Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting)

Debate between Patrick Spencer and Damian Hinds

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

First, I will ask the Minister a bit about process. The questions we ask in Parliament are often rhetorical; we do not expect answers to them from Ministers, and nor do we get them, but this is the Committee stage of a Bill’s passage, known as line-by-line scrutiny, where quite often he questions we put are questions about facts or the intent of the legislation. I have asked a number of questions at different points in this Committee stage that have not been answered, but nor has the Minister necessarily been saying, “I will write to the hon. Member in response.” Does he intend to do that, or, if any questions have been left hanging, are we required to put down a written parliamentary question to which the Minister will respond?

For the avoidance of doubt, what I am about to say is not in the category of question that requires a factual response or note of intent. The misconduct regime covered in the clause is clearly exceptionally important for the protection of children, public confidence and maintaining the very highest reputation of the profession. I welcome what is new in the clause, because it is right and proportionate that we should be able to take action regardless of when the incident took place and whether the individual was a teacher in the profession at that time. I also welcome online education and independent educational settings being brought into scope, as well as the ability to investigate a suspicion or an incident regardless of how it came to light.

I want to ask the Minister about something related to the regulatory regime. It would not technically require primary legislation, but there are quite a lot of things in the Bill that do not require primary legislation to be effected. I am referring to the matter of vexatious complaints. In the world we live in, particularly with the influence and prevalence of social media, we have heard teachers express the feeling that sometimes, in a small minority of cases, complaints may be made against a teacher neither for the right reasons, nor because of a genuine safeguarding concern. Of course there should not be barriers blocking people from any background raising concerns; the ability to do so should be available to everybody. Equally, however, there is a concern sometimes that when seeking to remove barriers, we risk going too far the other way.

We must ensure that there is a process to go through so that all genuine concerns and complaints do come through, but that we do not end up with an excessive volume of vexatious complaints. These are, I am afraid, sometimes fuelled by social media.

[Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

Let me state on the record that I have not met a single teacher who has not received some form of vexatious complaint at one point in their career. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will speak to this issue when he responds.

The Bill expands the scope for potential dismissal. Dismissal processes are incredibly cumbersome and costly for schools, so will the Minister speak to what provision he will make for schools to be reimbursed for what they are going through? The Bill also expands the capacity to look back into the previous career of someone who has started up a school. Would bankruptcy, for instance, prevent someone from being considered worthy of running a school? Will the Minister therefore also speak to whether a perfectly reasonable business experience might cause the Secretary of State to intervene?

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Southampton Itchen. I enjoyed his speech and I think he made several very good points, a number of which the Opposition would agree with. We certainly agree with the importance of the foundation of qualified teacher status, and a lot of work rightly went into reforming the core content and framework of initial teacher training, as well as the early career framework. Those are incredibly important foundations for a successful career in teaching.

With the present Government’s plan to recruit just 6,500 teachers over the next five years, which is a material slow-down compared with the Parliament just ended, it should be more straightforward to hit those recruitment targets, but I do not think this discussion is really about the numbers that we can recruit into the teaching profession. It is about getting the right people, which the hon. Member for Southampton Itchen also said. It is not about obsessing over having the structures but getting the right people, and this is about getting the right people in front of children in school settings. By the way, presuming we are not just talking about academics, that also applies to sport, music and art.

[Patrick Spencer]

Can my right hon. Friend answer me this question? Which is better, an English graduate, with QTS, teaching maths in a primary or secondary school, or a maths graduate, without QTS, teaching maths in a primary or secondary school?

[Damian Hinds]

I think this is where the whole House comes together. The best of all worlds is to have someone who is both a subject specialist, with their own excellent academic record, and QTS, and who is also a really inspirational practitioner. Of course, those three things come together on many occasions, but sometimes there are choices that have to be made.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Tenth sitting)

Debate between Patrick Spencer and Damian Hinds

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Damian Hinds]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston has mentioned, it has long been the case that some schools have not had to follow the national curriculum. Even under the proposals in the Bill there will be some schools that will not have to follow it. One of the reasons why I have been banging on for so long, Sir Christopher, is because I have been through a lot of these points already and I am being asked to restate them. I have to ask the hon. Gentleman to forgive me but, as I have set out, it is a broad framework, and there is nothing wrong with having a little bit of innovation within that.

I want to come to a close. There are serious people working on the curriculum review and I wish them well in their work. We must of course await the outcome, not prejudge it. So far we have heard only the good stuff—the things we are going to add. In politics, it is always easy to talk about adding things. We are adding more creativity, art and sport, and those are all things that I welcome. It is great to have those opportunities for young people. The difficulty may arrive when we ask, “What does that mean?” Does it mean a longer school day, which is one option? Or does it mean that something else has to go to make way for those things? I do not have the answer, but it is a relevant question.

To come back to the ceiling point—whether the national curriculum is a floor or a ceiling—it depends how much headroom is needed. In a very loose national curriculum, schools can innovate and so on, but in a heavily specified national curriculum, they cannot, because the floor is already close to the ceiling and there is not that much room to play with.

I do not know whether the hon. Member for North Herefordshire is on Professor Francis’s working group, or what will be in the review document, but there are three problems with insisting on 100% adherence to the national curriculum. First, we are being asked to agree to it before we have the outcome of the national curriculum review. Secondly, Ministers are not obliged to adopt that independent review; they may decide to do something slightly, or more than slightly, different. Thirdly, they are not obliged to stop there. I say “they”, but it is of course not only them. The Bill is going to be an Act of Parliament: we are not legislating for what happens between 2024 and 2029; in the absence of another piece of legislation to replace this one, we are legislating for all time. We cannot know who might come along in the future and decide to do something of which colleagues here might not approve.

We do not have large numbers of schools teaching unscientific facts, creationism and what have you. We do have Ofsted, which evaluates all schools on whether they follow a broad and balanced curriculum. We know that, the great majority of the time, the great majority of schools follow the national curriculum, but some innovate, and that can have some benefits. Like others, I am left asking Ministers, what problem are we trying to solve?

[Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I had a long speech prepared, but it does not include Keats, Semmelweis or Callaghan, so I will cut it short. Teachers want to be trusted to teach, to read their class and to choose what to teach, when to teach and how to teach it. My concern is that the Government are bringing all schools under the same framework and that that will allow them to fundamentally change what is taught in schools.

We have all read the news about the Becky Francis review trying to broaden the curriculum, dumb it down, dilute it and move it away from a knowledge-rich focus. Will the Minister confirm the Government’s intention to retain the national curriculum’s focus on knowledge, and the attainment of knowledge, as opposed to skills? I know she will say that the Francis review has not reported, but the Government have no statutory obligation to accept its recommendations. Will Ministers please confirm that they want to keep the national curriculum focused on knowledge and core knowledge subjects?

It is clear that the intention is for all schools to teach the national curriculum. Can the Minister assure me, and thousands of teachers who want to do the best for their students, that the curriculum will be kept broad to allow them to teach as they see fit, in the best interests of their students? Again, the Government do not have to follow the guidance from the Becky Francis review.

What has been proven over time is that the current framework works for academies. I will keep saying this in the Committee: academies have been proven to produce better results for children who come from a low-performing or failing state school—they have been proven to do much better for children in the long term. [Interruption.] They have; that is what the evidence says.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Seventh sitting)

Debate between Patrick Spencer and Damian Hinds

Committee stage
Thursday 30th January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Damian Hinds]

It has, and it has also been very controversial in many cases for pre-school provision, as the hon. Lady will know.

I also want to ask about the costs and reimbursements, which amendments 26 and 27 speak to. The Government, before they were in government and probably since, talked a lot about saving families £400 a year. In my rough maths, if we take £400 and divide it by 190 school days—[Interruption.] Oh, it is £450. Well, I am not able to adjust my maths live, so the answer will be slightly more than the number I give now. My maths gave me £2.10 a day. That seems to be somewhat different from the figures that schools are actually being reimbursed in the pilot programme, so I hope for some clarity on this point.

The details of the early-adopter programme talk about an initial set-up cost of £500, a lump sum of £1,099 to cover April to July and then a basic rate being provided per pupil. There is a different rate depending on whether the child is what is called FSM6—eligible for free school meals previously—if I have read the details correctly. I am not clear why the unit cost of a breakfast would be different between those two groups of children, but perhaps the Minister could fill me in.

Even at the higher rates—the FSM6 rates—there seems to be quite a gap between that and £2.10, or the Minister’s slightly higher figure, when it is £450 divided by 190 days. Obviously, part of that may be made up of savings from bulk purchasing and so on, but it still seems quite a gap, if I have understood the numbers correctly. I hope the Minister can help me to understand.

[Patrick Spencer]

When I was a governor of a primary school, I found that an unintended consequence of underfunded breakfast clubs was parents accruing ludicrous amounts of debt. There are no circumstances in which the school would have turned away the child, but that does not bode well for a policy that is about supporting parents who are hard up. If parents are forced to pay for the breakfast club and accrue huge amounts of debt, we know that is very bad for their mental health and for their general wellbeing. I do not know whether the Minister has anything to say on that point, but I am sure my right hon. Friend will agree.

[Damian Hinds]

As ever, my hon. Friend makes an important point. My worry is that, in a couple of years’ time, when Members sitting on both sides of this Committee Room get emails about the funding pressures on schools—because, spoiler alert, there will still be funding pressures on schools—breakfast clubs will be one of the factors contributing to those pressures, if this programme is not fully funded or almost fully funded. I wonder whether the Minister will say on the record that it is his expectation that this programme will, like the national school breakfast club programme, cover at least 75% of the actual cost of provision.