Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

If that was the case, let me apologise for saying that. They have got better at inclusion, and the noble Baroness is quite right to upbraid me on that.

However, it is really important that there is a power to direct schools to take pupils in order that they get an education. Secondly, we need a way of organising an admissions system which allows all children within the locality to have a viable education with a full, broad and balanced curriculum.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, some of the points the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, makes are important to consider. But let me remind the House that, over the years, Governments of various political persuasions have said how important it is that there is parental choice. They have encouraged parents to look at a school’s results, to read its prospectus, and to visit the school. Sometimes it is done by word of mouth. Sometimes those parents even look at how the children behave at the bus stop while they are waiting to go home of an evening.

I guarantee that nearly every single person sitting in this Chamber wanted the best possible school for their child. There were Members of different political parties who espoused strong views on this issue but, when it came to their own children, they often chose a school which was not in the local catchment area or was not the school the child was subscribed to go to. In some cases, they chose an independent or private school. The body politic has encouraged the notion of parental choice. We know that, as pupil numbers rise, this puts all sorts of pressures on schools and becomes very hard to deliver in all sorts of ways.

I am sorry to go on about Liverpool, but it is my home city and I learn lessons from it. I remember in the late 1960s and the 1970s, the then council decided to build two brand new state-of-the-art comprehensives: Paddington, in the inner city, and Netherley, in the north. They were built as 12-form entry schools. They had fantastic facilities: drama, you name it. The parents preferred the small secondary schools with three-form and four-form entry. Various Secretaries of State wrestled with this problem as the numbers dropped and dropped. I remember going to see Shirley Williams, then Secretary of State for Education, and saying, “Look, Paddington comprehensive is now only a two-form entry school. Why not make it into a tertiary college?” She said no, and I used to tease her about that decision. This is not an easy thing to do. We know that primary numbers are declining—the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, gave the figures. In Liverpool, we can already see that even so-called popular primary schools have spare capacity.

How do we sort this problem out? The answer is not to try to be the professor of admission numbers, chopping numbers off here and adding them there. Sadly, we have to do what we promised parents: we have to let them decide. The answer is not to say that we are going to make a particular school survive—as in the case of Paddington—by reducing the form entry, or, in some cases, closing a school so that children have to go to another particular school. That is not the answer at all.

I hate to say this—I never thought I would say this in my political career—but I think we have to let educational market forces take their course. If we believe in, and have promised parents, parental choice, we have to allow that. To say that we should cut the form entry—the PAN—of so-called popular schools is not the solution. Actually, there are academies that are not popular. Let us not think that all academy schools are going to gain from this. I know several academies—I will not name them—where numbers have dropped dramatically. Again, that is because of parental choice, and that is probably the right thing. So when it comes to this amendment, I will have to hold my nose but I think it is probably the right thing to do.

On Amendment 198, the noble Baroness, Lady Morris—as always—said what we on these Benches think. I say to my noble friend Lord Addington that I have never understood off-rolling. I can see children being taken off roll because their parents want to move or want to take them out of the school. I can see off-rolling when a pupil is permanently excluded from school. I can see off-rolling where a child has special educational needs which cannot be met at the school. But I cannot understand how schools were allowed to off-roll pupils for no particular reason at all. There are examples of where parents were given advice by schools which was not the right way to progress. I just think that off-rolling should not happen at all. In fact, I said to my noble friend Lord Addington, “Why do we need to review the practice? Isn’t the practice just not allowed, and we move on?” I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I just want to respond briefly to a couple of the remarks that were made about the amendments in my name. In relation to Amendment 198, I thank my noble friend Lord Nash for adding his name but also for making the case that we need more special schools and more alternative provision. I hope the Minister will have something to say on that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, said—I wrote it down—that we were giving schools reasons not to take a child. But the reason is the other children in the classroom. I was not trying to suggest that that is easy. I am just saying that there is one child who needs the right place, and we should do everything we can to make that happen, but there are 29 other children who also need to learn and to be able to study safely.

I turn to Amendment 199. The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, put it well when he said that it feels like we are punishing successful schools. That is the worry. Again, going back to the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, the new school that is improving is exactly the example that would be allowed to continue to grow. I think perhaps she misunderstood my remarks about that. In relation to a situation such as Camden, as she knows, first of all, my amendment would not apply. You would have to make an appropriate plan in exactly the way that she described, but we are talking about areas where you have schools performing at very different levels and it is the best schools that are forced to reduce their numbers. The noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, describes that as market forces gone to “ridiculous” levels. I just think it is about respecting parent choice, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said.

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[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 203 in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran. Free schools have played an important role in raising educational standards over the last 15 years, with their benefits felt most strongly in communities that have needed them the most. As I set out during our discussions in Committee, last summer’s exam results underline their impact: free schools outperformed other non-selective state schools at GCSE and A-level, pushing up standards, particularly in areas of significant deprivation and low educational achievement. Giving school leaders the autonomy to innovate, whether through a longer school day and more stretching curriculum or developing closer links with business and universities, clearly has a measurable impact on school outcomes.

This success continues: only last week, 62 students—over a quarter of the year group—at the London Academy of Excellence, one of the earliest free schools to open, learned they had secured Oxbridge offers, surpassing the success of many of the country’s leading independent schools. This outstanding achievement makes it even more regrettable that, in December, the Government chose not to go ahead with a new sixth-form free school in Middlesbrough, backed by Eton and Star Academies, which aimed to deliver similar outcomes for its students. It was one of 26 proposed mainstream free schools that were cancelled after a long delay, to the dismay of the teachers, parents and communities that had championed their plans.

It is not just one free school or trust making a huge difference: research from the NFER shows pupils attending secondary free schools get better grades at GCSE, have lower absence rates and are more likely to take A-levels and to go to university. Will the Government publish the quantitative thresholds that were used to judge community need, demographic demand and the impact on existing schools that lay behind the recent cancellation of each of the 28 mainstream free school projects, and will they publish the assessment scores for each cancelled project? This would be extremely helpful information and a transparent way for the groups that put a lot of effort into these projects, and the parents, who obviously may not have been privy to conversations with the DfE, to understand the reasons for the decisions.

Free schools have provided a route for new ideas, energy and educational models to join the state system. Indeed, the Government themselves have acknowledged that

“the free schools programme has been crucial to meeting demographic need and pioneering new models that can raise standards”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/12/25; col. 45WS.]

Yet Clause 58 will mean fewer chances to innovate and less opportunity for the best-performing academies to expand and replicate their models. It is disappointing that the Government, despite some of their words, seem unwilling in practice to recognise the contributions free schools have made, and indeed could continue to make, to improving our education system—an achievement in which we should all take pride.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I wonder if the Minister in her reply could tell us this? Presumably, some of these schools are not going ahead not just because of the demographics but because the birth rate is falling in that area and, going back to our previous discussion, it would be stupid to build new schools if we are seeing the birth rate decline.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I shall make the case that Clause 58 should not stand part of the Bill, as set out in my Amendment 203. I am bringing this back because, in Committee, the Minister gave what I think is the most cursory response that I received over the course of the Bill. She said:

“The current system allows local authorities to propose new schools only as a last resort or in very limited circumstances. Local authorities hold the statutory responsibility to secure sufficient school places in their area, and it is right that we give them greater ability to fulfil that duty effectively. These changes will enable consideration of any local offer that meets the needs of children and families”.—[Official Report, 16/9/25; col. 2114.]


I then wrote to the Minister to ask how often local authorities had been unable to meet these duties effectively. The reply stated:

“The department does not collect data on how many times local authorities run a process to open a new school, but as you know, some regions have many more academy trusts operating in them than others; and under the high-quality trust framework, some trusts are considered much stronger than others in terms of governance, finances and educational expertise”.


So, once again, the Government have no firm evidence that there is a problem that needs solving.

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[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, in my view, all the amendments in this group are important and worth seriously considering. I will deal first with Amendment 206. Of course, one person’s twaddle is most people’s reality.

The Curriculum and Assessment Review is an important step along the road to what the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, wants. It will actually strengthen the current citizenship curriculum. For the first time, it brings in citizenship at primary level as well. Now that we have the review, and the parts of it that have slightly altered civic and constitutional education, for example, I do not quite understand what the next stage is of populating that curriculum, particularly for citizenship and the points that the noble and right reverend Lord’s amendment makes, such as democracy, the rule of law, freedom, respect for every person and respect for the environment.

All that is important, but the most important thing, in my view, as well as having it on the curriculum, is the point that the noble Lord, Lord Norton, made. It is no good having a subject as important as citizenship unless you have quality teaching and staff who want to teach it, not just staff dragged in from the PE or the language department to do it. You need to have first-class materials to make that work.

On Amendment 208, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, I do not understand how a student in a school has relationship and sex education, yet a 16 year-old in a college does not. It just does not make sense. I am sure the Minister will be able to tell us that this should change, because it is hugely important. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, for tabling that amendment.

I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Sater and Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for their important amendment. In a sense, we have gone backwards, because we used to have an hour of sport and PE on the curriculum. It was one of the initiatives introduced by the Blair Government. For some reason, it got lost or diluted. I just do not understand why. When did it suddenly fall off the cliff edge, and who was waving the banner saying we should stop this? We still must have an hour of sport and PE on our school curriculum.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, for her amendments. I know some noble Lords will slightly wince at them but, with the exception of faith schools, what she is saying is happening in most of our secondary schools, and Ofsted is not reporting it. Most secondary schools that are non-faith schools are not carrying out a daily collective act of worship which is mainly Christian. It is just not happening. Maybe at some stage, whether we like it or not, we should face up to the reality of the situation.

My final question is to the Minister, on humanism. We have local SACREs, which decide what will be taught in schools in their locality. Could a SACRE minister say that humanism would be part of that religious education?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I have one substantive amendment in this group, Amendment 220, which is also signed by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, asked why the guidance needs to be statutory. I think the answer is that the issues associated with children who are questioning their gender at a young age overlaps significantly with the safeguarding responsibilities of a school and therefore should be on a statutory footing.

As we discussed in Committee, the consultation on the draft guidance for schools for children questioning their gender identity closed in May 2024, and we are now approaching the two-year anniversary of this. I must say that it is laughable that the Government think they will respond in a matter of weeks to a consultation about whether to prevent under-16s from accessing harmful and addictive social media, but it takes nearly two years and we have no response from government on the gender questioning guidance, which was in draft and had been consulted on. The Government repeatedly say they need time to get it right; I just wondered whether the Minister could give us an indication of how much time, and how much time they think they will need to get the social media issue right. It feels like, if this is two years, that might be 10 years. The Government really need to get moving to publish the guidance to safeguard our children in these schools from this very contested and harmful ideology.

I thank my noble friend Lady Sater and her cosignatories for the extremely constructive Amendment 243C, delivered with exactly the same amount of energy as our noble friend Lord Moynihan. We read in the national press about potential cuts to funding for sport in schools. I wonder whether the Minister can reassure the House that that is not the case. Sport is—I reluctantly admit, as the least athletic person in your Lordships’ House—extremely important. As we have heard, sport builds not just physical fitness but teamwork, mental resilience and an ability to meet the two imposters of triumph and disaster on the field with equanimity. I hope the Minister will give this amendment the consideration it deserves.

My noble friend Lady Morgan of Cotes made the case powerfully for bringing consistency to the provision of relationships and sex education and PSHE to pupils in FE colleges. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and I tussled over his amendment back in the Schools Bill in 2022, but he remains very persuasive on this subject. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

Finally, I expressed our concerns about the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Burt of Solihull, in Committee. I am afraid our position has not changed.