Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting)

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)]

Clauses 30 and 37 concern the regulation of independent educational institutions. I will turn first to clause 30. All children should receive the best chances in life and an education that helps them to achieve and thrive. To support that, it is already a legal requirement for private schools to register with the Secretary of State. Registered schools are regularly inspected and action is taken against schools that potentially put children at risk of harm by providing an unsafe or poor-quality education. The clause will bring more settings that provide a full-time education into that well-established and effective regime. That will lead to more children learning in a regulated and safe setting that is subject to regular inspection.

At present, private schools are regulated mainly by chapter 1 of part 4 of the Education and Skills Act 2008. The Act allows private schools to be subject to regular inspection, regulates the changes that they may make to their operation, and provides mechanisms to allow the Government to intervene in cases of severe safeguarding risk. The clause redefines the settings that are to be regulated under the 2008 Act and extends those protections to more children who attend full-time educational settings that are not schools. It will also provide clarity to those running educational settings about whether the regulatory regime applies to them.

In broad terms, settings will be required to register with the Secretary of State if five or more children of compulsory school age, or one or more such child with an EHCP—education, health and care plan—who is looked after by the local authority, could be expected to receive all or a majority of their education at the institution. When determining whether the new test of “full-time” is met, the factors found in proposed new section 92(4) in the clause will be considered.

Finally, in the interest of clarity, the clause provides a list of excepted institutions. Excepted institutions are not being brought into scope of the 2008 Act, even though they otherwise may meet our new definition. Generally speaking, that is because they are already captured by a suitable regulatory regime.

I will turn to clause 37. Clause 30 is intended to ensure that more settings that provide full-time education to children are subject to regulation. In addition, other legislation already applies in England to independent schools, but will not automatically apply to other independent educational institutions. Further legislation will be required if that is to apply to all the settings regulated under the 2008 Act. Clause 37 provides a regulation-making power to do that, and to apply other legislation that applies to independent schools—over and above the 2008 Act—to other full-time educational institutions.

That approach is proposed for two reasons. First, it will permit Parliament to debate the principle of bringing independent educational institutions into the existing regulatory regime in the 2008 Act for independent schools. Secondly, it will allow Parliament to debate separately the practical impacts of that with regard to the other individual pieces of legislation. That is because any regulations made under this proposed power will be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. Parliament will have the opportunity to scrutinise and approve any regulations made under clause 37. The clause is a mechanism to allow the changes, which might be regarded as downstream from clause 30, to be made.

To turn back to clause 30, this reasonable and proportionate step is built on a clear principle. Settings that provide education on a full-time basis and, as a result, are more responsible for children’s educational wellbeing, should be regulated and subject to Government oversight. The measure closes and identifies weakness in our existing regime. No more will settings be able to avoid registration and regulation by offering a narrow education, meaning that some children are not equipped to thrive in the modern world.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

I could pick this concern up in our next debate, on clause 31, but a related issue is linked to my concerns about this clause, so I will give the Minister a moment to reply. He mentioned the list of excepted institutions, which we find at clause 30, page 70, from line 17, and various types of institution are exempted: local authority schools, special schools, 16-to-19 academies and further education colleges, but not academies and free schools. Why? I want to check that that is a conscious choice by the Government and to get an explanation of why that is the case.

[Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)]

With your permission, Sir Edward, my remarks apply to clauses 30 to 36, because I thought it was more convenient to speak to them all together. Clauses 30 to 36 are extremely welcome to tackle illegal schools. Such schools are mostly, but not always, faith-based—

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[Stephen Morgan]

I thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, for his constructive response. He made a number of points and asked whether the clause applies to academies. It will not change the way in which academies, as state-funded independent schools run by not-for-profit charitable status trusts, are regulated. Academy trusts are accountable to the Secretary of State for Education through their contractual funding agreement, the terms of which already require them to comply with the regulatory regime established by the 2008 Act. All academy schools are subject to regular inspection by Ofsted under the education inspection framework.

[Neil O’Brien]

Is that not also the case for 16-to-19 academies already? I do not understand why they have to be exempted in the Bill, but non-16-to-19 academies are not. Surely they also have the same kind of funding agreement.

[Stephen Morgan]

I am happy to take the shadow Minister’s points away and get him a response in due course.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 30 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 31

Independent educational institution standards

[Neil O’Brien]

I beg to move amendment 70, in clause 31, page 72, line 31, at end insert—

“(1A) Powers under subsection (1) may not be exercised in relation to an academy.”

This amendment specifies that the Secretary of State should rely on the provisions in Funding Agreements as regards to academies.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss clause stand part.

[Neil O’Brien]

This will be relatively short and sweet. Amendment 70 aims to prevent a large and, I hope, unintentional expansion of the Secretary of State’s powers. Academies and free schools are, of course, independent state-funded schools. I think that under clause 30, an academy school, but not a 16-to-19 academy, is an independent educational institution for the purposes of the 2008 Act. This amendment to clause 31 would ensure that the powers under proposed new section 118A(1) may not be exercised in relation to an academy; instead, the Secretary of State should rely on the provisions in funding agreements with the academies and free schools.

Our amendment is grouped with clause stand part, so I also want to ask the Minister about something I read in the regulatory impact assessment. Page 56 states:

“We have identified one possible adverse distributional impact. Based on our current understanding, the Independent Schools Standards: Registration Requirements measure is expected to disproportionately impact some religious or faith-based schools. Where in scope of the new regulation, these schools may have to meet the Independent School Standards, which may entail costs.”

Will the Minister say how large those costs are, or explain why faith schools are disproportionately impacted? It may be unrelated but I also noted various references in the impact assessments to the Haredim; will the Minister speak to why that group is particularly affected by some of these measures?

[Stephen Morgan]

Amendment 70 seeks to disapply for academies the new power to suspend registration given by clause 31. It would not be appropriate if children in academies were not protected by the additional powers within a regulatory regime that already applies to them. I hope that that gives the assurance sought by the shadow Minister, and that he agrees to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 31 will make several changes to the regulatory regime for private schools found in the 2008 Act. The clause has a number of distinct parts, including a new power of suspension. It may help hon. Members if I quickly summarise the most significant changes.

First, the clause will allow the Government to set out, in regulations, standards requiring individual proprietors, or individuals with the general control and management of the proprietor, to be fit and proper persons in the Secretary of State’s opinion. Secondly, the clause will allow the Secretary of State to direct the chief inspector to carry out an inspection of an institution that has lodged an appeal against a decision not to register it, so that up-to-date information can be given to the tribunal.

Thirdly, as discussed, the clause makes a power for the Secretary of State to temporarily suspend the registration and, where applicable, the boarding of an independent educational institution, such as a private school. That power would be used when the Secretary of State is satisfied that there are breaches of the relevant standards and she has reasonable cause to believe that, because of the breaches, there is a risk of harm to children at the institution. During the period of suspension, the proprietor would commit a criminal offence if the institution remains open, providing education or other supervised activity, or if it were to provide boarding accommodation in breach of a stop boarding requirement.

In addition, rights of appeal to the first-tier tribunal against a decision to suspend registration or to impose a stop boarding requirement are conferred by subsection 31(6). We acknowledge that a suspension of registration would be a serious step that would inevitably disrupt children’s education; the new powers are therefore likely to be used only in the most serious cases. It is, however, essential that we have appropriate tools to provide the flexibility to act appropriately in cases where students are at risk of harm.

Finally, the clause will, by amending section 124 of the 2008 Act, change how appeals against enforcement action to deregister private schools are determined by the first-tier tribunal. That will ensure that more effective action can be taken against private schools with long-term or serious failings. In some cases, private schools can avoid deregistration by making improvements to meet the standards at the time of the appeal hearing. These changes will ensure that the first-tier tribunal carefully considers future compliance. The clause reverses the burden of proof so that the appealing proprietor must demonstrate that it has capacity to sustain compliance with the standards. These measures make many improvements to the existing system of private school registration and regulation, and I therefore commend the clause to the Committee.

[Neil O’Brien]

We thought that it was unintentional that academies are being brought into this new system of regulation. From the Minister’s comments, it is clearly intentional. This is triple dipping: the Minister already has controls over these schools; clause 43 takes that further, and this is another thing. I therefore will push the amendment to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

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[Stephen Morgan]

On the hon. Member for Twickenham’s points about Ofsted, the powers are available only to investigate the commission of specified relevant offences. Our experience is that the majority of inspections of unregistered schools are conducted under Ofsted’s existing powers process and on the basis of consent and co-operation. We anticipate that that will continue even after Ofsted has been granted the enhanced powers in the measure. The powers will not be available to Ofsted when inspecting private schools against the independent school standards. The hon. Member asked about resources for Ofsted; we are working closely with Ofsted on what the powers will mean, as Sir Martyn set out in the evidence session.

I will take away the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale and write to her on those matters.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 32 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 33

Material changes

[Neil O’Brien]

I beg to move amendment 71, in clause 33, page 86, line 12, leave out lines 12 and 13.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 72, in clause 33, page 86, line 38, at end insert—

“(2D) The Secretary of State must issue guidance for relevant institutions on how subsection (2)(g) is to be understood.”

This amendment to allow independent schools not to have to notify the Secretary of State about change of use for buildings.

Clause stand part.

Clause 35 stand part.

[Neil O’Brien]

Section 102 of the 2008 Act requires the proprietor of an academy to make an application to the Secretary of State for the approval of a material change, as defined in section 101 of that Act. Clause 33 introduces a new definition of material change, which adds to the list of material changes in the 2008 Act.

Proposed new subsection (2)(g) will require the notification of the Secretary of State when there is

“a change of the buildings occupied by the institution and made available for student use”.

Some of the things in the proposed list are reasonable things for the school to have to apply to the Secretary of State for—if it is a complete change of the proprietor or a change to the age range, or if it stops being a special school or moves to a completely different location, that is fine—but the idea that schools should have to apply to the Secretary of State if there is a change of the buildings occupied by the institution is too vaguely defined.

If I build a new building or get some new bits stuck on the end of one of the wings of my school, do I have to apply to the Secretary of State? It is not clear from a natural reading of proposed new subsection (2)(g). We worry that this will end up with even minor changes requiring approval from the Secretary of State, which is not necessary. Given that a breach of the provision can lead to an academy being deregistered as an independent educational institution, or the imposition of restrictions on the academy, it seems excessive.

Amendment 71 seeks to delete paragraph (g), which would be the best outcome, while amendment 72 seeks at least for the Secretary of State to provide guidance. Will the Minister provide some reassurance that we are not going to end up with schools feeling like they have to apply to the Secretary of State every time they build a new building, move out of one wing or add an extension to another? It seems like a recipe for unnecessary bureaucracy, creating legal risks for academies that really should not be there.

[Stephen Morgan]

Amendment 71 would make changes to clause 33, which, among other things, requires private schools to seek prior approval from the Secretary of State before they occupy a building and make it available for student use. The amendment is intended to remove this new requirement. I appreciate that there may be concerns regarding new burdens on private schools, but let me explain why the change is necessary.

Currently, a change of buildings occupied for student use, either at or away from the registered address, is not a material change. This means that there is no prior assurance that new buildings are safe for student use. Unfortunately, we see examples in which private schools are inspected and children are found in buildings that are unsuitable for their education and, in some cases, unsafe.

[Neil O’Brien]

The Minister keeps talking about private schools, but am I right in thinking that this also applies to academies?

[Stephen Morgan]

I answered the shadow Minister’s point earlier. We are referring specifically to private schools in this legislation. This is an important and necessary change that I trust Members will support.

Amendment 72 would place on the Secretary of State a legal obligation to publish guidance regarding how a change of buildings for student use will work. I reassure Members that the Department already publishes non-statutory guidance for private schools in relation to applications to make a material change. I can confirm for Members that we intend to update the guidance ahead of introduction, to explain how provisions are intended to operate. For the reasons I have outlined, I kindly ask the shadow Minister not to press his amendments to a vote.

On clause 33, if a private school wishes to amend its registered details, prior approval must be sought through a material change application. This process provides assurance that the school will still meet the independent school standards after the change is made. The current regime is too restrictive in the case of schools that admit students with special educational needs. An application for a material change is required to start or cease to admit one student. The Bill will redefine this material change to require an application to be submitted when a school wants to become, or ceases to be, a special school. It will also become a material change when a special school wants to change the type of special educational needs for which it caters. That will provide greater clarity and transparency to parents, commissioners and inspectorates.

In addition, as already discussed, there will be an entirely new category of material change. It will become a material change for a school to make a change to the buildings it occupies and makes available for students’ use for more than six months. The clause also allows for an appropriate degree of discretion in deciding whether a material change can be approved.

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[Stephen Morgan]

We are consulting and engaging widely on the Bill. The hon. Lady’s point is well made, and the Department will respond to it in due course.

Finally, clause 35 allows more proportionate action to be taken if a private school makes an unapproved material change. Currently, deregistration is the only option available, but forcing a school to close is often not a proportionate action to take. The new proposals will allow for relevant restrictions to be imposed on a private school by the Secretary of State when an unapproved material change is made. This will often be a more proportionate response, providing parents with confidence that suitable action can be taken to ensure that private schools are safe and suitable.

[Neil O’Brien]

The Minister keeps saying “private schools”, but we are talking about independent educational institutions. As I understand it, that includes academy schools, which are state schools.

The Minister also keeps talking about proportionality. Proposed new subsection (2B) states that, for the purposes of proposed new subsection (2)(g), the Secretary of State would have to be notified of any change to either “part of a building” or a “permanent outdoor structure”. If a school wanted to build a bike shed, it would potentially have to go to the Secretary of State. That does not seem proportionate at all. Perhaps the Minister can answer that point.

[Stephen Morgan]

I assure the shadow Minister that the provision does apply to academies, so I thank him for raising that point. Clauses 33 and 35 make important changes to our material change regime, so I hope the Committee agrees that they should stand part of the Bill.

[Neil O’Brien]

I wish to press the amendment to a vote. The Minister has confirmed that the provision applies to academy schools. It is not proportionate—to use the Minister’s term—to require the Secretary of State to be informed of a state school changing part of a building, or building a permanent outdoor structure. A school that put up a gazebo would have to go to the Secretary of State. That is not proportionate; it is an error. The rest of the clause is totally reasonable, but on this point it is unreasonable, so I want to press the amendment to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

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[Stephen Morgan]

We will consider these matters extremely closely as we progress the Bill further. I will take that point away to officials. With regard to the hon. Gentleman’s question about bankruptcy, the Teaching Regulation Agency considers only cases involving allegations of the most serious misconduct. Cases of misconduct that are not serious enough to warrant a lifetime prohibition from teaching and all cases of incompetence are more appropriately dealt with by employers at the local level. I commend the clause to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 39 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 40

School teachers’ qualifications and induction

[Neil O'Brien]

I beg to move amendment 73, in clause 40, page 99, line 23, at end insert—

“(1A) In section 133 (requirement to be qualified), after subsection (1) insert—

‘(1A) The requirement in subsection (1)(a) only applies after a person has been carrying out such work in a school for five years.’”

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 74, in clause 40, page 99, line 23, at end insert—

“(1A) In section 133 (requirement to be qualified), after subsection (1) insert—

‘(1A) Where a person was carrying out such work at the time of the passing of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2025, the requirement in subsection (1)(a) does not apply.’”

Amendment 75, in clause 40, page 99, line 23, at end insert—

“(1A) In section 133 (requirement to be qualified), after subsection (1) insert—

‘(1A) Where a person is carrying out such work for the purposes of teaching a shortage subject, the requirement in subsection (1)(a) does not apply.

(1B) For the purposes of this section, “shortage subject” means any subject in relation to which the Department for Education’s recruitment targets for initial teacher training have been missed in the most recent year for which such statistics exist.’”

Amendment 76, in clause 40, page 99, line 23, at end insert—

“(1A) In section 133 (requirement to be qualified), after subsection (1) insert—

‘(1A) Where a person is carrying out such work in an academy school, the requirement in subsection (1)(a) does not apply where the condition in subsection (1B) is met.

(1B) The condition is that—

(a) the individual is employed by the proprietor of an academy;

(b) the proprietor of the academy is satisfied that the individual has sufficient expertise to enable them to undertake such work appropriately; and

(c) the proprietor will provide the individual with appropriate training, support and guidance to ensure that they are able to undertake such work appropriately.’”

This amendment allows academies to maintain discretion about whether to employ teachers without QTS if they are subject matter experts and have received training from the academy.

Amendment 94, in clause 40, page 99, line 23, at end insert—

“(1A) In section 133 (requirement to be qualified), after subsection (5) insert—

‘(5A) Regulations made by the Secretary of State under this section must have regard to—

(a) the availability of qualified teachers in each school subject, and

(b) the necessity or desirability of specific sectoral expertise for teachers in each school subject’”.

This amendment would require the Secretary of State to take account of the availability of qualified teachers in each subject, and the desirability of specific sectoral expertise when making regulations under Clause 40.

Clause stand part.

[Neil O'Brien]

Sir Martyn Oliver gave us a good example of how the current freedoms are used on our first day of evidence. He said:

“In the past, I have brought in professional sportspeople to teach alongside PE teachers, and they have run sessions. Because I was in Wakefield, it was rugby league: I had rugby league professionals working with about a quarter of the schools in Wakefield at one point.” ––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 49, Q108.]

When he said that, I thought about when I was being taught rugby league not far away in Huddersfield, and how much we would have loved it if the professionals had come from Fartown to teach us. We were never told what the rules of rugby league were, nor was it revealed to us that there was a different type of rugby. It would have been amazing to have the professionals with us. That is just one example of how schools use non-qualified teacher status teachers in a brilliant way to bring in people who would otherwise never be in state schools.

Former headteacher David Thomas told us on the same day:

“I have concerns about limiting the number of people with unqualified teacher status who are not working towards qualified teacher status.”––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 92, Q199.]

He also said:

“I have worked with some fantastic people—generally late-career people in shortage subjects who want to go and give back in the last five to 10 years of their career—who would not go through some of the bureaucracy associated with getting qualified teacher status but are absolutely fantastic and have brought wonderful things to a school and to a sector. I have seen them change children’s lives.”––[Official Report, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 14 January 2025; c. 92, Q200.]

Rebecca Leek from the Suffolk Primary Headteachers Association gave another good example, telling us:

“I had to step in as an interim headteacher in Ipswich just prior to covid. I did not have an early years lead… There was someone who was not a qualified teacher, but who had been running an outstanding nursery… I took her on, and although she was not qualified, she was really excellent. I was able to do that because it was an academy school, and it was not an issue. In a maintained school, there is a specific need for a qualified teacher to teach in early years, so I would not have been able to take her on.”––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 83, Q174.]

Likewise, when I asked Julie McCulloch from the Association of School and College Leaders whether it was better to have a non-QTS teacher than no teacher, she noted that

“sometimes that is the case, particularly when we are looking at vocational subjects at the top end of secondary school and into colleges.”––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 22, Q44.]

When the Secretary of State was asked about this on “The News Agents” last night, she made exactly the same point. Indeed, the Government’s own impact assessment for the Bill says that

“some schools may struggle to find the teachers that they need”

as a result of the measure. It adds:

“From September 2026, we estimate this could affect around 700-1,250 potential entrants to the teaching profession per annum…This represents around 1-2% of all entrants to the teaching workforce in…2022.”

The only phrase I take issue with in that is “to the teaching profession”, because it is not the teaching profession as a whole but state schools that those potentially brilliant teachers will be locked out of. Private schools will not have the same burden put on them.

In attempting to construct an argument for that restriction, the impact assessment also says:

“Evidence suggests that being taught by a high-quality teacher can add almost half a GCSE grade per subject to a given pupil’s results”.

Obviously, we all know that high-quality teachers are key in education, but amazingly, the Department for Education does not go on to produce a single shred of evidence—it does not even attempt to give a tiny particle of evidence—that teachers without QTS are of low quality. When Ministers have been pressed on that, they do not demur; a policy is being adopted without any evidence at all.

There is also no estimate of what impact the creation of a new barrier to entry might have, particularly in the sorts of subject area that non-QTS teachers are employed in, which are often those that are more difficult to recruit for. Even the Government sort of acknowledge that the measure is not needed, as we find out by reading a footnote at the bottom of page 24 of the impact assessment, which was published halfway through the Bill Committee process. It is like “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”; the plans are available if we go to a locked toilet in an abandoned room on the bottom floor of a building that is open twice a year. The footnote reveals that:

“Unqualified teachers will not require QTS to work in further education, 14–19 and 16-19 academies, university technical colleges, studio schools and non-maintained school early years settings.”

My first question to the Minister is, if it is so desperately important to ban non-QTS teachers from our schools that we have to make primary legislation to do it, why are all those other types of school not included? How many non-QTS teachers are in those settings and will therefore be exempt?

Last month, data came out showing that the Government had recruited only 62% of their target number of students into initial teacher training for secondary schools, with particularly dramatic shortfalls in subjects such as physics, where only 30% of the target number had been recruited, business studies, design and technology, music, computing and chemistry. The National Education Union rightly talks about a

“global teacher recruitment and retention crisis”.

Most school systems across the world are battling to recruit teachers; if anyone googles “teacher shortage Ireland” or “teacher shortage Australia”—or “teacher shortage” pretty much anywhere—they will see what I mean.

Between 2011 and 2022, the last Government added 29,454 extra teachers to schools in England and grew the total school workforce by 96,555, or 11%. yet we still have a shortage of teachers in key subjects. About 3% of teachers are non-QTS, so this might seem like an odd time to make things harder for schools to recruit good teachers, especially in the specialist subjects where they tend to be used. To that end, our amendments seek to at least limit those counterproductive new restrictions, which have received a wide variety of criticisms from the sector. Amendment 73 proposes in a five-year grace period, because not requiring QTS can get teachers through the door into state education.

What message does the Government measure send to people who are mid-career, who might want to become teachers and give back but who cannot actually afford to do a PGCE or an apprenticeship? The Government’s plan will grandfather non-QTS teachers, but if they move school, they will have to get QTS. Amendment 74 would allow mobility and fix that. Amendment 75 would retain the freedom at least for shortage subjects; amendment 94, in the name of the hon. Member for Twickenham, also looks at that issue. Amendment 76 would allow academies to maintain discretion about whether to employ teachers without QTS if they are subject matter experts and have received training from the academy in question.

The bottom line is: where is the evidence—any evidence—that this is a problem in our education system, never mind one of the most important problems that we need to make primary legislation to resolve? Where is the evidence that DFE Ministers know better who to employ than school leaders themselves? They have not produced a single shred of evidence in the impact assessment.

I am afraid that this measure is another example of Ministers believing that they know best, but it will make recruitment challenges harder, create a barrier to entry into state schools, and prevent some great sports people, IT people and other people who want to give back from doing so. The unions may want this—they have for years—but it remains a mistake.

[Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)]

The hon. Member has twice referred to professional sportspeople, and the quote he read out at the beginning of his speech mentioned their contributing “alongside” teachers. Does he acknowledge that there is no prohibition on professional sportspeople or other experienced, inspiring professionals contributing alongside teachers? The issue is when they do so without that input. I kindly invite the hon. Member to correct that point.

[Neil O'Brien]

The hon. Lady has completely missed the point. This clause means that academy schools will no longer be able to employ people without QTS to do exactly the kind of inspiring things that Sir Martyn, at the start of our first evidence session, said he had used them so brilliantly to do.

[Catherine Atkinson]

The quote was “alongside” teachers. Having people there alongside teachers is not prohibited. I am sure that the Minister will clarify that matter if I am mistaken.

[Neil O'Brien]

To be clear, it will be illegal to employ them if they do not have QTS. People can turn up, but they cannot be employed. I do not know whether the hon. Lady is deliberately trying to muddy the water, or whether she has just missed the point. I notice that the Minister has not chosen to intervene. To be clear, the clause will stop Sir Martyn and people like him doing exactly what he said he had found it useful to do: employing non-QTS teachers, alongside teachers, to come and give back to their community.

During the course of my remarks, nobody has offered me a single shred of evidence that non-QTS teachers are bad teachers, are somehow a big problem in our schools, or are one of the top problems that we need to address. The clause will make things harder for schools, and it will mean that fewer pupils get a good lesson. Our amendments aim to stop this piece of vandalism, which is something that the unions wanted, that Ministers have given them, and that will be bad for our schools and our children.

[Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston talked about bottom lines and evidence. At the moment, the attainment gap between those who achieve and those who do not is widening across our country. For a number of years, and since the previous Government—the right hon. Member for East Hampshire was in fact—

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[Damian Hinds]

I agree with the hon. Lady 100%, just as I agreed with what the hon. Member for Southampton Itchen said entirely. Of course, there is not just a material difference between not being a qualified teacher and being a qualified teacher. It is like night and day, and what teachers learn about pedagogy and the experience they get during that time cannot be replicated on an online course or by reading books. She is right, too, that during covid millions of people up and down the country quite rightly developed, renewed or enhanced their respect for the teaching profession and for what teaching is capable of doing.

[Neil O’Brien]

rose—

[Damian Hinds]

I did say, “One last time,” but I cannot refuse my hon. Friend.

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[Neil O’Brien]

I thank my right hon. Friend, and I completely agree with him about the respect due to teachers. The hon. Member for Portsmouth North mentioned a “race to the bottom”, yet that is not what the Secretary of State is saying, and there is no evidence in any of what the Government are doing that there is a problem with the quality of non-QTS teachers. Indeed, we heard from Rebecca Leek at the start of our proceedings that it was a race to the top. She was getting one of the best people—she happened to be running a nursery and had not gone into teaching; but she knew all about the early years and was one of the best people one could possibly get, even though she was non-QTS. Another hon. Member on this Committee has said that there was “no reason” not to get QTS, but in many cases, there are reasons. Perhaps someone is at the very end of their career and is not going to go through all the bureaucracy to do that, in order to do the last two years of—[Interruption.] It was said—

[The Chair]

Order. Committee Members may speak as often as they like, so interventions need to be very short.

[Neil O’Brien]

To finish the point, sometimes there are reasons. Sometimes people want to give back; but by making it harder for them to go to state schools, it is state schools that will miss out—not independent schools or others.

[Damian Hinds]

The points that the hon. Members for Southampton Itchen and for Morecambe and Lunesdale made lead me to—you will be pleased to know, Sir Edward—the concluding section of my remarks, which is to pose the same question that all Opposition Members have posed: why? What is driving this? As with so many other aspects of the Bill—we heard about in the evidence sessions on day one—what is the problem we are trying to solve?

So I did a little research. I wondered—after 14 dark years of Conservatives in government, people being able to recruit teachers willy-nilly, a race to the bottom, blah, blah, blah—how huge the proportion had become of the teaching workforce without qualified status, which is something that Government Members, I and all of us know has such huge value, but which can also be complemented by people with other types of expertise and experience, who may help to augment those brilliant teachers with their qualified teacher status. What do you suppose the proportion was, Sir Edward?

--- Later in debate ---

[Amanda Martin]

I would like to understand whether the classes that are covered by teaching assistants and cover supervisors are included in the ratio of qualified or unqualified teachers, because things happen on a daily basis in our classrooms, and teachers are not always registered as the registered teacher—they might be covering a class or they might be a teaching assistant who has been asked to step up. I was asked why, and I was not able to answer at the beginning, but the Government still believe that the answer to the “Why?” question is that we need to ensure that all our children are taught by qualified teachers to get the best education. During the early 2010s, the gap across all school stages began to gradually close, but the attainment gap has since widened, with 10 years of progress wiped out—that is from a February 2024 Sutton Trust report.

[Neil O’Brien]

The hon. Lady says that all of our pupils deserve a QTS teacher, so why are the Government exempting those in further education, 14 to 19 and 16 to 19, academies, university technical colleges, studio schools, non-maintained schools and early years settings? If it is so desperately important, why are they exempting the settings that have more non-QTS teachers? The hon. Lady thinks that is a mistake, presumably.

[The Chair]

Is the hon. Lady going to respond?

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

If the hon. Gentleman were a parent at an FE college, would he have the same expectation, and does he understand why all these other schools are exempt?

[David Baines]

In an ideal situation, of course I want whoever is teaching my children to be qualified, and I do not think that is an unfair expectation.

Going back to a point that has been made, we have heard that that is already the situation in maintained schools. To bring what may be the conclusion of the debate back to its start by mentioning the rugby league—which I am very happy to talk about for many hours, if anyone will indulge me—in my constituency of St Helens North, our rugby league club does outstanding work across the community including in both maintained and academy schools, with children across the borough getting access to high-quality sports coaching. That will not change. At maintained schools across the country, pupils have access to specialist adults coming in and teaching them all sorts of things in the presence of qualified teachers as well. That will not change. This is about high expectations. Like the debate we had about branded items, most parents and families listening to this will be absolutely baffled at the Opposition and at how much time we are spending talking about something that, to most parents, should be a standard expectation —that the people teaching their children are qualified.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds]

You’re not.

[Neil O’Brien]

Straw man.

[Catherine McKinnell]

It has been referred to as a bureaucratic hurdle a number of times during this debate, which I think those in the teaching profession will find remarkable, as well as parents, as my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North said.

Amendment 73 could also lead to some unqualified teachers either leaving the profession or moving to another school before the five-year deadline that the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston suggests, rather than gaining the training and support to which all teachers should be entitled. That would risk having a negative impact on both the quality of teaching and the retention of teachers. We recognise that schools will still need some flexibility, so we are updating regulations to clarify that schools will still be able to recruit an unqualified teacher. Those teachers will have three terms to secure a place on an appropriate route to qualified teacher status, which will ensure that schools’ recruitment processes for teachers are not held up in any way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine McKinnell]

They will be updated to apply to the academies sector.

Turning to amendment 74, I appreciate the intention of the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston to ensure that the clause does not impact the working arrangements of unqualified teachers already working in academies. We agree that the requirement should not impact existing employment arrangements in academies, but we need to do that in a way that does not inadvertently affect the way that legislation already applies to local authority maintained schools and special schools.

We will, subject to the passage of the Bill, provide an exemption in regulations for any teacher who commences their employment with an academy school or trust prior to September 2026. Those teachers who move to another employer after that date will need to obtain qualified teacher status. We will set out an exemption in regulations for teachers who are employed to teach in a primary or secondary academy setting. That will mean that we are able to provide schools with reasonable time to prepare for any necessary changes to their recruitment procedures following changes to primary legislation.

On amendments 75 and 94, I recognise the challenges around teacher recruitment that we have inherited. However, the solution should not be to embed lower standards for shortage subjects in primary legislation. The amendments would create uncertainty for schools and teachers, as the teachers that schools employ could move in and out of the requirement to hold qualified teacher status depending on each year’s initial teacher training recruitment data. They would also change the requirements for qualified teacher status in local authority maintained schools and special schools, which are already required to employ teachers with qualified teacher status.

Under clause 40, schools will continue to be able to recruit teachers without qualified teacher status for any subject and then support those teachers to gain qualified teacher status through an appropriate route.

[Neil O’Brien]

It seems to me that the Government recognise the importance of pragmatism and that that is why they have chosen to exempt FE, 14-to-19 academies, 16-to-19 academies, university technical colleges, studio schools and non-maintained early years settings, and I would be grateful if the Minister would confirm that. I put it to her that the same argument that has caused Ministers to pragmatically exclude those types of schools is perhaps also an argument for excluding shortage subjects.

[Catherine McKinnell]

As the hon. Member is aware, qualified teacher status is the professional qualification for teachers in primary and secondary schools. Currently, it applies to local authority maintained schools and special schools. Under these proposals, it will apply to all primary and secondary state-funded schools in England. As he is aware, there are currently some exceptions to that in legislation. Those exceptions will continue to apply as the requirement is applied to the academy sector.

On the second part of the hon. Member’s question—

[Neil O’Brien]

The second part of my question was about the settings the Minister has chosen to exclude—let us be clear that this is a new exclusion from a new rule. They are settings where the share of non-QTS teachers is typically higher. We are still looking for the explanation of why some schools are different from others. These are schools with kids of the same age—schools with 14-year-olds—but some will have the new requirement and others will not. I am just trying to get Ministers to explain the logic of that. It seems to be pragmatic: there are not enough QTS teachers in those schools and Ministers do not want to create a problem by applying their new rules to those types of settings, of which there are many. I am just trying to make the same point about shortage subjects. I do not know if the Minister can see the connection.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I wonder if it would be helpful if I finished my comments, and then I will be more than happy to come back to the hon. Gentleman’s question if I have not answered it. I am currently responding to the amendments tabled by various Members, and then I will set out the rationale for clause 40. I would be more than happy to answer specific questions at the end if I have not anticipated them, which I hope to do.

Under clause 40, schools will continue to be able to recruit teachers without qualified teacher status for any subject and then support those teachers to gain qualified teacher status through an appropriate route. We are updating the regulations to clarify that they will have three terms to secure a place on an appropriate route to QTS. We believe that will give schools adequate flexibility for circumstances in which they need to recruit a subject expert who does not have qualified teacher status, but can be on a route to gaining it under these requirements.

We are focused on ensuring that we have enough qualified teachers available for schools. Obviously, the best recruitment strategy is retention, and that starts with making sure that teachers who are currently teaching have access to high-quality training and induction support. We have a range of measures beyond the Bill to address the recruitment and retention of teachers in shortage subjects, including a targeted retention incentive, worth up to £6,000 after tax, for mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing teachers in the first five years of their careers who choose to work in disadvantaged schools.

I have considered amendment 76, in the name of the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, but amending clause 40 in that way would build a loophole into the changes that the clause seeks to make, so the amendment effectively seeks to remove the clause. Clause 40 demonstrates our commitment to qualified teacher status and the professional status of teaching. High-quality teaching is the most important in-school factor for improving outcomes for all children. Great teachers need subject expertise, but they also need to understand how children learn, how to adapt age-specific approaches, and how to adapt their teaching to children in their class with a range of different needs.

This Bill will continue to raise standards. It builds on reforms made by previous Governments, who ensured that the essential knowledge associated with great teaching is incorporated into all primary and teacher training. We want to ensure that new teachers have the benefit of that knowledge, whichever type of school they work in. For the reasons I have outlined, I kindly ask hon. Members not to press their amendments.

Clause 40 will help us break down barriers to opportunity by making sure that new teachers are prepared for a successful teaching career through high-quality, regulated initial teacher training, followed by statutory induction to support their professional development. It will reaffirm the professional status of teaching and emphasise the importance of high-quality teaching for children’s outcomes.

Academies will need to ensure that new teachers entering the classroom have or are working towards qualified teacher status, followed by the completion of statutory induction. The qualified teacher status requirement will ensure that new teachers and experienced educators moving from other settings are supported to have long-term, successful teaching careers and are in the best possible position to have an impact on children’s life chances. It will not apply to any teacher who was recruited and employed before the implementation date, unless they move to a different employer. That will minimise any disruption to current academy employment arrangements.

The clause will ensure that teachers who gain qualified teacher status after the implementation date complete statutory induction so that they receive a programme of support that ensures that they meet standards and are well trained at the start of their careers. It will bring academies in line with maintained schools and will standardise the approach across state-funded schools for new teachers to the classroom to have or be working towards qualified teacher status, and to complete statutory induction.

I hope that answers the question about why we are doing this. To allay the concerns that have been raised, let me say that the exemptions that are currently in place for maintained schools will remain and will be extended to academies. I hope that answers that question.

[Neil O’Brien]

Will the Minister give way?

[Catherine McKinnell]

I was going to answer some more specific questions, but perhaps the hon. Gentleman wants to put his question again so that I appreciate what it is.

[Neil O’Brien]

The Minister talks about maintaining or continuing with various things but, to be clear, the clause will introduce a new exemption. This is not just about later phases of education; it is about children in normal secondary schools. The Government have chosen to exempt further education, 14-to-19 academies, 16-to-19 academies, UTCs, studio schools and non-maintained school early years settings. There are a heck of a lot of state schools that are being exempted from the things that the Ministers say are so desperately important. I still have not heard the reason why, if they are so important, they do not apply to them, too.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I have been pretty clear that we are basically bringing to the state school academy sector the same requirements that currently apply to the local authority maintained school sector and to special schools.

[Neil O’Brien]

The Minister says “ to the…academy sector”, but she is not doing it to 14-to-19 academies, to 16-to-19 academies, or to UTCs and studio schools, which are both types of academy. It is not, as she says, all academies; it is only some, and I do not know why.

[Catherine McKinnell]

High-quality teaching is available for those who want to teach in further education settings or early years settings. Early years teacher status is available for those wishing to specialise in teaching babies and young children. There is an optional professional status, qualified teacher learning and skills status, available to further education teachers. None of those things are the subject of this Bill, which deals specifically with primary and secondary schools in the state sector, including local authority maintained schools, special schools and academies.

There is a range of city technology colleges, studio schools and university technical colleges that offer a particular curriculum or focus in some respect on a particular artistic, technical or vocational education. We want to ensure that they have the flexibility that they require to employ specialist teachers with a range of expertise, knowledge and experience to deliver that education effectively.

The intention of the clause is to extend the already well-functioning qualified teacher status in the maintained sector to all primary and secondary schools so that parents know that their child has a core offer—it is not just about qualified teacher status; it is about the national curriculum, which we will get on to, and I am sure we will have additional debate on the teacher pay floor and conditions—and teachers who work in state primary and secondary schools, whether they are a maintained schools or academy schools, know that there is a core offer for them to work in that environment. The purpose of the clause is to provide clarity about what both a teacher and a parent can expect from a school.

I can go into more detail on specific points that hon. Members have made, but I believe I have covered most outstanding queries. I will leave it there, unless hon. Members have specific issues that they feel I have not addressed.

[Neil O’Brien]

I wish to press our amendment 75. To explain that briefly, across the public sector, be it in the civil service, the police or social work, we are trying to make it easier for talented people to come in from the outside, yet in this field we are moving in exactly the opposite direction. The Government are offering pragmatism in some fields, but not in the case of shortage subjects. I beg to ask leave to withdraw amendment 73, but I am keen to press our amendment 75.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendment proposed: 75, in clause 40, page 99, line 23, at end insert—

“(1A) In section 133 (requirement to be qualified), after subsection (1) insert—

‘(1A) Where a person is carrying out such work for the purposes of teaching a shortage subject, the requirement in subsection (1)(a) does not apply.

(1B) For the purposes of this section, “shortage subject” means any subject in relation to which the Department for Education’s recruitment targets for initial teacher training have been missed in the most recent year for which such statistics exist.’”—(Neil O’Brien.)

Question put, That the amendment be made.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Seventh sitting)

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Stephen Morgan]

The 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.

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine Atkinson]

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.

[Neil O'Brien]

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.

[Tom Hayes]

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?

[Neil O'Brien]

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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine Atkinson]

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.

[Neil O'Brien]

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.

[David Baines (St Helens North) (Lab)]

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.

[Neil O'Brien]

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?

[The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)]

It is up to the school.

[Neil O'Brien]

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.]

[The Chair]

Order.

[Neil O'Brien]

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.

[Amanda Martin]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Neil O'Brien]

I would also welcome an intervention from the Ministers if they want to say why this is wrong.

[Amanda Martin]

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.

[Neil O'Brien]

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.

[Amanda Martin]

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.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Fifth sitting)

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2025 Public Bill Committees

Provision of advice and other support

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

I beg to move amendment 23, in clause 7, page 12, line 13, at end insert —

“(3A) Where staying close support is provided, it must be provided with due regard to the wishes of the relevant person and a record must be kept of that person’s wishes.”

This amendment would require local authorities to take account of the wishes of the relevant young person when providing staying close support, and keep a record of those wishes.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 40, in clause 7, page 12, line 22, at end insert—

“(vi) financial support;

(vii) financial literacy”

Amendment 41, in clause 7, page 12, line 28, at end insert—

“(c) the provision of supported lodgings, where the young person and local authority deem appropriate.”

Clause stand part.

[Neil O'Brien]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. As we return to our work on the Bill with clause 7, I want to say that it is still a bit disappointing that we have been through Second Reading, and here we are on the third day of Committee, and we still do not have the impact assessment for the Bill, which could potentially answer some of the questions that we will be raising today. I know the Ministers want to do the right thing in trying to get it out of the relevant committee and published, and I hope they can succeed in doing that pretty soon.

On clause 7, no reasonable person would argue that a young person leaving care does not require some support to live independently. Young people who have not been in care often require years of support to live independently, and they are less likely to be doing so away from home and will be in less difficult circumstances. Again, the Opposition support the Government’s objectives in this clause to provide staying close support, but we have some questions about how it is to work in practice.

First, the Bill gives discretion to the local authority on whether this support is in the best interests of a young person’s welfare. Surely the assumption should be that the support is offered, and it should be the exception to withhold it. One advantage in having the onus turned round would be that the local authority would have to record and explain decisions not to offer that kind of support. What sort of criteria are the local authorities supposed to use to make those choices, and will that be consistent across the country?

Secondly, there is also a question about the process for identifying the person who is to help the young person. The Department’s policy summary quite rightly talks about identifying a “trusted person”, which is obviously very important to this kind of young person. By definition, some young people in care have pretty good reasons not to trust adults around them, so how are local authorities to go about identifying such a “trusted person”? Thirdly, and this is a small point, will there be digital options to support young people? These days, that is clearly the most frequent method that young people use to get information, particularly sensitive information. It gives young people a choice of how they find their information, and there is potentially an opportunity for some good practice here in setting up a good way of communicating with their trusted person.

That leads me to a wider point. As we have gone through this Bill, and we will continue to make this point, there is a risk that local authorities, when confronted with these new duties, will obey the letter of the law, but will they really fulfil the spirit and good intent of Ministers in passing the Bill? Can the Minister be clear that this is not supposed to be just another signposting service? As young people leave care, they need personal advocates who can help them articulate their needs with other agencies, not a phone number or email address to contact. They do not really need more leaflets; they need a human being who can be trustworthy and provide practical help and advice. Signposting can quickly turn into a doom-loop dead end and no help. How does the Minister also envisage the involvement of local charities, some of whom will have had quite long-term links with the young person in care, and how will that be funded?

I will come on to this point on other amendment, but I ask here what the Minister makes of the call from the Our Wellbeing, Our Voice coalition for a national wellbeing measurement of care leavers. That would obviously support some of those points.

Does the Government plan to accept the recommendation of the Family Rights Group to offer lifelong links to all care leavers to help them have better relationships with those that they care about? Again, is there an opportunity here? Many constituency MPs will know people who have been in care and then become carers. There is this cycle—I know several people like this, and I will talk about one of them later on today. If we are getting into the business of continuing relationships after leaving care, which is a good thing, I wonder whether that can become something bigger—a lifelong connection, for those who want it, obviously, as a way of getting much-needed carers to stay in the system.

There is a risk that these measures are all very local authority-focused rather than focused on the needs of the young person. Amendment 23 would ensure that the voice of the child is heard and that we have the information that we need to allow for continuous improvement. It is very light touch. Keeping a record of the person’s wishes would help to protect against the loss of knowledge when personnel change. If things are written down, it is easier for a new person to come in and pick up and understand a bit about what that young person has said they want. In the longer term, it also provides a resource for learning and performance improvement. I talked in the previous session about kaizen and continuous improvement. The amendment is designed to support that, to improve continuity and to make sure that the voice of the young people for whom this very sensible form of care is to be provided is heard.

[Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I rise to support clause 8 stand part. [Interruption.] Sorry, my mistake.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine McKinnell]

I appreciate the hon. Lady’s interest in this matter. We will produce the statutory guidance to make all this absolutely clear.

Before I come to clause 7 stand part, I want to respond to an additional question from the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston that I did not answer earlier. He asked about digital options and, as someone standing here using an iPad, I recognise the importance of that, particularly for young people. The local authorities already work with a range of digital options to connect with their care leavers, and we would certainly expect that to continue, and expect good practice to continue being developed and to be set out in the statutory guidance.

Turning to clause stand part, clause 7 requires each local authority to consider whether the welfare of former relevant children up to the age of 25 requires staying close support. Where this support is identified as being required, the authority must provide staying close support of whatever kind the authority considers appropriate, having regard to the extent to which that person’s welfare requires it.

Staying close support is to be provided for the purpose of helping the young person to find and keep suitable accommodation and to access services relating to health and wellbeing, relationships, education and training, employment and participating in society. This support can take the form of the provision of advice, information and representation, and aims to help to build the confidence and skills that care leavers need to be able to live independently.

The new duties placed on local authorities by this clause will not operate in isolation. They will be part of the existing legislative framework, which sets out the duties that every local authority already owes to its former children in care aged 18 to 25. This clause enhances and expands the arrangements for those children by supporting them to find long-term stable accommodation and access to essential wraparound services. The new statutory guidance will set out what the new requirements mean for local authorities and will draw on established good practice—for example, the role of a trusted person to offer practical and emotional support to care leavers.

On that basis, I hope I can rely on the Committee’s support for clause 7.

[Neil O’Brien]

I would like to push amendment 23 to a vote.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine McKinnell]

There will be a Minister from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. That area will form part of the discussions, I am sure, as the purpose of the group is to give the best chance to care leavers—this very vulnerable group of young people—and ensure that we as a Government are working collaboratively to make that effective.

We recognise how important it is that care leavers have clear information about the help and support they are entitled to, both from their local authority and central Government Department. We are therefore reviewing our published information to ensure that it is accessible and clear and that care leavers can quickly and easily understand and access all the support they are entitled to. Once that review has concluded, we will consider how best to publish this information. Therefore, I ask for the new clause to be withdrawn and urge the Committee to support clause 8.

[Neil O’Brien]

This is a good and sensible clause, and the Opposition support its inclusion in the Bill. I would note that although all these clauses are good, they come with an administrative cost.

We have already discussed the importance of ensuring that the measures are properly funded, but I want to press the Minister for a few more insights on clause 8. There is a list of details about the local offer—that it must be published, must anticipate the needs of care leavers—and it refers to how they will co-operate with housing authorities and provide accommodation for those under 25. This is all good stuff.

The discussion that we have just had prefigured the question that I wanted to ask, which is about co-operation with national bodies. The clause is quite focused on co-operation between local bodies and drawing up a clear offer. That is a good thing—although, obviously, some of those housing associations are quite national bodies these days.

In the “Keeping children safe, helping families thrive” policy paper published a while back, the Government set out an intention to extend corporate parenting responsibilities to Government Departments and other public bodies, with a list of corporate parents named in legislation following agreement from other Government Departments. When we were in government, we also said that we intended to legislate to extend corporate parenting responsibilities more broadly, so I wondered about that connection up to the national level. We have already had one excellent and very canny policy idea from my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire about setting the default for care leavers when it comes to how their housing payments are made. The Minister raised a good point about bursaries and making sure that care leavers are clear about what is available to them on that front. However, there is a whole host of other opportunities to write in to some of these—

[Damian Hinds]

Will my hon. Friend also comment on the particular situation of those young people from care who go on to university? Of course, come the holidays the vast majority of people in higher education go home, but the situation is very different for those who have been in care. Some enlightened universities—including the University of Winchester, in my own county—do very good work in this regard, but will he expand a little on how those young people in higher education can be supported with the offer?

[Neil O’Brien]

That excellent point is another example of exactly what we are talking about. In one sense, I regret not having an amendment that would insert a specific paragraph about the local offer from national organisations. On the other hand, it is pretty clear that the Minister is very interested in this question and is pursuing it. Anyway, there may even be scope to write that into the Bill as it goes through the Lords.

The DFE’s explanatory notes for the Bill say that, although the housing and children’s services departments are encouraged in guidance—in part 7 of the Children Act 1989, I think—to work together to achieve the common aim of planning and providing appropriate accommodation and support for care leavers, that is not happening consistently in practice; the Minister alluded to that.

My question to the Minister is: what do we know from current practice about where that does not happen and why not? It seems obvious, and something that every well-intentioned social worker—every person who works with care leavers—would want to do. What does the good model of effective provision of that support look like? Are there local authorities that are the best cases of that?

Other than providing the administrative and legislative hook for better gripping of this issue, I do not know whether the Minister has a specific plan to do anything else to try to achieve it more consistently—given that, of all the different things that one wants to join up for the care leaver, the provision of a safe place to live and a stable housing arrangements is probably No.1. Is anything more being done? Does the Minister have thoughts about how that can be done best and where it is done best? Where it has not been done as well as we would hope, why is that?

[Darren Paffey]

I appreciate your patience, Mr Stringer—this is not the first time I have stumbled over Committee procedure and no doubt it will not be the last. I welcome the Minister’s comments and the inclusion of clause 8, which I strongly support. I want to address the sentiment of new clause 40 as well.

The extension of the requirements around accommodation, extending the Children and Social Work Act 2017, requires councils to publish that local offer. That is crucial. Many of us have served in local government; it is at that local level that these crucial services, which can often make or break opportunities for care leavers, are delivered. The clause also takes steps towards making good on the Prime Minister’s commitment to guarantee care leavers a place to live.

We would all recognise, from the context of our own constituencies, that the barriers faced by care-experienced young people are numerous. The likelihood that good outcomes in life will be harder for them to achieve is simply a fact. It is absolutely right to bolster the local offer, as clause 8 seeks to do. The new provisions will further strengthen what many local authorities, including my own in Southampton, have begun to do over a number of years. As the right hon. Member for East Hampshire suggested, there are measures of good practice under local councils that we now ought to be bringing into this standardisation of the offer.

In terms of a national offer, the new clause certainly has its merits and it is something good to aim for. I had the opportunity to speak to the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby), who is responsible for children and families and whose remit this issue comes under. She has agreed to meet me to explore it further, but as my hon. Friend the Minister for School Standards has already said, there is a cross-ministerial group. I really welcome the work that it is doing to take these measures forward, because building on the existing measures, which strengthen that national focus, is crucial. It says to young people with care experience that they matter.

I have worked very closely with young people in care over the years, and I know that too many of them feel let down by the systems there to protect them. This is about showing that the Government get what it is like for them, are focused on acting for their good and doing so from the very top. Having that national focus goes a long way towards making those people’s journey to adulthood stronger and as smooth as possible and towards ensuring that they are fully supported to thrive.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I look forward to working through the measures in this landmark Bill with all Members, as has been the spirit so far.

The children’s social care market is not working effectively. The Competition and Markets Authority and the independent review of children’s social care recommended a regional approach to planning and commissioning children’s care places. My Department will support local authorities to increase the number of regional care co-operatives over time. As Members will have noted, the clause refers to those as “regional co-operation arrangements”. As a last resort, the legislation will give the Secretary of State the power to direct local authorities to establish regional co-operation arrangements.

Where a direction is in place, regions will be required to analyse future accommodation needs for children, publish sufficiency strategies, commission care places for children, recruit and support foster parents, and develop or facilitate the development of new provision to accommodate children. We expect regional care co-operatives to gain economies of scale and to harness the collective buying power of individual local authorities. I hope that the Committee will agree that this clause should stand part of the Bill.

[Neil O’Brien]

Regional co-operation is something that the previous Government were extremely enthusiastic about and worked to build up, so the Minister will not be surprised to hear that we support the clause. The previous Government’s “Stable Homes, Built on Love” policy paper said that the Government would work with local authorities to test the use of regional care co-operatives—regional groupings of authorities to plan, commission and deliver care places—in two areas. Those two pathfinders would trial an approach within the legal framework, with a view to rolling it out nationally following evaluation as soon as parliamentary time allowed. Were we in office, I suspect that we would be very much considering the same clause. This Government have announced that those two pathfinders are going ahead, in Greater Manchester and the south-east, from this summer.

When we consulted about the idea—it is a good idea —there was a lot of support, but there were also a lot of concerns and questions about the size of the groups, the risk that they would be too removed from the child, and the loss of relationships with small providers in particular. As the Minister said, this is a recommendation from previous work, including from the independent review of children’s social care, which we commissioned. Obviously, we hope that such groups will be useful in providing local authorities with greater purchasing power and more options when they are securing accommodation for children in care, but we think it is important to be clear about the objectives to avoid any unintended consequences. I have come to think that, often, it is when we all agree that we are doing a good thing that we should ask ourselves the difficult questions to ensure that we are not making a mistake.

The key issue in the “children’s home market”—I put that in scare quotes, because I hesitate to use the phrase in the current context—is a lack of supply, which leads to children being placed far away from their roots and support networks in accommodation that does not always match their care plan. We then see children going missing and having repeated placement moves. I wonder whether the Minister will put on record in Committee the aims for the regional care co-operatives, other than purchasing power, and how they will address the other issues.

Will the Minister respond to some specific issues raised in our consultation? One issue is that it is harder for smaller providers and specialist charities, which are obviously part of the offer for children in care at the moment, to engage with regional care co-operatives. What does he think about that risk and what does he plan to do about it?

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds]

Again, as hon. Members have said, we support this approach and it is the approach that we were taking. It is also true that when everybody agrees on something, it is usually the point of most danger for making bad law. It is important to have these Committee proceedings and proper scrutiny.

I was personally never keen on the name of regional co-operatives, although I do not think the word “co-operative” actually appears in the Bill. We can, of course, have co-operation without having a co-operative. This legislation is actually about regional co-operation arrangements.

There are three different types of potential co-operation arrangement: first, for strategic accommodation functions to be carried out jointly between two different local authorities; secondly, for one to carry out the duties on behalf of all; and thirdly, for a corporate body, effectively a separate organisation, to be created to do that. I imagine that Government Members will have different views depending on which of those three forms the arrangements take. Will the Minister say which of those he expects to be most common? As well as the pilots, there have no doubt already been formal and informal conversations with local authority leaders in children’s services in many different areas.

I am keen to know how this arrangement is different from some arrangements that may already take place. For example, the tri-borough children’s services arrangement in London—I will try and get this right—between Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, and Hammersmith and Fulham. Presumably, some of those functions are administered in common there, so how will this be different?

[Neil O’Brien]

I probably should have asked the Minister about scale. In the two pilots, we have Greater Manchester, which is just under 3 million people, and the south-east, which is roughly 3 million people. I do not know what the Government’s expectations about scale are and whether they would continue to support something like the tri-borough arrangement, which is obviously much smaller.

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend, as ever, makes a very apt point. Where we end up on that continuum of scale depends on what we are going after most. Of course, we want all those things. For purchasing power, a bigger scale is better, but for close and easy working relationships, a smaller scale is sometimes better. When we are talking about children, and the placement of vulnerable children, that may well push us towards the smaller end of the scale.

Perhaps it is possible to perform different functions at different levels, with some functions still being performed by the individual local authority. Even then, as my hon. Friend often rightly says, there is an enormous difference in scale between London local authorities, which are actually quite small even though they are in our largest city, and Birmingham, which is one enormous authority. It might be argued that doing some things at a sub-local authority level makes sense in a very large local authority area, but as I say, it might be possible to do some things as the single local authority, some things at a larger level, and some things—presumably principally in terms of purchasing leverage—on a wider scale again.

If regional co-operation arrangements are not materially different in practice from something that already exists in co-operation between local authorities, even if that is on a smaller scale than what is envisaged, is legislation actually necessary? If it is not, we probably should not legislate. I would like to understand a bit more about the legislative basis that is currently missing.

Finally, the Bill sets out that the Secretary of State may add to the definition of the strategic accommodation functions that we have listed in proposed new section 22J(3) of Children Act 1989. What type of additional functions does the Minister have in mind?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Morgan]

My apologies. I did know that, but I was trying to be impressive by remembering the hon. Lady’s constituency and I got it badly wrong.

On the hon. Lady’s point about where placements should be, local authorities will continue to have the same statutory duties to find the most appropriate place for looked-after children, including that they should live near home, so far as is reasonably applicable. Regional care co-operatives will assist local authorities with these duties. Placement shortage is a key driver of children being placed in homes far from where they live; regional care co-operatives should improve that by increasing local and regional sufficiency, making more places available locally for children who need them.

[Neil O’Brien]

Will the Minister confirm that—as I think is the case—the Government would use their powers under the clause to impose regional co-operation agreements only as a last resort, and that we would not push this on everybody who does not want it?

[Stephen Morgan]

The shadow Minister is absolutely correct. We want to work collaboratively with local authorities in rolling this out. We will not force local authorities to do so. I thank him for enabling me to make that clear.

Question put.

[The Chair]

I have put the Question. I am sorry, but you have missed the opportunity.

Question agreed to.

Clause 9 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 10

Use of accommodation for deprivation of liberty

[Neil O’Brien]

I beg to move amendment 24, in clause 10, page 16, line 39, at end insert —

“(8A) After subsection (9) insert —

‘(10) Where a child is kept in secure accommodation under this section, the relevant local authority has a duty to provide therapeutic treatment for the child.’”

This amendment would place a duty on local authorities to provide treatment for children in secure accommodation.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss clause stand part.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

We have come to a particularly serious clause—not that the other clauses are not serious, but the use of deprivation of liberty orders for children is always deeply troubling, as is the rise in the number of children who are subject to them. I share the wish of the Children’s Commissioner to see an end to this practice and an end to the use of unregistered provision.

We have seen an increase in the number of young children—including two aged seven last year and 200 under 13—given deprivation of liberty orders. There is nothing in the Bill to differentiate by the child’s age or stage. What consideration has the Minister given to that point? There is something about the use of the orders on very young children that is particularly striking.

When a young child goes into secure accommodation, the Secretary of State has to sign it off, but no sign-off is required from the Secretary of State on deprivation of liberty orders. Why not? The Government are keen on consistency elsewhere in the Bill. Will they bring the same consistency to this clause?

More broadly, do we not need greater clarity on the mechanism for restricting children’s liberty outside a secure institution? I am sure that Members of the other place will be very interested in that question. As the Children’s Commissioner has written, some of the children concerned have physical and learning disabilities, and many are at risk of criminal or sexual exploitation or both. Will the Minister act on the Children’s Commissioner’s recommendation and introduce a proper legal framework and guidance? We believe that much more clarity is needed in the Bill on therapeutic care for those who are under a deprivation of liberty order. Historically, there has been a lot of focus on containment. This amendment is, I suppose, our legislative prod to take the opportunity to think about what therapeutic help a child needs and how to deliver it.

--- Later in debate ---

We anticipate that this measure will reduce the use of deprivation of liberty orders applied for under the High Court’s inherent jurisdiction and ensure that children benefit from the protections afforded by a statutory scheme, with a framework of clear safeguards and mandatory review points, to ensure that no child is deprived of their liberty longer than necessary. Additionally, this change will signal to local authorities, other key sector partners and providers of children’s residential provision Parliament’s endorsement of and commitment to these placement options, supporting them to grow and reducing dependency on poor-quality, expensive, unregistered placements. This will ensure that some of the most vulnerable children are kept safe and given the support to get on well in life, improving their lived experience by ensuring that there is appropriate support, including community links, health access and so on, to assist them to develop to their full potential.

[Neil O’Brien]

I am grateful to the Minister for his informative speech, but can I press him to respond to the specific points made by CAFCASS and the Children’s Commissioner? The Minister is alluding to some of them as he goes along. The first is about requiring explicit Secretary of State approval beforehand. The second is about specifying the frequency of review, particularly for younger children. The third is about having an automatic requirement for children’s protection plans as the child comes out. The fourth, which the Minister has alluded to, is about them being put into illegal settings, and whether something legislative should be done at this point to stop that from happening at all.

[Stephen Morgan]

I am coming to the end of my speech and hope to answer the points that the Opposition spokesperson made. I will certainly take away the issues that he raised.

I thank all Members for their contributions and questions on this very important matter. On consistency, the views of the Children’s Commissioner and age, I know that this point was raised in the other place only yesterday by a former Minister, and I am grateful for that. It is worth saying here, too, that the child rights impact assessment is informing our work on the Bill. I give the shadow Minister the assurance today that I will take on board these comments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

Is the child rights impact assessment for the Bill published so that we can see it?

[Stephen Morgan]

There is no legal obligation for England to publish that assessment, but we are certainly using it to inform our work on the Bill.

[Neil O’Brien]

I think Ministers have said in previous sittings that it will be published during the process of scrutiny, along with the impact assessment. Is that still the case?

[Stephen Morgan]

I am referring to the conducted children’s rights impact assessment, where children are directly impacted by the policies and/or particular groups of children and young people are more likely to be affected by others. As I mentioned, there is no requirement to publish these documents in England. However, the documents are currently under review and we will advise on our next steps shortly. More broadly, with regards to the impact assessments, these will be published in due course.

[Neil O’Brien]

I thought I had heard Ministers say previously that they were planning to publish this for our benefit—that we would get both the impact assessment and the children’s rights assessment. Perhaps it is me who is sowing confusion and the Minister may still intend to publish this document. I cannot see any reason why the Government would not publish it, so can I get an assurance that that is going to be published?

[Stephen Morgan]

To state this clearly, the impact assessment has not yet been published but is obviously informing our work. Obviously, various different assessments are undertaken and I will certainly get back to the hon. Member on those points.

[Stephen Morgan]

To be clear, we will be publishing the regulatory impact assessments. We will certainly be using the evidence from the children’s rights impact assessments to inform our work.

I turn to the points raised by the Opposition spokesperson on placements of children under the age of 13. Depriving a child of their liberty must always be a last resort, but it is sometimes necessary to keep that child and others safe. These children are some of the most vulnerable in our society. We must do all that we can to keep them safe and help them get on well in life. When a child under the age of 13 is deprived of their liberty and placed in a secure children’s home, the local authority must obtain approval from the Secretary of State before applying to the court. That requirement is set out in regulations that reflect the added seriousness of depriving children so young of their liberty.

The Opposition spokesperson and the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) also made a number of broader points about child protection plans and deprivation of liberty. Local authorities’ care-planning duties are clear that when there are looked-after children, they must have a long-term plan for a child’s upbringing, including arrangements to support their health, education, emotional and behavioural development, and their self-care skills.

The statutory guidance “Working together to safeguard children 2023” is clear about the actions that local authorities and their partners should take, under section 47 of the Children’s Act 1989, if a child is suffering or likely to suffer significant harm, as well as the support that should be provided under section 17. If there is a concern about a child’s suffering, or if a child is likely to suffer significant harm, the local authority has a duty to make an inquiry under that Act. “Working together to safeguard children” sets out the actions that the local authority and their partners must take when there are child protection concerns. That includes putting in place child protection plans when concerns are submitted. I hope that the Committee agrees that the clause should stand part.

[Neil O’Brien]

I hope that we can clear up the confusion about whether we will see the children’s rights assessment. I cannot see any good reason why we would not be able to see that perfectly routine assessment. None of these things is the end of the world, but not having the impact assessment of the thing that we are quite deep into line-by-line scrutiny of seems to further compound this problem. Obviously, no one can defend that; it is not good practice.

I slightly pre-empted what the Minister said—he had scribbled some last remarks—but I was glad that he came to some of the points raised by CAFCASS and the Children’s Commissioner. I raised them partly because I know that their lordships will be extremely interested in these specific questions. There probably is scope for improvement of this clause to do some of those other good things, because this is such a serious issue for those very young children.

We will not vote against clause stand part, but I will press our amendment to a vote. I heard what the Minister said, but I just make the point that there is scope for improvement in the clause, and I suspect that their lordships will provide it.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Morgan]

Clauses 11 and 12 will strengthen Ofsted’s regulatory powers to allow it to act at pace and scale when that is in the best interests of children. Specifically, clause 11 strengthens Ofsted’s powers to hold provider groups—parent undertakings, in legislation—to account for the quality of the settings that they own and control. This ensures that Ofsted can take the quickest and most effective action to safeguard vulnerable children, without adding duplication within the existing regime. It will allow Ofsted to look across provider group settings as a whole and take action at provider group level, rather than being limited to doing so setting by setting as it is now. It will also ensure that a provider group is accountable for the quality of the settings that it owns.

Where Ofsted reasonably suspects that requirements are not being met in two or more settings owned by the same provider group, it will be able to require senior people in the provider group to ensure improvements in multiple settings. The requirement applies both to settings operated by a single provider and to multiple providers owned by the same group. Ofsted will be able to request that the provider group develops and implements an implementation and improvement plan to ensure that quality improves. The plan will need to address the issues identified by Ofsted and be approved by Ofsted if it is satisfied that the plan will be effective in addressing the issues.

The clause gives the Secretary of State the power to make regulations to provide that non-compliance by the provider group means that the providers that it owns are not fit and proper persons to carry on a setting. That will prevent a person from being registered in relation to new settings if their owner has failed to comply with the relevant requirements under these provisions. That should act as a deterrent and ensure compliance with the requirements.

Clause 12 gives Ofsted the power to issue monetary penalties to providers that have committed breaches of requirements, set out in or under the Care Standards Act 2000, that could also be prosecuted as criminal offences, including operating a children’s home without registering with Ofsted. Ofsted will also be able to issue a provider group with a fine for non-compliance with the requirements set out in clause 11. The fine will be at Ofsted’s discretion and is unlimited in legislation. That will act as a significant deterrent, so that provider groups comply with these requirements. Clause 12 ensures that Ofsted has an alternative to prosecution where that is currently the only enforcement option against those seeking to run a children’s home without registration. Ofsted will not be able to impose a monetary penalty on a person for the same conduct where criminal proceedings have been brought against them in relation to that conduct.

To act as a deterrent and to ensure transparency for the public, the clause gives the Secretary of State the power, by regulations, to require Ofsted to publish details about the monetary penalties that it has issued. Ofsted must also notify local authorities when a monetary penalty has been issued, as it is currently required to in relation to other enforcement actions that it takes. Finally, the clause provides that the issue of a monetary penalty could be used as grounds for cancellation of registration.

[Neil O’Brien]

We are entering a whole new section of the Bill. I will make a number of points now that we could come back to when we debate future clauses, but I hope we will not have to. I hope that we can have discussions about the principle and philosophy now and we might be able to move faster later, but we can come back to them if necessary.

As we turn to the clauses dealing with children’s homes, I want to start by checking that the Minister has the same basic understanding of the situation, and the same philosophical take on what we are trying to do, as I do. First and most importantly, there is a question about the underlying structural problems that have driven high costs for local authorities in the provision of residential care for children and young people, and there is a second question about the best approach to tackling that, both legislatively and non-legislatively.

On the first, does the Minister agree with me, at least in principle, that the main issue driving the high costs is a shortage of foster care, which is driving local authorities to send children into expensive children’s homes at best, or into unregistered provision at worst? Research by Ofsted in 2022 suggested that residential care was part of the care plan for just over half of the children whose cases it reviewed. To put that the other way round, almost half of children who ended up in residential care should ideally not have been there. Crucially, the research shows that the original plan was for over one third of children to go into foster care.

Although the Bill makes changes to the provision of information about kinship care, which is good, there is nothing that will produce the step change that we need to increase the number of foster carers, which is the thing that would really take down the demand and the high costs. That point is common to the discussions that we will have about cost-capping social workers, cost-capping individual care homes and reviewing whole entities. I do not think that those measures are bad; I just do not think that they are ultimately the underlying solution. That is a point that the Committee will hear me make several times today.

In his independent report commissioned by the previous Government, the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister) highlighted that in the year ending March 2021,

“160,635 families came forward to express an interest in becoming a foster carer, and yet just 2,165 were approved”.

That is just 1.3% making it through. It might be that some of those were just initial approaches and not all of those people were deadly serious, but that is still a very small share. He continued:

“Local authorities perform a wide range of roles and appear to be struggling to provide specialist and skilled marketing, recruitment, training and support for such an important group of carers. In 2020/21 recruitment and retention among independent fostering agency services led to a net increase in capacity of 525 additional households and 765 additional foster care places. In contrast, there has been a decrease in capacity of 35 households and 325 places in local authorities over the same period”.

By definition it is quicker, and in quite a lot of cases better, to provide foster care than to build a new children’s home. I want to press the Minister on what he thinks is the explanation for that 99% gap between those expressing an interest in fostering and final approvals. What is he doing to close that gap? He will be aware that there is a perception that it is almost impossible to become approved as a foster carer. We looked at this in my family some years ago. We started in on it through my work as a constituency MP; I have met many constituents who are foster carers. They are incredible people and I pay tribute to them. A woman I know well has fostered 70 children as well as adopting. I honestly think these people are amazing.

The Government really need to use the Bill—this rare legislative slot, as one of the Ministers said—to increase the number of foster and kinship carers. Publishing information is good, but it will not change much unless it is accompanied by a radical attitude to approvals by local authority social work teams. When the alternative—which we are getting to in this clause—is children being sent miles from home, placements breaking down, children going missing and high costs to local authorities, there is obviously a burning platform for change.

If I were the Minister—he is free to take this suggestion or not—I would commission a month-long desktop review to look at the pipeline and all the decisions to reject applications to be foster carers that got fairly far down the track, and understand what can be learned from them. That could shape amendments either here or in the other place and be a huge benefit to him. I can think of a senior official in a Government Department—someone the Government trust to run a major public service—who has two kids, provides a loving home and wanted to foster but was turned down. There are many such cases. Everyone knows the phrase “too many books in the house”, but I strongly encourage Ministers to dig into the underlying question of why we lose so many opportunities to get the foster carers that would take off the pressure that we are trying to take off with these clauses.

A key recommendation of the independent review of children’s social care led by the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington was to introduce mixed models combining residential and foster care, particularly for older children, who are the fastest growing part of this cohort. That was part of our brief for the initial pathfinder sites for the regional care co-operatives, which I mentioned in the debate on a previous clause. What assessment has the Minister made of that approach? What impact does he think its adoption might have? Is there any interesting early data from the pilots in Greater Manchester and the south-east?

Speaking of mixed models, I encourage the Minister to look at the incredible work of the Royal National Children’s SpringBoard Foundation, which, as he knows, does amazing work looking after care-experienced and edge-of-care children in a network of state and independent schools. It has been working with the DFE since 2020—something I am very proud that we brought in—and has provided incredible, transformative opportunities for disadvantaged young people. I encourage the Minister to build on that and go further.

On the specifics of clause 11, after the terrible abuse of children supposedly in the care of the Hesley Group, it is absolutely right that the Government are trying to identify systemic safeguarding problems in organisations that manage multiple children’s homes, independent fostering agencies and residential special schools. Our only concern, which is quite serious, is that we should allow for rapid action, not something that drags on and becomes a time and resource-consuming process.

I heard what the Minister said in introducing the clause about providing an alternative to prosecution, but I do not want to lose sight of the importance of prosecution. My noble Friend Baroness Barran told me that when she was a Minister in the Department for Education, she was already able to request inspections of every home in a group where one was judged to be failing, and did so on at least one occasion. Ultimately, we need experienced people to go into a home quickly and see what is actually happening. I think this is within the spirit of what the Minister said, but I hope he would agree that there is often no better alternative to actual inspection and actual prosecutions.

To use an example from a very similar area, the Department can also request an “improvement plan”, which is the main vehicle proposed in these clauses, in the case of independent schools, but that does not always work well in practice. The reasons for that are instructive for the kinds of issues that I hope Ministers will think about here. What ends up happening is that plans are sent in varying degrees of adequacy, and time—in some cases literally years—can be wasted with a lot of letter writing back and forth. I urge the Minister to think about the action he wants in those kinds of cases. Imagine being in the middle of a drawn-out improvement plan process in another case like the Hesley Group case—and that is before the inevitable appeals, which the clauses provide for, kick in.

We have not tabled an amendment to do this—I wonder, though, about the other place—but we think that the Minister needs to confine the improvement plan idea to more minor administrative cases or lower-level concerns. That is where it might be more appropriate. We worry that we might get similar processes to those that we have seen in independent schools, where we have a resource-intensive, rather bureaucratic and slow process that goes on for a long time with a lot of back and forth and appeals. Ultimately, we sometimes just need to get to the point. That is our broad concern.

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) has asked a very important question. The Government funded the pay award for schools and academised sixth-form colleges but, unlike last year, not for stand-alone sixth-form colleges. That decision has already led to seven days of industrial action. After threats of judicial review, the Department for Education offered some additional funding, but only £7 million of the £19 million that is needed. That funding gap has led to a pay gap, and as a result the National Education Union has more strikes planned and the NASUWT is also balloting. What is the Government’s plan to end the dispute and end the damage that is being done to those students?

[Janet Daby]

The hon. Member will know that industrial relations are a matter for sixth-form colleges themselves, in co-ordination with the sector-led national bargaining arrangement through the national joint council. We encourage open and constructive dialogue by all parties in the best interests of staff and students during this critical transition period.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

The Government have said in answer to written questions that they have a forecast for the number of apprenticeships but that they will not publish it for Members to see, which is a shame. At the last oral questions, the Secretary of State said it was still the Government’s policy to allow employers to spend 50% of their apprenticeship levy money on other things. Is not the reason the Government will not publish their forecast for the number of apprenticeships that their policy will lead to a sharp reduction in the number of people starting apprenticeships?

[Janet Daby]

We are very confident about what the Government are doing with apprenticeships. Our levy-funded growth and skills offer, with apprenticeships at the heart, will deliver greater flexibility for learners and employers in England, aligned with our industrial strategy, creating routes into good skilled jobs in growing industries. As a first step, that will include shorter duration and foundation apprenticeships in targeted sectors.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

The decision not to compensate nurseries for the national insurance increase has already pushed providers “to the brink”, according to the Early Years Alliance, and many in schools, including schools with nurseries, are worried that they will be next. Local councils received a bill of £1.8 billion as a result of the national insurance increase, but received compensation for less than a third of that because the indirect costs were not covered. Can the Minister reassure the House that compensation for the increase will cover all the costs to schools, not just the direct costs?

[Stephen Morgan]

The Government have announced that public sector employers will receive compensation for the increase in their national insurance contributions, including school-based nurseries and maintained nursery schools, but in line with the arrangements for other areas, there will be no additional NICs funding beyond that.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Third sitting)

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Ian Sollom]

Broadly, the Liberal Democrats welcome the new requirement on local authorities to offer family group decision making, which gives those who care for children, including family members, the opportunity to be involved in putting together that plan for their welfare. The provision strengthens the right to hear the child’s voice, which as we heard in the evidence session is important.

We have a few concerns. As the provision is currently laid out, it might be a little ambiguous. There are lots of different models of family group decision making around, so we would like clarification from the Minister about the principles and standards that are set out in regard to what it actually looks like in practice. Cases where there is domestic violence or coercive control can be hard to identify, so we would like guidance on the principles around that.

We would also like to encourage local authorities to probe into what family group decision making should look like and who should be involved. One example that came to us from the Family Rights Group was of Azariah Hope, who was a care-experienced young parent very frustrated about how she was not offered a family group conference because the local authority presumed that she did not have a family or friend network to draw on.

Amendment 36 strengthens the right for the child to be involved, but still gives the local authority the power to decide on the appropriateness of who should be involved. We would like to hear more from the Minister about what those principles and standards should be for taking family group decision making forward.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. As this is the first amendment on the first day of our line-by-line consideration, I will briefly say that although the Opposition have lots of serious questions about the second part of the Bill, there is much in part 1 of the Bill that we completely support.

In fact, a lot of the Bill builds on work that the last Government were doing. To quote the great 1980s philosopher Belinda Carlisle, we may find that

“We dream the same thing

We want the same thing”.

It may not always seem like that, because we are going to ask some questions, but they are all about improving the Bill. A lot of them are not our questions, but ones put to us by passionate experts and those who work with people in these difficult situations.

The relevant policy document sets out why it is so important to get this clause right. It highlights the number of serious case incidents, which was 405 last year, and the number of child deaths, which was 205—every single one a terrible tragedy. Around half of those deaths were of very young children, often under 2; they are physically the most vulnerable children, because they cannot get away.

Our amendment 18 seeks to make clause 1 work in practice. It reflects some, but not all, of the concerns that we heard in oral evidence on Tuesday from Jacky Tiotto, the chief executive of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service. The clause states:

“Before a local authority in England makes an application for an order…the authority must offer a family group decision-making meeting”.

In general, those meetings are a good thing, and we all support them—the last Government supported them; the new Government support them. They are already in statutory guidance.

However, we have two or three nagging worries about what will happen when, as it were, we mandate a good thing. The first is about pace. As I said in the oral evidence session, I worry that once family group decision making becomes a legal process and right, people will use the courts to slow down decision making, and that local authorities will sometimes worry about fulfilling this new requirement—although the meetings are generally a good thing—when their absolute priority should be getting a child away from a dangerous family quickly.

A long time ago, when I used to work with people who were street homeless, I met a woman who was a very heavy heroin user and a prostitute. She was about to have—[Interruption.]

[Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Neil O’Brien]

I will give way; I have finally managed to get my train of thought in order again.

[Lizzi Collinge]

How common does the hon. Gentleman think the situation that he describes is across our constituencies? Does he accept our understanding of that situation? We see it ourselves in our constituencies and in our inboxes.

[Neil O’Brien]

I thank the hon. Member for the intervention. A lot of us will have seen such situations where there is not a minute to lose. To complete my sentence, the woman was about to have—I think—her third or fourth child. This is not to criticise her, but a child would not have been safe with her for a single minute. The priority has to be getting children away from people who are dangerous to them.

I worry about pace, and our amendment 18 makes the importance of pace clear. It would insert:

“Nothing in this section permits an extension to the 26-week limit for care proceedings in section 14(2)(ii) of the Children and Families Act 2014.”

I was struck by what the head of CAFCASS told us on Tuesday. She said that the Bill “probably could move” the requirement for the family group decision-making meeting

“down to the point at which there are formal child protection procedures starting so that the family can get to know what the concerns are, work with the child protection plan for longer, understand what the concerns are and demonstrate whether the protection can happen.”––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 31, Q68.]

This is the bit of her evidence—she knows a lot more about this than I do—that struck me:

“if the Bill were to stay as drafted at the edge of care, I think there are risks for very young children, and babies in particular. The meetings will be difficult to set up. People will not turn up. They will be rescheduled”.––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 31, Q68.]

She went on:

“For very young children when you are concerned, if they are still with the parents, which is sometimes the case, or even with a foster carer, you want permanent decisions quickly. That does not negate the need for the family to be involved. You can have it much earlier because you have been worried for a while at that point.”––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 31, Q70.]

Our amendment does not encompass all those concerns, but it does seek to ensure that this very sensible provision in clause 1 does not slow down measures to keep children safe.

Given that there we were told a few other things by CAFCASS, I should also be clear about what our amendment does not do. It does not address my concerns about people and families—indeed, extended families—using the move to primary legislation to bring about legal action, such as a judicial review, against the decisions of local authorities, or using lawfare or the threat of legal action against local authorities, perhaps to force their way into a room when most of the social workers and other people involved would much rather they were not there because they are inappropriate people. Protecting against that risk is legally much more complicated, which is why the Government have not tabled an amendment on that point.

Ministers may say that the legal worries are less than I am supposing, but will they agree to look at this issue? The last thing we want, once this goes from being guidance to being statute, is people saying, “I’ve got a right to this meeting. You didn’t have me in the meeting. I am going to challenge this decision,” and all that sort of stuff. Hopefully, there is no risk, but I would love to see Ministers consider that point.

Nor does our amendment address moving meetings earlier in the process. As drafted, the clause encourages LAs to put pretty much all their cases to a meeting at the pre-proceeding stage—it has to be done before it goes to court—but lots of the people we heard evidence from think it would be desirable to have the meetings earlier, before the case enters the much less consensual pre-court process. By the time the case gets to the pre-proceedings stage, it is normally pretty clear that it will be hard to reach an amicable solution.

As I said, these questions do not come from us, but from people who know more about the issues than I do. I would like Ministers to respond to the points made by various experts and official groups. The head of CAFCASS said on Tuesday that we should move the point at which the Bill applies to when a section 7 report is ordered. I was really struck by her saying that, because it would be quite a big change to the Bill. She was very specific, however, and she knows a lot about the issue. She said:

“One suggestion I would like to make on CAFCASS’s behalf is that family group decision making should be offered to families where the court has ordered a section 7 report—a welfare report that, if ordered to do so, the local authority has to produce for the court in respect of what it advises about where children should live and who they should spend time with. I think the opportunity for a family group decision-making meeting for those families is important.”––[Official Report, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 32, Q72.]

That is a big proposal, but it comes from someone with huge experience, who clearly has some real concerns. Will Ministers agree to take that away and consider it further as we make progress in Committee and in the Lords?

The head of CAFCASS made a second big proposal on Tuesday:

“The Bill tends to focus on those who are in public law proceedings. Two thirds of the children we work with are in private law proceedings, where there are family disputes about who children spend their time with and where they live. Very often, those children are in families where conflict is very intense. There are risks to them; there is domestic abuse. The Bill is silent on children in private law proceedings, and I think there is an opportunity for that to be different.”––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 32, Q72.]

My second question to the Ministers is: have the Government reflected on that suggestion, and do they have any plans to respond? They might not be able to give us a full and final answer today, but what is their basic reaction to that?

Another expert made some significant and specific suggestions about the clause. Will the Government respond to concerns put forward in the written evidence from the Family Rights Group, a charity that helped to introduce family conferences, which were used in New Zealand, to the UK in the 1990s? It said:

“we are concerned that the family group decision making offer in the Bill is too ambiguous and state-led in the way it is framed, with the state determining how, who attends and even if it happens. Without strengthening the provisions, we fear in practice it will not deliver the Bill’s ambition, to ensure fair and effective opportunity across England for children and families to get the support they need to stay safely together.”

Essentially, it is worried that the form will be followed but the spirit will be lost. It goes on:

“We are already seeing evidence of local authorities claiming to use such approaches, including reference to ‘family-led decision making’ to describe meetings which are led by professionals and where family involvement is minimal. Without clear definition of terms, and a set of principles and standards for practice, it is likely that in many authorities, such meetings will be professionally-led, with the child and family engagement peripheral…If the legislation does not specify what is expected, we are also concerned approaches unsupported by evidence will proliferate.”

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

The debate on clause 1 stand part is included in this group.

[Neil O'Brien]

Thank you, Sir Christopher. I will include it here—I just wanted to double-check.

Although I have asked lots of questions about it, we totally agree with the spirit of the clause. In fact, in February 2023, the last Conservative Government published a strategy and consultation on reforming children’s social care called “Stable Homes, Built on Love”. That was partly a response to reports published in 2022, including the final report of the independent review of children’s social care, which was very ably put together by the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister). The 2023 strategy said that, over the following two years, the Government would invest £200 million,

“laying the foundations for whole system reform and setting national direction for change.”

After two years, the Government would refresh the strategy, scale up the approaches and bring forward new legislation, and in a sense that is what is happening now. This Government are doing some of the things that we had hoped to do when we were in government.

We are obviously not against new legislation; in fact, as part of the strategy, we provided £45 million to launch the Families First for Children pathfinder in 12 local areas for the following two years. That was going to test some of the measures in the Bill, such as more multi-agency working and early, non-stigmatising help and group decision making. We set up those pilots partly because of one of the measures in clause 1.

Those pilots started in July 2023 and, frustratingly, the results are supposed to be out in the next couple of months. Because of the way that things happen in this place, we are in the slightly frustrating position of having done a proper experiment—we have tested the concepts in clause 1 in the pilot—as we always say we want to do as politicians, but we do not get to hear the results, which are potentially just weeks away.

Have Ministers had sight of early findings from those pilots? Would they be prepared to make them available to Members of this House and of the other place, either in written form or via access to those who have been doing the work of pulling the findings together? It is very frustrating: there is a good piece of evidence, on which a lot of time and money has been spent, and yet, at the point at which we are legislating, we do not quite have access to it. It is weeks away. I hope that Ministers will find a way to share the findings with Members of both Houses.

As I alluded to, I read the Foundations report. Based on a randomised controlled trial, it states:

“We estimate that if family group conferences were to be rolled out across England, 2,293 fewer children would go into care in a 12-month period”.

That would be about a 7% drop, so that is a very large effect. If the RCT is right and it is not just a pilot effect, the effect would be big. We have that estimate from an external group, but I would like to know what the Government think the clause will do to the number of people in care.

On the one hand, that is very encouraging. Having 7% fewer children safely flowing into care every year would be a glorious and fantastic outcome, which is why both sides are interested in the model. On the other hand, such a big change would bring with it some downsides and risks, as is inevitable when we are talking about so many children. The Foundations report concludes that

“There is a need to undertake further research”.

I therefore have another question for the Minister: what gold standard randomised controlled trial work have the Government planned to understand the impacts of the change if it is rolled out as we expect?

I am speaking specifically of the potential negative impacts, which will be smaller in number and hard to look at. We might think, “Wonderful, we have 7% fewer children flowing into care every year. That is great,” but what happens to the children who do not end up in care but have a bad experience in another way? We all hope that will be a much smaller number, but when there is a big upside, there will probably be downsides as well. It is important to have a piece of research in train to try to measure those downsides and check whether the good consequences that we hope for also come with negative consequences. Unless we have the research that Foundations has called for, we will not find that out.

We do not disagree on the attractiveness of family group decision making in principle, but we need to make it work and to minimise the risks. Our amendment is one way to do part of that. We need to make sure that we are seizing all the opportunities of this legislative moment; they do not come around too often, as the Minister pointed out the other day. As the Bill goes through, we need to get a lot more information about that consequential reform. That will come partly from the Government’s impact assessment, when it is published, and partly from the Government providing the answers to some of our questions.

I have given lots of examples, and I hope that Ministers will think very carefully about some of the suggestions that we are getting from the serious experts who have been doing this for a long time. They are totally independent—they just want the right thing for kids and to ensure that we get the upsides of this change, which we all support in principle, while minimising the downsides.

[Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to amendments 36, 37 and 18. It has been a number of years since I was regularly involved in care proceedings as a barrister, but I did so for the best part of a decade. I and a number of my former colleagues hugely welcome this requirement for family group decision making to ensure that it can consistently take place and that all kinship options are considered before there is an application to remove a child from their family and place them in care. I anticipate that the clause will mean fewer cases where lawyers have to get involved and where families are subject to care proceedings.

I am concerned about amendments 36 and 37, however, which would make the Bill more directive about children being present at family group decision making. The wishes and feelings of the child need, of course, to be considered at that meeting and the voice of the child should, of course, always be heard, but that is different from them being present at the meeting. It is really important that the discussion at that meeting is frank and meaningful—often, in that meeting, family members will be finding out, and coming to understand, the risks posed to a child. The appropriate way for a child to be told about their safety or an issue that parents need to tackle is likely to be very different, and more tailored, from what is appropriate for the adults in the room.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine McKinnell]

I do think I have responded to the hon. Lady’s specific request, and explained why we are mandating and putting on to a statutory footing the requirement to offer family group decision making at this crucial point before care proceedings. We obviously encourage local authorities throughout their work with children in these circumstances to take a family-first approach and to offer family conferencing. Indeed, family group decision making can be used at any stage of a child’s journey through their relationship with the local authority. However, our decision to mandate it at this crucial point is very much based on the evidence that this reduces the number of children who end up going into care proceedings, and indeed into care.

A lot of issues were raised and I will do my very best to cover them. The hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston raised private law proceedings. The Ministry of Justice offers a voucher scheme to provide a contribution of up to £500 towards the mediation costs for eligible cases, supporting people in resolving their family law disputes outside of court. Similarly to family group decision making, family mediation is a process that uses trained, independent mediators and helps families to sort arrangements out. I take on board the concerns he has raised that all children should be able to benefit from family group decision making where possible. On the impact assessment, as we said in the second evidence session on Tuesday, the Regulatory Policy Committee is considering the Bill’s impact assessments and we will publish them shortly and as soon as possible.

[Neil O'Brien]

I know that the Minister is trying to get us the impact assessments and is completely sincere about that. Will she undertake to get them while we are still in Committee?

[Catherine McKinnell]

I believe I can, but I will check and report back in this afternoon’s sitting. I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s request.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

I invited the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his amendment and he said that he wished to press it, so that is why we had a Division.

As a number of people in this Committee are on a learning curve, I will just say that, if the people who tabled the other two amendments in this grouping wish to put them to the vote, that request needs to be put to the Chair now. They can then be moved formally and we can then have a Division on them. If that is not done now, those amendments will not have been moved and they will just fall. Does anybody else wish to move any of the amendments in this group?

[Neil O'Brien]

Yes, Sir Christopher.

Amendment proposed: 18, in clause 1, page 2, line 26, at end insert—

“(10) Nothing in this section permits an extension to the 26-week limit for care proceedings in section 14(2)(ii) of the Children and Families Act 2014.”—(Neil O'Brien.)

This amendment clarifies that nothing in this section should imply an extension to the statutory 26-week limit for care proceedings.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine McKinnell]

By strengthening the role of education in multi-agency safeguarding arrangements, clause 2 recognises the crucial role that education and childcare play in keeping children safe. It places a duty on the local authority, police and health services, as safeguarding partners, to automatically include all education settings in their arrangements, and to work together to identify and respond to the needs of children in this area.

The clause includes the breadth of education settings, such as early years, academies, alternative provision and further education. This will ensure improved communication between a safeguarding partnership and education, better information sharing and understanding of child protection thresholds, and more opportunities to influence key decisions about how safeguarding is carried out in the local area.

Multiple national reviews have found that although some arrangements have worked hard to bring schools to the table, in too many places the contribution and voice of education are missing. Education and childcare settings should have a seat around the table in decision making about safeguarding, so we are mandating consistent and effective join-up between local authority, police and health services, and schools and other education and childcare settings and providers. We know that many education and childcare settings are well involved in their local safeguarding arrangements, but the position is inconsistent nationally, which can lead to missed opportunities to protect children.

This change will improve join-up of children’s social care, police and health services with education, to better safeguard and promote the welfare of all children in local areas. It will also mean that all education and childcare settings must co-operate with safeguarding partners and ensure that those arrangements are fully understood and rigorously applied in their organisations. I hope that this clause has support from the Committee today.

[Neil O’Brien]

The Opposition do not have amendments to this clause, but we do have some questions. This change is generally a very good idea and we welcome it. I have sat where the Minister is sitting, so I am conscious that, even when a Minister wants to answer all the questions posed by the Opposition, it is sometimes impossible—but I hope, thinking about some of the questions in the last part of our proceedings, that she will continue to consider those and see whether she can get answers to them. I know it is utterly impossible to answer all these questions in real time.

On the Opposition Benches, we welcome the inclusion of education agencies in safeguarding arrangements. All too often, the school is the one agency that sees the child daily and has a sense of when they are in need of protection or are in danger. Our conversations with schools all underline that. We have heard that they welcome this change and that it is a good thing. Last year, schools were the largest referrer of cases, after the police, to children’s social care, and I know from friends who are teachers just how seriously they take this issue. One of my teacher friends runs a sixth form and she spends her spare time reading serious case reviews, so I know that teachers take this issue deadly seriously, and we want to help them to have as much impact as they can.

My questions relate to nurseries, particularly childminders, because this clause is about an extension to education, not just to schools. We understand that child protection meetings can take place via video conference to make them easier to attend. We would just like the Government to confirm and talk about what conversations they have had with those kinds of organisations, which are often literally one-woman bands, about how they will be able to participate, given their very limited staffing and the imperative to look after children in their care effectively.

If the childminder has to go off to some meeting and are shutting down their business for the day, do they have to ask the parents who leave their children with them to find their own childcare? How do we make it easier for these organisations, particularly in relation to really small, really vulnerable children, to take part in this process? We do not doubt that they will want to contribute; we just want some reassurance that the Department is thinking about how that will work well in practice.

The Government argue that education should not be a fourth safeguarding partner because, unlike with other safeguarding partners, there is not currently a single organisation or individual who can be a single point of accountability for organisations across the whole education sector and different types of educational institutions. I understand the Government’s argument, but there are other views. Barnardo’s says in its briefing that

“the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care recommended that the Department for Education make education the fourth statutory safeguarding partner, highlighting that the Department should ‘work with social care and school leaders to identify the best way to achieve this, ensuring that arrangements provide clarity.’

However, the new Bill falls short of this recommendation, mandating only that education providers should always be considered ‘relevant partners’. This should improve the recognition of the importance of education providers in safeguarding arrangements, but we believe that this does not go far enough to protect children at risk.

We recognise that the diverse nature of the education sector could pose a practical challenge in identifying a relevant senior colleague to represent education as a statutory partner. Education settings have a wealth of experience in working with children to keep them safe and we believe it is vital that options are explored to ensure they are able to fully participate in…the planning and delivery of local safeguarding arrangements.”

I want to hear what the Government’s response to those arguments is. As the Minister said, this is a rare legislative moment, so we want to ensure that these important contributions and questions are heard and answered.

Turning to a slightly different question, I understand that there might not be a single point of accountability—which is why this Government, like the previous Government, are not pursuing education providers as the fourth safeguarding partner—but to make this work well, a single point of contact for education might be sensible. Can the Minister confirm that, to support the successful operation of this provision, every local authority currently provides childminders in particular with a line they can call to discuss any concerns, both specific and more general? Schools generally know where to go, but is that true at the moment of nurseries and childminders?

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine McKinnell]

Amendments 1 to 5, in my name, relate to the nomination of individuals by safeguarding partners for multi-agency child protection teams. These important amendments ensure that primary legislation is consistent. To be consistent with the Children Act 2004, the reference to those who nominate should be to the safeguarding partners, not to specific roles. It is, after all, the safeguarding partners who are best placed to make the nomination for individuals, and have the required expertise in health, education, social work and policing. We will continue to use the statutory guidance, “Working together to safeguard children”, to provide further information on safeguarding partner roles and responsibilities, which will include nominating individuals in the multi-agency child protection teams.

These amendments ensure consistency with the Children Act and set out that safeguarding partners are responsible for nominating individuals with the relevant knowledge, experience and expertise to multi-agency child protection teams.

[Neil O’Brien]

I have nothing to say about these amendments. I will reserve my comments for our amendment, which is in a different group. I completely understand what the Minister is doing.

Amendment 1 agreed to.

Amendment made: 2, in clause 3, page 3, line 36, leave out

“the director of children’s services for”.—(Catherine McKinnell.)

See the explanatory statement for Amendment 1.

[Neil O’Brien]

I beg to move amendment 19, in clause 3, page 5, line 3, at end insert—

“16EC Report on work and impact of multi-agency child protection teams

(1) The Secretary of State must report annually on the work and impact of multi-agency child protection teams.

(2) A report under this section shall include analysis of —

(a) the membership of multi-agency child protection teams;

(b) the specific child protection activities undertaken by such teams;

(c) best practice in multi-agency work; and

(d) the impact of multi-agency child protection teams on —

(i) information sharing;

(ii) risk identification; and

(iii) joining up services between children’s social care, police, health services, education and other agencies, including the voluntary sector.”

This amendment would require the Secretary of State to report on the effectiveness of multi-agency child protection teams.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss clause stand part.

[Neil O’Brien]

Members will know that we are extremely supportive of this principle and agenda. We generally welcome the clause and think it is sensible, but we of course have questions, and we have tabled an amendment.

Members know that a huge amount of good multi-agency work is already going on to safeguard children, and it has the potential to address some of the really serious information-sharing gaps that have been so visible in pretty much every serious case review, from Victoria Climbié to the present day. Although we welcome the introduction of the multi-agency child protection teams, we have some substantive questions about them.

First, will the Minister set out her expectation for the activity of these teams? Teams can have a formal meeting, but then there is what they really do. If there is just one team in a local authority, that team may become a source of advice but not really generate new activity. I have a question about the scale of different local authorities and how many teams there will be in an area. This might seem a bit specific, but obviously there is a huge difference between Rutland, which is a single unitary authority with a population of 40,000, and Birmingham, which is also a single unitary authority. We need to ensure—I will come back to this in a second—that we can have provision for these teams to meet and work on a geography that makes sense.

The Government are building on a lot of activity that already exists, but they are slightly changing it in various ways. Will the Minister be specific about what these teams will do that is not being done today? How do they relate to, and how are they different from, existing multi-agency safeguarding hub teams? Linked to that, should we assume that they will be resourced to deal with all section 47 referrals? If they are not, it will potentially become another gatekeeping process—they would be making judgments in good faith, but not necessarily with the information to make them safely. I hope that the Minister can reassure me that the teams will be expected to do things like carrying out home visits, attending strategy meetings and having a much clearer view of health information.

There is also the crucial area of private law proceedings, where children are all too often invisible. I wonder what the expectation is for the involvement of these teams in private law cases. There are real concerns, as we heard the other day, that when CAFCASS makes a referral to the local authority in these cases, it looks like the threshold is not met because of the lack of social services and police involvement with the family in the past. Particularly in cases of domestic violence, we know that those kinds of appearances can be deceptive.

The clause makes provision for two or more local authorities to work together to deliver multi-agency child protection teams, and the explanatory notes state that that would enable police and health services to work within local authority boundaries to make the best use of their resources, which they do not always do. I can see the sense in that. To go back to our neighbours in Rutland, they come under Leicestershire and Rutland for the police and for health, and they have a lot of cross-border students in their schools. However, I want to check that the reverse is also true, and that there will be no impediment to having multiple teams within a local authority, and no sense that the police or health services with a bigger geographical footprint should not be expected to service more than one team in a large local authority. That question is about the geography.

Another question is about the timeliness of meetings, which is crucial. The best possible group of people in the world could be down to attend a meeting, but if they do not meet often enough, things will go wrong. Does the clause give the Government the power to specify in regulations how often such meetings take place? Do the Government intend to specify that kind of thing, or—maybe perfectly reasonably—not? Will they try to establish some norms around the frequency of these teams meeting? I do not have an incredibly strong view; I am just interested.

I also have some questions about the cast list, which was the subject of the last group of amendments; we went from a named person with a specific role to someone from a particular organisation. Subsection (4) lists a social worker, a police officer, a health professional and so on. Is the assumption that it will be the same person who attends each time? What happens in the absence of those people? Presumably, a person of the same category can be substituted for a period—for example, if the policeperson on the team goes off sick, someone can be substituted.

Although I am not an expert, I think that having the same cast list each time is broadly the right model. It is a much better model than one where, for example, the social worker for that case turns up once and perhaps do not go to that meeting ever again or for another year, meaning they are not in a position to join the dots. However, there is always a risk that appointing specialists within a team deskills others on the team. That sense that everybody has to stay alert and maintain professional curiosity gets a bit lost, and there is an assumption that the specialists on the team will deal with it. That is obviously not what the Government intend, but can we get some reassurance that they have thought about how to avoid that?

In oral evidence on Tuesday, we heard from—[Interruption.] May I ask you, Sir Christopher, whether we are going until 1.30 pm? The Opposition Whip is looking anxiously at the clock.

[The Chair]

The Opposition Whip may be looking at the clock, as indeed am I. Under the rules that have been agreed, the Committee will meet again at 2 o’clock. If people wanted to have a reasonable time for lunch, normally, by convention, the Committee would adjourn at 1 o’clock and come back at 2 o’clock. That is obviously in the hands of the Committee itself—

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Second sitting)

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you. I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association, but as I will not be making any comments, that may not be relevant.

Examination of Witness

Dame Rachel de Souza gave evidence.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

Q89 Thank you for coming—welcome. I want to ask for your view on the second half of the Bill, on schools. We have heard a lot of criticism of it from the Confederation of School Trusts, some of our leading trusts and, indeed, a couple of Labour MPs. What is your view on the schools, rather than the wellbeing, part of the Bill?

Dame Rachel de Souza: I am the Children’s Commissioner and have been since 2021, and before that I was a school leader in the most disadvantaged areas for 20 years, so I am very interested. I am pleased to see a Bill on children’s wellbeing; it is great that we are getting some legislation on that. I was well consulted around the first part of the Bill, on wellbeing, and I was able to take the children’s voice through. I worked closely with the Department for Education and others to ensure that it was honed, refined and made really good, as I did on some bits of the schools part. But I do not think that anybody got to see the schools bit until it was published.

On the schools bit, what I feel more than anything is that we now have a period of time when we need to see a vision for a new, vibrant and transformative schools system—how it will work locally, with local authorities, to do the best for children, particularly the most vulnerable children. I have a number of outstanding questions around that.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q What do you think of the curtailment of academy freedoms in the Bill? It has now been published, so you have seen it, albeit that you were not talked to before. What do you think about the moves to scale back the academy programme, the end of academy orders, and LAs setting up new schools? If you were doing this, is that the direction you would want to go in?

Dame Rachel de Souza: Look, I need the school system to be as ambitious for children—as Children’s Commissioner, I represent children—as they are for themselves. I had hoped that we would get to a point where we were not talking about old binaries—academies or council schools—but talking about schools, families of schools and building up our local authorities so that everyone can play their part to support standards in the post-lockdown period.

I have two issues with the academies provisions. First, I cannot let children remain in failing schools, so if those are going, I need to know what is going to happen. Childhood lasts a very short time, so if a child is in a failing school, how will those schools be improved, immediately and effectively? Secondly, as well as a real vision for the schools system—I know that it is there—I would like to see what will happen to attainment data, under what is envisaged as replacing it, so that no child, particularly the most vulnerable, is disadvantaged.

I was a headteacher for the first time in 2006. It was a Tony Blair-sponsored academy—I was his No. 67. That school had been failing for 20 years, and I got it to outstanding with the support of everyone around me. It has never gone back to less than good. Any new system has to deliver for the most vulnerable as well.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh) has raised some concerns, as has the Confederation of School Trusts, about the end of academy orders and the fact that because academisation is no longer automatic, there will once again be the prospect of legal action, lots of community campaigns against these things, and potentially quite long delays. She said on Second Reading that children in those schools do not have time to wait. Do you agree with her?

Dame Rachel de Souza: I think, Neil, that you have given quite a thoughtful comment, which people new to education might not quite get. Probably the main reason for academy orders was to try to expedite improvement quickly against a backlash. Would it not be great if we could get everyone on side to be able to act really quickly, together, to improve schools that need improving? I am not going to get hung up on this bit. What I want to see is the vision for how we are going to work together with the best knowledge we have about school improvement, and with a sense of absolute urgency about making sure that no child is sitting in a failing school, because childhood lasts such a short time. What makes a great school? Whatever background you are from—whether you are from the academy sector or the local authority sector—the evidence is clear: we need a great headteacher and great teachers allowed to do their jobs, with support from a family of schools, whatever that family of schools is. That is what we need.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)]

Q Dame Rachel, thank you for giving evidence to the Committee today. Returning to the benefits of the Bill, can you explain what you think the benefits of introducing a single unique identifier will be to the safeguarding of all children?

Dame Rachel de Souza: Yes. Before I do, I want to praise the fact that the children’s bit of the Bill really listens to children, because it has tried to do that. I want the schools bit to do the same. Since Minister Morgan is asking the question, I will say that he was the first person to speak to my ambassadors and actually try to take on board their views. That is important for all of us—we need to hear from children all the time.

I have been obsessed with the unique identifier from the second I got into my role. I do not need to spell out why—well, maybe I do. In my first couple of weeks in the role, I visited a violence reduction unit—a police crime reduction unit—in Bedfordshire, and it had a spreadsheet of children that were on nobody’s roll. They were not on any GP system or school roll; they were known by nobody. We cannot, in this century, with the tech capacity we have, find ourselves in that position.

I spoke to Professor Jay yesterday about the terrible abuse of young girls that has been going on and what to do about it. Do you know what she told me? She told me that one local area she was working with had a massive increase in sexually transmitted diseases in girls aged 13 and 14, but the health authority would not share the data with the police, under a completely misguided view about data sharing. My view is that we must invest in a unique identifier. Had Sara Sharif’s social workers had a unique identifier, they would have had the information and tech to know from other authorities she had been in that she was a child known to social services. The school would have known. Children, particularly vulnerable children, think we already know their stories. They think that we, the adults, are already talking to each other. For children, that is just how they think it should be—the adults who care for them should know.

Let me be clear, and be under no illusion: the parlous state of data systems means that the unique identifier will be a huge job. However, I am so pleased to see it committed to in the Bill. If there is one thing I would like to see before my term ends in the next couple of years, it is the unique identifier on the way. It will underpin so many things that we want in education, in child protection, in gluing the systems together and in the multi-agency work, so absolutely, we need it.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Will the witnesses from Ofsted please introduce themselves?

Sir Martyn Oliver: I am Sir Martyn Oliver, His Majesty’s chief inspector at Ofsted.

Yvette Stanley: My name is Yvette Stanley, Ofsted’s national director for early years regulation and social care inspection and regulation.

Lee Owston: I am Lee Owston, one of His Majesty’s inspectors and Ofsted’s national director for education.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q Thank you for coming. I have some short questions that do not need particularly long answers. Have you found evidence that academy schools are not teaching a broad and balanced curriculum? Are you finding lots of academies not doing that?

Sir Martyn Oliver: No, we do not find that.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q Is there a major problem with schools employing teachers without qualified teacher status? Are non-QTS teachers not up to scratch? Would you regard it as a red flag if a school were employing non-QTS teachers? Would it make you think, “We’re probably heading towards a bad result here”?

Sir Martyn Oliver: We do not actually look at the backgrounds of teachers and check to that level of detail, so I could not give you a quantitative answer. I do know that increasingly, as schools are finding it difficult to recruit and retain staff, they are looking at alternative measures. It is massively important that people be qualified to teach children to the highest possible standard in the specialism in which they are delivering.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q Do you recognise that sometimes a school can bring someone in who might be at a later point in their career and be highly specialised—perhaps a great sportsman, an IT person or a scientist—and that if the headteacher takes the view that they would be a good person for teaching, as an alternative to having no teacher, that can be the right decision?

Sir Martyn Oliver: Speaking as a previous headteacher, absolutely. Bringing in external expertise to supplement high-quality qualified teachers is clearly of benefit to children.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q The Bill will remove the academy order. How will the intervention regime work in future? At the moment, the Ofsted handbook states that

“if any key judgement is inadequate…we will place the school in a formal category of concern.”

How will that work in future? If a school is in the bottom tier of one of your new categories of assessment, what will happen?

Sir Martyn Oliver: The legal powers for Ofsted are that I identify to the Secretary of State a school that is in special measures or requires significant improvement. That requirement—from, I think, the Education and Inspections Act 2006—will not change. Ofsted will still be under a duty to pass that on to the Secretary of State. Very imminently, I will consult on a new framework that will strengthen and raise standards further. I am interested to see what the Department for Education will release alongside my consultation to explain those academy orders further.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q Are we still waiting to hear what that intervention regime will look like?

Sir Martyn Oliver: Yes, but I think it is very imminent. I am very happy: I feel that we are going to hold the system to account to raise standards better than ever before.

[The Chair]

It will help if those Members who wanted to ask a question last time but were not called indicate if they want to ask a question in this session.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Thank you. I will hand over to Neil O’Brien, the Opposition spokesperson.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q Thank you for coming. Are there any things in the Bill that you think we should amend as it goes through? Are there things that you would like to improve further, or any ways that you would like us to change the Bill? Why don’t we start with Lynn?

Lynn Perry: The coalition broadly welcomes the potentially transformational proposals that are contained within the Bill, including those for a single unique identifier, which is one of the things that the coalition has been specifically calling for over a period of time. Multiple reviews have found that information sharing between agencies is problematic, so that is one of the things that we think could really aid child protection, safeguarding and multi-agency working. I would say that to really shift the dial we need further investment in early intervention and early help across our communities, and much greater focus on embedding that consistently and universally. We also need some further clarification on some of the areas that the single unique identifier will need for effective application, I think it is fair to say.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q Can you unpack that a little bit?

Lynn Perry: Yes, certainly. I will raise the third area and then I will come back to that, if I may. The third area is mechanisms for ensuring that the voices, wishes, feelings and experiences of children and young people really influence the provisions in the Bill, and to put those at the heart of support.

On the single unique identifier, there are some questions that we think are worth some further scrutiny. The first of those is the question whether the single unique identifier would be assigned to all babies, children and young people, and a confirmation that that would be for children between the ages of nought and 18. We also think there is an opportunity to extend the use of the identifier, the scope of which is currently limited in the Bill to safeguarding and welfare purposes. A wider emphasis on wellbeing of children and young people and positive outcomes is one of the things that could be further considered here.

As ever, implementation cannot wait, and it would be helpful to have some indicative timescales for when the Secretary of State might introduce regulations for the consistent identifier and how people will be required to use it within their systems. Finally, while acknowledging the need for data protection, there is an opportunity to make better, data-informed decisions in the future about the commissioning and scoping of services that will effectively meet the needs of children and young people, as well as taking account of some of their emerging vulnerabilities and risk and need factors.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q Mark, getting straight to the point, are there any amendments that you would like to see?

Mark Russell: I associate myself entirely with everything that my colleague has said, but I have a couple of extra points. I would want the Bill to include a measurement of children’s wellbeing. I welcome the fact that the title of the Bill mentions children’s wellbeing, but we have no measurement of children’s wellbeing. We in the Children’s Society measure children’s wellbeing, but we are a charity; we are measuring a sample of children rather than all children. The Government talk about wanting to be child-centred. A measurement of children’s wellbeing would be real data on what real children think about their lives, and that would provide a huge amount of information for local authorities to ensure that local services meet the needs of young people. That is one thing.

Secondly, I would welcome schools becoming a fourth statutory safeguarding partner, because so many safeguarding challenges are first identified by schools—I speak not just as the chief executive of a charity, but as a school governor. Thirdly, I hugely welcome the breakfast clubs and the changes to the rules on school uniform; the Children’s Society has campaigned on school uniform for many years. Those will help families. I understand why the Government have made the breakfast clubs a universal offer, but with limited funds, I would like to see secondary school children included in it, but with the breakfast clubs available first to children from families receiving universal credit. The free school meal allowance has not gone up for a very long time. We think that around 1 million children in this country who are living in poverty are not eligible for free school meals, and we know that hunger hugely limits what children can do in school and their learning. If we can change that, we will improve the opportunities for, and wellbeing of young people.

Katharine Sacks-Jones: I want to focus on the provisions on children in care and young care leavers. There are some welcome steps to better support care leavers. At the moment, young people leaving the care system face a care cliff, where support falls away, often on their 18th birthday. A huge number go on to face homelessness —one in three become homeless within two years of leaving care—and that has meant a big increase in statutory homelessness among care leavers: a 54% rise in the past five years. There is a real challenge to ensure that we better support young people leaving the care system.

In that context, extending Staying Close up to the age of 25 and making it a statutory provision is welcome, but we think the Bill could go further in strengthening the legal entitlement for young people leaving care. There are two areas in particular. The first is that we are concerned about the how the Bill assesses whether a young person’s welfare requires Staying Close support. Where you have those kinds of assessment, particularly in times of scarcity, the extra support is often rationed, which will mean that many young people are not eligible for it or are not assessed as being in need. We think that rationing needs to be removed. Instead, there should be an assumption that a young person leaving care does require some extra support; the question should be what that support looks like, and we would like to see the provisions in the Bill broadened to allow local authorities to provide other types of support beyond what the Bill provides for at the moment, which is largely advice and guidance.

We welcome the strengthening of the care leaver local offer to include provisions around housing and homelessness. As I said, those are big issues for young people leaving care. We also warmly welcome the Government’s recent amendment on homelessness intentionality, which would remove intentionality from care leavers. We hear from young people who have found themselves homeless because, for example, they accepted a place at university in a different part of the country, and they were then deemed by their home local authority to be intentionally homeless and so not eligible for further homelessness assistance. We think that needs to change. That is a welcome step.

We think the Bill could go further in looking at priority need for young people leaving care. At the moment, that goes up to 21; we think it should go up to the age of 25, in line with other entitlements for young care leavers. We are also disappointed not to see in the Bill the extension of corporate parenting—something that the Government have previously committed to.

There are some welcome measures that will increase oversight and accountability, and help with some of the structural challenges, in relation to the provision of homes for children. We do not think those go far enough in addressing the huge issue around the sufficiency of placements for children. That issue is seeing more and more children moved across the country, moved far from their local areas and being moved frequently—a huge amount of instability. That is a big challenge. We would like to see a requirement for a national strategy that looks at the issue of sufficiency and collects better data, as well as an annual report to Parliament on progress against that strategy. Finally, to reinforce the point made by colleagues, young people’s voices are really important. The importance of considering young people’s wishes and feelings is set out in other pieces of legislation, and there are a number of areas in the Bill that would benefit from the inclusion of that, too.

[Stephen Morgan]

Q Thank you for being witnesses before the Committee today. My first question is to Mark and Lynn. Mark, you mentioned the benefits of breakfast clubs earlier. Could you say a bit more about what you think the benefits will be for families during a cost of living crisis?

Mark Russell: Perhaps I should say that we are working with about 75,000 young people around the country, and so many more young people are reporting as being hungry than have been for quite some time. We know that families are under huge strain. We saw in our “Good Childhood Report” this year that 84% of parents were anxious about being able to pay their bills, and we also saw that one in three parents were struggling to pay for a hot meal every single day. As they are provided to all children in the school, I think breakfast clubs will provide a real sense of uniformity and equality, and will give every child the best possible start to the day. Children who are hungry cannot learn and cannot thrive. I have friends who are teachers, and they are telling me that in classrooms around the country they are seeing children who are hungry and living in homes that are cold. Anything that we can do to support families is really important, so I welcome breakfast clubs. As I said earlier, 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.

Also, alongside that, this needs to link up with the Government’s child poverty strategy that is coming later this year, which we are very much looking forward to seeing, about how we lift more and more families out of poverty. According to the stats, there are 4.3 million children in this country in poverty, and those children will not get the best start in life or thrive in school if they are hungry and cannot succeed. I obviously very much welcome the measures on that in the Bill.

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[The Chair]

We now move on to representatives from the Churches. Could you begin by introducing yourselves, please?

Nigel Genders: My name is Nigel Genders. I am the chief education officer for the Church of England, which means that I have the national responsibility for the Church of England’s work in education, and I oversee 4,700 schools, which educate 1 million children.

Paul Barber: I am Paul Barber. I am director of the Catholic Education Service, which is the education agency of the Bishop’s Conference of England and Wales, and we provide just over 2,000 schools across England.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q Thank you both for coming. My first question is to you, Paul. The last Government promised to lift the cap on faith school admissions and consulted on doing just that. Is that something you would still like to happen and potentially be put into the Bill?

Paul Barber: The cap is a policy rather than law. We would very much like to see the cap lifted. My understanding of the current policy is that it applies to free schools, and we would very much like to see that lifted. The consultation took place and there has not, as yet, been a Government response to that.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q Do you have a timescale for when the Government are going on reply to that consultation?

Paul Barber: I do not—that is not in my hands.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q I just wondered whether we might get an answer during the passage of the Bill. I have a question for both of you. There was a thought-provoking leader in the TES the other morning that talked about the lack of discussion in the Bill, as well as more generally, on discipline. The Bill is largely silent on discipline, even though we know it is one the biggest issues affecting teachers, and Teacher Tapp surveys show that it is a huge issue for teachers and many students as well. Do you have particular thoughts on what you would like to see in the Bill, or more broadly, on discipline that would improve your ability to run orderly schools and protect teachers? There are obviously things out there like behaviour hubs, the discipline survey and questions about alternative provision. You both have very deep experience across the whole piece, so I am interested in your thoughts about what we could be doing further in the Bill and more generally.

Nigel Genders: You are right to raise the issue of behaviour. When we talk to teachers across the country, one of the biggest things that puts people off teaching, in terms of the retention and recruitment crisis, is children’s behaviour. I am not sure there are particular things that you need legislation for in that space; it is about just giving teachers greater confidence. We are doing work in teacher training and leadership training to equip teachers to be really fantastic teachers, which are all important tools available to the system to really prioritise that area. I cannot think of anything particularly in the legislative space that would be needed.

Paul Barber: I agree with Nigel that discipline is definitely a factor in the recruitment and retention of teachers, and it is something that we need to give some attention to. Like Nigel, I do not think there is anything specific that is required legislatively, but I think what is needed is an overall accountability framework within which schools have the flexibility to respond to the needs of their particular pupil populations. Our schools have a very good track record of being orderly, and I think that is one of the reasons why they are very popular with parents. It is about school leaders and professionals being able to do what is in the best interest of their pupils and enabling the behaviour to be what it should be in our schools.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q One of the major changes in the Bill is the extension of the national curriculum, for the first time, to absolutely all schools. At the same time, the curriculum is being changed and rewritten. I have a high-level question and a specific one. The high-level one is about the different visions for our schools. One vision would stress the importance of diversity and argue that there are different ways of educating and that schools can and should do things differently. I do not know whether you buy into that vision.

My second, more specific question is whether there is anything you would have concerns about being in the curriculum. I am particularly thinking of religious education and topics like that. Are there ideas out there that you would be concerned about being forced into all schools?

Nigel Genders: As previous panels have said, there is a slight complexity about the timing of the Bill and the intention to bring in a national curriculum for everyone. In broad principle, I think it is right. There are one or two caveats I will go on to talk about, but in broad principle it is right to create a level playing field and have a broad and balanced curriculum across the piece for everybody. The complexity is that this legislation is happening at the same time as the curriculum and assessment review, so our schools are being asked to sign up to a general curriculum for everybody without knowing what that curriculum is likely to be.

Certainly among the schools and leaders I have spoken to the hope is that through the process of the curriculum review, and certainly in the evidence we have been giving to that, we will end up with a much broader, richer balance of both academic and vocational and technical skills within the curriculum. We hope to have something of broad appeal to everybody that is at a high level, and under which everybody can find an equal place in that space. But we do not know at the moment.

[The Chair]

We do not want to go too far into the curriculum today, because it is not really part of the Bill.

Paul Barber: I will keep my remarks brief. We have a very clear understanding of what a curriculum is in a Catholic school. It is very much a broad, balanced and holistic curriculum in which there are no siloes and the curriculum subjects interact with each other. There is of course the centrality of RE, which you mentioned. We are hopeful that the review will provide a framework within which we will be able to deliver alongside other views of curricula in other schools.

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[Damian Hinds]

Q Forgive me—we are very short on time. I was talking about a council’s ability to stop a popular school expanding, for example. You both mentioned earlier that you have some really quite popular schools, and now the council will have much more an ability not to let that happen.

Paul Barber: Sorry; I misunderstood. You are talking about the restrictions on schools unilaterally changing their published admission number. Our position on that is that it is because of this relationship between admissions and the planning of school places, which must be planned in some way. Our diocese has a long track record of decades of working with its local authorities and with the diocese in the Church of England to work out what is required in the future, and looking forward for places and planning that. Having some kind of regulation of schools’ published admissions numbers is quite helpful in ensuring that that works smoothly, because if you plan it and three schools then arbitrarily decide to increase their published admission number, that creates some real problems locally with place planning.

Nigel Genders: We would agree with that. Not to rehearse all that Paul has just said, but a further point is that when it comes to resourcing local authorities to carry out their role in the allocation and direction of schools to take particular pupils, we are really keen to see that done in a way that makes fairness the arbitrating factor to ensure that there is a real fairness of approach. The collaboration between maintained and academy and diocese and local authority very much needs to happen, and we would welcome that.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q I have a very specific question on small rural primary schools attempting to deliver breakfast clubs, potentially with a very small number of staff. What is your understanding of whether the time spent doing breakfast clubs will count as directed time?

[The Chair]

Let us have a fairly quick answer. One other Member would like to ask a question as well.

[Neil O'Brien]

Do we know whether that is the case?

Nigel Genders: There is the question of how to make all that possible within the allotted hours that staff can be directed. It needs resourcing. It does not have to be teachers who provide those breakfast clubs—

[Neil O'Brien]

Q No, but what if it is a teacher in your little schools?

Nigel Genders: They will have to be resourced to do it in other ways to make it possible.

[The Chair]

The last question is from Ian Sollom.

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[The Chair]

We will now move on to representatives from various academies. If you could begin by introducing yourselves, that would be helpful to the Committee.

Luke Sparkes: I am Luke Sparkes, and I lead the Dixons Academy Trust. We run urban complex schools in Leeds, Bradford, Manchester and Liverpool.

Sir Dan Moynihan: I am Dan Moynihan, CEO for the Harris Federation. We run 55 academies in and around London, most of which were previously failing schools.

Sir Jon Coles: I am John Coles, and I run United Learning, which is a group of just over 100 schools nationally—again, mostly previously failing schools. Before the 13 years I have spent doing that, I spent 15 years in the Department for Education, and the last four on the board.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q Thank you for being here. I want to direct my first question to Jon and Dan. You have both been quite critical of the loss of academy freedoms in this Bill. Could I persuade you to say a bit more about why that matters? Why do those freedoms matter? What do they enable you to do? Do you accept reassurances from the Government, who are saying, “No, no, you’ve misunderstood: the Bill doesn’t reduce your freedoms; it just increases other people’s freedoms”, or do you think that it would be helpful to amend the Bill further in order to ensure those freedoms? We will start with Jon and then go to Dan.

Sir Jon Coles: My top concern is about pay and conditions freedoms. We take schools that have got themselves into serious difficulty and look to turn them around. If you want to turn around schools that have failed seriously—often generationally—to give children a good standard of education, clearly you need to attract very good people to come and work in those places; the quality of a school is never going to exceed the quality of its teachers. Therefore, the things that we do with pay and conditions are designed to make sure that we can attract and retain the very best teachers to do the toughest jobs, which I think is our fundamental role as a trust.

I think we really need those freedoms. They are very important to us. Obviously, that applies to this Bill, in relation to schoolteachers’ pay and conditions, but it also applies to the Employment Rights Bill, in relation to the school support staff negotiating body. Those are fundamentally important to us.

I have been hugely encouraged by the Secretary of State’s remarks that what she wants is a floor but no ceiling, and that is something that we can absolutely work with. I hope that that is what we see coming through. At this moment, that is not what the Bill says; it says that we have to abide by the schoolteachers’ pay and conditions document. I think there is an ongoing conversation to be had about whether that is where we end up, because that is not quite a floor but no ceiling.

[Neil O'Brien]

Having looked at that document, it does have a whole bunch of different maximums in it. It has quite specific maximums as well as minimums.

Sir Jon Coles: The thing about the schoolteachers’ pay and conditions document is that it is fundamentally a contract. Section 122 of the Education Act 2002—it happens to be an Act that I took through Parliament as a Bill manager, when I was a civil servant—essentially says that the Secretary of State may, by order, issue what is commonly known as the pay order, but the pay order includes a lot of conditions. Section 122 of the Act says that that applies as if it were a contract. Indeed, if you are a teacher in a maintained school, typically your contract will literally say, “You are employed under the terms of the schoolteachers’ pay and conditions document,” so it is your contract.

Therefore, the schoolteachers’ pay and conditions document has to act as a contract. It has to be specific. A teacher looking it up has to be able to see, “What are my terms and conditions? Have I been treated properly?” and so on. That is how the schoolteachers’ pay and conditions document needs to work, so if we have to abide by it precisely, that is what we would have to abide by.

I think that officials—I speak as an ex-official—should be asked to look again at whether the Bill they have produced for Ministers does what Ministers want it to do, and whether it actually provides a floor but no ceiling, or whether there is something slightly different that would enact Ministers’ policy.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q That was a superbly diplomatic answer—particularly the end of it. I will come on to Dan. You talked about QTS freedoms and the importance of being able to employ mature people in STEM and the like, and the risk that not having that freedom might put some of them off. I will just ask you about the freedoms on curriculum and things like that, and how those are being used by academies and trusts at the moment to find solutions that are right for individual situations. My impression is that those freedoms are quite often used to focus on core subjects in areas of high deprivation where there is great difficulty, and to have a model that works in those areas. It seems quite important for you.

Sir Dan Moynihan: We have taken over failing schools in very disadvantaged places in London, and we have found youngsters in the lower years of secondary schools unable to read and write. We varied the curriculum in the short term and narrowed the number of subjects in key stage 3 in order to maximise the amount of time given for literacy and numeracy, because the children were not able to access the other subjects. Of course, that is subject to Ofsted. Ofsted comes in, inspects and sees whether what you are doing is reasonable.

That flexibility has allowed us to widen the curriculum out again later and take those schools on to “outstanding” status. We are subject to Ofsted scrutiny. It is not clear to me why we would need to follow the full national curriculum. What advantage does that give? When we have to provide all the nationally-recognised qualifications —GCSEs, A-levels, SATs—and we are subject to external regulation by Ofsted, why take away the flexibility to do what is needed locally?

[Neil O'Brien]

Q Luke, you wrote a very interesting piece in the TES the other day about the importance of variety and difference between schools. You work in some exceptionally disadvantaged areas, turning around particularly difficult schools. I saw that you had used the academy freedoms to offer the nine-day fortnight so that teachers can have more preparation time, particularly because they are working in quite a demanding environment. How are you using those freedoms and how useful are they to you?

Luke Sparkes: They are very useful when it comes to conditions. As Jon was saying, the narrative coming through about a floor and no ceiling is encouraging. I can see that working for pay, but I am not sure how that would work for conditions. My significant concerns with the Bill are about conditions. We have done more than most as a trust to try to position ourselves as a modern organisation. We know that post-millennials are not going to accept the norms that currently exist in our sector. We have also tried to overcome the rigidity of the job with innovations such as the nine-day fortnight. That innovation is starting to diffuse across the sector.

We want to be even bolder. We are really starting to think about how we can totally re-imagine the school workforce. That is because most complex schools—the kind of schools that we lead—have become, in many ways, the fourth emergency service. That is by stealth and not by choice. We have had to address the scope and intensity of the job.

I wanted to make that position clear. It is from that position and understanding that we still believe that a rigid set of expectations around conditions will stifle innovation—the kind of innovation that the three of us have led across our trusts. Leaders working in our context need the freedom to do things differently. That, of course, was the point of Labour’s academy policy in the first place. I accept that in some instances, it is possible to negotiate around standard conditions, but not everybody can do that. The innovations we are leading will not be scaleable if we are all forced to align to a set of rigid standards.

It is also worth knowing that our most successful schools at Dixons—the ones that are getting the best results for disadvantaged students nationally—would have to fundamentally change as schools if they had to align to a set of rigid standards. That would be bound to impact negatively on outcomes for children, and not just academic outcomes. It would be a significant backward step. Finally, an interesting point is that our most innovative schools—the ones that are using their freedoms the most—actually have the highest staff engagement scores. These freedoms benefit and are attractive to staff.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q Would you say that the Bill, broadly speaking, erodes that kind of freedom and diversity in the system? That is at the moment, as drafted—it can change.

Luke Sparkes: Certainly, around the areas that I have just described.

[Stephen Morgan]

Q I have two unrelated questions on which I am keen to hear from all three of you. What assessment have you made of the introduction of registers of children not in school and how they will help schools and local authorities to support vulnerable children?

Sir Dan Moynihan: It is an excellent idea. Too many children disappear off-roll and are not monitored sufficiently. I would say it probably does not go far enough. When any child leaves the school roll, whether they are at risk or not, we should know why it happens and whether the parent can make proper provision for them, so it is a really good idea. My concern is whether local authorities have the resourcing to make this thing work. As we all know, they are under immense pressure. However, it is about time that we had it, and it is a real move forward. The question is about their ability to deliver it.

Sir Jon Coles: I agree with all that. I am not sure quite how many Secretaries of State have thought it was a good idea to do this, but it is a lot of them, and they have all backed off it before now. I think it is good, important and brave that it is being done, because while I support the right of parents to home educate, and I think that is an important freedom in society, those of us who work in challenging areas can see that there is an overriding child protection and child safeguarding risk. That risk has grown, is growing and does need to be tackled.

Luke Sparkes: I echo that. I think the correlation of families who apply for elective home education, for example, and the vulnerability of those children is known. Whether it is in relation to attendance, unsupportive parenting or poor relationships with schools, challenging EHE is the right thing to do. However, as Sir Dan said, it will need significant additional resource if a school is to ensure that the child is supported to integrate into school in that way.

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[The Chair]

Could the two witnesses in the room introduce themselves as well?

Rebecca Leek: I am Rebecca Leek. I am currently the executive director of the Suffolk Primary Headteachers’ Association. There are 253 primary schools in Suffolk; around a third of them are local authority and two thirds are academies. I am currently also an interim headteacher in a local authority school. I have been a headteacher in an academy school and a CEO of a trust, and I have worked in inner-city London, urban Ipswich and rural Suffolk.

Leora Cruddas: I am Leora Cruddas; thank you very much for the invitation to give evidence to this Committee. I am the chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, which is the national organisation and sector body representing school trusts in England. Around 77% of all academy schools are in membership.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q Thank you all for being here, and welcome. My first question is to Leora. We heard in the last session some concerns about taking away academy freedoms on pay, the curriculum and QTS. In some of the things that you have written, you have also raised concerns about two other things. The first is clause 43, which is a sort of general power to direct academies on a range of subjects. The policy summary notes to the Bill indicate that that will be used for some not particularly high-level things, such as school uniform and the like.

Do you have concerns that the general power is a bit untrammelled at the moment? Might it be sensible to table some amendments to that, so that we have some proportionality and do not have the Secretary of State being constantly sucked into intervening in schools and being pressed to do so by lots of different activists?

Leora Cruddas: The first thing I should say is that we really welcome the children’s wellbeing part of this Bill. There are a lot of good things in the Bill. We do have some concerns, as you say, about the schools part of the Bill, including, as you have heard from my colleagues, about pay and conditions. We welcome the Secretary of State’s clarification on that in her evidence to the Education Committee. We now need to work with the Government to make sure that the clarification around direction of travel is reflected in the way that the Bill is laid out. We do not think that the Secretary of State’s intention is properly reflected in the clause as it stands.

We do have concerns about the power to direct. We think it is too wide at the moment. We accept that the policy intention is one of equivalence in relation to maintained schools, but maintained schools are different legal structures from academy trusts, and we not think that the clauses in the Bill properly reflect that. It is too broad and it is too wide. We would like to work with the Government to restrict it to create greater limits. Those limits should be around statutory duties on academy trusts, statutory guidance, the provisions in the funding agreement and charity law.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q That is very helpful and specific. Another thing you have raised concerns about is clause 50, which will give local authorities the ability to challenge a school’s PAN, even if it is just keeping it the same. I am sympathetic and understand what they are trying to do, with place planning and so on, but I have concerns about the local authority being both the regulator and the provider of other schools.

I worry about that, particularly in the context of falling school numbers in some areas, which will make these questions quite acute, because of the lack of any guidance or trammelling around it. For example, if there is an outstanding school and one that is struggling and may shut, where is the prioritisation? Where are the rules that say, “You must not treat academies unfairly compared with your local authority schools.”? Do you share any of those concerns? Do you think that there is scope to make amendments to improve the Bill?

Leora Cruddas: I start by saying that we really welcome the duty to collaborate at a local level. Trusts already work with local authorities; you may have heard that from my colleagues in the previous session.

We are concerned about some of the potential conflicts of interest. We say “potential” conflicts of interest in the context, as you point out, of falling primary school rolls. We would like to work with Government to set out a high-level, strategic decision-making framework that would mean that, in a local area, we know our children really well and we get our children into the right provision at the right time. That means working together strategically around pupil numbers, admissions, falling rolls and the sufficiency of need in a local area. Those conflicts of interest can be managed, but they would need to be set out in a very carefully framed decision-making framework so that they are managed properly.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q You said:

“We accept current arrangements are fractured: introducing the Schools Adjudicator worsens rather than improves this”.

What do you mean by that?

Leora Cruddas: We are not sure what the intention is behind the Government’s need to bring forward the clause in the Bill that would introduce greater powers for a schools adjudicator. That is one of the conflicts of interest that we would be alive to—if a local authority could bring forward a case to resist an academy trust’s pupil admission number, that would be a source of concern for us. That is why we need this high-level decision-making framework.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q Thank you; that is very helpful. I have a question for Rebecca. In Schools Week you wrote:

“The schools bill working its way through Parliament…is not good legislation.”

You described it as “micromanagement” and “stifling”. You talked about some of your experiences as a headteacher. Can you expand a bit on the overall vision and direction of travel?

Rebecca Leek: Yes. I love being a headteacher—I was a headteacher yesterday, doing an assembly—but I have stood in both camps, and I have worked in very rapid turnaround situations with trusts.

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On resuming—

[Neil O’Brien]

Q Thank you to our witnesses for their patience while we voted. I was asking you about what you wrote in Schools Week, Rebecca—you said that the Bill was “not good legislation” and described it as “micromanagement” and “stifling”, and you talked about your experience of using some of those school freedoms. I wonder whether you could say more about why you think that is the case and what you think the problem is with the Bill.

Rebecca Leek: One of the things about the school sector is that it is incredibly complex, so you have to have complex solutions for complex systems—if you know anything about systems thinking. To support such a complex system, there needs to be room for agility, so the reason why I was writing that—we will talk about my specific experience as well—is that I know quite a lot about systems theory and governance. I have written a book on governance, subsidiarity and why it is important to have flexibility and agility in localities. That comes from theoretical knowledge about how to create good systems that meet the needs of very complex things, which is what schools are. I cannot impress on the Committee enough how much diversity there is in the school system, and how much there is the need for agility.

As a headteacher on the frontline, my dominoes can topple within a term: I am in a small school; I lose two senior teachers; a safeguarding issue happens because something in the locality changes, and I suddenly have to find a pastoral lead, because there are more safeguarding issues; I am trying to get more engagement with some of the local services, which might be struggling because they are undercapacity; and there is a recruitment crisis with teachers, honestly, and also with headteachers—hence I am an interim headteacher, as we can never recruit headteachers, because it is such a hard job, given so much grit in the system. There is that fundamental need for agility.

I do therefore have a concern, and my colleagues share that. I speak to headteachers and CEOs all the time in Suffolk—I met a trust last week and spoke to a CEO of a trust with 12 primary schools on the phone yesterday. We went over some of the things in the Bill. We know that the agility that the academies legislation and other changes brought into the system have helped us to be very adaptive to certain circumstances. Anything that says, “Well, we are going to go slightly more with a one-size-fits-all model”—bearing in mind, too, that we do not know what that looks like, because this national curriculum has not even been written yet—is a worry. That is what I mean. If we suddenly all have to comply with something that is more uniform and have to check—“Oh no, we cannot do that”, “Yes, we can do that”, “No, we can’t do that”, “Yes, we can do that”—it will impede our ability to be agile around our school communities and our job.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q That is very helpful. You have run both types of school and have said that when you were running local authority-run schools, you were often told, “No, we cannot do that”, even when the action would solve a problem and benefit our pupils, and even though you can see the academy down the road doing exactly that. What sort of freedoms are the most valuable? What have you found with those academy freedoms that the Bill is eroding?

Rebecca Leek: There are a few specific things, and some other things. I had to step in as an interim headteacher in Ipswich just prior to covid. I did not have an early years lead and we had Ofsted six weeks in: we got RI—with good for leadership and management, thank you very much—but I still did not have an early years teacher. I needed to solve that incredibly quickly, so I liaised with three different agencies and made contact with various different people. There was someone who was not a qualified teacher, but who had been running an outstanding nursery. She had decided to stop running it, because of her work-life balance, and she thought she might want to work in a school. I took her on, and although she was not qualified, she was really excellent. I was able to do that because it was an academy school, and it was not an issue. In a maintained school, there is a specific need for a qualified teacher to teach in early years, so I would not have been able to take her on.

That is just one example. Another example is that maintained schools, I think under the 2002 legislation, must have a full-time headteacher—they must have a headteacher at all times. In a small rural school, that is financially a real burden, and it is one of the reasons why I am not a permanent headteacher. Last year, I was an interim headteacher. I came to an agreement with those at the local authority that I would do it on four days a week, and they kind of accepted that—it was a bit of a fudge, because it is actually non-compliant. They asked, “Will you carry on?”, and I said, “No, because I am not going to be full-time.” At the moment, I am three days a week and, again, it is okay because I am interim—academies can have great flexibility around leadership arrangements.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q That is a potential problem for a small rural school.

Rebecca Leek: It is a real problem for small rural schools particularly. They function really well in little pockets of two or three schools together, with maybe one executive head dealing with some of the headaches—because there are headaches—and with some things that are more systematic across the three schools. Yes, definitely.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q I have a quick one for Leora on academies’ freedom with the curriculum. Some trusts not far from my constituency have used those freedoms quite strongly. They have deliberately focused on the core academics. In some cases, they do not necessarily even have the facilities to provide the national curriculum—if they are to be made to do that immediately—because they have focused on getting the core academic stuff for kids in situations of deprivation. Are you aware of others? There are definitely schools and trusts out there that are using those freedoms around the national curriculum, are there not?

Leora Cruddas: There definitely are trusts that have used their freedoms around the national curriculum. I would say it is not unreasonable for a state to want a high-level national curriculum framework—that is not an unreasonable position—

[Neil O’Brien]

Q But in adjusting to that, some schools might face severe adjustments or even need new capital, facilities and stuff—

Leora Cruddas: That is exactly right. Under this legislation, we could end up with a high-level national curriculum framework—once again, as I said on pay and conditions, with a floor but no ceiling. That would protect the right of schools and trusts, all schools and trusts, to innovate, to be agile, to respond to local context, and to be centres of curriculum excellence—you heard Sir Jon Coles talk about his curriculum. We want to retain that notion of curriculum flexibility, curriculum freedoms.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q Would an amendment to that effect be helpful to preserve those freedoms?

Leora Cruddas: It would be very helpful to have clarity on that position. Obviously, we have not had the curriculum and assessment review report yet. I have absolute confidence that Professor Francis will be eminently sensible. She is a very serious person, and will follow the evidence; but I think we need to be careful that we are not tying ourselves into high levels of prescription in all parts of the Bill, including the national curriculum.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q On pay and conditions, you might think that the idea of a floor, not a ceiling, is a decent direction of travel, but to be clear, that is not where the Bill is now and it needs to change. That is my position.

Leora Cruddas: Again, I would cite the Secretary of State’s evidence to the Select Committee, where she made clear that it is also her expectation around curriculum to have that floor and to be able to innovate and have flexibility above that floor.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q What I am getting at is that we need to change the Bill as it is currently drafted by officials, in order to achieve those things.

Leora Cruddas: Yes, I would say that was true.

[Catherine McKinnell]

Q I want to ask a question about admissions initially, which can go to any of you. Do you think it is important for schools to at least co-operate with local authorities on school admissions and place planning, in your experience?

Rebecca Leek: I can only tell you, from my experience, that there is a lot of collaboration where I work. We have Suffolk Education Partnership, which is made up of local authority representatives, associations, CEOs and headteachers. Admissions are not really my area, in this Bill, but my experience is that there is collaboration. We are always looking to place children and make sure that they have somewhere if they are permanently excluded. There is real commitment in the sector to that, from my experience where I work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

Q David, welcome and thank you for joining us.

I want to ask you first about the national curriculum and its imposition on all academy schools. We have heard about the use of that flexibility as a form of freedom—where schools are being turned around, they might do something different for a while and diverge from the national curriculum. But I know there are also trusts and school leaders who use it on a longer-term basis—they make a conscious choice to focus on, for example, the core academics, often in situations of great difficulty, in order to secure what they regard as the most important, core things for their students that will enable the maximum number of choices later on.

Obviously you have been a maths teacher—you have been in that core discipline—and I wondered whether, in an education system where parents have school choice and can choose different things that are right for their child, you thought it was legitimate for people to have different models and to have that flexibility, and whether it was useful to have that freedom from the national curriculum.

David Thomas: We need to strike a careful balance. It is absolutely a central purpose of education to make sure that all children going out into society have some shared knowledge in common and can interact as a society and function in that way. That is very important. It is also important that people running schools get to look at their children, look at the challenges they are facing and have bold and ambitious visions for what they want those children to go on and do and what that community wants for itself, and that they can be flexible and go on and achieve that. That is why you need a balance of different things.

At the moment we have statutory assessments that apply to all schools, whether an academy or a maintained school. We have Ofsted making sure that you teach a curriculum that is at least as broad and balanced as the national curriculum, so that you cannot go narrow. But you need to be ambitious for your children, and my understanding from Sir Martyn’s evidence earlier was that that system appears to be working for children.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q Right, so you do not think that there is a particular problem out there that needs to be solved.

David Thomas: No, there is not one that I can see.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q Can I ask you about the very general powers in clause 43 that give the Secretary of State the ability to intervene on a whole range of subjects? The explanatory notes to the Bill talk about using that to intervene on relatively micro things like school uniform. Do you think that untrammelled power is desirable, or would it be more sensible to amend that to have it slightly more focused, so that the Secretary of State does not get dragged into attempting to micromanage schools from the centre?

David Thomas: Clause 43, as drafted, goes beyond the explanatory notes and what Ministers have stated their intention to be. If the intention of the clause is to allow Ministers to intervene where an academy trust is breaching a power, but to do that in a way that is short of termination, that is a very sensible thing to want to do and the Government should absolutely be able to do that. If the purpose is, as it says in the explanatory notes, to issue a direction to academy trusts to comply with their duty, that feels like a perfectly reasonable thing to be able to do. The Bill, as drafted, gives the Secretary of State the ability to

“give the proprietor such directions as the Secretary of State considers appropriate”.

I do not think it is appropriate for a Secretary of State to give an operational action plan to a school, but I think it is perfectly reasonable for a Secretary of State to tell a school that it needs to follow its duty. I think there is just a mismatch between the stated intention and the drafting, and I would correct that mismatch.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q So an amendment to bring those two things back into line—the stated intent and the actual Bill—would be sensible.

David Thomas: Yes.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q I want to ask you about a few other issues, including pay and QTS. As a headteacher, you have used academy freedoms, and you have also worked in a global shortage subject, mathematics. I do not know what you think of the Bill more generally and whether there are things beyond what we have talked about already that you would amend, or what you think of the general tenor of the Bill—trying to take away academy freedoms and make things more similar. What do you think of the Bill’s direction of travel and what would you amend, if you were able to control it yourself?

David Thomas: On pay and conditions, I agree with the Secretary of State’s stated intention to spread the freedom to innovate, and to make teaching a more attractive profession, to all schools. I think we are only scratching the surface as a profession of what it means to offer flexible working within education. I do not think anyone has really mastered that, and it is a really big challenge. We need to be allowing the maximum freedom for people to be able to innovate. Of course, we have just done an experiment in what happens if you tell lots and lots of schools that they do not need to follow the statutory teachers’ pay and conditions: people only ever exceed it and offer things that are more attractive, because you want the very best teachers in your school.

I think it is essential that we have that freedom, and it is not enough for a Government to say that their intention is to grant that in a future statutory teachers’ pay and conditions document. It needs to be there in legislation for trusts to know that will be the case, which is really important for both pay and conditions. If you want to nail flexibility and offer that to teachers, you need to be able to trade off around conditions to make something more flexible. I think that is really important, and I agree with the Government’s intention, but I do not think that the Bill, as drafted, achieves that at the moment.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q Do you think it would be more attractive to extend those freedoms over both pay and conditions to local authority schools?

David Thomas: I think it would absolutely work, as CST has suggested, to say that statutory teachers’ pay and conditions should be an advisory thing that schools and trusts need to have due regard of, and to continue with something like the School Teachers Review Body. As it is at the moment, they are effectively setting a default starting position from which people can innovate out if they want to, rather than capping what people are able to do.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q There are lots of other big challenges in the sector at the moment: attendance, discipline and lots of other things. Is there anything else that you would like to either amend in the Bill or add to it?

David Thomas: I have concerns about limiting the number of people with unqualified teacher status who are not working towards qualified teacher status.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q What is the problem?

David Thomas: I have worked with some fantastic people—generally late-career people in shortage subjects who want to go and give back in the last five to 10 years of their career—who would not go through some of the bureaucracy associated with getting qualified teacher status but are absolutely fantastic and have brought wonderful things to a school and to a sector. I have seen them change children’s lives. We know we have a flow of 600 people a year coming into the sector like that. If those were 600 maths teachers and you were to lose that, that would be 100,000 fewer children with a maths teacher. None of us knows what we would actually lose, but that is a risk that, in the current system, where we are so short of teachers, I would choose not to take.

[Catherine McKinnell]

Q You have previously written about the value of ensuring that teachers can do some of their work from home, specifically marking and planning, so do you support the Government’s direction of travel in ensuring that greater flexibility and flexible working is available to more teachers and more schools?

David Thomas: Yes. I find it very odd how little flexibility lots of teachers are given. As a headteacher I remember teachers asking me questions such as, “Am I allowed to leave site to do my marking?” and I thought, “Why are you asking me this? You are an adult”. I absolutely agree with that direction of travel, but I do not see that reflected in the wording of the Bill, so I think there is an exercise to be done to make sure that that is reflected in the Bill. Otherwise, the risk is that it does not become the actual direction of travel.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Thank you very much for coming. Apologies; we are a little bit later starting than we had anticipated because of the delay for voting earlier. Could you introduce yourself?

Kate Anstey: I am Kate Anstey, the head of education policy at Child Poverty Action Group.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q Good afternoon. Thank you for bearing with us while we voted. During the course of the day we have been discussing free school meals in secondary schools. It is obviously desirable to give lots of people free breakfasts, but there has been a bit of a debate about how to prioritise in a situation of inevitably scarce resources. We heard from Mark Russell that, if given the choice, rather than go for a universal obligation in primary schools, he would have the roll-out of breakfast clubs in more secondary schools targeted at schools with high levels of deprivation. Should we focus first on areas of deprivation and secondary schools with deprivation? Obviously, we would like to have infinite money. What do you think of his argument?

Kate Anstey: We certainly welcome the introduction of free breakfast clubs in the Bill. We speak to children and families in schools extensively and carry out extensive analysis. We know that where breakfast clubs are provided freely, they make a huge difference to low-income families —they make a big difference to lots of children, but to lower-income families disproportionately. The fact that provision is universal is very important; we know that removes a lot of barriers for parents. Where there is any kind of targeted approach, there are issues around stigma and families are less likely to use provision.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q Do you mean universal within the school—everyone has access to it?

Kate Anstey: Yes, exactly. Take-up of breakfast clubs varies, but the fact that it is universally available is very important.

I would say that it feels like secondary school pupils need more attention. They are being missed in the Bill. More could be done to support those families. There is also the issue in primary schools of how much support breakfast clubs can provide in terms of childcare, which is much more needed at primary level, but secondary school pupils certainly need support. They need support to get to school and they need food available as well.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q That is a very interesting point. Do you have a sense yet of the future funding arrangements for breakfast clubs in secondary schools and for HAF—holiday activities and food? What is the current status of those, as you understand it?

Kate Anstey: My understanding is that the HAF funding for holiday programmes has been committed to until 2025—some time this year. There are concerns about what will happen next with holiday programmes. In terms of funding for breakfast clubs more generally, there has been commitment to carry on funding the national school breakfast programme until 2026. That supports some secondary schools that meet the criteria. That is welcome, but one of our concerns with the work going on around breakfast clubs is funding and commitment to funding. We know that there is funding until 2026.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q But there is no certainty after that.

Kate Anstey: Yes, there is no certainty after that. The costs cannot land on families—we know that that will be a major barrier—but they also cannot land on schools, which need to know that they can continue that provision.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q There are charities, voluntary groups and various people out there funding free breakfasts, and there are paid-for free breakfasts at the moment, so the interaction of the Government-funded entitlement for the 30 minutes and those two other things will be quite complicated. Do you have any thoughts about anything that we need to do in the Bill to make that work well and to avoid the problems you have described? More generally, do you have thoughts, based on the experience of the groups that you speak to, about what it really costs to deliver this well? What is the unit cost of doing it properly? I am interested in both of those things.

Kate Anstey: Around 75% of schools have some form of breakfast provision already, but, as you say—

[Neil O'Brien]

Q Is that primary?

Kate Anstey: There is a higher proportion in primary, but that 75% is across all. Sorry—I have forgotten your question.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q I was trying to get at what the unit costs look like and how you manage the interaction of providing a new, free entitlement to 30 minutes together with paid-for sessions that offer longer and existing, charitably funded things. Is there anything we need to do in the Bill to ensure that that does not get tangled up?

Kate Anstey: A large proportion are already running breakfast clubs. It is a real mixture in terms of how that is funded, whether it is through schemes or other things. In primary schools, it is much more likely that parents are paying in some form for that. Again, it is a mixed picture. There is a postcode lottery for families. If you are in a more affluent area, you are more likely to have breakfast club provision available to you, and you are more likely to be supported by family.

In what the Bill is trying to do on breakfast clubs, we really welcome the fact that it is bringing consistency and ensuring that there is access for all families. In the early adopter phase, it would be good to understand what schools are doing already and how this can work, but I think that standardised limit that includes both time and food for families should be standardised for everybody. There might be other things that go around that.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q On unit costs, I saw in the Government document that there was an initial grant—a lump sum—but the unit cost was about 65p per session per child. I know that there was the lump sum as well, but that struck me as being not a huge amount. I do not know what it really costs to deliver these things in practice in a lot of other places.

Kate Anstey: It is probably worth speaking to organisations; I am sure that Magic Breakfast will be able to speak more to that. There are certainly economies of scale that can help you bring down costs, but again, our area of expertise is free school meals, and schools are struggling with the funding that they have for free school meals. I would imagine that 65p might be a struggle for schools—I do not know. You would have to have conversations with some of the providers about that.

[Stephen Morgan]

Q Kate, it is good to see you again. Thank you for giving evidence to the Committee. I have a specific question around school uniform provisions in the Bill. Do you think that the provisions in the Bill on school uniform items for primary schools will support families and children with the cost of living?

Kate Anstey: We were very pleased to see Government taking action on reducing the cost of the school day, and uniforms are a huge pressure for families. We have done some research looking at the cost of uniforms for families. If you are a primary-aged family, the cost is £350 minimum, and it goes up to about £450 for secondary-aged families. That is for one child, of course, so that multiplies if you have more children. Part of that includes the fact that schools sometimes have excessive lists of compulsory branded items, so we were very pleased to see that acknowledgment in the Bill and the recognition that that needs to be limited. We think that that will make some difference to families.

The Bill could have gone further. I am not sure why the difference has been made between secondary and primary on the minimum. I think that those should be the same; there should not be a discrepancy there. I encourage Government to consider going further on this and bringing down the branded items as much as possible, because that is one of the things that place pressure on families.

In addition, the Bill could go further to support families with the cost of uniforms. In every other UK nation, families get grants and support with school costs. England is the only one that is lagging behind in that area, so we would like the idea of lower-income families getting more support with the cost to be looked at. This is two-pronged: schools need to do more, but families really do need help to meet some of those costs as well.

One more thing on uniform that comes up a lot in our research with children and young people is that children are being isolated or sent home from school because they do not meet requirements around uniform. DFE data showed that 18% of children in hardship were sent home for not meeting uniform requirements. I find that kind of shocking when we have an attendance crisis. Something needs to be done around the guidance for behaviour in schools to ensure that children are not sanctioned for poverty-related issues or issues relating to uniform. Those are areas where I think that the Bill could have gone further, but we certainly think restricting branded items is a good thing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Hayes]

I make this point in the context of the Labour peer who did disclose her party allegiance.

[Neil O'Brien]

And others.

[The Chair]

Order. It is not acceptable to have this backwards and forwards across the Committee. Please ask a question of the witness.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Q We now move on to the Ministers on the Bill. We all know who you are, but can you give us your formal titles?

The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell): I am Catherine McKinnell, the Minister for School Standards.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan): I am Stephen Morgan, the Minister for Early Education.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q We have heard from four or five different school leaders today alone that the Bill needs to be changed to deliver what the Government are committed to rhetorically, not just on pay and conditions, but on the national curriculum. They say that “It is nice that this is your intention” and “It is nice that this is what you say”, but four or five distinguished school leaders have said, specifically, over the course of the day, that the Bill needs to be amended. Will the Ministers work with those school leaders now to produce those amendments?

Catherine McKinnell: I want to say first that the Government’s mission through the Bill—

[Neil O'Brien]

Could you answer the question?

Catherine McKinnell: I will answer the question.

[Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham North) (Lab)]

We are supposed to be polite to each other.

[Neil O'Brien]

We have limited time. Can you please just answer the question. I have incredibly limited time.

[The Chair]

Order. We have had a question, and the Minister is going to answer it.

Catherine McKinnell: The Government’s mission through the Bill is to deliver on the ambition of giving every child a national core of high-quality education, while allowing schools more flexibility and to innovate beyond it. We know that excellence and innovation can be found in all school types, so our priority is to create a school system that is rooted in collaboration and partnership so that we can spread that best practice throughout our very diverse system, which was commented on in the evidence we heard today. That is just the schools part; there is obviously a whole other section on children and safeguarding, and making sure we bring forward the landmark reforms that we need to see in child safeguarding.

In direct answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question, the factor that makes the biggest difference to a young person’s education in schools and colleges is high-quality teaching, but there are severe shortages of qualified teachers across the country. We know that they are integral to driving high and rising standards, and they need to have an attractive pay and conditions framework. That is essential to both recruiting and retaining teachers who are qualified in every classroom.

We know academies have made transformational change, and we want them to continue driving those high and rising standards for all pupils, but especially disadvantaged pupils. That is why, as the Secretary of State set out, we want to create a floor with no ceiling, enabling healthy competition and innovation beyond that core framework to improve all schools. That is what we intend to deliver. We have heard the feedback from the sector. I have listened very carefully to the evidence that has been given today.

What this means for our ambition for teachers pay and conditions is that it should be clearer. In the same way that we have tabled other amendments to the Bill to make sure the legislation delivers our objectives, we are also intending to table an amendment to the clause covering teachers’ pay and conditions. That is entirely in line with the Government’s approach to providing clarification on the intention of legislation while we go through Committee stage.

The amendment will do two things. First, it will set a floor on pay that requires all state schools to follow minimum pay bands set out in the school teachers’ pay and conditions document. Secondly, it will require academies to have due regard to the rest of the terms and conditions in the school teacher’s pay and conditions document. In doing so, we make it clear that we will deliver on our commitment to create a floor with no ceiling, so that good practice and innovation can continue to spread and be used by all state schools to recruit and retain the very best teachers that we need for our children.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q So it is still your intention to make all academies comply with the school teachers’ pay and condition document, despite what Sir Jon Coles talked about regarding the problems that that would create?

Catherine McKinnell: As I said, the amendment will require all state schools to follow the minimum pay bands set out in the school teachers’ pay and conditions document, and then it will require academies to have due regard to the rest of the terms and conditions in the school teachers’ pay and conditions document. This is so that we can deliver that core offer to all state schools, but without a ceiling.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q Is the Minister prepared to commit to work with school leaders, both the ones here today and others, to generate that amendment so that they are all satisfied with where we end up?

Catherine McKinnell: We are in close consultation with all of the stakeholders that we have been collaborating with to make sure we create the best framework of legislation that will deliver opportunity for all children, and we will continue to do so.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q Is the only amendment that we will be seeing from the Government on some of the issues we talked about today on pay, with nothing on clause 43, QTS or the national curriculum? If the answer is yes, and you are not planning an amendment on those, that is fine. I just wondered if the Minister had been persuaded by any of the things discussed, particularly around clause 43 and whether it is a bit too untrammelled in its current form and did not necessarily reflect the intent as put down in the notes?

Catherine McKinnell: I can respond to the hon. Gentleman on the new power in clause 43 that he has raised a number of times today. It will provide the Secretary of State with a more proportionate and flexible remedy, where it is really important to address quite a narrow or specific breach regarding unreasonable behaviour within an academy trust. I can give you an example as to why this is necessary: at the moment existing intervention powers require the Department for Education to use a termination warning notice and subsequently a termination notice. That is not always necessary or appropriate when dealing with an isolated breach of a legal duty.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q I understand the sense of that.

Catherine McKinnell: We need a proportionate response and that needs to be framed—

[Neil O'Brien]

Q On that front we are in agreement. My question is whether the Minister would be prepared to limit that to schools’ actual duties, rather than just anything that the Secretary of State sees fit to direct them to do. That is the worry. It is not an “in principle” objection to it. It is a problem that the power is so untrammelled. Would she consider listening to the point that was made on that?

Catherine McKinnell: Is the hon. Gentleman talking about a point that he has made on that or a point that—

[Neil O'Brien]

Q It was a point that David made in his evidence on it. I thought he made a good point.

Catherine McKinnell: Obviously, we will listen to legitimate concerns on that. At the moment our view is that it is a much more proportionate way of dealing with a breach by an academy of a legal requirement within the legislation, so that we can avoid disruption to children where there is another way of dealing with it.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q One last point. Zooming back a bit, a few different witnesses called for a vision of where the system is going, and they intuited what the Government’s vision was from the contents of the Bill. I thought that was very interesting. I just wondered what Ministers’ view was of what had gone wrong in Wales. Obviously in Wales a lot of the different academy freedoms were never taken up, academies were not put in place and league tables were abolished. It was effectively a natural experiment going the opposite direction to England. The IFS report “Major challenges for education in Wales” is incredibly damning about what has happened there as a result. In terms of the Government’s overall theory and the vision they are trying to enact in the Bill, I am curious about why Ministers think things have gone so wrong in Wales. Why have things gone so backward? Why is the IFS report so damning?

Catherine McKinnell: I am conscious that other Members of the Committee might want to actually ask about the legislation, but I am happy to set out our overarching vision.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (First sitting)

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you. We will start our questioning.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

Q The first question is for Dr Homden. You talked about some of the things in the Bill that you would like to see amended. I wonder whether you could expand on that, and particularly your point about the timeliness of intervention.

Dr Homden: Particularly, we are concerned that some of the very sensible provisions in the Bill, such as breakfast clubs, are not extended to infants in the early years. There are a number of areas where early years extension would be appropriate, so while we recognise that this is a Bill on children’s wellbeing and schools, none the less the children’s wellbeing elements for the youngest children are particularly important—especially the opportunities for children to receive free meals, and also for the extension of admissions priority. The provisions for the extension of recognition of quality for teaching staff could and should be extended to early years workforce issues.

The second key area is the fact that there are no provisions in relation to children’s access to advocacy—particularly 16 and 17-year-olds, those who are excluded from school, and those who face other forms of crisis in, for example, unregulated accommodation. While others will call for broader extensions of advocacy, these are the focus areas that we would recommend and commend to you as being the most effective ways to ensure that young people have the information they need to exercise decision making, and that they can hold the system to account.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q I have follow-up questions specifically about some of the measures in the Bill about family group decision making—a thing that a lot of people generally are very supportive of. My only slight concern about it is at what stage in the process that happens, and whether, if it is at the point where you are seeking a court order, that is possibly too late in the process, where it is no longer voluntary or consensual. I wonder whether you thought we should look at bringing that forward in the process, or—you mentioned young children—whether it is something that needs to happen much earlier, particularly for the under-twos and the particularly vulnerable child in dangerous households.

Dr Homden: That is indeed an extremely valid point. Many local authorities will offer family group decision making support prior to pre-proceedings, and it is important that the new duty introduced does not take away earlier opportunities to extend the involvement of the family network when children’s services are involved. Timescales are indeed acknowledged to be of critical importance in family law, and statutory guidance should make it clear that nothing in the family group decision making requirement, or the provisions of the Bill, should slow down processes, or delay solutions for babies and children.

Overall, we support the promotion of the family first decision-making approach, but point out that while we understand that it is the preference not to specify a particular model, the evidence from the randomised control trial that Coram conducted is in relation to family group conferencing, and that evidence shows very clearly the importance of independent support, and of consistent and sufficient practice. So we do call upon the consideration of the ways in which there would be a strengthening of consistency and quality of approach to ensure that this really meets the needs of children and families.

It is also worth remembering that family group decision making will not necessarily divert children from care. There has been a significant increase in kinship foster placements, now representing 19% of all active households, but all our casework in the Coram Children’s Legal Centre demonstrates that family group conferencing and well-delivered family group decision making most certainly help.

Anne Longfield: I will briefly add my support on that. There is widespread support for upholding the principles of family group conferencing. In my experience, that intervention can transform children’s and families’ experience at that point and avert decisions being made about them without their involvement, including children, but it has to be done properly. We all want families to be involved, but this is around a process of involving families and children in solutions. That will have a point that it needs to get over, in terms of the mechanisms around it and the actual formality of that. So there is something there that there is widespread support for strengthening.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q Do you share, Dr Homden, the concern that we should be very clear that this should not delay decision making?

Dr Homden: Absolutely.

[The Chair]

This is a reminder to Members that is important to catch the Clerk’s eye if you want to ask a question. We will try to get everybody in during the morning and give everybody the same crack of the whip. I will now call the Minister to ask questions.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We will now hear oral evidence from two more witnesses. We must stick to the timings: this session must end at 10.30 am. Will you briefly introduce yourselves, please?

Andy Smith: My name is Andy Smith. I am the president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services. In my day job, I am director of children’s services and adult social services in Derby.

Ruth Stanier: I am Ruth Stanier, assistant policy director at the Local Government Association.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q Thank you for coming. We have an important principle in local government called the new burdens doctrine, which is that if the Government put a burden on local government, they pay for it. Given the various new duties and obligations that the Bill will place on local government, do you agree that that principle should be followed and that local government should be funded to implement those duties? Secondly, what is your understanding of the current situation? Is funding being offered to implement the duties in the Bill?

Ruth Stanier: Thank you for those extremely important questions. We very much welcome many of the measures in this Bill, which we have long been calling for, but they must be appropriately resourced to have the impact that we want.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q Would you like to see resourcing clearly specified in this Bill?

Ruth Stanier: You are absolutely right that the new burdens doctrine must be applied in the usual way. There are a number of measures in this Bill for which additional funding will be required, for example the new multi-agency units. We are encouraged that at this stage we are already having early discussions with the Department about the implementation arrangements. We are yet to undertake the full cost estimates, but that work will be set in train with the Department.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q That is very helpful. Clause 18 provides for regulations to be made on agency workers and their pay. We would all like to spend less on all these different things, but even though we might be sympathetic to the ideas in the Bill, do you agree that if we just cap prices without taking action on supply, it will fail, because the underlying cause of the high prices has everything to do with supply and planning over time?

Andy Smith: You have to cover both. It has been incredibly important and positive that the Government have taken forward measures to tackle the cost of agency workers. We are seeing the impact of the measures that have taken place already. For example, on Friday in my region we were talking about the implications and impact of the changes that have started to be implemented. We are seeing less churn of workers from one authority to another; we are also seeing some agency workers move over to the permanent books of councils, which is better for children.

It is also important to ensure that we have a sufficient approach and strategy for the workforce generally. That covers all elements of the Bill, so it would include social work but also other professions and other agencies where we have particular challenges. Yes, we absolutely need to focus on the recruitment and retention of social workers as well as tackling the costs of agency workers. I believe that that is already under way and is making some impact.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q Are there any other ways in which you would like to see the Bill amended?

Andy Smith: I think some things are missing from the Bill. There are some things that will be positive; no doubt we will come to those. What was disappointing, from the policy paper to where we are now, was the lack of corporate parenting: we would have expected to see all Government Departments committing to corporate parenting. We see that lack as a real disappointment, actually. It feels like a once-in-a-generation time for us to focus on the wider responsibility that all Departments should have for our children in care, so that is a particular gap in the Bill.

Ruth Stanier: I very much agree on extending the corporate parenting duty—this must be the right time and the right Bill to do that, and the Government have already committed to doing so in a recent policy paper, so it is really important we get that included. We were also disappointed that the Bill does not have powers for Ofsted to inspect multi-academy trusts, which was a Government election manifesto commitment. We support the similar new powers relating to care placement providers, but in respect of trusts that is an omission.

I am sure you will want to come on to discuss the elective home education provisions. We do support those, but there could be scope for them to go further. In an ideal world, councils would have the power to visit any child where there were concerns. Obviously, that would need to be appropriately resourced, but there could be scope to go further on that provision.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)]

Q Thank you both for being witnesses before the Committee. A question to you both: what impact will the Bill have on children and their families entering, or at risk of entering, the children’s social care system?

Andy Smith: A strength in the Bill is the focus on family help and early intervention. We talk a lot about the cost of the care system, but we need to see this in a much more strategic context and sense. We know that there is a lot of evidence. We published research last week showing that for councils that have been able to invest and maintain early help services, it has a direct impact on reducing the number of children coming into the more statutory end of things within children’s social care or the looked-after children service.

The challenge is that we have real variability around early help services across the country, because of the difficulties there have been with council budgets over the past 10 years. Seeing these reforms and the focus on family help in its totality—this goes back to the earlier question about the funding required to implement the reforms—will make a positive impact. It is ultimately better for children to remain with their families. If not, there is a big focus on kinship care, where children remain in the family network. That is a real strength in the Bill.

Ruth Stanier: I completely agree with that. We very much support the measures on support for kinship families. We think that is a very important area.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We will now hear oral evidence from Julie McCulloch, senior director of strategy, policy and professional development services at the Association of School and College Leaders, and Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers. You are very welcome. Do you both want to say a brief word of introduction?

Paul Whiteman: I am Paul Whiteman. We broadly support the provisions within the Bill, as far as they connect with schools. The Bill builds upon a lot of the policy positions and ambitions that we have held for some time. We do not see it as a revolution in education, but the provisions are broadly sensible.

Julie McCulloch: We are in a similar place in our schools. There is much in the Bill that aligns with our existing policy positions. We have a few logistical questions about how some of the proposals might play out, and perhaps some questions about how they sit within the Government’s broader vision and strategy for education, but we are broadly in favour of the proposals in the Bill.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q Good morning, and thank you for coming. Julie, on your logistical questions, ASCL said in its statement that

“work will be needed to get these measures right…Further changes must be done with care and must not seem ideological.”

You talked about some of the issues that you want to see addressed as we amend the Bill. What are they?

Julie McCulloch: They are largely about the fact that these proposals are landing in a particular context. There are three areas where those logistical challenges exist. The first is that they are landing in the context of a system that has been systematically underfunded for many years. That particularly relates to the proposal about breakfast clubs. We have some questions about ensuring sufficient funding for breakfast clubs.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q Can I press you on that one? I do not understand from the Bill how breakfast clubs are supposed to work. Obviously, many primary schools already offer a breakfast club, and they charge for it. If you are now supposed to offer 30 minutes and a free breakfast—I think the going rate will be 60p in the first wave—how does that work with schools’ current charging arrangements? Are they allowed to charge before that period, so there will be both charging and a free session? Is that your understanding of what the Bill does?

Julie McCulloch: That is our understanding. Is that yours too, Paul? There will be the provision of additional funding for the children who most need it, but you can provide provision around that.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q So you will have two tiers. What is your understanding of the position on secondary school breakfast clubs? Have you had any undertakings on the future of the free school breakfast programme that exists in secondary schools, or the holiday activities and food programme? Is it your understanding that there is secure funding for those things?

Julie McCulloch: I am not sure I would be as confident as that. We have started to have some conversations about that, but not detailed ones.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q You would welcome greater certainty about those things, presumably.

Julie McCulloch: We absolutely would, and continued funding.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q Is there anything else that you would like amended in the schools section of the Bill?

Julie McCulloch: I have two other thoughts, just to finish my point about the context within which this is landing. The second is about the challenge around recruitment and retention in schools. Although the proposal about qualified teacher status is absolutely welcome and the right thing in principle, we have had some concerns from our members about the challenges of ensuring that can be followed through, when they are already really struggling to recruit.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q Do you think it is sometimes better to have a good professional person whom the head thinks is a good teacher, rather than no teacher at all?

Julie McCulloch: In some cases, yes. That is a sad place to find ourselves, but sometimes that is the case, particularly when we are looking at vocational subjects at the top end of secondary school and into colleges. There are some excellent teachers and lecturers in further education colleges and secondary schools on vocational subjects, who do not necessarily have qualified teacher status, and we need to make sure we can retain them.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q You can be a good teacher even if you do not have QTS. You can be the right person.

Julie McCulloch: Yes. We absolutely in principle think that there should be qualified teacher status, but it is about that contextual piece.

The third area where we have some concerns about the context is the extent to which there is capacity in local authorities—you have just heard from local authority colleagues—to pick up some of the additional requirements on them. Again, we do not have any concerns about the principle, but some of our members are concerned about whether there is that capacity, and whether that expertise still exists in local authorities.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q Do you have a sense that a large number of schools are not providing a broad and balanced education at the moment? Do you have a sense of how many schools are not following the national curriculum?

Julie McCulloch: No, it is absolutely not a significant number at all. We hear from our members that the vast majority do use the national curriculum as their starting point and as a benchmark, and they innovate on top of it.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q What do you think the problem is that that measure is trying to solve?

Julie McCulloch: In our view, it is right that there should be a core national entitlement curriculum for all children and young people; we think that is the right thing to do. The devil is in the detail—we are going through a curriculum review at the moment. Our view is that that entitlement is important—on the ground it might not make an enormous amount of difference, but it is still important.

[Catherine McKinnell]

Q When it comes to school admissions, do you think the measures in the Bill will help local authorities to fulfil their statutory duties? Could you comment on how you think it will impact on children and schools?

Paul Whiteman: We do think it will help local authorities—we think there has been a gap in terms of their ability to ensure that their admissions duty is fully met. To that extent, the difficulty of some parents to find the school that their children really should go to has been fettered. Therefore, we think these provisions are broadly sensible and to be welcomed.

Julie McCulloch: We agree. The more join-up we can have between local authorities and schools on admissions the better; there are some areas where that is working really well already, and there are others where that statutory duty might help.

--- Later in debate ---

[Munira Wilson]

Q Obviously, breakfast clubs are for primary schools, but hunger does not end at 11. Do either of you think that we should be extending provision of free school meals right up to 18?

Paul Whiteman: May I add something in response to your first question, and then deal with your second question? In terms of QTS, we agree with what Julia said, but would add that it is a legitimate expectation of pupils and parents that they are taught by someone who is qualified to do so. Therefore, the provisions in the Bill meaning that people travel towards becoming qualified teachers are very important. That necessity has a marginal impact on recruitment and retention, frankly.

Recruitment and retention is so much more than the flexibilities that may or may not be allowed to academy chains under pay and conditions. Those are sparingly and judiciously used at the moment—we have no objection to how they have been used so far. But those flexibilities have a marginal impact. What affects recruitment and retention is more around workload stress, the stress of accountability, and flexibility within employment, rather than those flexibilities.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q A quick question for Julie. You said it was not clear whether the Bill currently delivers a floor, not a ceiling. Would you welcome it if we all passed an amendment to make that very clear?

Julie McCulloch: Yes.

[Amanda Martin]

Q What is the importance in the Bill of providing a clear legal basis for sharing information with the purpose of safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children?

Paul Whiteman: We absolutely support that. A statutory duty for schools and educators to be consulted in that respect is necessary, and it will widen the voices within that. After all, it is in schools that children are most present and visible, and teachers and school leaders already play a role in noticing changes and issues.

Julie McCulloch: We feel the same way. I would simply add that it is a growing set of responsibilities on schools—burden is not the right word, because schools absolutely need to do it. We are hearing a lot about the pressures on designated safeguarding leads in schools. While we also welcome schools’ having a statutory role here, we need to recognise that schools will need support and sufficient resources to deliver that.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We will now hear oral evidence from Jacky Tiotto, chief executive of CAFCASS—the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service. Please could you introduce yourself?

Jacky Tiotto: Thank you. My name is Jacky Tiotto. I am the chief executive of CAFCASS and have been there for five and a half years.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q Good morning and thank you for coming. Clause 1 states:

“Before a local authority in England makes an application for an order”

it has to

“offer a family group decision-making meeting”.

Those meetings are generally a very good thing. They are in statutory guidance already, but I have two nagging worries as we move to mandate a good thing, as it were. The first is about pace. I worry that through people using the courts or their legal rights, some people will slow this down, or I worry that the local authority will sometimes worry about fulfilling this requirement when the priority should be the pace of getting a child away from a dangerous family. And I worry, on the other hand, that because we are saying that they should think about this and do more of these meetings just before they put an order in, you are at the point where the meeting is not going to be that useful because you are already not into a consensual process. We want to try and get local authorities to do this earlier more often. Do you have worries about the pace, particularly for very young, very vulnerable children? Could we amend the clause to try to address some of my nagging doubts?

Jacky Tiotto: I think they are good doubts to have. I should say at this point that CAFCASS is not involved before the application to court has been issued, so it does not technically affect the work that we do. But when the proceedings are issued, we are interested in why they have been issued and what has not happened for the child. Our position is that if you are introducing something largely consensual about engaging people in the care of children in their family at a point when you are going to formalise a letter that says, “If you do not act now, we may remove your children,” I think it will be very confusing.

As drafted, the Bill probably could move it down to the point at which there are formal child protection procedures starting so that the family can get to know what the concerns are, work with the child protection plan for longer, understand what the concerns are and demonstrate whether the protection can happen. On the second point, if the Bill were to stay as drafted at the edge of care, I think there are risks for very young children, and babies in particular. The meetings will be difficult to set up. People will not turn up. They will be rescheduled—

[Neil O'Brien]

Q What is the average length of time?

Jacky Tiotto: I do not know, but I would think it is a number of weeks.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q Is a number of weeks a potentially dangerous thing?

Jacky Tiotto: For very young children when you are concerned, if they are still with the parents, which is sometimes the case, or even with a foster carer, you want permanent decisions quickly. That does not negate the need for the family to be involved. You can have it much earlier because you have been worried for a while at that point.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q So if you had the power, you could get this Bill into exactly the way you would draft it. With lots of experience in this world, you would change it so that we moved this thing in clause 1, part 1, so that it was focused on the point where there are initial child protection conversations rather than being in addition to. That is incredibly helpful. Is there anything else you would do to amend the Bill?

Jacky Tiotto: There are a few bits that it would be good to talk about. I do not know if you have a set of questions.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q My real question is: what would you amend? We are trying to find out how we should change the Bill as it goes through.

Jacky Tiotto: If I speak too long—because this is a great opportunity—please interrupt me. To go back to family group decision making and make a point about CAFCASS, we are the largest children’s social work organisation in England. We see 140,000 children through proceedings every year. The Bill tends to focus on those who are in public law proceedings. Two thirds of the children we work with are in private law proceedings, where there are family disputes about who children spend their time with and where they live. Very often, those children are in families where conflict is very intense. There are risks to them; there is domestic abuse. The Bill is silent on children in private law proceedings, and I think there is an opportunity for that to be different.

One suggestion I would like to make on CAFCASS’s behalf is that family group decision making should be offered to families where the court has ordered a section 7 report—a welfare report that, if ordered to do so, the local authority has to produce for the court in respect of what it advises about where children should live and who they should spend time with. I think the opportunity for a family group decision-making meeting for those families is important. I just put that on the table, if I may.

I want to talk a bit about clause 10, which is on deprivation of liberty—I do not know whether you have spoken about it yet. Obviously, CAFCASS is involved in 98% of those applications; to give you a sense of the span, last year there were 1,200 applications to deprive a child of their liberty. As I am sure you will know from the research briefing, that is an increase of about 800% since 2017, because the provision to secure children is not there. This is therefore a welcome change to section 25, but it is a missed opportunity to deal with the arrangements around deprivation, and some better, stronger regulations could be made for those children—who, let us face it, are actually being secured, or deprived of their liberty.

Our data shows that 20% of those children are aged 13 or under. Currently, if a local authority applies for a place in a secure unit for a child aged 13 or under, the Secretary of State for Education has to approve that application. I think an assumption is made in the Bill that that strength would remain in the amendment. We need to make it clear that, for all applications for 13-and-unders into places where they will be deprived, the Secretary of State should still approve. That has been unnecessary because the courts have been using their jurisdiction to deprive children. This clause will remove that, and make the accommodation usable legally, but we need to ensure that for young children it comes back. That is one point.

The second point is that for those young children, the review of their deprivation should be stipulated in terms of how regularly that deprivation is reviewed. For a 10-year-old deprived of their liberty, a week is a long time. The children who we work with tell us that they do not know what they have to do to not be deprived of their liberty, and very young children will be confused. So the frequency of review, I think, becomes more regular if you are younger.

I very much feel that the Department for Education should definitely consider what has happened to the child before the deprivation application is made. From our data, only 7% of those children were the subject of child protection plans, and it is hard to imagine going from not being protected by a statutory child protection plan to being in a court where they might deprive you. The relationship between child protection and deprivation needs strengthening.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q What would that look like? Do you have to do a case review?

Jacky Tiotto: As soon as that child becomes the subject of a concern, such that you might be making an application to deprive, you hold a child protection conference and you have a plan in place to protect that child beyond the deprivation, so including and beyond—it helps with the exit.

The final point is about the type of people who apply to run this provision as amended: Ofsted needs to be really sure who they are and what their experience is. I have run this provision; I have worked in it. These kids are really needy. They need specialist, highly qualified people, and at the moment the provision that they get is not run by those sorts of people.

[Stephen Morgan]

Q Jacky, thanks for presenting evidence to the Committee. I have two questions: one about local authorities, the second about kinship. On local authorities, what impact do you think mandating local authorities to offer a family group decision-making meeting will have on families and children?

Jacky Tiotto: The intention to be family-centred and to promote families as being the best place for children to grow up in is a good one. As I said, I think it is too late when you are in a panic and get a letter that says, “We may remove your children”—you are going to engage very differently at that point than if you were involved earlier. I think it is a good thing, but the problem with mandation is that just because you say it has to happen does not necessarily mean that people will come, and it does not necessarily offer protection to children. The principle is right but how it becomes operationalised will be important.

Creative Arts Education

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) on securing this debate, which, as well as being hugely informative and important, has been a pleasure to listen to. It has given us the exciting prospect of the Liberal Democrat drama club, which—given the exciting predilection of their leader, the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), for doing his own stunts—holds all kinds of potential. The idea of a flautist-off between the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Stroud (Dr Opher) is another exciting prospect.

We have heard thoughtful and important speeches from the hon. Members for Reading Central (Matt Rodda), for East Thanet (Ms Billington), for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous), for Chatham and Aylesford (Tristan Osborne), for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger), for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham), and for Strangford. It has been an interesting debate.

This will be the last education debate of 2024—barring any surprises from the Minister tomorrow—so I want to thank all the hard-working teachers for their efforts over the year. When I meet teachers, as I have been over the last couple of days, I often find that they are quite tired at this time of year. For primary school teachers, the creative activity around the nativity is the thing that finally finishes them off and leaves them ready for Christmas. I end the year in the spirit of good will, and particularly thank our hard-working teachers.

In order to facilitate an answer that the Minister may wish to get from her officials, I will start by asking about a very specific thing: the music and dance scheme. On 21 November, the Secretary of State wrote to the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), to say that the Government were going to extend transitional support for that scheme: “From 1 January 2025, for families with relevant income below £45,000, my Department will ensure their total fee contributions will remain unchanged for the rest of the academic year.” In a sense, that is a pause or a stay of execution. When will the Minister make a decision on the future of that really good arts scheme, so that there can be certainty beyond the end of the academic year? Will she continue to hold down fees for those who benefit from it for the next year? Will she also commit to maintain a related project, the Choir Schools’ Association scholarship scheme? I enter those specific things into the debate at this point so that the Minister has a chance to respond.

Let me now turn to the wider debate. We have talked about some of the things the last Government did, such as music hubs, which I think are widely welcomed, but—without wishing to move away from the spirit of good will and Christmas towards being the dog in the manger—of course the issue is always time. Our hard-working teachers are already working flat out. In theory and principle, I love the idea advanced by the Liberal Democrat Front Bench that it should not be an either/or, but unfortunately there are only a certain number of hours in the school day.

Now, if the Minister gets a wonderfully huge sum of money from the Treasury and manages to expand the school day so that we can do all those additional things, that is wonderful—I will be the first to welcome that—but our teachers and schools face some inescapable trade-offs. As the Minister will know by now, every week there are on average four calls from different groups for something new to be put on to the national curriculum or to get more time in our schools, but they cannot all have more time.

My only caveat to what Members have said today is the idea that there are creative and non-creative subjects. Some spoke about STEAM, which is a better concept, because the sciences and all those other things are creative subjects too. After a fall from 83% to 70% of pupils getting double or triple science between 2006 and 2011, it is a good thing that those subjects have rebounded to 98%. We have to be honest about what the trade-offs are. If we want to do more of one thing, we have to be clear and honest with people about what we are going to do less of—unless there is some sudden money gusher.

[Ms Billington]

I am interested in the idea that there is a limited amount of time in the state school curriculum, but there does not seem to be a limited amount of time for creative education in private schools. If it is important for private schools, then it is important for state educated children, so why can we not find the time for it?

[Neil O’Brien]

With respect, I am all ears, and it will be for the Government to say where they will find the time for those things. In principle, I have no objection, but I do not believe that the hon. Lady thinks that there is an unlimited amount of time in the school day, or that our teachers can all do endlessly more work. Of course that is not the case—no one believes that; there are choices here.

If I can return to the spirit of good will and Christmas, I want to commend something good that the Government have published: the evidence pack published alongside the curriculum and assessment review. It is a good piece of work that brings some nuance to the debate that is not always there. It shows that, although the numbers doing GCSE are somewhat down for some art subjects, the numbers doing other types of qualifications are going up at the same time. A lot of the bigger changes are nothing to do with art subjects whatsoever. We see less time spent on ICT in schools and more time spent on English, maths and science. I commend to hon. Members that very good piece of work by the Government; I strongly endorse the nuance that it brings. We all want to see more of these wonderful things happening in our schools, but I also beg that everyone is honest about the trade-offs involved.

[David Mundell (in the Chair)]

Minister, I would grateful if you left a few moments at the end so that Jess Brown-Fuller can respond to the debate.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Janet Daby)]

I will endeavour to do so, Mr Mundell. I am pleased to be speaking in this debate, which, as has already been said, is probably the last education debate this year—what a lovely subject for the final one. I extend my congratulations to the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) on securing it. It was excellent to hear so much about her performing arts background—from teaching to advocating here; she obviously still enjoys it.

I am sure many of us are enjoying creativity during this festive season—maybe hon. Members have been to a pantomime or two, although I am not encouraging anyone to do one here. I look forward to seeing “Sleeping Beauty” in my constituency, and I am sure that many Members who have spoken about the theatres, creative arts and creative places in their areas are enjoying visiting them and partaking in the activity as well. It was excellent and lovely to hear about the many things that colleagues have mentioned, although of course we also heard about the many challenges and the changes that are needed. Hon. Members said that we need to go further, and I know that they will hold the Government to account on our mission statements and reforms.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for East Thanet (Ms Billington) for her contribution, particularly about Sammy’s Foundation, and about the need to ensure that the creative arts are there for people with SEND and those who are neurodiverse.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) for speaking about music hubs and the need to review provision for arts and creativity.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) talked about the need to campaign. I very much agree that creativity and the arts help with children’s emotional health and wellbeing—I will be speaking about that later—but it was also lovely to hear that it helps with maths. Why wouldn’t we want to hear that? It is absolutely brilliant.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tristan Osborne) for talking about not only the worrying decline in the arts but the need to inspire generations to come.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger) for raising concerns about declining GCSE uptake, and for talking about hubs.

My hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) talked about the missions and growth, as well as SMEs.

It was lovely to hear the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) speak about many things, including how the art of graffiti can make real and positive changes.

The hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) spoke about many relevant things, as she often does, including the need to ensure that the curriculum is rounded, varied and broad—I could not agree more. I am sure that we are all advocating for more fun in our children’s studies and the encouragement of their creative abilities. Learning can be fun, and we hope that it is in our schools.

I am pleased with the many contributions that have been made, and I will endeavour to respond to them in the time I have, but I encourage Members to make contact with me if they feel they have not been answered. The Government recognise the immense value of creative subjects for every child and young person, extending far beyond career aspirations in the creative industries. Creative subjects support a child’s ability to express themselves, help their confidence and support their emotional wellbeing, and there are benefits in many other areas.

Creative subjects, like the arts, music, drama and many others, are significant elements of the rounded and enriching education that the Government want every child to receive. That is why creative subjects are part of the national curriculum for all maintained schools from the age of five to 14—and beyond for drama. Academies, too, are expected to teach these subjects as part of their statutory requirement to foster pupils’ cultural development. Indeed, many schools currently teach creative subjects as part of the curriculum and do so with great success, which enables children and young people to engage with subjects like music beyond the school day. The Government’s goal is to ensure that no child is deprived of the enriching experience that creative education provides. We aim to ensure a consistent approach across all schools.

The Government’s mission is to break down the barriers to opportunities that hold back many of our young people. We know that this will take time, but we are committed to taking the right steps to make it a reality. A crucial step in realising our vision is to ensure that our national curriculum strikes the right balance. It must embody ambition, excellence, relevance, flexibility and inclusivity. That is why in July we launched an independent curriculum and assessment review for ages five to 18, chaired by Professor Becky Francis CBE.

The review will seek to deliver a broader curriculum, with improved access to music, art, sports, drama and vocational subjects. It will look closely at the key challenges to attainment for young people and the barriers that hold children back from the opportunities that they should be able to access. This is an important process, and the recommendations put forward by Professor Becky Francis and her expert-led panel will be published in 2025. Many Members have mentioned that crucial review.

We recognise that although potential is widespread, opportunities are not. That disparity has held many young people back from fulfilling their true potential. To ensure that music education is fully inclusive, including for those with special educational needs and disabilities in both mainstream and special schools, music hubs are required to have an inclusion lead and to develop an inclusion strategy. Furthermore, the Government will launch a new national music education network. This initiative will help families, children and schools access broader opportunities and support.

[Neil O’Brien]

Will the Minister give way?

[Janet Daby]

I really do not have time, I am afraid.

Through the opportunity mission, we will work to break the link between young people’s background and their future success. Our focus is on supporting the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children, and we will continue to take steps to ensure that opportunity is not restricted by a young person’s location or background.

Our goal is to help families continue to support their children in accessing specialist music and dance courses, so we have made changes to the music and dance scheme for this transitional academic year. From January 2025, we will ensure that families with below average incomes receive additional support to prevent any increases in parental contributions due to the VAT change. This adjustment will benefit around half the families with a music and dance scheme bursary for their child.

I would like to give the hon. Member for Chichester some time to respond, so I will end on that note. I thank all Members for their contributions, and I wish everyone a very merry Christmas.

Qualifications Reform Review

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of the statement.



For many years, people have worried about the huge number of different qualifications in further education. For many years, people have wanted us to be more like Germany and called for new, higher-quality, higher-funded, simpler qualifications. T-levels, introduced under the previous Government, are an attempt to do exactly that, with a higher unit of funding and much more work experience. Finally, we have a clear, prestigious qualification mirroring A-levels on the academic side. As the Minister will know from talking to Lord Sainsbury, part of the vision was to use T-levels to simplify the landscape, which everyone agrees is too complex. I think the sector will heave a sigh of relief that today’s announcement is finally out—we were getting to the point where literally any decision would have been better than continued indecision—but it leaves some huge unanswered questions. The Minister says that things will be clear up until 2027. In other words, we will be back here again in two years. We had a pause and a review. We will now have a longer pause and another review. At some point, the Government will have to decide. The sector wants certainty, but we know from the statement that it will not get that yet.

The Government must spell out some kind of vision for how they plan to simplify the landscape of qualifications, which for my whole lifetime everyone has agreed is far too complicated and fragmented. The Minister said in her statement that the qualifications landscape is too confusing, even as she announced that the Government have decided to keep more qualifications, particularly overlapping qualifications. I do not want to be too mean to her—these issues are not easy. In Government, we had the Wolf review. More recently, we removed a further 5,500 qualifications that had sustained low take-up, but what is this Government’s vision to simplify the landscape? Never mind the detail, what is the rough vision, and when will they set it out? If it is not T-levels and what the previous Government were planning to do, what is it?

There is also a lot more work to be done to improve T-levels. As the Minister said, the Government will allow part of the work experience to be delivered working from home, but we need much more than that. What is the plan to reduce drop-out rates, and make T-levels more appealing and easier to deliver? One of the great things about T-levels is the need to produce so much work experience—about 50% more than previous qualifications. That makes them much harder to deliver. What are the Government doing to help colleges to deliver them? On a point of process, the Government—extraordinarily, I thought—refused to publish the terms of reference for the review that has just concluded, even in response to freedom of information requests from FE Week. Will the Minister agree to publish the terms of reference now that the review has concluded? There is no reason for them not to be in the public domain.

No qualification structure will work unless the review gets the funding landscape for technical education right, so will the Minister set out the funding implications of her announcement? The Government promised that they would protect public services from the national insurance increase, but first universities and, this week, nurseries and early years providers have discovered that that was a false promise. The university fee increase has been entirely eaten up by the increase in national insurance. Now, early years providers say that the failure to compensate them for the national insurance increase is “catastrophic” and will mean that

“countless nurseries, pre-schools and childminders will be left with no option but to raise costs, reduce places or simply close their doors completely.”

So far, the Government have refused to come clean about the cost to the further education sector of the national insurance increase—a piece of information that this House deserves to know. The Government have it, but they will not release it. When staff in non-academised colleges complain about their different treatment on pay compared with academised colleges, the Government say that there will be £300 million for post-16 education, but they will not say how much of that will be eaten up by the increase in national insurance. I hope that today the Minister will finally give this House the information that it deserves to know. The Government have the information, and this House and people in the sector deserve to know it.

It is early days, but what we are looking at is ongoing uncertainty over these qualifications, no clear vision to bring about the simplification that the Government say they want, and no proper plan yet to support T-level students and providers. The House is not allowed to see the terms of reference of the review that has just concluded, or know how much the national insurance increase will cost the sector. For students and teachers alike, we have to do better than this.

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

Staff in non-academised sixth-form colleges are not being offered the same pay increase as staff in academised colleges. It is understood that a sum of money is available for post-16 education, but colleges have been left completely unclear about whether that sum will be enough to offset the national insurance increase or whether they will find, as universities have, that it is entirely eaten up by that increase. Will the Minister agree to publish the cost of the national insurance increase to sixth-form colleges, and if she will not publish it, why on earth not?

[Janet Daby]

I find it shocking that the shadow Minister has taken no responsibility for the many circumstances in which we have found ourselves having to make decisions that are in the best interests of students and colleges. We are conducting various reviews to try to ensure that we put right the mess that we inherited.

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[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

Because of the increase in national insurance, the Early Years Alliance is warning of a 20% increase in fees for early years parents, which affects nurseries and things like paid-for breakfast clubs. It says that the Budget will be a “recipe for total disaster”, with up to four in 10 early years providers closing unless drastic action is taken. As a first step towards averting that disaster, will the Secretary of State now agree to publish the Department’s estimate of how much the national insurance increase will cost early years providers? If she will not publish it, why not? Does the House not deserve to have this information?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I take the concerns of early years providers very seriously indeed, and we will set out in due course the funding rates and the approach that we are taking. The hon. Gentleman and the Conservative party are very keen to complain about and criticise the measures that we set out in the Budget, yet the Leader of the Opposition herself said that she would refuse to reverse them. They want all the benefits—the teachers, the breakfast clubs and rising standards—but they are not prepared to take the tough decisions that are necessary. As a former Treasury Minister, the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott), should know better, because she saw the scale of the fiscal inheritance that this Government inherited from her party.

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[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

Before the election, Labour promised to let businesses spend 50% of their apprenticeship levy money on non-apprenticeships, but now Ministers say the commitment is under review. Ministers are taking away the flexibility of businesses to spend their own money on level 7 apprenticeships—a big change to the principles of the levy. Will the Secretary of State confirm when the review of her own policy will conclude, and will she rule out doing to level 6 apprenticeships what she is doing to level 7 apprenticeships?

[Bridget Phillipson]

We remain committed to reforming the failing apprenticeship levy and turning it into a growth and skills levy with up to 50% flexibility for employers, driving new opportunities in growth areas across our country, alongside ensuring that we deliver many more apprenticeship starts for our young people. We inherited a situation where apprenticeship starts were falling at a time when we urgently need to invest in the skills of the next generation. We will work with business through Skills England to drive forward what is required for adult learners as well as young people.