Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Sarah Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2025 Commons Chamber

When my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) and I and Members opposite served on the Education Committee which I chaired, we were horribly aware that the policies that we were helping to scrutinise and influence would have an impact on lives for decades to come. Education policies are in many ways more fundamental than the economic policies pursued by a Government at any time, which are at least more easily altered. But if we close down the opportunities for disadvantaged children, that will be having a negative impact on them, on their families, on their community and indeed on this country for decades to come. That is why this is such a bad idea.

[Sarah Smith (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

Under the current system, a third of our children leave school without the basic qualifications to succeed in life, so does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that that shows that the current system is failing and needs change? Furthermore, in the communities with the most disadvantaged—I mean those outside of London—the academisation approach has not made an impact and has not turned around the life chances of children growing up in the most deprived wards. I have worked in those communities and with those schools and seen the impact of trust after trust failing those children. I will not accept that. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that that is unacceptable and that we have to move forward from this day to make greater improvements to make sure that the most disadvantaged students genuinely get the opportunities they deserve?

[Graham Stuart]

I thank the hon. Lady for her speech, if not intervention, and I certainly applaud her passion for the interests of children, disadvantaged children in particular, and her rage at failings in the system and her desire to see improvements, which might need to be radical, but we have not heard how the mechanics of the changes proposed in this Bill will raise standards. They will in fact dismantle them. The hon. Lady’s intervention comes in the context of my following the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr talking about Wales, and it is clear that the system being created by this Bill is much more akin to that in Wales, exactly as the hon. Gentleman so honestly said. Does the hon. Lady suggest that deprived children in Wales have better outcomes than they do in England? [Interruption.] She moved to stand up but then thought better of it, which was wise because she knows that the situation in Wales—which, as the hon. Gentleman said, is exactly what this Bill is trying to create—is infinitely worse than it is in England. Whatever the failings of the system in England, it is demonstrably better than it was 15 or indeed 25 years ago, and it is demonstrably better than it is in Wales.

[Sarah Smith]

rose—

[Graham Stuart]

I happily give way to the hon. Lady again.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. I remind hon. Members that interventions should be short.

[Sarah Smith]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way once again. In my most recent conversation with a group of my headteachers, not one of them raised concerns about this section of the Bill and the reforms. For them, the question of academisation and how the amendments have been made will not limit them in their capabilities to do the best for their children. They are concerned about issues that will come forward as a result of the Bill around SEND, which have been mentioned by hon. Members from across the House, and other things that are restricting them from making progress.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

There are good elements in this Bill. In line with Professor Jay’s recommendation, I agree that the House must urgently make it a duty to report abuse. As new clause 50 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) sets out, we also want a new authority established to deliver national and local inquiries into rape gang culture and the like. I fully support breakfast clubs, especially following the invention of free school meals—a few years ago—by a Liberal Government.

These are good measures because they put the interests of the child at the centre of everything, and the Bill goes wrong where it puts ideology ahead of the interests of the child and loses sight of those interests. I do not support adding taxes to education, which is outside the scope of the Bill, and I am concerned about the effects on academies as well.

Any conflation of children being educated other than at a traditional school with safeguarding concerns is not borne out by the evidence. It is also an ideological position that is an insult to the parents and families of the 110,000 children—our constituents up and down the country—who are doing a great job in ensuring that their children are educated, whether they are home tutored or educated otherwise. In fact, according to local authority data published in academic research that has been submitted to the Education Committee, only 11% of section 47 child protection inquiries into home-educated children result in a child protection plan. That rises to 26%—more than double—for the average of all predominantly school-educated children. Child for child, those educated at home are the safest and least in need of protection, so the overwhelming weight of new bureaucracy and legislation tackling home education as a sector is not justified. My hon. Friend’s new clause 48 is therefore quite right, because we should remove the burdensome and highly intrusive sanctions on such families.

Unless amendment 221 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Vikki Slade) is agreed to, the Bill will enable grandparents reading to their grandchildren at weekends or in the evenings on a regular basis to be served with a notice, demanding a response on pain of a monetary penalty, by a council officer who chooses to issue one. These powers are really extreme and extraordinary. Instead, we should be supporting the interests of the child.

We should be supporting home-educated children and allowing them to sit exams without charging them hundreds and hundreds of pounds for the privilege. New clause 53, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham, would do exactly that. Without such a provision, can Ministers conceive of anything in the Bill that supports home-educated children? There is plenty to regulate them, control them and expose them to rigorous inspection, but there is not a single clause in the whole Bill that supports children being educated at home. Why the parsimonious Treasury cannot be persuaded to simply allow them to sit exams without paying hundreds of pounds is beyond me. Forgive me, but I cannot fathom why a Government would not want to provide for children to sit examinations.

In Somerset, our council has much a much better and proportionate approach, and it has developed a protocol in partnership with home-educated families. I am worried that that constructive approach will be swept away by the more confrontational approach that this Bill ushers in. At worst, there is the prospect of a disabled child being forced back to school by a local authority officer when they have good reason to be frightened of going back to that school, which really cannot be right.

Turning to my Taunton and Wellington constituency, I pay tribute to state schools such as those my children attended, and the independent ones in Somerset, where, as I have said, the local authority has a more constructive and positive approach to working with schools and families. I particularly pay tribute to the pupils at West Monkton primary school, who have written to me about their amazing plastics pollution campaign. I completely support their bid to ban single-use plastics, which they have written to me about. For those schools and the 5,254 children with an education, health and care plan who cannot get a school place, such as the family who came to my surgery on Friday, may I urge the Government to do more to help families with children with special educational needs? It is crazy that the system is preventing them from attending school when they want to. We need more projects like the great special educational needs centre being developed at Hatch Beauchamp school, which I visited recently. We need to be driven by the interests of the child, not ideology.

Finally, until the Government address the fact that £2 out of every £3 of council tax in places like Somerset is going on care—a national responsibility, in my opinion—then local services, schools and communities will see less and less investment. Social care funding must be tackled. It affects the whole of local government finance, including schools. That is not good for our environment, not good for jobs and not good for the growth of our economy.

[Sarah Smith]

It is a privilege to stand again in support of the Bill. If we are to improve our school system for the benefit of all children, regardless of their background or educational needs, their welfare and interests need to be at the heart of any reform. Opposition Members’ suggestions that that cannot be done without sacrificing standards in education could not be further from the truth. It is because the Government are ambitious for all children that the commitment to excellence in education is the driving force behind the measures in the Bill. Labour knows that when standards in schools drop, it is working-class children and those whose attainment levels may already be lower on paper but who are no less impressive due to overcoming additional learning challenges, who will suffer.

The Bill represents a cultural shift in how Government approach educational reform through delivering change in the sector through partnership and child-centred policy. The prioritisation of a child’s wellbeing and a focus on inclusion are not woolly concepts, but the bedrock of stability that will enable all children to thrive educationally.

It is not contentious to say that we currently have a fragmented school system that is letting down far too many children. That needs to change. Children need to feel like they belong in their school. Every setting, regardless of type, must be given the freedom to drive up standards in a way that meets the needs of its pupils and communities. The Bill goes back to the original purpose of academies, which was to share best practice and encourage collaboration in the best interests of our children. Allowing councils to open new schools will ensure not just that more school places are available, but that the places are the best ones for local families and where they are needed. This is a very positive step forward. A focus on school structures alone will not help families, children or teachers.

I support the roll-out of breakfast clubs, which will lead to every child having access to a healthy meal to start the day. As the impact assessment states, clubs will help to boost children’s attendance, attainment, behaviour, wellbeing and their readiness to learn. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) for highlighting, through amendment 2, the need for any provision to take into consideration the needs of all children, particularly those with special educational and disability needs. Inclusion is at the heart of this policy, so adjustments will need to be made to provide the food, transport and staffing for pupils in both mainstream and specialist provision. I also support new clause 1 and the auto-enrolment of children for free school meals. The two amendments support the Government’s mission to tackle child poverty.

Unfortunately, special schools fall behind mainstream ones in the offer to parents and pupils outside the conventional school day. Recently, a school close to Hyndburn and Haslingden that serves many of my parents and families has shortened the school day by a whole hour against the wishes of parents. In all honesty, I found the reasoning quite unconvincing. It will cause chaos for families and it would not have been tolerated in a mainstream school. We must do better with SEND schools to ensure that their children get the same school standards and excellent provision that the Government are working to achieve.

[Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)]

One point that headteachers in my constituency report is that, sadly, too many children with SEND are being offered access rather than inclusion in mainstream settings. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to get to grips with the SEND crisis that, sadly, we inherited from those on the Opposition Benches?

[Sarah Smith]

I absolutely agree. We look forward to what is going to happen on that, and particularly to what we will do to tackle those challenges and ensure that we offer truly inclusive settings and that the needs of every child are at the centre of all the decisions that we take. I look forward to working with colleagues and discussing with Ministers how we can continue to drive high and rising standards in all our schools.