Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Seventh sitting)
Stephen Morgan Excerpts(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)
I beg to move amendment 6, in clause 21, page 42, line 23, leave out
“has the meaning given by section 437(8)”
and insert
“means—
(a) a community, foundation or voluntary school, or
(b) a community or foundation special school”.
This amendment amends the definition of “maintained school” in section 551B (inserted into the Education Act 1996 by clause 21) so that it does not exclude community or foundation special schools established in a hospital. Such schools are already excluded by the definition of “relevant school” in that inserted section.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 26, in clause 21, page 43, line 31, at end insert—
“(4) This section may only come into force after the Secretary of State has laid before Parliament a report containing the following information—
(a) what form breakfast club provision by schools currently takes;
(b) how much breakfast club provision costs schools, and how much is charged by schools for such provision;
(c) how much funding is estimated to be required to enable schools to meet the requirements of this section;
(d) what additional staff will be required to deliver the breakfast clubs; and
(e) the grounds on which the Secretary of State would use the power under section 551C.”
Amendment 27, in clause 21, page 43, line 31, at end insert—
“(4) This section may only come into force after the Secretary of State has provided details of how schools are to be resourced to meet the requirements of this section.”
Amendment 28, in clause 21, page 43, line 31, at end insert—
“551E Duty to fund secondary school breakfast clubs
(1) The Secretary of State must, within three months of the passing of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, create a national school breakfast club programme.
(2) A programme created under subsection (1) must—
(a) provide a 75% subsidy for the food and delivery costs of breakfast club provision; and
(b) offer pupils in participating schools free food and drink.
(3) To be eligible to participate in the programme—
(a) a school must be a state funded secondary school, special school or provider of alternative provision; and
(b) at least 40% of the pupils on the school’s pupil roll must be in bands A-F of the Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index.”
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to continue with the existing funding programme for secondary school breakfast clubs in areas of deprivation.
Clause stand part.
Stephen Morgan
The Government amendment stands in the name of my hon. Friend, the Minister for School Standards. The amendment is a technical one, which will ensure that the clause only includes one reference to the exclusion of community or foundation special schools established in a hospital from the duty to secure breakfast club provision. Without the amendment, the Bill would mention that twice, which might have caused some confusion.
The amendment ensures the consistent use of the definition of maintained school with the provision on limits to branded school uniform items, which has also been confirmed by Government amendment. The effect of the Bill before and after the amendment—to exclude maintained schools established in a hospital—remains the same. Schools established in a hospital are excluded from this duty, because the Government recognise that children and young people who cannot attend their usual school, because of their medical needs, will already be receiving breakfast and quality care in hospital.
Amendments 26 and 27, tabled by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, seek a report from the Secretary of State to Parliament with key delivery questions on breakfast clubs. He raises some important issues and, as I stated previously, I value his engagement with the Bill and this subject.
The Department is working intensively and at pace on the delivery plans for breakfast clubs, including the information the hon. Member mentions and more. I will come to that later, but first I want to address his points about what form breakfast club provision takes and why we need to act. What we inherited from the previous Government is a patchwork of provision with varying costs for parents, varying offers and often, critically, insufficient funding for the actual club, leading to the exclusion of many disadvantaged pupils. We are legislating to replace that patchwork with an absolute commitment to give all children, regardless of their circumstances, a great start to the school day via a free breakfast club.
On delivery, I want to reassure the shadow Minister that schools will be funded and supported to deliver the new breakfast clubs. We are working with more than 750 early adopter schools from this April to ensure that we get the implementation, funding and support to resources right, before national roll-out of the new clubs. We published our funding methodology alongside guidance for early adopters on 16 January this year. We worked closely with schools on the rates to ensure they were sufficient. Funding for national roll-out is, of course, subject to the next spending review. As we learn from the early adopters to develop our statutory guidance and support package, more information will be made available, including on the exemptions process, putting that in the public domain and before Parliament.
I trust that Members will agree that the Department has the right plans in place to deal with delivery considerations through work with early adopters, support and statutory guidance, and that they have heard my commitment in Committee today that schools will be funded and supported to deliver the clubs. Therefore, for the reasons I have outlined, I ask the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston kindly to withdraw his amendments 26 and 27.
I am grateful for the opportunity afforded by amendment 28, also tabled by the shadow Minister, to discuss the continuation of provision for secondary schools in disadvantaged areas. The hon. Member makes a good point about hungry children in secondary schools, and I confirm that the 2,700 schools on the national school breakfast programme, including approximately 750 secondary schools, will continue to be supported by the scheme until at least March 2026.
We want to start by giving the youngest pupils, regardless of their circumstances, a great start to the school day. Through our opportunity mission, the Government will ensure that all children get the best start in life as we deliver what we believe is the most important starting point of a child’s schooling journey. These new primary school breakfast clubs will be transformational, giving every child access to fully funded provision of at least 30 minutes of free breakfast club. This measure goes much further than the existing national school breakfast program, which only funds the food and covers up to 2,700 schools.
Our plan builds on the evidence that breakfast clubs in primary schools can boost children’s academic attainment and attendance and drive up life chances. The free club and food will also support parents with the cost of living, and support parents to work. Compared with studies of programmes targeted at primary-age pupils, there are few high-quality experimental studies on the impact of breakfast clubs on secondary-aged pupils. Typically, primary school breakfast clubs have higher take-up than secondaries, and more studies, such as Magic Breakfast’s evaluation, report their positive effects on attainment and attendance. The reported attendance improvement for children at breakfast club schools is equivalent to 26 fewer half days of absence per year for a class of 30 children. Education Endowment Foundation research also shows up to two months of additional progress from key stage one to key stage two.
It has always been our intent—with limited resources, but backed by the evidence—to start with primary schools as we roll out breakfast clubs. It is right that we start with supporting the youngest children. We are working with 750 early adopters from this April to test how the measure will best be implemented. That will not only help us to test and learn how every primary school in the future can deliver the new breakfast clubs, but it will give us important insights into how schools with unusual age ranges, such as all-through schools, special schools or those with on-site nurseries, implement the policy. On that basis, I invite the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston to withdraw his amendment.
Clause 21, by placing a duty on state-funded primary schools to introduce free breakfast clubs, will give all children, regardless of their circumstances, a great start to the school day. We are absolutely committed to spreading the evidenced benefits that breakfast clubs offer, which will form a key part of our mission to break the unfair link between background and opportunity. Many more children will be settled and ready to learn at the start of the school day. It is also good for attendance, good for attainment and good for behaviour.
At a minimum, the breakfast clubs will start for 30 minutes before the start of the school day and will include breakfast. They will be free of charge and available to all pupils from reception to year 6 at state-funded schools. Importantly, the provision includes children with special educational needs and disabilities at mainstream schools, as well as state-funded special schools and alternative provision.
Schools will be able to do what works best for their families, so they will be able to work alongside childcare providers and even other schools if that means that they are best able to deliver the benefits of breakfast clubs to help parents and children.
Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
Has the Department conducted any analysis differentiating those students who are disadvantaged and on free school meals, or considered disadvantaged, and those who are not? The Government are applying a blanket policy across all students of primary school. The Minister makes an eloquent point that some of those children are very needy, but others are not. Has the Department conducted an analysis of the impact across different groups?
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.
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.
Stephen Morgan
I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their interventions. Members will appreciate that future funding decisions are subject to the spending review, but they can have the assurance from me today of the commitment that we have already made with regard to secondary school inclusion in the national school breakfast club programme and, indeed, my recently announced confirmation of more than £200 million for the holiday activities and food programme for the next financial year.
The shadow Minister made a number of points regarding schools currently on the national school breakfast club programme. Funding was confirmed in the previous Budget, which will ensure that that programme continues to at least March 2026. Subject to the will of Parliament, schools with children from reception to year 6 will transition from the existing programme to the new offer of free breakfast clubs lasting at least 30 minutes. The timing of the national roll-out will be confirmed in due course. Schools moving from the national school breakfast club programme to the new offer will be supported in that transition. Further details on the programme will follow after the conclusion of the spending review.
The shadow Minister asked a number of questions about when the duty will commence. Legislating breakfast club provision in this Bill will give schools the certainty that they need for the future. The national roll-out and commencement of this duty will be determined in 2025 after the spending review. National roll-out will also be informed by the assessment of the early-adopter phase of the roll-out, which will help us to test and learn how best we can support schools to implement their duty and overcome the barriers that they might encounter. As the Committee will know, we must go through the appropriate spending review process before committing to a date for national roll-out.
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
I have respect for the insight and experience of the right hon. Member for East Hampshire, but I ask the Minister whether one of the goals of the free breakfast clubs is to ensure that children, particularly those from hard-up backgrounds, are in a position to be ready to learn, so that they can start the school day with a hungry mind, not a hungry belly. The right hon. Member for East Hampshire made a point about the current provision of free breakfast clubs, but in my constituency of Bournemouth East, we have remarkably few. There is a real inconsistency in provision across our country. On that note, I will make a special call for schools in Bournemouth East to be among the early adopters. I thank the Minister for his response.
Stephen Morgan
I am afraid that my hon. Friend needs to remain patient in waiting for the confirmation of which local authority areas will have early adopters, but I know that he has been a tireless champion on these issues. I promise that he will not have to wait much longer to know which schools in his patch may have a breakfast club.
This scheme will make a huge difference to children’s lives. We know that it will put more money in the pockets of parents, but also, as I mentioned earlier, that it will be good for attendance, attainment and behaviour. Research out today demonstrates the impact and the challenge that we face to make sure that children do start school ready to learn.
Amanda Martin
I want to make about point about attendance and the evidence that suggests progress. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East that is about children’s bellies being full and them being able to learn in the best part of the day. It is also a calming part of the day. It allows parents, if they have an infant and a junior, to drop them off—they could do the infant first, and the junior next. It also helps our parents to go to work. Evidence also suggests that breakfast clubs can help children to make up to two additional months of progress in their core reading, writing and maths skills because they are, as my hon. Friend said, ready to learn.
Stephen Morgan
My hon. Friend speaks with real authority on these issues as a former teacher. I know that she will be very excited about breakfast clubs coming to her new constituency of Portsmouth North. Attendance is a key priority for this Government, and it goes right to the very top—the Prime Minister has set out that he is also keen to make attendance a key priority. Children have to be in school to learn the skills that they need for life and work. I know that breakfast clubs will make a big difference in making that happen.
Matt Bishop (Forest of Dean) (Lab)
I am a previous chair of governors and I have worked as an education welfare officer. Do you agree that punctuality also comes into the issue of attendance? If children come into school earlier for breakfast clubs, they are in class, which minimises the risk of disruption to other students’ learning and to teachers presenting their lessons.
Stephen Morgan
I thank my hon. Friend for his time as a school governor. Governors across the country do such important work holding headteachers to account and supporting them in the difficult challenges that they face. He made an important point about punctuality. We know, of course, that if a child is accessing a breakfast club, it hopefully gets them to school on time. I know that he has been a real champion of those issues in his constituency.
We have just heard how passionate Labour Members are about the difference that breakfast clubs will make, and that is why we are so excited to roll them out through this legislation. We will learn from the early-adopter scheme, which will inform the monitoring and evaluation plan for the national roll-out. For that roll-out, we will ensure that there are appropriate arrangements for the collection of breakfast club data from schools and for the evaluation of the programme.
The hon. Member for Twickenham made a number of helpful points on the practicalities of funding our ambitions for children and young people. The new breakfast clubs and the benefits that they will bring to children and families up and down the country are a top priority for this Government. We will therefore, of course, provide funding to cover the new duty, including for the costs of nutritious food and staffing. Moreover, informed by our early-adopter scheme, we will support schools who face delivery challenges to find the right approach for their school, pupils and parents. Schools will absolutely not be left to do this alone. As I mentioned, from April this year, before this duty comes into force, we will work with up to 750 new breakfast clubs in schools across the country.
Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)
The right hon. Member for East Hampshire mentioned that many schools already have breakfast clubs. I regularly visit schools in Derby North and recently visited Cavendish Close junior academy, which already provides a breakfast club. Staff there were confident in their ability to scale up; in fact, they are excited to do so and welcome the opportunity. Does the Minister agree that this clause will open up the benefits of breakfast clubs to all our children in primary schools and that that represents a massive step forward?
Stephen Morgan
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. She speaks very eloquently about the benefits this will bring to parents. Those benefits will include not only £450 back into the parent’s pocket but more childcare choices. I know that she is excited about this programme being rolled out in her constituency. To summarise the points on funding, we are keen to learn from the early adopters and feed that into our ongoing support programme for schools.
A number of hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North, raised points about the impact on attendance. Breakfast clubs have been proven to ensure that every child starts the day ready to learn by improving attendance, behaviour and attainment. The Magic Breakfast evaluation reported that the improved attendance of children at schools with breakfast clubs was equivalent to 26 fewer half-days of absence per year for a class of 30, and research by the Education Endowment Foundation showed that there was up to two months of additional progress from key stage 1 to key stage 2. Schools that have offered free universal breakfast clubs have told us that they make a huge difference. For example, Burton Green primary school in York reported significant improvements in punctuality, children more settled for lessons and improved behaviour, especially for pupils with SEND.
I assure hon. Members that I understand that absence is a key barrier to learning. For children to achieve and thrive, they need to be in school. We are doing lots to support that, including making attendance guidance statutory last summer, requiring schools to return data through our attendance data tool, and working with our attendance ambassador, Rob Tarn, to develop an attendance toolkit. We have also expanded the attendance monitoring programme to reach 1,000 more children, and have invested £15 million to expand that programme, which provides targeted one-to-one support for students who are persistently absent. I commend the clause to the Committee.
The Chair
Before we move on, I will say that I suspect that some hon. Members wanted to speak earlier. I will select Members to speak only if they bob. Members can speak after the Member proposing the motion has replied to the debate. The proposer then has the opportunity to reply, so it is easier if all Members have spoken by then. I had the impression that at least two Members wished to speak and therefore made slightly overlong interventions. I remind Members that interventions should be short and to the point.
While I am being pedagogic, I note that Members have once or twice involved me in the debate. Please avoid saying “you”, because I do not have an opinion on these matters.
Amendment 6 agreed to.
Clause 21, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 22
Food and drink provided at Academies
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Stephen Morgan
I am grateful for the opportunity, afforded by the new clause suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), to discuss compliance with school food standards.
It is important that children eat nutritious food at school, and the Department encourages schools to have a whole-school approach to healthy eating. The standards for school food are set out in the Requirements for School Food Regulations 2014. They ensure that schools provide children with healthy food and drink options, and that children get the energy and nutrition that they need across the school day. School governors and trustees have a statutory duty to ensure compliance with the school food standards. The existing regime involves school governors and trustees appropriately challenging the headteacher and senior leadership team to ensure that the school is meeting its obligations, and we want to support governors to work confidently with school leaders to ensure that the standards are met.
The Department for Education, with the National Governance Association, launched an online training pilot on school food for governors and trustees in November last year. The pilot, which will run until the end of May 2025, is designed to test the feasibility of using an online training platform to make information on school food available to governors and trustees in an accessible and flexible way. We will soon be evaluating the effectiveness of the training programme to determine whether it could be a valuable resource in the long term.
As well as supporting governors and trustees, we need a compliance regime that ensures standards are met without creating undue burdens. We note the findings of the compliance pilot run by the Department and the Food Standards Agency during the 2022-23 academic year, and we are working with the FSA on the next steps. Although the pilot demonstrated that food safety officers could conduct checks of school food standards during routine food hygiene inspections in schools, further consideration is needed of how non-compliance should be handled. Implementing that kind of monitoring arrangement nationally would require new funding, but more importantly, it is unlikely that it would be effective if the barriers identified in the pilot remained unaddressed. We want to work with the sector to understand how we can best overcome the challenges. For those reasons, I hope the new clause is not pressed.
We are committed to raising the healthiest generation ever. We have already laid secondary legislation to restrict television and online advertisement of less healthy food and drink to children and announced changes to the planning framework for fast food outlets near schools. We are also committed to banning the sale of high-caffeine energy drinks to under-16s, for which we will set out plans in consultation in due course.
Clause 22 formalises the long-standing position that all schools should comply with the school food standards across the whole school day. The clause is a technical measure, as academies are already well versed in the standards, and this legal change simply confirms long-standing policy. All academies have had to comply with standards for lunchtime provision; but for some academies there is a regulatory gap in respect of food served outside lunch. The clause will close that gap and ensure that the food served at breakfast clubs is healthy and nutritious, giving pupils the energy they need to get the most from their school day.
Munira Wilson
I want to stress the concerns I expressed in my previous remarks about the quality and nutritional value of the food that will be offered. I recognise that school food standards are in place, but although the recent House of Lords report on obesity welcomed the introduction of school breakfast clubs, it strongly recommended that the Government review and update the school food standards, and one of the witnesses this Committee heard said that schools should be given clear direction on what is and is not acceptable.
It is important that our children do not get high-fat, sugary or minimal nutrition provision from the breakfast clubs. When it evaluated the breakfast offer at 17 primary schools in Yorkshire, the Food Foundation found that fruit and water were not always offered at breakfast. Such things should be addressed. I hope that as the guidance is rolled out, more detail will be provided, but I urge the Government to consider the recommendation to review school food standards as they roll out breakfast clubs.
Stephen Morgan
I thank the hon. Member for Twickenham for her contribution; this is an issue that I know she cares passionately about. As I mentioned, the early adopter programme for breakfast clubs will give us an opportunity to test and learn, and to make sure we implement a national scheme based on really good, nutritious food. Governing bodies have a duty to ensure that the standards for school food set out in the Requirements for School Food Regulations 2014 are complied with, and they should appropriately challenge the headteacher and senior leadership team to ensure the school is meeting its obligations.
I believe we are making quick progress to deliver breakfast clubs in every primary school, with 750 early adopters. We recently published early adopter guidance to provide support to schools on these issues, which includes support and advice on a healthy, balanced breakfast offer. It is important that children eat nutritious food at school, and the school food standards define the foods and drinks that must be provided and those that are restricted. As with all Government programmes, we will keep our approach to school food under review.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 22 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 23
School uniforms: limits on branded items
Munira Wilson
I beg to move amendment 87, in clause 23, page 44, leave out lines 22 to 29 and insert—
“(1) The appropriate authority of a relevant school may not require a pupil at the school to have to buy branded items of school uniform for use during a school year which cost more in total to purchase than a specified monetary amount, to be reviewed annually.
(1A) The Secretary of State may by regulations specify the monetary amount that may apply to—
(a) a primary pupil; and
(b) a secondary pupil.”
Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Fifth sitting)
Stephen Morgan ExcerptsTuesday 28th January 2025
(3 days, 2 hours ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill 2024-26 View all Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 28 January 2025 - (28 Jan 2025)
Catherine McKinnell
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Itchen for his powerful and personal testimony, and for his clear commitment to these issues. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East for his clear and important contribution.
My hon. Friends have set out the reasons why we are providing that continuity of support when care leavers reach the age of 18, through the Staying Put programme, and why we are now legislating to add Staying Close to the duties of local authorities. It is to provide that care to leavers; to help them to find suitable accommodation and access services, including those relating to health and wellbeing support; and to help them develop and build their confidence and their skills as they get used to living independently. It is also why we are investing in family-finding, mentoring and befriending programmes to help care leavers to develop those strong social networks, which they can then turn to when they need advice and support.
As hon. Members have rightly said, it is really important that care leavers are supported to get into education, employment or training—the right hon. Member for East Hampshire clearly said that as well. That is why a care leaver who starts an apprenticeship may be entitled to a £3,000 bursary, why local authorities must provide a £2,000 bursary for care leavers who go to university, and why care leavers may be entitled to a 16-to-19 bursary if they stay in further education.
On the question raised by the right hon. Member for East Hampshire, more than 550 businesses have signed the care leaver covenant, offering care leavers a job and other opportunities, and we continue to deliver the civil service care leavers internship scheme, which has resulted in more than 1,000 care leavers being offered paid jobs across Government. We have a real commitment to improving education outcomes for children in care, which will help to support them into adulthood and reduce the likelihood of them not being in education, employment or training. We will continue to support that.
The hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston asked how the measure in this clause interacts with national offers. The Government set out guidance for local authorities on the duties and entitlements for care leavers, and we are working to develop the detail of those proposals to make sure that local authorities work together with the Government to improve support for care leavers. With specific reference to higher education, we already have a number of duties to support eligible care leavers in higher education. It will certainly be part of the expectation of the local offer that those options are open to care leavers. It is an important aspect to support.
In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Itchen, we absolutely agree about bringing the good practice of local authorities into the local offer. We work closely with a number of good local authorities, and there is a lot of really good practice around. The Government intend to bring those authorities into our work so that we have updated guidance to ensure that best practice is spread as far, wide and consistently as possible. With that, I urge the Committee to support clause stand part.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 8 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 9
Accommodation of looked after children: regional co-operation arrangements
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
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?
Tom Hayes
I rise to speak in favour of regional co-operation arrangements, primarily because of what we have seen in two important reviews or evaluations. The recent independent review of children’s social care that I referred to highlighted a system at breaking point, as we also heard from the Minister. The insight from that report was that how we find, match, build, and run foster homes and residential care for children in care radically needs to change. When the Competition and Markets Authority looked at this area, it also identified major problems, such as profiteering, weak oversight and poor planning by councils—the verdict on the system is damning.
The independent review recommended that a co-operative model should sit at the centre of bringing about change. The values of our movement could provide the loving homes that children in care need. I particularly support this clause because this feels like a very Labour Government Bill—one that has at its heart the co-operative model that is obviously such a big part of our labour movement.
My hope is that regional care co-operatives could gain economies of scale and harness the collective buying power of independent local authorities to improve services for looked-after children. There are obvious benefits to using a co-operative model to solve those problems—the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity apply directly to how these regional care co-operatives would be run. In a social care market that has been described as broken by the Minister and by those reports, it is critical to bring the co-operative model more into what we provide.
Stephen Morgan
I thank hon. Members for their thoughtful comments, suggestions and questions. On the point that the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston made about learning from the pathfinders, the Department has consulted widely with the sector on the proposals for regional care co-operatives. Learning from the pathfinders has shaped the proposed legislation and the definition of the strategic accommodation functions. We will develop expertise in areas such as data analysis and forecasting, as well as targeted marketing, training and support for foster carers. Working collectively with improved specialist capabilities should allow for greater innovation so that local areas are better able to deliver services for children in care.
I turn to the points made by the hon. Member for Richmond—
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.
Damian Hinds
Forgive me, Mr Stringer; I know that the Minister has finished, but may I speak again, with leave?
Ian Sollom
My understanding is that this change follows a trend of children being deprived of their liberty outside the statutory route by being housed in unsuitable accommodation not registered with Ofsted, often far from home and family. That has been partly addressed in the questions from the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston.
The success of this provision will depend on the regulations. What actually makes a setting capable of being used for the deprivation of liberty? Will there be a requirement with respect to education in that setting? Will they need to be registered with Ofsted? It is not entirely clear. When will regulations relating to this provision be brought forward? Is it the intention that they will mirror the scheme for the secure accommodation?
The law around the deprivation of liberty is incredibly complex. Without proper legal advice and representation, it is very hard for families to understand what is going on and what options they have. It is not clear yet what legal aid will be available to families or the child themselves when an application is made under the new route. Can the Minister clarify what will be available with respect to legal aid, or put a timetable on when we will get that clarification?
Stephen Morgan
Amendment 24 seeks to place a legal duty on local authorities to provide therapeutic treatment for children placed in secure accommodation—that is, a secure children’s home. The Government’s view is that the amendment is not necessary as there are a number of existing legal duties on local authorities to ensure that wherever children are placed, including in secure accommodation, their needs are met, including the needs for therapeutic treatment. This is part of the duty on local authorities, under primary legislation, to safeguard and promote the welfare of any child that they look after.
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.
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.
Munira Wilson
The Minister has said a number of times that, by law, the child rights impact assessment does not have to be published. In the interests of transparency and for all of us to do the right thing by children, does he not agree that even if he does not have to publish it, he really ought to do so?
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.
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.
Stephen Morgan
I thank the shadow Minister for his contributions and questions. He made a number of practical points and asked a number of specific questions.
Early Years Qualifications
Stephen Morgan Excerpts(3 days, 2 hours ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)
Having high-quality early education and care available on parents’ doorsteps is key to giving children the best start in life. In our plan for change, we have set a milestone of a record proportion of children starting school ready to learn. We will measure our progress through 75% of five-year-olds reaching a good level of development in the Early Years Foundation Stage assessment.
A key priority to achieve this milestone is rolling out Government-funded childcare support to improve access. Eligible working parents are already benefiting from the latest phase of the expansion of childcare in September 2024, being able to access 15 hours a week of early education and childcare from the term after their child turns nine months. And from September 2025, this will increase to 30 hours per week as we deliver the final phase of the expansion.
In our plan for change, we committed to work in partnership with the sector, reforming training and support for the workforce to drive up standards. To make it easier to recruit and train the right staff, the Government are working to expand the workforce to deliver the high-quality early years provision needed. We are introducing new routes to becoming approved as early years educators and early years teachers. We are also making it easier for educators and employers to check their qualifications and know that they are working within the early years foundation stage requirements.
Early years teacher degree apprenticeship
The Government have worked with sector experts to create a new undergraduate route to achieving early years teacher status, through the publication of a new early years teacher degree apprenticeship. The apprenticeship complements the existing early years initial teacher training route and is designed for those wishing to specialise in teaching young children and babies. It enables people starting out in their careers, as well as experienced early years educators, to gain a degree and become an early years teacher without needing to incur any debt while gaining invaluable experience at work. This three-year course will be available throughout England and will help ensure we have a highly qualified workforce to support the next generation of young children and help settings recruit the staff they need.
Experience-based route
Following last year’s technical consultation, the Government intend to proceed with the introduction of an experience-based route for early years staff. This new route will support the recruitment and retention of staff by allowing suitable educators who do not hold an approved qualification to be included in the staff-child ratios at level 3 following the successful completion of a period of supervised practice. Early years providers and educators will be able to begin using the experience-based route from 3 March 2025, and we will work closely with the sector in the coming months to ensure that employers and educators understand how to deliver the route and realise the benefits.
The qualification, experience and process requirements for the route will safeguard quality by ensuring only staff with the right experience and qualifications can access the route, that the duration of the process allows for sufficient development of skills and knowledge, and that providers maintain an appropriate number of fully qualified staff. These requirements were supported in the consultation response, and in response to sector feedback we have increased the required experience of assessors and supervisors in this route from six months to a minimum of two years.
Check an Early Years Qualification service
Early years qualification requirements can be difficult to understand, particularly when determining whether a qualification is approved for working in staff-child ratios. We have developed the “Check an Early Years Qualification” digital service to help managers check the approval status of qualifications held by existing and prospective staff. We expect this to save managers’ time and increase their confidence in having sufficient, appropriately qualified staff to meet the demand resulting from the expansion of funded childcare entitlements by September 2025.
The service has been tested with individuals and organisations working in the early years during its pilot and iterated in line with feedback. It will be made publicly available on www.gov.uk later this spring.
Together, these new measures are just the latest steps this Government are taking to grow and develop a valued early years workforce, who provide the high-quality provision that supports children and families right from their earliest years.
[HCWS391]
Oral Answers to Questions
Stephen Morgan Excerpts(4 days, 2 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ian Byrne (Liverpool West Derby) (Ind)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)
Our Government are driving an agenda to break down barriers to opportunity and reduce child poverty. Around £1.5 billion is spent annually on free lunches for over 3 million pupils. This includes all children from reception through to year 2, and we have committed to introducing free breakfast clubs in state-funded primary schools. As with all programmes, we will keep our approach under continued review.
Ian Byrne
Knowsley, an area in my constituency, has the highest proportion of obese and overweight children in England, according to NHS data. Knowsley council’s director of public health recently described to me how this was an issue of poverty and deprivation. We know from research into universal free school meals in London that such a policy can reduce obesity rates by up to 10%. Earlier this month, I got unanimous support from the council when I suggested that Knowsley could be a perfect test bed for the roll-out of universal free school meals. Will the Minister meet me and the leader of Knowsley council to discuss that possibility?
Stephen Morgan
Over 13,000 pupils in Knowsley are supported with a healthy and nutritious free meal at lunch time through the Department’s free school meals and universal infant free school meals programmes. Unlike the Conservative party, we are on the side of parents in making a child-centred Government a reality. My hon. Friend is a real champion on these matters, and I am happy to meet him to discuss them further.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
Because the previous Government widened eligibility, one in three children could get a free school meal in 2024, compared with one in six in 2010. That was despite the fact that 600,000 fewer children were growing up in workless households and that the proportion of people on low pay had halved. Will the Minister commit that this Government will maintain those levels of eligibility?
Stephen Morgan
The Department recognises the valuable role that free school meals play and encourages all parents eligible for the entitlement offer. We will continue to review our approaches and take a consistent approach going forward.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
Both in government and in opposition, the Liberal Democrats have a proud record of championing free school meals for all those who need them. However, even today, too many children from some of the poorest eligible families are missing out. Lib Dem-led Durham county council has automatically enrolled children for free school meals this academic year, resulting in over 2,500 additional children getting a meal at lunch time, and an extra £3 million in pupil premium funding for the county. Will Ministers finally commit to automatically enrolling all eligible children in England? The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is the perfect opportunity to do so.
Stephen Morgan
As I mentioned, we will keep our approach in all Government programmes, including eligibility for free school meals, under continued review. We are aware of local measures on auto-enrolment being trialled and are supportive of the overall aims of such schemes.
Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)
As a Government, we have had to take tough decisions to get the public finances back on track. In 2025-26, the entitlements budget will be over £8 billion, with a further £75 million to support the sector in this pivotal expansion year. We have also announced the largest ever uplift to the early years pupil premium. Early years is central to our mission to give every child the best start in life.
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
Early years providers are being hammered. In many cases, their national insurance costs per staff member are almost doubling. A large number are small businesses in the private sector, while others are schools that are taking children before they go into reception classes. All of them—both primary schools in the state sector and small private providers—are worried about the extra costs being imposed on them. Can the Minister assure my constituents and, indeed, people throughout the country that families will not face higher costs and that those childcare places will still be there? Can he assure the House that we will have more childcare places at the end of this Parliament than we had at the start of it?
Stephen Morgan
Unlike the Conservative party, we are on the side of working parents, and high-quality education will be available to every child. As for the hon. Gentleman’s substantive point, it would help if the Conservatives were honest. They would not reverse the rise.
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.
Andrew Cooper (Mid Cheshire) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)
High-quality childcare and early education is a crucial opportunity to transform life chances, but too often it is unavailable or unaffordable. That is why this Labour Government are committed to delivering additional places in new and expanded school-based nurseries. I congratulate my hon. Friend’s school on the work it is doing. Our plans will benefit children and parents with high-quality and accessible provision.
Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)
Mr Alex Barros-Curtis (Cardiff West) (Lab)
Stephen Morgan
Protecting children is a cross-Government priority. Although the devolved nations have their own safeguarding systems, we will continue to work closely with them to ensure that safeguarding remains a priority and that we all engage with our schools to see where we need to strengthen our safeguarding support.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)
Stephen Morgan
I thank the hon. Member for raising those matters. I would be happy to meet her to understand the issues in more detail.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
Stephen Morgan
I thank pupils, teachers and school leaders for their resilience since the original buildings were closed in August 2023. We have delivered high-quality temporary modular accommodation that the school will use until its new permanent buildings are ready. We will continue to work closely with the trust and the local community to find a permanent solution.
Mr Andrew Snowden (Fylde) (Con)
When I worked at the University of Salford, I was proud to be part of the revolution in higher degree apprenticeships that saw thousands of people finding new technical careers following higher education. With unemployment rising and with recruitment agencies reporting significant reductions in job postings as companies squeeze their payroll following the Government’s national insurance increases, what new measures are the Government taking to protect apprenticeship levels in this economic climate?
Stephen Morgan
Ensuring that schools and colleges have the resources and buildings that they need is a key part of our mission to break down barriers to opportunity. I will be happy to meet the hon. Member to hear more about his concerns.
Ms Polly Billington (East Thanet) (Lab)
Millmead children’s centre in my constituency helps young people achieve their early learning goals and provides safeguarding services, and it has been doing so with deprived families for many years, yet although Kent county council has been given £4 million to protect family hubs, it is not protecting those services. Will the Minister explain to Kent county council that it should be finding the money for this vital service?
Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Second sitting)
Stephen Morgan ExcerptsTuesday 21st January 2025
(1 week, 3 days ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill 2024-26 View all Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 21 January 2025 - (21 Jan 2025)
Neil O’Brien
Q
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 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.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
Q
Dame Rachel de Souza: On the children’s social care side, I can absolutely assure you that vulnerable children’s voices have been taken through. On deprivation of liberty orders, I did research with children deprived of their liberty and took their voices through. On many of the multi-agency points, and lots of other things, their voices have gone through.
We have an opportunity to take children’s voices through on the schools side, but I do not think it has been done. I have had a million responses from school-aged children about what they want from their schools. The top things that they tell me they want are to study and to have a curriculum that they are really interested in and motivated by. They know they have to do the core, but they want all those things that they are really interested by in there too. They also want proper mental health support. There has been a tsunami of mental health concerns since lockdown, and that is why we need our LAs and CAMHS and everyone working together.
On SEND, the cri de coeur from children is, “I want to succeed and I will roll my sleeves up and work hard, but I need the support—support, support, support.” The children with special educational needs who feel their needs are met in school have told me—I did a snapshot of 95,000 of them—that they are happier in their schools than the rest of the cohort, but the ones who think their needs are not being met are unhappy. They also want to know about adult life and have deep concerns about wanting better relationships and sex education that is relevant and teaches them how to be better adults. They also want to know about the workplace. They are incredibly teleological. I would have loved it if they had all wanted to learn Dickens, but, no, they want to know how to get great jobs and what to do. They are very ambitious.
Damian Hinds saw a group of students with me to discuss what they wanted from the curriculum. We need to do more of that. We need to get their voices. We have a period of time now when we can get their voices and concerns through, and we should do it.
Neil O'Brien
Q
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
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.
Stephen Morgan
Q
Lynn Perry: Certainly. I am looking at Mark because I know that has been an area of campaigning and influencing for the Children’s Society. I will first touch on the breakfast clubs, without wanting to repeat what Mark has said; we do welcome those. We are concerned about poor health outcomes for children and young people and health inequalities, particularly for the 4.3 million children and young people who are living in poverty, 1 million of whom are in destitution and whose basic needs are not being met. That means that in the provision of breakfast clubs we would like to see some real guidance, and monitoring of the guidance, on healthy and nutritious food with which children can start their day. We know that they are unable to attain educationally if they are going to school hungry and coming home to a cold house.
I want to touch on child poverty, if I may, because there is a need to join this up with the work in the child poverty strategy. Those two things should go hand in hand on parallel lines. On school uniforms, there is a question of affordability for a lot of the families that we work with. We ran the attendance mentoring pilot in seven areas, and we have had families that have been unable to get their children to school, not because of school refusal but because they cannot afford the right uniform, they do not have school shoes or transport is an issue. All those things need to join up to get children into school and to get them a breakfast, which will not only allow them to learn but destigmatise some of their experiences when they do not have the right school shoes or uniform.
Mark Russell: May I add something else? At the Children’s Society we have campaigned on uniform for about seven years, and we were very grateful to the previous Administration for backing a private Member’s Bill that we were working with an MP on, which placed the non-statutory guidance on school uniform on a statutory footing. That was designed to reduce the cost of uniform by providing for consultations with parents, using pre-loved items, reducing the number of branded items and not having one sole supplier. Since the Bill became law, our research has shown that a significant number of schools around the country have not changed their uniform policies. In our poll from last year, 60% of parents believed that their school uniform policy had not changed. I want to welcome the measures in the Bill that will tighten that further and reduce the number of branded items. Uniform should not be the thing that breaks the bank for parents. We know that children who are not wearing the correct uniform frequently end up being excluded from school and are then at a higher risk of being exploited by criminal groups.
Stephen Morgan
Q
Katharine Sacks-Jones: They are very welcome. We would very warmly welcome the extension of Staying Close support, because we know that too many young people do not get the support they need at that point of leaving care. That can often literally be on their 18th birthday—we regularly hear from young people who are perhaps told 24 or 48 hours before their 18th birthday that they will need to leave on it. Often the planning is poor and support is inadequate, and sadly many go on to face homelessness. We would like to see the provisions strengthened.
Our concern is that at the moment the assessment made by local authorities will enable them to ration support, and actually this should be a provision for all young people leaving care who need it. It could be a small amendment which would really strengthen the support available to young people and make sure that it is sufficiently different from what is already available on a statutory footing.
Neil O'Brien
Q
Luke Sparkes: Certainly, around the areas that I have just described.
Stephen Morgan
Q
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.
Stephen Morgan
Q
Sir Dan Moynihan: It is important for all schools to co-operate. With 9 million children in schools, I think only 55 directions were given in 2023 by local authorities. For me, the key issue is that it is important that there is co-operation, but there is potentially a conflict of interest if local authorities are opening their own schools and there are very hard-to-place kids. There is a conflict of interest in where they are allocating those children, so there needs to be a clear right of appeal in order to ensure that that conflict can be exposed if necessary.
Luke Sparkes: It is important for academies to work with local authorities. I think we accept that the current arrangements are fractured, but—similarly to what Sir Dan said—it is that conflict of interest that we have been concerned about. Although there is going to be an independent adjudicator, the question is whether they will be well placed to make those policy and financial decisions—almost becoming a commissioner role—and whether that would be the right way or not.
Sir Jon Coles: The short answer is yes. I do think it is important. I would like to see Government issue some guidance on how the powers will be used, and to say to everybody, “Here are the rules of the game, and this is what good practice looks like.” I think people are worried about whether there are conflicts of interest and poor practice. Of course, these powers could be abused, but my personal concern about that is very low. I do not think they will be abused. However, I think it would give everyone a lot of reassurance if the Government—you, as Ministers—put out some guidance saying, “This is how we would like this to work. These are the criteria. This is what good practice looks like. This is how we want the system to work.” I think that would make everybody feel comfortable that things will be done fairly.
Sir Dan Moynihan: Could I add to my previous answer, please? Some of the schools we have taken on have failed because they have admitted large numbers of hard-to-place children. I can think of one borough we operate in where councillors were very open about the fact that there was a school that took children that other schools would not take. They said that openly, and the reason they did not want it to become an academy was because that process would end. The school was seen as a dumping ground. I think there are schools that get into difficulty and fail because there is perceived local hierarchy of schools, and those are the schools that get those children. That is why there needs to be a clear right of appeal to prevent that from happening.
Munira Wilson
Q
Sir Dan Moynihan: indicated dissent.
Sir Jon Coles: indicated dissent.
Luke Sparkes: indicated dissent.
Neil O'Brien
Q
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 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.
Munira Wilson
Q
Kate Anstey: I think the Bill was a real missed opportunity to do more on free school meals. Again, school food comes up in every conversation we have. At the moment, we estimate that about one in three children in poverty do not qualify for free school meals because that threshold is painfully low. It has not been updated since 2018. As CPAG, ultimately, we want to see means-testing removed from lunchtime altogether. We want children to be in school and able to learn. They have to be there at lunchtime. There is no reason why we should not feed every child universally and make it part of the school day, but I think there is an urgent need to increase that threshold as much as possible to support more lower-income families.
Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (First sitting)
Stephen Morgan ExcerptsTuesday 21st January 2025
(1 week, 3 days ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill 2024-26 View all Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 21 January 2025 - (21 Jan 2025)
Neil O’Brien
Q
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
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.
Stephen Morgan
Q
Ruth Stanier: We very much support the new duty to co-operate across councils and all schools. It is something we have long been calling for. Of course, councils continue to have duties to ensure that there is appropriate education for every child in local places. Having the statutory underpinning set out in the Bill on co-operation across all schools is so important, particularly when we are thinking about councils’ duties in respect of SEND, where the system is under enormous strain, as was illustrated by an important report we commissioned jointly with the county councils network last year. We very much welcome those measures in the Bill.
Andy Smith: The education system in England is increasingly fragmented and lacks coherence. We see the role of the local authority essentially eroded, even though our duties have not changed that much. The measures in the Bill will be helpful in trying to bring some of that coherence back and in recognising the role of the local authority on directing academies, school place planning and admissions. The current system works for some children but not all. Trying to rebalance that is a positive step forward.
Munira Wilson
Q
Andy Smith: ADCS has long argued for a register of electively home educated children. For several years we carried out a survey ahead of this information being collected by the Department. We know that the number of children being electively home educated has increased exponentially, particularly since the pandemic. We need to be really clear that the measures, in themselves, will not protect children or keep them safe. The child protection powers are welcome, but we need to think about the capacity and resource that will be required to visit children in their homes and the training that will be required for staff who are going out doing visiting so that they can tune into issues around safeguarding and general wellbeing.
The measures in the Bill are certainly very detailed in terms of what is contained in a register, and there may be some reflection on whether there needs to be such a level of detail captured. That in itself is not going to keep children safe.
There is also some reflection about the relationship that local authorities have with parents, because the reasons why children are being electively home educated have shifted. We have moved away from the kind of philosophical reasons why parents might decide to home educate. Often, children are being home educated because of bullying, because of mental health challenges, or because their parents are being encouraged by schools to electively home educate.
We are also seeing an increasing proportion of children with SEND who are being electively home educated because parents are not getting the provision that they want—it is not available—or because of the tribunal processes. The kind of relationship that local authorities have with parents in that SEND context is quite challenging, and yet the local authority will be going in to the family home, with an officer asking lots of questions about the nature of that education. I think there is some reflection around the detail.
Local authorities need much clearer guidance on what a good elective home education offer looks like so that there is greater consistency across the across the piece. At the moment, we just have not got that because we are talking about very old legislation.
Neil O’Brien
Q
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 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.
Stephen Morgan
Q
Jacky Tiotto: I think it is fantastic to be acknowledging those people who often give up a big chunk of their lives to look after those children. Formalising the offer for them is a no-brainer, really. At CAFCASS, we clearly will be involved in assessing some of those carers if they have come into proceedings and have been named through the proceedings. We will be assessing them as we do special guardians now, so all to the good.
Munira Wilson
Q
Jacky Tiotto: Yes, I was thinking about that on the way here. The intention to be child-centred is great, but there is confusion. Look at the advice that exists now, say, from the Ministry of Justice about the meeting you would have in pre-proceedings about removal of your children: it is not to bring your children because you would be in a meeting where something scary would be being discussed. You can understand that advice. Now, perhaps the week before, we may have a family group decision making where the plan is to encourage children to come. I think that more thought needs to be given to how children will experience family group decision making.
To the point about it being earlier, I think a very special provision should be drafted about the need to seek children’s views and present them in that meeting. Whether they come or not is a matter for local authorities to decide, but, very critically, the adult voices will become the loudest if the children do not present a view.
Early Years Funding 2025-26
Stephen Morgan Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)
This Government are clear that whoever you are, wherever you come from, ours should be a country where hard work means you can get on in life. Ensuring that every child has the best start in life is crucial to breaking down barriers to opportunity from the earliest point in our lives.
Early years educators, providers and local authorities are already doing incredible work to meet this mission and expand their provision so that more families can benefit from affordable, accessible and high-quality early education and childcare.
As announced in the 2024 autumn Budget, we expect to provide over £8 billion for the early years entitlements in 2025-26—an increase of more than 30% compared with 2024-25—as we work towards the expansion of the entitlements.
Today we have also published the new early years local authority core funding rates for 2025-26. The national average three and four-year-old hourly funding rates of local authorities is increasing by 4.1%, the two-year-old hourly funding rates is increasing by 3.3%, and the nine months to two-year-old hourly funding rate is increasing by 3.4%. As usual, the hourly funding rates will vary between local authorities, reflecting the relative needs of the children and different costs of delivering provision across the country.
To ensure that providers are set up to deliver 30 funded hours of childcare and early education for children aged nine months to when they start school, and that parents are able to access this across our communities from September 2025, on top of over £8 billion through the core funding rates we will be investing an additional £75 million of revenue funding in 2025-26 through an expansion grant, recognising the significant effort and planning to prepare for the final phase of the expansion. This grant is on top of over £8 billion provided through the core funding rates.
It is essential that high-quality early education and childcare are accessible for all children and families, given the importance of the early years of life. However, currently there are gaps in both provision and quality, especially for disadvantaged children. That is why we are delivering the largest ever uplift to the early years pupil premium, increasing EYPP rates by over 45% per hour in 2024-25 to £1 per hour in 2025-26, equivalent to up to £570 per eligible child per year.
This unprecedented increase is an investment in quality early education for those children who need it most, providing additional support for disadvantaged children to meet development goals at age five.
Eligible children can also receive £938 per child per year through the disability access fund to support reasonable adjustments for children with a disability. We also expect to spend £92.6 million on maintained nursery school (MNS) supplementary funding in 2025-26, in recognition of the additional costs that MNSs face.
It is important that providers can plan ahead. Therefore, we have set the expectation that local authorities communicate their rates to providers by 28 February 2025 at the latest, and we will be working with local authorities to support them to do this. This will become mandatory from 2026-27.
From April 2025, we are increasing the minimum pass-through requirement, meaning that local authorities must pass on at least 96% of funding to providers, as part of a phased approach to a 97% pass-through in the future.
Full details on the 2025-26 local authority hourly funding rates, including step-by-step tables, have been published on www.gov.uk.
[HCWS292]
Oral Answers to Questions
Stephen Morgan Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)
Schools with primary age pupils can now apply to become early adopters of the universal free breakfast club programme starting from April 2025. Up to 750 participating schools will be funded to provide access to a free universal breakfast club lasting at least 30 minutes that includes food.
Matt Turmaine
In my constituency, parents speak to me about their worries and concerns regarding education provision and support. These range from being able to get their children into a good local school to how they will be able to continue to work while parenting. Will my hon. Friend outline further the benefits that breakfast clubs will bring to parents and pupils in constituencies such as mine?
Stephen Morgan
This Government are committed to making quick progress to deliver on our commitment to offer a free breakfast club in every primary school to ensure that children are ready to learn at the start of the school day. The Chancellor has announced a tripling of investment in breakfast clubs, driving improvements to behaviour, attendance and attainment and, for parents, more choices over childcare.
David Burton-Sampson
I have contacted all the primary schools in my constituency to encourage them to become early adopters. Child poverty in my constituency stands at 12.1%, and food bank use has risen by 433% over the last five years. Does my hon. Friend agree that breakfast clubs will be part of the solution by helping to lift children out of poverty, giving them food in their belly to start the school day and encouraging their parents back into part-time employment?
Stephen Morgan
Parents and carers up and down the country are still struggling with the cost of living. As part of our mission to bring down barriers to opportunity, breakfast clubs give parents and carers the confidence that their child can access a breakfast, should they need one, and we are supporting families to work with the cost of childcare. It is a pity that the Conservatives cannot say whether they back our plan to deliver better life chances for all children in all parts of the country.
Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
Nurseries and the small businesses that provide before and after-school clubs are being whacked by national insurance increases, and there is little clarity from the Government about how these breakfast clubs will work, which has the potential to undermine another part of their business model. What representations has the Education Secretary made to the Chancellor to deal with the massive hole that she has blown in her plans?
Stephen Morgan
We take no lectures from the Conservative party on how it failed children over the last 14 years. I have heard providers’ concerns about early years funding, and I recognise the importance of local authorities and providers planning ahead for the pivotal expansion year. We will be updating the House very soon on that issue.
Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)
Recently I met my constituent Farhan Adam, a winner of headmaster of the year, who lamented the fact that he spends more time addressing issues such as food insecurity than doing what he loves, which is teaching. This is not surprising as, according to the Food Foundation, approximately 18% of households with children are experiencing food insecurity. Does the Secretary of State agree that, in addition to breakfast clubs, lifting the two-child cap would help to alleviate this problem?
Stephen Morgan
Breakfast clubs offer a huge amount, including food and club provision. I encourage the hon. Member to consider that for roll-out in his constituency. More broadly, he will be aware of the ministerial taskforce focused on child poverty, which will report in the new year.
Sarah Green (Chesham and Amersham) (LD)
Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)
I appreciate my hon. Friend’s concern. As she will know, this Government inherited a broken system from the previous Government. We want to make sure that all children with SEND receive the support they need to achieve and thrive. We have announced £740 million of high needs capital funding for next year for additional places, which will support our ambition to improve inclusivity in mainstream schools.
Maya Ellis (Ribble Valley) (Lab)
Stephen Morgan
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the importance of early support for babies. The plan for change sets out that we will improve support through pregnancy and early childhood. The Start for Life programme is the responsibility of Department of Health and Social Care Ministers, but officials would be happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss this important issue.
Sarah Green (Chesham and Amersham) (LD)
Sir Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)
Over the weekend, Immanuel prep in my constituency announced it was closing, citing VAT on school fees and other damaging Labour policies. Does the Secretary of State share my concern about the damage that will do to Jewish children growing up in my constituency and the surrounding area, who will be deprived of access to a Jewish education, which they richly deserve?
Stephen Morgan
The Government’s fiscal inheritance is so dire that we have to take tough, but necessary decisions and take them quickly. Removing VAT exemptions from January is the right thing to do to deliver for every child across our country.
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
I was delighted to spend Friday afternoon with Cats Whiskers day nursery and earlier this year, I visited Tops day nursery, which is ranked ninth in the Department’s top 100 apprenticeship employees. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to increase the number and quality of childcare apprenticeships?
Sarah Smith (Hyndburn) (Lab)
I welcome this Government’s ambition to ensure that 40,000 extra children are school ready every year. However, at schools such as West End school in Oswaldtwistle in my constituency, there are no extra classrooms to make extra nursery provision available. Will the Minister consider capital funding to ensure that lots of primary schools have the opportunity to extend high quality nursery provision?
Stephen Morgan
The Government are committed to rolling out school-based nurseries. I would welcome the opportunity to meet my hon. Friend to discuss those issues further.
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
I assure the Education Secretary that we are very positive about schooling in this country. I am sure that she will want to thank all school leaders for their work to help English schools to soar up the rankings for the programme for international student assessment and programme for international student assessment rankings—PISA and TIMMS—but will she join me in sending personal congratulations to Katharine Birbalsingh, whose approach to discipline, the curriculum and teacher-led instruction makes her school Michaela the best in the country?
Oliver Ryan (Burnley) (Lab/Co-op)
I recently visited Heasandford primary school in my constituency, which is in a dire state. Will the Minister meet me and Lancashire county council to see what we can do to repair the school—the biggest in Lancashire by class number—and make sure that it is fit for children’s ambitions in Burnley?
Stephen Morgan
We are committed to improving the condition of the estate through the annual funding programme. I will happily meet my hon. Friend to discuss those issues further.
SEND Capital Funding
Stephen Morgan Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)
Today I am announcing £740 million of capital investment in 2025-26 to support children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) or who require alternative provision (AP). This is alongside the previously announced additional high needs revenue funding, which will increase by almost £1 billion in 2025-26, compared with 2024-25.
This new funding can be used to adapt classrooms to be more accessible for children with SEND, to create specialist facilities within mainstream schools that can deliver more intensive support adapted to suit the pupils’ needs, and create special schools places for pupils with the most complex needs.
Today’s funding announcement is part of the broader £6.7 billion capital settlement for 2025-26 so that we can deliver this Government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and give every child the best start in life. Ensuring schools have the high-quality and sustainable buildings they need is a key part of that.
Allocations of this funding to local authorities are expected to be published by the end of March.
We have also confirmed that we will not enter into any more safety valve agreements for councils in financial deficits, pending wider reform of the whole system to prioritise early intervention, properly supporting councils to bring their finances under control. Over time, over 30 local authorities have been supported to manage their high needs budgets through the safety valve programme. We will continue to work with LAs with safety valve agreements to deliver their plans.
[HCWS282]
Breakfast Club Early Adopters
Stephen Morgan Excerpts(2 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)
This Government believe that every child deserves access to a brilliant education, including the opportunity to have a supportive start to the school day. That is why the Government made a manifesto commitment to introduce free breakfast clubs for primary school children, breaking down barriers to opportunity and setting every child up to achieve.
As a first step towards this commitment, from today, schools can apply to become one of up to 750 early adopter schools, providing free breakfast clubs from April 2025, as part of a test-and-learn phase. These schools will be funded to provide access to a free, universal breakfast club lasting at least 30 minutes that includes food. New breakfast clubs, once rolled out nationally, will be available to every state-funded school with primary aged children.
Breakfast clubs help make sure that children are ready to start the school day. They support children’s attendance and attainment. Breakfast clubs offer much more than just food; they can serve as a welcoming space for children, providing valuable opportunities for them to play, learn, and socialise at the beginning of the school day. Breakfast clubs also give families more choices in childcare and support with the cost of living. We want every school, every child, and every family to benefit, which is why the Chancellor tripled the investment in breakfast clubs in the autumn 2024 Budget to over £30 million in the 2025-26 financial year.
Full details on the early adopter scheme, including how schools can apply to take part, will be available on gov.uk.
[HCWS256]