Providing education, training and, indeed, even socialisation for people who have been denied the ability, for instance, to access the written word and education is going to be incredibly difficult. They do not respond well and it is something that they cannot do. For example, you cannot even access social security when you leave prison. That might be going slightly off the point, but it is important that the Government give us an idea about the pressure that will be placed on these institutions to try to identify those who have these problems. Most of the work that has been done in this area shows that there is a much better chance of them not reoffending if that is done.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, is satisfied that we are nearly there. However, as always, we do not quite seem to be there. The best endeavours clause that we are proposing for home local authorities would place incentives, we believe, in the right place—it is in the home local authority’s best interests to arrange quality provision, as it will remain accountable for the young person while they are detained and when they return from detention.
I remember many late nights in lawyers’ meetings when I have been strongly advised not to give a “best endeavours” undertaking, as it is a very strong under- taking, but to try to get away with a “reasonable endeavours” one. My legal training teaches me to believe that a best-endeavours undertaking is actually a very strong one.
The amendments specifically require the local authority to secure the special educational provision that is specified in the plan. If that is not possible, best endeavours would require home local authorities to do everything they could to arrange the special education provision specified in a young offender’s EHC plan while they are in custody—or provision that corresponds as closely as possible to it or to other appropriate provision. Some provision specified in EHC plans cannot be arranged by local authorities while a person is in custody: most notably and obviously, any requirement for a young person to attend a particular school or college, which of course they cannot attend while detained. It is for this reason that it is necessary to use the term “best endeavours”. It is a technical term that avoids placing a legal duty on local authorities which is impractical or impossible for them to deliver.
Amendment 47E does not, we believe, provide a get-out enabling home local authorities to have a free choice about which services they arrange for detained children and young people. They cannot simply decide, without robust justification, that some provision is no longer appropriate, just to avoid arranging it. Under the best endeavours duty, their starting point must be to arrange the provision specified in the EHC plan. They can arrange alternative or other appropriate provision only once they have done everything they can to arrange the provision specified in the plan.
Local authorities and the health services commissioner will be accountable to parents and young people in respect of this best endeavours duty. Parents and young people will be able to complain to their home local authority or to the health body—with ultimate recourse to judicial review. Our strengthened best endeavours duties will be accompanied by a robust code of practice.
The existing contracts for education services in public sector young offender institutions are due to end later this year. We will ensure that the arrangements made with the new education providers support local authorities as they seek to fulfil their best endeavours duty to ensure that provision in EHC plans continues to be delivered while a child or young person is in custody.
The current draft code of practice was of course written before we tabled these amendments. We will now rewrite the code to reflect them and the intent that I have today set out. I am very happy to discuss the wording of the code with the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, outside the Chamber. The code is of course subject to affirmative procedure. I hope that the noble Lord will find that helpful. I look forward to those discussions with him so that it will not be necessary for us to come back to this at Third Reading.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
I am not clear: could any requirements in relation to young offender or custodial institutions included in the code of practice actually be applied to those institutions? Could they come within the purview of the code of practice legally?
Lord Nash
I have no idea, but I hope that by the time I have finished dealing with the amendment of my noble friend Lord Addington, I might have an answer.
My noble friend Lord Addington tabled Amendment 48A to require the host local authority to make arrangements to ensure that the workforce has the skills and knowledge to identify special educational needs and put in place effective interventions. It is already a requirement of those we commission to deliver education in the youth secure estate to ensure that the needs of those young people with SEN are properly identified and addressed. Education providers in the youth secure estate are contractually required to have an appropriately trained and qualified workforce to conduct assessments. They will also have a SENCO who is responsible for managing the effective delivery of specialist SEN services.
Education providers are required to conduct an educational assessment of anyone entering custody unless this information is already known. That includes both assessments of levels of literacy, language and numeracy, and the screening of anyone who shows signs of a specific learning difficulty or special educational need. They also use a variety of tools for this purpose, including the hidden disabilities questionnaire developed by Dyslexia Action which screens for a range of hidden disabilities. Provision is subject to regular inspection by Ofsted, where appropriate working with HM Inspectorate of Prisons.
The current contract between the Education Funding Agency and education providers for young offender institutions requires all secure settings to have: procedures for ensuring that the identification and support of specific learning difficulties in young offenders is inspected, evaluated, monitored, reviewed and developed; and an appropriately trained workforce that will identify and support a young offender’s individual learning needs and deliver relevant and individually tailored programmes of learning support to those young offenders whose profiles provide evidence of specific learning difficulties. With the amendments I have proposed today, a young person identified as being at risk as a result of the screening process could be referred for a full EHC assessment. In view of this, and the existing requirements on providers and the amendments I have outlined, I hope that my noble friend will not press his amendment.
I am confident that the government amendments in this group will result in vastly improved provision for children and young people with SEN in custody, and that they address the views and concerns of noble Lords. We have made significant steps on this. As I said, I would be very happy to continue discussing this further—including, if I may, the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes.
Lord Ramsbotham
I thank the Minister for the way in which, as other noble Lords said, he has listened during all our discussions. We have come a long way, but I am still nervous that we have people under the age of 18 in young offender institutions, but health and care plans continue from nought to 25; and we have the problem of the over-18s who will be dispersed elsewhere and who will now, under plans from the Ministry of Justice, no longer go to young offender institutions, but may be sent to adult institutions all over the country.
My nervousness is not so much about the home local authority drawing up the plan but about the actual implications. A great gulf seems still to exist between the intent of the Department for Education, which has been so clearly set out by the Minister, and the ability of the Ministry of Justice to deliver what is required and laid down in legislation. I hope that when we discuss the application of the code of practice, the Ministry of Justice will be present and will be required to set out exactly how it will deliver what is in the code.
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Lord Nash
My Lords, there has been broad support across this House for our ambition to create a system that raises aspirations and helps young people with SEN to realise their full potential, achieve positive outcomes and prepare for adult life. There has also been broad support for the provisions in the Bill that extend additional rights and support to 16 to 25 year- olds in further education and training.
The Bill enshrines in law the principle that local authorities must take account of young people’s views, wishes and feelings, and involve them in decision-making. It gives young people aged 16 to 25 the right to request an assessment of their needs. It ensures that post-16 institutions will be consulted by the local authority when it reviews its provision, and are included in the local offer. It places FE colleges, sixth form colleges, 16 to 19 academies and free schools under a new duty to use their “best endeavours” for all young people with SEN, and ensures that they have regard to the new nought to 25 code of practice. It gives young people the right to request that these institutions—and approved independent specialist providers—be named in their EHC plan and then admit them, unless exemptions apply. It ensures that young people who become NEET do not lose their EHC support, and are helped back into education. Also, for the first time, it gives 16 to 25 year-olds in further education and training the right to appeal to an SEN first-tier tribunal if they are unhappy with their arrangements. There is a great deal here that we should be proud of and I am grateful for the support that noble Lords have shown on all sides of the House.
However, I also know that there has been genuine concern about the provisions in the Bill that require local authorities to “have regard to” the age of young people aged 19 to 25 when determining their support. We had a particularly helpful round-table discussion on this when a number of noble Lords, including my noble friends Lady Sharp and Lady Cumberlege and the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Howarth, made a number of really helpful comments in this regard. Noble Lords have particularly expressed their fears that the Bill as currently drafted would provide local authorities with an excuse to deny or cease support to a young person based solely on their age. This is not, and has never been, our intention. Young people with SEN aged 19 to 25 should be supported to remain in formal education where this will enable them to complete or consolidate their learning, achieve their outcomes and make a successful transition to adulthood. In achieving this important aim we must not inadvertently create an entitlement or expectation that all young people with SEN remain in education until age 25. That would not be in the interests of many young people, who may need just one or two years of additional education to progress into adult life and work.
I have listened carefully to the concerns of noble Lords, both during debate in Grand Committee and subsequently. In particular, I have listened to concerns that the focus on age is unhelpful or unclear in its intention and could lead to support being denied on the basis of a young person’s age alone. I have therefore tabled government amendments to clarify our intention in the Bill. I am pleased to be presenting these amendments with the support of my noble friends Lady Sharp and Lady Cumberlege, who spoke incisively on this issue in Grand Committee.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I rise briefly to make two points. First, I welcome the amendments. The wording of the government amendments is very sensible and I am pleased that the Minister has listened. The critical moment was when the Government published their policy position on this issue when it was crystal clear to everyone that the position as outlined was not reflected by the words “having regard to age” in the Bill. That was a kind of “light bulb” moment, and I am pleased that they have recognised that. The wording in so far as it goes is fine, and I am very pleased to support it.
Secondly, I commend the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, repeated by the noble Baronesses, Lady Sharp and Lady Howarth. It is important that the Government pay attention to the way in which the code of practice reflects this change and make sure that the wording in the code is expansive rather than restrictive on local authorities and other service providers, so that they can look in the round at these young people as they approach and go beyond 18, in terms of their various needs, and not limit it only to a formal definition of education and training. I look forward to the Minister’s remarks on that, but I very much welcome the changes.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I thank again my noble friends Lady Sharp and Lady Cumberlege, as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, for their insights during Grand Committee. I welcome the opportunity that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, has given us to clarify how we have secured continuity of adult care for young people with EHC plans. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for her kind remarks.
On the point made by my noble friend Lady Cumberlege, yes, we are making it clear that the outcomes that we are looking for are wider. The outcomes specified in the plan do not have to be formal or accredited; we are happy to make sure that that is clear in the code. On a point made more generally by my noble friend Lady Sharp, the draft code predates the amendments, and we will make sure that the code fully reflects the amendments, including making it clear that outcomes rather than age must be considered.
In response to the important issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, I am delighted to state categorically that no young person who turns 18 and is in receipt of children’s social care will face a gap in provision while consideration is made about their adult care. This applies if they move to a new local authority or if their EHC plan comes to an end at that point because they are leaving education. Clause 47 provides for regulations that ensure continuity of support and provision when a child or young person with an EHC plan moves to a different local authority. For those turning 18, Clause 50 enables local authorities to extend children’s services beyond the age of 18 for those with an EHC plan where that is the best option. Provisions in the Care Bill ensure that there is no gap in care services when a young person moves to a different area, turns 18 or their EHC plan comes to an end. Those 18 year-olds who have eligible needs for care and support will in future receive a statutory care and support plan. Both we and the Department of Health are clear that this will form the care part of their EHC plan when one is in place and would continue in its own right as a statutory plan once their EHC plan is no longer maintained.
Furthermore, Clauses 37 and 38 of the Care Bill ensure that support is continued when someone with a statutory care and support plan moves to a new local authority. When a young person turns 18, Clauses 59 to 67 of the Care Bill ensure that assessments for adult care are carried out in good time so that support can be put in place promptly. In particular, Clause 67 requires local authorities to continue to provide existing support under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 or under the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970 until adult care begins, or a decision is made that an adult care and support plan is not required. Young people who have made a successful transition to adulthood and are now in employment, higher education or adult learning, will continue to receive support in those settings that will enable them to maintain and build on the outcomes achieved while in formal education. For example, Access to Work is available for those in employment.
As regards the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, about the reading of the words “for some other reason”, the Department of Health is clear that this phrase does not in any way change a local authority’s duty to meet an adult’s eligible needs for care and support under Clause 81 of the Care Bill. “Other reasons” could refer to, for example, a person changing their place of residence to a different local authority area before the assessment has been completed. It does not provide carte blanche for local authorities to refuse to provide services for spurious reasons. I hope that is helpful. I believe that the amendments I am moving today represent a genuinely positive change to the Bill, which, along with reforms in the Care Bill, further strengthen arrangements for young people making the transition to adulthood. I hope that noble Lords will support them.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Rix and Lord Low, the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, and my noble friend Lady Sharp for raising this important matter. I also welcomed the high-quality debate on social care in Grand Committee. I understand fully all the concerns expressed by noble Lords and I say again that it remains our clear expectation that any social care services specified in an EHC plan will be provided by local authorities. As I shall explain, I hope that at Third Reading we will be able to bring forward amendments to address some of those concerns.
However, it is vital that local authorities are able to decide how to prioritise expenditure on social care based on the needs of children and young people, whether or not they have an EHC plan. As a targeted service for vulnerable children and young people, social care is different from education and health services. Education and health services are universal and it makes sense that there should be equivalent duties to provide the services in EHC plans in order to prioritise, over others, children and young people with greater needs.
Social care is a targeted service and is available only for vulnerable children and young people, so there is a greater risk that an individually owed duty for those with plans could adversely affect other vulnerable groups, including children at risk of neglect. We do not think that that is the right thing to do. In answer to a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, I am afraid that it is really a question of resources. However, I am delighted to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, say that this is one of two remaining pieces in the jigsaw. I am dying to hear what the second one is and I am sure that I will not have to wait long. However, I hope that I shall be able to be helpful in relation to this point.
I do not propose to rehearse further all the important arguments that were made in Grand Committee except to recognise that a number of points have been raised by noble Lords about the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970. It is important to re-emphasise that, regardless of whether social care provision is included in the EHC plan, the duties in existing legislation will continue to apply, as a number of noble Lords have said. Therefore, the requirement for EHC plans to include social care provision “reasonably required” by the learning difficulty or disability which gives rise to the SEN will not introduce a new test for which social care services are to be provided. The duty of local authorities to provide services to disabled children where it is decided that they are necessary under the CSDPA will continue to apply.
I recognise that a number of noble Lords, along with representatives of Every Disabled Child Matters and the Special Educational Consortium, are attracted to including the CSDPA in the Bill as a means of, first, providing assurance that assessed social care needs for disabled children will be met under the existing duty in Section 2 of the CSDPA and, secondly, ensuring that the EHC plan includes all the relevant social care services needed by disabled children.
The Minister for Children and Families and I have had helpful meetings with representatives of the Special Educational Consortium and noble Lords where we have discussed this proposal, and officials at the Department for Education are continuing those discussions. There are of course a number of important issues to consider and we need to avoid unintended consequences. For example, we need to ensure that including the 1970 Act in the Bill will not cause confusion if other relevant legislation is not also listed. We must also ensure that we do all we can in the SEN code of practice to explain the existing legislation clearly to parents and professionals. However, I am hopeful of a positive outcome to these discussions and hope to bring forward an amendment at Third Reading to reflect this. In view of these ongoing discussions and my undertaking, I urge the noble Lords, Lord Rix and Lord Low, the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, and my noble friend Lady Sharp not to press their amendment.
Lord Rix
My Lords, I thank every noble Lord who spoke in support of this amendment. Clearly there is greater support than the number of noble Lords present at the moment and I most grateful, too, to the Minister for his response. I can only take him at his word, which I am sure is totally unassailable, and trust that the amendment that he brings forward at Third Reading will, indeed, support all of us who have wished for Amendment 38 to be accepted. Obviously, he will bring forth something which is not quite Amendment 38, but I hope that it will satisfy all of us here concerned and ensure that social care is, in some form or another, in the Bill. With that assurance ringing in my ears, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, rather like my noble friend who has just spoken, from listening to the arguments, I feel it is clear that something pretty sharp has to happen. I am assuming that one can have both the amendments. If we can, I am in favour of both of them.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Rix and Lord Low, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes, Lady Hollins and Lady Jones, for tabling the amendments, for their contributions and for bringing their experience to this debate.
Several noble Lords have been kind enough to discuss with me their questions and concerns about the complaints process for children and young people with SEN, including the noble Lords, Lord Rix and Lord Low, and my noble friend Lord Storey. I have been listening carefully to these points and have discussed them at length with my honourable friend the Minister for Children and Families.
Noble Lords have been right to press the Government hard to deliver an integrated complaints procedure to respond to the needs of a more integrated system. First, I reassure noble Lords that work is already in hand to improve the situation. The new code of practice will require that impartial information, advice and support is commissioned through joint arrangements and available through a single point of access with the capacity to handle initial phone, electronic, or face-to-face inquiries. It will also encourage clinical commissioning groups to ensure that relevant information is available at this single point of access, as well as including information on their local health offer on their website. A one-stop shop will be simpler and much more parent and young person-friendly than having to go to more than one place for advice on a range of issues, including how to complain.
Today, my honourable friend the Minister for Children and Families, who has vast direct personal experience in this area, announced a £30 million package to provide children and young people with SEN and disabilities and their parents with independent support to help them through the new SEN assessment and education, health and care planning process. This funding will be available between April 2014 and March 2016. The aim is to have around 1,800 trained independent supporters from the private, voluntary and community sectors in place by autumn 2014. That equates to about 12 individuals, on average, in each local authority area in England.
This will ensure that many families have access to informed advice and support at a time when the system is changing and new processes are bedding in. These independent supporters will be independent of the local authority, but they will need to work with local authorities and other statutory agencies to help families get the support they need. Where there is disagreement, independent supporters will make sure councils understand what families want, and help families to challenge decision-making. This will mean that children and young people with SEN get the help they really need across education, health and care. This is a major step forward.
On the health side, noble Lords will also be glad to hear that work is under way on how NHS complaints are handled, in the light of the Francis report and the review undertaken by the right honourable Ann Clwyd MP and Professor Tricia Hart into the NHS hospitals complaints system. The Government want to ensure that when things go wrong, the complaints system is clear, fair and open, and that at every level, the NHS scrutinises and learns from mistakes to improve care for patients.
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, Healthwatch England and the Department of Health will work with the Patients Association, patients, regulators, commissioners and providers to develop universal expectations for the handling of complaints. These will be used across the NHS to drive improvements in patient satisfaction with complaint-handling. This will benefit children and young people with SEN, so we should be wary of establishing a new set of arrangements for this one group without allowing the wider suite of reforms on NHS complaints to establish itself.
Turning to why extending the remit of the tribunal is difficult, the issues here are extremely complicated. It is tempting to extend the tribunal’s remit across health and social care, but there are legitimate reasons why we cannot do so at this point. Local authorities’ duty to arrange provision that will meet the special educational needs of a child currently with a statement, or, in future, a child or young person with a plan, is absolute. The local authority has to arrange that provision no matter what the cost. This means that when the tribunal makes a decision that will increase the special educational provision for one child, that will have no effect on other children with statements because the local authority has the same absolute duty to arrange provision that meets their needs as well.
The position is different with health and social care. The authority is making decisions having regard to the health and social care needs of the whole population. We have already discussed the issues around social care in some detail. This means that, if the tribunal were to be given powers to make decisions in those areas, any decision the tribunal made to increase provision for one child or young person could mean that other children or young people with similar or even greater health or social care needs could be deprived of provision they require. It would therefore be wrong to give the tribunal the powers implied by the amendment.
The issues are significant. None the less, we should consider what more we should do now better to integrate complaints across services. This is a matter of concern to Ministers in both the Department of Health and the Department for Education. Building on our commitment to funding for key workers to help parents who need to navigate the system, we agree that there is more to be done to ensure that redress works well and feels joined up, where it needs to, and that we will need to keep that under review as the reforms are implemented.
We would therefore be grateful for the opportunity to discuss these issues further with noble Lords before Third Reading to ensure that we can confirm a strong package by that point. The things that we particularly would like to look at include: the role of mediation, including the scope to extend the arrangements in the Bill to cover health and social care as well as special education; notwithstanding the concerns I have set out, whether there could be a role for the tribunal in joining up redress across education, health and care; and what arrangements we should put in place to review how redress works once the new system is bedded in and in the light of wider reforms to complaints in the health service.
I assure noble Lords that that is something that we are taking seriously and about which we are in active discussions, which will continue, with the Department of Health. In view of what I have said, I urge noble Lords not to press their amendments.
Lord Rix
My Lords, this is like opening a Christmas stocking, is it not? You are never quite sure what is going to come out next. The idea that we will be given time to discuss this matter in more detail before Third Reading is a promise which has great merit. To a certain extent it answers the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on his problems, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, who was asking for an extension of up to a year before any final decision were taken. If we can make a decision before Third Reading, it will be quite incredible. I would obviously welcome that, because my amendment is asking for immediate effect, but I am very happy to attend any meeting which makes this possible. Even at Third Reading, if some sort of promise is made to continue the review along the lines laid down by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, again, I am sure that I would support that. Without knowing quite what the noble Baroness is going to say, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, I support these amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington. I echo the comments that have been made about his diligence and determination in pursuing these issues. He has today, in his usual style, made a compelling case for the quality of special educational needs co-ordinators in schools to be ensured though appropriate professional development and training, and for all teachers to undergo an SEN module.
That would ensure that all teachers were aware of the range of SEN characteristics that could be identified and the range of services available to support and assist all young children. It would also avoid the SEN responsibility being given to a member of staff who was not prepared to undergo the training to carry out the functions seriously. In other words, it would protect children from the possibility of it becoming a box-ticking exercise in which the school could claim that the requirement had been met without anyone with the requisite skills actually being available. We feel that this ought anyway to be a feature that Ofsted routinely inspects in schools.
We rehearsed these arguments in Grand Committee, and the case was well made then for the importance of early identification and intervention to support children with special educational needs; that can make all the difference to the child’s subsequent education and life chances. The requirement in the Bill to have a comprehensive range of SEN co-ordinators is of course a good step forward, which we welcome, but these amendments would build in the extra requirement for skills and quality, which we also think are important.
The Bill talks of possible regulations in this area and obviously some of the detail of these requirements could, quite rightly, be included in regulation. However, the principle of qualifications and training for what is a specialist field is too important simply to be left to regulation, so we support this requirement being in the Bill and hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us that this will be the case.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Addington for tabling these amendments and leading the debate on this important issue of ensuring that schools and other institutions have the right expertise within their workforce to support children and young people with special educational needs. I cannot disagree with my noble friend’s intentions. Ensuring that we have a well trained workforce is essential, and is something that this Government are committed to doing. I hope that I can reassure my noble friend that it is possible to achieve this aim without placing requirements in the Bill.
Schools and other institutions that support children and young people with SEN must build the appropriate skills for their staff, and the draft 0-25 SEN code of practice makes that clear. Chapter 6 of the draft code requires schools to make sure that teachers’ ability to meet SEN is included in the school’s approach to professional development and in their performance management arrangements for all teaching and support staff. The chapter also requires schools to review teachers’ understanding of strategies to identify and support vulnerable pupils, and their knowledge of the special educational needs most frequently encountered. This would particularly cover issues such as dyslexia, which my noble friend has spoken passionately about on a number of occasions.
I mentioned in Committee that the latest newly qualified teacher survey, which at that point had not yet been published but was nevertheless giving off strong signals, reveals that teachers feel that the quality of their training in SEN has improved significantly in recent years. Just 5% of newly qualified teachers surveyed this year rated their training in SEN as poor, while 69% of primary teachers and 74% of secondary teachers rated their training as good or very good in helping them to teach pupils with SEN. That compares to as few as 45% in secondary in 2008. I am sure that noble Lords will agree that this is a significant improvement, and I am sure that we all welcome it.
Furthermore, initial teacher training courses must ensure that they enable trainee teachers to meet the Teachers’ Standards. These standards define the minimum level of practice required of teachers, and no trainee should be recommended for qualified teacher status until they have met those standards. Teachers’ performance is then judged against these standards throughout their career.
The Teachers’ Standards state that teachers must,
“have a clear understanding of the needs of all pupils, including those with special educational needs”.
Teachers must also be able to adapt teaching to the needs of all pupils, and have an understanding of the factors that can inhibit learning and how to overcome them. Of course, noble Lords will know that this Government have a strong drive to have more ITT in schools, and many more teachers are now coming through who have been trained in SCITTs, some of whom are at special schools particularly appropriate for training teachers in SEN.
Ofsted has an important role here as well. It inspects both the quality of initial teacher training and the quality of teaching in our schools. These standards and the ability to adapt teaching to meet special educational needs are central to these inspections.
With regard to further education, chapter 6 of the draft 0-25 code of practice sets out that colleges should ensure their curriculum staff are able to develop their skills and knowledge, and that colleges should have access to specialist skills and support when required to help students with SEN to progress. As autonomous bodies, FE colleges are responsible for ensuring that their staff are properly equipped. To support the development of the FE workforce, we are investing £1 million for the existing workforce to undertake the specialist diploma in teaching disabled learners. We are also providing initial teacher-training bursaries of up to £9,000 to help to attract high-calibre graduates to specialise in teaching students with SEN in FE.
Schools and other institutions have very clear duties to ensure that their staff are equipped to support children and young people with SEN. I do not think that it is necessary to introduce a skills audit in addition to these very clear requirements. The Department for Education is funding a range of specialist organisations covering autism, communications needs and dyslexia to provide information and advice to schools on implementing our reforms. The Dyslexia-SpLD Trust, for example, is providing an online professional development tool for teachers to help to assess their current knowledge of dyslexia and access further training. It will also be providing a toolkit to help teachers to identify and respond to literacy difficulties and dyslexia.
I hope that I have made clear that the Government recognise the importance of good teaching for pupils with SEN and that, through the changes in the code and the requirements of the Teachers’ Standards, there are clear requirements on all schools.
I turn to Amendment 46A. When Clause 63 was debated in Committee, I made clear that the appropriate regulations—the Special Educational Needs (SEN co-ordinators) Regulations—continue to require that the SENCO is a qualified teacher, and that SENCOs new to the role must study for the National Award in SEN Co-ordination. This should ensure that SENCOs have a thorough grounding in the knowledge and skills that are required for the role.
My noble friend Lord Addington’s amendment would go further than that in requiring that these skills are kept up to date and that schools ensure that their SENCO has adequate support and opportunities for training. I entirely agree with that aim but do not believe that the amendment is the best way to achieve it. Schools could fulfil the proposed requirement by providing the bare minimum opportunity for further training, and I fear that it would fall short of my noble friend’s intention.
Instead, I propose revising the section of the SEN code of practice that deals with the SENCO role. We will set out that schools “should ensure that the SENCO has sufficient time, training and resources” to carry out their role. This will place an ongoing expectation on schools to ensure that the SENCO is sufficiently supported and trained. As qualified teachers, SENCOs are also judged against the Teachers’ Standards. The code of practice already makes clear that the quality of teaching for pupils with SEN should be,
“a core part of the school’s performance management arrangements and its approach to professional development for all teaching and support staff”.
I hope my noble friend would agree that, taken together, this should deliver what he is seeking to achieve.
On the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, about governance, since I came into office governance has been at the top of my list of priorities. As things stand, it is true that governing bodies should have a governor with specialist responsibility for SEN.
I hope that I have reassured the House and my noble friend that the Government are committed to ensuring that our teaching workforce is well trained in identifying and supporting children and young people with SEN. Continual professional development and training is essential for the whole workforce but it is particularly important for the role of the SENCO and, as I have said, I am committed to ensuring that the code of practice goes further than before to adequately reflect that. On that basis, I urge my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Addington
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that answer. I would, of course, have been happier if we had got a commitment, particularly to initial teacher training having a more comprehensive element, and, basically, if all the amendments had been accepted, and accepted a long time ago, and I did not have to raise the subject.
The Dyslexia-SpLD Trust wrote the amendments and, although it is working with the Government, it would still like slightly more from this. It is a long-established fact that if you know what you are dealing with, you stand a much better chance of getting it right. Although the teachers of today are undoubtedly better trained than those of yesterday, I still feel they could be better trained. Having said that, progress is progress. It is fairly late, and the Government are putting pressure on to go forward on this. I will withdraw the amendment, but I am sure that the House will be addressing this issue on numerous occasions in the future. Unfortunately, we cannot draw a line under this. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, we are very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for raising these concerns about the access of apprenticeship trainees to SEN support. As he pointed out, they already have some entitlements that were laid down in previous legislation, but the rights and provisions are not being supplied consistently. This is leading to otherwise excellent trainees failing particular modules of their training because their learning support needs have not been properly identified. It seems that once again apprenticeships are in danger of being the poor relation in the education hierarchy.
There are two ways that these inconsistencies can be addressed. First, all employers and trainers need to be aware of their responsibilities to make proper provision. This echoes the point the noble Lord is raising here. Secondly, apprentices themselves should have greater awareness of their rights, how to access the help they need and how to appeal if they are unhappy with the provision made.
These amendments go some way to addressing these issues. Amendment 46D deals more specifically with the testing regime. We would expect apprentices with SEN to have their needs identified at an early stage rather than waiting until they have failed a component. However, we would also expect provision to be made for an appeal if the failure is felt to be caused by inadequate support for their special educational needs. I very much endorse the arguments the noble Lord made and hope that the Minister will be able to provide reassurance today that these issues are being addressed so that no young apprentice will suffer because of inadequate support for their learning and skills needs.
Lord Nash
My Lords, progress on this issue has been far too slow, and I am very concerned that some individuals have been denied the reasonable adjustments that could have helped them to demonstrate what they know or can do, and subsequently to achieve an apprenticeship.
I thank my noble friend Lord Addington for bringing this very important issue to the attention of the House. He has been an assiduous campaigner for children and young people with dyslexia, and I pay tribute to the way in which he has presented his concerns in this House, particularly during Grand Committee debates. I pay tribute to his passion and persistence. Saying that I managed by my letter to take the wind out of his sails is high praise indeed. I want to take this opportunity to clarify the system allowing reasonable adjustments to qualifications and appeals, and I hope I will be able to reassure him that additional action will happen with an urgency that has been lacking.
As my noble friend knows from our discussions, I share his desire to see reasonable adjustments offered to all young people on an apprenticeship who need them, so that they have a reasonable opportunity to achieve the required qualifications in English and maths. I want to take this opportunity to clarify the clear duty in Part 6 of the Equality Act 2010 on learning providers and awarding organisations to make reasonable adjustments so that disabled people are, wherever possible, not put at a disadvantage compared to other learners. I share my noble friend’s concern that this duty should be applied in every relevant case.
Where a body breaches this duty, individuals may bring a challenge in a county court. The county court can grant any remedy which the High Court could grant in proceedings in tort or in a claim for judicial review. Available sanctions include damages, injunctions and a declaration. In addition, repeated breaches may lead us to challenge the body’s ability to deliver training or to award qualifications. Following the important points that my noble friend Lord Addington made in Grand Committee, I am pleased to be able to place on record that there is nothing in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act, or in the associated specification for apprenticeship standards in England, that prevents the use of assistive technology for functional skills qualifications.
I am aware that Ofqual has for some time been working with awarding organisations and the British Dyslexia Association to continue to widen opportunities to use assistive technology as a reasonable adjustment. The Access Consultation Forum meets three to four times a year. The next meeting is on 30 January, and this will be on the agenda. Ofqual assures me that it takes the issue of equality very seriously. I understand that the BDA and my noble friend have examples of individuals who have been disadvantaged, and I invite them to provide details of the specific cases to Ofqual, via officials if that would be helpful. Ofqual has committed to investigate the circumstances of all these cases. In addition, we will include new text in the skills funding statement to remind education and training providers of their duty to support young people with learning difficulties or disabilities and of their responsibility for providing reasonable adjustments, including the use of assistive technology where appropriate.
I also agree with my noble friend that we can do more to provide straightforward advice and information on the support available to individuals with learning difficulties or disabilities, so that they understand their rights and can challenge appropriately if they are not properly supported. Noble Lords will be aware that I wrote to the noble Lord, Lord Addington—as he mentioned—on 2 December and committed in that letter to some additional steps to raise awareness of the support on offer.
I know that my noble friend is also concerned that young people should make a good transition out of school and into their next stage of learning. The system that we are replacing has not always served young people well in this respect. The nought to 25 system created by the Bill will ensure a much greater continuity of support between different phases and types of learning. Local authorities will be under a duty to identify all young people aged up to 25 in their area who have, or may have, special educational needs, and to consider whether local provision is sufficient to meet their needs. They may publish a local offer setting out the full range of post-16 education and training provision, including apprenticeships. Young people who need the most support will receive an EHC plan regardless of whether they stay at school, go to FE college or to work-based provision in the private sector, unlike the current disjointed system.
The new nought to 25 code of practice is clear about how schools and colleges should focus much more strongly on helping children and young people prepare for their transition into post-16 education and on to adult life. Chapter 6 states:
“Schools should help pupils to start planning for their future adult life as early as possible, and by Year 9 at the latest”.
This should of course include,
“the range of post-16 options which may be available”.
The draft code also explains the importance of a school sharing information about a pupil’s special educational needs with the college before the young person starts. As a result of my noble friend’s recent appeal, we are working with the Dyslexia Trust to produce clear information explaining the support available to apprentices with learning difficulties or disabilities. This will be made available through the National Apprenticeship Service website and will also include information about assistive technology and reasonable adjustments.
In response to the concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, I also asked officials to look into the process of complaints, retakes and appeals to ensure that it is as fair and transparent as possible. Although a process is in place and is consistent with other national qualifications such as GCSEs, I believe that more could be done by centres and training providers to publicise it. My officials checked several apprenticeship provider websites, and, although there were examples of good practice, many do not provide details of their procedures. This contrasts with information on school or university websites, where it is generally very clear how to get advice about support or exam results, and about how to complain. I will ask officials as a priority to find a way to ensure that centres and provider websites publish good information about complaints and appeals on their websites in future. I hope that my noble friend will recognise that, taken together, these measures represent improvements for those undertaking apprenticeships. I hope also that the House will acknowledge the outstanding personal commitment that the noble Lord, Lord Addington, had demonstrated in bringing this about.
I move now to historic appeals for those who failed key skills tests because of failures to make reasonable adjustments. As noble Lords may know, key skills qualifications have been replaced by functional skills qualifications. The last possible date for certification was in 2013. Key skills were phased out very gradually, allowing plenty of opportunities for learners to resit them. Nevertheless, as my noble friend has so eloquently set out, we cannot ignore cases where there is evidence that legal duties have not been adhered to. I have therefore asked officials to work with the British Dyslexia Association and Ofqual to gather evidence and seek a solution to any issues identified, whether current or historic. Officials will be able to advise on specific cases or systemic issues.
I will now make a further specific commitment. Where an apprentice with learning difficulties or disabilities has previously completed all other requirements of a particular apprenticeship, but was not able to pass a key skills qualification, for example because reasonable adjustments were not made, they will be able to sit the alternative functional skills test. They will be entitled to the appropriate support and reasonable adjustments. If this test is passed at the appropriate level, the Government will enable the individual to receive an apprenticeship certificate, even if a year or two has elapsed.
I hope that this will reassure noble Lords that the issue is of great concern to the Government and that we are taking substantial and appropriate action to address it. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Addington for his work, as I have already said, and I hope that with these assurances he will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Addington
My Lords, this is one of the speeches I thought I might never get to make. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Nash. Another Minister might have done the job, but it was he who did it. Other Ministers have not addressed this subject. He has gone in and probably made the lives of a substantial number of people considerably better by his actions. I thank him profoundly on their behalf and on my own.
However, I hope the whole House will pay attention to the fact that we took this long to get here, and that officials provided answers for the noble Lord’s colleagues at the Dispatch Box that did not concur with what he has said. This is something about which this House—and indeed the Government—should be worried. The noble Lord took a bold step and corrected something. Once again I thank him. Unfortunately he should not—as I should not—have had to battle away for this long. I thank him for his efforts and for what has happened here. He has made people’s lives better with one blow. That usually makes the day feel a little better in the end. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“Application of Part to detained persons
(1) Subject to this section and sections (Assessment of post-detention education, health and care needs of detained persons) to (Supply of goods and services: detained persons), nothing in or made under this Part applies to, or in relation to, a child or young person detained in pursuance of—
(a) an order made by a court, or(b) an order of recall made by the Secretary of State.(2) Subsection (1) does not apply to—
(a) section 28;(b) section 31;(c) section 69;(d) section 73;(e) any amendment made by this Part of a provision which applies to, or in relation to, a child or young person detained in pursuance of—(i) an order made by a court, or(ii) an order of recall made by the Secretary of State.(3) Regulations may apply any provision of this Part, with or without modifications, to or in relation to a child or young person detained in pursuance of—
(a) an order made by a court, or(b) an order of recall made by the Secretary of State.(4) The Secretary of State must consult the Welsh Ministers before making regulations under subsection (3) which will apply any provision of this Part to, or in relation to, a child or young person who is detained in Wales.
(5) For the purposes of this Part—
“appropriate person”, in relation to a detained person, means—
(a) where the detained person is a child, the detained person’s parent, or(b) where the detained person is a young person, the detained person;“detained person” means a child or young person who is—
(a) 18 or under,(b) subject to a detention order (within the meaning of section 562(1A)(a) of EA 1996), and(c) detained in relevant youth accommodation,and in provisions applying on a person’s release, includes a person who, immediately before release, was a detained person; “detained person’s EHC needs assessment” means an assessment of what the education, health care and social care needs of a detained person will be on his or her release from detention;
“relevant youth accommodation” has the same meaning as in section 562(1A)(b) of EA 1996, save that it does not include relevant youth accommodation which is not in England.
(6) For the purposes of this Part—
(a) “beginning of the detention” has the same meaning as in Chapter 5A of Part 10 of EA 1996 (persons detained in youth accommodation), and(b) “the home authority” has the same meaning as in that Chapter, subject to regulations under subsection (7) (and regulations under section 562J(4) of EA 1996 made by the Secretary of State may also make provision in relation to the definition of “the home authority” for the purposes of this Part).(7) For the purposes of this Part, regulations may provide for paragraph (a) of the definition of “the home authority” in section 562J(1) of EA 1996 (the home authority of a looked after child) to apply with modifications in relation to such provisions of this Part as may be specified in the regulations.”
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, I have some sympathy with the amendment. Earlier today we rejected the notion of minimum standards being laid down for local authorities but we made it very clear in that debate that this was a matter for local authorities and that we wanted to see them use their discretion and compete with each other to provide high-quality services for those with special educational needs. Equally, in discussing the local offer, we were concerned not just with those classed as having special educational needs but with the wider community of children who have special educational needs. That is a very large number of children, as has been mentioned already. Some 1.4 million children fall into that category and are served by their schools but depend very much at the moment on local authority services to supplement what the school SENCOs and the school staff can provide.
There is enormous variation between what local authorities do in this regard. Picking up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, I believe I am right in saying that Ofsted currently inspects children’s services within local authorities. In so far as it is inspecting children’s services, including protection services, it would not be so difficult for it to take account also of the special educational needs services provided by local authorities. It seems to me that this is not an impossible situation and that the point that the noble Baronesses, Lady Wilkins and Lady Howe, made on accountability, and the need for it, is very important.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, for tabling the amendment. Earlier today we discussed the government amendment to Clause 30(6) to strengthen transparency and accountability for the local offer. Local authorities must publish comments from disabled children and young people, those with SEN and the parents of such children, about the local offer, including the quality of the provision available and about any provision that is not available in their area. We make clear in the draft SEN code that when local authorities publish their response to comments this includes the action local authorities propose to take. Amendment 33C makes this explicit in the Bill. Local authorities cannot simply publish their response to comments but then ignore them. They must say what action they intend to take. As with every other part of the development of the local offer, children, young people and parents will be involved in discussions with local authorities about the action they propose to take.
When we debated the local offer, I emphasised that we are not yet clear about whether inspection is necessarily the best way to encourage a good local offer. I hope that the confirmation that we have asked Ofsted to deliver a study to identify best practice in preparing for the SEN reforms, and consider particularly whether there is a need for an inspection framework to drive improvements, is reassuring. It has been asked to deliver the study this summer, not next spring. I hope, too, that the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, is reassured that the study will include local authority specialist services supporting children and young people with special educational needs and those who are disabled, and say how Ofsted intends to monitor those services. The study will focus on the extent to which local areas ensure that children and young people with SEN and those who are disabled are identified and their needs met. It will look for improved outcomes and the satisfaction of parents and young people. It will establish a baseline from which to evaluate progress in implementing the reforms; provide guidance to local authorities about the development of effective practice and advice about aspects requiring further development; and consider how, if required, effective accountability could take place.
The study will consider how local authorities identify and assess social care needs and ensure that those needs are met, look at how local authorities will work with clinical commissioning groups to identify and commission the range and sufficiency of specialist services required to support the needs of children with and without EHC plans, and evaluate the effectiveness of these services. The study will also consider arrangements for personal budgets, transition to EHC plans and how school and college inspection and other inspection activity could provide ongoing information about the effectiveness of the local area’s arrangements.
This is a comprehensive study. Should Ofsted recommend that an inspection framework is needed we would, of course, take that very seriously. If it does not make such a recommendation, we will consider what further action is necessary. I should make it clear that we have not ruled out inspection by Ofsted of local authority support services.
In terms of accountability, schools are ultimately responsible for the progress of all pupils where additional support is needed. Schools should use their best endeavours to ensure that those needs are met. The Ofsted inspection framework introduced in September 2012 places a clear emphasis on meeting the needs of disabled pupils and those with SEN. Inspectors must consider the quality of teaching and the progress made by these pupils. Where a school has a specialist resource base or integrated unit, these are covered as part of the inspection. Ofsted also inspects special schools, which provide support for sensory impaired children and others who may currently have a statement of SEN. This means that any deaf child in a mainstream or specialist school would have their education inspected as part of the Ofsted Section 5 framework. I want to stress that the SEN reforms will provide legal protections for families wanting to challenge councils through their involvement in determining local provisions. Not only do the SEN reforms in the Bill provide legal protections, they will also establish a better system for identifying need and commissioning services across education, health and social care to ensure that services provided match local needs as accurately as possible and so that families do not have to battle to get those services.
Of course, the success of the reforms will depend on changing culture and practice locally. We cannot just pass this Bill, walk away and hope that things happen. I agree entirely with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, about ensuring that local authorities perform. That is why my department is monitoring closely the readiness of local areas to implement these reforms in preparation for September 2014. There is already a package of support for implementation delivered and co-ordinated by our strategic delivery partners—the Council for Disabled Children and pathfinder champion lead via the pathfinder support team at Mott MacDonald. The Minister for Children and Families has written to all chief executives of local authorities and clinical commissioning groups about the reforms. We will be monitoring local authorities’ progress in implementing the reforms from September 2014. We will consider what further steps may be needed in the light of this information and the findings of the study being conducted by Ofsted into local authority practice in preparing for and taking forward these reforms. I will certainly ensure that we look at the prior art to which the noble Lord referred and that we take seriously the whole issue of ensuring that delivery happens on the ground.
I hope that I have been able to reassure noble Lords about the measures that we have taken to improve transparency and accountability for the local offer. I also hope that what I have said about the Ofsted study and the approach we will take to monitoring the implementation of the reforms in some way reassures the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, that we will consider the issue of inspection carefully once we have the findings from that study, and I urge her to withdraw her amendment.
“( ) In subsection (1), after “local authority” insert “in Wales”.
( ) In the title, after “with” insert “statement of”.
55A In section 562D (appropriate special educational provision: arrangements between local authorities), in subsection (2) after “local authority” insert “in Wales”.”
“Children Act 1989 (c. 41)(1) The Children Act 1989 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 23E (pathway plans), in subsection (1A)(a) after “Education Act 1996” insert “or Part 3 of the Children and Families Act 2013”.
(3) In Part 1 of Schedule 2 (provision of services to families) in paragraph 3 (assessment of children’s needs) after paragraph (b) insert—
“(ba) Part 3 of the Children and Families Act 2013;”.”
Lord Nash
My Lords, government Amendment 50A makes consequential amendments to Section 23E of, and Schedule 2 to, the Children Act 1989.
A pathway plan makes plans for a looked-after child leaving care and sets out the role of the local authority once the young person has left care. The pathway plan is about managing that transition. Section 23E of the Children Act 1989 allows the local authority to combine assessments in respect of pathway plans with other assessments, including an SEN assessment under Part IV of the Education Act 1996. This technical government amendment would ensure that Section 23E of, and paragraph 3(b) of Schedule 2 to, the Children Act would be able to include, for England, assessments under Part 3 of the Children and Families Bill. I beg to move.
Children and Families Bill
Lord Nash Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I shall briefly, but strongly, support both amendments. On Amendment 34A, the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, has fully explained her concerns, which I share, about the possible consequences of allowing specialist SEN academies to admit children without an ECH plan. That seems to run counter to the principle of inclusion and it also seems dangerous to admit children without that comprehensive assessment of their specific needs. I hope that the Minister will respond positively to that point.
When the noble Lord, Lord Low, moved Amendment 16A in Committee, he rightly said that although the code of practice had improved guidance on inclusion, in the Bill as it stands, inclusion is not referred to anywhere. Given the commitment of the Government and of noble Lords across this House to increase access to mainstream schools and to act in accordance with the recommendations of the JCHR, it seems very odd that this overarching principle is not enshrined in the legislation.
The purpose of the amendment is to insert that general principle alongside other general principles that are included in the Bill. As the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, has said, this is not about pushing inclusion above everything else; it is about parental choice. At the moment, because local authorities and schools have not moved far enough towards making mainstream schools accessible to disabled children, many children are denied that choice.
Clause 19 sets out other key principles to which local authorities must have regard in fulfilling their obligations under Part 3: the wishes and feelings of children and their parents; the importance of child and family participation in decisions; providing adequate information; and supporting the child’s development and educational progress. Those are all very important. But equally important, I would argue, is the principle that local authorities should seek to maximise the opportunities for inclusion.
As the noble Lord, Lord Low, told us, when the Minister was arguing against the amendment in Committee, he said that the Bill maintained the general principle of inclusion in a number of other provisions and went on to list some of them. He also said that schools and colleges had important duties under the Equality Act and he told us about other measures that the Government were adopting to help mainstream schools improve their ability to include disabled children more effectively. However, he did not tell us why the Government would not accept this amendment alongside the other general principles that appear on the face of the Bill. If the Minister is not minded to accept the amendment today, I hope that he will not rehearse that information as we have already heard it and it is on the record. What we really want to know is why he will not accept the general principle of inclusion sitting alongside the other principles in Clause 19. That would send a strong signal to all educational settings, and to local authorities, that they must up their game and move closer and faster to being able to offer places to disabled children. That would catalyse a very positive and marked shift. I hope that the Minister will accept the amendment today.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Low, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Warnock and Lady Wilkins, for tabling Amendment 16A, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for tabling Amendment 34A. I had an extremely helpful meeting with the noble Lord, Lord Low, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Howe and Lady Wilkins, recently, and I am grateful to them for helping me to understand these issues. As noble Lords know, they are, of course, immensely knowledgeable on this matter. They have spoken eloquently about an issue that I know is important to many in this House—inclusive provision for children and young people who have SEN or are disabled. We have had an informed and passionate debate.
Amendment 16A picks up a recommendation from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, a member of the committee, mentioned. The Joint Committee welcomed the Bill as containing,
“a number of provisions which … enhance the UK’s implementation of some of the relevant rights of children and young people”.
Those include the general principles in Clause 19; the extension of education, health and care plans to young people up to 25; the requirement for academies to be covered directly by the statutory framework for SEN; the duty to provide SEN information to children and young people; the measures to ease transition from children’s to adult services; the explicit reference to assist in preparation for independent living in a local offer; and the provision of direct rights of appeal for young people and the proposed piloting of children’s rights of appeal. However, the Joint Committee felt that including a principle on inclusive provision in Clause 19 would demonstrate the Government’s commitment, under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, to the progressive realisation of the right to inclusive education.
I make it clear at the outset that the Government are fulfilling their commitments under the UN convention. The Bill maintains the general principle of inclusion and does so through some of its key provisions. It places duties on schools and colleges to use their best endeavours to ensure that those with SEN get the support they need and holds a presumption for inclusion in relation to choice of schools and colleges through Clause 33. However, it also recognises that children and young people have different needs and different preferences for where they wish to be educated, including specialist settings such as special schools and independent specialist colleges. That is entirely consistent with the reservation and interpretative declaration that the Government made to Article 24 of the UN convention recognising special schools as part of the general schools system.
Beyond the Bill, as we have discussed in previous debates, local authorities, schools and colleges have important duties under the Equality Act 2010 to prevent discrimination against disabled people, to promote equality of opportunity, to increase access over time and to make reasonable adjustments to their policies and practices. Indeed, it was this Government, in 2012, who included schools in the provision of auxiliary aids and services, such as specialised computer programmes, sign language interpreters and hoists, within the reasonable adjustments duty under the Equality Act. I made a commitment in Grand Committee to look at the scope for improving the links to the Equality Act duties in the SEN code of practice and I am happy to reaffirm that commitment now.
We have previously discussed the inclusive schooling guidance. One of the striking findings in the responses to the Green Paper Support and Aspiration was that nearly half of those who responded to a question about the guidance did not know that it existed. That is why we put the key elements of it into the code of practice. I am happy to consider how the code of practice can be further improved in that regard. In view of all that, we do not believe that it is necessary to add to the principles in Clause 19 to fulfil our commitments under the UN convention. The principles in Clause 19 are designed to underpin the key features of the reforms, placing the views, wishes and feelings of children, young people and parents at the heart of the system and placing a focus on improving outcomes. They apply irrespective of where children and young people are educated.
We have heard in other debates about the important role that specialist provision plays in supporting disabled children and young people and those with SEN. The noble Lord, Lord Low, referred to the importance to parents of having that choice. Amendment 16A could run the risk of being perceived as a threat to specialist provision and as encouragement to local authorities not to place children and young people in specialist provision where that is appropriate for meeting their needs and where parents wish it, and could threaten the viability of high-quality provision for children and young people with SEN. I know that that is not in any way the purpose of the amendment, but it is an example of the kind of balance of arguments that we have to weigh.
The Government take very seriously their commitment to the convention. In addition to the provisions in the Bill and the government amendments on disabled children and young people that we will be debating later, we have taken a number of practical steps to build the capacity of mainstream schools and colleges to support children and young people who have SEN or are disabled. I spoke about these in Grand Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Low, referred to them as “soft measures”, but I would not describe them as such. They are certainly extensive. I will not go through them in detail, because I know that noble Lords have heard this before. However, we have invested considerable sums of money in training: there are over 10,000 new SEN co-ordinators, a number of schemes to develop the training of SEN, we have made grants to the Institute of Education, and we are involved in many other projects.
Chapter 6 of the draft SEN code of practice provides strong guidance to all mainstream early-years settings, schools and colleges to ensure they have high expectations for all pupils and students, provide high-quality teaching, have clear systems for identifying those who need additional support and provide that support as quickly as possible. We make it clear that schools are responsible for setting their own priorities for the continuous professional development of their staff and we recognise the key role played by the SEN co-ordinator in this and in other ways. In addition, as noble Lords know, the Bill now includes a new clause on supporting children with health conditions. Noble Lords will see that a number of government amendments have now been tabled to include disabled children and young people with SEN in the scope of a number of key provisions in the Bill. I will speak about those amendments shortly.
On Amendment 34A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, I understand her concerns and those of other noble Lords about the provisions in Clause 34(9), but I hope to reassure them. Clause 34(9) would enable a child or young person with special educational needs but without an EHC plan to be admitted to an individual special academy or special post-16 academy whose academy arrangements permit this. The admission of children or young people without EHC plans to special academies or special post-16 academies would be limited to those academies where the Secretary of State for Education had specifically agreed to permit that in the funding agreement in relation to specific types of children.
I reiterate what I said when we debated this issue in Committee. This is not a blanket policy and it is also definitely not part of any dark plan. On the contrary, the Government’s intention is to facilitate innovative new approaches and provision for the benefit of children and young people with SEN. The Secretary of State would look carefully at the detail of any proposal made by a special academy or special post-16 academy and would consider its educational merits and viability. Indeed, we have approved 16 free special schools. All are able, as things stand, to apply to the Secretary of State to have the competence within their funding agreements to admit non-statemented pupils. That is the status quo. Only one has so applied. They were approved to admit, on a temporary basis only, children with autistic spectrum disorder or with specific communication and language difficulties, but as far as we know none has been so admitted.
Concerns have been expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Low, the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and others that children and young people might be forced into special provision and parents coerced by local authorities into placing their children in special schools. We will ensure safeguards against that are in place. First, the relevant academy’s funding agreement must stipulate that the special academy or special post-16 academy could admit only children or young people without plans who had a particular type of SEN set out in the agreement. Changes that suggested reducing the number of places for children with statements to enable the admission of children without statements would not be approved unless the case was supported by the local authority and by parents, and a lack of demand for statemented places could be demonstrated. Secondly, such a child or young person would be admitted to the academy only if their parents or the young person had applied to go to it. Thirdly, the child or young person should have those particular needs and their admission should be supported by a relevant professional opinion, such as that of an educational psychologist. Of course, parents of young people will continue to have the right to ask for a statutory assessment of their child’s needs to be undertaken and a right of appeal to the tribunal if the local authority decides not to carry one out. The academy would also have to adopt fair practices for such admissions in line with the principles of the school admission code. We would take very seriously indeed any instances where these freedoms were being abused. Very significantly, the new secondary accountability, the best eight progress measures, will become the main measure by which we assess the performance of all maintained schools and academies. This new approach will strip away the previous perverse incentives and will hold schools to account for the progress made by all their pupils, not just blunt measures of absolute attainment at grade C. This will move schools that have focused too much on those pupils who can achieve a C grade to focus on the progress of all their pupils and should particularly benefit SEN pupils in those schools.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, Amendment 17 would, for the purposes of Sections 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 30, 32 and 62 of Part 3, include children with a disability under the Equality Act. It would interpret children and young people with SEN to include children and young people with a disability as well. The Government have tabled a number of amendments, I think, to achieve the same thing.
I will be very brief as this is not now contentious, given that the Government have moved on the issue, but my amendment would ensure that key clauses that relate to identifying children with needs, duties of the health authority, joint commissioning arrangements, the duty to keep provision under review, the local offer, advice and information for parents and so on would all now apply equally to disabled children without a special educational need under the terms of the Equality Act. This is important, not only in principle, but also in its practical effects, particularly for the local offer, which we will debate later on Report. The local offer is particularly important for children with a disability but without a special educational need because that is now to be the only way in which they can get services that they and their families need. It is very important for the local offer, particularly Clause 26 on the joint commissioning arrangements between health education and social care. When they are looking at what is needed in an area they will have to take into account the needs of all children with a disability, including those without a special educational need, which was not the case under the Bill as it was drafted.
I very much welcome the Government’s concession here, as far as it goes. The Minister knows that I would have preferred to have an amendment to apply the whole of Part 3 to children with a disability as well. That would have achieved a truly inclusive, integrated and comprehensive system for all disabled children, whatever their disability and whatever the extent of their need. Many feel that this was the promise of the Green Paper. However, we have come part way and that is to be welcomed.
Turning to the government amendments, I think that my Amendment 17 has the advantage of being completely comprehensible when you read it, but the 40-odd government amendments are not so easily understood. I understand that it has been done in this way to achieve a more comprehensive effect and I look forward to the Minister explaining that. I beg to move.
Lord Nash
My Lords, it may be helpful if I outline our government amendments in this group to enable noble Lords to have a debate if they wish to. In Grand Committee we had an extensive debate about the support for disabled children and young people and I know that this is an issue on which the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, has reflected deeply, as have I since then. Many Peers expressed concern that disabled children and young people without SEN would miss out on the benefit of our reforms and, at the time of the debate, I introduced a government amendment to require schools to make arrangements for supporting children with medical needs. I also asked for help from noble Lords in understanding which groups of disabled children would not be supported by this Bill, the government amendment in respect of children with medical needs, the provisions of the Equality Act 2010 and Part 3 of the National Health Service Act 2006.
Following the debate, the Every Disabled Child Matters campaign sent some very helpful advice to the department in which it said:
“The Government rightly made the point in the debate yesterday that disabled children and young people are already protected by a range of other legislation, such as the Equality Act 2010, the NHS Act 2006 and the Children Act 1989.
We would like to stress that our concern is not about the rights of individual children and young people who may have a disability but no SEN. We completely accept that on an individual level they are protected under the Equality Act 2010 and other legislation. Our concern is about disabled children and young people as a group not being included in the joint commissioning arrangements, review functions, and local offer duty”.
It went on to suggest which clauses in the Bill might be amended to achieve this—Clauses 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 30 and 32—and drafted a single amendment to deliver this. I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes of Stretford and Lady Jones of Whitchurch, for their amendment, which is largely based on the Every Disabled Child Matters amendment.
We agree with Every Disabled Child Matters that the clauses identified should be amended. However, our view is that, by relating the provision for disabled children and the young people to special educational provision, a single amendment would not deliver the outcome that we all want, and that we need to amend each clause.
Clause 22 would be amended to require local authorities to exercise their functions with a view to identifying both the children and young people with SEN and disabled children and young people. Clause 24 would be extended to require health bodies to inform the child’s parents and their local authority where they are of the opinion that a child under compulsory school age has, or probably has, a disability. Clause 25 would now require local authorities to exercise their functions with a view to ensuring the integration of education and training provision with healthcare provision and social care provision for children and young people with SEN and disabled children and young people, where they think that this would promote their well-being, including in relation to their participation in education, training and recreation. In Clause 26, the duties on local authorities and their partner commissioning bodies to make joint arrangements for the commissioning of education, health and care provision for children and young people with SEN would be amended to include disabled children and young people.
Clause 27, which currently requires local authorities to keep under review the special educational provision and social care provision for those with SEN, would be extended to cover provision for disabled children and young people. They will broaden it to cover all education and training provision, not just special educational provision, for children and young people who have SEN or are disabled.
The amendments also require local authorities to consult disabled children and young people and their parents when carrying out that duty. The provisions in the local offer would include disabled children and young people, both in relation to the information to be published and in developing and reviewing the local offer and publishing comments. In Clause 32, the requirement on local authorities to arrange for young people with SEN and parents of children with SEN to receive advice and information on SEN would be extended to include provision for disabled young people and the parents of disabled children to be provided with information about matters related to disability. I have also tabled an amendment, which we shall come to later, to extend the requirement to cover children themselves as well as their parents. Clause 73 would make it clear that the definition of disability applied to the provisions covered by these government amendments is that in the Equality Act 2010.
Noble Lords will also be aware from commitments that I made in Committee that we are looking at ways of strengthening links to the Equality Act duties, including those to make reasonable adjustments in the SEN code of practice. The amendments that I am speaking to today will sharpen the focus on the Equality Act duties considerably. Since the code of practice is statutory, the guidance that it provides cannot be ignored. I will respond to the debate in the normal way in due course but I hope that noble Lords are reassured by these amendments.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanation and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I support Amendment 18C and very much echo the arguments put forward by my noble friend Lady Wilkins and other noble Lords in this short debate.
Clause 22 already sets out that it is a requirement on local authorities to identify all children in their area with SEN. The Government obviously intend this data gathering to take place and this work to be done; otherwise they would not have put this in the Bill. It therefore needs to be collected and collated in an organised and effective way. It cannot be argued that it is an extra administrative burden when the basic requirement for the information to be gathered is already in the Bill. Noble Lords have raised genuine concerns about the quality of data in the past and the challenge of improving that quality in the future. I would also like to ask the Minister how the Government, if they think that it is important for the information to be collected, intend to make sure that the quality is delivered so that a proper planning process can take place. Obviously, it is necessary to have this information as a precursor to planning service delivery for all those people with SEN in local authorities.
The amendment is partially about transparency. It is about making sure that the data are not only collected but shared in an appropriate way so that they help both planners and service users to have a more informed input into the local offer and help devise better services in the future. The data might also have the advantage of providing isolated families with the knowledge of how many other families, children and young people in their area share a similar type of SEN or disability, which may help to bring people together.
The amendment is very much in the spirit and intent of the local offer, which is designed to help parents, children and young people shape services for the future. That is part of an ongoing debate that we have been having. The data collection and the quality of that data are crucial to help make this happen. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will see the wisdom in the amendment and will be able to support it.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I would like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, for raising this important issue and noble Lords who have spoken on this matter. I accept noble Lords’ concerns on this. I understand that the noble Baroness’s purpose behind tabling the amendment is to put, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, has said, local authorities and schools in a better position to make good commissioning decisions. Good commissioning is clearly an important underpinning to the reforms that we are making and the Bill already provides for joint commissioning arrangements across education, health and care for the provision that is reasonably required for local children and young people with SEN. That commissioning will be informed by the local joint strategic needs assessment and the data that are already available on these children and young people.
I accept absolutely that good data need to be available to inform commissioning, but I do not think that the local offer is the right place to publish that data. The purpose of the local offer is to set out what provision children, young people and families can expect in their local areas and it is to be used as a vehicle for discussion about the development of local services. It is not designed to publish information on the numbers of children and young people in the area with different types of SEN. It would not be appropriate to clutter up the local offer with such data. We accept that that information will be material to discussions about the development of provision in the local area, but that information is available elsewhere.
The department already collects data from schools and local authorities on the number of children with special educational needs and publishes this annually on the department’s website. This includes data about the number of children by type of special educational need and we will be expanding this information. At present, we publish data by type of need for children at school action plus and with SEN statements. However, as we move to the new system for school-based SEN support, we will also publish data by type of need for children who are currently at school action.
For disabled children, local authorities are already under a duty to maintain a register of disabled children and young people under Section 17 of, and Schedule 2 to, the Children Act 1989. The draft, new SEN code of practice reminds local authorities of that duty. The department also collects data on children in the early years through the early years census. For post-16, the Education Funding Agency and the Skills Funding Agency also collect data on young people in the further education sector, through the individualised learner record on a range of types of need. Requiring local authorities to publish this data in the local offer would just replicate data that is already available.
So far as bringing together these different data sets into one place is concerned, as I said, I do not believe that the local offer is the appropriate place to do this, and I do not think it is right that central government should impose on local authorities something that they should already be doing. Some local authorities may well be poor at carrying out their duties in this regard, but that is not a legislative issue: it is a matter of practice. We have made it clear in the code that local authorities have this duty.
The noble Lord, Lord Low, talked about incomplete data. It is true that SEN data from the early years census, although available on request, is not routinely published publicly, but we will make sure in future that it will be and will be linked up to the main SEN statistical publication. I assure noble Lords that the department is thinking about what the new arrangements in the Bill imply for data collection and we are seeing where there are possibilities for greater clarity and the joining up of data sets. The post-16 data that are collected by the department, the Education Funding Agency and the Skills Funding Agency are publicly available on a number of websites, and we are looking at ways to bring these together for greater clarity.
Indeed, more generally, we are looking to see how data can be brought together to reflect the new nought to 25 arrangements under the Bill. We will also consider whether there should be a collection of disability data from schools. I would be happy to discuss this further with the noble Baroness and any other noble Lords who are interested. On that basis, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Wilkins
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Unfortunately, agreement has not continued from previous amendments. I thank all other noble Lords who contributed to this debate, but I find the Minister's reply extremely disappointing. He said that the local offer was not the place to put this information and that it would be cluttered up by it. But he then went on to enumerate various forms of collection of the data which fail to recognise that it is the quality of the data that are collected that is so criticised at the moment: it is failing to provide its purpose. It seems key that, without reliable data, local authorities will not be able to commission the services that are needed.
I will read what the Minister has said in Hansard and consider this further. As I said, I am disappointed in his reply, but, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
(a) ”
(i) ”
Schools Careers Service: Apprenticeships
Lord Nash Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Bakewell
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that career services in schools make pupils fully aware of apprenticeship opportunities open to them.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, schools are legally required to secure independent careers guidance for 12 to 18 year-olds, and that includes information on all education and training options, including apprenticeships. We will publish revised statutory guidance to help schools deliver better support to pupils, including about apprenticeships. Young people are most likely to be influenced by hearing directly from employers and apprentices. We will be strengthening the importance of partnerships between schools and businesses via the National Careers Service. Ofsted is ensuring that careers guidance and pupil destinations will be given greater priority in inspections.
Baroness Bakewell (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that Answer, but given that the House of Commons Business, Innovation and Skills Committee report of 2012-13 found that,
“awareness and resources in schools and colleges remains lacking”,
expressed disappointment with the National Apprenticeship Service and recommended that the NAS should be given statutory responsibility for raising awareness of apprenticeships, can he explain how far these recommendations have been carried out?
Lord Nash
The National Apprenticeship Service funds the Education and Employers Taskforce, which is a programme to deliver knowledge about apprenticeships to schools. We also had 70 advisers from the National Careers Service and Jobcentre Plus stationed at the Skills Show in November. The National Careers Service and the National Apprenticeship Service ran a jobs bus road show, and we are pursuing a number of other measures in this area.
Baroness O'Cathain (Con)
My Lords, is my noble friend aware of the huge amount of work going on in the area of apprenticeships? Sub-Committee B of the European Union Committee is taking evidence on youth unemployment at the moment, and the great finding is that many large companies are actively getting involved in apprenticeships for the first time in many years. We have heard about some outstanding examples of this, and when our report comes out I think that he might be surprised.
Lord Nash
I am grateful for my noble friend’s comment. Our priority is to expand apprenticeships, particularly where they deliver the greatest benefits to young people, are of high quality, last longer and are more rigorous. Of course, since this Government came into power, we have delivered 1.5 million new apprenticeships.
Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)
My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that, when I speak to young people in a wide variety of secondary schools as part of the House of Lords outreach scheme, there is little or no knowledge of 16-to-18 apprenticeships, and that schools are focused on sixth form recruitment? What action are the Government taking to ensure that all secondary schools offer impartial guidance, have links with local businesses, and invite young apprentices to speak to pupils?
Lord Nash
I agree entirely with the noble Lord that links between schools and businesses are key. Schools can no longer feel that they need just to teach; they have to open their doors to businesses, and businesses have to engage with them. In my travels around the country, I have not found any difficulty with businesses wanting to engage with schools; it is usually a question of putting in place the structures. The organisation Business in the Community has a marvellous programme called Business Class which is providing careers advice, mentoring and workplace experience to 300 groups of schools. There is the Glass Academy in Sheffield and a number of other such models. However, we need to widen these efforts, and I know that the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission made some excellent recommendations in this area a couple of months ago.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, will the Minister confirm the steps that I am sure the Government must be taking to ensure that as many girls as boys are aware of these apprenticeship schemes, particularly in engineering, where there are certainly very many more young boys than young girls taking up these apprenticeships at the moment?
Lord Nash
I entirely agree with the noble Baroness. It is very important that we get a higher participation rate of girls in STEM subjects. We are funding the Stimulating Physics Network and the Further Maths Support Programme to increase the take-up of A-level physics. The STEM Ambassadors programme gives careers advice on more technical qualifications and apprenticeships. However, as my colleague Liz Truss said recently, it is excellent teaching and a culture of equal aspirations for all that will help engage more girls, so all we are doing to improve the quality of teaching helps in this regard.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, can my noble friend assure me that a teacher or careers adviser will be able to advise a dyslexic pupil in a one-to-one interview that he or she can now access, or will soon be able to access, the apprenticeship system, as the barriers to dyslexics getting through the functional skills test in English and maths will be removed?
Lord Nash
My noble friend speaks with great passion and personal experience on this subject; I have heard him do so many times, and we have already met on this subject. The Government are aware of the technical issues with assisted technology in the English and maths assessments. We are meeting the British Dyslexia Association, Ofqual and the Dyslexia Trust to try to ensure that we send a very clear message to all involved, providers and examiners, that there is the ability to use screen readers, in the case of dyslexia, as well as other assistive technology. I think that my noble friend knows that he has my personal commitment —if he does not know, I give it to him now—that we will do as much as we can to sort this out.
Baroness Wall of New Barnet (Lab)
My Lords, in response to my noble friend’s earlier question, the Minister said that it was really down to employers to do more work. Is he aware that employers try very hard to be in touch with schools, but that there is an issue around head teachers, in particular, encouraging that? As my noble friend Lord Young said, rather than aiming primarily for academic qualifications, this country needs very good apprentices; we need women apprentices, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, said, but we also need people to get engaged with apprenticeships and be encouraged to do so. That is not evident.
Lord Nash
I am sorry to hear the noble Baroness make that comment. I think that it is a two-way street. We need schools willingly to engage with all walks of business for all apprenticeships, but I still hear shocking stories about schools being reluctant to send their pupils on them and heads being too focused inwardly. They cannot give their children a good education unless they give them a direct line of sight. I have been so impressed talking to young people about how the experience of going to the workplace and meeting people in work has raised their aspirations. From this they have managed to reverse-engineer backwards what they need to do to achieve this themselves.
Children and Families Bill
Lord Nash Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
“Contact between prescribed persons and adopted person’s relatives
(1) In section 98 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 (pre-commencement adoptions: information), after subsection (1) insert—
“(1A) Regulations under section 9 may make provision for the purpose of facilitating contact between persons with a prescribed relationship to a person adopted before the appointed day and that person’s relatives.”
(2) In each of subsections (2) and (3) of that section, for “that purpose” substitute “a purpose within subsection (1) or (1A)”.
(3) In subsection (7) of that section, after the definition of “appointed day” insert—
““prescribed” means prescribed by regulations under section 9;”.”
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to be starting the Report stage of the Children and Families Bill. I know that we are all hoping to make significant progress through the Bill this afternoon and evening, but before I speak to my first amendment, I hope noble Lords will allow me to share a few words of thanks.
We had some very good debates in Committee over 12 days and I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who contributed to those debates and to those who came to the many meetings we had during Committee and since on specific issues. I found the debates and those meetings extremely helpful, and I have tried hard on those relatively few matters where we do not have a consensus really to understand both sides of the argument. I am grateful for the patience and expertise of all noble Lords who have taken time to talk to me and I have shared those discussions with my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and my honourable friend the Minister for Children and Families—noble Lords will realise, I am sure, that they have been supporting me on a learning curve which has been, at times, almost vertical.
I am also grateful to noble Lords for tolerating the large volume of paper that I and the Bill team have been sending their way. Some people have been kind enough to say that our meetings and correspondence have been helpful, and I very much hope that has truly been the case. We have now shared improved indicative statutory guidance on adoption, sibling contact for children in care, care leavers’ access to records and support for care leavers aged between 21 and 24 who are not in education, training or employment. We have also shared information on new regulations and guidance on support for trafficked children. Copies of that information are in the Printed Paper Office if noble Lords do not already have them. Some of the guidance addresses issues that we will continue to discuss today; in other areas, I am pleased that we have been able already to make progress towards addressing the issues that your Lordships have raised.
A number of noble Lords were kind enough to join me in a discussion with our new chief social worker, Isabelle Trowler. Isabelle was inspirational in her account of the reforms she is helping the Government to drive to improve the confidence, professional skills and quality of social workers. Achieving that will do more than any primary or secondary legislation or statutory guidance can do on its own to secure the step change we all want to see in support for our most vulnerable children.
There are also some issues on which we have been persuaded that legislation is the answer. Noble Lords will see further evidence of this when I table amendments to Part 3 of the Bill later this week. If we proceed at pace tonight, we will be able to speak about the Government’s commitment to use this Bill to legislate on “staying put” arrangements for care leavers in foster care.
Returning to the matter in hand, however, let me thank my noble friend Lady Hamwee and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, for helping me to understand the initially confusing issue of access to intermediary services for the descendants of adopted people. There was one debate in Committee in which I felt we were operating in two completely parallel universes and there was also a moment in the debate when I felt there was an anomaly which could not possibly be as simple and straightforward as was being proposed. However, on investigation afterwards and following an extremely helpful meeting with my noble friend Lady Hamwee, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and a number of people who are experts in the field, it became clear that there was an anomaly that we needed to rectify. I am therefore delighted to be putting forward an amendment today that addresses this.
Under the current law as it applies to adoptions that took place before 30 December 2005, both the adopted person and the adopted person’s birth relatives are able to make use of an intermediary service to facilitate contact between them, but the children of the adopted person are not able to do so. My noble friend Lady Hamwee and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, have set out very clearly that this anomaly leaves a number of people in the dark about their family history. The proposed new clause will correct this anomaly. It will enable regulations to be made that will extend access to intermediary services to those who have a prescribed relationship with the adopted person. I should be clear that the reason that the proposed new clause does not apply to adoptions that took place after 30 December 2005 is because information about these adoptions is held and accessible under a different legal framework, which does not distinguish between descendants and other relatives.
Noble Lords may wonder why the wording of the new clause refers to “persons with a prescribed relationship” rather than “descendants”. Were we to put “descendants” on the face of the Bill, we believe that the extended access would be limited to children and grandchildren of the adopted person. While it is our intention that the regulations will, at a minimum, include the children and grandchildren of the adopted person, we also wish to consult on whether it is appropriate for others, such as spouses and siblings of the adopted person, to be able to access the same services.
With the help of my noble friend Lady Hamwee, the Government have explored the implications of this reform with the Law Commission and the British Association for Adoption and Fostering and are confident that this new clause will close the current gap in the law. I hope that your Lordships agree that this amendment is necessary and I urge noble Lords to accept it. I thank again my noble friend Lady Hamwee and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, for bringing this important matter to our attention. I am very glad to be able to rectify the problem. I beg to move.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest at the beginning of the Report stage as a governor of Coram and as a patron of, among others, BAAF, PAC and Childhood First.
I start by saying that I think that this is a good Bill, though it needs some improvements. What is absolutely splendid is that in certain places the Minister has listened with great care and, like the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, I am extremely grateful to him, not only for a number of very useful meetings on this particular amendment and indeed others, but also for the outcome. I am really very grateful indeed and look forward to that being a source of relief to a number of families.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I speak in favour of Amendment 2, to which my name has been added, and very much support the arguments that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, has put forward this afternoon.
Noble Lords who were in Committee will recall that we debated this in depth. It is fair to say that there was widespread sympathy for the point of view that the noble and learned Baroness has put forward this afternoon. There was a sense that we wanted to get the balance right—not overstating their importance, but recognising that ethnicity, culture, language and heritage are all factors that make up a child’s identity, which any prospective adopter should be able to respect and value. The challenge for us is how to get it right and achieve that.
The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, explained that this issue was dealt with in some detail by the adoption pre-legislative scrutiny committee last year, which took evidence from a number of the major players in the adoption sector, including Coram and Barnardo’s. We continue to believe that that is an authoritative piece of work. While no one wants children to be disadvantaged by delays being caused by the search for the perfect match, the evidence of the adoption committee seemed to show that while there are some pockets of poor practice, it is no longer a widespread issue. For example, Barnardo’s believed that the current legislation was adequate and Coram argued that while this might have been a problem in the past, the situation was improving rapidly. The committee also identified that there were several other factors affecting the placement of BME children, including having fewer prospective adopters and a failure by social workers to promote their availability. The truth is that there remains a paucity of evidence that BME children are waiting longer for placements because of the current wording on ethnicity.
In his response in Committee, the Minister referred to two pieces of research, which I have now had a chance to look at. The first is by Julie Selwyn and commenced in 2005, which is some time ago. Even so, the study did not find systematic bias or mishandling of minority ethnic children by children’s services. The second piece of research, which was by Professor Elaine Farmer, was also carried out some time ago. It commenced in 2007. It was also interesting reading, but it covered a limited sample and, as she acknowledged, it was impossible to draw definitive findings because local authority practice was changing at the very time that the research was taking place. I believe that the latest research carried out by the adoption Select Committee is probably a better reflection of what is currently happening in adoption practice rather than research carried out six or seven years ago.
While there is, no doubt, scope for further definitive research, we should in the mean time be cautious about driving major change in this area. This is why we believe that putting these factors in the welfare checklist along with other considerations strikes the right and proportionate balance in addressing this issue. It would require agencies to have regard to these factors, but they would not be paramount.
The Minister argued that, if references to ethnicity and culture were removed, they would nevertheless remain as a silent, unspoken part of the children’s characteristics and would still need to be taken into account. A similar argument was put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, in her amendment. The Minister also referred to the fact that indicative statutory guidance is being prepared, which we welcome. But putting those two things together, I do not think they are good enough. By removing the references to ethnicity, religion, culture and language from the Bill, the Government plan to send a deliberate message to courts and social workers. Why else would they do it? We believe that that message is disproportionate and misguided and will be interpreted in the wrong way.
As we discussed in Committee, any change in the law in this area would also be in direct contradiction to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and in particular Article 20, which states:
“Children who cannot be looked after by their own family have a right to special care and must be looked after properly by people who respect their ethnic group, religion, culture and language”.
I am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Lister for updating us on the continued concerns of the Joint Committee on Human Rights in this regard. We continue to share those concerns. We think it is important that parents understand the identity of the child and are able to help them feel at ease with that identity. We cannot be blind or neutral to these considerations.
For all these reasons, we urge the Government, even at this stage, to agree to the amendment. We all want what is in the best interests of the child, which in this case is to have their identity respected and nurtured. We believe that our amendment sends the right message to the sector, building on their developing good practice and helping to speed up placements. I therefore urge noble Lords to support the amendment.
Lord Nash
My Lords, it seems ironic that, on a day when we have been paying tribute to probably the greatest force for racial reconciliation ever, we are having a debate about a matter relating to race. However, I am encouraged by today’s debate. It is absolutely clear that we are really not very far apart; we are all trying to achieve the same thing—the question is just how. Perhaps I could try and outline, at some length if I may, how I and the Government see the matter, our motivation, and where I believe there is considerable common ground.
The fact is that it takes two years and seven months for a child from entering the care system to be formally adopted, but for a black child it is 13 months longer—nearly four years. It takes one year and seven months for a child to be placed with his or her proposed adopters, but for a black child it takes 13 months, or 70%, longer. Of course, this conceals the fact that many children never get adopted. This is completely unacceptable and upsets me now as much as it did when I first heard about it three and a half years ago. This is not a question of the pendulum having swung too far. The pendulum has swung off the scale.
I have since I started working with children and young people felt very strongly that we need to ensure not just that the life chances of all young children are substantially improved but particularly those of the BME community, and in particular the black community, because it seems to me that we need more successful black people and more successful black role models. It defines our society to have a balance of successful people. I look forward greatly to the day when there are many more Baroness Youngs and Baroness Benjamins. Although I was scribbling some of the time, I think I agreed with everything the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, had to say.
There is unequivocal evidence on the negative impact of delay on children’s development and well-being. Children need to form secure and stable attachments, with one or two main carers in order to develop physically, emotionally and intellectually. Therefore, what can we do about the appalling fact that it takes black children, and other children from other minority ethnic groups, so long to be adopted? First, we are taking great steps on a number of fronts to improve the speed at which children are adopted generally. Secondly, we must seek to recruit more adopters and BME adopters and, as my noble friend Lady Hamwee said, we need to open up the system on a more national basis so that there is more scope for making the right matches. However, our research still reveals that in too many cases social workers try for too long to make a perfect match.
I have reflected deeply on this clause since Grand Committee. When children are being matched, consideration of their background and heritage plays a critical part. It is an integral part of a child’s identity and their new parents must be able to support them as they grow up. In Committee, there were moving testimonies from my noble friend Lady Perry, who spoke about Marrianna, the little girl of the Kindertransport, for whom her parents cared, ensuring that they learned about Jewish religious tradition so they could help Marrianna cherish her religious identity.
My noble friend Lady Walmsley spoke about her granddaughter Cathryn, of Chinese heritage, whose parents are learning about her heritage so they can support her. Clearly, with the right awareness and commitment, mixed-race adoptive families can be very happy and successful ones. What is crucial to making effective matching happen is good social work practice and support for adoptive parents so they can support their children, not just at the point of adoption but beyond, as the child grows into a young adult. I do not think that the blunt wording of the Adoption and Children Act—however well-intentioned and wherever it is placed—can secure that.
I am delighted to see the noble Baroness, Lady King, here this afternoon. I had the great pleasure of meeting her now probably eight week-old son the other day, and one could not wish to see a more charming baby. Perhaps the whole House can join me in congratulating her on the birth of Tullio.
Lord Nash
Under the Government’s proposal, courts and adoption agencies will continue to have to have regard to,
“the child’s age, sex, background and any of the child’s characteristics which the court or agency considers relevant”,
as set out in the welfare checklist. The Government take a strong view that that must include the child’s ethnicity. We therefore believe that the amendment is not necessary, as that aspect of a child’s identity will form part of an agency’s, or court’s, considerations in deciding the most appropriate match for a child. It is not in the nature of social workers to ignore ethnicity. That has been confirmed by discussions I have had with practitioners, to which I will refer shortly.
On the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, on the JCHR, we do not agree with the Joint Committee that the clause is incompatible with the United Nations convention. We are satisfied that the requirement in the welfare checklist to have regard to the child’s background and characteristics includes ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic background. There is also a risk that to place the requirement in the welfare checklist as the amendment proposes will have the effect of giving this aspect of a child’s identity more significance than other equally important characteristics such as disability.
Due to the current wording, some local authorities have paid undue rather than due regard to ethnicity in some cases, at the expense of other needs of the child, as most noble Lords have acknowledged. Since Committee, I have spoken with several directors of children’s services about our proposals. I will share with noble Lords what those who are willing to be quoted told me, and why they support our clause. Ade Adetosoye is Director of Community and Children’s Services, City of London, and spent seven years as the director of social care at Lambeth Council, during which time his leadership helped transform practice. He told me:
“Changing the legislation to remove this explicit requirement is a positive thing—it will not change the good work of many local authorities who already look for the best placements rather than the perfect match. However, poorer performing local authorities do sometimes look too hard for the perfect match to the detriment of the child”.
Andrew Christie, Executive Director of Children’s Services for Westminster, Hammersmith and Fulham, and Kensington and Chelsea, said:
“I fully support the government’s plans not to have ethnicity on the face of the Bill and the welfare checklist because there is evidence that suggests that this leads to some social workers trying too hard to make the perfect match which can result in the child taking a very long time to be adopted, or in some cases never being adopted at all. In my authorities we have a strong focus on people realising that the crucial thing for the child is that the clock is ticking”.
Tim Coulson, Director for Commissioning: Education and Lifelong Learning, Essex, who has himself adopted a child of a different race, said:
“We agree with the Government’s proposal to remove the requirement in legislation to give due consideration to ‘a child’s religious persuasion, racial origin, and cultural and linguistic background’ because we think that this requirement makes some social workers look too long for an ideal match based on these factors”.
Those are practitioners at the coal face.
I think we all agree that we therefore need to change the behaviour and culture of some social workers. We think that the right way to do this is through considerably enhanced guidance, so we have been spending a great deal of time talking to the NSPCC and others about this. I have also had the opportunity to talk to the marvellous charity Hope and Homes for Children, which specialises in going into conflict-torn areas—it started in Bosnia—and placing children in adoptive-type arrangements. It has considerable experience of making cross-race placements, including of Roma children—there is a massive shortage of Roma adopters—and emphasised strongly to me in some detail the importance of training and advice for adopters in that situation.
The debates with noble Lords have made us look closely at the guidance on this issue. We need to underpin practice with nuanced statutory guidance and will continue to work with the NSPCC and others. We intend that the revised statutory—not discretionary—guidance on which we will consult in the new year, and on which I would welcome noble Lords’ comments, will build on the existing draft. It will add that identity, background and heritage are issues that may need to be addressed at different times in a child’s life so that they understand their identity within the family and wider society, particularly as the child reaches adulthood. The noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, spoke convincingly and passionately from personal experience about the importance of this.
Baroness Whitaker
I am grateful to the Minister for understanding my convictions, but I was attempting to argue against his proposal that these characteristics should not appear in the Bill. It seems to me imperative that they are there as a signpost. I hope he can acknowledge that.
Lord Nash
I am grateful. I understand entirely the noble Baroness’s position. The guidance will also state that adopters of a different background/ethnicity may need additional training and support to help them support their child. This will include how to identify and deal with racism. On the matching process, it will ensure that the adopters can engage with the cultural background, heritage and ethnicity of the child. We will take my noble friend Lady Benjamin’s point about the importance of the child’s life story—the life book—and ensure that this point is in the statutory guidance. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Eccles for his support for this approach.
We do not think that having ethnicity in guidance but not in legislation is confusing and we are funding the British Association for Adoption and Fostering to provide training seminars for all local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies on this matter and the rest of the adoption reform programme. Training to support ethnicity issues will be part of the 2014-15 sessions and places at these sessions are free. Of course, good matching is important for all children and all adoptive families need access to adoption support at different stages of childhood. We are addressing these issues for all adoptive families and the guidance will reflect that. We will also add other issues that may arise in our discussions with the NSPCC and other experts. During the consultation I will put a copy of the consultation document in the House Library and send a copy to former members of the Select Committee. I hope that many of you will respond. To make that as easy as possible we would be delighted to host a round-table discussion with Peers about the guidance.
However, improving outcomes for black children is not only about adoption. For many, fostering will be more appropriate: three-quarters of all looked-after children are in foster care. For others, it will be special guardianship with a relative or former foster carer. Where adoption is the right outcome for black children, we must do better to find them families as quickly as we do for other children. For those children for whom adoption is the right permanent outcome we need action on several fronts. This includes recruiting more adopters generally, including from minority ethnic communities. This year we have given £150 million to local authorities through the adoption reform grant to help boost adopter recruitment and £16 million for the voluntary adoption agencies to help recruit more adopters who can meet the needs of children needing adoption. For example, Southwark has come up with innovative ways of recruiting adopters from the black community.
There will be better training for professionals. We have appointed BAAF to provide training on a range of issues, which next year will include ethnicity. Places are free for all local authority and voluntary adoption agencies. There will be better adoption support. We know how important this is, not only when the child is first placed with the family, but also later on, perhaps when they are dealing with the trials of adolescence and maybe, as my noble friend Lady Benjamin alluded to in one particularly moving case, questioning their identity. In September 2013 we announced a new fund with a contribution of nearly £20 million to help adoptive parents access the best possible support to meet their children’s needs. This fund will be rolled out nationally from 2015 but will be trialled from next year. The investment will make a difference to adopters in providing the support they need and better guidance, and I have explained the steps we are taking here.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said so incisively, we have, I believe, complete consensus right up to, and including, the point of diagnosing the problem. The issue is precisely how we change a culture of behaviour, but we have no intention of moving away from the importance of the child’s cultural and ethnic background. It is imperative that these are taken into account on every front.
I hope that we do not vote on this matter. That would be unfortunate given the nature of the matter that we are dealing with. I am personally committed to spending as much time as possible with my officials, the NSPCC, noble Lords and other interested parties to ensure that we get appropriate guidance in place to enable this matter to be handled in a way that takes into account the best interests of the children so that, on the one hand, their ethnicity is fully taken into account in all placing and matching decisions and, on the other, they are not left on the shelf and short-changed by the system, as many are now.
I hope noble Lords will agree that we are all very much in the same place and that statutory guidance gives us the scope to steer social work practice in a more nuanced way than through blunt statements in the Bill. On that basis, I hope the noble and learned Baroness will withdraw the amendment.
I now turn to the amendment in the names of my noble friends Lady Hamwee and Lady Walmsley. I am grateful to my noble friends for their innovative thinking on this matter, proposing to remove references to age and sex from Section 1(4)(d) of the relevant Act. I understand the thinking behind the amendment, which I believe is designed to remove from legislation any of the specific characteristics about a child, and rely wholly on the phrase,
“the child’s background and any of the child’s characteristics which the court or agency considers relevant”.
After careful reflection, I do not propose to follow this line of thinking at present. This is because there is no evidence that there is an issue with the way that the courts or adoption agencies are interpreting the words “age and sex”. There is a fairly technical issue at play here. Clause 2 seeks to remove subsection (5) of Section 1 of the 2002 Act. This is a requirement which applies only to adoption agencies—that is, local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies—when placing a child for adoption. Subsection (4) of Section 1—what is known as “the welfare checklist”—applies to the court as well as to adoption agencies, so seeking to amend this suggests a change for the courts as well as for adoption agencies.
In addition, this provision in the welfare checklist reflects an identical requirement on the courts in Section 1 of the Children Act 1989 when considering orders under that Act. Therefore, if we were to change the wording in the Adoption and Children Act 2002 in the way suggested by removing the reference to age and sex, that would send a strange signal to the court as it would suggest a different decision-making process under the Adoption and Children Act 2002 from that under the Children Act 1989.
However, in the end I come back to the very serious issue we want to address: the delay that black children and other ethnic minority children experience while waiting for adoption. As I said at the beginning, we have today paid tribute to one of the greatest advocates of racial equality ever. I listen frequently to the wonderful speech given by the other great advocate, Martin Luther King, which in my view is the greatest speech ever made. It is not the “I Have a Dream” speech, which everyone thinks of, but the one he made two months before that at Cobo Hall in Detroit in June 1963, which was then the centre of popular music, in which he used that wonderful musical analogy that all God’s children, from base black to treble white, are equally important in God’s world and on God’s keyboard. However, that does not seem to be the result in terms of the outcomes for black children in our adoption system, and this Government are determined to change that.
It is the requirement on local authorities and other adoption agencies at Section 1(5) in the Adoption and Children Act which—albeit it was placed there with the best of motives—I believe has contributed to the delays that black children face, as I think all noble Lords have acknowledged. The statutory guidance gives us the opportunity to provide much more nuanced advice and guidelines which will benefit all children being adopted, not just those who are visibly different from prospective families. For this reason, I urge the noble and learned Baroness to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I thank all those who have spoken on what in my view is an important issue, although it may be, as several have said, a question of balance and degree. I will start by answering some of the Minister’s points. As a former judge who tried adoption cases, I am well aware of the unacceptable delays that there have been in adoptions of non-white children and children from other cultural backgrounds. I believe that Section 1(5), requiring social workers and the courts to pay particular regard to ethnicity, was wrong and I am happy that the Government wish to remove Section 1(5) from the Adoption and Children Act 2002. However, I do not believe that putting these words into the checklist would have the effect that the Minister says.
The Government are putting forward a number of extremely sensible suggestions, many of them coming from the important reports that have been published. I hope that these will lead to far better adoption situations, and for all children who should be adopted to be adopted more quickly. Therefore, I very much appreciate the work the Government are doing. It is interesting that agencies remain unconvinced by the Government’s arguments, although they are, like the NSPCC, willing to work with Government to improve the statutory guidance if this amendment does not go through. I very much support any sort of enhanced guidance and training, but I am afraid that this is not enough.
I was probably wrong in my opening remarks to your Lordships in concentrating on ethnicity, because the words that I proposed should go into the checklist are four factors:
“religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background”.
They are all equally important and I was at fault for concentrating on ethnicity. It was a shorthand version and probably misleading.
I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, about statutory guidance being good enough, but I ask him: if statutory guidance is good enough, why do we have the checklist? Surely the checklist could equally well go into statutory guidance. The checklist in Section 1(4) of the Adoption and Children Act has six paragraphs, (a) to (e), and three sub-paragraphs, (i) to (iii), and it is thought necessary to include them in the checklist, not just in statutory guidance. So why are the other factors in the 2002 Act so much more important than these four points that I have just set out, which I propose should be slipped neatly in with the rest of the checklist?
It has been suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, that the words “have regard” might be seen as prescriptive, but sitting as I did as a judge, to “have regard” to something is not in the least prescriptive. One can have regard to it and then disregard it. One does not have to keep on regarding it. I certainly had no problem in the Children Act and the Adoption Act in having regard to something, then discarding it. There is nothing at all prescriptive about “having regard”. However, a checklist is a reminder to social workers and judges that they must not ignore it. To take it out altogether, which the adoption agencies are concerned about, is to swing that pendulum too far the other way, because it is not then anywhere.
It is suggested that the words “background” and “characteristics” are clear, as the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said, and one does not need anything else. If I may respectfully disagree with her, I actually think that you do. You need a bit of a jolt. What do “background” and “characteristics” mean? They have to include certain points that I am not certain every social worker, however senior, might necessarily have in mind unless they were there. I say again that statutory guidance is not quite as good as having a checklist in primary legislation. The pendulum should be in the middle, and the middle means putting it in somewhere, but not making it too important. That is what I would like to see with this amendment, and I would like to test the opinion of the House.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Hamwee.
A point was made by two earlier speakers that the Secretary of State could use successive orders under new Section 3A(3)(b) to achieve what new subsection (3)(c) provides for—in other words, to wipe out all local authorities from these various functions. Given the fact that new subsection (3)(c) is in the Bill, any Secretary of State who were to try that would, I am sure, be challenged for an abuse of process. I cannot see any Secretary of State trying to do that. It would be eminently challengeable. To colleagues who fear that scenario in the future, I suggest that it is not likely to happen. We have in my noble friend’s amendments a process—which I think the Government will be able to accept—to bring about parliamentary scrutiny if the powers in new subsection (3)(c) were used. That is the right level of parliamentary scrutiny required.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I am grateful to those noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. I am acutely aware of the concerns Peers have raised about this clause. I thank particularly my noble friends Lady Hamwee, Lady Eaton, Lord Storey and Lord Eccles for helping me to understand the nature of those concerns.
Following constructive discussions, I am persuaded that the Government’s amendment and the commitment to report to Parliament do not provide for the parliamentary scrutiny that many noble Lords would wish to see. I am therefore very grateful to my noble friends for tabling their Amendments 4A to 4D and 6A. I am persuaded that it is right for a direction to all local authorities to be subject to full and rigorous scrutiny by Parliament. I therefore confirm my support for their amendments and, if they are accepted, I will not of course need to move my Amendment 6.
Before I address Amendments 4 and 5 I remind noble Lords of the rationale of the clause as set out in the recently published policy statement. The clause is intended as a backstop should the current and significant efforts of local government and voluntary agencies prove insufficient. Unfortunately, we have to accept that this is a possibility as adoption agencies have to work within a flawed system. The fundamental problems are the structure of provision, based around local boundaries, and the unhelpful incentives associated with this structure. This constrains the ability to recruit adoptive parents in sufficient numbers. As a result, the system fails to deliver enough adopted parents to meet national demand, as we have already discussed.
However, let me be quite clear: it is the system that is failing to meet national demand, not the individual local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies that make up the system. The distinction is important and can be demonstrated by statistics. Recently published Ofsted data showed a 34% increase in adopter approvals in 2012-13 compared to the previous year. This is a huge achievement on the part of individual agencies. Local authorities have delivered a 32% increase in adopters recruited and approved and voluntary adoption agencies a 53% rise, and they should be congratulated.
Impressive though these numbers are, the sad truth is that this is still not enough to meet the needs of the number of children waiting for a loving home. At the end of March 2013, there were 6,000 children approved by the courts for adoption, waiting to move in with a permanent family. This is 15% higher than the year before. Furthermore, we estimate that we need around 3,100 additional adopters to meet the existing demand of the children who were already waiting with a placement order.
So we face a real challenge to recruit more adoptive parents. To meet it, we need to transform the system and tackle the underlying structural problems. I feel that we are well placed to do so. After welcome and constructive discussions with colleagues from local government and the voluntary sector, we have an agreed proposition for a national adoption leadership board. This is a significant milestone and demonstrates a collective commitment to take nationally driven action to close the adopter recruitment gap. The board’s members will be senior figures from the core organisations within the adoption system in England. I therefore see this board as the principal forum to deliver significant improvements in the performance of the adoption system.
Under the board’s leadership, we expect to see significant changes in the shape and structure of the providers available, including increasing consolidation and scale among local authority adoption agencies; growth in the capacity of the voluntary sector and an increase in the proportion of adopter approvals for which it is responsible; and more partnership working between local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies, local authority employees, spinouts into mutuals and the entry of some new providers.
These sorts of things are already happening. For example, I was pleased to see from the recent Ofsted publication that, as my noble friend Lady Hamwee referred to, 12 local authorities now provide adoption services under joint arrangements. These are Bedford borough and Central Bedfordshire; the west London tri-borough; Leicestershire and Rutland; Shropshire and Telford; and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, referred to, Warrington, Wigan and St Helens.
I also welcome the partnership arrangements that exist between local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies—for example, those operating in Harrow, Kent, Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire. We just need to see these types of arrangements happening more quickly and more often.
Clause 3 therefore provides levers of last resort. It is the backstop to a number of things that Government are doing to support local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies. I have already mentioned the Government’s support for the new national adoption board. We have invested £150 million through the adoption reform grant to support local authorities in 2013-14. We are also investing £16 million to build the capacity of the voluntary sector.
We know that these investments are having an impact. We expect there to be a number of new voluntary adoption agencies in the near future and we know that many local authorities have made good use of the adoption reform grant. For example, they have recruited additional staff, provided staff training and development and funded a range of marketing activities to recruit more adopters. I was particularly interested in the work the Southwark area is doing, as I have already mentioned. It used some of its funding to develop an innovative recruitment campaign to target harder-to-reach prospective adopters using a reward scheme. Southwark is also working with Lambeth to fund an outreach worker to promote the recruitment of adopters from the BME community.
I will now explain the government amendment, which tries to address some of the concerns raised in Grand Committee. Amendment 6 delays the implementation of new subsection (3)(c) until March 2015 at the earliest. It therefore provides more time for current reforms to embed and for the new leadership board to have an impact. The Government also commit that the Secretary of State will report to Parliament before issuing any direction under new subsection (3)(c).
This report would set out an updated analysis of the state of the adopter recruitment market. It would cover both the local government and voluntary sectors and analyse their current structure and effectiveness. It would also include the latest estimate of the adopter recruitment gap. In essence, it would justify the requirement for a direction under new subsection (3)(c). Any such direction would provide sufficient time for new arrangements to be put in place. This is an important point as structural change cannot happen overnight.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I would like to clarify whether the Minister is withdrawing Amendment 6, as I thought he stated earlier on.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
For absolute clarity, is the Minister saying that he is withdrawing Amendment 6?
Lord Nash
My Lords, I am and I am accepting Amendment 6A.
In the period prior to March 2015, the Secretary of State would retain the capacity to issue directions under new subsections (3)(a) and (3)(b), if absolutely necessary. As I set out in my policy statement, these directions would follow due process. For example, they would be preceded by a letter setting out the Secretary of State’s intention to issue a direction. This would explain the underlying reasons and provide the affected local authorities with an invitation to respond. Only then would the Secretary of State take a final decision to issue the direction. In considering the issuing of any direction, I expect the new adoption leadership board to play a key advisory role.
Amendment 5 would largely reduce Clause 3 to an intervention power to tackle individual local authorities. But this is not the purpose of Clause 3 which, as I have said, is intended to tackle whole-system failure. Nor would such an intervention power be necessary. As noble Lords are aware, the Secretary of State already has the power to intervene if the performance of individual local authorities requires it.
We have already seen a welcome increase in the number of adoptive parents recruited. This is testament to the efforts of adoption agencies to rise to the challenge. Simply having Clause 3 in the Bill has undoubtedly helped to galvanise agencies, as referred to by my noble friend Lord Storey, but Amendment 5 would simply undermine this stimulus to further progress. I therefore urge the noble Baronesses not to move it.
Turning to Amendment 4, the Government do not agree that directions to “one or more descriptions” of local authorities under new subsection (3)(b) should also be subject to the affirmative procedure. New subsections (3)(b) and (3)(a) provide the Secretary of State with the flexibility to take swift, decisive action if required. For example, to answer the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, they could be used to direct a small number of local authorities who were resisting a successful regional initiative, driven by other local authorities, to collaborate and work more efficiently. A direction given in this way would be the result of a dialogue with the affected authorities. It would thus be an iterative process, not a unilateral declaration.
I can confirm to my noble friend Lady Hamwee that it is not the intention to use new subsection (3)(b) as a method of achieving the aim of new subsection (3)(c) without the affirmative procedure. My noble friend also asked whether the direction has to be about all the functions in subsection (2), or merely some of them. She is right; it can be about all or any of the three function in that paragraph.
I understand that the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Meacher, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, wished to make the case for the affirmative procedure and I have agreed that this should apply in relation to new subsection (3)(c). I am also surprised that Amendment 4 does not encompass the March 2015 milestone. This is an important staging post to ensure the reforms have maximum impact. I therefore ask the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, to withdraw her amendment.
Lord Nash
My Lords, the small government amendment I have tabled will move Clause 9 from Part 1 of the Bill to the new Part 5, which is about the welfare of children. This will mean that the provision will be in the same part as other clauses that relate to looked-after children.
Before the noble and learned Baroness speaks to her amendment, it might assist the House if I confirm the Government’s position on enabling young people to remain with their former foster carers, commonly referred to as “staying put” arrangements. Last week, we announced our intention to propose an amendment to the Bill at Third Reading to place a new duty on local authorities to support every care leaver who wants to stay with their former foster parents until their 21st birthday.
I am fully conscious that many noble Lords have dedicated their life to public service, whereas I am a relative newcomer to this. Indeed, up until 10 years ago I spent my life in business focused, frankly, on money. However, about 10 years ago some philanthropic juices started to flow—better late than never you might think—which was initially sparked by two events which happened, as so often serendipitously occurs, in close proximity to each other that made a profound impact on me. First, I visited an organisation which was involved in looking after children in care who were particularly challenged and had fallen out of many other placements or, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, described it, had experienced a revolving door of care. This organisation provided intensive care for these children. I remember when visiting them being struck by how intensive this support was.
Shortly thereafter I visited the charity Amber, which looks after young people, many of whom have been in care and many of whom some years after leaving care have become homeless or been in prison. Amber takes these young people for an intensive residential course to rehabilitate them into society, teach them how to apply for a job, be interviewed, how to dress and show manners et cetera. The charity has a very high success rate of getting them into jobs permanently. When visiting this charity and talking to the young people, I was struck by the contrast between the often very good care that they spoke about receiving—not always but often it was very good care—and how, when they became adults, society seemed to drop them like a hot brick. Following this, I spent some considerable time understanding the plight of children leaving care, and I am delighted to say that we have moved a long way since then, thanks to the very good efforts of the previous Government and this Government.
Therefore, when the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, first started to talk about staying-put arrangements he was, as far as I was concerned, pushing against if not an open door at least one that was off the latch on well-oiled hinges. I discussed the matter with my honourable friend the Minister for Children and Families who—as the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, said, I am delighted to see is in the House—particularly following the latest disappointing figures from the staying-put pilots, had absolutely no hesitation in feeling that this was something we should do. We then spoke to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education, who agreed to it in a heartbeat. Therefore I am delighted to bring forward the amendment today.
I know that many from across both Houses share our commitment to doing better for these most vulnerable young people, but I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute particularly to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for his commitment to increasing and improving the support available to care leavers. The way he presented the case for this new duty during our debates and in our meetings shows that he is a powerful advocate for this group of vulnerable young people. Indeed, I would like to thank the many noble Lords who spoke on this issue in Grand Committee.
Over recent years, I think we have all come to realise that young people often are not ready to leave home at 18. We rarely expect our own children to do so, so why on earth should we treat those in care differently? This issue has moved up the agenda, from the work started by the previous Government, including by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, to the significant step forward that we will make in the Bill. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, for initiating the pilots, which have so informed our thinking on this matter.
My honourable friend the Minister for Children and Families has made improving support for looked-after children and care leavers one of his main priorities since joining Parliament—initially as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Looked-After Children and Care Leavers and now as a Minister. From last autumn, he has led a drive to promote staying put and to encourage local authorities to make this more widely available. As he said in the other place, we wanted to wait for this year’s figures to see what progress had been made. At Grand Committee, those figures had just been released and the increase was minimal. I explained our disappointment that they had not increased as much or as quickly as we hoped.
I would like to thank the sector, particularly the Fostering Network, for its work with officials on the evidence base which has so informed our decision. The new duty will come into force from April 2014. We will be giving local authorities £40 million over the next three years to put the support arrangements in place.
When we made the announcement on introducing this new duty, a number of voluntary organisations immediately supported the move. I will quote two of those. Janet Rich of the Care Leavers Foundation said:
“Step by step this Government has demonstrated that it truly understands the difficulties which face care leavers as they set out on the journey towards adulthood. Today’s announcement is another positive step on the journey towards State-as-parent acknowledging the duty they owe to this uniquely vulnerable group of young adults”.
Natasha Finlayson of the Who Cares? Trust said:
“This is absolutely fantastic news for thousands of young people in foster care, giving them vital security and support at a crucial time in their lives. It represents the most significant reform to the support children in care are given in a generation”.
I hope that noble Lords will welcome the significant change that we are proposing for care leavers. This will allow them to leave stable and secure homes when they are ready and able to make the transition to independence. I beg to move the government amendment, which moves Clause 9 to Part 5 of the Bill.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, perhaps I should rise. I was so focused on the previous amendment that I had rather missed that this was coming here. I apologise most sincerely for that, but I thank the Minister for his words.
Sorry, am I talking completely out of place?
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for informing us of the Government’s proposal to bring forward their own amendment at Third Reading to introduce the staying-put amendment. I was very grateful to him for his preparedness to listen. Our first meeting had to be postponed because of family illness, but he was very prepared for us to meet again to discuss this, he listened carefully to concerns and we met on subsequent occasions. I was most encouraged by his attention and his responsiveness to my concerns and to those raised by other noble Lords.
I was also very moved in Grand Committee by the strong support from all around the House, from so many noble Lords who are parents and grandparents, who recognised that they look after their own children until the age of 25 or 30. The average age of a child who leaves home is 24 or more. However, many young people who leave care move out at age 16, 17 or 18. I am so grateful to all your Lordships that this change has come about.
In the evaluation that was done on this following the pilots in the 10 local authorities that the noble Baroness set up under the previous Government, 24% of young people stayed put. Those who stayed put with their foster carers towards the age of 21 were twice as likely to be in education and more likely to be at university. Those who did not benefit from staying put, who did not stay with their foster carers, were more likely to have multiple changes in habitation immediately after leaving care and to have far poorer outcomes. As Natasha Finlayson, chief executive of the Who Cares? Trust, said, this is a huge change in the lives of many young people leaving care—one of the biggest changes we have seen in many years. It is very much to be welcomed.
I want to raise one issue at some point with the Minister, which Natasha Finlayson raised in her comments, on dealing with children in children’s homes. They would not be touched by the legislation as it stands, and I understand that it would be a considerable extra cost to allow young people to stay in their children’s homes past age 18. However, it has been suggested that there might be a method of connecting young people in residential care with foster carers towards the end of or early on in their stay in residential care so that, if they chose, they could move on to a fostering arrangement as they moved towards the ages of 18, 19 and 20. I hope that the Government might look at that. Perhaps that is something for guidance rather than statute, and therefore perhaps not for the amendment the Government will bring forward at Third Reading. However, I hope that they will consider it.
I am particularly grateful to the Secretary of State who, at a time of serious austerity, was prepared to come forward with £40 million to enable this to happen. I very much wanted that to be achieved, but felt some concern for the directors of children’s services, who would have to make some very difficult choices in the short term to make this possible. As regards this matter I am therefore extremely grateful for the actions of the Minister, to the Minister for Children and Families, and to the Secretary of State.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I can confirm that we will lay an amendment at Third Reading and that we will produce it in good time before that. We did not lay it today as we wanted to get the wording right. We want not only to ensure that the wording is legally correct but also that there is a consensus around it, both in Parliament and in local government and the sector. We will take account of all the comments made by noble Lords as we develop the amendment and start to work on statutory guidance. We will be consulting with interested Peers, local government and key voluntary sector organisations over the next few weeks on the wording of the proposed amendment. Officials will be happy to arrange a meeting with noble Lords to discuss the detail of the amendment.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, commented on care leavers who leave residential care. In general, as noble Lords will know, children’s homes do not seek to provide a permanent “family-type” placement, and few placements in homes last very long. However, there is nothing to stop local authorities from providing staying-put arrangements. However, our proposed duty will only apply to care leavers who leave foster care placements. As the noble Earl said, it is a great deal more difficult and expensive to provide staying-put arrangements in children’s homes. You would have vulnerable adults in homes with much younger vulnerable children. However, we are supporting Catch22 with a grant of £200,000 over two years to help improve support and outcomes for young people who leave residential care. The project is working with six providers in the north-west of England and learning will be disseminated nationally. I will be very happy to discuss that project with the noble Earl in more detail.
I hope that our decision to table an amendment on staying put at Third Reading will reassure noble Lords that we are committed to introducing legislation in the Bill on this issue. I therefore urge the noble Baronesses to withdraw their amendment and I beg to move the minor government amendment that would transpose Clause 9.
Education: Contribution to Economic Growth
Lord Nash Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, for proposing this debate on such an important topic. She is an experienced and passionate advocate for education, from her time as a geography teacher in the early 1980s to the work that she has done as a member of the board of trustees of the Teaching Leaders charity, chair of the board of trustees of Future Leaders and chair of Ofsted.
I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and my noble friend Lord Sherbourne on their maiden speeches. Both spoke passionately, incisively and eloquently, and I am sure that we are all looking forward to hearing them speak on many more occasions. I also thank all noble Lords for their valuable contributions.
As the excellent charity ARK, one of our high-performing academy sponsors, which I know the noble Baroness advises, has stated, education is one of the strongest determinants of future income and social mobility. Young people with university degrees have double the earning capacity of those who leave school without qualifications. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, spoke about the underachievement “tail” of particularly poor children. We all know that many of our children are brought up in chaotic home lives with no systems, no structures and a background of generational worklessness. As I think noble Lords know, and I think there is consensus on this across the House, the only way in which we can break this cycle is through education. The tail is why we are changing the basic accounting measure for schools from a rather simplistic five A* to C grades, including English and maths, to a progress measure across eight subjects so that all pupils, whether they come to school performing poorly or highly, are measured on the progress that they make.
The noble Baroness also mentioned London Challenge, to which I pay tribute, as a model of collaboration. The academies programme is the structure that we are using for school-to-school support in local clusters in regional locations. A local collaborative structure is the only model that we feel works. I was delighted to hear the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, say that people work best when they have ownership of the processes that they are running, which is exactly what our academy programme is all about.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans mentioned that 82% of the schools in his diocese are good or outstanding. As I am sure he knows, that puts his diocese in the premier division of dioceses. I am extremely grateful to the Diocese of St Albans for its sponsorship of the All Saints Academy. I also pay tribute to church schools generally, which consistently outperform local authority-maintained schools and outperform on community cohesion.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and other noble Lords have said, this debate is particularly timely as the latest PISA international comparison results were published earlier this week. These results showed that, having tumbled down the PISA tables in the first decade of this century, we have broadly maintained our pretty average, mid-20s standing out of 65 countries. For the sixth largest economy in the world, it is clear that there is a lot more that we have to do if we are to give our children the ability to compete in an increasingly competitive and diverse international market.
These results follow the shocking findings of the recently published OECD’s adult skills survey, which showed that we came joint bottom out of 24 countries in numeracy and 21st out of 24 in maths. We were the only country in the surveyed group whose school leavers’ grandparents are better educated than they are. There is a similar story with TIMSS and other statistics.
It is clear that countries with successful education systems have faster rates of economic growth, as the noble Lord, Lord Paul, referenced. A study by Hanushek and Woessmann in 2012 suggested that if the UK halved the then 50 PISA-point gap between us and Finland, it would result in a 6% boost to the level of UK GDP by 2050, worth around £90 billion in today’s money.
There is evidence that education is increasingly important across the world. Graduates are good for growth and good for the economy; the noble Baronesses, Lady Warwick, Lady Cohen, Lady Donaghy and Lady Dean, referred to the success of our university system. Looking across developed economies, a study by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research shows that countries that increased their share of graduates in the workforce saw labour productivity grow faster, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, referred to. In the UK, we estimate that roughly one-third of the increase in labour productivity between 1994 and 2005 was attributable to the accumulation of graduate skills in the labour force. In other words, a substantial share of the UK’s economic growth over this period was related to the expansion of higher education.
The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, referred to the graduate premium. Office for National Statistics data show that the average income for graduates levels out at £35,000, compared to £22,000 per annum for those with A-levels and £19,000 for those with merely GCSEs.
The noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, and the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, referred to funding. I must remind the House that we inherited a particularly parlous state of finances in this country and we have had some very difficult decisions to make as we seek to rectify the financial situation while protecting education budgets extremely well, particularly in relation to schools. As a result of our tighter financial controls, and as the Chancellor has today announced, the economic prospects for the country are looking up substantially.
While education is critical in building human capital, it is also important for short-term and medium-term growth. Our £18 billion capital investment programme to build new schools is stimulating construction activity across the country and supporting jobs. Free early years education for 1.3 million three and four year-olds—that is 96%—is enabling more parents to work. Education is worth around £17.5 billion to the UK export sector. My department spends almost £60 billion on education and children’s services.
However, it is not just about spending money, it is also about value for money. I am delighted to be able to tell the House that we are now building schools at half the cost of that under the Building Schools for the Future programme, more quickly and more fit for purpose. We are also running the Department for Education far more efficiently and, by 2015, will have halved the cost of running the department in real terms from just over £500 million to around £300 million, and we will have a far more efficient and effective organisation as a result.
Our ambitious educational reforms are influenced by international evidence on what works. Successful school systems prioritise the quality of teachers over the size of classes; they attract the best people into teaching; and there is greater autonomy and accountability—I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and Sir Michael Wilshaw for the highly effective work that Ofsted does in this regard.
High-performing systems have curriculum standards that set clear and high expectations. The relationship between early education and better student outcomes is strongest in countries that offer early education to a large proportion of the population. The amount spent is less important than how those resources are used.
Pupils’ socioeconomic background still plays too big a role in attainment in England. The impact of parental education on literacy and numeracy is stronger in England than in most other countries. According to the Sutton Trust, boosting the educational outcomes of children from less educated families to match the UK average could be worth around 4% of GDP, or £60 billion, to the country’s economy.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel and the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, spoke about the importance of engaging parents in their children’s education. I could not agree more. Unfortunately, many parents, however hard they try to engage, are so badly educated and so immersed in worklessness that schools today have to do so much more to replace the lack of support that children get at home. The evidence is that children from middle-class families will hear different words millions of times more than children from poorer families, which is why we are focusing so much on improving early years and primary education.
We know that education is crucial to a child’s future success. Not only is that true in respect of the labour market but educated people are healthier, more innovative, less likely to commit crime and more likely to be involved in volunteering.
Our education reform programme is based on raising attainment across the board and narrowing gaps. We are prioritising the most disadvantaged children through additional funding for early years and the pupil premium; setting higher expectations of the quality of teaching and standards of education; giving our teachers more scope to make the right decisions; holding schools and colleges to account for the outcomes that they secure for their disadvantaged pupils through a robust accountability system, which I have already mentioned; and creating opportunity for more innovation in the schools system, giving head teachers more freedoms in maintained schools and driving forward growth in the number of free schools, UTCs and studio schools.
As the noble Lord, Lord Baker, mentioned, we now have 42 UTCs open or due to open. These are creating opportunities—or will do when they are full—for 30,000 young people to train as the engineers and scientists of the future, playing a crucial role in England’s long-term economic growth. In this, they are teaming up with employers such as Jaguar Land Rover, Rolls-Royce, Siemens and the National Grid. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Baker, for his tireless, relentless and energetic determination to drive this programme and to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, who is not in his place, for getting this programme off the ground in the first place.
We also have studio schools. There are now 28 open, with 13 more due to open shortly. They bring together academic and vocational education and employment, with over 400 employers, including M&S, Sony, Barclays and the BBC as well as many smaller businesses, involved.
My noble friend Lord Sherbourne set out another crucial factor in the future competitiveness of our children—modern languages. He highlighted many of the reforms that we have made in this area and made a compelling case for these changes, and I thank him for it. As he said, the English baccalaureate is already encouraging more young people to take a language at GCSE level. The increase is 16% in 2013 in pupils taking MFL at GCSE. Studying languages is about choice and we are making £3.1 million available in funding for Routes into Languages, a consortium of universities working together with schools and colleges to enthuse and encourage people to study languages to support a new three-year student demand-raising programme. Through the free schools programme we have opened the Bilingual Primary School in Brighton, which is delivering the curriculum in both English and Spanish, and the Judith Kerr Primary School in Southwark, where the curriculum is being delivered in both English and German, while in pre-opening there is the Bromley Bilingual school, which will teach French and English through immersion, and the Marco Polo Academy, which will teach English and Mandarin using immersion methods.
I thank my noble friend Lord Storey for his encouraging words about what we are doing about languages in primary schools. Strong and robust vocational education is essential for the future. More and more young people are taking vocational courses; we have seen a 200% increase over the past 10 years. As my noble friend Lord Baker said, the fact that we have such a high number of NEETs, stubbornly stuck at around 1 million, has to change. We need to repair the broken link between qualifications and training between British industry and employers and universities. The most able students must have confidence that the vocational qualifications are of the highest standard.
The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, spoke about the importance of raising the status of vocational courses, and that is why we commissioned the report by Professor Alison Wolf on vocational education. We have followed all her excellent recommendations. We have already reformed vocational qualifications at 14, we are in the process of consulting on reforming 16-to-19 vocational qualifications and we have introduced Techbacc. In the past, skills training has been bureaucratic, top-down and complex. The funding of the system has been done through large numbers of people rather than focusing on value. Successive Governments have made the education system for vocational qualification accountable to funding bodies instead of to their customers, learners, businesses and the wider local community.
Under this Government we have ended top-down bureaucracy in FE colleges and supported a massive expansion in apprenticeships programmes, which we are focusing on making of higher quality and of longer duration. However, none of this means anything unless our young people are engaging with education, and we are planning to spend £7.4 million in 2013-14 to fund an education and training place for every 16 or 17 year-old who wants one, and we are raising the participation age.
Our higher education system is a huge success story, as a number of noble Lords have mentioned. We attract large numbers of international students and researchers who bring revenue, expertise and stimulate growth. Our strongest universities are among the best in the world. Education is a valuable and growing export sector worth about £17.5 billion in 2011. About 26,000 international students at over 1,200 UK independent schools contribute £685 million in fees, and around 1.4 million pupils studied at nearly 3,000 British schools overseas, contributing nearly £10 billion in fees. There is a strong overseas demand for educational products and services, including support in building, staffing and inspecting overseas schools. There is also growing interest in developing technical and higher vocational skills.
In the summer we published our education export strategy, which will ensure that British schools, universities, colleges and education businesses continue to stay ahead in the global education market worth about £1 trillion. The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, talked about the Institute of Education, which I would be delighted to visit. I was delighted to hear the noble Baroness refer to the World Bank report mentioning the importance of acquiring knowledge and the processing of information, which is why we are increasing the content in our curriculum. I was also delighted to hear her mention the importance of providing incentives so that the stronger teachers can get better paid, which is what performance-related pay is all about. I am beginning to sense the makings of a consensus across the House on the future of education, and perhaps we can begin to see the end of the stone-throwing era.
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, about the importance of raising aspirations for our pupils, particularly those from less privileged backgrounds. The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, talked about those films in the 1960s. I can particularly remember one with Tom Courtenay. I cannot recall what it was called but it made a vivid impression on my mind.
We must open the door to education much wider for employers. As the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, said, we must provide our pupils with a clear line of sight to the workplace. I have been struck when talking to students about their work experience and visiting places of work; talking to people from the workplace has raised their heads and their ambitions. I look forward to meeting him to see if we can unblock the logjam to which he referred.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Graham, that schools should widen their connections with the local community. In my own school we have an active programme of raising aspirations, engaging with community voluntary groups, professions and businesses, which has had a remarkable effect on the aspirations of the children.
The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, talked about prescription and the freedom to teach. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, knows, one of the things that we in this Government have been very strong on is being much less prescriptive. We have had many conversations with Ofsted about how teachers should teach so that they can teach in the way that they think is best to make progress for their pupils.
Ensuring that all our children receive the best educational outcomes is a priority not just for me, my department and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education but for the whole country, and I am sure that there is consensus across the House about this. In concluding, I again congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and my noble friend Lord Sherbourne on their excellent maiden speeches, and I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, for allowing us to discuss these most important matters.
Schools: Expenditure Per Pupil
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Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the average spend per pupil in the state-funded education sector for 11 to 18 year-olds; and how that figure compares to the average spend per pupil in the private sector for the same age group.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, we estimate that state schools received revenue and capital funding of £6,350 per pupil in 2012-13, compared to independent day schools, which received £11,510. These figures cover pupils aged three to 19 years old, as there is no available breakdown of either figure to cover the requested age range of 11 to 18 year-olds. We cannot provide data relating to 2013-14, as these are not yet available.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that unexpectedly helpful reply. We can accept from what he said that there is clearly a significant difference between the amounts of money being spent on children in maintained schools and those in independent schools. The House has often heard the Minister extol the virtues of the independent schools, and I acknowledge that there is a lot to admire in the best of them, but would he acknowledge that to use as he does the achievements of that privileged and exclusive sector as a stick with which to beat maintained schools is neither fair nor reasonable? Would he further agree that what parents who can afford to pay are buying—and I speak with authority on this matter—is not narrow focus on academic achievement, important as that may be, but a broad curriculum that properly values, for example, sport, music, drama and the humanities, the very subjects now fighting to avoid marginalisation under the Government’s new national curriculum arrangements?
Lord Nash
The noble Baroness is quite right that we cannot make the comparison, for the reasons that she states. I am delighted that she found my Answer helpful; we are always here to be as helpful as we can. I do not seek to use the independent sector as a stick to beat the state sector, but I personally find it quite shocking that 7% of the population go to private schools yet they take more than half the top jobs and more than 40% of the places in our top universities. That is a level of social immobility that I am sure we are all determined to change, without wishing in any way to knock either the state or independent sector.
I agree entirely that all pupils should receive a broad and balanced curriculum. The noble Baroness has vast experience of the performing arts. In their contributions to the “Best Eight” measure, there will be plenty of opportunity for schools to make a showing on a broad and balanced basis with subjects such as drama and music.
Lord Lexden (Con)
Would my noble friend agree that it is important to bear in mind that more than one-third of pupils in independent schools pay reduced fees? Would not that proportion be even larger if the Labour Party had not abolished Margaret Thatcher’s marvellous assisted places scheme?
Lord Nash
I am fully aware that the independent sector provides bursaries of £300 million a year to pupils whose parents might otherwise not be able to afford to send them there, and that there are many examples of independent/state school partnerships. More than 90% of the Independent Schools Council members, 1,100 of them, support activities such as co-sponsorship of academies, or sponsorship—34 schools do that, while 388 schools provide specific lessons or other educational activities to state school pupils. Our ambition in this Government is to support all state schools and to improve their performance.
Lord Storey (LD)
My noble friend will be aware that the Charities Act 2011 can allow leeway for independent schools to claim charitable status if they are deemed to be of public benefit. Can the Minister make an assessment of how independent schools can further justify that they deserve this status by sharing facilities with state-educated children in the local community, thereby enhancing their education and opportunities?
Lord Nash
I have already mentioned the independent/state school partnerships, which are very active. I also mentioned bursaries. Precise assessment is impossible but we are keen to encourage, in any way we can, the independent sector to support the state sector. Despite the difference in finances there is a lot that both sectors can learn from each other. We should encourage the independent sector to engage with the state sector, rather than seek to berate it in any way.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I presume that the noble Lord will acknowledge that most public schools are, quite rightly, proud of their sporting achievements and their extensive sports facilities. As the noble Lord has committed himself to tackling the challenge of social mobility, how can this Government justify selling off so many sports fields? I think it was 50 state sports facilities at the last count. This obviously puts children in state schools at a disadvantage.
Lord Nash
As the noble Baroness said to me recently, I was not around, but I think our record on this is rather better than that of the party opposite. Indeed, we now have a very strong presumption that schools cannot sell off their sports facilities unless they are replacing them with equivalent ones. We are very keen to see all new schools have sports facilities. Where we are building schools in confined spaces, which we often are, we have used artificial turf or maybe sports facilities on the roof. We consistently now use games such as table tennis and basketball, which can be played by many pupils in confined spaces.
Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes (Con)
My Lords, does the 7% that my noble friend cited as being high achievers include those children in this country who have the finest free education in the world at our remaining grammar schools?
Lord Nash
There is no doubt that our grammar schools provide an extremely good education. It is an interesting fact that, whereas 7% of the population get 50% of the top jobs, the grammar schools, which educate about 4.5% of the population, get more than 20% of the top jobs. This means that 90% of the population are getting into under 30% of the top jobs. It is that kind of inequality, particularly for poorer pupils, that this Government are particularly determined to improve.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
In view of the huge fees at Eton College, does the Minister agree that Stanley Johnson should ask for his money back?
Children and Families Bill
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Lord Nash
That the amendments for the Report stage be marshalled and considered in the following order:
Clauses 1 to 6, Schedule 1, Clauses 7 to 12, Schedule 2, Clauses 13 to 72, Schedule 3, Clauses 73 and 74, Schedule 4, Clauses 75 to 94, Schedule 5, Clause 95, Schedule 6, Clauses 96 to 105, Schedule 7, Clauses 106 to 119.
Education: PISA Results
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, with your permission, I would like to repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education in another place earlier today about the PISA league tables of educational performance published earlier today by the OECD.
“Before I go into the detail of what the league tables show about the common features of high-performing systems, may I take a moment—as I try to in every public statement I make—to thank our teachers for their hard work, dedication and idealism. Whatever conclusions we draw about what needs to change, I hope we in this House can agree that we are fortunate to have the best generation of young teachers ever in our schools.
The data show that the new recruits now entering the classroom are better equipped than ever before. I would like in particular to thank those head teachers who are, through the new school direct programme of teacher training, recruiting more superb new graduates to teach in our state schools. But while the quality of our teachers is improving, today’s league tables sadly show that that is not enough. When people ask why, if teachers are better than ever, we need to press ahead with further reform to the system, today’s results make the case more eloquently than any number of speeches.
Since the 1990s, our performance in these league tables has been at best stagnant, at worst declining. In the latest results, we are 21st in the world for science, 23rd for reading and 26th for mathematics. For all the well intentioned efforts of past Governments, we are still falling further behind the best-performing school systems in the world. In Shanghai and Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong, indeed even in Taiwan and Vietnam, children are learning more and performing better with every year that passes, leaving our children behind in the global race.
That matters because business is more mobile than ever, and employers are more determined than ever to seek out the best-qualified workers. Global economic pressures, far from leading to a race to the bottom, are driving all nations to pursue educational excellence more energetically than ever before, and today’s league tables show that nations that have had the courage radically to reform their education systems, such as Germany and Poland, have significantly improved their performance and their children's opportunities.
There is no single intervention or single nation which has all the answers to our education challenges, but if we look at all the high-performing and fast-improving education systems, certain common features recur. There is an emphasis on social justice and helping every child to succeed. There is a commitment to an aspirational academic core curriculum for all students. There is a high level of autonomy from bureaucracy for head teachers. There is a rigorous system of accountability for performance, and head teachers have the critical power to hire who they want, remove underperformers and reward the best with the recognition that they deserve.
Those principles have driven this coalition’s education reforms since 2010. The first reform imperative is securing greater social justice. It is notable that many of the high-performing jurisdictions set demanding standards for every child, whatever their background, and Germany in particular has improved its standing in these league tables by doing more to promote greater equity to ensure more children from poorer backgrounds catch up with their peers.
The good news from the PISA research is that in England we have one of the most progressive and socially just systems of education funding in the world. But we in the coalition Government believe that we must go further to help the most disadvantaged. That is why we have made funding even more progressive with the pupil premium, extended free pre-school education to the most disadvantaged two year-olds and changed how we hold schools accountable so that they have to give even greater attention to the performance of poor children. I hope that today the Opposition will acknowledge these steps forward and give their support to our reforms.
The second reform imperative is a more aspirational curriculum. In successful Asian nations all students are introduced to more stretching mathematical content at an earlier age than has been the case here; and in the fastest-improving European nation, Poland, every child now follows a core academic curriculum to the age of 16. Our new national curriculum is explicitly more demanding, especially in mathematics. It is modelled on the approach of high-performing Asian nations such as Singapore. The mathematical content is matched by a new level of ambition in technology, with the introduction of programming and coding in the national curriculum for the first time.
In our drive to eliminate illiteracy, we have introduced a screening check at age six to make sure that every child is reading fluently. Our introduction of the English baccalaureate, which is awarded to students who secure GCSEs in English, maths, the sciences, languages and history or geography, matches Poland by embedding an expectation of academic excellence for every 16 year- old. I hope that today the Labour Front Bench will confirm its support for our new curriculum, the phonics screening check and the English baccalaureate. Our children deserve to have these higher standards adopted universally.
The third reform imperative is greater autonomy for head teachers. There is a direct correlation in these league tables between freedom for heads and improved results. That is why we have dramatically increased the number of academies and free schools and given heads more control over teacher training, continuous professional development and the improvement of underperforming schools. By giving heads control of teacher recruitment, the School Direct programme has improved the quality of new teachers. The creation of more than 300 teaching schools has put our most outstanding heads in charge of helping existing teachers to do even better. The academies programme has allowed great heads, such as those in the Harris and Ark chains, to take over underperforming schools, such as Downhills Primary in Tottenham. I hope that today the Front Bench will signal its support for these reforms and show that, like us, it trusts our outstanding heads to drive improvement.
The fourth pillar of reform is accountability. Those systems which have autonomy without accountability often underperform, but accountability has to be intelligent. That is why we have sharpened Ofsted inspections, recruited more outstanding serving teachers to inspect schools and demanded that underperforming schools improve far faster. The old league table system relied too much on a narrow measurement of C passes at GCSE, which generated the wrong incentives and wrote too many children off. We have changed league tables to ensure that every child’s progress is rewarded and ensured that children are not entered early, or multiple times, for GCSEs simply to influence league tables. I hope that today the Opposition Front Bench will endorse those changes and join us in demanding greater rigour and higher standards from all schools.
The fifth pillar of reform is freedom for heads to recruit and reward the best. Shanghai, the world’s best-performing education system, has a rigorous system of performance-related pay. We have given head teachers the same freedoms here. I hope that today we can have a clear commitment from all sides of the House to support those brave and principled heads who want to pay the best teachers more.
The programme of reform we have set out draws on what happens in the best school systems, because we want nothing but the best for our children. Unless we can provide them with a school system that is one of the best in the world, we will not give them the opportunities they need to flourish and succeed. That is why it is so important that we have a unified national commitment to excellence in all our schools for all our pupils”.
I commend the Statement to the House.
Lord Nash
I am grateful for the noble Baroness’s considered analysis. With her experience, she probably knows better than to suggest that we can be expected to have turned round the education system after only three and a half years, as Andreas Schleicher acknowledged only yesterday. It is far too early to form a verdict on the coalition’s reforms. However, we have stopped the decline. Between 2000 and 2009 we fell from fourth to 16th in science, eighth to 28th in maths, and seventh to 25th in literacy. We have now stabilised at 23rd in literacy and 26th in maths, although we have done worse in science.
I agree that the Labour Government spent 87% more in real terms on the education system, but it is all about what results you get rather than how much money you spend. We must have a concept of value for money. It does not look as though we got very good value for money. We are now building schools at half the cost per pupil of Labour’s Building Schools for the Future programme; we are building many more purpose-designed schools, and more quickly.
I acknowledge that Teach First was a splendid idea. We have expanded that dramatically. I acknowledge that the academy programme was a splendid idea—indeed, I would not be here if it was not for the academy programme. The London Challenge was an excellent example of co-operation between schools. That is why we have taken these ideas and expanded them dramatically; for example, from 200 to 3,500 academies, working together in close geographic local clusters, with schools supporting each other locally, which we believe is the only model. We agree entirely with the collaborative approach.
The unqualified teacher story seems to run and run. It is a bit of a red herring. We have brought the numbers down to 14,800 from 17,800 under Labour. It is still a tiny proportion. It is interesting that the area that the noble Baroness refers to—London, which had some of the best results—has the highest incidence of unqualified teachers. It is also true that we have a high incidence of unqualified teachers in our academies and free schools because we have nationalised quite a few independent schools. However, we are interested in the best teachers with the best qualifications and now 75%—up from 61%—of our teachers enter the profession with a 2.1 or better.
However, it would be so much better if, rather than throwing stones at each other, we all acknowledged that these PISA statistics are a wake-up call for our school system and that we should work together in a unified way to improve it. I am delighted that the noble Baroness supports some of our reforms. I know that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education would love to know which reforms, and I look forward to discussing that with her further.
The PISA report contains an extremely intelligent analysis, which I recommend to everyone in this House. In particular, it states that the schools that succeed are those with high levels of autonomy and accountability—both of which the Government are focusing on—and a core academic curriculum.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for repeating the Statement. I agree with him 100% that the time for throwing stones at each other, as he puts it, should be past. That is something that schools get absolutely fed up with.
The Statement highlights the importance of head teachers. We all know that strong leadership in a school produces the results and the progress that we all want. Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore have been mentioned. What they have in common are focused and clear ways in which to become a head teacher, to train a head teacher and to put somebody into that role. Does my noble friend agree that we need to look carefully at how we prepare people for school leadership, that we cannot just have any unqualified person leading a school and that there needs to be proper training? On reflection, was it perhaps the wrong decision to do away with the leadership college and the leadership qualification for aspiring head teachers?
Lord Nash
I agree entirely with my noble friend that we need to grow a new generation of head teachers. We are going to be short of head teachers because many of them are retiring. We will have to promote younger people, which is why it is so encouraging that so many more highly qualified people are motivated to become head teachers. Many of the academy chains have very sophisticated training programmes for their heads to ensure that we grow the next generation of head teachers.
Lord Quirk (CB)
My Lords, the Statement made no reference to one issue which must have caused a certain amount of buzzing in the DfE yesterday. His ministerial colleague, Liz Truss, addressed the Publishers Association and very largely deplored the disappearance —which may surprise many of us—of the textbook from the classrooms of both primary and secondary schools. I was astonished to learn from a Telegraph report today that, as compared with 10% use of textbooks in primary schools here, Germany and Poland have around 80% or 90%. Only 8% of pupils in English secondary schools have textbooks in their hands, whereas the figure for Finland is 80%. I compare the UK largely with other European countries because of the huge cultural differences which make comparison with Taiwan and Hong Kong a bit difficult. In view of what Liz Truss said yesterday, why does the Minister think that there is such a gap between our countries and other European countries in the simple use of textbooks in classes? Does he think that this gap between the two lots of teachers and the two lots of procedures may account for our disappointing performance and the much more hopeful performance that he has drawn attention to in Poland and Germany?
Lord Nash
I agree entirely with the noble Lord. I think that the answer to his questions in brief, although I will elaborate, is that this situation has been caused by a lack of rigour in the curriculum and in teaching methodology. I agree entirely that this lack of rigour and methodology, which is expressed in one way in textbooks, is one of the reasons why we have declined. One also needs to look at workbooks. In far too many state-maintained schools, there is a complete absence of workbooks. We are finding that some of the much more successful schools—not just academies but maintained schools—insist that all their pupils have a workbook. A workbook is something pupils can be proud of and it can be marked. Pupils do more homework and they get more feedback. In all senses, we need to instil more rigour in our school system.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
My Lords, the Government’s reforms borrow more from Sweden than from any other jurisdiction, but the position of Sweden in these tables is going backwards. As we have heard, the reforms also built on what the previous Government did on academies. Therefore, regardless of politics—and I regret the highly political tone of the Statement—should we not learn from the top three, from Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore? There, parents are much more involved in their child’s learning, and those jurisdictions are designing-in collaborative problem-solving to meet the needs of employers. Given that those skills will be tested by PISA in 2015, how does the Minister think our children will fare then, given the Government’s new emphasis on rote learning and individual testing?
Lord Nash
I know that the noble Lord is very experienced in these matters. I was recently visited by a delegation from Sweden consisting of MPs and others involved in education. They were here to study our accountability system because they acknowledge that they have half of the equation right—autonomy—but not the other half. They have been impressed with what they have seen here in Ofsted and our move to a more rigorous accountability system in examination analysis. That is why they acknowledged that they have failed; I do not think that it has anything to do with autonomy.
We are learning from Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai, particularly in maths. We sent 50 of our head teachers, with their heads of department in maths and science, to Shanghai earlier this year. I agree entirely that parents need to get more involved. When I first got involved in the academy programme, we had one ghastly meeting in Pimlico with all the antis. They were clearly not representative of parents, so to reach out to the parents, we organised eight one-hour meetings in Camberwell and Brixton, where the parents lived, to tell them what we were doing. There were 1,300 pupils so you would think that there would be 2,500 parents. I would like to ask noble Lords to guess how many parents turned up but I will tell you—one parent came to all eight meetings. We now have more than 90% attendance at parents’ meetings, because all state schools must now send out a message to their parents that if their children go to that school, they must turn up. That is what happens in independent schools and we must try to replicate that in the state system. I entirely agree with the noble Lord.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, I follow on from the wise, perceptive question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Quirk, and my noble friend’s response to it. Is not one secret a proper, disciplined framework in every school? In 10 years as a schoolmaster and 40 years visiting schools in my constituency, it was always the case that where there was proper discipline—allied to parental enthusiasm, I would add with reference to the noble Lord, Lord Knight—and children could learn in a disciplined framework, they made real progress. Should not our primary aim when we are talking of rigour be to ensure that there is real, rigorous discipline in every school?
Lord Nash
I agree entirely with my noble friend. Across the academy system a great many sponsors have taken over schools where, frankly, the previous behaviour was very poor indeed, and put in place a very effective behaviour management system. I saw a behaviour management system in America which I thought was particularly effective. You start the pupils on the left-hand side of the page, where they basically behave because they will get into trouble if they do not, and you slowly move them across to the right-hand side of the page, where they behave because that is the society they want. They want a calm society in their school because that is the only way they can learn. More sophisticated behaviour management systems are coming into place. We have strengthened teachers’ ability to confiscate mobile phones, particularly in the appalling incidents of sexting, and given more power for detention, and so on, but I agree entirely with my noble friend.
Lord Rooker (Lab)
Can the Minister confirm that although this is December 2013, the tests on those half a million children actually took place in 2012? I have to say that it is ludicrous beyond belief, and silly, for my friends in the Opposition to complain that it is the fault of the coalition. Two years is a nanosecond for change and it is ludicrous to make such connections. I would argue that although the Secretary of State went a bit far in his Statement in throwing stones, it is also a case of “What’s sauce for the goose”.
I do not go on many school visits these days but I was in a secondary school about a month ago. It has been dramatically turned around in the last six months, since a new head arrived. He described his office to me as being set out like a war room, with all the key five factors. I asked him, “What about the staff turnover in this period?”. There were very few changes; I had walked around the school and talked to the staff as well. In other words, the dramatic changes in the school had been brought about by leadership—not by going in to clear out teachers but by leading them. Even this head will therefore require help in future. I take the point about the leadership of schools being absolutely crucial. You cannot just put the best teacher in the role of head teacher. They have to be trained to lead but it can be done. Finally, if this is a wake-up call to the schools, it is equally a wake-up call to the governing bodies. More work needs to be done there because if governing bodies take the issues seriously, it is more likely that parents will take them seriously.
Lord Nash
I am grateful to the noble Lord for his comments. He made his opening point extremely eloquently and I think we all realise that you do not turn around an ocean liner in a couple of years. He is absolutely right and we should all just avoid having that conversation in the future.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
If the Minister will give way, I have to clarify the points I made in my opening speech. It was not that I expected the Government to have turned around a tanker. What I said was that substantial progress had been made during the years of the Labour Government, and necessarily so because of the state of the education system in 1997. In their three and a half years, the Government could have built on that progress rather than starting again with some very destructive reforms.
Lord Nash
We will have to beg to disagree on this because I do not see our going from seventh to 25th in literacy, from eighth to 28th in science or from fourth to 16th in maths as progress.
The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, referred to a war room. I look forward to him perhaps taking me to visit that school at some stage. I entirely agree on the question of leadership. I was particularly impressed when I visited the Perry Beeches schools in Birmingham, which are run by an inspirational head, Liam Nolan, and by how he has managed to turn around a number of failing schools. He has not only kept in place people who were clearly not performing well under the previous regime but promoted them to very senior positions.
I entirely agree, too, about governing bodies. Whether the school is a local authority maintained school, a church school or an academy chain, real decisions can often be made in the governing bodies and we are focusing much more on them. We have recently made it absolutely clear that governing bodies should focus on a few key things: the vision and strategy of the school, holding the head to account for the attainment and progression of pupils, the performance management of his or her staff, and the finance. We need smaller governing bodies, in many cases, but with many more of the appropriate skills.
Baroness Humphreys (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Statement. For many years I worked as a teacher in Wales, so it was with a great deal of sadness and disappointment that I read the PISA results for Wales today. Wales performed worse than the OECD average in all measures: maths, science and reading. Since 2009, Welsh pupils have slipped from 40th to 43rd in maths, from 30th to 38th in science, and from 38th to 41st in reading—a disastrous performance which shows Wales to be the poorest performing nation in the UK.
All this makes the ambition of Wales’s Labour First Minister to be in the top 20 by 2015 almost laughable, if it were not so serious. This is the culmination of nearly 15 years of Labour control of the struggling Welsh education system. I recognise that education is a devolved matter, but will the Minister be having discussions with Ministers from the devolved nations to ensure that standards improve throughout the United Kingdom?
Lord Nash
I know that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education is deeply concerned about the situation in Wales, which—quite deliberately, it seems—lacks many of the systems of accountability and rigour that we are putting in place here. My noble friend puts it extremely well: if anyone wants a case study of how not to do it, Wales seems to be it. We would be happy to have conversations with them if they were prepared to engage in conversations.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
When he read out the Statement, the Minister began by paying tribute to the work and dedication of teachers, which is the right thing to do. I hope that it was meant sincerely, not by him but by the Secretary of State who wrote it. However, I have to say to him, although I am sure that he will know this if he visits schools, as I know he does, that that respect and affection is not reciprocated by teachers up and down the country. He will know that dedicated and committed teachers see the Secretary of State as being arrogant and failing to value the commitment and quality of teachers, their advice and their experience, which in my judgment is a very bad position for any Secretary of State to take. They do not feel valued and understood by him, and they do not feel, when they express strongly held opinions, based on experience, about how and what to teach and how to manage schools, that they are respected by this Government.
I will not say that I modestly suggest this because it is not a modest suggestion, but I simply suggest as a matter of common sense that if the Secretary of State wants to make changes in our education system, then a fundamental principle of management on his part should be to get on his side the people who have to implement those changes and improvements.
Lord Nash
I think that the Secretary of State wants to improve the lot particularly of underprivileged children in this country far more than he wants to be liked. He greatly values the advice of teachers and constantly has teachers and head teachers in and out of his office. It is a fact that where you have an organisation—I have seen this in business many times—that needs to go through change because it has slipped so dramatically down the international tables, we have to make a lot of changes. That is why we are making a lot of changes quickly, because we have slipped so fast. People are always reluctant to embrace change, and I understand that teachers feel under pressure from so much change. However, we have to do it if we are to do the right thing for our teachers. Both my right honourable friend and I constantly have conversations with head teachers around the country that go along the lines of, “I know you’re unpopular and I know that teachers don’t like it, but you’re doing the right thing. Keep going”.
Lord Elton (Con)
My Lords, can my noble friend give us a little more insight into the view that he takes of the comparison between examination systems—their design, their management and use—in competitor countries? How do they differ from ours, and is that in itself one element that needs to be improved?
Lord Nash
I am grateful to my noble friend for that question. We have looked at examination systems across the world in improving the examination systems in this country. We have reduced, or rather will be reducing—again, going to the point about turning the ship around quickly, a lot of these reforms have not even come into effect yet—the number of modules and the amount of coursework and continuous assessment in exams, and we will be reducing the scandal of equivalence that went on in recent years. You could take a higher diploma in construction, a subject that even someone as hamfisted as myself would probably pass because there were no exams at all and it was entirely continuous assessment, and it counted for four GCSE equivalents. I could give noble Lords many other examples of exams that were massively overrated, doing their pupils no favours at all and not valued by employers. We have taken into account a lot of what we have seen in international systems in our reform of the exam system.
Providers of Social Work Services (England) Regulations 2013
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Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, Part 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 2008 enables local authorities to delegate specified relevant care functions to a provider of social work services. Part 1 has, to date, been brought into force only for piloting purposes but the Government brought it fully into force on 13 November, before sunset provisions would otherwise take effect.
The background to this is that in May this year the Department for Education laid a draft legislative reform order as an affirmative instrument under the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006. This draft LRO proposed removing the requirement for direct registration and inspection by Ofsted of social work services providers in England in parallel with Part 1 of the 2008 Act being brought fully into force. The department’s intention, as I understand it, was that if the LRO had been approved, inspection of arrangements involving such providers would have become part of the local authority inspection by Ofsted.
The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee first considered the draft LRO in June. In its third report of the current Session, it recommended that the LRO should be subject to the super-affirmative procedure, because it considered that the noble Lord’s department had not adequately demonstrated that the LRO would not remove any necessary protection. The committee considered the draft LRO for a second time in July, taking account of a letter received from DfE Ministers responding to the points raised in its third report. However, the letter was not persuasive and the committee remained of the view that the department had not justified its statement that the LRO would not remove any necessary protection. Therefore, in its seventh report, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee recommended that the LRO should not proceed.
The department has now withdrawn the draft LRO and, consequently, my understanding is that this instrument is needed to set out registration and fitness requirements for persons who wish to contract with local authorities as providers of social work services. This instrument has been drawn to the special attention of the House by the Scrutiny Committee of your Lordships’ House, which is why I am moving this Motion this afternoon.
First, with the withdrawal of the LRO, can the Minister confirm that the matter is now settled for the foreseeable future and that independent providers of social work services will continue to be inspected directly rather than as an adjunct to a local authority’s inspection?
I would also like to ask the Minister about the wider implications of the policy to outsource social work services. Are the Government determined to press ahead with plans to outsource the placements of children in care to the private sector, despite opposition from children’s charities? Can he confirm that Serco and Virgin are among the firms that might take over those services? The Minister should consider very carefully before pressing ahead with plans to allow private companies to take decisions about some of the most vulnerable children, when the pilot projects showed no clear benefit for children. I know that the noble Lord’s department is rather light on evidence to justify the policies that it takes on, but will he acknowledge that an evaluation of the pilots by academics from King’s College London, the University of Central Lancashire and the Institute of Education found that there was limited evidence in favour of relocating public services for children in out-of-home care to the private sector?
The study, published last year by the Children and Youth Services Review, concluded that:
“While the independent sector is often the setting for innovation, the public sector continues to function as a repository for a wide range of expertise and resources. It is also more likely to offer continuity of knowledge, skills and care and, in this respect, it may be better placed to respond to the uncertainty that characterizes the needs of children in out-of-home care”.
What is the Government’s response to the evaluation of those pilots?
What will happen when children’s interests and the ambition of companies to make profits conflict? Most worryingly, the regulations seem to allow for a clear conflict of interest to arise. My reading is that the same private company will be allowed to place a child into care under contract from the local authority and then actually to run that placement. The parallel with clinical commissioning groups in the health service—CCGs, which are essentially member organisations run by GPs, are actually allowed to place more money into GP primary care-led services—is uncanny, and is clearly against the public interest.
Will the decision to contract with private providers be entirely a matter for individual local authorities, or is the Minister’s department intending to put pressure on local authorities? His department does not seem to have a very positive view of local authorities, and I would be very interested in his response on that matter.
I would like to ask the Minister about the consultation. The Explanatory Memorandum that accompanies the order states that there was near-universal support for the principle of these regulations. It goes on to list the broad support and the percentage of respondents agreeing with the proposals. However, the memorandum says that amendments have been made to the regulations concerning premises, and those covering the registration process, to reflect consultation responses. I would be grateful if the Minister could give details of the changes made as a result of the consultation.
My principal reason for raising this order today is to find out from the Minister exactly what government policy is, to look for reassurance that the Government will not attempt to reintroduce an LRO in the near future in order to reduce the amount of regulation on providers of services that are contracted with the local authority, and to seek some reassurance about the potential conflict of interest with regard to a private provider in contract with a local authority then placing a person who needs care into the institution or service that that private provider also runs. I beg to move.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for proposing and speaking to this Motion. Noble Lords will be painfully aware of the tragic cases recently in the news, so I do not think I need to name them. The noble Lord said that we do not have a very positive view of local authorities; in fact we have a completely open-minded view of them, but the facts are that there are currently 26 local authorities in government intervention following recent Ofsted inspections and, of the 50 local authorities inspected since June 2012, 17 were found to be inadequate, only four were found to be good, none was found to be outstanding and the remaining 29 were judged adequate, which will become “requires improvement” under the new Ofsted framework. That is an extremely disappointing and depressing picture and it shows that the status quo is just not good enough.
My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education recently made an important speech on how to improve support for children in need, and many have noted how keen he is to encourage local authorities to improve and spread best practice. An important part of this is to allow innovation. We are committed to giving local authorities the tools they need to make their own decisions on how best to deliver services. We wish to give them every freedom to delegate social care services if they so choose.
The first step towards this was the commencement of Part 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 2008, which was enacted by the previous Government. From 12 November, all local authorities have been free, if they wish to do so, to delegate children in care and care leaver services—only those services—to third parties. This follows the social work practice pilots which were put in place under the previous Government. Commencing the Act has enabled the pilots which are still in operation to continue if they wish to do so and given freedoms to other local authorities to delegate. It is a purely permissive provision. No local authorities will be forced to delegate functions under the CYPA, although we will not hesitate to intervene more directly where councils are failing vulnerable children, as in Doncaster. It is an important first step towards our aim of expanding this permissive approach to delegation.
The noble Lord is quite right that the Government’s original intention was not to make these regulations. He points out, as noted in the 16th report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, that we sought to make a legislative reform order, which would have removed the Ofsted registration requirement. However, whether or not these providers are registered has no bearing on inspection, and the way Ofsted will inspect, which is essentially following the child, is not affected by whether or not they are functions performed by the local authority or functions subcontracted by the local authority.
We are determined to give local authorities the opportunity to contract out to a range of providers. He mentioned some specific private providers—that would be possible. Providers could also include charities such as Barnado’s or NSPCC, or social work practices which have been spun out from the council, such as in Staffordshire or Bristol. As the noble Lord may know, we are great fans of the mutuals approach, which seems to be having a great effect.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his comprehensive response. I come back to the point he raised. My understanding is that these regulations are needed as a consequence of the fact that the draft LRO will not proceed. That is, in a sense, why I ask the question. Under the original proposals, the provider who receives a contract from the local authority would not have been inspected as an individual body but as part of the local authority inspection. Can the Minister say whether we can expect another LRO to be brought forward in the next year or two, or whether it is now settled policy that the provider, when it comes to inspections, will be inspected as a separate entity rather as an adjunct of the local authority? I am trying to elicit what future policy is likely to be—I think that I have grasped what current policy is as a result of this order and the fact that the LRO was not introduced. It is a question of whether this is a settled policy or whether the Government will come back in the next few months with further proposals.
Lord Nash
I can confirm that the Government have no plans to change the inspection arrangement, which would be through the local authority.
The noble Lord also raised the very important point of conflict. Before expanding on any of those paths, we would look at that very carefully. We feel that some valuable lessons were learnt from the pilots. The advantage of a pilot is that one learns and expands on good practice. Evidence was found of positive change for children, parents, carers and the workforce, including increased opportunities for direct work with children and young people. There are examples of very good quality support for carers and of small integrated teams working well to offer a personalised service, as well as a number of other examples. We feel that we should take this opportunity. We may continue to expand but we would consult on that. It is only fair that these children and young people have the opportunity of the whole range of experts who may be available to them, rather than just those who happen to be working for a particular local authority. I hope that the answers that I have given the noble Lord will reassure him that we have no plans, in a rush, to make any more dramatic changes in the short term.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister. Perhaps he would care to write to me about the changes that were made as a result of the consultation; I would be happy for him to write to me on that basis.
I am glad to have reassurance that the Government are not going to reopen the question of short-circuiting the regulatory function with regard to private providers. I am also glad that the Minister has agreed to look at conflict of interest. He said that there are valuable lessons to be learnt from the pilots, and I agree. The most valuable lesson to learn is that there is a great risk of breaking up public sector provision. As the pilot evaluation showed, there is a repository of knowledge and a wide range of expertise and resources.
I take the point that there is an issue of innovation—of course there is. That is why the previous Government took through the 2008 Act. However, innovation cannot be introduced at the expense of the solid foundation that is required from a wide range of public services, and I hope that the Minister will be prepared to consider that. That said, although this short debate has not been well attended, none the less it has been useful.
Local Authorities: Child Protection
Lord Nash Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, local authorities are responsible for judging what the level of need is locally and recruiting accordingly. Ofsted inspects children’s services and, if an authority is judged inadequate in its provision, we intervene. We should not judge the success of local authority children’s services solely by the size of their workforces. Management is also very important, as is the quality of social workers. However, since 2010, we have spent nearly £0.25 billion on social work training programmes and I am delighted to say that one of these, Frontline, has received more than 5,000 applications from top graduates in just a few weeks for its first 100 posts. The other, Step Up to Social Work, for career-changers with good first degrees, has already trained nearly 400 people and has a third cohort of 320 people in 76 local authorities beginning next year.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
I thank the Minister for his reply, but only last week the Association of Directors of Children’s Services said that child protection services in England were under greater pressure than ever. We also heard last week that, following the Francis report, the number of nurses in hospital wards is to be monitored. We have a ratio for the number of children to teachers in education, yet social workers up and down the country are left to deal with uncontrolled caseloads—when the next case comes in, someone has to take it.
With the number of children in care at the moment at a higher level than in the past 30 years and social workers suggesting that the level of need required to get support is greater, is it not time for the Government to do even more to intervene? The position is dangerous for children at risk and social workers alike, and responding simply by saying that social workers are committed and hard-working, and that more money is now being put in, is not good enough. Are the Government waiting for the next report of a child’s death, when no doubt it will not be the institution seen as responsible but some poor individual social worker? Is it not time that greater attention is paid at a national level to what is a crisis in our children’s services?
Lord Nash
The noble Baroness speaks with great experience in this area and anything she has to say on the subject we should all listen to very carefully. We all acknowledge that social workers have a very tough job and, of course, we hear only about the disasters—there are plenty of Daniel Pelkas or Hamzah Khans whom they save and whom we never hear about. It can be a question of volume of cases, but there is evidence that there is no direct correlation between failure and caseload; indeed, a number of local authorities have failed with relatively mild caseloads. It is a question of managing those caseloads and whether the more experienced social workers get the more difficult cases. The Troubled Families programme, for which we have just announced an investment of a further £200 million, is undoubtedly helping in this regard, as are innovative ways of working such as those seen in Hackney. It is also a question of local authorities recruiting better managers for these services.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
In the light of the increased numbers of children in care, what steps is my noble friend the Minister taking to ensure sufficient numbers of adoptive parents are recruited?
Lord Nash
My Lords, this matter is at the top of our list of priorities and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education feels extremely strongly about it, as does my colleague Edward Timpson. We have established the adoption leadership board to drive improvements in adoption recruitment. We have the adoption scorecard, and the adoption support fund for voluntary agencies. We have invested £150 million in the adoption reform grant, and are encouraging partnerships between local authorities and voluntary agencies. Through the Children and Families Bill we are also opening up access to the adoption register.
I can report some good news. Today we announced that in the past year we have recruited just over 4,000 new adopters, an increase of 34%. Nevertheless, the gap between children waiting to be adopted and the numbers of adopters is sadly still widening.
Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that child protection, such as that called for by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, requires not just numbers but intense social work casework with troubled and problem families? If there were sufficient people undertaking enough of that, would it help to address some of the horrific problems that we heard about this morning from the Deputy Children’s Commissioner of children being forced into sexual activity, often associated with violence, at an unacceptably young age?
Lord Nash
The matters to which the noble Baroness refers are of course shocking. As I say, we have innovated and started the Troubled Families programme. It seems to be working well and having quite substantial effect, which is why we are expanding it to 400,000 high-risk families until 2016.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, my noble friend the Minister will be aware of the child protection register, which is an important means of recording children at risk. There is also an opportunity to be proactive through use of this register. What plans do Her Majesty’s Government have for the child protection register in future?
Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)
My Lords, in the light of the shocking findings published today by the Children’s Commissioner—that the extensive use by boys of adult pornography is fuelling sexual exploitation and abuse of girls on an apparently massive scale—what action are the Government taking to ensure that social workers and teachers in particular are better equipped to protect young people from this new and escalating abuse taking place among them? In view of the widespread concern across the House about these serious issues, will the Minister host a meeting with the commissioner and interested Peers to discuss further her findings and recommendations?