Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Seventh sitting) Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateNeil O'Brien
Main Page: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)Department Debates - View all Neil O'Brien's debates with the Department for Education
(3 weeks, 4 days ago)
Public Bill CommitteesThe beauty of this scheme is its universal offer—a free offer to every child in primary school. As I mentioned earlier, we see the clear benefits of the scheme in terms of attainment, behaviour and, indeed, attendance. That is what is really exciting about our plans.
Work is already under way with 750 early adopter schools to start to deliver from April 2025, thanks to a tripling of funding for the breakfast clubs at last October’s Budget compared with financial year 2024-25. Early adopters are just the first step in delivering on our steadfast commitment to introducing breakfast clubs in every primary school. They will help us to test and learn how every school can best deliver the new breakfast clubs in the future and maximise the benefit to schools, their pupils and the families and communities they serve. Legislating for breakfast club provision in the Bill will give schools the certainty they need to plan for the future and ensure that there is a consistent and accessible offer for children and parents who need a settled start and support with childcare. I commend the clause to the Committee.
I rise today, as we pass the halfway point of line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill, to find that we still do not have the impact assessment. The Bill has passed Second Reading. It is totally pointless having an impact assessment of a measure if it is produced after has Parliament debated it. The Ministers would make the same point if they were still shadow Ministers, so I make it to them now. I do not understand what the hold-up is.
The last Government substantially expanded access to breakfast clubs in primary and secondary schools and created the holiday activities food programme. The national school breakfasts programme has been running since 2018, and in March 2023 the then Government announced £289 million for the national wraparound childcare funding programme, which helps to fund breakfast clubs, among other things. That was part of a much wider expansion of free childcare that saw spending on the free entitlement double in real terms between 2010 and 2024, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, including things such as the 30-hours offer, the two-year-old offer and the expanded childcare offer.
We will not vote against the clause and will not push our amendments to a vote, but I was struck by the comments made by Mark Russell of the Children’s Society, who said that given the resource constraints, he would have focused on rolling out breakfast clubs to a greater number of deprived secondary schools, rather than on a universal offer in primary. He said:
“I would like to see secondary school children helped, and if the pot is limited, I would probably step back from universality and provide for those most in need.”––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 55, Q122.]
I draw attention to the uncertainty being created by the Government’s refusal to commit to funding the existing free breakfast provision in secondary schools beyond next year, and likewise to the uncertainty being created around the holiday activities and food programme. A number of witnesses in our first oral evidence session called for Ministers to guarantee that funding beyond next year, and I join them in asking Ministers to give us that guarantee, or at least give us some sense that the provision targeted on deprived schools will be maintained.
To that end, our amendment 28 would lock in the existing provision in secondary schools and secondary special schools. There are arguments for specifically targeting needy secondary school pupils. According to evidence submitted to the Committee by Magic Breakfast:
“The extension to secondary pupils in special schools would not require a significant amount of additional resource”.
It would require about 2.2% of the budget. What did Ministers make of the suggestion by Magic Breakfast to make secondary special schools a priority? The Government have made primary schools their priority.
Amendment 26 would require the Government to report properly on provision. Groups such as Magic Breakfast are calling for careful measuring and monitoring of the programme, which is what we need. In Wales, we saw a commitment brought in in 2013 to reach all primary schools, but by last year, 85% of disadvantaged pupils were still not being reached by the provision. Obviously we do not want that to happen here. The Secretary of State must collect data on who is getting breakfasts and on the impact. As Magic Breakfast said in its evidence to the Committee,
“if the Government policy doesn’t significantly impact”
behaviour, attendance, concentration, academic attainment and health and wellbeing,
“then the Secretary of State should consider the efficacy of the policy roll out.”
That is why we want special monitoring.
The programme is landing on top of a complex existing patchwork, as the Minister said. Some 85% of schools already have a breakfast club, and one in eight of all schools, including secondary schools, have a taxpayer-funded breakfast offer. The new requirement being brought in by the clause will interact with the existing provision in lots of different ways.
Many school breakfast clubs currently run for an hour on a paid-for basis, and I hope that most of them will want to continue to run for at least the period that they run now. Now, if a breakfast club is provided for an hour or more, the school will have to charge the first 30 minutes but not the final 30 minutes, which unavoidably leads to complexity. On the other hand, we do not want schools to focus on just delivering the new statutory 30 minutes then pull the earlier provision, which is useful for parents. Schools will have to do a lot of agonising as they think all this through, and they will have to manage it carefully. In some cases, where the demand is very high, schools may struggle get all the children fed in 30 minutes—lunchtime is normally longer than that. That is one reason why Magic Breakfast is calling for advice and guidance, which I hope the Minister will consider.
Amendment 27 asks for a report on funding, because there is still a lot of uncertainty around that. According to a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies last year:
“Based on the experience of the national school breakfast programme, the estimated annual cost today would be around £55 per pupil…for food-only provision and double that (around £110) for a ‘traditional’ before-school breakfast club. Labour’s manifesto offers £315 million overall in 2028; this could be enough to fund all primary school pupils under a food-only model, or 60% of pupils if the party plumps for a traditional breakfast club with some childcare element.”
The Government are just at the pilot stage, and we just want to make sure that the lessons are learned about the very real costs of this policy in different places and settings, be that for on-site provision, off-site provision, expensive or cheaper places to live, or small rural primaries. They will all have different costs and the funding will have to reflect that.
Hopefully all of these problems are surmountable, as this is obviously a good thing, but we want careful monitoring to make sure that the policy is actually making changes and having the positive impacts that people hope for, and to avoid any unintended consequences.
There is a uniform shop, Uniform Direct, in my constituency in Derby, which was opened by Harvinder Shanan. Like me, she is a mum of three. She is determined to drive down the costs of school uniform and understands the financial pressures that local families face, particularly with the cost of living crisis that the last Government left us in. Her small business has been able to reduce the cost of items. She told me about how in one instance, when she began to supply a school, she was able to bring the cost of their blazers down from £75 to £25.
I note that the majority of the schools that Harvinder Shanan supplies are already compliant with the limitations on the number of branded items that the Bill imposes. If many can reduce, or have already reduced, the number of branded items, I am concerned that amendments seeking exceptions would fundamentally undermine the purpose of the clause, which is to bring down the costs of school uniform that families have to bear. Some providers might seek to increase the costs of branded items. Consideration of a cost cap was asked for, to limit the amount of money that could be charged. I invite the Minister to keep the clause under review and to keep all options open, should the cost of branded uniform items rise.
Turning to new clause 56, the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston indicated a shared concern about prescription for schools, which seems somewhat at odds with the prescription sought through the new clause, which would prescribe details of how second-hand items might be made available down to what is on school websites. My concern is that the detail of that provision would impose so much prescription that when there are new items of uniform, second-hand items simply would not be available.
In total, the clause represents a huge saving for families in Derby North and across the country. I greatly welcome the provision.
I find myself in great agreement with much of what the hon. Member for Twickenham said about the danger that this provision will turn into a piece of backfiring micromanagement. The Opposition have made that point and, indeed, we have heard Labour Members make the same point. We are not in a position to make a fiscal commitment today, but I thought that that the hon. Lady made a good point about VAT. I found myself agreeing with more and more of what she was saying and then, towards the end, when she started talking about potential Brexit benefits, I realised we were really through the looking glass. Remarkable moments here today—incredible scenes.
To describe our amendments in brief, amendments 29 and 30 say that schools can have items that parents do not have to pay for, and amendment 31 clarifies that it is three at any given time. Schools can require replacement of lost items; amendment 32 exempts PE kit, and amendment 91 exempts school sports team kit. New clause 56 is a positive suggestion to make schools offer old uniform to parents. As the hon. Member for Twickenham said, we do not particularly want to be prescriptive, but if we are going to be, we might as well do it in sensible ways. That builds on the previous guidance.
When I was a school governor, which was mainly under the previous Labour Government, I was struck by the flood of paper that came forth every week from “DFE Towers”, the Sanctuary Buildings. That flood abated a little after 2010, although probably never enough. Sometimes, I wondered whether we had more ring binders with policies in than we had children; but that might soon seem like a golden age, because under new Ministers, the urge to micromanage seems to be going into overdrive.
Our guidance, introduced in 2021, encouraged schools to have multiple suppliers, and it was focused on generally holding down costs, as the hon. Member for Twickenham pointed out. Parents are in fact spending less in real terms on school uniforms overall than they were a decade ago, according to the DFE’s own survey. The DFE found that average total expenditure on school uniform overall was down 10% in real terms, compared with 2014.
Does the shadow Minister agree with a 2023 report by the Children’s Society which showed that school uniform costs were another burden on families, impacting on children’s education, to the point that 22% of parents were reporting that their child was experiencing detention for breaching uniform policies, and one in eight had been placed in isolation? Last year, the Children’s Society surveyed parents again and found that two thirds were finding uniform costs unaffordable, which is not surprising given the cost of living crisis affecting so many parents. The hon. Member speaks as a former school governor and therefore with deep experience. Does he agree that we need to reduce the cost of uniforms, because parents are struggling and, as a consequence, children’s education is suffering too?
That is a very helpful intervention, because it lets me say what I was about to say next. We obviously want to reduce the cost of school uniform, but really, we want to reduce the cost of clothing children overall. If we have the kind of backfiring effects that a number of Members on both sides have pointed out, we will not achieve that.
The shadow Minister’s new clause 56 sets out specific things in great detail. It seems really odd that he has a concern about micromanagement in light of the provisions he has tabled.
The hon. Lady is quite right to point out the tension between wanting to avoid micromanagement and saying that if we are in the business of prescription, we might do some sensible things. I wanted to offer a positive suggestion rather than simply critique what the Government are doing, which is why that is there. Indeed, a lot of schools are already doing it. I understand the hon. Lady’s point, but one reason why Whitehall micromanagement is a bad idea is that rules dreamed up by civil service mandarins in London often go wrong when they make contact with the real world. That is exactly what has happened here.
I have no doubt that Ministers’ intentions for clause 23 are good, but it will have the opposite effect to the one they intend. It may well make things more expensive for parents—not less. That will hit many schools. Ministers said, in answer to a written question, that
“based on the Department’s 2023 cost of school uniforms survey of parents, we estimate that one third of primary schools and seven in ten secondary schools will have to remove compulsory branded items from their uniforms to comply”.
Instead of measures the Government could have brought forward in the Bill—things that the polls show are teacher priorities such as discipline, as Teacher Tapp shows—we will have at least 8,000 schools spending their time reviewing their uniform policy.
Worst of all, this may well end up increasing costs for parents overall. Many secondary schools will respond to this new primary legislation by stopping having uniform PE kit, at which point, highly brand-aware kids will push parents to have stuff from Adidas or Nike or whatever instead, which will be more expensive. What do we think that school leaders will get rid of in response to the new rules? We know that according to the Government, lots of them will have to change their uniforms in response to this.
In a poll of school leaders last year, more than half said that the first things they would remove in the event of such restrictions would be PE kit, but uniform PE kit is cheaper than sportswear brands; it is nearly half the price for secondary school kids. I worry that the Government have a sort of tunnel vision here. They want to cut the cost of uniform, but we really want to cut the cost of clothing children overall. The problem is that when we get rid of uniform, particularly PE kit, what will fill the space is often more expensive and worse.
I speak as a parent of a child at a secondary school with branded PE kit, so I have some interest in this. Maybe my understanding is wrong, but surely any responsible school following this becoming law, as I hope it does, would still have a uniform? Uniform does not have to be branded to be uniform. This would not necessarily mean that it would be a free for all and that children would be encouraged to turn up in all sorts of branded sports gear. They can still wear plain sports clothes that are uniform and are not hugely expensive or branded by international sportswear brands.
That is an incredibly helpful point, because it leads me to the point that the word “branded” here is being used in a very specific way, which is not a particularly natural meaning. Anything specific or anything where there is only a couple of shops that sell it will count as branded. For example, I think of the rugby jumper that I used to wear when I was doing rugby league in Huddersfield in the 1990s. It was a red jumper with a blue stripe. If it was freezing cold and snowing, I could reverse it. That jumper was branded. It did not have any brand on it—it was not sportswear—but anything like that is captured in the provision. I also remember that when I was at school, in summer we had very unbranded clothing. The school said, “You can have a black T-shirt.” What happened? Everyone had a black Nike or Adidas T-shirt, so more expensive stuff fills the space.
Let us take a worked example and think about the primary school that my children go to, which is typical. They have a jumper and a tie in the winter. My daughter has a summer dress. They have a PE hoodie, a PE T-shirt and a plastic book bag, so they are a couple of items over the limit. Our children are at a really typical state primary, so which of those items do Ministers want them to drop?
It is up to the school.
If they drop the book bag, other bags will likely be more expensive. My kids are quite young, so they are not very brand-aware, but we will end up with a request for a branded bag and something more expensive. [Interruption.]
If we get rid of the PE tops for the older kids, we will end up with branded sportswear stuff. [Interruption.] If Members want to intervene, they can do so.
I watched the kids in a London secondary school arriving for school the other day, and it was really apparent from watching them that the expensive thing for their parents was not the uniform, but the expensive branded coats that they were wearing over them. All the fashion brands were on display. I worry that we are missing the pressure that is put on parents to get this stuff when we take out uniforms. It is ironic that the word used in the legislation is “branded” school uniform, when fashion brands—real brands—will fill the space that Ministers are creating by trying to micromanage schools.
I will talk about sports teams and amendment 91, which I will press to a vote. There is a specific problem here. The explanatory notes to the Bill state that an item of branded uniform will be considered compulsory if a pupil is required to have it
“to participate in any lesson, club, activity or event facilitated by the school during that year. This means that it includes items required for PE and sport. This applies whether the lesson, club, event or activity is compulsory or optional (i.e. even if an activity is optional, if a pupil requires a branded item of uniform to participate”,
it will count towards the cap. It is clear that that means that if there is a sports team and it has a kit, that would count towards one of the three branded items. The explanatory notes make that absolutely clear.
If there is more than one school team, the problem is even worse. If a school had a sports team for athletics, rugby, swimming, football or whatever it might be, pupils would use up the entire limit of items doing that. This is effectively as good as a national ban on having school sports team kits. This is micromanagement gone wrong.
I would also welcome an intervention from the Ministers if they want to say why this is wrong.
Having taught in schools and had schools sports teams, we have kits within the school. When pupils represent their school teams, the kits are washed and given out to the children, because that means that all children get a chance to participate. Schools might not have the same football or rugby team. Those kits belong to the school and are taken in and washed, so it does not stop children of all abilities and backgrounds representing their school.
That is another hugely helpful intervention, because it lets me say two things. First, the clause as drafted does not help, because it uses the words “to have”. Unless the Government accept our amendments, the fact that the kits are being given does not make any difference, because the legislation does not say that. Secondly, there is an implicit assumption in the hon. Lady’s intervention that all schools will, from now on, have to pay for all this themselves. It is generous of her to make the huge funding commitment to schools that she has just mentioned, but unfortunately I do not think that the Ministers have come up with the money to do what she says.
We know why there are school sports teams. We do not expect English, Scottish or Welsh football teams to have a single kit. There is a reason why teams have a kit, yet that will effectively be banned by the clause. Amendment 91, which I will press to a vote, would exempt school sports teams. The DFE’s current suggestion on what schools should do in this situation is to give pupils kit, as the hon. Member for Portsmouth North said, but even that would not work under the clause unless the Government accept amendments 29 and 30. We have also tabled the amendments because the Bill as drafted potentially bans schools from asking children to wear “more than three” compulsory branded items even if the school has provided them for free, which is obviously bizarre. That is why our amendment would change “have” to “buy”.
That brings me to amendment 31, which is a practical one to correct what I think is a drafting error. At the moment, if a child grows out of, or loses, or damages a branded item, then parents will not have to replace that item within the academic year because the Bill says that they cannot be asked to “have more than three” items during a school year. If schools are allowed to require three branded items, then they should obviously be allowed to require that those items are replaced otherwise, effectively, uniform policy becomes unenforceable.
Instead of all this backfiring micromanagement, our new clause 25 points toward a different, more effective way to reduce costs for parents. Some 70% of schools already offer second-hand uniforms. Our amendment just aims to get schools doing what many others already are. As the parent of primary school children, I know how much is already passed on from sibling to sibling and from family to family outside school, though that is something that is obviously much less likely to happen with non-uniform items.
Finally, it says in the notes of the Bill that parents can make a complaint to the Department and that
“The department will be able to act when it is found that a school has not complied with the limit”. I feel that Ministers should have better things to do with their time than to try and fail to micromanage schools and determine whether the PE kit at Little Snoddington primary school is compliant. After so many attempts at micromanagement, I just worry that this is going to backfire and the cost in the end to parents is going to be higher.
While I have the utmost respect for the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, I want to draw his attention to the real world of parents, the cost of uniforms, the impact of negativity on pupils. As a former teacher and a parent of three lads who did not all go to the same school, so could not always have their clothes passed down, I am really pleased to see clause 23. We have heard from the Children’s Commissioner that this is an issue for so many children, through her big ambition conversation on behalf of children. We also see a BBC survey that notes how senior teachers, and I have been one of these, have helped parents buy uniform and have provided school uniform. That is done by so many staff in our schools across the country and it also shows the cost of the hardship that parents and families are under.
The Children’s Society also note in their support that this is “practical and effective”. They do not see it as red tape, as lines being drawn, or as schools being held to account. They actually see it as a real, practical and effective way to help children and to help parents afford uniform. It does not stop schools stipulating a school colour or a standard of uniform, relating to their own uniform policy. It stops uniforms costing the earth. Many parents have emailed me, and one parent said that they stagger the cost of uniform across the year—buying one now and getting another next time, when they get paid. That leaves children—I am guilty of it myself— wearing uniforms that are too big, and that they never grow into. Or worse still, if the uniform is passed down, it might be worn out because siblings have worn it, or a cousin has worn it, or a neighbour has worn it before donating it to the kids. The clause stops children feeling self-conscious and really uncomfortable in school. It gives them a sense of dignity while they are in their school place and—we all know— if they feel pride in who they are and feel confident, it helps with learning and with being able to take part fully in education.