Vocational Education and Training
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Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, for initiating this important and timely debate. As we all know, the Queen’s Speech said that “all young people” will,
“have access to an excellent education, unlocking their full potential and preparing them for … work”.
The phrases “all young people” and “preparing them for work” will require a major shift in our schools and our education service if this is to happen.
Currently, about 50% of young people have the capacity to follow an academic curriculum, but the other 50% are caught in a system which is like a straitjacket for their career and vocational aspirations. In schools we have a narrow curriculum, and the introduction of the EBacc is wholly unsuitable for these students. Because of the EBacc, schools have jettisoned other subjects, so we have seen another year in which non-EBacc subjects have dropped further; this time by 11.1%. This of course feeds into our A-levels and a further decline in availability. Design and technology, for example, has reduced by 7.5%.
Can somebody explain this to me? As a country, we have a thriving creative industries sector, which generates 5.5% for the UK economy. There are 2 million jobs in the creative industries, accounting for one in 10 jobs across the UK. By the way, the sector employs 700,000 more people than financial services. However, year by year, as we see this sector grow, creative subjects—music and drama—in our schools are being dropped. One would think we would want to nurture and grow this successful sector by ensuring that young people who have the vocational aspirations to enter it have the opportunity to do so. It is not surprising that school leaders prioritise the EBacc subjects: the other sting in the tail is that 70% of a school’s league table score comes from the results in those subjects. Of course school leaders prioritise these subjects. No wonder Ofsted raised the issue of the narrowing of the school curriculum in a letter to the Public Accounts Committee last year. Its chief inspector said that there is:
“clear evidence of a decline in the quality of education in the narrowing of the curriculum in schools and an endemic pattern of prioritising data and performance results, ahead of the real substance of education”.
For many non-academic young students, a complete focus on end-of-year written examinations is wholly inappropriate. We surely want these students to blossom. Removing most coursework and non-exam assessment and just using end-of-course exams makes those exams extremely high stakes—which, by the way, is a contributing factor to poor mental health among students. Our school system is not vocational education friendly. When a student finishes at 16, schools try to encourage them to stay on in the sixth form—because each student is worth a pot of money—when, in many cases, a vocational course at a college would be more appropriate to their needs. As the House has already heard, the Baker amendment has at least slightly tilted the balance. However, I have heard alarming tales of how schools try to get round the encouragement of vocational courses. Maybe Ofsted needs to look at this.
For the first time in decades we are beginning to see a realisation that if we do not prepare all school students for the world of work, and if we are to provide the skills that our country needs, then the dial needs to be reset. Is it too hopeful to think that we are seeing the beginning, the dawning of a new tomorrow in vocational education? The Secretary of State for Education has talked about vocational education being his top priority and additional resources have gone into the sector. The Augar review set out a vision for England’s higher and further education that, if implemented, will rebalance spending on vocational and technical education. That report also described the disparity between the 50% of young people who do not go to university and those who do. The Augar review was welcomed. Perhaps, when he replies, the Minister will tell the House where we are up to on that and when it will be brought forward.
One of Mr Williamson’s predecessors used to cite other European countries and international tables to bring about changes to education. If we want to see vocational education flourish, we need look no further than Switzerland or Germany or France. I have Swiss relatives and my cousin has two sons who were not academic but have thrived in their education system. Switzerland holds vocational education in equal esteem to academic education. Despite its size, Switzerland is an economic powerhouse. It ranks first in the Global Innovation Index and third in the World Economic Forum’s human capital index. Switzerland’s economy is one of the most inclusive in the world. Switzerland’s vocational and technical education plays a crucial role in preparing young people for the world of work. Two-thirds of young people in Switzerland choose to go down the vocational route, typically at the age of 15 or 16, which involves signing a three or four-year apprenticeship contract. Under Switzerland’s dual system, apprentices typically spend three or four days learning on and off the job at a host company, for which they receive a salary, and one or two days in general education. Pedagogically, the aim is not just to build technical skills but to develop students’ capacities as active citizens.
We obviously cannot just import these ideas, yet there are policy lessons and principles that the UK would do well to consider. I hope that this debate will be the springboard for the renaissance of vocational education that we all hope for.
National School Breakfast Programme
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, as I said, any decision to renew the contract for this national school breakfast programme will be part of this year’s spending round, of which headline details were announced yesterday by the Chancellor. My officials are working closely with the contractor on ensuring that breakfast clubs are sustainable. We will announce plans in relation to this shortly. However, I want to ensure that we do not entrench existing suppliers. We must remain alert to other ideas and other methods of delivery.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, the Minister will be aware that where breakfast clubs operate it ensures that children’s attendance and punctuality improve, healthy food is eaten, attainment achievement is often improved and socialisation takes place. He will also be aware that 62% of teachers say that increasing numbers of children are coming to school undernourished and wanting food. When this decision on spending takes place, will he put those important issues into consideration so that this programme can not only continue but be extended?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
I completely agree with the noble Lord on the importance of a healthy breakfast for children—there is masses of evidence to support the benefits. It improves concentration and provides nutrition, which does not always happen at home. I agree with that. We are reviewing the future of the programme. We had our spending settlement letter and announcement from the Chancellor only yesterday. We want to ensure that we can extend this programme in an effective way. We have targeted it initially in the opportunity areas, which, as noble Lords will know, are some of the areas of greatest deprivation. We want to create a system that is sustainable into the long term.
Education Funding
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
I am perhaps more optimistic on rural schools than the right reverend Prelate. Coming from a rural background myself, I know the importance of these schools in communities beyond the simple provision of education. As he quite rightly said, some of the greatest increases in funding will go to these schools over the next two to three years. I am therefore very confident that it will be a huge boost to them.
Early years was not the subject of this announcement. It may be addressed as part of the spending review tomorrow, but it is not in the remit of this announcement.
I hear the right reverend Prelate’s concern on these retakes, but I am afraid I respectfully disagree with him; I think it is incredibly important that they get these base qualifications so that they can progress to their career, but I accept that we need to find better ways of educating. I am particularly interested in edtech, which might bring in ways of teaching that have previously eluded those pupils.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I also welcome the Statement. We are obviously delighted that extra resources are being made available, and I accept the figures that were given. I am concerned about two areas. The first is further education—we heard my noble friend Lady Garden speak eloquently on this subject. While there are extra resources, does the Minister expect that they will increase over the next few years? I have never quite understood—perhaps the Minister could explain this to me—why, if I am a chemistry teacher in an academy or a maintained secondary school, I get considerably more pay than if I am a chemistry teacher in a further education college. Why should this be the case? Secondly, if I am in a sixth form college which is part of an academy chain, there is a VAT exemption. If I am in a stand-alone sixth form college which is not part of an academy chain, the school has to pay VAT. Can that be fair?
My niche question is on behaviour. I was fascinated, interested and delighted to hear about these behaviour hubs and will watch this space with interest. We heard the Secretary of State say, whether it was in the Statement or separately, that he would back schools which permanently excluded pupils from school for bad behaviour. I have always said that teachers have a right to teach and pupils have a right to learn. Schools have to do everything possible to try to ensure that pupils with behavioural problems are supported within the school, but if we move to a system where there is a sort of free rein to exclude pupils, we will see all sorts of difficulties. If we move to that new ethos, will the Minister make available more resources for alternative education? If that is the case, will he ensure that the use of unregistered alternative providers no longer happens? We are seeing young people excluded from school and going into unregistered providers, many of which quite frankly do not deserve to be in education at all. The young people are not even checked in and checked out; they can often roam the streets and get involved in drug and gang culture. That cannot be the case, so what extra resources will there be for alternative education in this announcement?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
The noble Lord asks important questions. First, I will try to clarify the difference between FE and the school system, particularly the academy system. FE colleges have a different legal status and a degree of independence which does not relate to the school system. The colleges themselves take the decisions on pay, and one of the anomalies which I must admit I do not really understand is that they tend to prefer to pay all teachers exactly the same rate irrespective of their skills or the particular subjects they are teaching. One of the things that I want to do with this new funding is to find a way of challenging them to be a bit more flexible. As the noble Lord says, if you teach chemistry in an academy and earn X amount, why can you not earn a similar amount in an FE college? I want to get to the bottom of that, to be honest.
Again, VAT status is a quirk of the different legal status of these entities. For example, FE colleges as independent units have the right to borrow, which does not exist in the school system; however, as almost a quid pro quo, they do not have the right to recover VAT. We have offered for sixth form colleges to convert to academisation; quite a lot of them—over half, I think—have done so. Those that have not have reasons for choosing not to, but it is an option that they can consider.
On behaviour, I have just found a note. To answer my noble friend Lord Lexden’s earlier question, the first hubs will open in September next year. In relation to exclusions, I assure the noble Lord and everyone here that we are not for a second suggesting a free-for-all on permanent exclusions. Indeed, in the new Ofsted framework, there will be much more scrutiny of exclusion policies, particularly permanent ones, by schools. So there is no suggestion that we encourage exclusion, but I believe strongly that it is an important tool in the locker of a school where very difficult children disrupt the education of others.
To be clear, an unregistered school is an illegal school. Ofsted has an ongoing programme to track these schools down; when they are located, we close them and take legal action against the proprietors where that is the appropriate course.
Lord Storey
I am pleased with the Minister’s answer. In terms of alternative provision, the problem with unregistered schools is that local authorities themselves send the excluded pupils to those institutions. The parents are not deciding that they should go to a particular religious type of unregistered school; local authorities are saying, “Oh, we’ve got this boy or girl, this student, who has been excluded from school. We are going to put them in alternative provision”. They then go for the cheapest option, which is often an unregistered school, with all the problems that that entails. I have asked before whether we can write to local authorities saying that this is not acceptable because they are operating illegally.
Lord Agnew of Oulton
The noble Lord is quite right. Sometimes, a local authority may use part-time provision that may be legal but, often, these morph into full-time institutions without the local authority realising. We are in constant dialogue with local authorities on this issue, reminding them that sending a child to an unregistered school on a full-time basis is not on. We are carrying out a consultation of the process of getting schools to take ownership of a pupil once they have excluded them; in other words—this is not agreed yet, but we are consulting on these ideas at the moment—they would be responsible for the ultimate educational results of the child that they had excluded, so they would have to consider the issue much more carefully. We are opening more free school PRUs and APs so that more provision is available. I accept that this is a difficult area, but we are putting a lot of emphasis on it.
Relationship Education Lessons in Schools
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
The noble Lord asks a number of questions. The first was on how many schools we envisage will start teaching this voluntarily this autumn. We are up to about 1,500 schools having registered as early adopters; when I took the regulations through in April we had about 1,000, so the number has gone up quite dramatically even in a couple of months. It has spread among primary schools as well.
On the teaching of sex education, the noble Lord is entirely right. At primary level, parents are able to withdraw their children from specific sex education. That is not relationship education and it is important to discern the difference, but they have that right. As I mentioned when we debated the regulations in April, they have the right to withdraw their child up to the age of 16 minus three terms, for the reasons we discussed at that time.
The Government give their unequivocal support to teachers and absolutely condemn the aggressive behaviour. It is worth pointing out that a lot of this behaviour is nothing less than misogynism on the part of some of these protesters, and that they are protesting against the teaching going on at the moment, not the teaching that will come in under the new regulations in September 2020.
The noble Lord’s last question was about whether teaching under the Equality Act is voluntary. I can confirm that that is absolutely not the case. The original provisions of that Act insisted that teaching advances equality of opportunity and fosters,
“good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic”.
Those relevant characteristics include sex, race, disability, religion or belief, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, or pregnancy and maternity.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, we welcome the Statement. I also welcome the Minister’s robust response. It is important that teachers and head teachers are supported. We have agreed the way forward on relationships and sex education; that must not be diluted in any way at all.
I have been concerned on two levels. First, seeing that particular head teacher face a very difficult situation, I am not sure whether at that moment there was the proper support for that person. I also hear of a number of cases where governing bodies have not been supportive of head teachers, particularly the chairs of governing bodies. What advice might the Minister give those schools where the governing body or its chair is not supporting the head teacher? Finally, children must be taught the skills that will allow them to navigate the modern world as adults. Will he ensure that in addition to SRE lessons, skills such as first aid and financial literacy are included in the curriculum?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
The noble Lord made several points. If the school he referred to, where he feels the Government’s response has been too slow, is Parkfield School, I can reassure him that we have been actively involved behind the scenes and in the school. The regional schools commissioner in Birmingham has been to that school weekly, and often daily. I think I am correct in saying that a mediator was hired to try to bring about consensus between parents and the school. A lot has gone on. Our view has been that publicity for these disputes is simply oxygen for the bigots who want to promote their own position. While we may not have been seen to be publicly active, we have been active behind the scenes.
On the important question on governing body support, it is a requirement under the new regulations that a school publishes its policy on RSE on its website. To get to that position, the governing body will need to have supported it.
On the broader question of navigating the modern world, that is why these RSE regulations are so important. It is nearly 20 years since they were last properly updated—before social media or smartphones existed. All the issues they bring to children are being addressed. I will write to the noble Lord to confirm whether the two subjects he raised are included.
Multi-academy Trusts
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Lord Storey
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the financial arrangements and auditing of multi-academy trusts.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)
My Lords, the financial arrangements and auditing of academies is based on a clear framework and effective oversight, with robust intervention when needed. Trusts must comply with the Academies Financial Handbook, publish audited accounts and have independent internal scrutiny. In November 2018, the academies sector annual report and accounts showed that the vast majority of trusts are compliant with financial requirements; 98% of accounts were unqualified by their auditors and 95% had no regulatory issues.
Lord Storey (LD)
I wonder how robust these procedures are. The Minister may recall that, a few months ago, the newspaper headlines were saying that an academy leader had established a love nest in his office and had spent £100,000, I think, on various gifts and pleasures. This went on for a number of years but was not picked up by any audit or inspection—it was a whistleblower who shone a light on what was happening. The Minister will also be aware of the large number of transactions by chief executives of academies to companies that they own or are owned by family members. For example, in 2016 £120 million was spent on contracts with companies owned by chief executives or their family members. Surely, we need systems that stop this happening, because this is money that should be spent on schools and their pupils.
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, I am not familiar with the love-nest situation, but I assure the noble Lord that scrutiny of the sector is robust. From 1 April this year, we brought in a requirement that any related-party transaction in excess of £20,000 had to have pre-clearance with the ESFA, and all other RPTs needed to be disclosed. It is frustrating that I am often attacked about governance in the academies sector while there are also a lot of transgressions in the local authority sector. While researching this Question today, I discovered the 2009 case of a so-called super-head in a local authority school, who was knighted by the Labour Government, was then charged with false accounting and has recently lost his knighthood, been convicted and must repay some £1.5 million.
Education: Industrial Strategy
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
The noble Baroness is right. The number of starts for the first quarter of 2018-19 is some 76,000, compared with 41,000 this time last year. We know that the quality of the new apprenticeships is of a much higher order than under the old system, and this shows that employers are getting behind the scheme.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, the creative industries are an important part of the industrial strategy. They are worth £101 billion per year to the British economy and grow at double our overall rate of economic growth. The difficulty is finding people to go into the creative industries. We are seeing, as we heard in the first Oral Question, that the number of students following creative subjects is declining in our schools. How can we ensure that we have the young people to go into these important creative industries?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, for that to happen, we need to make sure that we have apprenticeship standards for the creative industries. A great deal of work is going on there and the number of apprenticeships in creative subjects is increasing as we speak.
Education: Music A-level
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, it is of course correct to say that A-level entries in music have declined in recent years. However, we want all students to have the opportunity to study arts subjects at A-level if they wish to, whatever their background and wherever they live. It is up to individual schools and colleges to decide which A-level courses to offer; they may wish to work together with other schools and colleges to maximise choice. I also point out to my noble friend that there are other routes into music. For example, on Friday evening I was in Norwich Cathedral with the choir; in the organ loft they are teaching children to sing in English, German, Italian and even Russian. All of this can lay the foundations for a future career in music.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, the Minister will be aware, because he kindly wrote a reply to a written request, that over the past five years the number of pupils doing GCSE music has declined, the number of pupils doing A-level music has declined, the number of students going to university to do a music degree has declined, and the number of music teachers has declined. There is one beacon of success in the independent sector, where music still flourishes. Does the Minister not think that the 98% of pupils in state schools should have the same opportunities as those in the independent sector? Does he not think that it is time to have a proper strategy to make sure that music is rescued in our schools so that it can flourish?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, I accept that there have been declines in the area that the noble Lord pointed out. However, as I mentioned in my earlier reply, music can be taught in various different ways, and the number of hours spent on music education have remained pretty stable over the last nine years.
Children’s Homes etc. Inspection Fees, Childcare Fees, Adoption and Children Act Register (Amendment) Regulations 2019
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The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, I express my thanks to my noble friend for making this important debate possible. When the Minister responds, I would be very grateful if he could be as explicit as possible in assuring the House that no vulnerable child will have been disadvantaged by the change in policy that my noble friend has enunciated.
We and successive Governments have been very concerned about black, Asian and minority ethnic children, sibling groups and children with special education needs being left behind in the adoption process. To successive Governments’ credit, much progress has been made. Obviously, we are all very concerned that this change in policy is not a step backwards.
My noble friend has talked about the imperative to think about the needs of our children and the importance of their future happiness, but we must also as a society think about the cost to society of failing to intervene early and effectively. I visited a residential school for children with severe trauma on Friday. They told me that it can cost a local authority £1 million to place a child in a residential setting. It is costing local authorities huge amounts of money to intervene very late in troubled children’s lives. I pay tribute to what the Government have been doing, but I would really appreciate it if the Minister could make it absolutely clear that there is no disadvantage to the vulnerable children successive Governments have been trying to serve in this change in policy. I look forward to his response.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, my father and his brother were adopted into a loving family, and it changed his and his brother’s lives for good, so in a sense I have a vested interest in this important debate. I welcome the opportunity to speak in support of the Motion to Regret and thank the noble Lord, Lord Russell, for moving it.
I am deeply troubled that the Government’s behaviour has made such a debate necessary. I remember that, during the coalition Government, the then Prime Minister David Cameron rightly spoke of the importance of adoption and the need to ensure that children are matched with the right family and that the process is not dragged into bureaucracy of our making.
I paid careful attention to what the Government said in the Explanatory Memorandum about the revocation of the regulations referring to the adoption register, but there is no explanation, merely a statement of what the regulations state, ending with the following sentence:
“These revocations are necessary as the Secretary of State will not be operating or maintaining an Adoption Register from 1 April 2019”.
That is the sum total of the Government’s justification for simply allowing the adoption register to lapse. They have abandoned—or let lapse—plan A without any plan B.
In the letter to the scrutiny committee, the Children’s Minister says:
“I would like to reassure the Committee that this decision was made following careful scrutiny of all the evidence and I am confident that it will not have a negative impact on children and adopters”.
However, there is no information about what “all the evidence” comprised, nor details of the “careful scrutiny” that the Government claim to have undertaken. It is difficult to challenge the Government’s decision, as the Explanatory Memorandum offers no explanation. The Government cannot claim that there will be no “negative impact”—nor, indeed, any other impact—as they have not undertaken an impact assessment of any sort. The adoption register has disappeared without trace and without any transition arrangements being put in place. Worse than that, there is no suggestion as to what the Government intend to do to replace the register.
Later in his letter, the Minister admits:
“It is my understanding that the charity Coram, the former contractor for the Adoption Register, also intends to set up a matching service. They have communicated that to all local authorities, but I do not know when this service is expected to launch … I do not know how many local authorities choose to subscribe to additional services … I am unable to say what the distribution of local authorities across that range is, except to say that around £5,000 is the average. The amount paid is a matter between individual local authorities and Link Maker”.
The Minister goes on to justify the decision by saying:
“The Adoption Register ceased operating on 31 March 2019, and, since then, I have not received feedback from any adoption agency to suggest they are struggling without it”.
I hope that the Government do not think that the lack of feedback within just seven weeks is evidence that there is no problem.
Some people may think that the regulations are just tidying up some unnecessary bureaucracy or getting rid of another length of red tape, but they would be wrong. It is always easier to talk in the abstract, but this is a shameful—perhaps dreadful—example of the Government pulling out of or back from doing something positive. The Government are washing their hands of hundreds of the most vulnerable children.
According to Coram—it ran the adoption register, as we heard—the hard evidence is that 277 of the most difficult-to-place children were found families in the single year up to 31 March 2019. Although I say “most difficult”, the difficulties are not of the children’s own making but their often complex needs mean that they need adoptive parents with the skill, determination and commitment to provide them with a proper home.
The alternative for many of these children is life in an institution of one sort or another—a life that could be transformed by finding the one set of parents in England that could meet their need for a family life, as happened for my father. In her letter to the scrutiny committee, the chief executive of Coram stated:
“The Adoption Register was the only registered, child-focussed pro-active independent service helping agencies to find adoptive homes for children when all other approaches have been tried. It was a vital extra chance for those who wait the longest - those with additional needs, developmental uncertainty, BAME or in sibling groups”.
In its excellent briefing, Coram said:
“Without the Register, agencies may pay to use an alternative product, with the total cost to the sector likely to exceed the value of the Register contract”.
The commercial alternative, depending on the size of the local authorities and the looked-after children population, is typically between £5,000 and £10,000 per local authority. We are all well aware of the dire situation of children’s services and the difficulty in them finding even this relatively small sum. To cover its annual costs, the register needed to help to find adoptive families for just two children who would otherwise have remained in care for the rest of their childhood—a target that has been achieved every year since it was created.
For some children, the adoption register was their last chance. For every child not adopted because the Government have abandoned the register, and for every adoptive parent not matched with an adopted son or daughter, the impact is incalculable. This Government should be ashamed of allowing the register just to disappear.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, due to the announcement in Part 4 to close the national adoption register for England, these regulations are subject to a regret Motion in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, on which I congratulate him. I should also say that we do not believe that the negative procedure is appropriate in this case. It should be used for routine matters; by no stretch of the imagination is the sudden closure of the national adoption register—with no proper replacement identified, far less in place—a routine matter. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, the Explanatory Memorandum provides no rationale for it.
When a local authority considers placing a child for adoption, it looks for a match with a suitable family, which is often found locally. For some children, it needs to look further afield to families “recruited” by another adoption agency. To facilitate this process, the national adoption register was introduced in 2002. The database included details of children who had been approved for adoption but were waiting to be matched, approved prospective adopters and prescribed information about children for whom the adoption agency was considering adoption. It was used by social workers and approved prospective adopters to seek matches until it was closed down in March this year under these regulations.
Like the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, we find too many unanswered questions associated with the closure of the register. The committee drew the regulations to the special attention of the House on the grounds that the explanatory material laid in support provides insufficient information to gain a clear understanding about the instrument’s policy objective and intended implementation. It also expressed concern that there was no public consultation on the closure.
Such was its concern that it held an oral evidence session with the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families. The committee remain dissatisfied with Mr Zahawi’s responses to its probing about the potential implications of the Department for Education ceasing provision of the register before a replacement system is ready, particularly regarding the impact on hard-to-place children. At that session, the Minister stated repeatedly that his aim was to end what he called the “silo mentality”, saying that he wanted to bring fostering and adoption into one place. That is a worthy aim, but, unfortunately, he offered no suggestion as to how that might be achieved and said nothing at all about when or even if a new type of national register would be established involving children available either for adoption or fostering or both. How the needs of children would be separated if such a register were ever to be established was not left hanging because it was not even mentioned.
Sure Start
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, in answer to the noble Lord’s question about the exact number of children’s centres, as at the current state, there are 2,353 main children’s centres and a further 700 linked sites open to families and children. The important part of this issue is that all noble Lords share our concern to help improve the chances of disadvantaged children in our society. We have taken a slightly different approach through the introduction of the offers for two year-olds, three year-olds and four year-olds, where we are providing free childcare for hundreds of thousands of young children.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for repeating the Statement and, like him, I welcome the report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The report indeed shows that children in disadvantaged areas benefit most from Sure Start centres. The IFS report is not about childcare, nor indeed about children’s centres; it is about Sure Start centres and is entitled, The Health Effects of Sure Start.
The unique feature of Sure Start centres is that they offer a range of services to parents and children. The evidence is clear that Sure Start centres contribute significantly to improving the life chances of families in the most deprived communities—for example, as we have heard, by reducing the hospitalisation of young children by more than 5,000 a year and saving millions to the NHS. Sure Start centres also offer mental health support to young parents.
Why are the Government only now asking the Early Intervention Foundation to look at children’s centres and other models of delivery? We already know that more than 1,000 centres have been closed and that Sure Start centres are of greatest support to children in deprived areas. So why are the Government kicking the evidence-collection can down the road? The Minister must know that cuts to local authority budgets have inevitably impacted disproportionately on the most disadvantaged young children.
I have two questions for the Minister. Will the Government take a holistic view of the needs of families, and will they ensure that the early years pupil premium, frozen since its introduction five years ago, is increased in line with the pupil premium?
Schools: Free School Meals
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, a great deal of work has gone on over the past few years to remove any chance of stigma, principally through the cashless facilities that schools now operate in their canteens so that a child in receipt of free school meals is indistinguishable from another child when they are being served with food. I would be very surprised to hear of the discrimination that the noble Baroness referred to.
Lord Storey (LD)
The Minister rightly talks about healthy eating, nutritious meals and the problem of childhood obesity, but the reality in schools is rather different. First, at key stage 2 the majority of children bring packed lunches, which are often not at all healthy. Secondly, the amount of time that children have for their lunch is being cut back so they literally rush in, eat it and rush out again. Thirdly, a cafeteria approach means that, sadly, young people choose food that is not at all healthy. I can remember when you would have what were called family meals; children would sit down at a table and serve each other, there would be conversation and they would have time to eat. Is it not time to look at what is happening in our schools at lunchtime and establish some guidelines about good practice?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, compliance with school food standards is mandatory for all maintained schools and has been part of funding agreements for academies and free schools since 2014. We have provided this legislative framework, and we are providing free school meals for a huge number of pupils. As the noble Lord will know, we introduced free school meals for infants, which are now feeding some 1.5 million pupils a year.