Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Triesman Excerpts

2nd reading & Lords Hansard - Part two
Monday 23rd May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Triesman (Lab)]

My Lords, there may be few times in recent history when new thinking on schools was more important. I share the overview and analysis of the gaps here from the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Knight, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the analysis of state centrism from the noble Lord, Lord Baker; I shall not repeat those points, because I simply agree with them. I will focus on Part 2, on how to optimise learning outcomes and remove impediments through modest changes to growing challenges.

I am unimpressed by the Government’s Pollyannaish narrative about sunny uplands and government levels of investment. It is not entirely the Government’s fault that we are in a deep shadow—quite possibly the deepest social and economic crisis in 75 years. Living standards are close to freefall. Covid has caused deep stresses, and Covid has not gone away. Health and social care is struggling with normal demands and a huge backlog of accumulated demands; half a million are on the social care waiting lists, and one in nine of us is waiting for routine surgery. Quite aside from the growth in demand for food banks and fear of heating bills, an average 2 million adults daily go a whole day without food, most often to try to feed their kids. That is the UK in 2022.

If anybody does not think that all this impacts kids and households very acutely, they must live on another planet. These kids do not inhabit sunny uplands. They are the kids who suffered most during lockdown and they are suffering most through economic recession, which is set to get worse, so please, let us have no platitudes or complacency today about government support. Nearly three-quarters of primary school heads say that catch-up funding barely scratches the surface of the problems that kids face. Head teachers are already diverting the pupil premiums from the most disadvantaged kids to general funds. This is a long-term blight which needs long-term investment or it will hobble our country.

UNICEF research shows that Covid impacted learning everywhere: the acquisition of foundational and socio-economic skills, mental health, and the safety and well-being of children. Here, we know that it spotlighted inequalities in our society, hurting the most vulnerable the most: the poorest and those from ethnic minorities. However, our problems predate the pandemic. A study in 2015 in England showed that, for every pound invested in school mental resilience programmes, England generated a net return on invest of £5.08. Research started in Finland and continued in this country estimates that every pound invested in preventing bullying in UK schools returned £7.52. Initiatives for pupils and teachers in mental health literacy have similar benefits. I am very grateful to the exceptional Sarah Kline, the CEO of United for Global Mental Health, for careful analysis of these data.

To be clear, I am talking not only about the struggles of kids with diagnosed mental illnesses, or those on the rapidly expanding list of spectrums, or kids who routinely see their SENCO at schools, or those with special challenges but without specialist help. These are significant cohorts on their own. I am talking about all kids, parents and a fair proportion of their teachers who are all impacting each other and amplifying major stress. Reliable research in the United States and the United Kingdom—on which Members of this House are experts, including my noble friend Lord Layard—conclusively demonstrates that these stresses subsequently hamper attainment across the curriculum. Put simply, children who are not provided with personal tools in their tool kit to be resilient enough to reach their potential do not reach it. The points made by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and the noble Lords, Lord Sandhurst and Lord Altrincham, go very much to that point. These children’s parents and teachers do not have the training or tools to make enough of a difference. Of course, this is not the case for everyone, but a high proportion of kids are held back this way and a high proportion of teachers and parents cannot really help.

I declare my interest as a member of the board of a charity, Bounce Forward, originally started to respond to United States research on programmes to equip teachers and pupils with greater resilience. It is a small charity which reaches out to UK schools and local authorities, with real success. As you would predict, greater resilience has led to improvements right across the curriculum, in confidence and in reductions in bullying, as well as a hunger to catch up lost education time. Its methods could be embedded in school routines, timetables and teacher practice. The spread of good practice is too slow; mandated time is needed in timetables and modest sums need to be spent specifically on resilience through inset day slots and places in teacher education. It all seems so obvious, and Part 2 of the Bill needs to garner this information. I would like to hear whether the Minister can confirm that there are ways of transforming resilience and, roughly speaking, whether we can organise timetables to make that possible.

I know that I am short of time, but I ask the House’s indulgence for one brief note of real distress that I have about this Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, my noble friend Lord Watson and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and I have sought and received government assurances from the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, that the full range of remedial steps provided to children adopted from care in the UK will be extended to children adopted from care abroad. I was always told—including by noble Lords here—that exclusion of this latter group had been an oversight and not a matter of policy. We all agreed that it was necessary to correct it. The House was repeatedly promised in writing that the anomaly would be corrected at the first available piece of primary legislation. This is that piece of primary legislation. However, the change is not in the Bill so we must amend it. These kids have one chance, not multiple chances. Every time that we neglect to make this correction, a small group of children suffers disproportionately—but we can stop that.

Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Triesman Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 13th June 2022 Lords Chamber

The fact is that, for large numbers of children—whether the areas in which they live have grammar schools or have all the difficulties outlined by my noble friend Lord Knight in terms of how the transfer between year 6 and year 7 works—year 6 is blighted for those children, their parents and carers and often, frankly, for their wider family members who are also worrying about where their niece, nephew or whoever else might end up. This is a year when these children, who are at the top of their primary school, ought to be developing their leadership skills in an age-appropriate way and ought to be looking to the next phase of their education and thinking about how exciting it is going to be. However, what they are actually doing is worrying: of course, they are worrying about SATs, but they are also worrying about where they are going to end up. The idea that some of them end up in one school and some end up in another—sometimes on the basis of admissions arrangements which are completely inexplicable to parents—is an absolutely terrible thing. If we really want education to work for all children and to be the service that can do the best by all children and young people, we certainly need to have reassurance from the Minister about no expansion of grammar schools, but we also need to ensure that we have genuinely fair admissions arrangements for all children, wherever they are.

[Lord Triesman (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 169. I express my gratitude to both Ministers on the Government Front Bench for a very helpful conversation. In the course of what they will say, they may well be able to allay some of the anxieties that I have expressed about the position of adopted children in the past. I greatly appreciated that, and want my appreciation recorded.

Amendment 169 is not about the big issues on admission which we have been discussing, although I completely associate myself—if I can pick just one of my noble colleagues—with my noble friend Lady Morris about geographic and local coherence in the arrangements we make. This amendment may appear to be a small and detailed matter by comparison, but I can assure the Committee that it is of the first importance to the small number of people who are impacted by it. Amendment 169 addresses the difference in educational access and assistance experienced by children adopted from care internationally, contrasted with those who are adopted from care in the United Kingdom, and the impact of these differences on their education and life prospects.

I declare an interest as the proud father of a quite exceptional adopted daughter who became part of our family on the third day of her life and is a great blessing. When I first spoke about this matter in the House, she was 10; she is now 13 and, until the discussion I had today, it appeared to me that nothing had moved forward in those three years of her life. However, I think that we will hear something rather more different today.

Adopted children face many challenges which are well documented. Many have special needs, some far greater than others, and, in many cases, because some spend years in care before finding a loving family home, they experience many of these difficulties to a very great extent. The care they experience is of very mixed quality, especially abroad, and they carry that experience alongside the fundamental experience of loss of attachment throughout their lives. There are multiple studies in the leading peer-reviewed journal, Adoption & Fostering, which most Members of the House will feel establishes the facts beyond dispute. The impact on these children has also been largely experienced by children from particular countries: China, India, Thailand, Ethiopia, Guatemala and some from Russia. As your Lordships will easily detect, the impact of discrimination has therefore been far greater on children of colour.

The scheme of intercountry adoption is regulated by the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in respect of Intercountry Adoption 1993. It was ratified by this country, among the then 24 EU members, and it says that all children adopted from care overseas should have the same rights as those in the receiving countries. There was nothing at all unwilling about our participation, and I note that David Cameron was in the forefront of making all kinds of adoption, here and abroad, easier. I hope that in the course of this discussion, we will hear about changes being made to the School Admissions Code, so that it will require local authorities and other admissions bodies to give the same top priority for pupil places to children adopted from state care in this country.

In case it is not well understood, although I suspect that it will be, I add that most of the children who are adopted from overseas, once they are adopted, come here and become United Kingdom citizens. The question on their parents’ minds will be, “Why on earth would they have worse prospects than comparable United Kingdom citizens?”. It is acknowledged that this would be discrimination between kids adopted here and overseas, and it would violate the 2010 Equality Act which states in terms that there must be no discrimination in school admissions based on country of origin.

The data is strong. While I will not delay the Committee for long, it is always worth trying to use an occasion like this to underpin why the changes are necessary. Some 94% of peer-reviewed papers show adoption to be correlated with lower academic attainment and related behaviour problems. This is clear among very young children and gets clearer with age—it is most acute among teenagers. Of the issues faced by children, trauma around attachment and anxiety about the loss of attachment are absolutely distinct and significant in all the research. Some 80% of adopted children express profound confusion and anxiety at school; two-thirds report that they are bullied. Neither they nor their parents feel, in an overwhelming proportion of cases, that they have had an equal chance. To underline the point as thoroughly as I can: adopted children are 20 times more likely to be excluded than their classmates. In the first three years of primary school, they are 16 times more likely to be excluded. None of these data are spurious; they all meet high levels of statistical significance and confidence.

I was very grateful to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said a while ago about the role of parents, because I feel that I am talking about the same thing. It is inevitable in these circumstances—and I believe quite rightly—that parents have the central role. It is not a mainstream role for national or local government for obvious reasons, but I know first-hand that parents pay the closest attention to the attributes in the pool of school options in front of them. Parents are the ones who interact with the schools and local authority. I promise you that, as a parent, you come to know which schools are most attuned to social and emotional trauma issues, can sponsor and encourage executive functioning for your child, know about providing sensory diets to regulate behaviour and grasp the implications of neurological divergence. You form self-help groups of parents grappling with these issues where you learn a lot and enjoy a lot of support. You get to know—because you have to—where there is specific training and knowledge of attachment trauma and where the head teacher and specialist staff really know what they are doing, as distinct from knowing what they should be doing. It is the way in which you choose the mission-critical path for your child and it does not rely then on good luck in admissions. It is parent engagement and decision-making at its clearest.

Many schools are excellent at many other things, but they are not all necessarily excellent at everything and may not be excellent at this vital thing which I am describing, which could determine whether your child joins that absurdly high number of kids who get excluded or bullied, underachieve or are profoundly miserable. It matters not one whit to you whether your child was adopted from here or abroad.

I look forward to what the Minister will be able to say but, having commented on the Ministers in this House, I say that much of the running on this was made by Nick Gibb when he was Schools Minister. He told local authorities in December 2017 that they should include children adopted overseas for priority admission to schools identified by their parents to give the kids the best chance. Unfortunately, a significant number of local authorities would not take that advice from the Minister for Schools, which I think was very sad. But we are now in a position where we have a ministerial team that will, and I sincerely welcome that. I also welcome that there will be further thought on the pupil premium plus, which is also very significant for this group of students, and hope there will be further comment on that.

It turns out that we did not need, as I thought for some years we did, primary legislation to achieve the things that I think can be described by Ministers today. I welcome that for a very straightforward reason that is not all that much to do with personal experience, although of course that does bear on me. I welcome it because kids get one chance, and kids who have difficulties need all the help they can to take that chance. It is up to us to give it to them.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, in this amendment. I have great respect for people who adopt. I personally support a wonderful organisation called Hope and Homes for Children, which has closed many orphanages in eastern European countries and allowed the children to be effectively adopted—it is not quite the terminology that most of these countries use. I took the Children and Families Act through your Lordships’ House, which was very substantially about improving adoption arrangements. I remember the noble Lord raising this point with me when I was a Minister. It seemed a no-brainer then and it seems to be so now, and I very much hope that my noble friend the Minister will support him in making this amendment.

I would also like to speak briefly on the point about academies fixing their admissions arrangements to their advantage, which has been mentioned. As a rule, this is unfair. There are some schools—schools of different types, actually—which have rather complicated admissions arrangements and one sometimes wonders whether they are deliberately complicated. But, as I say, I think it is unfair on the vast majority of academies and multi-academy trusts.

Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Triesman Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 20th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, there are some splendid amendments in this group. I very much liked what the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, had to say. I will speak briefly to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and to that of my noble friend Lady Morris. The former is an extremely important amendment on the broad principle that it is never too early to widen the horizons of children at school as to what may be possible and the options that may be there. We all know that there is a tendency for the career horizons of students to get narrower rather than broader, and if it is not there at a very early age then certainly is by the time they are in secondary school. They are affected by their peer group very strongly, and I hope that it is not too old-fashioned a phrase to say that it is a matter not just of gender stereotypes but of class stereotypes.

People are often restricted in their view of what is possible by the careers of people they know, such as their parents. These may be very good choices, but people need the whole bandwidth, as it were. I hope it is not seen as too facetious a comment—I know we are not talking about private schools—but if you attended Eton College and said that your career ambition was to be Prime Minister, that would be a reasonable and statistically likely objective, given that, I think, 20 Prime Ministers went to Eton. If that was your objective in life, the strong recommendation would be to go to Eton, assuming, of course, your parents could afford to send you there. If, however, you had been to the schools that most of us have been to and had said in your teenage years that your ambition was to be Prime Minister, you would have been told to sit down, have a drink of water and be more realistic in your expectations. I really think that before children start commenting, essentially in the same language as their peer group or their social background, the broader the options made plain to them the better—and, of course, the ways of achieving those options.

The other amendment I want to speak to is the one from my noble friend Lady Morris. I emphasise that, for me, the issue is not so much about parental examination, if you like, of life sciences, life relationship skills and the like; it is about the principle of accountability that could apply to any area of school activity. I must admit that it was news to me—I am nothing like the professional that she is—that schools could contract out pretty well anything they liked. To take an absurd example, it is possible that parents would not be able to discover what was in the English curriculum at school because it was commercially sensitive. Quite apart from that being unacceptable, it seems pretty impractical. Given that these subjects are being taught in schools to teenagers and the details of the curriculum are being withheld from parents because they are commercially sensitive, you would simply have a situation in the family where a teenager came home from school, their parents asked what they had been doing that day and the teenager responded by saying, “I’m afraid I can’t discuss it—it’s commercially sensitive.” On a practical level, even if the principle is right, which I do not think it is, my noble friend’s amendment should be supported.

[Lord Triesman (Lab)]

My Lords, I support pretty much all the amendments in the group. The one tabled by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, is particularly helpful and casts a glow over most of the others. That is why I plead it in aid when talking about Amendment 171F, spoken to by my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley and so strongly supported by both the noble Lords, Lord Sandhurst and Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, with both of whom I align myself.

I should like to make three points. First, almost all of us in ordinary conversation talk about the importance of the relationship and the fact that education is a team sport—schools, kids and parents are all involved. We take it as a truth and do not question it any further. But the other thing about this team sport is that none of the bits is sealed off from another. All of us who have brought up children must have had the experience of them coming home and wanting to talk about something that has arisen in the curriculum they are being taught. If we do not have the smallest idea of what that might be, it will be a much less fruitful conversation than any parent, or the child who introduced the subject, would want to have. These points have to be fundamental and this amendment goes to the heart of the issue. If we mean that it is a team—something shared and collaborative—it must mean that we are all in the position where we can talk about what the other experiences and what the other knows. If not, it does not really mean anything. I hope that point will be taken very strongly.