Child Hunger in Schools

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Lord True) (Con)]

If I may, I will point out that we have heard only once from the Liberal Democrat Benches; others have been heard twice.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, of course no child should go starving. Would the Minister not consider extending the coalition’s policy of giving free school meals to all key stage 1 children to key stage 2, and at secondary school—key stage 3—ensure that every pupil whose parents are on universal credit gets a free school meal?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think I have tried to answer that question in a couple of ways. It comes down to: should the Government be funding a number of separate things to support parents or should the Government be putting money in the hands of parents so that they can make the choices that are right for their families? This Government believe in the latter.

Social Workers (Amendment and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2022

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jones (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her introduction to the regulations, and the department for the helpful Explanatory Memorandum, notwithstanding that for the uninitiated the notes are at times unnecessarily dense.

Paragraph 2.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum talks about Social Work England. Is it appointed by Ministers? How many are on the board? Who is the chair? I presume that members obtain some payment. What is the remuneration of the chair?

Concerning paragraph 7.3, will the Minister elaborate on the Disclosure and Barring Service and the reference to “local policing bodies”? What is the extent of the interface with the police? The same might be asked about NHS trusts. The Minister might admit that Regulation 7 is somewhat complicated. How often does barring take place? Are there figures for that? With reference to paragraph 7.4, are there figures for how many people have been struck off, say, over the last three years? At paragraph 7.5, the Explanatory Memorandum mentions registration and removal from the register. Can the Minister say how many were removed last year?

I will conclude, as time is of the essence, but we should instance the hard work and professionalism of social workers—certainly those whom I know of. Social workers are hugely important to all of us, particularly to the lives of our children. It must be very difficult for professionals to negotiate the legislative thickets and potential booby traps amid great social change, political correctness and, if I may say, wokery. Surely we do need the social worker.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, we welcome this SI. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Jones, that it is nice to have a policy background that is concise, well written and easily understandable to those who are not particularly knowledgeable in all social service matters. I also preface my remarks by welcoming and highlighting the incredible work and professionalism of social workers in our country, as he rightly said.

As the Minister rightly said, it is important that the public always have confidence in public workers, whether teachers, police officers or indeed social workers. This SI goes some way to strengthen and enhance their professionalism. It is right and proper that public workers can be removed from their role where they do something that is not acceptable. I like the notion of a voluntary opportunity to take that action but, of course, there will be occasions where a voluntary action is not appropriate and a harsher response is needed.

I do not quite understand the DBS in terms of social workers, so perhaps the Minister could elaborate. I understand that all social workers must have DBS clearance; my only question is how often that is renewed. Is it the same length of time as for teachers?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

Similarly to the previous speakers, we broadly support these measures. The noble Lord, Lord Jones, has gone in on some very fine points of detail. I want to deal with a bit more of the broader context and refer to the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, which called for a total reset of children’s social services. Half of local authority children’s services departments were rated either “inadequate” or “requiring improvement” by Ofsted in their last report. Can the Minister say anything about how the Government are planning to tackle this? That is a completely unsustainable situation.

We note that these changes are also supported by Social Work England and almost all the consultation respondents. However, as the Minister will know, important concerns were raised during the consultation about the impact that these measures might have on social workers as individuals, particularly the plans to allow the regulator to publish details of orders before an appeal has expired. While we absolutely support strengthening accountability and the measures in place, it is very important that whatever we do has the confidence of practitioners and their employers. It would be helpful if the Minister could say a little about that.

Perhaps I might press the Minister on the wider crisis in children’s social care. The MacAlister review sets out starkly the pressures and challenges facing children’s social care and makes a compelling case for change. We have not had a formal response to the review yet and we are very keen to get one.

On DBS, my understanding is that if something happens that may result in a voluntary withdrawal from the register, that information would be flagged or logged with the Disclosure and Barring Service, so that should that individual wish to go on and work with children in another context or with vulnerable adults, that information is able to be taken into account by a future employer. Clearly, the current situation is not working as it should, either for social workers or the children they are supporting.

We are content to support these measures today but, as the Minister will know by now, we will continue to press her on the Government’s plans to reform children’s social services with some urgency.

Kinship Care

Lord Storey Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I agree that it is cost effective, but I know that the noble Lord agrees that it is also really important because of the stability it offers children. It substantially outperforms other forms of care in educational and employment outcomes.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, noble Lords can go on to the charity Kinship’s website and look at each parliamentary constituency to see how many children are in care and how many are in kinship arrangements. In Liverpool Wavertree, there are 601 children in kinship care and 330 in local authority care. Does the Minister not think we need to ensure that all those children have the possibility of kinship care? One way to do that is to make sure that financial and other support is available for them; it should not be left to discretionary arrangements by local authorities that may or may not pay. Will the Minister and the Government give real consideration to making sure there is that support for these parents and relatives?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

At the risk of sounding like a cracked record, the Government are considering all the review’s recommendations. More broadly on the noble Lord’s point, the variability in the use of kinship care across different local authorities is also very striking. For some local authorities it is as low as 2%; for others it is over a quarter.

Times Education Commission Report

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I sometimes wish I had the confidence and ability just to push aside my prepared words and respond to some of the comments that have been made. For example, the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, rightly talks about the continuing growth in university places, but he knows that that is driven by financial reasons in the main. There are more and more overseas students and universities—in London, for example—are setting up campuses that do not even have a library but pile the students in to get the money. They do not even give disadvantaged students access to IT or a laptop.

We heard a number of noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Baker, plead with the Government to see sense, but the sad thing is that Governments do not do that. They set out their stall and live or die by it. They might change at the margin and they might firefight, but change comes about when new Governments come into power having listened to the points made over time.

The Times Education Commission report, Bringing Out the Best, is not driven by dogma or idealism. It is not driven by short-term fixes or popular political slogans. It looks at education from preschool to post school and from academic to vocational education; it looks at the needs of all our children. The report brings a well consulted, researched and coherent plan for ambitious education reform. Its conclusions are realistic and achievable, and the financial implications credible and well thought through.

Your Lordships have raised a number of common themes time after time, and I shall add my thoughts to the wise words of my fellow Members, but I first thank the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for securing this debate. He is a tireless champion of the independent sector and independent schools. He may remember that a few months ago, I congratulated him on an intervention he made on behalf of the independent sector but, at the same time, I wished for his wisdom for the maintained sector. In securing this debate, he has given that—and in spades.

As the report shows, Covid has had a devastating effect on our children and young people, especially those from poorer backgrounds, who have suffered most. The learning gap has not just widened but become a huge chasm, and the report graphically spells out this and the actions we need to take.

The report also sees it as an opportunity to bring about fundamental change. Tony Blair famously said that it is about “Education, education, education”. I would add that it is about “Teachers, teachers, teachers”. Michael Gove, during his tenure as Secretary of State for Education, always used Finland as an exemplar. What he did not say was that Finnish teachers must have a master’s degree. Finnish teachers are well trained, with continuous professional development. I want the same for our teaching profession: to be the best in the world, with teachers well supported, highly trained, well respected and, of course, well paid.

Teachers should be given greater mental health resources to prevent burnout and the shocking resulting plummet in teacher retention. As the report says:

“The status of the teaching profession in this country should be raised and the job made more intellectually engaging.”


I also very much support career paths for teaching assistants, who are the unrecognised gems in our schools. I have doubts about more routes to a teaching degree. Training a teacher cannot be a quick fix; it needs time, resources and good practice. It is alarming that, in the rush to plug teacher shortages, we look at training them very quickly. Primary teachers, for example, need to be taught child development. The notion that they should go into primary school not knowing about child development is unbelievable. Teachers need to learn how to identify educational needs.

Good schools, of course, are invariably led by good and outstanding leaders. The highest quality of school leadership is vital. So I say yes to a national leadership programme. Teachers need to be free from unnecessary red tape and unnecessary bureaucracy so that they can get on with the job of teaching.

Yes, of course we need school inspections, but we do not need a name and shame regime. We do not need to beat up our schools and our school teachers. Let us ban the need for schools to fly banners from their gates proclaiming they are a good school. There are still 360 areas in England where every primary is rated either inadequate or requiring improvement, with the majority in the most deprived parts of the country. All schools should be good or outstanding and we achieve that by Ofsted identifying problems, with more nuanced inspections, looking into pupil skills, social skills and emotional development; and then, away from the glare of public condemnation, working with those schools to improve.

I taught all my teaching career in one local authority. Every year, that local authority has the worst educational results in the country. From its inception in 1970 or whenever it was until now, it has had the worst results of any school in the country. What have successive Governments done about that? They have allowed the local authority to close all the secondary schools and open secondary learning centres, which got poorer results than the schools that were closed down, which had budget deficits and where over two-thirds of head teachers left within two years. What did the Government do about that? Absolutely nothing.

So to the curriculum. Our school curriculum is rigid and inflexible. As the report says, most schools are constrained by an outdated rubric composed by Whitehall that has no room for regional variation and takes little account of employers’ needs. Our curriculum is hidebound by rote learning. Younger children learn by play and discovery and, as they get older, we have to give them opportunities to ignite their passions, interests and strengths. We need to make a curriculum fit for purpose to reflect the 21st-century UK. It is Black History Month, yet it is a disgrace that the curriculum of most schools does not reflect the multicultural community that our society has become.

The damage that the EBacc has done to creative subjects is there for all to see and the intransigence of Governments, against all the evidence, beggars belief. Further, it is nonsensical to limit creative subjects. The creative industry generated £119 billion for the economy in 2019. The report rightly says that sport, music, drama, debating and dance should be an integral part of the timetable for all children, not an extracurricular add-on, as the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, knows only too well. The independent schools know and do this well. Employers are looking for diligent, adaptable, innovatory thinkers in their organisations. A more well-rounded curriculum is needed for this, which implies greater emphasis on creative education, extracurricular options and a diversifying curriculum.

I turn to assessment. It should—must—be a continuous process, not an outdated requirement to turn up to an exam hall in the summer months and sit an exam for two and a half to three hours; that takes no account of summer-born children, by the way. What happens if a poor girl has started her period? What happens if there has been some tragedy in the family? The effect that has on that pupil’s ability to do well in their exam is hindered. So I say yes to continuous assessment.

I would scrap the EBacc completely. I welcome the report’s proposals for a slimmed-down set of exams in five core subjects. I very much welcome and like the idea of a British baccalaureate at 18, with academic and vocational subjects under the same umbrella. I must say, I have never been quite sure about the term “vocational”. I do not think that parents understand it. They think it is some sort of namby-pamby thing—that it is not really a qualification at school. We need to find another term instead.

On levelling up, of course the eight measures that support childcare should be overseen by the same department and brought together by one. Yet the recent Schools Bill focused too much emphasis on governance, not content or approach reform in the wake of existing inequalities. Levelling up requires an acute emphasis on addressing the barriers, insufficiencies and struggles addressed in the report, homing in on the ways in which we can tangibly close the gap of disadvantage and leave no child behind for success.

Levelling up must also prioritise the individual and multifaceted needs of pupils with learning and physical disabilities, ensuring that we do not consider only those who fit in the narrow box of success that the system is currently built upon. There is an existing gap between the needs of the economy and how we are preparing future generations. Information and digital skills, practical skills, qualifications, study habits, emotional intelligence and creativity are all needed for success. We must better connect the skills we are teaching children with both industry needs and the passions of children to maximise the potential for success. There is no one post-secondary route that fits all. The system must not only better reflect this but better inquire into how we can better support each pathway option for young people.

The OECD’s director for skills mentions this:

“Your education today is your economy tomorrow.”


Employers are looking for diligent, adaptable, innovatory thinkers in their organisations. Levelling up will not take one action. I agree that long-term planning and consultation with a wide variety of educational experts is needed to drive forward-thinking policies. I commend the Times Commission on showing the kinds of deliverables that can come with this kind of cross-sector collaboration. The report alludes to this Government’s lack of prioritisation for education funding, resulting in children paying a high price for the pandemic. Reform has stalled. The report should be the wake-up call to ignite tangible change that goes beyond short-attention-span policies.

Bringing Out the Best has a 12-point plan, as we have heard. I note that there was a young persons’ panel made up of primary school children, secondary school children and post-16s. I would love to have been a fly on the wall to hear what they had to say. Among the proposals were laptops and tablets, of course, but many poor families cannot afford wi-fi. Why are we not providing wi-fi for those families?

I love the idea of an “army of undergraduate tutors”. Children relate to young people. We could be innovative and, dare I say it, link that to their loan. Well-being should be at the heart of schools. There should be a school counsellor, not just for children but for staff. I also love the idea of an “electives premium” for the arts, sport, volunteering and outdoor pursuits. I declare an interest as a trustee of the Summer Camps Trust.

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, is absolutely right that we need in every school a careers adviser who can give face-to-face interviews with pupils.

I want to say how important it is that we develop oracy in our schools. In independent schools, there is a high premium on children debating and being able to speak. We do not do that in the maintained and academy sectors as well as we should, so, when young people go for jobs, they struggle to verbalise how they feel. Oracy should be part of our education system.

The subtitle of this report is

“How to transform education and unleash the potential of every child”.


I hope that the Minister will do all in her power to see that this report informs the thinking and actions of our Government.

Children in Care

Lord Storey Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As a department, we look at all those options, but on the one hand we need to recognise the extraordinary challenges children faced particularly through Covid—particularly teenagers while their schools were closed—but we also need to acknowledge that we are in an economy with more opportunity and more job opportunities than ever before. I think we need to be empathetic to their experience but also optimistic for their futures.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

The Minister will be aware that, over the past decade, an increasing number of children and young people have been put in placements outside their home area—there has been something like a 28% increase. Just imagine the trauma and mental anguish that that causes. We find that very vulnerable children often go missing. It is important that children relate to their area. Rather than more words, what can we practically do to ensure that this practice ceases?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think more money rather than more words. We have supported local authorities to meet their statutory duties through capital investment totalling £259 million, which will allow them to maintain and expand capacity in their areas.

Family-strengthening Policies

Lord Storey Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I know the noble Baroness will recognise that the Government have committed £37 billion to households most in need, and that £8 million of the most vulnerable households will receive an additional £1,200 of support for energy bills.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that the current Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, has a stated aim of ensuring that no child grows up in an institution. What help are the Government giving to ensure that that noble aim is achieved?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord will be aware of the work that was done by Josh MacAlister in his independent review of children’s social care and by the Competition and Markets Authority on children’s homes. We have said that we are considering both those reports, and we will report back later this year.

Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Storey Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 18th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am very supportive of Amendment 64A. Amendments 65, 66, 66A and 94 are also ways of reassuring and protecting home-schoolers in the Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Soley, made the point that, over his many years in politics, many have threatened to go to prison for their beliefs and rarely do. We all recognise that point. But it is also true that, over the many years that I have been involved in politics, I have been reassured that many a law is supportive and not a punishment or threat, and I have learned not to take much notice of that either. The notion that if you are a good actor you have nothing to fear is actually quite chilling, because then you have to ask who decides who the good actors are—who will define what a good parent is, in this instance. It is a little unfair that people who feel so strongly that they say they would go to prison are dismissed, because it speaks to the fact that this Bill has created uncertainty. The Minister has gone out of her way to be reassuring—I do not dismiss that; that is something to be taken seriously—but all that these amendments are trying to do is to codify that reassurance in a variety of ways, rather than just having it on word of mouth.

It is not helpful to say whether it is a minority of home-schoolers who are worried about the register or a majority. In a way, who cares whether it is a majority or a minority? It is the principle, and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has made that very clear. I emphasise that there is a principle of freedom here that we should not just throw out or dismiss as some sort of inconvenience to more pragmatic concerns.

The problem with the register is that it is not just a register; it ends up looking as though it requires far more on details of means, as the right reverend Prelate just explained—more than you need in a register. It does not just tick a box. That is why many home educators are very anxious about it. I am not a home educator and have never been home educated; to be frank, I am not interested in home educators per se, but I am interested more broadly in a situation where the state collects so much data and information—a database of children—and interferes in our freedom in a democratic society to home educate, if that is what we want. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle explained, the cloud of suspicion being created that this is a potential assault on deeply held religious and philosophical freedoms is something we should all take seriously as democrats who support a free society.

The suspicion that some home educators have of the state and the way that education is conducted is what we should be discussing in relation to this Schools Bill—if it were not such a basket case of a Bill that we cannot get anywhere on what we ought to be discussing, which is irritating. We have a problem when many parents believe that the state cannot be trusted to educate their children. All sorts of controversial issues come up. I do not think it is a criticism of home educators that they do not trust the state or think that it does not provide the kind of education that their SEND child or bullied child needs, or that they do not want someone to be exposed to the kind of materials in sex and relationship education that we will probably discuss later, which have been all over the news. These are reasonable philosophical ideas to hold; they, and religious freedom, are things that we should be protecting in this House.

We should remember the Telford report, which I just finished reading over the weekend. We have to be careful when the state starts saying that the people acting suspiciously are the parents. I also read the Oldham report, in which state actors—councils, schools, the police and all sorts of people—ignored in plain sight the sexual grooming and abuse of thousands of young people. I am not prepared just to say that I trust the state. It is perfectly reasonable when people do not, but we at least have to reassure them about their freedoms to withdraw from state schooling. After all, it is not the law that you have to school your child, simply that you have to educate them. I trust those parents to educate them as much as I trust the state. Where there are bad actors, you act, but you do not treat everyone all the time as potential bad actors.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I said at Second Reading, putting the register aside for a moment, that we as a society have a responsibility to ensure that all our children are safe, secure and educated. If that is not happening, we need to ask why and what we can simply do to make sure that every child is safe and educated.

Over the last seven or eight years, I have put down a whole series of Written Questions asking how many children are missing from our school rolls, such that we do not even know where they are. The answer is that we do not know. The best we can do currently—this goes back to 2018-19—is information from the National Crime Agency, which, by the way, identifies as missing anyone whose whereabouts cannot be established and who may be the subject of a crime or at risk of harm to themselves; examples include child trafficking, getting involved in drug pushing, et cetera. It concluded that there are 216,707 children missing whose whereabouts we do not know. That is a very low figure. I think it is considerably higher than that.

For me, that is what this debate is about: protecting children and making sure that they are safe, secure and educated. That is why I welcome these measures on home education and congratulate the Government on having the courage to pick up this political hot potato and try to do something about it—it is not perfect; I take it for granted that there are some concerns—and about unregistered schools.

Of course, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle was right about parents’ rights and values, but society has to make sure that, when children are in schools which are not subject to any checks or inspections, they are not being taught the most appalling practices, which Ofsted highlights in its reports. There have been a couple of cases where it has taken those schools to court and managed to close them down—the right reverend Prelate would be horrified if he knew. One such school, which was not unregistered, was a Christian school as well; I am happy to talk to him privately about it.

Let us understand where we are coming from in this debate. We all have anecdotal evidence of home tuition and teaching. I listened with great interest to the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Wei, and his worries about what might happen. I accept that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is absolutely right that there have been some appalling practices by local authorities; there have also been some fantastic practices by them, which should be the model for how we behave. That is why I will suggest in the next group that local authorities appoint home school co-ordinators.

I have been struck by the number of emails I have had—I think it was 82 at the last count—from home educators. They have concerns, of course, or they would not be emailing me, but I come away thinking, “Wow, what a tremendous job you’re doing.” I have met some of them. I met one last week, who told me about how she had ignited an interest in the Tudors in her daughter. I thought again, “What a tremendous job you’re doing.” However, those actually doing the work of home tuition are perhaps seeing problems that will not be there.

We need a simple register which collects some simple information. I did not know and was quite surprised to learn that independent schools do not provide any data—that is a new one on me. They should be doing so. As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, rightly said, we should know where all our children are—whether they are in school, home educated, in an unregistered school or in the independent sector. Let that be the rallying call from these amendments.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I am in a bit of a dilemma. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, if I may so refer to her, has spoken to all the clauses she would like to have taken out of the Bill. When I was last in the House, during my 26 years, the issue of whether a clause remained in the Bill came up only in debates of clause stand part. At that stage only did the argument come forward, if someone wanted to make it, that a clause no longer stand part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I am not sure whether that assessment has been made. If it has, I will be happy to share it. As we have said several times, there are at least two more stages to go on the guidance. One is a collaborative process to produce the draft guidance, and then a consultation process. There are plenty of opportunities as we go along to look at it—for example, whether exam costs would be included in the statutory guidance. I will find out whether we have that assessment and, if we do, I will share it.

I turn to Amendment 118 from my noble friend Lord Wei. As we have already discussed, several routes for complaint already exist for home-educating parents. But, as my noble friend said in response to the previous group, we have heard concerns raised by noble Lords about whether the different current routes of complaint are sufficient. We are also continuing to consider what more we can do to support home-educating parents and strengthen independent oversight of local authorities, such as exploring alternative routes of complaint.

Finally, I turn to Amendments 97ZZA to 100F from the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, which would remove Clauses 53 to 66 from the Bill. The overarching purpose of Clauses 53 to 56 is to improve the consistency of attendance support pupils and families receive to help pupils attend their school regularly. These clauses are an important part of the Government’s overall approach to providing more consistent support for pupils and families in order to help children attend school before legal intervention is considered. Clauses 57 to 66 concern the regulation of independent educational institutions and help us to ensure that all children receive a safe and suitably broad education. Extending the registration requirement and improving investigatory powers will ensure that full-time settings serving children of compulsory school age are regulated. Other measures improve the regulatory regime for independent schools, including by creating a power to suspend the registration of a school because pupils are at risk of harm.

I heard the noble Lord’s request for a meeting and my noble friend is very happy to do that because, as I think she has been at been at pains to stress throughout the passage of the Bill, we want to make sure that we engage with a broad range of voices from the home-education community to be clear about what we are aiming to do with the Bill. It is not at all about reducing or interfering with the right to home education, but just ensuring that we have the proper processes in place to make sure that the best interests of all children are protected while doing so.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

Before the Minister finishes, will she respond to Amendment 77 from my noble friend Lady Garden, about examination costs? Maybe she will have that in mind that when she meets these home educators, as it might be an issue to talk to them about.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I believe I responded about examination costs. In fact, I had an intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Knight, on it. One of the things I said to him was that in the statutory guidance we are seeking to create, we will look at the support duty. We are looking to work collaboratively with local authorities and home educators to hear all those different views in order to help us co-create that guidance. Then we will also consult on it. We are keen to ensure that we hear those views as part of that process.

I hope that my noble friend Lord Lucas will feel able to withdraw his amendment and other noble Lords will not press theirs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 100, in my name and the name of my noble friend Lord Shipley. I hoped that we could have spent the same amount of time talking about the most disadvantaged children in our society as we have on home education. These are young people, mainly with special educational needs, from the most deprived communities and from ethnic minorities, who are permanently excluded from school. What we do with some of these children reminds me of Victorian education, to be honest.

--- Later in debate ---

I turn to Amendment 100 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey. The alternative provision statutory guidance is clear that local authorities should not commission alternative provision in settings that meet the criteria of an independent school, but have failed to register, as that is clearly a criminal offence. But I think the point he makes is a wider one.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

That is the statutory guidance, but what is the Minister’s department doing in relation to those many local authorities which take no notice?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

That was in relation to illegal settings, and we hope that is straightforward. Alternative provision education is delivered in other settings—as the noble Lord has rightly drawn attention to—which do not receive state funding, are not required to register as an independent school, and do not meet, currently, the requirements for registration. The noble Lord is aware, I think, that in the special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision Green Paper, we made a commitment to strengthening protections for children and young people in unregistered alternative provision settings, so that every placement is safe, offers good-quality education and has clear oversight. If I understand correctly, that is exactly what the noble Lord also aspires to.

I am pleased to report that on 11 July the department issued a call for evidence on the use of unregistered alternative provision settings. Again, I place on record my thanks to the noble Lord for his insistence and persistence on this very important issue, which is important, as he pointed out, for children whose parents may not have the confidence to challenge the system. The information collected will help us find the right solution that addresses these concerns effectively and proportionately.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, for his Amendments 97A, 118J and 118K, and for the very constructive way that we have been able to work together. I hope we can continue to work together to address the points that he has raised. We have worked with Ofsted to develop the package of measures to investigate illegal schools, to ensure that we can take effective action against unlawful behaviour. Since Ofsted started investigating unregistered schools in 2016, we have gained a much better understanding of how to tackle this sector. There have been six successful prosecutions. The number of cases investigated reflects an increase in efforts to investigate. The actual number of unregistered schools, as the noble Lord knows, is unknown, sadly, but the measures in this Bill have been developed—working together with Ofsted—to address the key issues in the sector, which the noble Lord has rightly drawn attention to.

We believe that Amendment 97A is not necessary as we can already prosecute companies and charities which are operating schools unlawfully. We already inform the Charity Commission when charities are prosecuted. Education and childcare behaviour orders will allow courts to prevent individuals from continuing to operate from buildings that have been used for illegal schools. When we were developing the measures, we also looked at whether it would be appropriate to create measures which would allow action against landlords, in the way that the noble Lord’s amendment has set out. This is a very complex area, and we concluded that education and childcare behaviour orders, which could prevent those convicted of an offence from continuing to operate from a given site, were the more appropriate mechanism.

Amendment 118J replicates powers that Ofsted already has. Genuine part-time settings are not under a statutory obligation to register, so would not be caught by the proposed amendment. There is ongoing engagement between the department, Ofsted and other stakeholders on the effectiveness of measures to tackle unregistered schools. The effectiveness of the legislation will be kept under review. The need for accountability suggested by Amendment 118K is, we believe, best secured through the annual report that Ofsted presents to Parliament.

Finally, I turn to Amendment 110, in the name of my noble friend Lord Lucas. We believe that this amendment is unnecessary as existing provisions—specifically in Section 136 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 and in Clause 65 of the Bill—already ensure that new local authority education functions under the Bill will be within scope of Ofsted’s inspection powers. I therefore ask my noble friend Lord Lucas to withdraw Amendment 87 and hope that other noble Lords will not move theirs.

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord in what I thought was a very moving and profound contribution. My Amendment 118M takes us back to the role of regional schools commissioners, which we touched on in Committee. Commissioners have enormous power but they are civil servants and act on behalf of the Secretary of State, who remains accountable for their decisions. Each regional schools commissioner is supported by an advisory board, and they have a wide range of responsibilities including intervening in academies that Ofsted has judged inadequate, intervening in academies where government is inadequate, and deciding on applications from local authority maintained schools to convert to academy status.

In the schools White Paper earlier in the year, the Government stated that they would be changing the name of the regional schools commissioners to regional directors. A new regions group has been established within the noble Baroness’s department, which is bringing together functions currently distributed across the department and the Education and Skills Funding Agency. In Committee my noble friend Lord Knight raised a question about regional directors, as part of his thinking on what an all-academy schools system might look like in practice, particularly relating to the accountability of multi-academy trusts. He referred to the fact that many think academies insufficiently accountable. He felt that the advisory boards that regional schools commissioners have might be one way of strengthening accountability, particularly if they had a majority of local authority people on those advisory boards. The Minister was not very encouraging, I have to say, at that point.

I want to come back to this, because it seems to me that the review the Minister is now undertaking must take account of the relationship between academies, multi-academy trusts and regional directors. The direction of travel is that, by 2030, all schools will be academies. In essence, the Secretary of State is taking direct responsibility for each school in the English school system. In reality, the regional directors will take on that responsibility on behalf of the Secretary of State. Those regional directors are nominally civil servants, although they are not really civil servants in the way we think of them because they are external appointments. The sort of people who are appointed are not career civil servants; they are people who have come mainly from outside the system, as far as I understand it, so to call them civil servants is misleading in many ways, because it suggests they are functionaries directly accountable to the Secretary of State. The reality is that they take on huge powers. My argument is that they need to be more accountable to the system. I think the Minister should spell out in more detail the role of these regional directors. Recent research on Twitter—this is where we get information about them—shows that five of them have announced themselves on Twitter setting out their responsibilities. Each of them says that they are now responsible for children’s social care. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm if that is so or not. Does it mean, for instance, that these regional directors will be taking a lead on the regional adoption agencies? If there is an inadequate judgment under the Ofsted inspection of local authority children’s services framework, what is their role there? Do they have intervention powers?

What are the transitional arrangements between the regional schools commissioners and the regional directors? Will the regional directors be responsible for maintained schools that are not going through the academisation process as yet? I agree with my noble friend Lord Knight: there should be much greater transparency about what regional directors do, with the role of the advisory boards beefed up. There is actually a strong case for them becoming statutory agencies in the end, given that so much power is going to be given to them.

My substantive question to the Minister is: given the review she is now undertaking, will she assure me that the relationship of the regional directors and their accountability will be part of that review? She may argue that this has all been settled in the White Paper following Sir David Bell’s review but, given the scale of the change in many schools, which are going to be forced to become academies, I do not think that is the answer. We need to see much more accountability about how the system is going to operate. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond on that.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, before speaking to the amendments, I want to quickly say how much I agree with Amendment 101 on British values from the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and Amendment 105 from the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst. I do not see it as an issue of culture wars or whatever—parents should see the material that their children are being taught. I am quite surprised that we cannot do that. When we had parents’ evenings, the textbooks and the material that we were using were freely available for parents to look at. It was quite an important aspect of those meetings, as well as children’s work being on display. I hope the Minister can answer this issue about copyright because that seems to be a red herring.

On Amendment 118H, the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, is absolutely right: there should be a review of diversity in the curriculum. When you ask about black studies or black history in school, you get a list and you might find a black author or an Asian poet on it, but there is no guarantee that that is actually taught in schools; invariably, it is not. I want that audit on diversity to be carried out so that we know exactly how our curriculum should be developed.

I will come to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, at the end, if I may.

I have a slight reservation with the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman. We do not have a national curriculum: it is not taught in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, so it is not national. It is not taught in academies or free schools. It is taught only in maintained schools, so it is not a national curriculum.

I like the fact that academies and free schools have the freedom to devise their curriculum and I wish that freedom were given to maintained schools as well so that schools can devise their curriculum to suit their particular circumstances or issues. I gave an example to the Minister only today: Liverpool was the centre of the slave trade and I know that in academies in Liverpool they will do a unit on the slave trade, but it is not part of the maintained school curriculum. Maintained schools should be free to develop their curriculum.

The noble Baroness’s amendment lists the things that should definitely be part of this mandatory curriculum. They are probably the right ones. Financial management should be taught. Certainly, some personal, social and health education issues should be taught. I have a Private Member’s Bill on water safety, because I believe passionately that that should be taught in schools. Yes, there are things that should be taught, but let us not be prescriptive now. What we need is a review of our curriculum. It has not been reviewed for 10 years and we need to do that—for all the reasons we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman. So this is an important amendment but it is perhaps too prescriptive.

Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Storey Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 2
Tuesday 12th July 2022 Lords Chamber

That sounds far too much like social engineering. I fear it could be divisive and inadvertently end up making young children far too self-conscious of caricatured views of what type of people end up doing different jobs. That might not be the end result, but it could be a minefield for teachers and inadvertently introduce stereotypes into the classroom about who works in what profession based on their characteristics. I would let them dream, play and be imaginative and leave the careers until later.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, briefly, I do not know whether the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, taught in a primary school, but social engineering is not a phrase I would associate with them; I would associate imagination, sponges sucking up knowledge and getting excited about things, but not social engineering.

I want to raise another issue on mandatory work experience. The UK shared prosperity fund is a fund of £2.6 billion to develop people and skills. It also trains people to help with careers development. It is managed through the combined mayoral authorities and is for the next three years. I am a little disappointed that there is continuity in the fund for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland but in England it has ground to a shuddering halt. We have been told that the money cannot be spent until 2024-25. Can the Minister explain why? That will have repercussions for those who were employed to work on these areas.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I spoke in favour of similar amendments in Committee and will do so again. I will ask the noble Baronesses, Lady Chapman and Lady Wilcox, the same question as last time, as I did not get an answer. Proposed new subsection (1) in Amendment 113 says “all schools”, so can I presume that means primary as well as secondary schools? I am not sure what work experience looks like over 10 days of primary school; my understanding of

“a minimum of 10 school days overall”

would be over the period of life in that primary or secondary school. There is a lack of clarity there.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and I are largely in agreement on some things this evening. I am absolutely with her on imagining, dreaming and so on, but I read the clause completely the opposite way around. I think it says, “Imagine what you can be, whatever your background”. The problem at the moment is that too many children do not think they can.

I had not heard the extremely good news that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, shared. It is very welcome, so I thank the Minister.

Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Storey Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Tuesday 12th July 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Storey]

10: After Clause 4, insert the following new Clause—
“Academies: local governing bodies(1) A proprietor of two or more Academies must establish a committee (“a local governing body”) for each Academy in its care.(2) A local governing body must comprise the following persons—(a) the headteacher of the Academy;(b) at least one person appointed by the proprietor of the Academy;(c) at least one person employed by the proprietor to work at the Academy, elected by those persons employed by the proprietor to work at that Academy;(d) at least one parent or guardian of a pupil registered at the Academy, elected by the parents and guardians of pupils registered at that Academy;(e) at least one person appointed by the local authority in England in which the Academy is located.(3) A local governing body may apply to the Secretary of State to transfer the Academy for which it is responsible to the care of a different proprietor.(4) Regulations may make further provision about the powers of a local governing body.(5) In this section “local authority in England” has the same meaning as in section 579 of the Education Act 1996 (general interpretation).”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment ensures that there is a governing body for each individual Academy with a role for parents and the local authority on each governing body.

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[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I shall move Amendment 10 in my name and speak to my Amendment 43 in this group. I preface my remarks by commenting on the important points that the noble Lord, Lord Harris, made about schooling. He is absolutely right that it is the role of school to motivate children. It can do that with the best possible teachers and resources. As the noble Lord rightly said, children get only one chance, but I think he missed out leadership. Leadership is hugely important.

In this debate about academies, one of my concerns has been that we almost regard maintained schools as not very good and have forgotten them. I have rarely heard Ministers praise maintained schools that did a good job in turning themselves around. You have to look only at the area where I taught: there was a maintained secondary school called the Grange School, which had appalling results. Along came a new head teacher, with dynamic leadership, and the school blossomed and thrived in exactly the same way as the schools that the noble Lord, Lord Harris, talked about.

I hope we can stop this business of claiming that one type of school is better than another. I remember the constant “Well, academies’ results are better than those of the maintained sector.” We can all play that game, if we want to. The latest figures out now—I do not particularly want to dwell on this—say that the maintained sector is possibly performing better than the academies sector.

That does not matter now, because we know the Government’s direction of travel. We know that academies started during Tony Blair’s Government and developed during the coalition, with my party working alongside and supporting that development. Much to my regret, as I always thought there would be a dual track in the maintained sector, we saw that if there was a slight suggestion that any school was failing, it was immediately pushed into an academy. But we have moved past those days.

At Second Reading, I welcomed the fact that we are moving towards one system of schooling. It would not have been my choice of how we do it, but we are there now and, over the next 10 years, I think we will see all schools becoming academies and local authorities being given the opportunity to create multi-academy trusts. The amendment in the last group in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, and referred to by my noble friend Lord Addington, is one of the ingredients of a multi-academy trust that is hugely important. We will come back to that in future.

This group is about governance. I remind your Lordships of my major concern. If we look at the top 10 multi-academy trusts, we see that they have 70 or 80 schools. Take United Learning just as an example, with 75 schools which stretch from Barnsley to Stockport, Manchester, Oxford, Bognor Regis and all over the country. The trust and the trustees are headquartered in the south-east. I have concerns about that and about how the trustees of that multi-academy trust relate to local people and local communities. We have always agreed that the local community is an ingredient of a successful school, so we need to look at how we can recognise and develop community links and relate to the community and the locality.

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I hope your Lordships will agree that it is important that the review runs its course before we make any decisions about legislation in this area. I therefore ask the noble Lord, Lord Storey, to withdraw his amendment and other noble Lords not to press theirs.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I thank the Minister for her response. It is refreshing to have a Minister who listens and who is open-minded about issues and tries to resolve them. I had intended to push Amendment 10 to a vote, but that would be churlish given the Minister’s offer. I respect her for making it; it is the best way forward. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham said, it is important to get this right so that schools in multi-academy trusts that are not based in that locality can relate to a local community. I hope she might provide me with the opportunity to talk to her about some of the ideas we may have. I also very much support the important amendment from the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 10 withdrawn.

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[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I feel obliged to make a few comments on the question of what is and what is not religious education.

On Amendment 30 and the discussion of other religions, is the teaching of Judaism regarded as religious education or civics? I declare an interest as on the register as a trustee of a multi-academy trust. A major piece of work is already under way looking at how contemporary Jewish life could, in a very minimal but important way, be put into the curriculum of every school, and how contemporary anti-Semitism could be more than touched on and built into teaching in a timewise, modest way. That could be defined as a discussion of Judaism and classified as religious education.

From my perspective, in a sense, that does not matter. What matters is that somewhere within all secondary schools in the country, pupils get a glimpse of another community and its life, our history with the Jewish community—which has not been the proudest over the past 1,000 years—and some feeling and understanding of what it is like to be Jewish in this country.

I do not have a specific view on whether the amendment would work or not. The spirit of it is very interesting and useful. There is a challenge there and the more debate and discussion we have on the challenge of how other faiths, communities or both are fed into the school curriculum in this small but important way is vital to faith communities, education and the country.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I ought to declare an interest as a former head teacher of a Church of England school. We live in a multicultural, multifaith community, and we make that successful by respecting each and every one of us. I shall come back to that in a moment.

We on these Benches support Amendment 30. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, that you do not have to be a Christian to believe in Christian values, but the values of other faiths are also important. For example, my daughter went to a Jewish school, where she learned many values which were not, initially, her understanding. Because that Jewish school admitted children from different faiths, at 28 she still has lifelong friends from a whole range of different faiths: Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Hindu. She seems to constantly go to Hindu weddings for some reason.

I have a question for the Minister to which she might not know the answer, so perhaps she could respond in writing. I understood that we had SACREs, Standing Advisory Committees on Religious Education; each local authority had to establish a SACRE, which determined the religious syllabus for the schools in its district or city. I do not know how that works now. I was the chair of a SACRE for a couple of years, a long time ago. I do not know how that relates to the previous debate on academies, current religious education in schools or the amendment. If we agree to this amendment, which I hope we do, how does a SACRE get involved? Can it say that it is not in favour of doing this or that? If the Minister does not know or cannot get those in the Box to tell her, perhaps she could write to me. That would be very helpful.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham said that RE must be safeguarded in all our schools, and here is the problem. The problem is not religious education; it is the quality of its teaching. I have been in non-faith schools and been appalled at how religious education is taught. Nobody is qualified—it can be the person who is least qualified who does it and, frankly, it would be better not to do it.

I was always a great believer in school assemblies. The law of the land said—I think it was under the Blair Government—that every school had to have a daily act of collective worship. I do not think that happens in most non-aided schools. At one stage, Ofsted used to report if it was not happening. A school assembly can be a wonderful way to celebrate people of faith or no faith—it can bring the school community together. But some schools just go through the motions and try to squeeze 500 pupils into a hall to tick the box that they have had an assembly. Frankly, I would rather that they did not do it than try to fulfil the letter of the law.

I hope the Minister will look kindly on this amendment, because it is very important. On the comments of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, if we agree the amendment, it does not prevent those discussions taking place.

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, my amendment is based on discussions with the Local Government Association—although, unlike almost every other noble Lord in your Lordships’ Chamber, I am not a vice-president of the LGA, despite years of endless work as a local government councillor.

My amendment, to which the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, has kindly added his name, would enable the Secretary of State to lay regulations to delegate responsibility for calculating and administering aspects of school funding to local authorities, should future government consultations on the direct national funding formula conclude that local authorities would be best placed to do so. Concerns were raised in Committee about the Government’s plan to set more than 24,000 schools’ budgets centrally from Whitehall and remove input from local authorities. School funding is complex, and local education authorities that work closely with maintained schools are very well placed to understand the unique circumstances of each school.

The Government’s own fact sheet on the implementation of the direct national funding formula recognises that there may be some instances where the Government are not able to set school budget allocations at the national level—

“for example, where this is related to specific roles and duties of local authorities, or where local authorities have better access to information that would allow them to determine the funding more accurately.”

The document goes on to say that councils may be better placed to determine certain aspects of school funding, such as additional funding for PFI schools and funding for schools with growing or falling school rolls. The approach to those aspects of funding will be consulted on in the second-stage consultation on the direct national funding formula, which is set to close in September.

As schools’ local point of contact, naturally councils have access to local education data and can work more agilely to respond to changing local circumstances than can be done from the centre. None us should underestimate the huge work involved in having a national system of funding when you are dealing with thousands upon thousands of schools. I wonder at the Government’s nous in taking on that responsibility, but of course this change means that Ministers are accountable to this House and the other place for anything to do with school funding.

I hope the Government will reconsider this measure and that, when they come to consider the results of the second-stage consultation, they will see local authorities as being a partner in the whole funding of local schools. At the very least, if the Government’s ongoing consultation concludes that councils are indeed best placed to deliver certain aspects of school funding, surely the appropriate power should be delegated to councils in order to avoid causing schools unnecessary financial difficulties as the direct national funding formula is implemented. I beg to move.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for reminding me that I should declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I have three amendments in this group. I think Amendment 59 is pretty self-explanatory: it would increase the pupil premium in 2023-24 by £160 per primary pupil and £127 per secondary pupil from 2022-23 levels, before pegging it to inflation. That is clear.

Amendment 60 is about alternative education. Members will have heard me going on about that for some time, but it really is important that we look at ensuring that when the most vulnerable pupils—often with special educational needs and often from poorer backgrounds—end up in alternative provision, the financing is transferred swiftly along with their education, health and care plans.

That brings me to Amendment 58, which is the one that I really want to concentrate on. This issue is important. Yesterday I sat in on the child vulnerability debate, which was as a result of the Public Services Committee report. During that debate, I heard our Minister say:

“As your Lordships have reflected, the real test of any society is how it treats those who are most vulnerable within it”.—[Official Report, 11/7/22; col. 1350.]


She went on to say, quite rightly, that the priority of her department is to support the most vulnerable children. Who could be more vulnerable than the 800,000 children that the Child Poverty Action Group has found live in relative poverty and do not qualify for a free school meal?

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Moved by

[Lord Storey]

58: After Clause 39, insert the following new Clause—
“Provision of free school lunches to all pupils in households in receipt of universal credit(1) In section 512ZB of the Education Act 1996 (provision of free school lunches and milk)—(a) in subsection (4)(a)(ai), omit “in such circumstances as may be prescribed for the purposes of this paragraph”;(b) in subsection (4)(b)(ai), omit “in such circumstances as may be prescribed for the purposes of this paragraph”.(2) In the Free School Lunches and Milk, and School and Early Years Finance (Amendments Relating to Universal Credit) (England) Regulations 2018 (S.I. 2018/148), omit regulations 2 to 4.(3) The Secretary of State must ensure that funding to maintained schools and Academies is sufficient to provide school lunches free of charge to pupils in receipt of, or whose parents are in receipt of, universal credit.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment extends the provision of free school meals to all children whose parents are in receipt of universal credit, and places a duty on the Secretary of State to ensure that sufficient funding is available to schools to provide this.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I wish to test the opinion of the House.

Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Storey Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lords, Lord Aberdare and Lord Moynihan, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, for having on two occasions said that I must sign an amendment and then failing to do it. I must also declare an interest here; although young people may fall down occasionally, it is usually older, occasional sportsmen who do so, and I am certainly in that category.

As was mentioned before, many sporting facilities are on school grounds. If we want people playing sport, and playing it as safely as possible, we should really make sure that, at the very least, school sports grounds—which have more structure and over which we have more control—have access to defib. It is a pretty common practice now. Most people say that, if you follow the instructions, you will be able to use it correctly, although extra training cannot hurt. Indeed, it sounds like the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, is a man to be beside when you are under any stress at all if he has the thing with him. If we can put something in the Bill that says we will have better coverage of defib capacity and some training on how to use it, or at least make it more common, that will be a definite step forward.

I live in a village designed for horseracing, and on the high street there is a nice big yellow defibrillator, because if people fall off horses and get injured, defib might be required. This is something we can do easily and in a straightforward manner that will make people’s lives that little bit safer. I recommend that we embrace this and go forward with it, if not in this exact form then, I hope, something very like it.

I will briefly cast my eye over the other two amendments in this group. On the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, I like the idea in proposed new paragraph (b) of having a list, including sports fields, to make sure that we know how they are doing. I have a Private Member’s Bill that puts a little more emphasis on this, so possibly I am biased.

I do not have to tell the noble Baroness who will be responding for the Government just how important is the capacity of computers to help many people in their educational process, and making sure they are up to date. These are two good examples of why the idea within the amendment should probably be brought further forward. It would be a good thing.

As for the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, I had not really considered what she has brought forward but it does sound sensible. I look forward to hearing the answer. It occurs to me that there is a certain degree of irony here; we often argue against overregulation, but this sounds like one they have missed that might be very useful.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, we support all three amendments in this group. I declare my interest as vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I start by telling the Committee that every single school on Merseyside has a defibrillator. Why? As we have heard, at the school that my daughter attended at the time, a young boy called Oliver King had a tragic sudden cardiac arrest in the swimming pool and died. As noble Lords can imagine, the school was grief-stricken; the pupils and the staff needed counselling. However, from that awful tragedy something wonderful happened, in that Mark King established a charity in his son’s name, the Oliver King Foundation, with the simple aim of putting a defibrillator in every school on Merseyside. As noble Lords can imagine, the community rallied round—the local press, benefactors, et cetera—and it happened. As we have heard from other noble Lords, Mark has continued his mission, not just for Merseyside but for schools throughout the UK. He was a frequent visitor to Parliament, trying to encourage MPs and Peers to get behind his campaign. I have to single out former Education Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for whom I managed to arrange meetings with Mark King. The noble Lord had planned to celebrate, so that when we reached the target of, say, 1,000 defibrillators in schools, we would have a party. Unfortunately, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, was reshuffled, or decided to leave, and that never happened, but he was very helpful and supportive in that campaign.

I mention that it is not going to be expensive, as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, rightly said. We are not allowed to use props or visual aids in the Chamber, but an Australian and a Canadian—noble Lords have probably met them as well—have come up with something, because most cardiac arrests actually happen in the home. They do not happen in public places, at schools or sporting events; most happen in the home and it is too expensive to spend several thousand pounds to have a defibrillator in your house unless you are very wealthy. These two people—one is an inventor and the other a salesperson—have invented a defibrillator which is about the size of a notebook. They are very simple to use and they cost, I think, just under £200. If you cannot afford that, there is a monthly subscription of a few pounds, and there is no reason why everybody should not have one in their home. For those who cannot afford one, there should be some mechanism of support. I gave mine to my noble friend Lady Walmsley and she promised me she would show it to the Health Minister. Maybe she will show it to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, as well, or I will get it back off my noble friend. It is a real way forward.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, when he rightly says that this is about protecting young lives. There are various other things we can do. Defibrillators should be available in every school, but so too, for example, should an EpiPen—it should be mandatory for every school to have one. Again, the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, puts his finger on it when he says that every school should include first aid training as part of its curriculum. It does not take long. There is a gap when year 6 pupils have finished their SATs and are kicking their heels before they go to secondary school. That is an ideal time to do first aid training. It could be four or five sessions, and St John Ambulance or the Red Cross are only too willing to help out. There are wonderful schemes whereby they can provide lesson notes and all the rest.

Similarly, another area that should be mandated—by the way, I have a Private Member’s Bill on this—is water safety. We could prevent young people drowning if people knew proper water safety. This is about preserving lives, so it is hugely important. I am sorry that I have repeated the points that others have made.

The amendments on school buildings are absolutely right. At Second Reading I mentioned the internal memos, which the Minister will know about, outlining real concerns about the safety of our school buildings. This has gone on for a while—the coalition time was mentioned; I am not sure if that is true but perhaps it is. Of course, the Building Schools for the Future programme was excellent, but many of the buildings were very shoddily built and had a life expectancy of 20 or 25 years. Never mind the whole business of PFIs and whether they were good value for money—we will not go there—but I know from personal experience that many of the buildings, certainly the ones I have seen, are quite shoddy in my opinion; they are well past their proper use. These two amendments are hugely important and I hope that, between now and Report, we can look at them carefully and see what support we can give.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, for Amendment 156. Well-maintained and safe buildings and facilities are essential to support high-quality education, and they remain a priority for this Government. Perhaps the noble Baroness will be very kind and pass on my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, for her update on the Welsh strategy.

As my noble friend Lady Berridge pointed out, responsibility for school buildings lies with the relevant local authority, academy trust or voluntary-aided school body. Those organisations are best placed to prioritise available resources to keep schools safe and in good working order, based on their local knowledge. We provide significant annual capital funding, major rebuilding programmes, and extensive guidance and support to the sector. We have allocated more than £13 billion to improve the condition of schools since 2015, including £1.8 billion committed this year.

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[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I will say a few brief words on these amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, undersold the point he is making slightly, because for many people the disparity between verbal skills and written skills is actually a sign of special educational needs. Dyslexia is the classic example of this, and often dyspraxia as well. It is also the coping mechanism—the primary coping mechanism—by which people handle this. I put my hand up as an example of that. If people can explain their case verbally, they stand a chance of getting some form of accommodation on a casual basis. If you have the ability to come forward and explain yourself to a new teacher in a classroom—this was drummed into me from an early age—the teacher then has the chance of making some response that is appropriate. If you are terrified of doing this, or not told how to do so, then you have another problem. The ability to talk coherently is incredibly important, as it underpins just about everything else that goes through.

I know this is not exactly what the noble Lord was driving at, given the tone of all the discussion so far, but I hope that when the Minister responds she will have some idea of how disparities between expected verbal communication are going to figure in the Government’s thinking when it comes to things such as the new version of special educational needs. The Government must have a little guidance on this already. I know they are having a review; there must be some undertaking of what is going to happen. The interventions we have spoken about, with a speech and language facility and support, are incredibly important, because the whole thing is underpinned by the ability to talk. Very few people master good written language if they cannot at least talk coherently. Can the Minister give us some idea of how they are planning to bring these two together? If they do not, they are missing a trick, and also the identification of a need that is very important for dealing with many problems in our education system.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

These amendments are hugely important. There is a rhyme, is there not?

“Sticks and stones may hurt my bones, but words can never harm me.”


But how wrong that is. Words are very harmful and are often used by bullies. However, it is not just the person being bullied who needs support; it is also the bully themselves. Many of the bullies have real problems, and we must not forget that.

Secondly, we have made tremendous strides on bullying issues at schools. I pay tribute to the work that schools have done over the past decade or so on the issue of bullying there. I was quite shocked when my noble friend Lady Brinton said that many—or some— schools still do not have anti-bullying policies, as I thought they were a requirement. I thought that this was one of the things Ofsted looks at when it inspects schools, particularly for safeguarding reasons. My noble friend Lord Addington is absolutely right that it should be part of teacher training—it is not because of time constraints—as dealing with incidents of bullying is quite a complex issue. Teachers need to feel supported and equipped to be able to deal with it.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Watson, for putting down his probing amendment on oracy in schools. I think that we have forgotten the importance of oracy or the spoken word. I always remember my education tutor saying to us that the three most important things for developing children in the early years were good toilet training, play, and talking and speaking. Our national curriculum and SATs do not give teachers the time and space they should have to develop the spoken word.

Many schools do things as part of the school day. Remember how we used to have children reading aloud? When I go into schools, if you suggest that children should read aloud, people look at you as though you are a bit barmy. We should go back to some of those practices, such as school class assemblies where children can perform and talk in front of their peers; school drama productions are really good for that too. There is a whole list of things we can do but, looking back, I just get the feeling that we were so focused on the literacy hour and all its ingredients that the spoken word—oracy—was somehow sidelined and lost. No doubt the Minister will give us chapter and verse in her reply about all the things we are doing but I want all those things to happen in every school; I get the feeling that that is not the case.

To reiterate what the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, there are four things. We want to raise the status and priority of spoken language in education. We want to equip teachers in schools to develop their students’ spoken language. We want to make children’s spoken language a key pillar of education recovery after Covid, which we will hear about in a minute. We want to ensure that children with speech, language and communication needs are adequately supported, as in the point that my noble friend Lady Brinton made.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

First, I want to say a few words about Amendment 171J in the name of my noble friends Lord Watson of Invergowrie and Lady Blower. It is such an important amendment because it highlights the need for the Government to report on the level of spoken language and communication ability in academies, independent schools and maintained schools. I do not know whether I need to declare an interest but my husband is a former director of campaigns at the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, so I am very familiar with some of the issues.

My noble friend Lord Watson did a fantastic job of explaining why this issue matters. I pay tribute to his work, not just on this amendment but in this area more generally. He made the case very powerfully and both his amendments raise a vital issue. We would like to see it properly considered by the Government and look forward to the Minister’s response. We are hopeful that she can say something positive.

Amendments 171N, 171O and 171Q, in the names of my noble friend Lady Whitaker and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, would require the reporting and recording of bullying based on protected characteristics, the provision of information to parents and the sharing of that information in the interests of the welfare of the child. We support my noble friend and the noble Baroness in their amendments and feel that they would assist us in tracking what is going on and enabling us to do something about it. Their amendments would go a long way to help address and prevent bullying, especially that directed against minority groups and particularly, as they said, the GRT community. That is probably now the least well recognised form of racism that we see, sadly, in schools.

Our Amendment 171L would require the Government to consult on and launch a children’s recovery plan, including breakfast clubs, music and drama, small group tutoring and other measures that I will not bore the Committee by reading out; they are all there in the amendment. So far, the catch-up measures that the Government have introduced have either not worked in the places where they are needed most, such as the tutoring programme in the north of England, or have been so far short of the scale of intervention needed that they have resulted, as my noble friend Lord Watson said, in the resignation of the expert brought in to advise the Government.