(2 days, 8 hours ago)
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Lord Lucas
“85ZB Co-operation in providing parents with admissions information(1) A local authority in England and the governing body of a maintained school in England must co-operate in the provision of admissions information to parents. (2) The governing body of such a school, where it is the admissions authority for the school, must provide the local authority with such admissions information as is specified in regulations in the electronic format set out in those regulations, within the timescale set out in those regulations.(3) Within one month of the deadline for schools to provide that information, a local authority must publish the information so provided and the equivalent information for schools for which it is the admissions authority in the same electronic format.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that complete, accurate, and consistent admissions information is available to all parents.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, my hope is that this amendment has been rendered unnecessary by the Government’s plan for school profiles, so I will speak to the principles of it rather than the details. For parents, admissions information is of great importance. If they are looking around for a school for their child, they need an understanding of which schools they have a chance of getting them into. The admission rules and outcomes from those rules are vital information for parents.
Local authorities used to publish a booklet every year setting out exactly that—what the rules were and what the outcomes had been—but the more that academy schools have grown, the less that has become the practice. I ran off the booklet for East Sussex—where I live—senior schools. Out of the 20 or so schools available at secondary level, full admissions information is available only for four of them. The others just say, “Contact school”. Although there is supposed to be a system whereby schools provide local authorities with the information they can put in their schools booklets, this is no longer happening.
East Sussex is by no means an outlier. This is common. The system for providing parents with easily accessible schools admissions information has broken down. If, as part of the forthcoming school profiles, we are to have proper school information available on the government website and if, as with the other excellent information that they provide on that website, it will be available in electronic form in bulk, then we have solved this problem. I hope that is the answer. If not, we must do something to get back to the position we all thought we were in. I beg to move.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, I have not had much input into the Bill, which colleagues with much greater knowledge of the issues than me have covered so ably, but I have tabled two amendments in this group, Amendments 452A and 452B. Refugee and asylum-seeking children and those on resettlement schemes may be among the most disadvantaged in our society. They may be accompanied, but the adult or adults with them may be as traumatised as the children. I should like any child in the asylum process or with refugee status, irrespective of whether they fall under the category of unaccompanied asylum-seeking child, to be treated as worthy of special treatment. This is unlikely to open the floodgates, but it would help some very needy children who otherwise would fall outside the criteria. I hope the Minister will be able to look kindly on these modest amendments.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, this is only the second intervention I have made in this very important Bill. I draw the attention of the Minister, the department and, indeed, the House to the plight and funding of rural schools.
One of the first actions that the incoming Government undertook was to end the rural services delivery grant, which had greatly benefited rural areas and allowed many outlying villages and farms to access the schools for their children. This has had an immense impact on counties such as the very rural and isolated North Yorkshire. When I was in the other place, a group of about 100 MPs felt that they represented deprived areas of local education funding, for the simple reasons that we lost what was initially an element of the funding for rural and sparsely populated areas and that the grants seem to change every single year. In addition to the loss of the rural services delivery grant, the Government took away the grant that was dedicated to rural schools’ transport funding, so there was a sort of double whammy, a double effect, from this first action from the Government.
In the year up to the end of the financial year 2023-24, I understand that the rural services grant totalled over £100 million, and the Government saw fit to redirect that money from what are called “more deprived areas”. On my Amendment 455, I want to point out the lack of understanding of how changes to this funding really impact individual rural schools—which face the risk of closure—and the parents and their children, who are trying to access what I believe are very good schools. I understand that the thinking of the Government is to transfer resources from rural to urban areas, so in this amendment I ask them to review within six months of the passing of the Bill their rural school admissions policies, to include an assessment of whether admissions policies in those areas have been affected by the availability of home-to-school transport.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
Amendment 456 in my name would require new state schools opened after this Bill enters the statute book to have a limit on faith-based selection for admissions of 50% when the school is oversubscribed. This has been a requirement since 2011, but, as it stands, the Bill would end that requirement. We often hear amendments being dismissed by Ministers who warn of unintended consequences, but this appears to be an example of a Bill itself in danger of causing unintended consequences.
The determination by a succession of Tory Governments, initially hand in hand with the Lib Dems, to undermine maintained schools while promoting academies and free schools vigorously has meant that, since 2011, all new schools had to be free schools. There was one benefit of that policy, because free schools are subject to the 50% faith-based cap on admissions as part of their funding agreement. Clause 57 would remove the presumption that all new schools should be free schools and would instead allow other types of schools to be opened. That includes voluntary aided or foundation schools, which can be 100% religiously selective. Those types of schools will be allowed to open for the first time since the cap was introduced 14 years ago.
Was that an unintended consequence? If it was initially, it seems that the Government were not greatly concerned by it. When the issue was debated in another place, an amendment similar to Amendment 456 was voted down by the Government in Committee, and the same thing happened on Report. I hope that my noble friend will be able to say that, on deeper reflection, that is a position that she does not want to defend.
I say that because a cap on faith-based admissions has been demonstrated to strengthen ethnic integration. Analysis of data on faith schools shows that religiously selective schools operating under the 50% cap were significantly more ethnically diverse than schools that were 100% religiously selective. We should bear in mind that, at a time when the far right is seeking to divide communities on grounds of ethnicity, it is surely inappropriate to allow schools to entrench differences. This is a time for the Government to be promoting social and ethnic integration, not facilitating a means by which children grow up potentially not knowing anyone of their own age who is different from themselves. I cannot believe that that is what the Government want to see happening.
Faith-selective schools remain less inclusive across multiple factors. Compared to other schools, faith-selective schools admit fewer children eligible for free school meals than would be expected for their catchment areas, and 100% faith-selective admissions would only exacerbate inequalities in the school system. Last year, the Office of the Schools Adjudicator said that disadvantaged children, including those in care, miss out on school places because of faith-based admissions. Studies by the Sutton Trust and the London School of Economics reached the same conclusions. We know that 100% faith-selective schools will open if the provisions of Clause 57 remain. The Catholic Church and the Church of England will certainly do so, and it may be that Jewish, Muslim and Sikh groups would wish to do the same. They already exist.
In Committee in another place, the then Schools Minister Catherine McKinnell MP said,
“on the faith schools cap provision, we want to allow proposals for different types of school that will promote a diverse school system that supports parental choice”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/2/25; col. 454.]
Supporting parental choice is admirable, but allowing new 100% faith-selective schools to open would not expand parental choice. It would actually limit it for parents in an area who do not adhere to the faith of the new school or indeed any faith. According to the British Social Attitudes survey, 53% of people now have no religion. Thus, potentially more than half of all parents have fewer choices for state-funded schools than their religious counterparts, and 100% faith selection allows their children to be rejected from an oversubscribed school on their doorstep in favour of the child of a parent in a home possibly miles away whose choice—that is, the religious affiliation—is the factor that allows them to be selected for admission.
I suggest that that is neither right nor fair. Lifting the 50% cap on admissions would be a regressive move, and not one that I believe should be sanctioned by a Labour Government. I suggest that Amendment 456 offers a means of avoiding that.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, I wish to speak to my own Amendment 457 and to Amendment 456 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, both of which deal with the issue of faith- based selection in school admissions.
My Amendment 457 speaks to the missing data that the Schools Minister raised in Committee in the other place. The Department for Education currently does not collect data on how admissions policies are applied in schools, and therefore we do not know how many parents are missing out on their preferred school placements because of their religion or because they do not have a religion. Collecting data would shed light on what the impact of faith-selective admissions is for parents and pupils and whether such selection is contributing to or undermining parental choice.
Amendment 456 should, I hope, be uncontroversial. Since 2011, all new faith schools, as all new schools, had to be free schools, and have been subject in their funding agreements to a 50% cap on faith-based selection in admissions when oversubscribed. In this situation, Amendment 456 is a simple tidying-up exercise—that is how I read it anyway—extending a standing policy for free schools with a religious character to all new state-maintained schools with a religious character that could open under Clause 57.
The Government have not in any way suggested that they oppose the 50% cap in principle. Following a consultation on the cap that showed overwhelming support for it to continue, the Government have stated that they will maintain the cap for free schools with a religious character. If the Government are supportive of allowing new 100% faith-selective schools to open, I ask the Minister to state that clearly before the Committee.
I wish to be clear that neither of these amendments oppose the opening or continuing service of faith schools in this country, many of which provide exemplary education for their pupils. What the amendment seeks to do is ensure that faith schools cannot limit parental choice and pupil diversity by hand-selecting whom they wish to accept.
Using selection of faith leads to less inclusion. Church of England and minority religion schools, subject to a 50% cap, have higher ethnic diversity compared with those not subject to the cap. Faith schools compared with schools without a religious character in the same catchment area have been found to accept fewer children on free school meals, according to the Sutton Trust; fewer children in care, according to the Office of the Schools Adjudicator; and fewer children with additional learning needs, according to research from the London School of Economics. Amendment 456 and my Amendment 457 would promote fairness and parental choice in the schools admissions policy. I commend them both to the Committee.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I will briefly speak to my amendment in this group and leave the summing up to my noble friend. I use the term “off-rolling” in this. It may be out of date and unfair, but the fact of the matter is that there has been an increase in the number of children not in school over recent years. A Commons report on the issue came out in 2020, but it has been exacerbated by the Covid situation. It is about time we had a real, in-depth dive into why more and more pupils are not within the mainstream system.
There has been some suggestion that the academy system wanting to get rid of bad pupils is to blame or that the greater emphasis on special educational needs has led to the thought that people might be more trouble for the school. I would like to know. I know that some of the academies—the better ones—have fought against this. I remember the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, getting extremely annoyed about the idea of that practice in a Committee stage debate on another Bill. If there are academies that are avoiding it or some that are falling to this, we should know. If academies are here to stay, under this Bill, whether we like it or not, because we have accepted them, can we find out whether there is a specific problem there or if it is something else? The increased number of people not in school is a problem that we have referred to throughout Committee, and it is about time we had a decent and in-depth look at it.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, I will make very few remarks. I am an active humanist and I would like to identify my support for the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, and my noble friend Lord Watson. I hope that the Government will take heed of what these rather modest amendments propose. If there is something that needs to be discussed, I ask that my noble friend the Minister calls together those of us who are interested and committed to this to talk about it.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I will speak to a number of these amendments and I want to do it from my own experience. First, I will start with the cap on faith. If your Lordships remember, this was originally introduced by the Tony Blair Government for any new schools. I thought at the time, “How sensible is that? If we live, as we do, in a multifaith, multicultural society, isn’t a good thing that children mix with children of different faiths?” Speaking on day nine in Committee, I referenced the fact that my daughter went to a Jewish school. It was wonderful for her to be able to have Jewish, Hindu, Christian and Muslim friends, because that was the ethos of that Jewish school. If you just put the Catholics there, the Anglicans there, the Jews there and the Muslims there, you divide people. I do not want a divided society. I want children to celebrate their faith and their culture, and the best place to do that is in school when they are learning and growing up. You only have to remember what happened in education in Northern Ireland.
Secondly, I want to talk about faith schools in terms of admissions. I am speaking to Amendment 456 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, on the 50% cap, and I cannot add anything further to his excellent contribution, so I turn to my noble friend Lady Burt’s Amendment 457. Faith schools do a fantastic job—I must stop using the word “fantastic”. They do a very good educational job. I look again at my own city, where the four Anglican schools are oversubscribed and are very popular. The way children are admitted raises real questions in my mind. Suddenly, the local Anglican churches, which are in the neighbourhood of that school, fill up their congregations, because when people apply to the school, they have to have a reference from the vicar.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, as we have heard, this group and the next one cover a range of issues in relation to admissions. My sense is that most of the amendments in this group are not really needed in practice, but the Minister will no doubt clarify.
In relation to Amendment 449 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lucas, as my noble friend made clear, each individual school publishes its admissions policy on its website. I accept his point that local authorities no longer publish as many comprehensive booklets as perhaps they once did. It is reasonable to expect that parents should be able to look at different websites and the admissions policies of the schools that they are interested in sending their children to.
Turning to the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, my understanding is that under the fair access protocol, children in need of a school place will be found one. While I absolutely respect the noble Baroness’s concerns about the groups of children she described, I am not sure it is helpful that we should place a priority on one group of children over another, but rather that we see the right to education as fundamental for every child.
My noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering’s Amendment 455 relates to admissions policies for children living in rural areas. My noble friend raised some valid points about the financial pressures that rural schools, and in particular very small rural schools, face, but I am just not sure that it would be appropriate for an analysis of those policies to be done in the department.
I turn to Amendment 456 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie. The noble Lord raises a valid point. There is a change in policy happening around the future ability of maintained free schools—although they will not be free schools in the sense that many of us understand—to be available, and that is different from what exists today for academies. So it is entirely fair of the noble Lord to probe the Government’s thinking on this.
As we heard, Amendment 457 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Burt of Solihull, would require the Secretary of State to publish an annual report on school admissions policies, including an analysis of the proportion of places allocated based on faith-related criteria. Of course, as I said earlier, schools already publish their admissions policy, but I do not think they publish the outcomes in relation to faith-related criteria. Again, I am slightly puzzled about the value of doing this nationally as, obviously, parents typically look at schools in a pretty narrow geographic area close to where they live.
Finally, in relation to Amendment 475, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that off-rolling is not acceptable. In 2019, Ofsted defined off-rolling as
“the practice of removing a pupil from the school roll without using a permanent exclusion, when the removal is primarily in the best interests of the school, rather than the best interests of the pupil. This includes pressuring a parent to remove their child from the school roll”.
That aspect is clearly in the sights of the inspectorate, so I do not think that the noble Lord’s amendment is needed. The noble Lord also raised much wider issues around attendance, which go far beyond that definition of off-rolling, and I think that the new inspection framework from Ofsted, with its emphasis on inclusion, might serve to reassure the noble Lord that that continues to be in the sights of those who are responsible for holding our schools to account.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, the amendments in this first group cover admissions and related issues in relation to these clauses. This package of measures will help to ensure that decisions on place planning and admissions support the needs of communities and families while also supporting local authorities to deliver their statutory functions.
I turn first to Amendment 449 from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and Amendment 457 from the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, which seek to ensure that admissions information is available to all parents. They would require the Secretary of State to publish information about schools admissions arrangements, including any faith-based arrangements. I hope to provide some reassurance to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. Admissions authorities are already required by the statutory school admissions code to publish their admissions arrangements on their school’s website, including the proportion of places that will be prioritised for pupils of faith, and ensure that parents can easily understand how admissions arrangements will be satisfied.
Admissions authorities must also provide information to enable local authorities to publish an annual admissions prospectus for parents. The code requires local authorities to publish this information for all schools via a composite prospectus. We believe that the existing approach is proportionate, reflects the diversity of admission arrangements and local circumstances and is not overly burdensome on schools or local authorities, while enabling parents to access the information they need about their local schools.
Amendment 455, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, seeks to insert a new clause to require a review of rural schools’ admissions policies. The admissions system already contains mechanisms to ensure that admissions policies meet local needs, including the policies of rural schools. Admissions authorities must consult locally before making changes, and anyone who considers a school’s admissions policy to be unfair or unlawful can object to the Schools Adjudicator.
Furthermore, our school travel policy ensures that no child is prevented from accessing education by a lack of transport. Local authorities must arrange free travel for children attending their nearest suitable school who could not walk there because of the distance or their special educational needs, disability or mobility problems, or due to route safety. The Government have also set out a plan to deliver better bus services and drive opportunity to underserved regions.
The noble Baroness talked in particular about the issue of the rural services delivery grant. In relation to that, the Government are committed to tackling the issues that matter to rural communities. We are allocating funding through improved needs formulae in 2025-26 to target funding where it is needed the most, investing in the priority services that people rely on the most. Places with significant rural populations will receive on average an almost 6% increase in their core spending power this financial year—a real-terms increase—and no council will see a reduction.
The rural services delivery grant does not properly account for need. In fact, many predominantly rural councils receive nothing from it. That is clearly not right. The Government consulted on proposals to repurpose this funding in the usual way, in the provisional 2025-26 settlement, but the Government are nevertheless keen to hear from councils about how best to consider the impact of rurality on the cost of services as part of the longer-term consultation on local authority funding reform, which was published in June.
Amendment 456 in the name of my noble friend Lord Watson seeks to apply the 50% faith admissions cap to new state-funded schools designated as having a faith character. We greatly value the contribution that faith schools make to our schools system and support the ability of faith schools to set faith-based oversubscription criteria. This can support parents wishing to have their child educated in line with their religious beliefs; it is for the admissions authorities of individual schools to decide whether to adopt such arrangements.
Many faith schools are oversubscribed, which suggests that parents value and want these schools. We also understand that the ability of faith schools to prioritise children of faith when they are oversubscribed—and of course it is only at the point at which a school is oversubscribed that these admissions criteria would bite—is important and, at the risk of disappointing my noble friends and the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, we do not intend to change that approach at this time.
Removing the legal presumption that all new schools should be academies, which is what has brought about this issue, is intended to give local authorities the flexibility to make the best decisions to meet the needs of their communities. Decision-makers will carefully consider proposals from all groups and commission the right new schools to meet need and to ensure every child has the opportunity to achieve—
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
I do not feel that my noble friend the Minister has answered the questions asked by my noble friend Lord Watson asked about why this is a change. I do not expect to make any progress right now, but I do think that, before Report, we will need to discuss it further.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I am certainly happy to write to my noble friends and perhaps facilitate the opportunity for them to meet the new Schools Minister to discuss this particular issue.
I was in the process of saying that this relates to the new provisions around opening schools. In doing that, decision-makers will carefully consider proposals from all groups and commission the right new schools to meet need and to ensure every child has the opportunity to achieve and to thrive.
Lord Storey (LD)
The Minister, when referring to Amendment 456 from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said there were no plans to make a change “at this time”. What does she mean by that? Does that mean that the Government will consider it in the future or that it is not going to happen at all?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I think I was pretty clear about the position that the Government take with respect to the admissions arrangements of faith schools, and it is not intended to change that.
Lord Lucas (Con)
But the Government are changing that, my Lords. I was part of the debates where we arrived at the 50% figure. I remember the Catholic schools playing a very strong part in that debate. It was very much understood that the schools created could quite clearly have a strong religious character and be directed and run in that way but not becoming isolated parts of the community, fracturing it and separating it. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, one has only to look at Northern Ireland to see the difficulties caused by a fully segregated system.
We agreed a system for avoiding that. Why are the Government now going back on it? Where is the argument coming from? It does not appear to be coming from the Church of England—the right reverend Prelate has been silent on these amendments. We have not heard any other religious voices saying, “Thank you so much, this is what we want”. Who has been lobbying for this? Where is the pressure coming from for the Government to give in and make this change? It is not at all obvious—and the Government are not being open or clear about—what the motivation is or what outcome they wish for. Presumably, they are hoping that a collection of 100% religious character schools will be founded over the next year or two. Where are those schools intended to be? What kind of schools are they looking at? What future are the Government letting us in for? I really think they owe us some clarity and some openness on this so that we can understand what they are doing and what they intend to do to our society.
This is a really important set of issues. Binding us together as a nation has never been more important. We are threatened from various angles now. Why are the Government adding to that dissolution of our nation? I can see that I am not going to get anything out of the Minister now.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I will respond and, as I said, I will write. The noble Lord is enormously overstating the very specific circumstances to which these criteria would relate. This is not an invitation by the Government to enormously increase the number of faith schools. This is a requirement specifically relating to the provisions about opening a new school contained in the Bill. I will write to noble Lords about that point.
Lord Lucas (Con)
I look forward to that, but I very much regret that the settlement that we reached should be torn up in this way.
When it comes to my own Amendment 449, it is all very well for the Government to say that there should be a composite prospectus, but there is not one. It used to exist, absolutely, but that is not what is available now. If you look for an East Sussex composite prospectus, it is not there. What is there is a confusing passage among a collection of documents and websites; then it is back to the school and off to here or there. We have produced a system where the really diligent, intelligent, motivated parent can find their way through, but anyone—
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
In that case, East Sussex is not fulfilling the requirements of the statutory code that I spelled out in my response. I would be surprised if that were the case but, obviously, if it were, I would be willing to look into it. The Government have made clear the requirement both on schools to publish their admissions arrangements on their websites and on local authorities to publish a composite prospectus about the admissions arrangements of all the schools in their areas.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I have not done a complete survey, but I am not aware of a single local authority that does produce a composite prospectus in the old style any more. I absolutely take—
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord might have put quite a lot of emphasis on the “in the old style” expression there. I think the requirement is for this to be on a website. I am not sure that production of a written prospectus for all parents is necessarily something that we would require in this day and age, is it?
Lord Lucas (Con)
No, I would expect a website or maybe a PDF, but something containing the information that is supposed to make it possible for parents to go to one place and see the admissions criteria and how they work, for all the schools within the local authority that they might be interested in. This is widely not happening, and nor is that information available on school websites; I checked a few as the Minister had challenged on that and, no, I cannot find that either. There is supposed to be a system, but there is not so, yes, I will take up her invitation to pursue this afterwards. It is important that we get back to a system where ordinary, hard-pressed parents can easily find the information they need to make good decisions for their children.
I very much hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me at some stage that the admissions information will form part of the school’s profile, as talked about in the announcement that was made at the same time as the announcement of the new Ofsted systems. There is real promise in that. I should like it if she could tell me more about the Government’s plans for what should be in that profile and how that will evolve; I should be very grateful. But, for now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Longfield
“85ZB Managed moves and the Fair Access Protocol(1) Before the initiation of any managed move of a registered pupil from one maintained school or Academy to another, the pupil must be considered under the local authority’s Fair Access Protocol.(2) The consideration under subsection (1) must include consultation with—(a) the current school,(b) the proposed receiving school, and(c) the parent or carer of the pupil, and where appropriate, the pupil.(3) The local authority must keep and maintain a record of all managed moves occurring to, from, or within its area.(4) Where a managed move results in the registration of a pupil at a school within the area of a different local authority, the responsibility for monitoring the educational outcomes and welfare of the pupil following the move shall transfer to that receiving local authority upon the pupil's registration at the new school.(5) The duty imposed by subsection (1) above does not apply—(a) in circumstances where the child of compulsory school age is removed from the roll of one school and registered at another school solely as a consequence of the child's change of ordinary residence, provided that—(i) the change of residence is documented and verified, and(ii) arrangements for re-registration at a new school are underway or have been made within a reasonable period.(6) A record under subsection (3) must include—(a) the reasons for the move,(b) the schools involved,(c) whether the move was voluntary or directed, and(d) the outcome for the pupil.(7) Each local authority must submit an annual report to the Secretary of State containing a summary of managed moves conducted under this section. (8) The Secretary of State may issue guidance to local authorities and schools on the implementation of this section, to which they must have regard.(9) In this section—“managed moves” means a permanent change of the pupil’s school registration, where a move is not a result of—(a) a permanent exclusion under Section 51A of the Education Act 1996;(b) a transfer to a special school pursuant to Section 42 of the Children and Families Act 2014;(c) a change of registration due to school closure;(d) movement between educational phases;(e) change in school type as a consequence of the Academy Act 2010.“school” has the same meaning as in Part 4 of the Education Act 1996.”
Baroness Longfield (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 450 on managed moves, as well as Amendment 453, which is in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey.
The amendments concern a group of children who are literally moved between schools. At the moment, they are pretty much out of the spotlight and are not in any way accountable within the system. Mine is a very practical amendment: it seeks to provide a framework that is consistent, fair and transparent, so that we do not lose these children. It would ensure that we know where they are and that the moves are in their best interests. Managed moves relate to permanent changes of pupils on a school registration where the move is not the result of a permanent exclusion, transfer to a special school, school closure or movement between educational phases. They are currently unmonitored and unregulated in many areas.
While some local authorities have very strong protocols and partnerships that mean that managed moves operate well, the lack of appropriate guard-rails, to ensure moves between schools are in the best interests of the child, has allowed some problematic practices to emerge. In the current system, frequently neither the local authorities nor the Government know where, or even if, the child is being educated following a managed move. The Who is Losing Learning? report this year uncovered a deeply concerning trend: it estimated that, for every child that was permanently excluded, there were 10 more invisibly being moved around the system behind that. There are also reports that, sometimes, children can almost be traded between different schools and systems within this process. Some children will spend a lot of time out of school as a result, and others are moved time and time again.
The solution proposed in my amendment is very practical. It would bring managed moves in line with suspensions and exclusions. It proposes that they are put through the existing fair access protocol and that local authorities report on its use to the Department for Education. This would subject managed moves to a collaborative peer review and set out what knowledge and oversight the appropriate local authorities and the Department for Education have. It would be important that discussion of, and application to, the fair access protocol should happen before the move is initiated, to ensure that the child’s education does not get disrupted as a result.
We want local authorities to keep good records, as we must be clear on where responsibility lies for that child as they move between schools. We also want a stipulation that this does not apply to a child when they move from one school to another because of a change in the child’s residence. There is a real need for a definition of managed moves and for all those managed moves then to be reported back to the department, with an annual report on the numbers and nature of those moves.
There is an opportunity here to draw on the really good practice that occurs in many areas and to create a standardised approach that would be fair, transparent, accountable and, ultimately, in the best interests of the child. This speaks to the ambition that we all have for increasing opportunities for all children while also strengthening inclusion—that is what we all want to see. The provisions are practical and doable, and I look forward to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, I speak in support of my Amendments 452 and 454, on the control of admissions into schools. This is a fraught issue for parents trying to get their children into excellent schools that lack sufficient places, so rationing—that unpleasant word—has to apply. Where the shortage of places is structural, outstanding schools can be and are supported to expand their facilities. In my trust, we have an outstanding school that started out with us in special measures over 10 years ago. It has nearly doubled its cohort size over that time, and I am grateful to the local authority and indeed to the DfE for supporting that expansion in physical terms. This year, it was the highest-performing secondary school in Norfolk at GCSE, and I am incredibly proud of the staff who have achieved that. But, more relevant for this legislation, it shows that the system can work well and responsibly.
Baroness Bousted (Lab)
My Lords, I oppose Amendment 452, which has just been put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, which would limit local authorities’ interventions in admissions to situations where the admissions authority had failed to meet its admissions obligations or had behaved improperly.
Local authorities have a statutory responsibility under Section 14 of the Education Act 1996 to ensure that enough school places are available in their area for every child of compulsory school age. The provision in the Bill to create a duty on schools to co-operate with local authorities to enable them to carry out their place-planning duties as required by law and to co-operate on SEND inclusion and school admissions is entirely necessary and reasonable. It ends the nonsense of academies being allowed to set their own pupil numbers without regard to the number of pupils in the catchment area.
Multi-academy trusts are no longer outliers; they run over 46% of primary schools and 83% of secondary schools. The Government have a duty to ensure that local authorities, on which the legal requirement to provide school places falls, are able to do so. This must require local authorities and multi-academy trusts to work together to ensure that place planning is done effectively and cost-effectively. That is particularly important now, as we are experiencing a decline in the birth rate which is affecting primary places and will affect secondary places. The sustained rise we have seen in pupil numbers since the early 2010s has now been reversed. The number of pupils in England’s school system overall decreased in January, dropping by more than 59,000. Primary numbers have been falling for several years now, but secondary numbers are due to peak in 2027 before falling as the population bulge moves out of compulsory education.
These pupil demographics require co-ordinated place planning. We cannot have a situation where local authorities are legally responsible for providing places for pupils but have no powers to direct the majority of schools in their area, which are academies, to co-operate on place planning, admissions and exclusions. We cannot leave local authorities with the responsibility, but without the authority, to require co-operation on these legal duties.
Lord Nash (Con)
My Lords, it is a delight to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted. She may be pleased to hear that I have advised my noble friend on the correct pronunciation of her name.
I did not hear very well when we were here last week, but the word “devil” was mentioned. Having checked Hansard, I see that the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, seemed to think that when we had some dealings in the Department for Education, I thought she was doing the devil’s work in working for unions. I could not possibly think that—I always found her the most charming person to deal with—and, as opposed to the devil’s work, I commend the unions on doing what seems to me the Lord’s work in their campaign on smartphones. I look forward to talking to them about that. I welcome the noble Baroness back from her sojourn in the Arctic this summer, and I hope she is finding the atmosphere in the Labour Party at the moment somewhat less glacial than she found it there—although in the current circumstances, maybe not very much so.
I rise to support the amendments in the names of my noble friends Lady Barran and Lord Agnew. Life in the real world teaches one that the benefits of competition are that strong organisations survive and expand, and weak ones demise. While I accept that there may be remote communities where the availability of these schools is essential, as an overriding policy in schools, allowing competition has been proven to be a good thing. Take for instance the London Academy of Excellence in Stratford, which resulted in a rising tide lifting all boats. Apart from its own excellent performance, it has had a dramatic effect on the performance of the other sixth forms in the area. Good schools must be allowed to expand. To not allow this is to deprive children of their benefits, and they certainly should not be forced to shrink.
Turning to my noble friend Lord Agnew’s amendment, local authorities clearly have a conflict of interest under the proposed admission provisions. Surely there must be a right of appeal, as set out in his amendment. I also support my noble friend Lady Barran’s Amendment 502YC, as highly performing schools should be given the freedom her amendment asks for.
Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)
My Lords, I want to speak to the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, as the noble Lord, Lord Nash, has done. However, on managed moves, these are good things when done well, as they can prevent permanent exclusions. At their best they are in the best interests of the child.
I know Birmingham very well, and the size of Birmingham. Sometimes the managed moves are made on a consulting basis. I ask my noble friend Lady Longfield, who moved the amendment, to reflect that if you make that more bureaucratic in terms of the local authorities’ overall role, it will put too much of an administrative burden on what is working very well in some parts of the city. I am not saying that it is working well everywhere, but where it is working well on a consulting basis, it would be a shame to add layers of bureaucracy. However, on the whole, managed moves based on the framework she suggests are very good.
On admissions, my starting point is the same as that of the noble Lords, Lord Agnew and Lord Nash. Why would you want to prevent a good school expanding? Also, if something is good, why would you not want more children to go to it? That is at the centre of what this is about, because it is true. However, life is not as simple as that. It is not only the interests of the school and the children who might go to it that are affected by the amendments.
I was reflecting back on both noble Lords. One of the best things they did as Ministers was to recognise the early mistakes made by the coalition Government in having stand-alone academies and not encouraging schools to work together. The work they did on multi-academy trusts was a very good step forward from what we had at the start of the coalition Government. Inherent in that is the understanding that schools do not stand alone. At their best, they work with each other, help each other, depend on each other—and the key point is that they do no harm to each other. They do not make life more difficult for the school down the road.
This goes further than multi-academy trusts. Take geographical areas such as Birmingham, Camden or Coventry, which I know reasonably well. There is something about those places that every school in the area has in common. For example, it does not matter whether they are an academy, a maintained school, a faith school, a free school or an independent school—they teach the children of Birmingham. What they hold in common is that they teach the children who go to school in that area. They owe the same obligation to each other that I have just praised in multi-academy trusts—do no harm, support each other, help each other, and compete. You want to get to the top of the table, but not at the expense of the school down the road, because we want all schools to thrive. The problem with the amendments is admissions. If they were to follow these amendments, it would harm other schools serving the same group of children. That is a problem, and that is why I oppose these amendments.
If numbers are rising and there must be an expansion of places, then I take the point: why not expand the good schools? I have often thought that that is not as simple as it is claimed to be, because sometimes the success of the school is the size of the school. You cannot put in two, three, five or six more children—it does not work. You end up putting in 30 more children per school year. You raise it by one form of entry, and over seven years you have more than 200 pupils. The change in the size of the school sometimes makes it different in nature and different in culture. It might damage its academic performance and its pastoral work. Expanding good schools is not done at no cost at all. There is something to pay.
Lord Storey (LD)
I will pick up that last point, which was very incisively made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. My primary school was a two-form entry primary school. It was a popular school, and we wanted to increase the size to three forms of entry. The local authority initially said, “No, because if you do that, you’ll take children from the two other primary schools in the locality, which will weaken those schools”. At the time, I was a bit miffed about this, but I thought, “Okay”. The local authority said, “What we need to do is to build up the numbers and the esteem of those two other primary schools”, which it did very successfully. Then, guess what: it agreed that my school could become a three-form entry school.
It is not just about size; it also about schools working together. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, quite rightly paid tribute to the role that the noble Lords, Lord Agnew and Lord Nash, played as Ministers in establishing multi-academy trusts. One area which has never worked, to my mind, is that you can have the headquarters of the multi-academy trust at the other end of the country. It has never worked for me that a multi-academy trust can have schools in Devon and Cornwall but also in the north-east. Where is that community feel about them?
The trouble with expanding schools is that you can get to a situation in which schools just want to grow and grow, because they get more money. They can get too large for the existing children and families. I think of the school that my wife worked at, a seven-form entry comprehensive which was allowed to increase its size to 11. It became completely unmanageable. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, rightly said, by taking children from one school, in many cases you are almost putting a close notice on that school. The way to deal with it is not by moving children or allowing schools to grow but by providing the resources and expertise and making that school popular, putting in real expertise to change its character and educational purpose.
I put my name to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, and I have also put an amendment down myself. Let us first understand the definition of a managed move. It is a permanent move of a child from one school to another for reasons not related to family relocation. It is important to put that into context and to remind ourselves that currently 1.49 million children are persistently absent from school and 171,000 children are severely absent from school.
The Who is Losing Learning? report of 2025 uncovered a deeply concerning trend; that
“for every child that is permanently excluded, 10 more invisibly move”
between schools or are off rolled entirely. These moves are unregulated and unmonitored, meaning that too often even the Department for Education does not know where or even if those children are being educated following a managed move.
Managed moves, when done correctly, can have great success for both the pupil and the school. That is why these two amendments, which are very similar, are so important. We need a fair access protocol to make sure that, when we carry out those managed moves between schools, we know how it is happening. I like the notion that the local authority should perhaps report on this—not creating more bureaucracy but just giving confidence to the system. I hope the Minister when she replies will tell us how important it is to get this right.
Baroness Spielman (Con)
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Barran’s amendments to Clause 56 and my noble friend Lord Agnew’s Amendment 454. I have heard much around the Committee this afternoon that is extremely important, but I think there are some wider points to make.
There are many romantic expectations of school admissions—that there is a perfect world in which every child will go to the school that they and their parents choose, in which every mainstream school can provide well for every child no matter how extreme their needs, and in which no child will ever cause harm to any other child or adult in a school. In this perfect world, the romantics expect children to be distributed perfectly evenly between schools on any measure by which we choose to analyse the population. But this is a dream, and chasing dreams rarely improves children’s experiences in the real world. Sadly, it is entirely possible that the extended powers to direct admissions will backfire, especially with policy pressure on local authorities to keep even the worst behaved children in mainstream schools irrespective of the consequences.
Consider a child for whom an LA is trying to find a managed move. If several schools decline to accept the child, it may mean that they are all shirking their responsibilities, or it may mean that they have correctly assessed that the child’s needs are too great for that school or any mainstream school to manage the child safely. One shocking case I saw as chief inspector related to a girl who was raped by a boy who had come to her school on a managed move and, worse, the receiving school had not been informed by either the LA or the sending school of the boy’s known history of serious sexual misconduct. No school should be levered into putting other children at risk in this way.
If the LA directs the child to one of its own schools, it still has direct responsibility for the child, but if it can direct the child to an academy, it has offloaded the problem, at least in part. There is an obvious incentive for local authorities to use this power to offload the most difficult children and leave academies to shoulder a disproportionate responsibility for the most difficult and even dangerous children, and to inflict the greatest risk on the other children and staff in those academies.
Let us also consider the point that, while a decision will relate to a single child, good schools also have to consider how many children with behavioural problems they can manage and support properly without destroying the very strengths that make them able to work effectively with such children. I have seen already how difficult this is for local authorities in the context of SEND. Local authorities control EHCPs, which name a school to which that child should be admitted. In theory, it is parents who choose that school, but in practice, local authorities have significant influence over those parent choices, and some local authorities have perhaps on occasion found it convenient to encourage parents to choose academies rather than maintained schools, or at the very least to not discourage them from doing so.
As a result, some popular and successful academies have at times found themselves facing real difficulties. I know of cases where local authorities expected a school to fill more than one-third of its year 7 places with children requiring intensive individual support, many of them for behavioural problems. This would have turned those schools into de facto special schools without the wider infrastructure and support that we expect of special schools.
It is in fact extraordinarily difficult for local authorities to be impartial between mainstream schools and academies. For this reason, I strongly support my noble friend’s Amendment 452ZA, requiring local authorities to act impartially between maintained schools and academies. It will still be difficult in practice, but the principle should be explicit in the Act.
Similarly, my noble friend’s Amendment 453A to Clause 56 and Amendments 457A and 457B seek to ensure that changes to school admission numbers are made in the interests of children and parents, rather than the administrative convenience of the local authority. Again, these decisions will always be hard and will never please everyone, but it is right and important that children’s needs are explicitly put first: otherwise, it is sadly all too certain that, with the shrinking birth cohort, some excellent schools will see their admissions restricted while mediocre schools carry on. My noble friend Lord Agnew’s Amendment 454 gives some protection to this principle. I hope the Government will see how unfortunate this would be and will take steps to guard against it.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, Clause 53 covers the role of schools in general and academies in particular in relation to pupil place planning. As we know, in the vast majority of cases, academies co-operate and fulfil their role in helping the local authority to meet its sufficiency duties, as the Bill says, so far as is reasonable. Clause 54 gives the local authority new powers to direct admission of individual pupils, despite the fact that those powers already exist for the Secretary of State to use within the funding agreement for all academies.
The policy notes say, slightly quaintly:
“Schools and local authorities’ interests may not always be aligned, and they are not expected to agree on all admissions and place planning matters. However, it is expected that they will behave reasonably and collaboratively, for example, considering the other party’s views, being willing to meet and discuss differences, and sharing information in a timely manner”.
All this is fine, but presumably the point of the clause is to get quicker decisions and to address a problem of academies apparently unreasonably refusing to accept these pupils. But where is the evidence that that is true? In the academic year 2023-24, there were just under 11,000 exclusions. Looking at the data on the department’s website for exclusions and suspensions, including repeat suspensions, one sees incredible differences, in the rates of permanent exclusion in particular, even in neighbouring local authorities. This is true for local authorities where almost all the secondaries are academies and for those where there are predominantly maintained schools.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My Lords, I turn first to Clauses 54 and 55, the latter of which the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, opposes standing part of the Bill. Together, they extend local authorities’ current powers to direct maintained schools to admit a child to enable them to direct academies in the same way.
There are important elements of this Bill that are about future-proofing the system. As I explained last week when talking about the nature of the national curriculum, if, quite rightly, a majority of our schools, or schools that are teaching the majority of our children, are academies, and if, as we do as a Government, we want to continue the progress to see more academies developing and opening, we need to future-proof the system. At the moment, local authorities can direct admissions in the particular circumstances in which they need to do so in only half of schools, and in the future in even fewer schools than that. The proposals enable the school admissions code to set out additional circumstances in which directions can be made to ensure school places for vulnerable children can be secured more quickly and efficiently.
Enabling local authorities to direct into academies without needing to make a request via the Secretary of State will help to reduce delays in securing vulnerable children a school place. It is right, as the noble Baroness says, that there is a route to direct into an academy, but that requires making a request to the Secretary of State and an average, as I understand it, of 38 days for that to be determined. That is a long time for a vulnerable child to be without a school place.
These clauses will also create a more streamlined directions process for children who have come out of care, or where the fair access protocol—the local process to secure places for unplaced and vulnerable children—has failed to secure a child a school place. Together, these measures will help provide a more robust and consistent safety net for vulnerable children, ensuring that no child falls between the cracks.
Amendment 452 from the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, seeks to amend the circumstances in which local authorities can direct admissions and places certain requirements on academy admissions, and Amendment 452ZA, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, requires local authorities to not take into account a school’s academy status in these decisions. Noble Lords are, of course, absolutely right that it is important that these decisions are made in the best interests of the child and that impartiality between types of schools should be maintained.
Baroness Longfield (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for her response and the emphasis that she has placed throughout on inclusion. The ambition is for all children to be able to benefit from a great education and for them to be able to thrive in school.
The amendment I put forward about managed moves is very much about keeping children within schools and the education system. It is a practical response, and I have been really pleased to bring together a group of schools and school leaders who are really putting forward a very positive practice by meeting with the education team and talking about that. With that in mind, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, we have seen some of the most significant improvements in outcomes for pupils in our free schools, with schools such as Michaela and Ark Greenwich in London, Eden girls and boys, part of the Star academy trust in Birmingham, and the Mercia School in Sheffield, to name but a few, achieving remarkable results. I know that my noble friends Lord Harris, Lord Nash and Lord Agnew are very likely to add to that list of exceptional free schools that they have been part of creating.
Free schools have been a mechanism for the injection of new ideas, new energy and improving models of education into the state system. Free schools respond to parental and community demand; they provide parents with choice over their child’s education and they have driven up standards. Free schools are usually part of a strong multi-academy trust that has a track record of delivering high-quality education and the back-office capacity needed to support smooth and financially sustainable operations across HR, finance, IT, premises and more. Local authorities do not have and never have had the same capacity and ability to provide tailored support to schools.
The reason for the change in policy in the Bill to allow local authorities to open free schools in future is given in the policy summary, which says that the measure better aligns
“local authorities’ responsibility for securing sufficient school places with their ability to open new schools”.
Again, to loop back to the previous group, on which the Minister did not commit to write—I am sure that her officials noted my request for data—can she share the evidence that there really is a gap in their ability to secure sufficient school places and cite any instances where a local authority has been unable to meet its sufficiency duty as a result of a lack of applications from suitable trusts to establish a new free school? Certainly, during my time in office, there were always multiple applications for new presumption free schools, both mainstream and special schools.
My worry is that this is an example of bureaucratic tidiness being prioritised over outcomes for children. The English system is not tidy: we have voluntary-aided schools, voluntary-controlled schools, foundation schools and many other models. On paper, it might look messy, but we have still been able to rise significantly up the global league tables because we focused relentlessly on outcomes over bureaucracy. This clause feels like we are putting a bureaucrat’s diagrams first—even, I add before the Minister growls at me too much, a bureaucrat with a big heart and a lifelong commitment to children. All of this will change—and to the detriment of pupils.
It will also create higher costs for the Government. In an interview with Schools Week in April, Rachael Wardell, the new president of the ADCS, said, on the range of new responsibilities that councils will be given in the Bill, that
“part of our ongoing dialogue with government is going to be about, if you want us to do these things, then we’re going to need to be resourced accordingly”.
Can the Minister give an estimate of the additional funding needed for local authorities to fulfil their new duties, including in relation to free schools?
This proposed change creates a fundamental conflict of interest for the local authority. It will both invite proposals for a new free school when one is needed and be able to propose one itself, and it will then decide which proposal to approve. That is hardly a system designed to build confidence. We are told that, where it puts forward its own proposal, the Secretary of State, through the work of the regional directors, will be the decision-maker; however, this introduces an additional layer of work and, dare I say it, bureaucracy in a system that is currently working reasonably well. Organisations such as the New Schools Network have been critical in supporting trusts, establishing free schools and building capacity in the sector. We therefore think that the change in policy created by Clause 57 is a fundamental mistake and unnecessary, and I hope that the Minister will think again.
My Amendment 480 seeks to unblock the pipeline of free schools, which have been put on hold since the election. I think that 44 free schools are on hold, including some that bring high-quality 16-to-19 education to areas of very high deprivation, such as those with a high percentage of white, working-class boys, which the Secretary of State has recently focused on. Surely this is a way to demonstrate that focus and unlock those applications now.
The Government have, so far, spent twice as long reviewing the free schools pipeline as it took to open the first 24 free schools in 2010. The time between that election and the opening of free schools was 142 days; in contrast, the time between this Government’s announcement of the review in October 2024 and today has been about 288 days. Overall, it feels like the whole programme has been delayed, and I hope that the Minister can reassure the Committee that this is not the case and put some numbers on how many places will open in the next three years, in both special and mainstream schools.
Finally, I express my support for Amendment 481, in the name of my noble friend Lord Agnew, which would bring greater transparency to the accounts of maintained schools. I am sure that my noble friend, like me, is tired of being told that there is not enough transparency around academies, even though there is actually no financial visibility for maintained schools. I beg to move.
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, I will address my Amendment 481. This group is a bit of a mixed bag, but I think that my amendment is relevant and important, as it seeks to level the playing field by ensuring that there is a high level of financial governance for local authority schools compared to academies. Yet again, the credit must go to a previous Labour Government for setting out such strong foundations to underpin the governance of academies; comparing academies and local authority schools is like light and day.
I have a reputation for being something of a martinet when it comes to the disciplined management of school finances. Various people have made fun of me over the years, which does not trouble me in the least, because every pound I have saved from wasteful and poor management in schools is then available to go to the front line in improving the education of children. The Minister might even want to call me a bureaucrat, because I have been so assiduous in that part of the system. I would love to see the overall schools budget at a much higher level, but that will not happen given the parlous state of our country’s finances. We therefore have to work with what we have.
In the meantime, the level of accountability and visibility of LAs’ oversight of their own schools is murky at best. An academy trust has to complete a full external audit of its finances within four months of the close of the academic year—that is, between 31 August and 31 December. The accounts have to be filed with Companies House on that date. At that point, the full record of the trust’s financial affairs is available for public scrutiny for the year ending only four months earlier. You can get that information on any trust in England with about four clicks of a button. There is a red list in the DfE—I hope the Minister has seen it —of any trust that misses this deadline. When I was there, any trust more than a month late was immediately placed on a risk register. If schools’ managers or trustees cannot get the money right, how can they ever get the education right? It really is that simple.
But what visibility is there for local authority schools? There is virtually nothing that is easily accessed. Even as the Minister for the school system, I found it an endless battle to get this sort of information. Although LAs would complain frequently about not having enough money, they were rarely forthcoming about how they were spending what they had. This is a very unacceptable state of affairs. If we look at some key categories of oversight and compare the levels of transparency, I hope noble Lords will see why this very unbalanced situation needs correcting.
First, there is the accountable body. For academies, it is the board of trustees and the members sitting above that. The DfE Academy Trust Handbook sets the rules. These board members and the members themselves are on every academy’s website. For local authorities, they are their own accountable body—and try talking to that person.
Secondly, there are audited annual accounts, which I have already explained. But there are no requirements for anything similar for local authority schools. It is even worse that the average frequency of an internal local authority audit of its own schools is about every three years, and it is virtually impossible to see a copy of those reports. I failed consistently when I was in the department.
Thirdly, there is internal auditing. For trusts of a certain size, this is another annual requirement. For noble Lords not familiar with the term, an internal audit is not exactly as it says on the tin. An internal audit is conducted by external specialists but looks at different areas of schools’ operation beyond straight finances, such as deep dives into cyber vulnerability, payroll, the condition of the school estate and so on. There is no such requirement for local authorities.
Fourthly, there are financial returns. Academies are required to submit annual accounts to the DfE and indeed a three-year budget forecast. They also need to demonstrate compliance with their chart of accounts. For local authorities, again there is no standard national chart of accounts, and they are not required to submit three-year forecasts.
Fifthly, there are monthly management accounts. Academies are required to ensure that the chair of the board of trustees sees these at least four times a year. My noble friend Lady Barran actually reduced it. I had it at six, but she was right; my bureaucratic obsession probably had got the better of me. But this is not required for chairs of governors in local authority schools.
Sixthly, there is related-party transaction reporting. Academies have to comply with specific rules, such as needing independent authorisation from the DfE for larger sums. It was £20,000, but my noble friend—she might correct me—lifted it to £50,000. Again, there is nothing like that for local authority schools.
Seventhly, there is the publication of salaries. Academies have to disclose all salaries above £100,000, but local authority schools do not. This is required only for LA officers at LA level. Estimates I have seen indicate that there are over 1,000 staff in local authority schools across England who exceed that threshold, so any defence that it is not a material number of people in receipt of public money does not wash.
Eighthly, there is website reporting. Academies are required to publish their audited accounts on their website. There is no requirement for local authorities to publish their school accounts.
Ninthly, there is the accounting officer. Academies have to appoint an accounting officer with—I stress—personal responsibility for accurate and timely reporting. No such thing exists in local authority schools.
Given that LAs are facing an unprecedented financial squeeze, with some virtually bankrupt, such as Birmingham, there should be no excuse for them not to up their game. The costs—which will of course be the reflexive defence for not doing anything—would be trivial against the improvement in the spending going on inside the LA schools and would be recouped many times over the cost of the audit fee.
Every time I have taken over a local authority school, we have eliminated hundreds of thousands of pounds of wasteful expenditure, which is then focused on teaching. In every secondary school inside my trust, because of the very tight financial management, we have been able to extend the school day by three hours a week. If a child spends the full five years of his or her education in one of those schools, it is the equivalent of receiving another year’s education. That is what is at stake here. Norfolk is not a well-funded local authority; it is about middle ranking. We are not getting any handouts. It just shows you that, if there was more rigour in the system, it would make an enormous difference to the children in our country.
Lord Harris of Peckham (Con)
My Lords, I am very disappointed that we have over 50 schools from which we are still waiting to hear the results. We started taking free schools back in 2012. We have 16 free schools today, all handed to us under the Conservatives. We have got great results from these 16 schools: 12 are outstanding, four are good, and there are 15,000 children. This year, in those schools, the difference between the ordinary children and the disadvantaged children was only 1%; that proves that they are working. We want more of these schools. I want to see everyone get a good education.
The other point is that we want more schools because we have teachers whom we have trained. We have nearly 200 teachers trained to go into new schools. We are paying for them privately from investors to make this happen, but we cannot get the schools. We cannot get schools that are failing because they will have another two years of failing. That is very disappointing.
Look at the results in the free schools and the county schools. With primaries, looking at every school in the country, the results are 68% for free schools, at local council schools it is 62%, and I am proud to say that Harris is at 76%. At secondary level, which is finished for this year, our Progress 8 scores are at 0.24 while the council scores are at 0.001. A-level results at academies are fantastic: 29% of the children get A*s and As from our free schools against the country average of 26%. This makes a big difference. We are giving children a better education. We want to make sure they get a better education; I think that is a fantastic thing.
We have two schools that we have been working on for two years and three years respectively. One of them is at Bow, in an old mill, at the top of Tesco and in a building down the road. We were promised that we would get a new free school in Bow, where they are building 4,008 new houses, but at the moment we cannot get an answer. We have got the staff for it. Before, this school was always inadequate. It was inspected in the last month before the year’s end. The primary got “outstanding”, the secondary got “outstanding”, and the sixth form got “good”. The sixth form was over the top of the Tesco. It used to have only 40 students. Now we have 220. So in that poor area, in those poor conditions, we are giving good people a good education. That is what we need to do. We need a school where we can have 1,500 students, and it works.
I have heard people saying today that some primary schools are too big; I do agree, to a degree, but we have a primary school with 300 students and one with just under 1,000 students that are both outstanding. These schools are both in Thurrock, by the way. So we know it can happen, but you need motivated staff and motivated people. Motivated children want to come to school, but some of them are not.
When we take over a school, we set three years to make it outstanding, and 95% of the schools we have taken over are outstanding in three years. We talk to them. We put more people in them. We cut the cost, because the costs are very strong. They have got too many staff not doing things. We take them out, put good staff in and make sure it happens. Remember that a child gets only one chance of a good education. We have to make sure every child in this country, wherever they come from, gets a good education.
Then there is the school in Greenwich. This is very disappointing. We spent three years and nearly £1 million pounds of our budget to get it approved. I know the department spent a lot of money as well. We got it approved about six weeks before the election. It was in the press. Before it opened—it does not open for two years—it was oversubscribed in year 7. People want these good schools—not only our Harris schools—all over the country. We have to make sure we give them good schools, but we cannot have those schools that have been failing for two years failing for another two years, because that is nearly the lifetime of a child in education.
I am a great believer in education. I know everyone here is. We have got to make sure it works; we have got to make sure it happens; and we have got to make sure we give them a good education. I hope the Government look at these free schools and make it happen, because they are very successful.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, I too speak in support of the free schools programme, Amendment 480 and the clause stand part notice in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran.
As we have just heard so powerfully, free schools have been a significant driver of education improvement in this country over the past decade and a half, and their impact has been felt most powerfully in the communities that needed the benefits they have brought the most. Today there are 741 free schools educating hundreds of thousands of children and their results speak for themselves. Of those free schools that have been inspected, 93% are rated good or outstanding by Ofsted. As my noble friend Lord Harris just said, this summer’s exam results have confirmed their impact. Free schools once again outperformed other non-selective state schools in both GCSEs and A-levels, helping to drive up standards, particularly in areas of high deprivation and traditionally poor educational achievement.
Some 31.3% of A-levels taken by pupils at free schools achieved grade A or A*, compared with 25.2% of pupils in all state-funded schools; 23.7% of GCSEs taken by pupils at free schools were graded 7 or above, compared with 20.6% studied by pupils in all state-funded schools; and provisional results for 2025 key stage 2 showed that 70% of pupils at free schools met the expected standard in reading, writing and maths, compared with 63% of pupils at all mainstream primary schools.
These are not isolated success stories. They are systemic proof that autonomy, innovation and freedom work. The success of free schools has been especially striking in disadvantaged communities. The New Schools Network report on the impact of free schools highlights that they have been disproportionately located in the most deprived parts of the country and played a key role in improving access to high-quality places where they are most needed. Many of the strongest performers, such as Reach Academy Feltham, Dixons Trinity Academy, Newham Collegiate Sixth Form and the Star Academies, all serve communities that have historically struggled with low attainment.
Giving school leaders the freedom to innovate, as we have heard, whether through a longer school day, a more stretching curriculum or developing closer links with businesses and universities, has a measurable impact on pupil outcomes, helping to close the disadvantage gap. Given this record, it is disappointing that the Government now seek, through Clause 57, to weaken the very mechanism that has allowed free schools to flourish by removing the requirement on local authorities to seek academy proposals first when a new school is needed. As Sir David Carter, a former National Schools Commissioner, observed:
“Free schools are an excellent way of filling gaps in provision that aren’t always obvious in Whitehall or in Local Authorities, and we should back school leaders and others to decide what their area needs”.
Finally, Amendment 480 tabled by my noble friend Lady Barran would require the Secretary of State to proceed with the opening of the 44 mainstream-approved free school projects that were paused in October 2024. As we have heard, many of these proposed new schools will offer incredible opportunities for the young people in the areas where they are due to be set up, from ensuring that every English region has a 16 to 19 university-backed maths school to proposals for new state sixth forms to support students from disadvantaged backgrounds through a collaboration between a leading private school and a multi-academy trust in Oldham, Middlesbrough and Dudley.
Since the pause, however, there has been a lack of information and progress. The 44 schools under review have not been publicly named and there has been a lack of transparency from the department about the review process being followed or indeed when it is due to conclude, with officials saying only that updates will be sent to trusts and local authorities in due course. Projects provided information to the department before Christmas but have heard little since. Can the Minister please update the House on when the review will conclude to provide certainty to these projects? She will know they will have put a huge amount of work and effort into submitting their applications but have been in limbo for almost a year.
Furthermore, at Education Oral Questions in the other place on 21 July in response to a question on capital resources to help expand Exeter Maths School, the former DfE Minister Stephen Morgan said that the department hopes
“to replicate the success of these settings across the country”.—[Official Report, Commons, 21/7/25; col. 534.]
There are two maths free schools in the pipeline—Nottingham and Durham—and a number of other 16 to 19 projects proposed for outside London by trusts with a track record of exceptional results. The Government have at their fingertips the means to replicate the previous success we have seen across the country, so why not approve the two maths free schools and all the 44 schools in the pipeline?
Free schools have delivered exceptional outcomes, expanded opportunity and brought high-quality education to communities that for too long were left behind. Clause 57 risks turning back the clock while Amendment 480 would give certainty to 44 much-needed projects and ensure that the next generation of free schools can continue this record of success. I hope the Minister will reflect on the positive contribution the free school programme has made and is making to hundreds of thousands of pupils’ lives and ensure it is able to continue to grow to further improve our education system, particularly in areas that need it the most.
Lord Nash (Con)
My Lords, it is a great honour to speak after the last two speakers and I will speak in support of the amendments in the names of my noble friends Lady Barran and Lord Agnew. The speech from the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and the passion with which he spoke were a tribute to him and his team, who have done a most remarkable job. It is also a tribute to the previous Labour Government, who had the foresight to bring in people such as him to help turn around failing schools. That is why it is such a shame, as I have said before, to see this Labour Government appearing to row back on many of those proposals; I hope that is not really the case.
I will not begin to try to compete with my noble friend Lady Evans, who so ably ran the free schools programme and understands so much more about it than I do. My own experience of free schools is limited to my group opening one primary school in the grounds of Pimlico Academy because we believe strongly in an all-through education, a broad education and a subject-specific education even for primary school pupils where that can be delivered efficiently. We teach Latin in our primary schools, a subject which some believe is too exclusive for children in state schools.
The noble Baroness will be aware that my group, Future Academies, was appointed by the previous Government to run the Latin excellence programme, a £4 million contract to bring Latin to 40 state schools across the country which were not previously teaching it, something we were doing. Sadly, this Government binned that programme, which was a great pity, because the students love Latin; it helps them greatly with their grammar, their vocabulary and their thinking skills. I offer just one statistic. Noble Lords may be interested to know that this summer 48% of pupils at Pimlico Academy who took Latin GCSE, a subject which is thought to be very difficult, got a grade 9.
I understand that there are over 50 special and AP free schools in pre-opening, or which were approved prior to October last year. We desperately need more special schools and AP schools in this country. I ask the Minister kindly to tell me how many of those are now planned to open and how many are not. If she cannot do that today, and I understand why she may not be able to do so, perhaps she would write to me with the answer.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, as I had to go out and take an urgent phone call during the debate, I think it would be wrong for me to comment.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My Lords, this third group of amendments relates to the opening of new schools, including new maintained schools, academies and free schools, and the financial governance of maintained schools—but not to the noble Lord’s amendment about local elections, so I will not respond to that.
Clause 57 relates to how new schools are opened, and the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, opposes it standing part of the Bill. The clause ends the legal presumption that new schools should be academy schools. It requires local authorities to invite proposals for academies and other types of school when they think a new school should be established and gives them the option to put forward their own proposals for new schools. The current system allows local authorities to propose new schools only as a last resort or in very limited circumstances. Local authorities hold the statutory responsibility to secure sufficient school places in their area, and it is right that we give them greater ability to fulfil that duty effectively. These changes will enable consideration of any local offer that meets the needs of children and families.
Amendment 480, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, relates to the opening of projects in the free schools pipeline. I understand the noble Baroness’s desire—and the passion and enthusiasm of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, who, as others have said, has played an enormously important role in improving the quality of schools for many of the children who need it the most—to ensure that the approved free school projects open as planned. I know that trusts and local authorities commit significant time and energy to supporting these projects.
However, noble Lords will also understand the need to consider carefully the use of a limited amount of school capital. Agreeing the amendment would commit the Secretary of State to opening all projects in the current pipeline, regardless of whether they are still needed or represent value for money. That is why the department is giving careful consideration to these proposals in relation to the need for places, their value for money and the extent to which they provide a distinctive local offer. It would be wrong to spend funding on new schools that cannot be financially viable while existing schools urgently need that funding to improve the condition of their buildings.
Amendment 481, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, would require local-authority-maintained schools to have an annual external audit. In response to the noble Lord’s contribution, I am afraid I must clarify that he was wrong to state that maintained schools do not have to publish salaries over £100,000 and that they do not have to submit three-year budget plans. Those requirements were introduced by the last Government in 2021 following a consultation put out by the noble Lord as a Minister. He has had more of an impact even than he realises.
I nevertheless understand the points the noble Lord made about the responsibility on all school leaders to ensure that public money is being spent as effectively as possible in order to maximise the amount that can be spent directly on supporting and educating our children. However, the Government do not believe it is necessary to mandate all maintained schools to have an annual external audit. Maintained school accounts form part of local authority’s accounts. A sample will be audited each year as part of the local authority audit process. Any maintained school that wants a separate audit has the right to commission one. We can argue about whether, as the noble Lord has suggested, auditing would save money. However, we are clear about how much it would cost. School audits can cost £10,000 or more—the total cost of separate audits for all maintained schools would be at least £100 million a year.
I hope that, given my explanations, the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her clause stand part notice, and other noble Lords will not move their amendments.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
I accept what the Minister says—that of course the proposal for new free schools has to be properly interrogated, et cetera— but it has now been nearly a year. She alluded to the fact that some of the issues may be around the tight funding. At the very least, could she commit to contacting the schools or groups that have put forward proposals, just to give them an update? In some sense, it is the not knowing and not hearing that is the most frustrating for them, so perhaps she could at least do that.
As the Minister well recognises, it is a huge amount of work to do this, and there will be local groups, schools and parents desperately wanting to know if these schools are going to open. Even if she cannot tell us today, if she could perhaps commit to some further information for those in the pipeline, that would be a welcome move forward from their perspective.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I recognise the point made by the noble Baroness and the need for trusts to have certainty about their projects as soon as possible. We will provide an update on next steps to trusts and local authorities in due course, and I am sure that others in the department have heard the reasonable points made by the noble Baroness.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I am slightly surprised by the Minister’s response to this group. On the changes proposed by Clause 57, she repeated the point set out in the policy summary document about the importance of local authorities being able to meet their sufficiency duty, but she did not give us any examples or data to suggest that there had been instances where they were unable to meet their sufficiency duty because of a lack of suitable applications. Therefore, if I may, I will repeat my earlier request that the Minister write to me setting out exactly how often that has happened, maybe over the last five years, year by year, so we can get a picture of what this problem really is.
The Minister gave the House no reflection on the capacity of local authorities to deliver new free schools, no reflection on the conflicts of interest inherent in this policy and no real recognition of the contribution of free schools, which, as we heard particularly from my noble friend Lord Harris, have done really great and important work, particularly in narrowing disadvantage gaps. As my noble friend Lord Nash said in relation to the importance of the Latin Excellence programme, these schools have often been pioneers in raising the aspirations of children through the curriculum they offer. As we debated, and as I quoted in the debate last week on the curriculum, this is about opening doors for children—not moving the destination closer to them but building the bridge so they can get to that destination.
On my noble friend Lord Agnew’s Amendment 481, it is good that the Minister has the figure on the cost. I am sure my noble friend could negotiate that down given half a chance, but the real point is the one he made: that his trust has been able to unlock funding that gives three more hours a week to the children in that trust, or one year more of education. The Government’s accepting invisibility and probable financial inefficiency in local authority schools does the children in those schools a real disservice.
Baroness Barran
“Duty for schools to report acts of violence against staff to the police(1) Where an act which meets the conditions set out in subsection (2) takes place which involves the use or threat of force against a member of a school’s staff, the school must report the incident to the police.(2) An act must be reported to the police where—(a) it is directed towards a member of school staff or their property, and(b) it takes place—(i) on school property, or(ii) because of the victim’s status as a member of a school’s staff.(3) The provisions of this section do not require or imply a duty on the police to take specific actions in response to such reports.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new clause seeks to create a duty for all schools to report acts or threats of violence against their staff to the police. It would not create a requirement for the police to charge the perpetrator.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, this is a very important group of amendments as it seeks to understand the Government’s attitude to behaviour in our schools and, in particular, how to balance the rights of children who have been excluded or have committed acts of violence with the rights of other pupils in the classroom, as well as how best to address bullying in schools.
Amendment 459 aims to bring clarity about acts of violence or threats of violence towards school staff. Pupils should understand that any such act would be referred to the police. We have made it clear that this is not intended to criminalise children, but we believe it would help to reset expectations on behaviour and give the police and children’s services important information about those pupils. I recognise, of course, that schools know their pupils very well and are able to exercise their professional judgment; but even with that, we are concerned that there might be pressure on the Government to move to a position such as we have seen in Scotland to reduce the use of exclusions and suspensions.
Noble Lords will be aware of the disastrous impact of the Scottish Government’s policies in this area, which have led to violent assaults by pupils on teachers with no power remaining to exclude them. More recently, the Mayor of London has launched an inclusion charter to reduce suspensions, and at an event hosted by the Children’s Commissioner last week, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, suggested that he would like to see all pupil referral units abolished.
Head teachers need and deserve reassurance that they will be backed to exclude or suspend when necessary, and the presumption will always be that the rate of these strategies should not be considered too high unless there is good reason to think otherwise. The correct rate of exclusion is “when necessary”; it is not “as low as we can make it”. Amendment 502YYA seeks to clarify this. We are concerned about the impact of councils pursuing zero-exclusion policies, either directly or indirectly, by asking schools to sign up to reduction charters or similar. Such policies create an implicit expectation that head teachers should not exclude, which, frankly, would be disastrous for pupils and staff who have to face the impact of these decisions.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I echo the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran: head teachers need and deserve reassurance that they will be backed to exclude or suspend where necessary. I would like to pass on the experience of a head teacher who told me recently that he had had to permanently exclude two pupils who had set the school on fire; they were successfully moved back to a PRU.
I am now in the rather bizarre situation of speaking against an amendment to which I put my name: Amendment 459. As a teacher, I thought that this amendment was eminently sensible, given that the police would still be able to decide whether or not to act. But I found out that it is more complex than that. Rebecca Warren, the executive principal of the Mossbourne trust, says:
“I agree that on the face of it this appears eminently sensible as one would think it is vital to ensure that all services are alerted to ensure that the perpetrator … and victim are offered necessary support. Given that the police service is one of the three arms of Safeguarding Boards (along with the council and healthcare) then police should be alerted and equally responsible for the welfare and safeguarding of children. An act of violence against an adult in a school environment is, in itself, a safeguarding concern.
However, I am dismayed that once again no duty is placed on the police to respond or act. So, in the absence of a collegiate approach, I worry this will become just another duty for teaching professionals with no duty placed on fellow services. I must emphasise that this should not become yet another safeguarding duty placed on the shoulders of schools, with schools being potentially penalised if an act is not reported. Reporting to the police is very likely to erode the trust between child/home and school. This is only worth risking if there is a definite response and support from the police for the child and family.
My question is why the professional judgement of educators is deemed to be less worthy than the professional judgement of the police ie: educators have a statutory duty to report (and must always support) but Social Care and the Police have no statutory duty to support when a report is made”.
Peter Hughes, the chief exec of the Mossbourne trust, makes this plea:
“This Bill is in danger of treating schools as if they are full of idiots without the ability to make sensible decisions. Schools, as the second class citizens in the safeguarding arena, spend more time with children than the other three safeguarding partners combined. We are the only service that is in loco parentis 190 days a year from the age of 4-18. Like any good parent, we need to make judgments about what is in the best interests of our children balanced against society and the other members of our family (students and staff). I would ask that we are afforded that right”.
Baroness Whitaker (Lab)
My Lords, I support Amendment 501 by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and will speak to Amendment 464 in my name and those of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln, the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for all of whose support I am most grateful. The amendment implements and supplements an excellent recommendation of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry. It is difficult to understand why it has been left on the table when racism has been acknowledged as a problem in schools for so long.
Gypsy, Traveller and Roma parents have reported racist incidents as a reason for opting for home education for as long as I have been concerned about these communities. One of the problems in their case is that, because the children are usually white, they are often not recognised as members of a legally defined minority ethnic group. But they are ill-treated, ostracised and bullied for that membership just the same. Now, we also have seen religious prejudice, incidents and taunts demoralising children and undermining their motivation. This totally belies the right to freedom of religion and belief. It really is time to put this right and record and report such incidents. They should have no place in the conduct of the school day. Unless the data is captured, the position will not be understood and improved. This is an amendment, surely, whose time has definitely come.
Lord Nash (Con)
My Lords, I speak to Amendment 502YF in my name and those of my noble friends Lady Barran and Lord Bailey, to require an assessment under the Children Act when a child is permanently excluded. The reason for this amendment is that, in my experience, when a pupil is permanently excluded without an adequate handover or adequate liaison between the school and the local authority, there is a risk that the pupil disappears into a black hole. I have sat on, thankfully, few PEx panels—we really do not like excluding pupils in my trust. I have always hated having to exclude a pupil, not just in its own right but because they just disappear from view.
In my view, schools should continue to have some involvement, if not responsibility, for PEx students to ensure that they receive adequate provision. As things stand, they have no say in where children go when PExed, often because the local authority has an arrangement or a contract with one or two AP providers such that there are no other options—and, of course, in some areas, the AP providers have no capacity. As I have said, that is why we desperately need more such provision. I would like to see schools with greater involvement in this. I understand that, in Milton Keynes, there is a model where about a dozen secondary schools—11, I think—co-operate well with the local authority on this. That could perhaps be a model for the future.
I also support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran in this group. Poor behaviour by a few students has a dramatic effect on the effectiveness of a school. Teachers spend a disproportionate amount of time dealing with a few pupils who exhibit very poor behaviour, and they are increasingly acting as social workers. We must protect the other pupils in the school, and we must support our teachers. There comes a time when the disruption this causes to other pupils and to teachers means it is necessary to exclude certain pupils.
The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford
My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 464 knowing that, had my right reverend friend the Bishop of Lincoln been in his place, he would very much have wanted to contribute to the debate. If passed, this amendment would introduce a duty on schools to record and report any incidents of racism or faith-based bullying on school premises. It would also help diocesan boards of education in collating and monitoring such cases and better assisting those church schools which might benefit from support.
In preparing for this speech, I spoke to our own director of education in Chelmsford diocese, whose team oversees 139 church schools. She told me that this proposed amendment had the potential to help the board of education strengthen anti-bullying and inclusive practices in partnership with schools.
Every child deserves to feel safe at school, yet we know that racist and faith-based bullying is a significant driver behind school exclusions. A report published last year by The Difference and the IPPR revealed that black Caribbean children are 1.5 times more likely to find themselves permanently excluded from schools than the national population. Irish Traveller children are three times more likely, and Romani, or Gypsy, and Roma children are four times more likely.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I will make a couple of comments. When children fail, it is usually the result of a cocktail of inputs. One of those is frequently special educational needs. If you do not believe it, just look at the prison population—a gross overrepresentation of virtually every single special educational need you can mention. We do not get this right or spot it early enough. There are several more groups that touch on this, and I hope that when the Minister starts to sum up, she will have in the back of her mind how this all fits together.
Often, both the victims and the perpetrators of bullying have special educational needs—somebody does not fit in, they look for somebody weaker, and so on. It is disruptive to a classroom, and it affects everybody else. If you get in early enough, along with the other considerations made here—and I fully endorse the comments made about racism and so on—it can bring the whole thing together. How are we doing that? How are we working it in? I would hope that the Minister has an answer.
I would also hope that it does not fall on the teacher in the classroom. We are asking them to do a superhuman task anyway. What support are we going to give? We are going to come to this again and again. We may not get the Government’s strategy on the special educational needs bit in full until later on. If we could get some idea of the thinking, it would help in future debates on the Bill, both at this stage and on Report.
Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 502E in my name. I entirely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Addington, just said. To judge by the numerous safeguarding and similar cases in which I have been involved as a lawyer, it is the failure to share information that causes huge damage and often leads to that cycle—the revolving door of children going in and out of school, which leads to many of them going into custody for crimes when they are not very old.
My Amendment 502E is an uncomplicated attempt to provide consistent standards and process in the way in which individual schools focus on bullying. I am grateful to the Anti-Bullying Alliance for providing me with information on this subject. The truth of the matter is that huge numbers of children are bullied, and we see it every day.
A few days ago, I was on a bus in north London at the time when children are just going home from school. There were three noisy, normal-looking 11 or 12 year-olds on the bus laughing and pointing through the window at something. I realised that they were pointing at another boy, on the pavement, who was actually the largest of the group. I deduced from what I saw that they had tricked that boy into getting off the bus at the wrong stop and then had got back on themselves. Off the bus went, and they were laughing at the disconsolate fourth boy as the bus passed him by. It was a small example of bullying, but what I saw was evidence—possibly, at least—of a much larger bullying issue relating to that fourth child.
It is a heartbreaking reality that over one in five children and young people report being bullied each year. That figure comes from the Office for National Statistics. It is a pervasive issue which not only disrupts their childhoods, mental health and education; its repercussions can persist well into adulthood. Many of us know people who have been affected by bullying, particularly at school, which they suffered from at a very young age.
There is plenty of evidence that children who are bullied are significantly more likely to suffer from mental health issues. I used to be the chair of a mental health charity called Addaction, now called We Are With You, which has to deal with many people who, among their multiple and often complex issues, suffered from bullying when they were young, either at school or possibly in the home. Children who are bullied often miss school, have a very poor sense of belonging and achieve poorer academic results. Parents learn that their children are being bullied, but they do not know how to deal with it because, in many schools, they are not given any real guidance on how to approach the school or what the school will do if their child is bullied.
The effects of bullying are even more pronounced among children with special educational needs—about whom we will soon be talking in another group—children in poverty, young carers, care-experienced young people and other at-risk groups. It really does not have to be this way. My suggestion is that something like my very straightforward Amendment 502E would at least ensure that schools have a consistent approach to these issues.
I respectfully suggest to the Minister that, in pursuance of their duties, head teachers of relevant schools in England should appoint a member of staff simply to be the school’s anti-bullying lead, just as they have leads in the sixth form and individual subject heads. The primary role of the anti-bullying lead should be to develop the school’s individual anti-bullying strategy, and that strategy should include details of the steps being taken by the school to prevent bullying in all its forms among pupils, including of course those with protected characteristics. There should be a standard way of recording incidences of bullying, just as there are standard and required ways of recording incidences of injury at school. Staff training on bullying should be available for all staff. I submit that this amendment is just common sense, and it would make a significant contribution to the way in which bullying is dealt with at school, to the advantage of children.
Baroness Verma (Con)
My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendments, but I really want to follow on from what the right reverend Prelate said about racism. Racism has been rife in schools from as far back as I can remember, but at that time social media was not there to inflame it further. Over recent years, it has become racism about not just colour but religion. The right reverend Prelate mentioned Islamophobia, but most underreported acts of bullying against faith are not Islamophobia.
People from my community endure it quietly. Where do they report it when, as often as not, it is the most misunderstood way of bullying? Parents say to me that children have told them that they will burn in hell and that, if they do not change their faith, this or that will happen. We have to find solutions that involve not just the teachers—they have more than enough to do already—but making sure, first, that what we say and do is reasonable. Secondly, families cannot abdicate from their duties in what happens in and out of school. They need to be part of the solution because, unfortunately, we have a lot of dysfunctional families— not by choice but, often, because of the economics of everything. We need to find ways for every child to go to school knowing that they will learn, like every other child, and not be fearful of going.
I grew up in a fearful atmosphere. That fearful atmosphere is back—even more now than ever before. It is amplified by social media. So I say, on my noble friend’s amendments, that yes of course the police have a duty; so do local authorities. They need to be the support mechanisms for the teachers, not standing on the sidelines waiting to offer help. They should be intrinsic in the integrated plans to make sure that we can respond to the needs of children who come with problems—not of their own making, mostly, but from their surroundings and their environment. We should not make excuses and say that it is acceptable and that everything should be on the teachers. It is not fair, and they are not well enough equipped.
As a child who went through a miserable time at school, I knew what bullying is like, dreading to go into school in case you are be beaten up by the next skinhead around the corner. I did not become a bully; I actually became resilient. We have to make sure that resilience is part of the teaching of our children.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I will raise some reservations that I have about Amendments 501 and 502E, on bullying in schools, and Amendment 464, on the reporting of racism or faith-based bullying.
Bullying is a label that has been subject to the phenomena of concept creep. Bullying has now expanded enormously. It is an elastic term and so a wide range of behaviours can be described as bullying. I fear that it is becoming a vehicle to encourage pupils to lack resilience —a point was just raised about how we deal with the issue of resilience. I have written about this extensively. For now, I note that, via anti-bullying initiatives in schools already, pupils are taught that words hurt and damage, that words can become interchangeable with violence, and that name-calling is on a par with physical intimidation. Inevitably, that can lead the young to believe that speech is violence. I think all of us can acknowledge that that is a problem at the moment, with people who say that speech is violence then feeling able to use violence to deal with speech they dislike—a very current issue.
Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)
My Lords, Amendment 502N, in my name, would insert a proposed new clause after Clause 62, which raises the issue of seclusion in education, particularly in the form of isolation rooms.
Isolation rooms have serious implications for the emotional and psychological well-being of children, especially disabled children and young people and those with special educational needs. This is a probing amendment that would introduce a statutory definition of seclusion. It would empower the Secretary of State to regulate its use through consultation. If regulations are made, my amendment requires minimum protections: banning seclusion as discipline, notifying parents, recording incidents and ensuring internal safeguarding oversight.
The experience of seclusion impacts too many children today—children with speech, language and communication needs—whose communication may not be understood, recognised or supported in that moment. Children with ADHD may find it hard to regulate strong emotions without timely support, and yet instead of being supported they are removed, placed alone and not free to leave, in rooms with such labels as isolation, calm, breakout room, nurture space or any other number of euphemisms. What they experience is seclusion, whether it happens in a locked room, a space with a closed door, or an area where the child is simply not permitted to leave. The impact is the same: a loss of connection and potential safety.
Disabled children and those with special educational needs are disproportionately affected. Some children are removed daily, and there is no guarantee that parents will be told. These experiences can be isolating, traumatic, and deeply damaging to a child’s sense of safety and belonging. Other sectors, such as healthcare and secure settings, already regulate seclusion and deprivation of liberty. Education should not be an exception.
The Department for Education acknowledged the issue in its 2020 guidance, but guidance alone does not close a legal loophole. This proposed new clause invites us to act thoughtfully and proportionately, to close a legal gap that has persisted for far too long. It is not a radical proposal. It is a proportionate, enabling amendment, grounded in evidence, shaped by lived experience and guided by the principle that no child should be left unsupported or invisible in the name of behaviour management. Seclusion happens in our schools, even if we do not call it that. This proposed new clause would not ban it but would give us the tools to see it, define it and scrutinise it. At the very least, we should agree that when a child is confined and not free to leave, we ought to know and we ought to care.
Baroness Spielman (Con)
My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 502YF, proposed by my noble friend Lord Nash, and Amendments 502YV to 502YYA, proposed by my noble friend Lady Barran.
There has long been a lot of discomfort about permanent exclusions. No one likes the idea that there are children who cannot thrive in mainstream schools or who are too likely to harm others to be allowed to attend them, but last year’s youth justice statistics show 12,000 convictions of children for offences of violence, 3,000 for knife-related offences and 1,400 for sexual offences. Serious misconduct does not begin only once children have left school. There is also a lot of hope that keeping children in mainstream schools, no matter what they may do, will avert later criminality, but in fact excluded children are more likely to have come into contact with youth justice services before they are excluded than after. Because we have been remarkably successful in reducing the number of children in custody, there are more children with very serious behaviour problems in the school system who might once not have been there.
What I saw at Ofsted is that the vast majority of schools work extremely hard to keep children in mainstream schools. Relatively few exclusions are unjustified. Many parents, especially those with children who have been harmed by other children, believe that there is too much pressure rather than too little on schools not to exclude. The vast majority of exclusions are a culmination of a long period in which a school does all that it knows how to do to support a child and help them to progress academically and socially.
As a result, I believe that we have a problem of a different nature. Many teachers will tell you that it is often possible to spot the children who are most likely to fall out of school as early as reception year, or even earlier, but the pressure is always to keep them in mainstream schools, even when that school can do little more than warehouse a child with teaching assistants until this becomes manifestly unhelpful for the child and the parent succeeds in obtaining an EHCP and a special school place.
We do not start contingency planning for those children as early as we should and could, which contributes to there not being enough specialist provision. Even at the point of permanent exclusion, our laws and processes are focused on the legitimacy of the exclusion and the process that has been followed. What is not part of any of those processes is a pragmatic assessment of what kind of education to adulthood will give the excluded child the best chance in life, by which I mean reaching adulthood with basic skills in place, functioning within social norms, being willing and capable of holding down a job and, in the longer term, being capable of sustaining a marriage or stable relationship. The amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Nash will help to concentrate minds on how best to do what it is in the power of the state to do to help excluded children to the best possible future.
My noble friend’s Amendments 502YV and onwards in this group would also help to direct attention appropriately. They reflect a pragmatic recognition of the circumstances in which the harm to other children from reinstating a child is likely to exceed the benefits to the excluded child of reinstatement. For example, it is well known that sexual offending tends to be a persistent pattern of behaviour, and I referred to one such case in an earlier group. I add that the bullying survey suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, might be useful in showing how much fear and unhappiness can be induced in many other children by a very small number of their peers.
For many years, there has been a strong presumption that children should be reintegrated in mainstream schools as soon as possible after exclusion and policy and processes have been designed on this basis, but there is good data that shows that pupils who have been permanently excluded and returned to a mainstream school very rarely stay in mainstream to age 16. Nearly all will be moved into alternative provision subsequently, with or without another permanent exclusion, or drop out entirely. It would be useful to know what proportion of managed moves are in fact effective in the long run and which kinds of children and problems are most likely to be effectively dealt with in this way. My noble friend Lady Barran’s amendments, relating to a presumption against reinstatement for certain children, dovetail with my noble friend Lord Nash’s amendment to steer schools and local authorities towards constructive and realistic planning for the children with the greatest difficulties in their lives.
I echo some of the concerns expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. The last thing we need is more measures that could be weaponised and potentially cause more divisions in schools and society. When two young children fight, labelling the tussle as racially motivated may not help those two children get along and may in fact encourage factions in the class. Promoting and focusing on what we have in common and should value together is at least as important, and probably more important, than labelling and division if we are to achieve the social cohesion that we all aspire to.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, this debate has been very thought-provoking. I always want to listen to what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, has to say; she always challenges my own thoughts.
We all know the saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never harm me”. But, of course, words can harm you—sometimes tremendously so. They can almost “destroy” a pupil’s resilience and well-being. I think about a little girl called Millie, who was eight years old and a very good footballer. Her grandad took her to play football every Saturday morning on the fields by Otterspool Prom. Because she was so good, the other girls became quite jealous of her, so they contrived among themselves never to pass the ball to Millie. Millie just could not understand that; she wanted to take part in the game, but together they bullied her by not passing her ball.
She went to the parent who organised and refereed the football; one of his girls was part of this little group saying, “Let’s not pass the ball to Millie”. He said to her, “Oh grow up. Go away. You’re a footballer, come on, you can take it”. She went home feeling completely “destroyed” and chose not to play football again. I tell that tale because we actually forget the bully in that situation; the bully needs help and support as much as the person who has been bullied. We often do not consider that in school policies on anti-bullying.
I just want to say to the Minister that when we briefly discussed bullying in another group of amendments, she mentioned that schools have behavioural policies. I was arguing that we should have separate anti-bullying policies, because—I think I am correct in saying this—not every school has to have them.
This amendment simply says that we should know where we are. I will perhaps criticise myself a bit—as did the noble Lord opposite. All these amendments are seeking more information, quite rightly, on racist incidents, bullying and so on. But who has to collect that information? The school. Who in the school has to collect it? The teacher. When we talk about workload pressures on teachers, let us be aware that, all the time, we are creating more workload pressures for them. Nevertheless, some of these things are important. Certainly, information on racist incidents should be collected; we should know exactly what is happening with that. We should also know about bullying incidents, so that we know how to react and where we should go next.
My noble friend Lord Addington made an important point, picked up by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, that while we might be good at collecting information, we are not good at sharing it—and it is a fat lot of good collecting the information if we do not share it with other people, particularly other agencies. I was going to share the details of why we want to do this, but the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, very eloquently spelled out the information that we were supplied by the Anti-Bullying Alliance. Those figures are quite shocking in respect of the number of children in our education system who are bullied.
Bullying comes with all types of events. I mentioned football but I could equally mention the sly little pinch every day from one child to another. I could mention a whole host of things. I think of my own friends, now are in their 60s and 70s, who were affected by bullying as young people and it formed part of how they behave and react to things. We need to address this issue, but we can do so only if we know how serious it is. So, despite more workload pressures for teachers, I hope the Minister might agree that this is an important route that we should follow.
I want to mention briefly, as time marches on, the amendment from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester. It is important: teachers and head teachers may not be aware of how many children have parents or a parent in prison. We had thought it was somewhere around 31,000 but, in fact, according to figures, the number of children with a parent in prison is nearly 193,000. That is something that we need to address. I do not want to go into all the details but I very much support the right reverend Prelate’s amendment as well.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My Lords, we have had a good, wide-ranging debate on this group, which concerns how schools deal with acts of violence against their staff, pupil behaviour management, and tackling bullying in schools, including incidents that are racist or faith-based.
Violence and bullying in schools are never acceptable. No teacher should feel unsafe or face violence or abuse in the workplace. The department will always support teachers to ensure that they can work in safe and calm classrooms.
All schools must have a behaviour policy to regulate the conduct of pupils, to help ensure that teachers and pupils are protected from disruption and, most importantly, that they have a safe school environment in which to work and learn. When misbehaviour occurs, schools can use sanctions as a measure to improve behaviour; in the most serious cases, exclusion may be necessary to ensure that all pupils are protected from disruption and can benefit from the opportunities provided by education. To provide some assurance to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, we believe that pupil referral units have an important role to play in this.
To reiterate the importance with which the Government view this, we have recently announced the launch of new RISE attendance and behaviour hubs, focusing on supporting senior leaders to develop safe, supportive school cultures with high expectations for attendance and behaviour. Their role will include using data to identify and address areas of concern. We have now appointed the first 21 lead schools in this programme.
Amendment 459, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, would require schools to report acts of violence against staff to the police. I want to be completely clear that, as I have already said, all forms of violence against school staff should be taken seriously. It is never acceptable for anyone to be harassed, intimidated or attacked.
The primary duty to take reasonable care for the health and safety of all employees rests with the employer. The employer is responsible for doing what is reasonably practicable to ensure the health, safety and welfare at work of all employees and should take appropriate action where they are aware of any matters that could detract from that. Where violence is involved, schools should take immediate and appropriate action. Should the incident constitute a potential criminal offence, it would be for the school employer to consider involving the police, having followed the advice in WHEN TO CALL THE POLICE Guidance for Schools & Colleges from the National Police Chiefs’ Council, written in partnership with the department and the Home Office. Given those provisions and that guidance, we fear that this amendment would be likely to impose additional burdens on schools without necessarily strengthening protections for staff.
Amendment 464, in the name of my noble friend Lady Whitaker, would place a duty on local authorities to require schools to record and report racist incidents or faith-based bullying, and the action taken. I wholly support the views of noble Lords who have identified how reprehensible these incidents are and how important it is that action is taken within the school to identify and educate students about the significance of that element of bullying.
Under the Equality Act 2010, every school in England has an existing legal obligation to not discriminate unlawfully on the grounds of a protected characteristic. We have confidence in the seriousness with which head teachers take any incidents that breach this requirement, as these would. Further reporting requirements for schools would risk creating a new burden and risk unintended consequences, as some noble Lords have touched on, discouraging children and staff from disclosing to school leaders due to privacy concerns and increasing the threshold at which schools may identify and respond to incidents due to perceived risk of reputational damage. We want children to be as open as possible within the school environment so that head teachers and teachers can determine the appropriate action.
I will take Amendments 501 and 502E together as both aim to address the importance of tackling bullying in schools and recognise the profound impact it can have on children’s lives. Amendment 501, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, seeks to introduce a duty on the department to collect and publish national data related to pupils’ experiences of bullying in schools. The department already monitors young people’s perceptions of bullying through the annual National Behaviour Survey, and I can confirm to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, that that survey will continue. It enables us to develop our understanding of bullying prevalence and trends.
Amendment 502E, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, seeks to mandate the appointment of an anti-bullying lead in schools to develop an anti-bullying strategy. In my introduction to this group, I referred to the legal requirement for schools to have a behaviour policy. In response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Storey, the law is clear that a school’s policy should include measures to prevent bullying. Schools are held to account by Ofsted and the Independent Schools Inspectorate on that.
School leaders are, and should be, free to tailor their approach and this can include deploying a lead for anti-bullying. Mandating how schools meet their obligations to prevent bullying, particularly in terms of staffing, does not recognise the need for flexibility in schools to ensure that approaches can be tailored to meet the needs of different settings and cohorts of pupils. This in no way suggests that we do not take this issue seriously and that is why the Department for Education is launching a procurement for an expert- and evidence-led review into best practice on preventing and tackling bullying. The learning from that best practice review will inform the support to be given in the longer term by the new attendance and behaviour hubs that I have already mentioned. This approach has been informed by recent engagement with a range of stakeholders, including teachers, parents, academics, charities and young people, to understand more about the issues around bullying.
Amendment 502N relates to a very important topic and it is right that the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, raises it. The department recognises that the misuse of seclusion in schools can have a significant and long-lasting effect on the pupils, staff members and parents involved, and we are committed to minimising its use in schools. Earlier this year, we held a 12-week public consultation on the draft Use of Reasonable Force and Other Restrictive Interventions in Schools guidance. We have listened to the views of the sector and taken the decision to pursue secondary legislation that mandates the recording and reporting of the use of seclusion in schools to parents. This important work is already under way. It is a significant and positive step forward for pupils and their families, and will support schools to have consistent, transparent policies on the use of reasonable force and restrictive interventions which aim to safeguard everybody within the school community.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister. I felt much happier listening to that reply than to her earlier one. As the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, said, it is important that head teachers know the Government have got their back in terms of managing very difficult situations with such dedication day in, day out. The Minister’s comments about the importance of safe, calm classrooms, her focus on the guidance that already exists in relation to suspensions and exclusions and her reassurance about the discretion that head teachers have on behaviour and permanent exclusions when they are necessary—and that the Government protect the rights of head teachers to do that—are important for them to hear, and I am grateful to her for making that very clear.
I am sure everyone in this Committee would echo her sentiment about early intervention strategies. That was picked up by my noble friend Lady Spielman. I warmed very much to the contrast she drew between the current focus on following process versus the opportunity to think about a plan for the future for each child who sadly finds himself in that position.
On Amendment 502YF in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Nash, I think I heard the Minister say that those children already qualify under Section 17 as children in need, and I agree with her. I wonder whether it would be helpful if, where that is not happening in practice, we bring those examples to the department for it to consider because clearly that is both the letter and the spirit of the law, and we all want to see that happening in practice.
I will skate over my minor fallout with my noble friend, as I hope I can call him, Lord Hampton. Things have been going so well and to fall over at 7 pm on Day 11 seems unfortunate, but there we go. I hope we can recover before Day 12 is out.
Briefly on the amendments regarding bullying in schools raised quite rightly by the noble Lords, Lord Carlile and Lord Storey, I very much share their concern about the impact of bullying, but I argue that this is all about having a strong school culture where bullying and other forms of poor behaviour are not accepted. I worry that if you make an individual person responsible for it, rather than it being something that every member of staff upholds, that might not work as effectively as noble Lords would wish.
On information and data on bullying, I was relieved to hear that the behaviour survey will continue to be published. I am hoping that means it will have the same questions as in previous years, to allow for comparability. The noble Baroness might want to put that as a “PS” on one of the many letters she is going to write to me. The survey gives detailed information, and we also know from the response of the charity Parentkind that, in parental complaints, bullying peer behaviour, safety, safeguarding, behaviour and discipline —it is all very overlapping—are the top areas.
I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, is happy with and reassured by the Minister’s comments on seclusion rooms. Of course, we are able to offer the Minister the simplest way to reduce bullying in schools, which is for the Government to accept our ban on smartphones in schools. I say this with a smile, but in all seriousness, we know that this is the source of much bullying nowadays and it continues not just in school but out of school. [Interruption.] I am not sure what the noble Baroness is muttering, but if the Government do not want to listen to me then maybe they will listen to Esther Ghey, the mother of Brianna Ghey, who has recently bravely launched a campaign against smartphones in schools, highlighting the terrible bullying and impact they had on Brianna. With that I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Nash (Con)
May I just refer to my Amendment 502YF? I heard what the Minister said about the general duty under the Children Act, but I am still concerned about the black hole I spoke about. This is all part of improving the liaising between schools and local authorities on how we provide for these children. I will reflect on that, but I am still concerned. As far as my noble friend’s point about smartphones in schools and bullying goes, of course, bullying does happen outside school, when they still have those smartphones. It happens on social media, and that is why I am pleased to see the National Education Union and others pushing for increasing the age restriction in respect of social media to 16. As I say, I commend them in that endeavour.
Lord Storey
“National tutoring guarantee(1) The Secretary of State must, within six months of the passing of this Act, publish a report outlining the steps necessary to introduce a national tutoring guarantee. (2) A “national tutoring guarantee” means a statutory requirement on the Secretary of State to ensure access to small group academic tutoring for all disadvantaged children who require academic support.(3) A report published under this section must include an assessment of how best to deliver targeted academic support from qualified tutors to children—(a) from low-income backgrounds,(b) with low prior attainment,(c) with additional needs, or(d) who are young carers.(4) In preparing a report under this section, the Secretary of State must consult with—(a) headteachers,(b) teachers,(c) school leaders,(d) parents of children from low-income backgrounds,(e) children from low-income backgrounds, and(f) other individuals or organisations as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.(5) A report under this section must be laid before Parliament.(6) Within three months of a report under this section being laid before Parliament, the Secretary of State must take steps to begin implementation of the recommendations contained in the report.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment requires the Secretary of State to publish a report outlining the steps required to introduce a national tutoring guarantee, and to begin implementing its recommendations.
Lord Storey (LD)
I thought we might be breaking at quarter past, so you caught me unawares.
My Lords, Covid seems a long time ago, and I remember very well the virtual meetings we had as Members. We carried on our business, but for schools it was a very challenging time. Perhaps one of the successes of that time in terms of education was the national tutoring programme—I think it cost £1 billion—so that children could carry on their learning with a dedicated tutor online.
This amendment suggests that we look at introducing a national tutoring guarantee that is particularly aimed at children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The gap between children is growing and growing, and this might be one way we can accelerate children from disadvantaged backgrounds’ learning and help them overcome that deficit. It is, if you like, the rocket fuel that will ignite their educational needs. It is easy to do. It is effective, as we found during Covid. The amendment is just asking that we look at whether this is feasible. I beg to move.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 490 in my name; I thank my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, for adding her name to it.
Special educational needs and disability education are not working in the UK right now. This is no fault of the excellent SENCOs up and down the country. It is no fault of teachers, who try to teach all of the children in front of them in their classes. It is certainly no fault of parents, who try to find their way through often labyrinthine, circumlocutory, beyond-bureaucratic practices in order to get the best for their children. It is obviously no fault of children with special educational needs or disabilities, who just want an inclusive educational experience to give of their talent.
Amendment 490 simply asks, in a probing manner, for a royal commission to look at the attainment gap for children with special educational needs and disabilities. I do not much mind if it is a royal commission; the weight of the issue merits a royal commission but, were the Government to undertake swiftly a task and finish group, so much the better. The attainment gap needs to be considered at all levels of the school experience, and right through all examinations from when they begin. Crucially, it is about putting a plan in place so that, in short order, we no longer talk about an education attainment gap, because there is no reason why there should be one just by dint of a young person having a special educational need or a disability.
That is all this amendment is asking for: simple, clear and effective measurement of the current situation and disability educational attainment gap. It is important to measure the gap. However, the aim—the mission—must be to close it. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford
My Lords, sadly, my noble friend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester is unable to be here to speak to Amendment 482 in her name.
This amendment, which I support and has already been touched on by a couple of noble Lords in our debate on the previous group, would compel the Secretary of State to
“commission a report on the educational attainment of school age children with a parent who is in prison”,
and to
“make recommendations for how the educational attainment of those children can be improved”.
I will not presuppose what the recommendations of this report would be. However, through its work in supporting more than 1,450 children with a parent in prison, the charity Children Heard and Seen has shown that, through simple, targeted and tailored emotional support, you can drastically change outcomes for children with a parent in prison.
Having a parent in prison is among the most significant adverse childhood experiences, severely impacting children’s mental health and well-being. Children with an imprisoned parent are 25% more likely to suffer from mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, insomnia and eating disorders. Negative school experiences such as bullying, persistent truancy and academic underachievement are also common among this group. It is estimated that there are almost 200,000 children with a parent in prison in England and Wales, yet we still do not know who or where these children are. This means that they are not being brought to the attention of schools.
Due to the lack of awareness of the issue of parental imprisonment throughout schools, support for children with a parent in prison varies hugely from school to school. There is no uniform approach and many children are left without the appropriate support that they need. Amendment 482 would be a strong step in the right direction in increasing awareness and understanding of the harms within schools of parental imprisonment, ensuring that pupils and students who are affected by parental imprisonment are supported through an inclusive and non-judgmental approach. Children with a parent in prison should be given the same chance in life as any other child. The amendment would help enable them to mitigate the impacts of their parents’ imprisonment, overcoming educational barriers and allowing them to fulfil their academic potential.
Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)
My Lords, I strongly support the amendment in the name of the right reverend Prelate. We know for a fact that, as we just heard, children who have a parent in prison are at significantly greater risk of suffering mental health difficulties than children who do not, including low self-esteem, depression, disturbed sleeping patterns and symptoms of post-traumatic stress.
The Ministry of Justice’s research highlights a strong correlation between parental offending and child offending. Family members often explain that parental imprisonment for children is akin to a type of bereavement from losing a parent who suddenly leaves the home and never returns. It is not exactly the same, however. I remember visiting Holloway prison in the early 1990s, when it was a women’s prison, and it happened to be visiting hour for the children seeing their mothers for the first time possibly in many months because of the geographical distances involved in travel. It was wonderful to see the excitement and joy that the children had in greeting their mothers after perhaps a long time, but that turned to despair and anguish when visiting time was over. Sometimes, and I saw it, the children had to be physically separated from their mothers by prison officers. It was a horrific sight and it still haunts me.
Parental imprisonment is hugely under-researched. In most cases, schools, which have a crucial role to play here, are not even aware that a pupil’s parent has been imprisoned. These children are the forgotten and invisible victims of crime and they are totally innocent. Article 3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child provides that the best interests of the child must be a primary consideration in all decisions and actions that affect children. This means that the best interests of the child should be taken into account at every stage of a parent’s journey through the criminal justice system, as these decisions affect these children directly.
The Labour Government, on page 71 of their manifesto for the last general election, commendably committed to identifying and supporting children with a parent in prison. What has happened? Nothing yet, as far as I can see. There is still no statutory mechanism for identifying and supporting children with a parent in prison, so can the Minister say when this manifesto commitment will be fulfilled?
I can answer my own question, because the right reverend Prelate’s wonderful amendment provides a golden opportunity to fulfil that commitment right now. It would not only raise awareness and understanding of parental imprisonment within schools but also provide clear guidance on how to mitigate the impacts of a parent going to prison so that children can fulfil their academic potential. Will the Government grasp this opportunity to do something and accept the amendment this evening?
Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)
My Lords, I start on this group of amendments by declaring an interest as a board member of the Education Authority in Northern Ireland, which is responsible for around 90% of education spend in Northern Ireland and, most pertinently as regards these amendments, has direct responsibility for all special educational needs education there.
I would be broadly in favour of all these amendments. I had one caveat as regards Amendment 460, but to some extent the noble Lord, Lord Storey—I am sure that he will be pleased to hear—allayed some of my concerns during his opening remarks. These amendments are important because they highlight the issue of the attainment gap in their different ways. Across different jurisdictions, while there may be some slight degree of variation in which groups have particular issues around attainment gaps and the extent of those gaps, we know that issues around educational underachievement and attainment gaps are universal in whatever part of the United Kingdom and, indeed, internationally. Three of the areas that seem to be particularly true in all jurisdictions are around children of socioeconomic disadvantage, children of prisoners and SEND children, so these amendments are apposite.
Given that challenge, whenever I was a Minister in Northern Ireland I saw one of my key priorities as tackling educational underachievement, ensuring that we could take whatever steps we could in a strategic manner to address the attainment gap. I established an expert panel to draw up a report on the issue—very much as a template, if you like, for some of the proposals put forward today. That panel was drawn not simply on the basis of ensuring that it had the right mix of a cross-community element and those drawn from educational sectors; it is particularly pertinent to the proposals in front of us today that, whether on a single report or a royal commission, we need to draw from a range of expertise. It was critical that we had people who came from an educational academic background, those who were involved with education from a community background and those who had the direct experience of leadership within schools. It was only with that mix of skills that the best report could be produced. I commend the efforts of that panel in Northern Ireland, which produced a report called A Fair Start under the great leadership of Dr Noel Purdy.
A lot of the conclusions reached in that report will not surprise the Committee. One of the major lessons that we face with any of these reports is that there is not a single solution that then closes the attainment gap. It is about a cocktail of measures, including ensuring that we have the right early intervention. It is also important that, whatever is developed at a strategic level by government, if we try to do it on a top-down basis and impose it on people, it will have a limited success. You have to get buy-in from the grassroots up as well.
Also of particular relevance was one of the conclusions of that report, which touches on Amendment 460: the advantage of small-group tutoring. It recommended an expansion of nurture units in Northern Ireland, and additional finance was able to be put into those. The one caveat I had was that, if this were to be done on a universal basis, an expansion of that nature could be very costly and difficult to achieve in the short term. However, I think that the model put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Storey—which in many ways was to look at a replica of, or something at least drawn from, the national tutoring programme at the time of Covid—is a good example. In Northern Ireland, we had our version of that called Engage, which was able to be set up and was very successful. If that is the type of model we are looking at, the Government would be wise to look at replicating that on a long-term basis.
I will touch on some of the specifics of the other amendments. It is right that, for a couple of major reasons, we focus on attainment issues for children of prisoners. First, on the basic principle, while I appreciate that the previous speaker made reference to Holloway, there is the old saying that the sins of the father should not be inflicted on the children—we know that, with a few exceptions, most prisoners are males, so that is perhaps particularly apposite. Ensuring that children are not punished in a system for something that is no fault of their own is important from an educational point of view.
From a societal point of view, we often talk about investing in society to save money in the long run. An issue that we will face within various families is a cycle of social problems that goes from generation to generation. If, through education being the great liberator, we can ensure that there is positive support for the children of prisoners then that is one important area where we can help to break that kind of cycle.
Lord Gove (Con)
My Lords, I rise—briefly, I hope—to urge the Minister to reject all three amendments. They come, I am sure, from the very best of intentions, making sure that disadvantaged children, children who labour under the additional difficulty of having a special educational need and children whose parents are in prison are deserving of our compassion and our support, but the means by which the Minister and the Government are being urged to support those children is a diversion of resource, an addition to bureaucracy and an impediment to progress.
The noble Lord, Lord Storey, requests that we have a national tutoring guarantee. That seems to me to be an entire misdirection of resources. We should be concentrating on making sure that children are actually in school in the first place. When we have a level of persistent absence at the rate that we have at the moment, and when any national tutoring service would be staffed inevitably by people who are already stretched and are hard-pressed members of the teaching profession, it seems to me to be—I hesitate to suggest that such a thing would ever come from the Liberal Democrat Benches—a performative attempt to secure publicity rather than a thoughtful analysis of what is actually going on in our schools. If we want a national tutoring guarantee, perhaps we should make sure that, across the nation, tutors—or, as I prefer to think of them, teachers—are guaranteed the support they deserve in the classroom.
The children of criminals and those in prison deserve our support: the sins of the father and mother should not be visited on the son or daughter—absolutely. But equally deserving of support are the children of veterans, those who work in our emergency services and others in homes where daily stresses and pressures increase the likelihood of anxiety or depression in that household. To single out and devote administrative resource to the children of one vulnerable group rather than others is simply to divert the energy of the Minister’s civil servants from the work that they should be doing. Believe me, it is vital that we improve education in the criminal justice system, but it is the job of the Ministry of Justice to improve education in our prisons. That will make far more difference to ensuring that, when people who are currently incarcerated leave, they can be useful members of our society and supported in their parenting roles.
Most striking of course is the need to improve education for children who have special educational needs, but the term “SEND” has become so stretched and capacious that we have almost lost sight of what we are really talking about. There are children who have high-impact low-instance special educational needs: those living with severe learning difficulties, visual impairment or hearing loss, who need discrete tailored support—as well as children with physical disabilities, who will need significant investment in order to achieve everything of which they are capable. But there is a larger and growing group of children who have behavioural, emotional and social difficulties. They certainly deserve our support but occupy a very different category from those who are living with neurological, physical or other barriers to learning.
I know that civil servants currently working in the department and Ministers are paying attention to that. A royal commission—it is a cliché, but it is true—which takes minutes and lasts years, would not provide the focus required to deal with those children. It would be a diversion once more. Having been in the department and worked with the outstanding civil servants there, I know just how hard-pressed they are and that, almost every day, there are new calls on their time from well-intentioned lobby groups that have compassion in their hearts but will only lower the morale of those seeking to improve our schools.
The one thing that I say to the Minister is that we have actually seen, in living memory, a narrowing of the attainment gap in state schools. It happened as a result of the policies introduced by the coalition Government, which was as a direct result of giving front-line schools greater autonomy, making sure that Ofsted provided appropriate and rigorous scrutiny, with transparent judgments on schools that parents could understand. This was allied to strengthening our curriculum and our accountability measures at the end of key stage 2 and through GCSEs and A-levels. I am afraid that, overall, this legislation puts in peril some of those gains that saw the poorest children catch up with the wealthiest in our schools.
So, as well as urging the Minister to reject these well-intentioned but deeply flawed amendments, I hope she will be able to persuade the Secretary of State, for whom I have the highest regard, to think again about those measures in the Bill that will do damage to the gains that were made and that were supported once upon a time by every party in this House.
Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)
My Lords, I was delighted to put my name to Amendment 490, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, because it took me back to thinking about my experience at school, which admittedly was a while ago. My parents used the work of Baroness Warnock to threaten to sue the Secretary of State for Wales over my right to go into mainstream education. Without that, I would not have had the career that I now have. The system that existed back then took a tiny percentage of disabled children and gave them a great education, but everyone else was left languishing in a special school system that did not even allow children to sit exams. At the school I nearly ended up in, I would have been able to sit three CSEs at most. So there was nothing around looking at the ambition of disabled children.
I had hoped that things would have moved on by now, but the reality is that disabled children in the UK still face a significant educational attainment gap compared to their non-disabled peers. Studies show that they are significantly behind in key exams and assessments and are less likely to achieve higher qualifications or degrees. The Education Policy Institute has research that shows that disabled children are some of the most educationally disadvantaged children in the English state school system. Around four in 10 children are identified as SEND at some point between the ages of five and 16. These children have been shown to have multiple grades lower than their peers. I find myself in a slightly interesting situation: I agree with some of what the noble Lord, Lord Gove, said about making sure that children are not absent, and I am certainly not seeking to expand the definition of “SEND”, but there has to be something in the middle of where we are now and where I came from through my educational experience. To me, it is about getting the right support to the children who need it.
Disability Rights UK has reported on the situation with the gap. There is a huge gap for disabled children, and it is even larger for children with an education, health and care plan. In 2019, children with an EHCP scored grades that were 3.4 places lower than a those of a non-disabled child, and by 2020 that gap had increased to 3.6 places lower. Whatever we are doing, it does not feel like we are able to educate and support disabled children in the best way that we can.
We already know that, when disabled people apply for jobs, they need at least a qualification higher than a non-disabled person. If the job requires a degree, a disabled person needs at least a master’s or a PhD to have a chance of getting it. If we do not get this right, we are not giving disabled people the chance to work, pay taxes or contribute to society.
Like other Members of your Lordships’ Committee, I feel that we need to understand where we are and what is required, whether through a royal commission or however it works out. This amendment fits with amendments I have tabled in other groups that talk about teacher training, because there is more that we need to do to make sure that teachers are in the best position to educate and teach everybody in the class. At the moment, that gap for disabled people is just too big.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I will say just a few words, inspired particularly by the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson.
We know that there is an attainment gap for those with disabilities, and we also know that bits of the education system do not help. The biggest one for me—and I remind the Committee yet again that I am president of the British Dyslexia Association—is English and maths, because guess what, the British Dyslexia Association also covers dyscalculia.
About three days ago, I sat down with a child who said that they had a brother with dyscalculia who had been made to sit English 14 times and still had not achieved a pass. What an incredible waste of time, because we have decided that English and maths are gatekeeper exams. People have a better target with English, because they seem to understand it a little better, but maths is a real problem. Getting some degree of flexibility and understanding and looking at the attainment gap and what causes it would be very helpful.
However, I must slightly disappoint my two, shall we say, noble colleagues on this—I do not think that I am allowed to call them noble friends, although I hope that they are friends—by saying that we would have to say, “identified special educational needs”, because we might know somebody who is blind or deaf, or who has impaired movement, which is pretty obvious. We know that, for instance, well over half of the dyslexics in the country are never identified. We do not know the situation for the others—dyspraxia, et cetera—and we are still very bad at identifying them.
Therefore, we could adjust this amendment to say that we should have a look at the attainment results of those who have been identified. That would give us an idea of how the system properly fails, because we know that there is a problem, we just have not addressed it. There is a problem that is running through here. When the Minister replies, I hope that she can start to address this, because we know that there is a problem here. We know that something is going on. If we have that information already, which we should if the problems are identified, we might be able to bring it forward, because addressing the problem itself would help.
Briefly on the other amendments, tutoring, if properly targeted, will help these people, especially if the tutors are trained to support. Also, for those in prison— I have worked in the prison sector, not extensively, but I have worked there—the fact that a child is disadvantaged or comes from an environment where everybody is expected to fail will probably work into the other two groups. As a dyslexic, I still say that the only time I have ever sat in a group of adults whose educational attainment was below mine was with a group of prisoners, and I am pretty badly dyslexic. How we address this problem, this idea and this culture is very important.
I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some idea of the general thinking of the Government. It is very important—if we are starting to address these deep-seated problems, which we have, in many cases, given lip service to in the past—to get support for which you do not have to fight and be a tiger parent to obtain. That is where we are coming from now.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, His Majesty’s loyal Opposition believe that we do, of course, need to pay careful attention to the barriers that prevent children from low-income backgrounds, young carers and others from attaining higher grades and better results in school. Ensuring that every child has a fair and equal chance is paramount, and it is entirely right that we should look for ways to mitigate these barriers wherever they arise. That may well be achieved in different ways —for some children, through home schooling, and for others, through specialist academies, as we have already argued on other clauses of the Bill.
It is also important that we look beyond structure and address the socioeconomic reasons that often lie behind underperformance. Disadvantage, low prior attainment and the additional burdens carried by some young people all need to be recognised. We hope the Minister will use this opportunity to set out clearly how the Government are working to level the playing field, ensuring that no group of pupils, regardless of background, is either favoured or disadvantaged and that even well-intentioned measures do not lead to any kind of positive discrimination. The principles of fairness and opportunity for all must remain central.
For that reason, while we would have stopped short of saying that a statutory national tutoring guarantee is the best or only approach, we welcome the spirit of Amendment 460, and we look forward to hearing how the Government intend to address the issues it highlights.
On Amendment 482, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford for raising this important issue. The children of parents who are in in prison are too often a hidden group, and yet they face particular challenges that can significantly affect their educational attainment and life chances.
We have had the opportunity to research the work that has been done by the charity Children Heard and Seen. That research suggests that schools were aware of just 30,000 children with a parent in prison, whereas the Ministry of Justice’s data estimates that the number of children with a parent in prison in England and Wales is more like 192,000.
This amendment rightly shines a light on these children’s needs and on our responsibility to ensure that they are not overlooked. We would be grateful if the Minister took this opportunity to set out what steps the Government are taking to address the barriers faced specifically by these children and whether they recognise them as a group that requires dedicated support and special help, in addition to helping schools identify those affected children who would indeed benefit from additional or tailored interventions in their place of learning. It is only by identifying and acknowledging such groups, not just children with parents in prison, that we can make sure that no child is left behind, whatever the circumstances of their family life.
Finally, we support the principle that lies behind Amendment 490. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, for their tireless work in highlighting these challenges that are faced by children with special educational needs and disabilities. Their determination to improve outcomes for this group makes a huge difference, and we hope the Minister will recognise the strength of feeling across your Lordships’ Committee on this matter.
That said, we have reservations as to whether a royal commission is the best medium to close the attainment gap for people with special education needs and disabilities. Commissions can be lengthy and expensive, and sometimes produce recommendations that are overtaken by events before the findings themselves can be implemented.
Our goal is to ensure that we do everything we can to enable children with special educational needs to leave school with the skills, independence and confidence that will allow them to flourish and seize every opportunity available to them in the outside world. That requires schools and educational delivery to be formulated in ways that are genuinely tailored to children’s needs, not necessarily to meet a single uniform benchmark. For that reason, although we absolutely support the intent, allow me to suggest that another approach may be from the bottom up, focused on practice and provision on the ground and in the corridors, rather than launching a royal commission.
None the less, the underlying issue is of the greatest importance, and we hope that the Minister will take this opportunity to set out how the Government are addressing the attainment gap which has been made clear by noble Lords across your Lordships’ House, between those with special educational needs and those without, and to set out what more can be done to make sure that every child is given the best chance to succeed.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank all those who have contributed on this important group of amendments. First of all, it is not going to be possible to give the list that everyone has specifically asked for, but I want to start by making it absolutely clear that raising attainment for all children with inclusivity in mind and recognising the gaps wherever they occur is absolutely a top priority for the Government. This is such a complex area of work, as has been eloquently highlighted by the contributions that we have had on the three amendments.
On the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Storey, he reminded us of the place we were in during those very dark days of Covid, and of the response to try to recognise that so many vulnerable young people in particular were being left behind as a result of their absence from the school system. I fully appreciate his concern and the concerns expressed by others, and particularly his interest in this and his understanding from his background of how this works locally. But I emphasise that it was a programme that was time limited for obvious reasons and has served its place.
I am very conscious of the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Gove, about how we target the resource we have. One of the best resources we have is our schools and those involved in the system, and I believe it is much better to go to those schools and let them identify the best way forward. It could be that a tutoring programme has worked brilliantly for them specifically, but we know that this is not the case all over. We should have confidence in those schools to determine the best way that they can reach young people who really need that additional support.
As I say, schools can choose to continue to provide tutoring through the use of funds such as pupil premium, for example, and to support the disadvantaged pupils identified in this amendment. Also, the Department for Education has published evaluations of the National Tutoring Programme; therefore we do not believe that it would be good value to have further reporting on it.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Weir, for his comments. I am very interested in the work that he highlighted. If he could send me a link to the report that he mentioned, I would be grateful. It is of course critical that we listen to experience from our devolved regions and make sure we learn from all the experience that we have. As has been said, gathering information from across so many comments is one part of the issue. How we analyse that information and make it worthwhile and useful is another serious part.
My response to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, is that we do not believe that it is necessary to set out the complete requirements and framework in statute. We have confidence in schools to take this forward.
Moving on to Amendment 482, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford for stepping in and raising this whole important area. I of course recognise the concerns that have been expressed across the House. I am very grateful to her for raising such an important issue. Having a parent in prison can have a lasting detrimental effect on children’s life chances, including increasing their risk of low educational attainment, as we have heard. I appreciate that a supportive school environment can help to act as a buffer against these risks, and teachers can help children to navigate a challenging time and aspire towards further education.
The Government have committed to identifying and supporting all children affected by parental imprisonment. This is not a simple or straightforward task. It is extremely difficult. We have to be aware of the gaps in our knowledge and perhaps try to understand why we have some of those gaps. We are considering how to support this cohort as part of the Government’s opportunity mission. Obviously, the theme running through all this is about making sure that educational attainment is at the centre, but there are many other factors that we need to bring in relating to the well-being of children and young people, and how that can have an impact.
While the request is welcome, it would risk duplicating efforts that are already being made to identify this cohort sensitively, ensuring that they are offered appropriate support. As the noble Lord, Lord Gove, said, the Ministry of Justice is stepping up in this space. The Department for Education is working closely with the Ministry of Justice to ensure that all children affected by parental imprisonment, including those not of compulsory school age, are recognised and receive the support they need to achieve and thrive alongside their peers.
I say that this is sensitive because we cannot assume that all children whose parents are in prison have the same experience. Indeed, the difference in experience between siblings can be stark. It is a complex area. Some children who have a parent in custody might never have lived with that parent. We must be careful not to make assumptions about their experience. Our approach is looking at all children, recognising that their specific experiences can be very different indeed. Sensitivity is paramount in this area.
I turn to Amendment 490, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and thank him again for the way in which he expresses his concern around these issues. I extend those sentiments to everyone who has contributed to this area.
Again, I have to agree that establishing a royal commission on this subject may not be the way forward. As a Government, we have recognised that the whole area around special educational needs needs serious attention. Just to pick up on the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, recognising the complexity of all this is why we are looking at that review. I know that we will go on in the next group of amendments after the dinner break to look into some of these issues in more detail, so I do not want to cover too much of the ground that will be raised then.
Lord Storey (LD)
I thank the Minister for her detailed reply and all Members for their contributions. I was particularly taken by the comments from the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, who said that no child should be left behind—he is absolutely right. It was a very measured response to the amendments.
It was good to receive a contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Gove. As a coalition partner, he did work on education. I was a bit surprised that he thought the idea of a tutoring programme was a Lib Dem publicity stunt. During his time as Secretary of State for Education, he focused on the attainment gap, particularly for those with special educational needs, but that dial hardly shifted—for all the work he did in that cataclysmic period, the attainment gap hardly shifted.
The noble Lord asked how poorer pupils could catch up with wealthier pupils. Sadly, if a wealthier pupil is behind—guess what?—someone might hire a tutor to help them catch up. That is what the national tutoring guarantee scheme would have done. Despite some of the comments, I still believe that it is an area that we need closely to look at—not for all children and not for ever, but as a catch-up programme for young people and children from disadvantaged backgrounds. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Addington
“Establishment of a national body for SEND(1) The Secretary of State must, within 12 months of the passing of this Act, establish a national body for special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in relation to children.(2) The functions of the national body for SEND will include, but not be limited to—(a) national coordination of SEND provision for children,(b) supporting the delivery of SEND support for children with very high needs, and(c) advising on funding needed by local authorities for SEND provision for children.(3) Any mechanism used by the national body for SEND in advising on funding under subsection (2)(c) should be based on current need and may disregard historic spend.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment requires the Secretary of State to establish a national body for special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in relation to children.
Lord Addington (LD)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, for that compliment. We go back to special educational needs here, with a series of amendments in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Holmes and Lord Carlile, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. My amendment is the most general of them, on a general duty to have a look at special educational needs. Some of the specifics in the other amendments probably should be included in that general duty.
On teacher training, unless you have teachers who are increasingly better equipped to spot conditions and deal with them in the classroom, you are always going to fail because you will have late diagnosis—or no diagnosis for many conditions—or the wrong practice. I am trying to convince people here that getting extra help for special educational needs may be a bad thing if that help is from the system by which you have already failed. If you do not know what is required and are being told “You’ve already failed to do this”—English would be a classic one—you will just not pass. My experience with dyslexia, which I have mentioned once today, is of being given an extra 15 spelling tests, one every week. You fail them all; you carry on doing it, but you just will not pass.
This is because having special educational needs usually means that you process information differently. There can be extreme cases. I have already referred to the noble Lord, Lord Holmes—nobody expects somebody who is blind to copy off a blackboard. You would describe what it is. You have got to have a different system of working and different structures that go with it.
I could expand upon this for ages, but the hour is late and other noble Lords with more detailed amendments are waiting to speak. I beg leave to move my amendment and look forward to the rest of this debate.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and I congratulate him on all the work that he continues to do in this area. I thank my friends, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lord, Lord Watson, for cosigning my Amendments 491 and 498. I will take them in reverse order, with Amendment 498 first.
Quite simply, it addresses the issue we discussed in the previous group: current SEND provision is not working. It is not working for the SENCOs, who try their utmost; it is not working for the teachers, who strain every sinew to educate all in their classrooms; it is not working for the parents; and, most importantly, it is not working for children with special educational needs or a disability. Yet it can, if we start from the provision of inclusive by design and set out an approach where the funding is identified and ascribed to that SEND provision. The department should and must reach out beyond its budgetary constraints, because the reality is that this is far more than an issue of education. For example, there is a clear causal relationship between the education attainment gap and the subsequent employment attainment gap for those with disabilities.
Other departments must also pull their weight in addressing this issue of special educational needs and disability provision. This is why in Amendment 491 I suggest a practical, reasonable and achievable measure to make a difference across government: to introduce a mentorship scheme for those young people with special educational needs or disabilities.
Before the question arises of distracting departmental officials from their incredibly important work, or of putting more pressure on already overstretched resources, I suggest to the Minister that this would be an ideal situation for an effective, practical and achievable public-private partnership. Imagine how local, regional, national and international businesses could get involved to help support and be part of the delivery of such a mentorship scheme for children with special educational needs and disabilities. Imagine the empowerment for those young people in hearing from adults in successful careers, professions, jobs, activities and third-sector work, across the piece, who have lived experience of being a disabled person and have come through, succeeded and achieved. That is not just mentorship; that is leadership and empowerment, enabling all those young people.
The scheme could be brought in with minimal, if any, disruption or resource pressures put on the department. The difference it would make for those children with special educational needs and disabilities could be profound, impacting their educational experience, setting them up for life and enabling them not only to positively be part of closing that education attainment gap but subsequently closing the employment attainment gap. Any Government should have this as one of their core provisions. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 491 and 498, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, to which I have attached my name, and Amendments 502U and 502V in my name.
With regard to Amendment 491, we have already spoken about how disabled children are being left behind. I worry that we are wrapping some disabled children in cotton wool. The noble Baroness, Lady Verma, talked in an earlier group about resilience. We have to do more to ensure that our disabled children in schools can build resilience. This is one way in which they can do that.
This amendment is not about physical activity, but disabled children are routinely excluded from physical activity in schools and physical activity is one way that they can build this resilience. There are myriad excuses—“Well, they are sent to the library”—which are often wrapped up in health and safety. It sometimes feels that we are writing off disabled children before they have been given a chance. Often their world is smaller: there is less opportunity and a lack of ambition that is placed upon them.
This is something that I would like all children to be offered. It is probably dependent on what His Majesty’s Government are thinking of on enrichment around the school day. I declare an interest here as chair of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, and we are talking to the Government about what this enrichment would look like. I believe that providing mentoring will help. It is about not just grades but building skills for life.
Amendment 498 simply seeks a view of SEND provision and how it is funded. Amendment 502U links to amendments that I have in other groups, but this one sits better in this group. I do not think that we have got right the support that disabled children are getting in school, and we must think about what more we can do.
The organisation Contact a Family and the Independent Provider of Special Education Advice surveyed 2,000 families with children and young people who have SEND but do not have an EHCP to see how the process was working. The survey concluded that there was not enough SEND support in schools, which leads many families to seek an EHCP to secure support for their child’s needs. This does not feel like the right way that the system should be supporting disabled children. It leads to school avoidance, absenteeism, pupils being put on part-time timetables and exclusion, and therefore an ever decreasing circle of support and ambition. This amendment seeks to ensure better support.
I am keen that access to the curriculum for disabled children is not reliant on a single member of staff. I do not, in this group of amendments, seek to debate the role of TAs. It is about how we get the right support beyond that so that we do not limit children’s opportunities. I know that there will probably be some discussion of whether, under this amendment, their role should sit under the supervision of a qualified teacher.
Finally, on Amendment 502V, we need to know how much we spend on SEND provision. In a previous group, the noble Lord, Lord Agnew of Oulton—admittedly not talking about this—said how important it was to identify how every penny is spent in schools. We must have a better understanding of how SEND money is spent. I do not mean to place a lot of additional work on schools, but we need to know that we are getting value for money and, ultimately, that we have the right provision for disabled children to thrive.
Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 502Q, 502R, 502S, 502T and 502W in my name. Amendment 502R is supported strongly by my noble friend Lady Bull, who has expressed sincere regrets at not being able to be with us tonight because of a long-standing engagement.
These amendments seek to achieve co-ordination between criminal justice services and schools in relation to children with special educational needs. The amendments are the product of a review carried out by the Michael Sieff Foundation, chaired by Professor Cheryl Thomas KC of University College London, of which the membership included Sir Robert Buckland, the former Lord Chancellor. And I had a part in it too.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, this group of amendments is important because I think we have a crisis in SEND provision. I am particularly attracted to Amendment 498, on the SEND provision review, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Holmes of Richmond and Lord Watson of Invergowrie, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. Also, on Amendment 502V in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, on the need for more transparency and reporting on SEND funding in state-funded schools, that seems a key and obvious demand, because the SEND issue is having a huge financial impact on schools and education in general.
But for me, as well as that, the issue of SEND provision is important because it potentially shapes how young people see themselves, and in some instances they are being encouraged to develop a habit of dependence and pathologising their own everyday experiences. One in five children in the UK are now identified as having SEND needs, and the number of education, health and care plans for those with the most severe needs has increased by 83% from 2015-16 to 2023-24. The number of 11 to 15 year-olds receiving disability living allowance for which the main condition determining eligibility is a learning disability such as ADHD increased by 70% between 2018 and 2024. So something peculiar seems to be going on and, as part of explaining what is happening here, we need to acknowledge that there is a widening social definition of mental health and neurodiversity—an issue I will raise briefly again in the next group.
Informally, if you go into any school and talk to pupils of all ages, as I do—obviously, as teachers do and those who are familiar with young people—young people regularly describe themselves these days through the prism of a range of mental health acronyms or their particular divergence from the neurotypical norm. They use the language of medical textbooks and psychiatry with ease. Meanwhile, teachers too think in terms of these labels—I am sure that we are all watching “Educating Yorkshire” on Channel 4; it is great viewing—and, almost inevitably, if there is a behavioural issue, staff suggest testing the pupil for ADHD as both an explanation and a solution. So investigating what is going on here is essential, and that is why I am interested in the review.
In that context, I hope that the tablers of the amendment and the Minister get the opportunity to read—if they have not read it already—a new Policy Exchange report entitled Out of Control: Addressing the Rise in Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Disorders amongst Children and Young People. I do not always agree with Policy Exchange, but I found this report fascinating. One issue it identifies is a bug in the system of support. It argues that it is
“designed to meet the needs of a small number of specialised cases, rather than the sizeable”
numbers that it is now expected to support. Even more troublingly, it says:
“These systems of support can also incentivise diagnosis-seeking behaviour … which has squeezed support for those with the most severe needs”.
Those kinds of issues were touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Gove, in an earlier group.
So, to return to spending, spending on EHCPs for those with SEND has ballooned, but funding per head has fallen by nearly a third since 2015-16. So I hope that the tablers of the amendments and the Minister will consider the risks of overdiagnosis in relation to SEND but also how current support may inadvertently encourage an escalation in perceived need, rather than target the support where it is absolutely needed the most, as has been vividly described by some of the speakers on this group.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, in contrast to the previous speaker, I would say the following. I do not know how many noble Lords attended the rally held in Parliament Square yesterday by parents and children about the SEND review, on getting it right, or how many noble Lords attended the drop-in held in our committee room upstairs, which was full of joy and optimism, with lots of Members of Parliament from across the political spectrum—including our new Schools Minister, Georgia Gould—who called in to listen to parents and children. It gives me hope and optimism that, if those listening exercises are taking place as this review goes on, we will end up with something that is worth having and that has involved listening to the people who are at the sharp end of this.
I am actually encouraged by the fact that our new Minister in the Commons has been the leader of a council, has been the Local Government Minister and has hands-on experience of what it is like dealing with the SEND system. I say to my noble friend the Minister that I am encouraged that the Government are listening to parents and children with that direct experience, and that gives me hope that this review is going to produce the right outcome.
Baroness Spielman (Con)
My Lords, no one stands to speak here or anywhere else about SEND without preparing for a social media barrage from one direction or another. But unless we can discuss the underlying problems and tensions openly and honestly, there can be little hope of getting to a better place than we are in at the moment.
From the parents’ point of view, some are happy, but others say that theoretical entitlements do not translate into the support they believe their child needs. From the schools’ perspective, they are loaded with enormous expectations and have inadequate resources to meet them. From the funders’ perspective, eye-watering amounts of money are already being spent on SEND.
If you do the sums, the average household in England already contributes £450 a year just for the cost of the high needs funding block, on top of the other money it contributes for education. Yet local authorities, and behind them the taxpayer, must meet almost unlimited demand from this large but finite resource, with few levers to direct that resource to the activities where it will make the most difference.
As my noble friend Lord Gove said in a previous group, the SEND category has expanded and diversified to an extraordinary degree in recent years. Among other things, I think we are mixing up the children who have conditions that will always affect their lives with those who really only need some catch-up teaching or some extra encouragement, and who should be able to lead unimpaired adult lives. They are really quite different things.
Clearly, this situation cannot go on, and that explains the raft of amendments relating to SEND proposed for insertion after Clause 62, as the Bill does not contain any direct proposals for SEND. In aggregate, what I take from these proposed amendments is a hope that if only we can find a few more ways to extend and push harder, everything will be better.
There are certainly ideas that deserve attention within these amendments. We do need a national body for SEND, but what we need is the SEND equivalent of NICE: a body that collates and, where necessary, commissions evidence of the effectiveness of and value for money of SEND interventions, and that determines which treatments can be paid for out of the public purse and which cannot be justified. Someone needs to set and hold that line.
We need better join-up between schools and youth justice services. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has an alternative educational plan for children involved with youth justice that parallels my noble friend Lord Nash’s amendment discussed in a previous group. We have already pushed identification and labelling to the point where they may be doing more harm than good to some children at the margins. Even though a label may feel reassuring, it can also do real harm if it lowers the child’s own expectations of what they can achieve, or their teacher’s expectations of them.
Neurodivergence is a term that has no clinical definition. In essence, it invites people who do not meet clinical criteria and thresholds to self-identify into services and funding streams intended for those who do meet those criteria. The definitions that float around for neurodivergence often sound like most young people’s adolescent experience. I suspect there are few of us who did not feel awkward, socially inept, and often just out of things in that period of life.
Good schools understand the adolescent experience and work to make a culture and framework in which teenagers have the structure and encouragement they need for most to succeed and emerge into adulthood without ever needing to be labelled as abnormal, and reserving specialist support for those who really need it.
The Government must take great care not to create incentives to segregate children within schools into SEND and non-SEND categories. With very few exceptions, children with rare physical needs need to learn the same things, and cognitive science shows us that they learn in the same way, though some may need the learning broken down into smaller steps with more repetition and reinforcement along the way. Most children with SEND will do the vast majority of their learning in their mainstream classrooms. Concentrating on getting that core classroom experience right for all children, with a strong, coherent, well-sequenced curriculum taught effectively, must come first, because doing this well minimises the number of children who come adrift, which is never a pleasant experience for the child, and it enables the expert SEND practitioners to concentrate on those who will always need their help. If, for example, we expect SEND funding to be spent on things that are specific to children with SEND, those mainstream classrooms will be neglected and starved of resource.
I look forward to the Government bringing forward their reform proposals for SEND and to proposing amendments in this vein in due course.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I very much support Amendment 502W from the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. We need a much better standard and a much better quantity of data in this area. We need to start with some clear understanding and definitions of the terms we are using. There seems to have been a lot of drift and expansion in definitions, and we need to get back to something that is clear, commonly defined and commonly understood.
Then we really need to understand what works for these children. We need to track what we are doing and when and why it works. This is a really complex area, so we will not get the answer out of small studies and small amounts of data. We need to track every child who has been fingered as SEND, and then we will get enough data to start seeing some patterns. Perhaps we can add other categories, such as young carers and those who are in care, where there are known difficulties with their education that are not associated with SEND but which may well share some common characteristics. If we get better at data, we will really start to understand how to do better by the children and work the cost down at the same time, and that is important.
I am with the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, in the spirit of some of the other things that he is doing but I hope that, if this amendment ever came to be enacted, there would be alongside it a recognition of the interests of the other children in class.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, we have heard some thoughtful speeches on the issues facing pupils with special educational needs and disabilities in general and neurodivergence in particular. There is no doubt that this is a pressing issue for parents, pupils, staff and of course local authorities, whose budgets are being severely impacted by the costs associated with education, health and care plans, or EHCPs. As all noble Lords are aware, the Government have committed to publishing a new White Paper on SEND and have been working with an expert group ably led by Tom Rees, the CEO of Ormiston Academies Trust. That is an incredibly important task, and we on these Benches hope very much that the Government can show a positive way forward that addresses some of the problems that beset the current system. I think the plans for that report mean that Amendment 498 is not needed.
I understand the criticism of the Children and Families Act 2014, which introduced the current system. However, all who were involved with that legislation, including some noble Lords who have been in the House today, had the best interests of children with special educational needs and disabilities at the forefront of their minds. Whatever the Government propose, I hope that they will take the time to pilot it and avoid the problems of implementation and the unintended consequences that the current approach has found.
I hope also that we can move away from blanket terms such as “SEND” or “neurodivergent”, as they cover such an incredibly wide spectrum. With that in mind, I am cautious about some of the amendments in this group, including Amendment 491 in the name of my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond, which would include mentors for all children with SEND, and the implications of Amendment 502S.
Given my earlier amendments on exclusions, it will not surprise the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, that I do not agree with subsection (2) in his Amendment 502Q, which would make a presumption against permanent exclusion or fixed-term exclusion, for the reasons that I set out earlier. Similarly, I disagree with Amendment 502T in the noble Lord’s name, which would put a duty on schools to support reintegration for pupils who had been in custody without any balancing consideration about the impact on the other pupils in the classroom.
Again, I am not convinced that Amendment 502R, in the name of the noble Lord Carlile, or Amendment 502U, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, are needed. There is already extensive content in the early years and core initial teacher training curricula following updates undertaken by the previous Government in relation to these issues. When I talk to experts on inclusive teaching, they are clear that for pupils who are able to attend mainstream school, the same approaches of very high-quality teaching apply to them too. I agree absolutely with my noble friend Lady Spielman when she says that the core way that we all learn is much bigger than many of us appreciate.
The SEND review of 2022 put it very clearly that:
“High-quality teaching, differentiated for individual pupils, is the first step in responding to children who have or may have SEN”.
I think there is a big gap in our understanding of the impact of different interventions. Some commentators have called for the creation of something a bit like NICE, which we have for pharmaceuticals, for SEND interventions. I have been sent examples of the kinds of requirements that are put on schools for children with education, health and care plans. Those I saw ranged between nine and 44 separate requirements, many of them not based on any academic evidence of their effectiveness, but all of them creating a great workload for schools. That is something that I hope the Government are going to grip in this review and address.
I have a lot of sympathy for Amendment 502V, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, as I spent a lot of time trying to understand the flows of funding for EHCPs, as have many much more august organisations such as the IFS and the National Audit Office. It remains very difficult to get clarity on how the system works from a financial point of view. Given the sums of money involved, it surely would make sense to be able to do this.
Amendment 502W in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, builds on Amendment 502V and aims for cross-sector reporting. I hope that with the new single unique identifier some of that will become much more possible. It will certainly reveal some valuable data. I look forward to the Minister’s comments on these amendments.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My Lords, a common theme of the debate this evening has been that noble Lords from across this House have recognised the pressures facing our special educational needs and disabilities system. It is a system that many families find frustrating to navigate, where too often the outcomes for children fall short of what they deserve, and where, as we have heard from noble Lords—I think including the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman—a considerable amount of money is being spent with insufficient evidence of effective outcomes. It is certainly a system which has lost the trust of parents. For all those reasons, I can assure the House that the Government remain absolutely committed to reforming the SEND system. Our ambition is clear. We want all children to receive the support they need to succeed in their education and to lead happy, healthy and productive lives.
The amendments in this group raise important questions about the support available to children and young people with SEND. First, Amendment 498, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, concerns a review of SEND provision in England. Although I thank the noble Lord for both his amendment and his obvious commitment and concern to improve the situation, we do not need another review at this point. I think we know, and in fact we have heard in this debate this evening, many of the failings of the SEND system, and there have been many reviews by the previous Government, by Parliament and by the National Audit Office. The Government inherited a system with significant failings, and we know that too many children and young people with SEND are not getting the support that they need. That is why we are determined to take action, and we are committed to bringing about a more inclusive education system.
This is a difficult and complex task. We are working with parents, teachers and experts that we have appointed. We are fortunate, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, said, to have the leadership of practitioners such as Tom Rees in this job, and, of course, particularly to be able to listen to those with lived experience to make sure that we get it right.
I thank my noble friend Lady Thornton for her recognition of both the day of action and what that identified, and the attendance and the listening approach of my new ministerial colleague, Georgia Gould—absolutely at the beginning of her time in the role—who has been making sure that she is listening to the people who were most impacted as she takes forward the work that we are doing in this area. The details of our intended approach to SEND reform will be set out later this autumn.
Amendment 461, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, proposes the establishment of a national body for SEND. Once again, this is an important issue. As others have said, there is a range of ways in which we might want to bring national consistency into the approach being taken. The NICE idea is a nice idea. However, the important point being made there is the need to ensure evidence-based practice in what is proposed. I can assure noble Lords that that will be and is a very important element of the approach that the Government are considering. I do not believe another body would necessarily contribute to that at the moment. Our focus is on making the system less bureaucratic in getting support to children and young people who need it quickly and efficiently.
Amendments 502R and 502U were tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, respectively. I appreciate them raising important issues around the quality and training of our staff, particularly mandatory training in SEND for school teaching staff and inclusive education standards for teachers. Inclusion lies at the heart of our work in the department, and our approach is vital in meeting the needs of children and young people with SEND.
All teachers are, to an extent, teachers of special educational needs and disabilities, and we need to approach their training in that spirit. In specific cases, teachers in special schools, for example, are already required to have qualified teacher status, unless they are working under an exemption. In compliance with the teachers’ standards, all teachers with QTS must be able to adapt their teaching to understand the needs of all pupils, including those with SEND. In October 2024, the Government also introduced the national professional qualification for SENCOs, a mandatory qualification supporting participants to develop the essential knowledge and skills needed to set the strategic direction on SEN policy.
From this month, initial teacher training will include significantly more content on supporting pupils with SEND and adaptive teaching. As others have said, all teachers need to know how to adapt their teaching for the range of students in their classes and to recognise special educational needs and disabilities in those classes. This is being delivered through the mandatory initial teacher training and early career framework. In addition, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has agreed to provide more training for teachers on SEND, the details of which are currently being worked through.
Amendment 491, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, concerns the establishment of a school mentorship scheme for children with SEND. The SEND code of practice is clear that all children and young people with SEND should be prepared for adulthood, and that schools and colleges should use a wide range of imaginative approaches, such as taster opportunities, work experience, mentoring, exploring entrepreneurial options, role models and inspiring speakers. In addition, schools and colleges are expected to provide careers guidance to all children and young people, including at least one meaningful interaction with employers per pupil per year.
We are also funding employer engagement activities, and we will consider the feedback and experiences of previous mentoring activity. This includes the mentoring pilot for apprentices with learning difficulties and disabilities, which was delivered in 2024 and explored what additional support young people with additional needs may require from mentors.
Amendment 502V, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, concerns transparency and the reporting of SEND funding in state-funded schools. As I said, one of the things we are clear about, aside from the question of additional transparency measures, is that the considerable amount of money currently being spent on the provision of SEND education is not delivering the outcomes for children that we would all want it to deliver. That was the clear message of the National Audit Office report. Nevertheless, I understand the point that the noble Baroness is making about how we can achieve more transparency in schools on how funding is allocated to SEND and delivered.
Ofsted’s inspection of schools of course covers how schools support pupils with SEND, but it is important that schools have autonomy over how they spend their core funding allocations, and we trust school leaders to make decisions that best serve their pupils. We would be concerned if asking schools to produce detailed annual reports of the kind proposed placed a burden on them. For example, asking teachers to work out precisely how much time they spent supporting children with SEND could result in increased paperwork and less time spent teaching. In this area, the call for transparency and clarity about the value for money and effectiveness and the outcomes that we are receiving from the money spent is very legitimate, but we need to be careful that we do not set up structures that actually increase burdens without increasing either real transparency or the ability to drive the most effective practice.
I turn to Amendments 502Q, 502S, 502T and 502W, all tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. They are aimed at preventing children and young people with SEND from unnecessarily entering the justice system. I thank him for raising this issue and for the important work that he has done on this. I noted his point about the Michael Seiff report. I shall certainly make sure, if it has not already happened, that it is brought to the attention of those people in the department working hard on this area.
In relation to Amendment 502Q, the Government recognise the importance of improving safeguarding and co-ordination regarding exclusions. However, the changes that the amendment would make to the statutory school exclusion review process may also cause unintended burdens, particularly on youth justice practitioners. In all cases, as we talked about in the earlier group, when thinking about exclusion, school leaders should consider early intervention to address misbehaviour before excluding. Any decision to exclude must also be lawful, reasonable and fair, including when there is police involvement or parallel criminal proceedings against a pupil.
Amendments 502S and 502T propose duties on schools to work with youth courts to provide assessments of SEND and support reintegration and rehabilitation for children post custody. We support the spirit of both amendments but believe that the existing statutory framework already provides mechanisms to deliver those outcomes. Local authorities have a statutory duty to establish a multi-agency youth offending team, with members from police, social services, probation, health and education. They are equipped to work with schools and other relevant partners to compile assessments and reports for youth courts, ensuring that children’s diverse needs are appropriately identified and responded to. In addition, youth offending teams also play a central role in supporting reintegration post custody. Their work is designed to provide continuity and consistency across services, and they are well placed to draw in education partners, including schools, where needed. Placing a direct duty on schools would therefore risk duplicating or confusing existing multi-agency working.
Amendment 502W proposes a cross-sector data management system. I welcome the intention to strengthen co-ordination across services and ensure that no child is left unseen or overlooked. However, we already have the means to understand the interplay between exclusions, social care involvement and special educational needs through nationally collected official statistics. These datasets provide a valuable foundation for joined-up working. On a unique reference number, I can reassure the Committee that this Bill already makes provision for a consistent identifier. We had important discussions about that earlier in this Committee. We have initiated a series of test and learn pilots to explore how best to expand its use across safeguarding and welfare datasets. These pilots will inform a careful and incremental approach to implementation.
The amendments in this group understandably identify the need for the considerable amount of work currently going on within the department—as I said at the beginning, alongside parents and other experts—in ensuring that we can improve our SEND system. For those reasons, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment, in the certainty that noble Lords’ contributions will be adding to this really important work and helping us to deliver the system that our children deserve.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I am reassured by the amount of attention paid to this subject, and that we are getting through and into the Government’s head. We do not know yet whether the results we have will be delivered. Just to sum up some of the arguments, the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, said that there are problems but there is overidentification or something, if I may paraphrase her. The fact of the matter is that we know that, for many of these hidden needs, these diverse educational problems—call them what you like—we do not identify most of them, and this means that you have somebody in an environment where the learning process is not one that they enjoy. It might be something such as delivering and receiving information, which is usually where the basic blocks are, but there are identified ways to deal with that now, most of which are quite cheap.
There is technology—I declare my interest as chairman of Microlink plc. Most of the technology you have is not specialist any more: a lot of it is on every computer already; it is about structuring how you get at it. It is also about identifying the structure and way in which you learn and making it acceptable in a mainstream classroom to be using it. Headphones are not regarded as a good thing in most classrooms, until you realise that they might be the way you are taking in information. Attitudes to technology will colour this. There is this great thing about no smartphones in school, but there is a wonderful platform to hold assistive technology going through them. Some suggest that these computers, screens and structures are bad things—no, they are not, if used correctly. The noble Earl shakes his head; they are not. We are going through this thing about how we use them, and how we go forward is the important bit here.
The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, talked about the criminal justice system and special educational needs. He is right to draw attention to it, for this very simple reason: if you want to find what happens to somebody who does not address these needs, go into any prison and talk to them—any prison, for any of the groups. You will find a huge overrepresentation. Autism is greatly overrepresented in there: people who are manipulated or who react badly, with violence. There are so many complications here, but most of the solutions are comparatively simple, flexible, and made more easily available now than they were. I hope that, when we get this review, the Government will accept that they will probably save a great deal of money if they get this right.
The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, was quite right about one thing: when we implemented the last system—and I was on that Bill—I think I managed to convince the noble Lord, Lord Nash, to save one tree in a burning forest. We managed to get a concession on dyslexic youngsters taking apprenticeships, where they did not have to do the exam in that way going forward. That was all, though. We have the rest of it coming through. It is very easy to make mistakes by making assumptions.
Yet again, I hope that the Minister takes back to her department the fact that we are dealing with a problem, which we have identified but are struggling to deal with because the structures are just wrong. Considerations outside special educational needs will bear an incredible weight. I refer back to fact that if you have to pass English and maths to get on to any course, and you are dyslexic, dyscalculic or dyspraxic, so you cannot write quickly, you have a problem. That is the sort of balance I will be looking for from this. It is not just about help; it is about structure. Having said all that, the hour is late, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield
“Duty of school governing bodies regarding mental health provision(1) Subject to subsection (3), the governing body of a maintained or academy school in England has a duty to make arrangements for provision in the school of a dedicated education mental health practitioner.(2) In subsection (1) “education mental health practitioner” means a person with a graduate-level or postgraduate-level qualification of that name earned through a course commissioned by NHS England.(3) Where a school has 100 or fewer pupils, the duty under subsection (1) may be satisfied through collaborative provision between several schools.(4) The Secretary of State must provide, or make arrangements for the provision of, appropriate financial and other support to school governing bodies for the purposes of facilitating the fulfilling of the duty in subsection (1).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires the governing body of a maintained or academy school in England to make arrangements for provision in the school of a dedicated education mental health practitioner.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
My Lords, Amendment 462 is in my name. I thank my noble friend Lord Storey and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for adding their names.
This is a very important group. It is about the mental health and well-being of children, something that is, or indeed should be, central to the Bill. It is the name on the tin. My amendment would ensure a dedicated mental health practitioner in all schools qualified to a level—and this is the critical point—that they can deal safely with the problems that are more complex than those currently dealt with by early-intervention CBT—cognitive behavioural therapy—support, which is currently delivered by existing mental health support teams.
To be clear, I welcome and applaud the Government’s commitment in the spending review to expanding mental health support teams to all schools and colleges in England. These teams work with children, parents and wider school staff to promote good mental health and, funded through the health system, provide effective prevention and early-intervention support for children with a range of mild to moderate mental health needs, including things such as low mood and anxiety. They are doing important work.
These teams are staffed by education mental health practitioners. The terminology can be a bit confusing here, but it is a relatively new role within the children and young people’s mental health workforce system. As these mental health support teams expand, these practitioners in training are recruited for a work-based placement, while they complete a diploma or postgraduate qualification over a period of one academic year. During this time, practitioners are trained to deliver low-intensity cognitive behavioural therapy to children or, in some cases, to parents, to allow them to directly support their children.
While this approach has been effective for children with lower-level needs, CBT is not appropriate for all. Evidence has shown that some groups of children are less likely to benefit from these interventions; this includes those with special educational needs, younger children, and children experiencing moderate to more complex mental health needs.
The problem is—and this is specifically what my amendment is designed to address—that these children with more complex needs still do not meet the very high threshold for child and adolescent mental health services, because their needs are deemed to be not severe enough. In short, they are currently falling through a gap in support, and it is often referred to as the “missing middle”.
In the last 12 months, CAMHS has closed 28% of referrals without offering any support. This results in mental health support teams in schools often being asked to hold cases that they are not trained to work with safely, leaving children at risk. These children include those who are at risk of or have indeed self-harmed, those who have experienced trauma, bereavement or loss, and those who have thoughts of suicide. These things are real; these children are not making those things up. These children are often clearly visible to the professionals within schools and the health service through repeat presentation at health services. Often, they are struggling, not attending school or unable to engage with learning.
It is worth noting that respected voluntary sector providers, such as Barnardo’s and Place2Be, have recommended that, as part of the Government’s rollout of mental health support teams,
“the model is expanded to include provision of funded … school-based counselling”.
They say it would fill this missing middle
“to ensure that all children in mental distress can access timely support”.
A dedicated mental health professional qualified at the right level, such as a school-based counsellor, would normally hold a degree in counselling or psychotherapy. That would improve outcomes for children whose needs are not currently being met and—this is critical—should help to reduce pressure on CAMHS in a cost-effective way. These professionals are trained to deliver a range of different therapeutic skills and approaches that allow them to understand the unique needs of each child. One size does not fit all; I am sure we can all agree on that.
Evidence from other UK nations demonstrates how embedding school counsellors can indeed reduce pressure on CAMHS. In Wales, where school counselling services are statutorily funded, only 1.7% of those accessing counselling need to be referred on to specialist CAMHS. Existing mental health support team staff and school-based counsellors have different routes of training, different qualifications and different skill sets. They each fill a different mental health need and working together could offer more support to more children than is currently the case.
In conclusion, my amendment proposes that the skill mix of the mental health support team workforce should be expanded to ensure that all children have access to an appropriately qualified mental health practitioner as part of the rollout. I very much look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on this.
Finally, I want to express my strong support for Amendment 472 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, to which my name is also attached, and to Amendment 479 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson. I will make a just a few very quick points on Amendment 472. This is a Bill about children’s well-being but, frankly, with very few direct references to the broader issue of well-being and, certainly, without any provisions for measuring well-being. This amendment would provide for a single, optional online well-being survey, delivered annually in schools and with centralised support made available to schools that wished to take up the option.
That is a modest but important ask. School data from the surveys would not be published or used to penalise schools in any way, or be part of the formal accountability systems. In case of any misunderstanding, this would not be a stick with which to beat schools. The survey would be optional. Schools would not be mandated to participate. It would be up to them, as indeed it would be for parents, carers and pupils, to opt out should they choose. However, we know from a recent YouGov poll that 75% of parents agree that, to improve young people’s well-being, we need to measure it. Critically, the data collected would allow the whole system to respond, including children’s services, education, health and the voluntary sector, at both national and local level.
I end by pointing out what I think we all know: happy and healthy children are most likely to be present at school, to engage in learning and to achieve to their full potential. Surely that is what we all want. We have a real chance here to progress that aim. I beg to move.
Lord O'Donnell (CB)
My Lords, I will speak on behalf of Amendment 472, which is in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, who has spoken very well, and the noble Lords, Lord Layard and Lord Moynihan. This is a modest proposal, but it is probably the most important one. I have sat through all the hours of this debate and I would say to all noble Lords who have spoken that, if this does not go through, they will not succeed.
The reason I say that is that I have not spent over two decades in the Treasury without knowing that you need evidence: you need to prove what works. Your Lordships have talked various things. The noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, mentioned various interventions and wanting to know whether the costs and benefits were worthwhile; that is absolutely right. She mentioned NICE. The key thing about NICE is that it works out whether a given medicine is worthwhile by doing a cost-benefit analysis based on QALYs—quality adjusted life years. We now have more sophisticated measures known as WELLBYs—well-being years.
To understand whether a thing makes sense, we need to do the assessment and for that we need data. Your Lordships have all made suggestions: we want more physical exercise; we want less bullying; and we want to think about what things in SEND work. As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, we need some common definitions. We need a common definition of well-being that we can use; the department can give us that. Then we can work on the basis of exactly how important and how effective all these things are.
If we think about how this debate started, we all talked about our favourite brand of school: free schools, academies, you name it. How do we assess which one is better? Well, either implicitly or, in some cases, very explicitly, it was a matter of exam results or Ofsted rankings. Nobody talked about these schools’ impact on well-being, for the very good reason that we do not know. We do not have data. The only data we have is the world’s most embarrassing data of all, which nobody has mentioned yet: the PISA data. The PISA data shows us that, out of all of Europe, our young people have the lowest well-being. Of the 38 countries in the OECD, where do we come? In 37th place. My favourite football team, Manchester United, is not even that bad in the league.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 479 in my name. Before doing so, I offer an apology to noble Lords, in particular the noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Holmes of Richmond. I added my name to their amendments in the previous group and fully intended to speak in support of them, but I got my timings rather wrong and did not arrive here until the first three speeches had been made. Because of that discourtesy, I felt it would have been inappropriate to contribute on that grouping.
Amendment 479 would not mean a material change for schools and colleges because it aims to make the existing guidance statutory, with programmes and support around that guidance already in place. Previous Governments have acknowledged concern at the worsening mental health among children and young people, with the most significant policies stemming from the 2018 Department for Education and Department of Health and Social Care joint Green Paper on children and young people’s mental health. That referenced the non-statutory guidance issued in 2015, Promoting Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing: A Whole School or College Approach.
I welcome the fact that the Labour Government have continued with this commitment. The announcement from the Department for Education in May indicated that the rollout of the mental health support team programme will continue, with additional funding committed for this year and full rollout—aiming for 100% coverage of schools—expected by the end of the 2029-30 academic year. However, as the guidance is non-statutory, there is a current inequity of access to support for schools that would like more help with improving mental health and well-being in their setting. Most schools will have a trained senior mental health lead who understands whole-school approaches, but that person is often a current member of staff who may be juggling other roles, such as a pastoral lead, a SENCO or a safeguarding lead. Also, many schools may not have further access to a mental health support team until that programme reaches its conclusion by 2029-30.
Additionally, without statutory status, leaders and senior managers in schools may be tempted, understandably, to overlook this approach to improving a school’s ethos and environment when they are faced with a range of other issues, not least the challenges presented by attendance and behaviour. The Schools Wellbeing Partnership campaign group argues that, by improving the mental health and well-being of pupils, attendance and behaviour can be positively affected. This forms the foundation of support for all pupils, so that they can feel a true sense of belonging at a school and can thrive in that school’s environment. Whether or not the current guidance is made statutory, it certainly requires updating; incidentally, that last occurred in 2021.
With that in mind, I want to elaborate a little on the points listed in my amendment on whole-school approaches. There is an old saying: “You cannot improve what you cannot measure”. This relates to what the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, just said about evidence. Incidentally, I say to him in passing that I have bad news for him: he suggested that Manchester United are not as bad as seventh in the league table, but it is twice as bad as that, I am afraid. You have to measure before you can begin improvements. Identifying and measuring children and young people’s mental health and well-being will offer the necessary data, which schools can use to improve their environment, their teaching and their support.
I welcome Amendment 472, but a whole-school approach already has the tools to respond to that data. However, the current guidance needs to be strengthened to offer more robust information about schools. Updating the guidance and making it statutory would support schools in turning data into action plans and action plans into improvement, although that improvement will require further training for mental health leads. The training for staff taking on these roles ended in March this year. Perhaps my noble friend the Minister will be able to say if and when that essential training will resume.
Access to mental health support in schools was a manifesto commitment last year, and I commend the Government for wasting no time as that delivery has now begun. That is very welcome, of course, although there is concern that some mental health support teams are not able to provide the support that some specific cohorts of children require in some schools.
Finally, I want to touch on wider aspects of a whole- school approach. The Schools Wellbeing Partnership has long campaigned on this issue and recently published eight principles necessary for that approach to be fully effective. I will not list them just now due to the time, but I am very encouraged to note that all eight of those principles are contained in Ofsted’s proposed new inspection framework, so there is a very good chance that they will soon enter the mainstream. That would strengthen the effectiveness of the whole-school approaches necessary to ensure that children’s and young people’s mental health are taken seriously, and the necessary support is properly resourced. That support is too important to be left to optional guidance and simply must be made statutory to ensure those in need of it get the support that they deserve.
Lord Moynihan (Con)
I support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, to which I have attached my name. I have to say that after such a powerful speech—probably one of the best we have had in Committee—I was sort of waiting for the Minister to jump to her feet and say, “Look, I can bring this to an end and accept that amendment. It makes such consummate sense that we need to underpin with data all the ambitious goals we have for the well-being of children”.
What can we do without data? Introducing policies that we do not know are effective or ineffective costs too much; we need data. Nobody is arguing today that this data should be compulsory among all schools. This is voluntary, but I expect virtually every school I have ever visited in the state sector to want to do this, to be party to this, because there can be opportunities to benefit from this as well.
Some of us had the opportunity the other day to listen to the CEO of Lego, Niels Christiansen, who was giving a presentation here in Parliament. He was talking about the work he and his company were doing with young kids—five year-olds in Slough—to get fantastic benefits at an early stage in life by playing with Lego rather than playing online. If you had the data and the evidence that companies such as Lego were doing such good work, more schools would want to do that. Having that information available would be second to none.
I am confident that this evening the Minister is going to be wholly supportive of this amendment. I am not going to dwell on the points that have been made so far, but on the reasons why. How would the measurement we are talking about benefit the well-being of young people? It would promote children’s mental health, enhance learning outcomes, promote fairness, strengthen accountability and build a healthier and fitter society. It would have long-term social benefits. Schools play an absolutely central role in shaping future citizens, and this information would help us foster well-being, which improves social cohesion, productivity and public health. It would help us create a national policy to support the UK’s wider commitments to tackling not just mental health problems but physical health problems and challenges, and it would reduce pressure on the NHS.
This data would support teachers and staff. Well-being measurement data can highlight systemic issues such as high-stress levels and workload concerns that also affect staff and allow us to address them. It can lead to healthier, happier school communities, benefiting both students and educators. Staff can use insights from well-being data to tailor pastoral care and teaching more appropriately and more effectively to the problem.
We can have a cultural shift in education. The more we know what is going on in schools on this front, the more we can do to have a cultural shift. Embedding well-being measurement reinforces the message that mental health and physical health is an important issue and, in many ways for many children, just as important as academic achievement. It normalises conversations about well-being and reduces stigma around mental health issues. This shift helps prepare young people for life beyond school, fostering resilience and emotional literacy.
I can see that the Minister is just about to get to her feet to accept this amendment. But if, in the event, she is just going to pause to reflect because she wants to hear a little more about how this amendment is going to benefit her Bill, her reputation and her legacy in education, I will say this: regular well-being measurement can help schools identify mental and physical health and well-being challenges before they escalate into serious issues. Earlier detection enables timely support, reduces long-term risks such as school dropout, self-harm and disengagement, and preventive intervention is more cost-effective than crisis management in the health and social care systems.
Baroness Whitaker (Lab)
My Lords, I support Amendments 472 and 479 briefly but very warmly. I will not try Treasury terms, though as a former civil servant, I of course recognise their strength.
Quite apart from the intrinsic value of enabling happiness, which I confess is my underlying reason, well-being has instrumental advantages for society. It stimulates motivation, energy and concentration, particularly for demoralised and alienated children, such as those from minority-ethnic groups who have experienced constant prejudice and belittling, among others. It encourages them on to a pathway of achievement. We know that children from disadvantaged backgrounds and on free school meals are more likely to have lower well-being, as are care leavers. In our credentialised society, improving motivation and raising achievement can reduce the disturbing proportion of NEETs who slot aimlessly into routes to unemployment and crime.
I think well-being is allied to a sense of self-worth—after all, if you feel your world does not think enough of you to value your happiness, you may well feel that you are not worth it yourself. It is this absence of sense of self-worth and self-respect that I noticed most strikingly among the criminals I met when I was a magistrate; also among the children at risk of delinquency who I used to run a club for; and even among a few so-called normal children when I did some teaching; and more recently in encounters with embittered adults whose childhood had surrounded them with prejudice and discrimination. Children can be resilient and can triumph over adversity if they are motivated enough, but the erosion of the ability to cope, which suffering and the absence of well-being causes, has clearly undermined an increasing number.
Well-being has been notably increased by the right kind of design and architecture in schools, and particularly by music education, including singing. There is good evidence for that, but well-being needs to be measured systematically in all schools. This would do much to start embedding a stable culture of resilience and happiness in our schools, so I very much hope my noble friend the Minister will accept these amendments.
Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 502YG, in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, and other noble Lords. Your Lordships may well have seen the helpful briefing from the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, of which I have the honour to be a parliamentary ambassador. For those noble Lords who have not had the chance to read it, I will share some brief highlights, given the hour.
Two children per class suffer from food allergies, on average. If your allergic reaction to milk, cheese, nuts or anything else triggers an anaphylactic shock, you need an immediate dose of adrenaline injected with an EpiPen, also known as an autoinjector. Half of all of England’s schools have not got one—that is 10,000 of them. Two-thirds of teachers have not had any formal training on what to do if a pupil suffers from an anaphylactic reaction or shock—and that is in the buildings outside the home where children are most likely to have an anaphylactic shock, unsurprisingly, since they spend six hours a day, five days a week, 38 weeks a year there.
I am confining my remarks on this amendment to the support of all elements relating to EpiPens and autoinjectors, but I support all of the amendment. Your Lordships can see from my comments that requiring all schools, not just half of all schools, to have an EpiPen and someone who knows how to use it has the potential to save lives and reassure countless parents that their children will be safe at school.
Your Lordships might be wondering why so many schools are completely unprepared for this sort of emergency. Schools have a vital day job to do. It is hard enough teaching maths to children who are not interested—please insert your own least favourite lesson if you happen to be a mathematics enthusiast—so is it fair to load this responsibility on to them as well? I gently say that all that is being asked at this point is that an EpiPen is in the school reception and that there is someone who knows one end of it from the other. I am not joking—I am afraid that there has been at least one incident of a member of staff injecting themselves with adrenaline rather than the pupil in shock.
Another argument which might be used against the amendment is that it is surely the responsibility of the pupils at risk to carry their own EpiPens and of their parents to make sure that they do. This is true, but I imagine that my noble friend the Minister agrees that it is not realistic to assume that every child will follow the rules every day without fail. The evidence shows that pupils are most at risk when they are 15 to 17 years-old, precisely the age when they are most likely to take risks.
I have spoken in this House on this issue before, as the mother of a now 17 year-old pupil who has suffered two episodes of anaphylactic shock. Yes, she has two EpiPens in her bag and yes, I try to make sure that she always does. But just like any other mother, I know that things do not always go to plan. I live with that fear just like so many others.
Shortly after my daughter’s first anaphylactic shock, 10 years ago, her doctor at the Evelina London Children’s Hospital, just across the river, asked for my phone after her emergency treatment. To my astonishment, he then took photos of my pale, limp and silent daughter as she lay in my arms. He explained to us that we should print out these photos and give them to her grandparents, her friends’ parents and anyone else who was a bit doubting that severe peanut allergy is really dangerous, and keep one for her first boyfriend in years to come, so that everyone who might have to treat severe allergies would understand that this is what can happen, and that the adrenaline in EpiPens is life-saving.
It is well worth requiring schools to keep them and for them to know how to use them. They save lives.
Baroness Spielman (Con)
My Lords, I will be fairly brief. I mainly want to commend the Government on the restraint that they have shown in this Bill in clauses relating to mental health and well-being.
Despite the Bill’s title, there is a welcome absence of clauses that imply that well-being and activities that promote it are separate from, or even antithetical to, good education. In reality, they are strongly correlated. For most children, well-being is a likely outcome of being well taught, well supported, discovering and developing their wider interests, and forming good relationships with peers and with adults—developing a sense of belonging.
Further, there is a growing recognition that spending too much time talking about mental illness to young people who are not ill can be counterproductive. We may need less mental health awareness training in schools, not more. For those advocating more universal mental health interventions in their amendments, I recommend reading the findings published by DfE earlier this year on the effectiveness of several school mental health awareness interventions. These tests of established programmes found that they did not reduce emotional difficulties in the short term, and in the longer term appeared to be associated with greater emotional difficulties and decreased life satisfaction.
Those who have been around in education long enough may also remember the evaluation of the then popular SEAL programme; I think it was “social and emotional aspects of learning”. This study of the programme, which was for primary schools, showed not only that the positive outcomes expected did not materialise, but also that there was an unwelcome side-effect in that, to paraphrase, it taught the mean kids to be better bullies, using the techniques of emotional manipulation that the programme taught them. These findings are a valuable reminder that sometimes less is more.
A word of warning: much of what is proposed in these amendments is hugely well intentioned, but I am particularly nervous about some of the ideas around measurement. If we do not want measurement processes in themselves to harm children, we should not collect data by constantly asking children who are not unwell about their well-being, and especially about their negative emotions. I have seen so many dreadful examples in schools where even very young children are constantly prompted to express emotions and invited to say that they are experiencing negative emotions. You can see the change; they start to believe they are sad or worried or afraid, where this had not even occurred to them. Nothing could fit the phrase “throw the baby out with the bath-water” more accurately than to make children unhappy through well-intentioned measurement processes.
I therefore urge the Government to prioritise advice from expert clinicians in this field and to allow schools to do only—
Lord O'Donnell (CB)
I will just say one thing. The noble Baroness mentioned all the things on which she has been able to talk about the evidence because there was data. I just remind noble Lords that this amendment is talking about one annual survey. It is not asking people every couple of minutes how they are doing, just to be absolutely clear.
Baroness Spielman (Con)
Children are very frequently surveyed from different directions; another one would actually add to an extensive load of surveys that they already complete.
The wider point is that there are many ways of measuring indirectly. If we want to measure, we should look for indirect routes that do not involve constantly asking children to self-assess. We should make sure that schools are doing only what is genuinely likely to be helpful for children. The Government should resist the urge to launch crowd-pleasing but ultimately wasteful or even harmful initiatives.
Baroness Sater (Con)
My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendment 472 and everything that has been said by the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, and my noble friend Lord Moynihan so passionately. I cannot agree more with what the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, just said.
I frequently touch on themes of well-being, especially with regard to sport, physical activity, mental health, inclusion and financial security. The term “well-being” means different things to different people. If we do not define and measure it consistently, we leave it to drift and risk missing the opportunity to improve children’s lives in meaningful and measurable ways.
We all recognise that young people today face mounting pressures, whether increased anxiety or reduced physical activity, yet we lack a consistent national framework for measuring how children are really doing—not just academically but emotionally and physically. That is why I look forward to hearing how initiatives like the Be Well programme are progressing. Be Well is an example of what can be achieved when universities, charities and local authorities come together to prioritise children’s well-being. It can offer valuable lessons on how data, gathered and shared sensitively, can inform targeted support and drive better outcomes. Anything that improves children’s well-being and strengthens the evidence base behind policy has my full support.
This amendment, as we have heard, proposes an annual, voluntary and confidential national survey. It would equip schools, local authorities and policymakers with the data they need to understand and respond to what young people are really experiencing. Better data leads to better policy and ultimately to better outcomes. Back in 2023, Youth Sport Trust chief executive Ali Oliver said that “fewer than half” of children in the UK meet the Chief Medical Officer’s guidelines for the minimum recommended activities. She said:
“This is contributing to a nation where too many children are missing out, have poor wellbeing and lack a sense of belonging. The evidence is clear: unhappy and unhealthy children do not learn”.
Well-being is closely linked to educational attainment. When children feel better and more supported, they are much more likely to engage in learning and reach their full potential. Understanding that connection and measuring it properly is vital.
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 502YG and pass on the apologies of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, who has had to go but had agreed to introduce the amendment on behalf of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Prentis, who cannot take part on the Bill. In summary, the amendment is to improve allergy safety in schools, but it marks the culmination of a long campaign in conjunction with the inspirational Helen Blythe, following the tragic death of her son Benedict in 2021, when he was only five. An inquest last month concluded that Benedict’s death was avoidable and caused by the accidental ingestion of cows’ milk after his school failed to follow the processes and procedures in place to protect him.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey, outlined, almost 20% of all allergic reactions take place in schools and, sadly, we now know that not only do they not necessarily have the EpiPens but they do not necessarily have a plan or training in place. Only putting these protective measures on a statutory footing will ensure that adequate protections are there for the two children in every classroom with allergies. Helen has worked tirelessly to establish the safety measures necessary to ensure that no child is ever lost again in such a tragic and avoidable way. I also pay tribute to the work of Alicia Kearns in the other place, MP for Rutland and Stamford, with which I am connected. Helen Blythe is her constituent.
The current government guidelines do not even mention allergies. There is only one line on food and one link to an anaphylaxis charity. The key aim is of course spare EpiPens, trained staff and a proper policy. The Government would prefer any change to be by way of guidance, but that just does not give the guarantees necessary—hence tonight’s amendment.
Between 1998 and 2018, 66 children died from allergic reactions. There are 680,000 pupils in England’s schools who have allergies—that is one or two per classroom, according to the Benedict Blythe Foundation’s REACT report of March 2024. At a time when the Department for Education is rightly focused on the attendance crisis, children miss half a million days of education due to allergy each year. These adrenaline auto-injections are life-savers, and the Benedict Blythe Foundation estimates that it would cost only £5 million for the rollout in English schools, plus the training. I remember a similar campaign to put defibrillators into every school; that was done, so why not put these EpiPens, and proper training and policy, in place? I welcome the department’s engagement, but the time for action is now.
Lord Meston (CB)
My Lords, I want to underline, in respect of Amendment 462, the importance of the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, about reducing the pressures on CAMHS. The family courts are being frustrated, as I know from recent experience, and impeded in reaching necessary long-term decisions about the future for children. They are told, week by week, that they are waiting for an appointment with CAMHS and then that they are waiting for an assessment report from CAMHS—and then that they are waiting for the recommended treatment to take place. If Amendment 462 serves to help with those tasks, children, their parents and the courts will benefit. The courts are being criticised for the delays in reaching decisions, and certainly the problems with CAMHS contribute to those delays.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I really want to challenge the assumption of some of the amendments in this group that what we need is more dedicated mental health practices and provision in schools. One of the problems is that there is too much emphasis on mental illness and mental health in education at the moment. That awareness is taking up too much time in school life, is over-preoccupying young people and is becoming a real problem.
If you look at what is going on in schools at the moment, there are indeed endless numbers of staff, volunteers and organisations with responsibility for emotional well-being: mental health leads, support teams, emotional literacy support and assistance, mental health first aiders, counsellors, and well-being officers. If you go into any school, the walls are covered in information about mental illness, mental health and so on; it is everywhere you go. Yet despite this booming, school-based mental health industrial complex, almost, the well-being of pupils continues to deteriorate—or that is what we are told.
Mental health problems and diagnoses are rising at the same time as all the awareness initiatives are taking place. Something is going wrong and that at least needs some investigation, but these amendments just assume that we should carry on doing the same and more of the same. Along with the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, I think that real, critical thinking needs to be done around some of the awareness campaigns.
I want to challenge the idea that schools are the vehicle for tackling the undoubted spiralling crisis of unhappiness among young people. It is also important that we untangle that from the crisis of CAMHS. There is actually a serious problem in NHS mental health support for children, and I would like that to be taken on. That is very different from the kind of discussion we are having here about schools, which is that mental distress becomes such a focus of all the discussions in schools.
I tend to agree—for possibly the only time—with Tony Blair on this. He said,
“you’ve got to be careful of encouraging people to think they’ve got some sort of condition other than simply confronting the challenges of life”.
That is true. Starting with children, we are encouraging the young to internalise the narrative of medicalised and pathologised explanations and the psychological vocabulary of adopting an identity of mental fragility, and that is not doing them any good. That can then create an increasing cohort of young people and parents demanding official diagnosis, more intervention and more support at school.
Dr Alastair Santhouse, a neuropsychiatrist at the Maudsley, argues this in his new book, No More Normal: Mental Health in an Age of Over-Diagnosis. He says that it has become crucial to reassess what constitutes mental illness, so that we can decide who needs to be treated with limited resources and who can be helped in other ways. He is talking about the NHS, and he warns that the NHS has buckled under a tsunami of referrals for some conditions. He also says that other state services such as schools are straining to the point of dysfunction in dealing with this issue, and I tend to agree with him.
I admire the passionate intervention by the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, calling for measurement and evidence, but one of the problems is that I am not entirely sure we know what we are measuring. There is no clear definition of well-being to measure. The psychiatric profession is making the point that the definitions of what constitutes mental illness are now contended—there are arguments about them. What are you measuring? This woolliness of definitions is becoming a problem in schools.
The counsellor Lucy Beney, in her excellent recent pamphlet, worries that this means that mental illness in schools is leading to a kind of diagnostic inflation itself, as pupils compare notes on what they have got and go to different professionals to ask what they have got and so on. It can create a sort of social or cultural contagion, enticing the young to see all the ups and downs of life through the prism of mental health, which can be demoralising and counterproductive. There is no doubt that too many children and young people are not thriving mentally and emotionally in the UK today, and I would like to have that discussion, but I do not think that well-being and mental health is necessarily the way to do it. Schools are definitely not the places to solve it.
A lot of the well-being initiatives, counselling and therapeutic interventions encourage young people to look at life through the subjective filter of their own feelings and anxieties. That, in turn, is likely to lead to inward-looking, self-absorbed children. The role of education in schools is to introduce new generations to the wonders of the millennia, of knowledge outside their experience, which takes them outside themselves. That is what schools are for. That is what teachers are good at. It is not just about gaining credentials. In fact, I hate the credentialing aspect of it. But if you get into a brilliant novel, the law of physics, the history of our world or evolution, you forget your troubles. If you are constantly talking to the counsellor about your troubles, yourself and endlessly thinking of your own well-being, it is boring, demoralising and stunting. It is enough to make anybody depressed, including the young. It is important that schools do not get completely obsessed with this issue. I fear that they have, and it has made matters worse.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, first, I want to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that the World Health Organization has a clear definition of well-being:
“Well-being is a positive state experienced by individuals in society … Well-being encompasses quality of life and the ability of people and societies to contribute to the world with a sense of meaning and purpose.”
So this is not about self-focus; it is clear that it is about people being in a position to contribute. The WHO goes on to say that a society’s well-being can be
“determined by the extent to which it is resilient, builds capacity for action, and is prepared to transcend challenges”.
Perhaps most of us can agree that that is something society needs to do much better.
I am afraid that I disagree entirely with the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman. The noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, said that the Dutch score particularly highly, along with Denmark, in the recent PISA figures on children’s well-being, and we score astonishingly badly. I was looking at a publication from a few years ago, The Dutch Way in Education. The publisher of that notes how the Dutch system measures not only academic achievement but also the well-being and involvement of students. I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, that I have raised the study he referred to a number of times. I would like to raise it tonight, but in the interests of the Committee making progress, I will not. Every time we are told how much progress our schools have made, saying, “Look at the exam results”, I say, look at the state of well-being of our pupils. I say particularly to the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, that if we measure only the exam results, that is what we are going to judge our schools on. That is what we have been doing, and it is what has got us into this position.
Baroness Spielman (Con)
Ofsted, where I was chief inspector, took personal development, including children’s well-being, very seriously; it was one of the judgments there. I have never suggested, nor would ever suggest, that academic outcomes were the only thing that mattered for children.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
In responding to the noble Baroness, I can speak as a former school governor, and I have my own opinions of Ofsted. I want to put it on record that the Green Party wishes to abolish Ofsted, so that is where I am coming from.
It is important that we speak in support of Amendment 502YG about allergies. I also went to an event with the Benedict Blythe Foundation where I learned about this crucial issue, and the work of that foundation absolutely needs to be acknowledged.
There are two amendments in this group that have not yet been introduced. The first is Amendment 502B in my name, kindly backed by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, and the noble Baroness, Lady Willis. I am also going to speak to Amendment 502Y, which was tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, and backed by the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Boycott. The noble Baroness, Lady Willis, apologises greatly that she is unable to introduce her own amendment. Like me, the noble Baroness had a train to catch and, while I have now given up on mine, she had to catch hers, so she has departed.
Both amendments focus on the importance of nature in the physical spaces in and around school buildings, and to promote active-based learning and teaching in the school curriculum. It is important to say that far too often that is seen as a “nice to have”—an additional something for schools that have the resources to get money from parents to plant trees, make nice gardens and so on. It is a great pity that the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, is not here because this is something that she has literally written the book on. I am sure that many noble Lords already know that the title of her book is Good Nature: The New Science of How Nature Improves Our Health.
I shall highlight the difference between the two amendments. My Amendment 502B says:
“The Secretary of State shall have a duty to promote school pupils’ access to nature”,
and says there should be one hour of access to nature each week for every pupil. This is something on which there is bountiful evidence. The amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, is much more limited but still important: it would require a review to be conducted on the benefits of nature-based learning to children’s health and well-being.
I have vast amounts of notes here that noble Lords will be pleased to know I am not going to read out, but it is worth focusing on just one study from 2015 that the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, highlights, focusing on 3,000 primary-aged children in four standard urban schools in Barcelona. The test scores of children who were looking out of the window at green space were better than those of the children who did not have that view of green space. We are not talking here about forest schools; they were normal inner-city schools. The addition of trees and green infrastructure in the playground has real impact on exam results. More than that, there is significant evidence about improvements in anti-social behaviour, levels of mental health and teenage anxiety, and even reduced truancy, something that noble Lords and the Government are very concerned about.
The second part of the noble Baroness’s amendment is about nature-based skills. In other parts of the economy, in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, we are focusing on the need to look after green spaces in our communities. Who is going to do the work of looking after that? It is crucial that we have the training.
The noble Baroness, Lady Willis, has given me a great deal more information and I feel guilty that I am not going to pass it on, but in the interests of time I am going to sit down now and urge noble Lords to read the noble Baroness’s book.
Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Lab)
My Lords, I support Amendment 502YG. I declare my interest as the chief officer of the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, the UK’s food allergy charity.
Regrettably, we have an education system completely unprepared for the growing numbers of food-allergic children in the UK, with safeguarding standards varying widely from school to school. Recent incidents underscore the urgent need for thorough staff training and well implemented allergen management policies. Food allergy-related deaths, which for the most part are preventable, while uncommon, tragically occur in school.
A few months ago, as the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, noted, the inquest into the death of Benedict Blythe, who was aged just five, concluded. Today, as we discuss this amendment, I know that Benedict is in our hearts and our minds, as is his mother, Helen. She is the driver behind Amendment 502YG, which would be a critical addition to the Bill.
There are of course excellent examples of food allergy management in some of our schools. However, with two children in every classroom having a food allergy, and one in five allergic reactions to food occurring in school, too many schools lack policies for effective allergy management and staff are inadequately trained. There is also a lack of understanding around allergy in our schools. That all impacts on children’s attendance and puts them at risk.
At the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, we regularly hear from parents about schools that ignore their requests for reasonable adjustments or, worse still, are dismissive about a child’s allergy. These persistent challenges are faced by thousands of allergy families across the country, and they reinforce that allergies should be treated with the same seriousness and attention as other medical conditions in school settings. That is why, at the Natasha foundation, we launched Allergy School, which offers free practical resources to help teachers create inclusive and safe environments for children with food allergies.
However, charities and foundations cannot deliver change alone. The Government need to do more to help schools and early years settings be better equipped to manage food allergies, from improved staff training to safer food management practices. This amendment would achieve that. It would ensure that all schools had proper staff training; effective policies in place; data—I emphasise that for the sake of the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell—on allergic reactions, which is woefully lacking; and spare AAIs, or adrenaline auto-injectors.
There are very few chronic conditions that can take a child from perfectly fine to unconscious in 30 minutes, but food allergy anaphylaxis is one of them. Who can disagree with life-saving medication being on site and quickly and easily accessible to save a child’s life? I look forward to my noble friend the Minister’s reply.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, the hour is late. I have my name on some of these amendments. I simply say that the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has highlighted that around 16% of children aged five to 16 now have a mental health disorder. CAMHS cannot cope with this. The amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, is certainly trying to plug that large hole.
I also remind the Committee that it has been estimated that in every class, on average, there is a child who has been bereaved of a parent or sibling. That is not trivial trauma; it is major. They need support and help, but they are often not getting it.
On collecting data, it is essential that we know what we are doing. However, we must use validated measures that have been properly evaluated, so that schools are measuring what people think they are measuring and they do not contain leading questions and so on. In addition, good-quality data allows a school to understand whether it is improving.
I declare my interest as having chaired the Science and Technology Committee’s sixth report on allergy, and I strongly underline all the comments made in it. During that inquiry, we heard about children being bullied by other children who put peanuts in their pockets, and about staff sometimes confusing anaphylaxis with panic attacks because they have not had training. It is a very simple measure to train staff and to make sure that they can access an EpiPen. With that, I hope that the Government will adopt the suggestions in these amendments.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I very much support the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the amendments she has put forward. I hope that the Government are thoroughly behind the National Education Nature Park, which is a great initiative from the Department for Education, and are looking for ways to push that out, maybe through the natural history GCSE. If the noble Baroness feels in need of a holiday, I recommend Japan as a place that has really got on top of how to get young citizens involved with nature; that may surprise noble Lords, in view of the urban character of Japan, but it is very good at that.
I also agree with my noble friend Lady Spielman that indirect measures are best. They are very much the underpinning of the Good Schools Guide: watching, observing and looking for strong structures and relationships—and, yes, someone to turn to when you do not know what to do, but an excess of mental health professionals is almost always the sign of a school in trouble.
When it comes to children, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle applies. By asking a child a question, you create the answer; you have to be really careful how you try to measure well-being, particularly in young children. Maybe the Dutch can teach us to do it, but I share the scepticism of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, about much of what is going on in schools at the moment.
Baroness Longfield (Lab)
I shall add something on those points, although I do not want to drag this on. Clearly, this arouses a lot of emotions, but we are mixing a lot of things up. There are rooms full of evidence on how these effectively work, not least on the things that the noble Lord is putting forward. I do not think that schools are being asked to undertake surveys—it is about giving information to schools, which is a completely different aspect.
What we should all be talking about here is keeping children well, which means intervening when they need help; it does not mean taking them to clinics or overmedicalisation but it is about providing positive environments in which children can flourish. Also, it is not something that we are asking schools to take on; schools have had to take this on, because it comes through the door. We are talking about other professionals —health professionals, youth workers and others, who know about well-being—being able to work with schools to support those children. This is a win-win for everyone, and children and their families are the last ones who want to overmedicalise this and come up with what has been described as an industrialisation of a medical complex. That is not what anyone wants, and I do not think that it is there in any of the intentions that have been put forward.
Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest in that I am chair of Sport Wales. I strongly support Amendment 472 in the name of my noble friend Lord O’Donnell, and I agree that it is one of the most important things that we can do. At Sport Wales, we carry out a school sport survey, and we had responses from 116,000 children who gave their opinion on sport and well-being. We do not use it only to focus the funding; it is to help them to be part of the solution, to think about how their well-being might be improved.
I have my name on Amendment 500. I make a plea for physical literacy, and for giving it the same status as literacy and numeracy. We know that, if we teach children good physical literacy skills, it helps their mental well-being. The reason why we need to do this is that we are in a time of crisis. UK Active data shows that we have a generation of children who are more likely to die before their parents because of inactivity. A press release issued by the Department for Work and Pensions on 18 June 2025 stated that one in eight young people is not in education, employment or training. I realise that that cuts across age groups and is looking at something different—but we have up to 93,000 young people between 16 and 24 on personal independence payments. This is not to criticise the Government, but the system is not sustainable in this current format. We cannot keep just pushing young people on to benefits, so we have to do something differently. This group of amendments is part of the solution to helping young people. In a Bill that has well-being in its Title, it would make sense that we measure well-being.
Lord Storey (LD)
The hour is late, so I shall be brief. This group of amendments has brought out the best in your Lordships. How people have spoken on each of these amendments I have found truly caring.
Stupidly perhaps, earlier on I was saying how the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, made me consider more closely particular issues, but I have to say that on this issue I think she is wrong. For me, the most important thing in schools is not just getting children learning; it is about how they learn about themselves, and their well-being and mental health is so important. The sooner they can get the feeling of a sense of well-being and get any mental health problems sorted, the more their learning will accelerate—not as the noble Baroness suggests. We know that about ourselves; when we feel good about something, we give of our best, do we not? I know that I do. If I feel down and miserable and things are not going right for me, I do not give of my best. So it is important to get mental health issues sorted.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, as we have heard, this group of amendments focuses on the important issue of the mental well-being of pupils and the roles that schools could play in that. This obviously needs to be seen in the context of an adolescent mental health service which is currently struggling to keep up with demand, and where waiting lists are all too often extremely long, particularly with the rise in reports of poor mental health since Covid.
However, schools already have extensive guidance from the department on how to support both pupils and staff with mental well-being, and there is a mental health hub of resources. The previous Government introduced and began the rollout of mental health leads in our schools, and my understanding is the current Government have continued with this. So I am really not convinced that more duties and standards and guidance, as proposed in Amendments 462, 500 and 479, are the answer, although I accept the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, regarding the range of qualifications one might want to have on a team.
We have also heard that we have some major red flags in relation to children’s mental health and well-being with the use of smartphones and social media and the extraordinary amount of time that children and young people typically spend on their screens. Once again, I urge the Government to address these root causes of isolation, loneliness and disconnection in our society, especially for young people, rather than introducing yet more guidance.
I am sympathetic to the spirit of Amendments 502B and 502Y in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Willis, respectively. Many schools are able to offer a forest school in primary, but this is something that school leaders need to decide on.
As the Minister mentioned, we introduced the National Education Nature Park when we were in office, with an emphasis on schools in areas with few or no green spaces, and I was pleased when I looked at the National Education Nature Park website last night that more than 3,000 schools have signed up to the scheme. That will give those children the opportunity not only to spend more time in nature but to gather a range of relevant skills, including data capture and analysis.
Amendment 472, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, would establish a national children’s well-being measurement programme. We heard the noble Lord make a powerful case for such an approach, although I note the concerns raised by my noble friend Lady Spielman and the suggestion that indirect measures might achieve some of the same ends. A lot of questions are put to pupils in the national behaviour survey regarding well-being, including about happiness, how worthwhile a pupil’s life feels, levels of anxiety, loneliness, bullying and more, and I think there is a case for looking at the range of data that is collected. If it does not meet some of the objectives that the noble Lord set out, perhaps we could dispense with some of the data collection and replace it with something more useful.
I was very struck when in office by the approach that is taken in Indonesia—the Committee cannot laugh at me at this hour—in relation to surveys of pupil well-being, which are completely built into its equivalent of an Ofsted framework. It is able to identify very quickly schools where pupils’ well-being is significantly better or worse than the average, which allows it to learn from the best and address the weaknesses of the poorest.
I am not going to speak to Amendment 496 unless someone tells me I should because I do not think that that amendment was introduced.
Finally, my noble friend Lady Berridge and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, reminded us of the tragic case of Benedict Blythe. Whether or not we are parents, we can all recognise the heartbreak of the death of a child, particularly where that death is avoidable. The noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath, rightly pointed out the much wider and more prevalent issue of anxiety for parents of children at risk of an anaphylactic shock. I express my thanks to all the organisations in this area which have contributed to improving the response of schools to managing the safety of pupils with an allergy, particularly the Benedict Blythe Foundation for its work on the schools’ allergy code and the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation for its work on the allergy school. I hope that the Minister will be able to address the concerns raised in that amendment.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My Lords, this Government are committed to improving mental health support for all children and young people to help pupils achieve and thrive in education. We also agree that all children and young people should have the opportunity to understand and connect with the natural world, and recognise the importance of supporting pupils with allergies.
On Amendment 462 on the dedicated mental health practitioner, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, this Government have announced that we will expand mental health support teams from 52% coverage of pupils and learners at the start of April 2025 to 100% by 2029-30. This will ensure that all schools have access to NHS-trained and -supported mental health practitioners. Additionally, funding of £13 million has been agreed to pilot enhancements to this service to support those with more serious needs; for instance, young people who have experienced trauma or those with neurodiversity or eating disorders. We will look at the experience of those pilots and how they could be extended.
The issue, as other noble Lords have identified, rests particularly in the numbers of mental health staff available to deal with the most acute needs of young people. This amendment would not add to the provision of mental health professionals, although the Government have committed to increase their number by 8,500, but switch responsibility from the NHS to schools. Schools provide a range of pastoral support, including counselling, but managing mental health professionals is not their job. Mental health support teams benefit from being recruited, trained, clinically supervised and having outcomes monitored by the NHS, and there is good evidence of their effectiveness.
Amendment 472, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, seeks to establish a national children’s well-being measurement programme. The Government are strongly committed to supporting all children and young people to achieve and thrive. To help us do this, we need to understand how our children and young people are feeling. There is immense value in schools measuring, understanding and taking action on the factors which influence whether their pupils attend, achieve and thrive. Around 60% of schools already conduct some type of well-being measurement voluntarily.
We agree with the noble Lord that measurement should remain voluntary for schools. However, we do not agree that a centrally administered survey, costing millions of pounds a year over this spending review, is necessarily the right way forward. We believe in measurement, but for schools to choose to measure, it is important that the tool they use is relevant to them and they can be assured that results will not be used for accountability in an overly simplistic way.
Therefore, we recognise the need for there to be consistency of that measurement. That is why the Government have already initiated a programme of work with similar aims, with measurement experts and providers, including from the Our Wellbeing, Our Voice campaign, and with the education sector. This will involve setting standardised questions for schools to ask pupils, including about their well-being, enabling benchmarking between schools.
We will go further and provide non-statutory guidance, including tools and resources, to support schools to measure in a more consistent and evidence-based way and, importantly, to act on the findings with partners to improve outcomes for children. We are confident that the adoption of a standard set of questions across the sector and publication of operational guidance will better enable schools to share data with one another and other local partners, to facilitate local benchmarking and joined-up community action.
I hear the noble Lord’s point about national collection, and in the longer term, we will also explore whether and how this data could be collected centrally to inform national policy. In the meantime, to further amplify the voices of young people, we have committed to publishing an annual data release containing collated national survey data on pupils’ experiences in school, including their sense of belonging, enjoyment and safety.
Amendment 479, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, would require statutory guidance for schools on whole-school approaches to mental health and well-being. The Government already provide guidance, supporting schools to put in place whole-school approaches. While itself not statutory, this supports a range of statutory duties in relation to teaching, safeguarding, behaviour and special educational needs and disabilities, which are key to identifying need, and working with external services to meet that need. These existing statutory duties, the support already available to schools and the work that we are committed to on the framework, measurement and annual data collection, which I have just set out in response to Amendment 472, taken together, will provide a sound basis for all schools to put in place whole-school approaches and secure the support that their pupils need. I will write to the noble Lord about the specific point relating to the training grant and the Government’s approach to providing additional support for schools to do this.
I turn to Amendment 500, also in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, which would require newly published standards for schools in England on physical and mental well-being; this point was referenced by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. Schools already have specific requirements to teach about physical and mental well-being, which are set out in the physical education national curriculum and the statutory guidance on relationships, sex and health education. Ofsted inspects the delivery of these requirements. This approach allows schools to develop their own approaches to supporting physical and mental well-being that reflect the very different circumstances of their pupils. Centrally set delivery targets could not reflect this difference.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response to this, as she said, wide-ranging—you could even say “interesting”, in a certain sense—debate. I simply reflect that, in terms of the tone of the debate that we have had, there was a time not so long ago—perhaps a few years ago—when, if you were talking about children’s mental health and well-being in this Chamber, there would have been a certain sort of debate. There would probably have been a general consensus about the problem and what we were trying to achieve, and there would probably have been some disagreement over the best way of getting there.
I have to say: that is no longer the case. As with so many things in this current world, this whole issue seems to have become highly polarised and contested in a way that I find pretty unhelpful, but we are where we are. We can all quote our favourite bit of evidence or research report that backs up our own worldview but, frankly, unless you are looking at these things in the round, that rarely takes you much further forward.
I was pleased to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, talk about the need to look carefully at the root causes of mental health issues. That was a very helpful perspective; personally, pretending that a problem does not exist rarely helps to address it.
I do not recognise that schools have turned into some sort of industrial complex of mental health with an excess of mental health professionals. All I can say is that the schools I have visited are not like that; they tell me what an issue mental health is and how they want extra help and support. That is all I am going to say in general terms.
I will respond to a couple of the points on the amendments. On my amendment, I was moderately encouraged to hear the Minister talk about the pilots, looking at the enhanced levels of support from mental health support teams. That is exactly what I was trying to get at in my amendment about the missing middle, as I put it. It is about the skills mix. There is a legitimate question to look at there. I hope that that we can return to that point on Report because, according to the people I have talked to—practitioners on the front line—it is important.
There was such a strong consensus. Well, it was not a consensus, but many people in the Chamber could see clearly the case that was being mounted for a national well-being survey—a voluntary survey. No one would be forced to do it. None of it would form any part of the accountability system of schools, but it would be something that those schools could have and use.
Having and being able to use that data will be fundamental if we are to increase the well-being of children and young people in schools. As far as I am concerned, there is no running away from the PISA data that tells us that the UK’s young people have the lowest well-being in Europe and the second worst in the OECD. That is what PISA tells us. We need to do something about it. To do something about it, we need to be collecting that data.
I am sure we will want to think about this again, and about putting it across—the costs would be very modest indeed—in a way that will be acceptable to the Minister and to this Government. Until we have that, we will not be able to address the fundamental problem of children who have poor well-being, are unhappy with perhaps poor mental health, do not learn well, do not achieve, and do not live the fulfilling lives that we all want them to live. However, at this point, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Blower
“Duty to provide relationships and sex education and PSHE to persons who have not attained the age of 18 at further education institutions(1) The Children and Social Work Act 2017 is amended as follows. (2) In section 34 (education relating to relationships and sex)—(a) at the end of subsection (1)(b) insert—“(c) relationships and sex education to be provided to persons who have not attained the age of 18 and who are receiving education at post-16 education institutions in England.”;(b) in subsection (2)(a), after “schools” insert “and further education providers”;(c) in subsection (2)(b), after “schools” insert “and further education providers”;(d) in subsection (2)(c), after “schools” insert “and further education providers”.(3) In section 35 (other personal, social, health and economic education)—(a) at the end of subsection (1)(b) insert—“(c) to persons who have not attained the age of 18 and who are receiving education at post-16 education institutions in England.”;(b) in subsection (2)(a), after “schools” insert “and further education providers”;(c) in subsection (2)(b), after “schools” insert “and further education providers”;(d) in subsection (2)(c), after “schools” insert “and further education providers”.”Member's explanatory statement
This new clause would extend the existing provision of relationships and sex education and PSHE under the Children and Social Work Act 2017 to people under the age of 18 who are receiving education at post-16 education institutions in England.
Baroness Blower (Lab)
My Lords, given that my noble friend Lady Lister is unable to be here this evening, it is my pleasure, with her permission, to read her speech to move this amendment.
It is an honour to move Amendment 463, which would extend the provision of relationships and sex education to young people aged under 16, in post-16 institutions in England. It is an honour because it has been dubbed the Massey amendment as a tribute to our late friend and colleague Baroness Massey of Darwen. Had she still been with us, she would have been the ideal person to move this amendment, given her experience and commitment to young people’s social health and well-being. It was to honour Doreen that I agreed to table this amendment, even though I do not claim any expertise in this area.
Another reason that I agreed to table the amendment was that I was so impressed by how Faustine Petron, who approached me, founded the Make It Mandatory campaign and enlisted the support of many important bodies such as Brook—of which Lady Massey was a former president—the Sex Education Forum and the End Violence Against Women and Girls coalition. She has received the endorsement for this amendment of 50 organisations, and has collected over 105,000 signatures for her petition. She says, in her own words:
“I am a university student and young survivor of domestic abuse. As an older teenager, I would have benefited from being provided with RSE after year 11 and an adequate education surrounding the early warning signs of domestic abuse, the different forms abuse can take, and places to get help”.
The third reason is that Faustine Petron has such a strong case: she has identified a real gap in the mandatory provision of relationships and sex education, which does not cover 16 and 17 year-olds, yet, under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, these are still children.
Since RSE was made mandatory in schools, it has begun to make a real difference. The Office for Students is making it into a condition of registration for universities that they intend to prevent and address sexual violence. Filling the gap in FE and sixth-form colleges would contribute to a preventative strategy on sexual violence among young people.
This would also help address the concern voiced by the Public Accounts Committee that,
“to date, the approach to tackling violence against women and girls has not put enough emphasis on preventative measures that are necessary to achieve long-term change”.
The committee emphasised the key role that education can play in tackling this issue, including in preventing children from becoming perpetrators in the future. Among its recommendations was that the Department for Education should set out how it intends to work with children and young people to prevent violence against women and girls, including further changes to the relationships and sex education curriculum. Some 77% of young people surveyed—
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)
My Lords, I apologise to the noble Baroness for interjecting relatively late into her remarks, but I am reminded that, in the Companion, it is fairly clear that Members should not seek to have their speeches read by other Members of the House. Perhaps she could rephrase her remarks in a way that makes it clear that she is speaking for herself, not on behalf of another Peer.
Baroness Blower (Lab)
I apologise to the Committee. Clearly, I and possibly the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, had misunderstood the rules relating to this.
As has been noted, national organisations backing the Make It Mandatory campaign, in addition to the Children’s Commissioner, all agree that the extension of relationships and sex education to this group would be important.
In conclusion, in a recent Commons debate on relationships education in schools, the Minister for School Standards emphasised the vital role that education plays in preventing violence and that the aim of relationships education is to support all young people to build positive relationships and to keep themselves safe. That education must equip them for adult life. It thus makes no sense that, just as they are at the cusp of adult life, they should not be assured access to relationships and sex education to help equip them. The Minister continued that, as part of the Government’s opportunity mission,
“we will equip our young people and children with the skills they need to form strong, positive relationships”.—[Official Report, Commons, 1/4/25; col. 112WH.]
Although she was talking about the school context, this is clearly important in terms of an extension to post-16.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 463, to which I added my name. Government data shows that 16 to 19 year-olds experience the highest rates of domestic abuse of any age group. Without mandatory RSE, we are leaving many 16 to 18 year-olds unsupported, just as they are starting their first intimate relationships. Tender, a marvellous charity that goes into schools to educate children in relationships, has been working with this age group. It found that only around half of the students could identify signs of an abusive relationship or knew where to find support; by contrast, after participating in Tender’s workshops, over 90% can identify abuse and will know where to find help.
Victim-blaming and perpetrator-excusing attitudes are prevalent in this cohort, in part due to a high percentage of young people viewing harmful content online. The End Violence Against Women coalition agrees, quoting the National Association for Managers of Student Services in saying that, “As the front line of support services in post-16 education, we know it’s been never more important to give young people a safe place with structure, to discuss and learn about positive relationships and to address the social isolation and misinformation a world living on social media has created”. In a confusing world, 16 to 18 year-olds seeking guidance deserve to be supported to critically examine and challenge harmful attitudes among their peers in a safe, supportive environment, which we can create through mandatory RSE lessons.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, I apologise on behalf of my noble friend Lord Storey, who has unfortunately had to leave to get the last possible train home.
I want to say just a few words, as the hour is so late, on Amendments 471 and 465, which seek to clarify in legislation the requirement for schools to teach about non-religious beliefs, such as humanism, in religious education at all stages. I am aware of the ongoing review into the national curriculum. It may be that, through the review, it is recommended that religious education becomes part of the national curriculum. This would be welcome, to ensure that the subject becomes impartial, objective and balanced, with clear national minimum standards that teach children about all the main religions and non-religious belief systems within our country.
However, as this may not come to pass, my amendment seeks to ensure the teaching of non-religious beliefs in religious education. In 2015, the High Court ruling in R(Fox) v Secretary of State for Education declared that religious education curricula should include the teaching of non-religious beliefs, such as humanism, to comply with the rights of freedom and belief under the European Convention on Human Rights. Nearly a decade later, in 2024, Ofsted released Deep and Meaningful? The Religious Education Subject Report. It reported that half of all secondary schools and a majority of primary schools still did not teach about non-religious world views in their RE lessons.
It is vital that children and young people learn about non-religious belief systems alongside the major religions. Humanism has a long and significant history in the UK, stretching through our sciences, arts, culture and politics. Many people in the UK live their lives around the values of the scientific method, making ethical decisions based on reason, empathy and a concern for all living life, and that in the absence of a God or afterlife we must strive to improve ourselves and our communities in the time that we have.
My Amendment 471 would ensure that religious education must teach about non-religious beliefs, providing clarity and direction to schools and local authorities. Amendment 465 seeks to remove the requirement for collective daily worship in all state-funded schools without a religious character. It would not remove the ability for schools without a religious character to provide collective worship if they choose to do so, nor, as some noble Lords have seemingly misunderstood, would it ban prayers, Christmas carols or any religious holidays.
It simply removes the legal requirement of mandatory Christian worship in these non-faith schools. While faith schools will still be required to provide collective worship, schools without a religious character will have to provide an assembly once a week that furthers the spiritual, moral, social and cultural education of all pupils, regardless of their faith or belief.
This amendment is about freedom of choice and respecting the diversity of our society. It cannot be justified, when in the recent census over a third of the population in England and Wales had no religion, rising to over half of those in their 20s, that when non-religious parents send their children to a non-religious school, the school is still legally obliged to perform Christian worship. When the alternative is to pull children out of lessons or assemblies and leave them sitting in classrooms or corridors by themselves, this is not a real choice.
The current situation demands that parents choose between ostracising their children and forcing them into religious worship they do not want for their family. I know that there are many noble Lords who deeply and sincerely believe in the values of Christian worship, and I respect that belief. That is why my amendment does not remove the requirement of collective worship in faith schools. In return, I ask noble Lords to respect those of us in society who do not believe in any faith, and to allow parents the equally valid choice to have their children attend schools that do not require daily worship. Children should also have the right, as under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, to remove themselves from worship if they do not believe in it.
Maintaining the daily collective worship obligation for state-funded schools without a religious character is not respectful to those families from other religions or with no religion. We should provide more choice, not less, to schools and parents, to reflect the needs and beliefs of children.
Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)
My Lords, at this late hour, I sound a slight note of caution and concern over Amendments 465 and 471. I do not have any particular problem with Amendment 463, which is something all of us should be able to embrace, in terms of ensuring education around prevention of sexual violence and promoting respectful relationships.
Amendment 465 in many ways transposes the proposed Private Member’s legislation and tries to put it within this legislation. By removing the requirement for collective worship, what is put in its place seems to be quite vague and ill-defined in its nature. It talks about assemblies that have to promote
“spiritual, moral, social and cultural”
aspects. It strikes me that it almost replaces a religious assembly with what is, in effect, a humanist assembly. That is a conclusion which a lot of people will draw.
The vagueness of what is being proposed to, in effect, replace the collective worship will lead a lot of schools into trying to find other forms of lectures and lessons that they will try to put across within an assembly. There is no doubt that this will lead to a widespread and vast difference of interpretation. There is also no doubt that many of the subjects, while very merited, can be quite controversial. We would be naive if we did not believe that this would create a situation in a number of schools in which there were levels of friction, perhaps between parents and the school, or between governors and the school. There is a certain element of the hornet’s nest being stirred up.
The proposer of the amendment also then talked about choice. It is absolutely right at present that no child or family is compelled to attend religious or collective worship. The right to opt out is enshrined in legislation and, as such, clearly will remain, and I think everyone would accept that. However, the way the amendment before us today is drafted creates this alternative form of assembly, which is compulsory for everyone. It would mean that if a parent objected to a particular assembly, to a lesson, there is no right for them to withdraw their child because there is no provision directly to do that.
There is a danger of unintended consequences as a result of this. Mention was made on a number of occasions today of not wanting to go down the route of Northern Ireland education. Without going into the details, some of what has been said was a bit oversimplified and wrong. But leaving that aside, Members made the point that they see the best social mix of education where there is a wide range of faiths—where, indeed, there is a considerable level of mixing. Removing collective acts of religious worship will actually push some parents much more towards faith schools, feeling that perhaps the faith of their children is not being represented. That will create a situation that makes integration less likely, albeit perhaps in a relatively small fashion. So there is that question of unintended consequences.
I do not believe that Amendment 471 is necessary. The curriculum already at times reflects non-religious topics within RE. This, to some extent, supercharges the non-religious issues within RE. Whether we have faith or not, I think everyone in this House probably, in different ways, holds non-religious beliefs. Unfortunately, the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell is gone. I share with him one unfortunate trait, in that I am a lifelong Manchester United supporter. I have a belief that within the next few years, Manchester United will win the Premiership again. Perhaps that is not a non-religious belief, because the amount of faith required to hold that belief is such that it perhaps tips over into being much more a matter of faith over hope and experience.
Nevertheless, we have seen that the definition is tied to the provisions of a particular part of the ECHR. We know that, as a result of that clause, there has been quite a lot of case law, not just here but throughout Europe, in relation to the definition of non-religious beliefs. A very wide range of topics has come into play and been defined in case law. Again, all those are perfectly legitimate topics. However, it raises the prospect of the non-religious belief side overwhelming the religious side of RE. I may be quite literalist in my view, but I think religious education should principally be about religion, and this clearly dilutes that to an unacceptable extent.
In conclusion, I appreciate, given many of the figures that have been quoted, that we are becoming an increasingly secular society, so I suppose what I am saying may be regarded as a bit unfashionable. But I believe that, in an age when perhaps there are a lot of unnecessary divisions within this country, a lot of our laws and collective values ultimately rely on Judeo-Christian values and traditions. We should not abandon those in a school setting, on a casual basis without specific consultation. These amendments take us too far in that direction.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, the naivety that the noble Lord referred to is actually his own naivety. Because of the area in which it is, the primary school that I attended in Manningham—which is part of my title—in Bradford now has a population that is over 70% Muslim. The idea that, by law, that school has to have Christian services and assemblies is naive and possibly offensive to the parents of those children. Our society needs to recognise that it is not fair to impose these things upon those parents and children.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I oppose this amendment. Time does not permit me to properly debate and discuss Amendment 471, so I will confine my comments to Amendment 465. I thought that the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Weir, were very apposite, and I more or less wholly agree with him.
I want to specifically talk about the first part of the amendment, which would replace the duty to provide an act of worship with
“an assembly which is principally directed towards furthering the spiritual, moral, social and cultural education”,
rather than the specific issue of replacing the daily act of worship. This amendment contains an incoherent phrasing that, in effect, amounts to an imposition of humanist beliefs. To refer to spiritual education, regardless of religion or belief, is absurd. To refer to moral education, regardless of belief, is irrational. It is impossible to make moral judgments without beliefs about what is right or wrong or beliefs about how these judgments should be made.
It is not possible to understand British society and culture without regard for the religious beliefs that have shaped its literature, music, art, history and institutions. The exclusion of religious belief from a social and cultural education in assemblies is illogical and will restrict pupils’ understanding. The assumption that it is possible to provide an assembly
“directed towards furthering the spiritual, moral … education of the pupils”,
without regard to belief, is illogical. In effect, these new assemblies would promote humanist beliefs and provide pupils with a highly partial account of spiritual, moral, social and cultural education.
As humanists are keen to point out, not everyone is religious. There are people who hold non-religious beliefs, but these are beliefs, and consequently shape the perspective, values and attitudes of those who hold them in ways that are not neutral. They are sincerely held, but they are not universally held. This is why Humanists UK, for example, campaigns so vigorously—it needs to persuade others who currently disagree with it.
There is also a disparity in parents’ rights to withdraw their child. Currently, all parents have the right to withdraw their children from collective acts of worship, but this amendment allows parents to withdraw their children from assemblies in schools that contain an act of worship but does not allow parents to withdraw their children from humanist assemblies. This two-tier system is deeply inconsistent and unfair. The state educates children on behalf of parents with their permission, and not against their wishes; the amendment is inconsistent with Section 9 of the Education Act 1996, and incompatible with Article 2 of the first protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights. I surmise that there has been no consultation with the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church or any religious bodies on this in respect of this amendment.
Without the context of religion, the content of these assemblies will inevitably focus on issues of a political nature, and views on these issues will have to be considered with religious perspectives excluded. There are already concerns about political impartiality in schools, and this amendment risks making matters worse.
Britain and its values are rooted in Christianity, and this continues to be reflected in our national life. Currently schools can accommodate important national days, such as Remembrance Day, within their acts of collective worship. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, spoke in favour of the Private Member’s Bill proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, earlier in the year, which aims to achieve similar changes to this amendment, arguing:
“Children need to be taught early the importance of generosity, kindness, neighbourliness … community support”.—[Official Report, 7/2/25; col. 968.]
But the fact that these are valued in contemporary British society is due in large part to the impact of Christianity. These values have positively transformed society and are still cherished in modern Britain. It is impossible to explain the development of these values to pupils without regard for the context of the religious beliefs from which they arose.
There is an assumption that Britain is becoming an increasingly secular country, which is used to support these amendments, but it is not borne out by recent studies which demonstrate a sharp increase in young people attending church. Dr Rhiannon McAleer, co-author of The Quiet Revival, states:
“While some traditional denominations continue to face challenges, we’ve seen significant, broad-based growth among most expressions of Church—particularly in Roman Catholicism and Pentecostalism. There are now over 2 million more people attending church than there were six years ago”.
The present legislation already allows for the consideration of all beliefs, and requires the head teacher to have regard for the background of pupils in determining the extent to which collective worship reflects Christian belief. If still unhappy, parents can withdraw their child. The proposals are trying to fix a problem that does not exist.
There is also the issue that the amendment extends to Wales, where the education system and governance are devolved.
For all the reasons that I have laid out, I oppose this damaging and wholly unnecessary amendment.
Baroness Whitaker (Lab)
As it is late, I shall just register my support for Amendments 465 and 471. I agree that a large number of young people and their parents do not adhere to a religious faith. It is clearly valuable and important for them to learn about the central faiths that influence our culture, but they are also entitled to have access to moral and ethical frameworks which do not depend on a religious faith so that they may arrive at their own moral compass. These amendments would enable that positive development.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I offer Green support for all three of these amendments, but in the interests of time I shall make two brief remarks about Amendments 463 and 465.
On Amendment 463, I agree with all the contributions made thus far, but with a focus particularly on the relationship and sex education part of it. I think that it is also important that we focus on the PSHE element of that. This is education about the financial sector and managing personal finances, something that it is generally agreed there is a real shortage of. This is education about physical and mental health—and I cross-reference the earlier amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, about the importance of physical literacy in particular. It is also about rights and responsibilities. We have to note that, with votes at 16 now being government policy and coming in this direction, it is surely important that we provide education about voting and our political system to young people in our further education system.
When I say that we need that kind of education, people sometimes say that that is an argument against votes at 16. I think that 16 year-olds are as well informed about our political system as 60 year-olds, and they all need more information and more education. Educating 16 and 17 year-olds will also provide information that will disseminate out into the general community through their family, friends and colleagues in the workplace.
On Amendment 465, I want to respond directly to the noble Lord, Lord Weir, who, I think, suggested that there was something odd about the idea that the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, had previously brought two Private Members’ Bills—I have spoken in support of both—and that their subject was now being put forward as an amendment to a government Bill. There is a very well-trodden path for—
Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)
No, I did not. In case there is any misunderstanding, I was simply pointing out that this was, in effect, a transposition. I did not suggest that it was some sort of irregular route or that there was something wrong with it. I pointed out that, if it were to become part of the Bill, it would not have gone through the same level of consultation as the rest of the Bill. However, I did not suggest that this was an oddly trodden path—in case there was any misunderstanding on that.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
I thank the noble Lord for that clarification. Of course, what he just said applies to any amendment that your Lordships’ House inserts into a government Bill.
The argument for Amendment 465 has already been powerfully made, but we are talking about a law that dates back to 1944. This is a 20th-century arrangement for the 21st century, which, as others have said, simply does not fit our society any more. A poll in 2024 said that 70% of school leaders wanted to get rid of the current legal arrangement.
On alternative moral, spiritual and cultural development, we hear from all sides of your Lordships’ House regular lamenting about how much cultural education we have lost from our current system and how little space there is to fit into the curriculum things such as cultural activities and cultural learning. This provision would be one way to create a little more space for something that is pretty well universally agreed as being essential.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I will very briefly say a few words about this group.
On Amendment 463, the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, may have taken up the baton from somebody else, but she did it pretty well—nobody has disagreed with her. It seems agreed that she is on very solid ground. The amendment is about useful information that people should have. I hope that the Government are at least friendly to the amendment.
On the two amendments tabled by my noble friend, I very much doubt that one assembly a week will change anybody’s religious views either way. Not making one point of view compulsory will probably not change religious views either way. The similarity in the values of religions—the fact that we should be nice to people seems to be common across the board—is something that we can probably convey elsewhere; it does not have to be put forward in this way. I do not think that it will make much difference. It would certainly bring it in line with a bigger chunk of the population. If people want spiritual activity somewhere else, it would be available.
I turn to the final amendment in the group. I hope that my noble friend will not hit me too much when I say that the provision should already be there. Any education about religion must include the contrary arguments, so I think this is really belt and braces. I am not getting snarled at by my noble friend, so I think I am not too far off in saying that. I hope that the Minister can confirm that Amendment 471 should be covered, at least partially, in all current religious education.