Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Storey Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I have listened to this debate carefully, and it has been extremely sensitively presented, but it has raised a lot of questions. I shall certainly not talk about home schooling, on which I have no expertise whatever, but I am going to make a comment about procedure, of which I have a learnt a little over the years.

This is not the first group of amendments where I have sensed there is serious need for proper discussion between Committee and Report. It has alarmed me, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, mentioned, that the date being pencilled in for Report is the week beginning 10 July. We will probably not finish Committee stage until Monday 27 June. The minimum period between Committee and Report is 14 days. We would be abusing Standing Orders, or require a special resolution, to reduce it further.

I do not want to inflame the conversation, but this badly prepared Bill is crying out to have a longer period between Committee and Report. The only excuse that the Government can make—it is not an excuse but a genuine problem that Governments face—is that towards the end of a parliamentary Session there is urgent time pressure to apply the minimum gaps between Committee and Report. However, that is not the case here, right at the beginning of a Session. When the Commons have tons of Bills to consider and we have a very small number, there is no pressing requirement for the Government to apply the minimum gap.

I hope that it does not sound like a threat when I give notice that I think that there are many people in this House, on all sides, who feel that it is important for there to be a proper gap. There are mechanisms with any Chamber for majorities, if a majority exists, to ensure that this happens. I hope that it does not come to anything like that, but I urge the Government to think carefully about doing as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said, and allowing Report to take place in the autumn.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I echo the two phrases that the noble Lord, Lord Soley, used: we want to protect the vulnerable and protect the rights of children. There are some amazing home educators who do an amazing job, but there are also some amazing local authorities which do a very good job as well. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, praised local authorities, and I pay tribute to my former local authority. We had a boy with a phobia of being in school who had to be home educated. It was not because his single-parent mum, a nurse, wanted that, but because we just could not physically get him into school, so we home educated him. And guess what? Knowsley LA—I will name-check them—supported my school in doing that, in financial terms as well.

There are lots of examples of good local authorities, just as there are hundreds of thousands of examples of good home educators, but it should not be “us and them”. Disagreeing with whoever said it, I like the language used by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. This is an opportunity to reset the dial in terms of home education, to do the things that protect the vulnerable and protect the child, but to ensure that local authorities work with home educators. There are all sorts of ways in which we can do that.

Hopefully, if we do it that way, in a few years’ time, home educators will realise the value and importance of local authorities and how much they can bring to the table. Perhaps there are ways of doing it. I like the suggestion by the noble Lord, Lord Wei, of an ombudsperson. That might be a mechanism for ensuring that home educators do not feel threatened, because they would know that there is a way of dealing with it. As long as that does not lead to a massive increase in bureaucracy, maybe we should consider it.

Let us also remind ourselves of an important point which has not yet been made. Through formula funding, every child who goes to school is worth a sum of money; is it £6,400? Home educators do not get that money, so every child who is not taught at school but taught at home saves the Government money and those home educators have to pay for it. They give up not only their time but considerable money to home educate. Therefore, it seems sensible that we should show willing and give something back to home educators. Maybe one way would be by taking Amendment 130, tabled by my noble friend Lady Garden, and looking at supporting them when they want to take examinations.

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[Lord Wei (Con)]

I am sorry to interrupt again, but the point about Finland is important, because many of us in education policy—I helped to set up Teach First—have studied this material and I do not believe Finland is as exceptional as people make it out to be. I brought Professor Hattie over 10 years ago, who is a researcher who studied 15,000 randomised control studies on education—the noble Lord, Lord Knight, knows what I am talking about. He looked at 30 million children across thousands of studies and found three things that affected their education the most by a standard deviation. They were simple: how well does the teacher, or the parent in home education, know the child? How difficult is the work? If it is too hard or too easy, it makes a big difference. And when they mark their work or give feedback, how good is that feedback? Those three things can work in any system or country, whether private or public. All the things we argue about in politics—private/public, the size of the class and teacher pay—were shown to make a limited difference in the randomised studies. Incidentally, televisions and screens were very bad, and keeping kids back a year took things back by a standard deviation.

We could debate Finland for a long time, but I would argue that home education has many of the hallmarks that the Finnish enjoy. They are: an incredibly great relationship between the well-paid teacher and the child; and the time, because they are not being monitored all the time, to set work at an appropriate level; and to give great feedback.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I thank the noble Lord for that and would, at some point, like to talk to him about Finland. One of the other things we forget is that, just as a teacher in the classroom—I still miss teaching and miss my time in the classroom, because I got a great deal from that—home educators get a great deal from being with their children, learning with them and teaching them. We forget the importance that can have for the family home and for parents, whether they are a family or a single parent.

I end by going back to the point I was making: it is really important that we get this right. This is an opportunity to reset the dial, so that we achieve what we are all trying to get.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, I missed the opportunity to speak before the Front-Bench spokesperson got up. The point I want to make on home schooling is that it is as much about the rights of the child as it is about the rights of the parent. In the debates on Monday and today, I think that we have heard too much about the rights of the parents, but the rights of the child not to be abused and to get a decent education are important. They are not important; they are crucial. Those rights might be a counterpoint to those of the parents.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, asked a rhetorical question: is the state going to adjudicate? The answer is yes. Who else will adjudicate between the rights of the parent and the rights of the child? The education authority and the social services authority clearly have crucial roles there. Noble Lords need only cast their minds back to all the dreadful cases that have occurred where the school or social services have failed. This is not about home education. What is notable about many cases of child abuse is that those children were at school, although their absence from school too frequently was a hallmark that should have been picked up. The local education authority and the local authority more generally have an important role. They should not be demonised, in the way some speakers have suggested, as if the hallmarks were bureaucracy and interfering with parental rights.

I have two more points, the first of which is on the point of the noble Lord, Lord Wei, on data. I am afraid he made two conflicting points: first, that the data was available anyway and, secondly, that it would be hacked. If the data is available anyway, it can be hacked.

The other point is a genuine, not a rhetorical, question for the Minister. Noble Lords have referred to decisions made by the local authority. Do they not come under the aegis of the Local Government Ombudsman in any event? Why do we need a special ombudsman service? If the Government are trying to cut back on bureaucracy, they can use the tried and tested system we already have.

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[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 129. I put my name to this because I saw it and said, “Yes, this is right”. What level of support are you going to give to a certain group with special educational needs, particularly if they do not have the plan? Anyone who has looked at special educational needs knows that there is a great struggle to get the plan. We have a bureaucratic legal system in which whether you get it often depends on the lawyer you have employed. I know that this was not the original intention of the Bill, because I did it. Going through this process, there was supposed to be something called a graduated approach involved. Can we have some indication of what the Government feel the process will be in future? I assume that the new review of special educational needs will come up with something that is an improvement.

The law of unintended consequences, or the cock-up theory of history, means that we have a mess in special educational needs at the moment. I do not think anybody seriously disputes that, but I hope that in future we will not be so dependent on the plan, the statement mark 2, the gold star tattooed on the back of your neck or whichever way you identify special educational needs; you will not be as determined on the higher classification. Many people are getting the plan now because they are not getting any support, their education is deteriorating and they are suddenly finding themselves in the higher-needs group.

I did the Bill and the noble Baroness did not, so maybe this fault falls more on me than on her, but that is the state of affairs at the moment. Some indication that the Government will intervene before they get to this crucial point would be very reassuring, at least with regard to their thinking and lines of progression on this. It is not happening at the moment, and some assurance that it will happen in future, or at least that the Government plan for it to happen in future, would make life a little easier.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I was slightly diverted there. I am going to be very brief. I am diverted because—is Amendment 123 in this group? Yes, it is.

I will perhaps ask the Minister a question. Any teacher who is teaching children in a school has to have disclosure and barring clearance. Regarding the practice—and I do not complain about this—where some home educators use teachers either to teach their own children, not all the time but occasionally, and maybe a group of children, presumably those teachers have to also have safeguarding qualifications. What I am trying to say in this amendment is that there are cases—and this actually was raised with me by some home educators—where, for example, and I think this is very good practice, the children will meet other adults who are not qualified teachers but have particular expertise in a particular area to instruct or teach their children. What this amendment seeks is to ensure that those adults also have safeguarding clearance. I do not know what the current situation is on that.

I also want to respond to the point in Amendment 129, which my noble friend Lord Addington signed. This is the issue which I still struggle with. For those pupils who are permanently excluded from school—and in the vast majority of cases they are young people with special educational needs—if there is not a pupil referral unit on the site of the school, they get moved to an alternative provider. As we have discussed, I think in Written and Oral Questions, many local authorities, often because there is a shortage of places or because they have not got the money, look for the cheapest provider. I had a meeting yesterday with Ofsted, which told me—I was absolutely horrified by this—that one unregistered provider charges £50 a day plus taxi fares, including the £50, almost just to look after that child. That child could have special educational needs, so this cannot be allowed to go on. We need to take a firm hand. I am sort of having a second go at this, because I was chairing the session today at the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Education. The Minister on special educational needs spoke about this and I was very reassured, but hoped I could be reassured from our Minister on this issue as well. Other than that, that is all I want to say.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I do not want to repeat much of the good stuff that has been said, but I shall just mention our Amendment 128, which amends Clause 48 on sharing data between local authorities when a child moves. We are just pointing out that we must have regard to child protection and the safety of their parents when this is done. We are concerned that, where there are circumstances in which a parent is moving as a consequence of domestic violence or is a victim of or witness to crime, that they are protected. To be absolutely clear, we want to make sure that information can be shared, and that it can be shared safely and quickly.

On Amendment 129, about the support provided by local authorities to children with special needs or disabilities, we are very interested in supporting this. We take the points raised on time limits and school days and would be sympathetic to any reasonable amendments along these lines at Report.

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[Lord Storey (LD)]

I was not going to speak on this group, but I am now. My noble friend Lady Brinton is right: the tone is really important; we underlined that in previous debates.

I am very nervous that we said right at the beginning—I think there was agreement across the Committee—that this was about protecting the vulnerable and ensuring the rights of children. I guess that all noble Lords here have been bombarded with emails from home educators, and we must be careful that we do not believe everything that they tell us. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, was talking, I received an email giving a completely different view about how some home educators are suing one other over what they said; some are being told to be quiet. The noble Baroness mentioned a couple of organisations, but, for some people, there is more at stake here. We must remember—I repeat this—that the vast majority of home educators are doing a fantastic job; they want support and to work together. If we ramp up the fear that they will be threatened, they will feel threatened. We should try to ensure that they completely understand what we are trying to do to support them and their child.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, we are respectful of the right of parents to educate their children at home, but we cannot agree that this clause should not be part of the Bill. There are clearly important measures that we support quite strongly and want to see enacted. We support the principle of a register. However, there have been some helpful suggestions for improvement—particularly on new Sections 436C and 436D(2), inserted by Clause 48—and the Minister has committed to go away and consider those further.

On the issues around data we raised in relation to Amendment 128 in an earlier group, having thought about what the Minister said and the issues raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, and other noble Lords, I think it is worth some further consideration, because clearly there are risks and we would not want to rush into anything that would cause more problems. We hope that, with some improvements, this clause will be a helpful and necessary change that will safeguard children. It is not about forcing children back into school; it is about balance between freedom to decide and safeguarding.

On the comments that we have just heard from my noble friend, this Bill is not ready for Report. We do not think that the Government will have time to reconsider some of the issues that have been raised. It would seem appropriate, given everything that has been said, for us at least to wait for the regulatory review to be completed before we take this Bill to Report.

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[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has already expressed the worries from home educators and why she is opposing the clause standing part. My queries are more probing as to whether these clauses and the schedule should stand part.

On Clause 49 on school attendance orders, many Peers have already raised a surfeit of problems during the debate. Unlike the current system on the government website that I described, there is no sense of a ladder of penalties, of support between each stage before progressing on, or how local authorities will work as constructively as they can with parents and pupils before the process for school attendance orders kicks in. I know that the Minister said before the break that the guidance will talk about support. The problem is that, if that guidance is not in the Bill or referred to in the Bill, it might easily be missed and ignored.

On Clause 50 and failure to comply with the school attendance order, I want to come back to something the Minister said at the end of the debate on the first group. I am sorry, and I appreciate that the Minister is probably getting frustrated by this, but I have frustrations myself. She said in response to my question that prison terms were increasing from three months to 51 weeks because magistrates’ powers were now being increased from three months to 51 weeks. In fact, the current maximum is six months. It is going up to 51 weeks, but it is not currently three months. I was slightly bemused by that.

Usually, a maximum prison sentence is defined by the level of the offence, not the sentencing power of the court that is going to hear it. That is exactly why I quoted examples of crimes that would receive sentences of up to six months—threatening someone with a weapon or a second offence of possession of a gun. The example that I gave of a 12-month sentence—I appreciate that 51 weeks is not quite 12 months—was of very serious harassment and stalking, over an extended period, which involved a large team of police investigating over many months, not to mention the distress it caused to the 30 people who were the targets.

I am hearing from the Minister’s response that the drafters decided that, because magistrates will have the opportunity to sentence a convicted criminal to up to 51 weeks, that should be in the Bill. There are three worries and three groups of people involved in this. First and most importantly, what is the impact on children of a parent, especially if it is a single parent, going to prison? For three months, a temporary foster placement or possibly a short-term placement with kinship carers might be possible, but social services view a 51-week sentence very differently, even if the parent comes out after half the sentence has been served.

The second is the impact on prisons. We already know that our prisons are overcrowded. I have no idea of the numbers the Minister thinks are likely to be involved, but it might be useful to have an indication. The third is the impact on the parent who is themselves imprisoned. I ask the Minister if the Ministry of Justice has said that it is content with lines 18 to 20 in Clause 50 and this new, much-increased maximum sentence of 51 weeks.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, sort of said “all home educators” and I briefly want to say that that is not the case. Some home educators feel threatened by a number of people in their organisation, particularly a number of ex-home educators who are running and providing services. I am happy to show the noble Baroness the evidence for that privately.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I did not say “all”. I am well aware that there are others, but I did not say “all”.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

The noble Baroness said “home educators”. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, corrected by saying “some home educators”, but the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said “home educators”. When she said that, it indicated to me that she was talking about all home educators.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I am really sorry; the noble Lord is going to have to check this in Hansard. I have my copy and that is not what I said.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

Let us agree to differ until we see Hansard.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

No—the noble Lord is wrong.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

If I am wrong, I am wrong and will apologise, but I make the point quite strongly that a large number of home educators are getting on with home educating. Within the home education movement, there are home educators who are behaving in an unacceptable way. In the first debate we had—I do not think the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, was with us—we all agreed, or the feeling of the debate was, that we need to use language that brings home educators together and works with local authorities. That is really important.

I turn to the issue of school attendance, which, again, we discussed previously. Part of me asks that, if school attendance is important—of course it is; it is hugely important, and we want to make sure every child and young person is in school—what are the tools in our kit to ensure that it happens? It must be through encouragement, reward and so on. If that is the case, should we say that there should be no sanctions, and let us do it through all other means? If we want school attendance to thrive in our society, we should not be suggesting that parents be fined, taken to court or, as my noble friend Lady Brinton mentioned, criminalised. Should we have a serious discussion about doing away with all those sanctions? If so, we need to know the consequences. I prefer a carrot-and-stick approach, but the carrot should be the overriding way we encourage parents to ensure that their children are in school.

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My concern is that if the purpose of schools becomes too embroiled in the therapeutic, we will end up never educating any young people. That would be bad for their physical and mental health, and certainly for their educational development. That is what schools should be for, without being insensitive to some of the mental health challenges of the day.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

For the first time, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, in many of the things that she said. This is a first.

One thing I want to add is that the Covid lockdown certainly created real problems. However, you can go further back and say that the recession created a situation whereby local authorities had massive cuts to their budgets. For example, my local authority in Liverpool lost a third of its budget, and services such as CAMHS just went. The resource was not there.

We all understand that young children’s mental health is hugely important, but we have not really thought it through. I do not mean this as any criticism at all. Governments will say, “Yes, we’ve got this scheme going, we’re doing this and we’re doing that”, but I would much prefer it if we completely understood what provision we needed to provide in all our schools and then made sure that it was absolutely Rolls-Royce. I would rather we said that, in every single primary and secondary school in England and Wales, we will ensure that somebody referred to CAMHS is seen within 10 days. Currently, we cannot do that. On Monday, we took evidence from a group of parents regarding, I am sorry to say, alternative provision. A very young, single parent talked us through how she had waited never mind days but months to get referred to CAMHS. Let us do just one small thing at a time and be successful in it.

The second thing I want to say, which my noble friend Lady Brinton mentioned, is the importance of linking up with health. We are not very good at this. I remember that health was the real problem for the education, health and care plans in the Children and Families Act. Getting health to work with education was an absolute nightmare, so good luck on that one. I do not understand why that is the case.

I turn to Amendment 171Y. Noble Lords will be sorry to hear that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has had to catch a train back to Cardiff, so she asked me whether I would read out her speech—am I allowed to say that?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord can speak to the amendment, but he should not read out the noble Baroness’s speech, as she is not here.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I am learning all the time, after 10 years.

Some 80% of all learning is visual. A child who has undiagnosed, uncorrected vision problems faces academic disadvantages, particularly in literacy and numeracy. This affects their safety, social and cultural development, and physical agility, and disadvantages them for life. The current child screening programme recommended by the National Screening Committee is targeted at four to five year-olds starting school, but a recent pre-Covid study suggested that only around 50% of local authorities are fully compliant with its specifications, and there is no commissioned post-screening follow-up. There is no provision for vision screening in other age groups, despite the numbers needing visual correction increasing in secondary school years.

The prevalence of myopia—short-sightedness—among 10 to 16 year-olds has more than doubled in the past 50 years from 7.2% to 16.4% and continues to grow. During Covid, short-sightedness may have increased between 1.4 and three times, driven by more time indoors and increased screen time. Up to 15% of pupils need spectacles or need their spectacles reviewed. Although an NHS eye examination is free for under 16 year-olds, a child might not be fully aware of, or may be reluctant to admit to, vision problems that would be picked up by a simple universal screening programme. Parents, teachers and carers might also not realise that the child’s vision is deficient. Universal screening would ensure that advice is available to all.

Basic smartphone or laptop-enabled screening could take less than one minute per eye to carry out. It builds on screening carried out in developing countries by volunteers using an “E” shape. Here, training of volunteers or support staff takes only half a day. Reports from schools are positive. It simply alerts the parent or guardian that the child should have a free NHS eye check. The details of the standard can be agreed by the Secretaries of State for Education and Health, with appropriate input from professional bodies and education advisers.

The amendment would not interfere with the NHS’s special schools eye care service, which began to roll out in April 2021 to over 70 special schools. Four in five children with learning difficulties attend special schools and are 28% more likely to have a sight problem than other children; 23% need glasses. The NHS service in special schools is praised by schools and parents. It has already identified that half of children in special schools have a sight problem, and more than 4,000 children have already benefited from it. I hope the Minister can provide an assurance that the rollout of the NHS’s special schools eye care service will restart, to reach a further 130,000 children in the next few years.

The amendment empowers the Secretary of State to set the standards to provide simple screening for all schools to alert to possible vision problems, which, if unaddressed, threaten the academic potential and social development of the child. It aims to remove health inequalities and to enable all children to access the support they need.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, taking first Amendment 145, the Government recognise that some pupils, such as those with mental ill-health, may face greater barriers to attendance than their peers. To ensure that all pupils receive the support they need to remove barriers to attendance, the department has recently published new attendance guidance entitled Working Together to Improve School Attendance. Through this Bill, we intend to make this guidance statutory.

The new guidance sets a clear expectation on all schools to have an attendance policy that is applied in such a way that it considers the individual needs of pupils and supports pupils to overcome barriers to attendance. This includes supporting pupils with mental ill-health, so that they can attend school regularly. This is in addition to obligations under the Equality Act 2010 and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Ofsted will consider schools’ efforts to improve or sustain high attendance as part of its regular inspections, which includes efforts on their attendance policies.

On Amendment 170, it is right that schools should be accountable for their role in supporting their pupils’ mental health, but requiring Ofsted inspectors to assess pupils’ mental health and then to restrict inspection outcomes on that basis, as this amendment would do, would place responsibility for pupils’ mental health squarely on the shoulders of the individual school. I hope your Lordships would accept that that is not appropriate. Many factors can influence a pupil’s mental health and some of these, such as the culture of a school, are inside the school’s control, but many others are not.

As I think noble Lords have agreed on previous debates on mental health, it is not for schools to take on the role of providing specialist mental health support. It is important that we hold schools to account for the right things: delivering a high-quality curriculum that meets people’s needs; providing strong pastoral support; promoting a strong ethos and an inclusive culture; ensuring pupils are safe and feel safe; and engaging effectively with parents and local services. These elements play a key role in supporting pupils’ mental health and are an essential focus of Ofsted’s school inspections.

On Amendment 171M, the department already gathers and assesses a range of data on children and young people’s mental and physical health to improve our understanding and inform the support we provide children, young people and education settings. We do this through publishing an annual State of the Nation report. The department also undertakes and publishes pupil, parent and teacher omnibus surveys, which include a range of questions about the type and level of mental health support provided in schools.

What the debate has been trying to get at—and we have had this for several days in Committee—is thinking through and making sure the Government continue to be held to account for improving the provision of mental health services for young people, including in the support they get through schools. We have put quite a lot of thought and work into that, but there is definitely more to do.

To take the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, we have a policy of putting funding in place so that every school can have a mental health lead trained by 2025. That mental health lead can take a whole-school view of the school’s role in supporting pupils’ mental health. A lot of that might be about prevention, discussion in PSHE classes, the school’s ethos and other things. They will then be equipped with the training to make sure they develop the right approach for their school, but we know that they should not provide specialist mental health support. That is why we are rolling out mental health support teams to provide both early support within schools and that link to specialist support. That is funded by the NHS.

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I am aware of the deficiencies in the drafting of these amendments, but I would be grateful if the Minister considered their intent carefully. Of course, I will be happy to assist in any way I can. When passing the Bill, it is essential that we live up to the intent behind it and ensure that no one can inveigle it in any way or at any time.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I shall speak to my own Amendment 149, and also speak to Amendment 152 and 171C. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, and the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for the amendments and congratulate the Government for, for the first time, trying to sort this problem out. I do not want to repeat everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said, because she has painted the situation as it has existed, which is, frankly, totally unacceptable in our society.

I met with people from Ofsted yesterday—and I have had a long-running dialogue with Ofsted over the issue of unregistered schools. I asked them if we have sorted this issue out. They said, “Yes, Government have done the right things now, and this will make a real contribution”. They paused and said that, if we wanted to do something further, we could do, just to close that very small loophole in the issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, raised. I hope between Committee and Report, the Government might look at this again. It would be silly to have got so far, and not be able to deal with that last bit where they morph into private dwellings. I know the Minister is very keen that we deal with this, and so I hope she will think carefully about that.

I turn to unregistered schools. We talk a lot about young children and attendance at school, and a lot of time, quite rightly, we talk about special educational needs. If there is one group of young people who are constantly forgotten, and pushed from pillar to post, it is those young people who are excluded from school. They are often excluded from school for all the wrong reasons. They are often young people who have special educational needs. In fact, the vast majority of young people excluded from school have special needs. Just think what happens to them. If they are lucky, there is a pupil referral unit on the site, and that seems to me to be the right model. I know the Government are looking at expanding the number of pupil referral units. It seems right to me that they are on the school campus and they can draw from the expertise of the school, and the young people can, we hope, go back into mainstream schooling—if that is the right expression to use. I welcome that, but that is not going to deal with the problem, because the progress in providing that number of pupil referral units will take a long time.

So what happens? If they are lucky, these young people go to a registered provider, but there are not enough registered providers. There is also the issue, which we have talked about quite a lot in this Chamber, of unregistered providers. Some providers are genuine, but some just want to make money and they are almost babysitting those young people. It is absolutely awful: Ofsted told me of a number of providers that charge £50 a day, plus the taxi fare in. If you speak to Ofsted, they will tell you that. What do you get for £50? You get somebody childminding a really vulnerable young person who has special educational needs. Why does that happen? It is because we do not have the places in registered schools, and also because local authorities are strapped for cash. In the past, I have questioned why local authorities do that. I think they do it because they are strapped for cash, but also there is not the provision available. If most of the young people have special educational needs, that special educational needs money does not get to them. Certainly, the staff in these establishments do not have the qualifications, the training, the expertise or the interest in giving them the support and education these young people need.

I do not have all the answers to the current situation we are in. Clearly, the Government are looking at this issue and we need to keep it high on our agenda and keep coming back to it. Noble Lords can be sure that we on these Benches will do that.

There are a couple of practices that I do not like, and which can be closed down straightaway. There is the “managed move”, which used to happen with local authorities: a young person who was disruptive, rather than being permanently excluded from school, was moved to another school to be managed. Sometimes it worked at the other school, or then they would maybe be moved to another school, and if it did not work, they would go back to their original school. If that failed, they would be permanently excluded. Now they go on a dual register, so they are on the register of the school that they are excluded from and the school or alternative provision that they are going to but then, come the examinations, they are immediately taken off the host school, because they affect the overall results. We must examine that very carefully indeed.

The Minister knows the problem better than anybody. I just hope that we can come to some sensible moves on this.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I want to embellish a couple of points particularly pertinent to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and my noble friend Lady Meacher.

Some noble Lords may remember that a few years ago we created care orders in cases of FGM for the family court. What emerged from the research that I did into that was that it was the family units that were espousing FGM but, furthermore, they liked to see themselves as a society—and, in certain cases, belonged to a society—that initiated and believed in female genital mutilation. I make this point because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said, it is very easy for a small group of people to move from being a family unit to being accepted possibly as a “school” and thereby having the moral authority to take forward these practices and propagate them. I mention this as a point which we should bear in mind, given what my noble friend Lady Meacher and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, were warning us about.

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[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am obviously cautious about speaking on behalf of Ofsted, but we have worked closely with it in developing this legislation. My understanding is that it is content, but I would not want to speak on its behalf, as it is an independent body.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

That is a very fair answer but between Committee and Report, will the Minister just make sure that Ofsted is completely content and there are no further loopholes?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I would be delighted to do that.

I was talking about how institutions might be operating separately but effectively as one institution. The evidence Ofsted might use to establish that could relate to individuals acting in concert or other evidence of links between the activities, such as the same pupils being educated on different premises. Clause 63 is intended to enhance Ofsted’s powers of inspection in these circumstances. This could include the investigation of so-called “tapestry schools”, with which the noble Lord is rightly concerned. In brief, we believe that those loopholes are closed.

As I explained, we do not believe it appropriate to regulate part-time settings until we have considered the response to the call for evidence on unregistered alternative provision. However, as we have discussed at length, parents have a duty to ensure that their children who are of compulsory school age receive a suitable full-time education. As we know from our earlier debates, local authorities can check this, and where a parent cannot demonstrate that the settings a child attends provide a suitable education, a school attendance order could of course be issued. A parent who sends their child to a different setting that provides only a narrow religious education with no secular education each weekday is very unlikely to be ensuring that their child receives a suitable full-time education, which I think is the point the noble Lord is rightly concerned about. I would be delighted to meet with the noble Baroness and the noble Lord to work through some of these examples in detail to assure them that we are meeting the spirit of their amendments.

Amendment 154 from the noble Baronesses, Lady Chapman, would remove the charitable status of independent educational institutions. When the noble Baroness talked about a change of tone, I thought for a minute that we were going to go to a certain place, but I thank her for the very measured way in which she made her case.

Independent schools that are charities are already obliged to show public benefit, as the noble Baroness acknowledged. She questioned the strength of that, but we are concerned that we should avoid piecemeal reform of charity law, aimed at only one group of charities. The amendment risks creating pressure to extend the removal of charitable status to other sectors. All charities must exist for public benefit, but they are not required to serve the whole public. It is not clear why this principle should change for one group, namely independent schools, and not for other charities.

As my noble friend Lord Lexden explained better than I can and with much greater experience, 85% of independent school council members are already involved in cross-sector working. I have met with a number of schools that are in different partnerships. I think there is a real sense of mutual benefit for the private schools and state-funded schools working together. I know that the noble Baroness and the Government will not agree on this point, but we see independent schools as an asset in our school system. Our responsibility is to make sure they fulfil their charitable purpose and that we use that asset to maximum benefit.

Finally, on Amendment 171G, also from the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, schools are already under a statutory duty to act in accordance with the arrangements set out by local safeguarding partners. The noble Baroness will remember the recommendations made in Sir Alan Wood’s report following the review of multi-agency safeguarding arrangements. The Government legislated in the Children and Social Work Act 2017 to remove the requirement for local authorities to establish local safeguarding children’s boards. The 2004 Children Act was then amended by the 2017 Act to include provisions relating to those three safeguarding partners—the local authority, police and health—including a duty to make arrangements for them and any appropriate relevant agencies to work together to deliver their safeguarding functions. So there is some history here that we need to remember and take into consideration. The noble Baroness is absolutely right to point out that the independent review included a recommendation to make schools a statutory safeguarding partner. It is something that needs proper consideration and to which we will respond in our implementation strategy later this year.

I therefore ask my noble friend Lord Lucas to withdraw his Amendment 146A and I ask other noble Lords not to move the amendments in their names.