Education: Advanced British Standard

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what are their plans to replace A-levels and T-levels with the Advanced British Standard.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, the advanced British standard will bring together the best of A-levels and T-levels, remove the artificial choice between academic and technical pathways, and raise the attainment floor for all students. Students will receive more high-quality teaching time, continue to build maths and English capability, and develop a wider knowledge base that will enhance their career opportunities. This is a long-term reform which will need careful development and consultation.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

My Lords, at the Conservative Party conference the Prime Minister had the opportunity to announce real change for our schools. He could have spoken about fixing crumbling schools, recruiting and retaining teachers currently leaving en masse, and sorting out the widening attainment gap, soaring absence levels and missing mental health support. Nothing we heard will tackle these issues affecting pupils now or provide the staff we need to teach now, let alone in a decade’s time. What are the Government doing this financial year to provide the buildings, teaching and support this generation of children so desperately needs?

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[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I cannot accept the assertion of the noble Baroness. The Government are doing a great deal on teacher recruitment, and these programmes, starting now, will also address the attainment gap. We will pay up to £6,000 a year tax free to teachers of key STEM and technical shortage subjects in the first five years of their career and to those working in disadvantaged schools, addressing recruitment and attainment. Critically, we will spend £150 million each year to support those who do not pass their maths GCSE at 16 to gain these qualifications by the time they get to 19.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, since this is the advanced British standard, can the Minister confirm that it will be available for schools in Scotland, as the A-level exam is at the moment? What discussions have there been with the Scottish Government?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As I said in my Answer, there will need to be extensive consultation, but we hope to work closely with the Scottish Parliament on this.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, A-levels and T-levels should never be the only options for 16 year-olds. There are many highly talented, creative and practical students with work-based skills which are essential for the economy. Can the Minister reassure us that BTEC vocational qualifications will continue to be available to ensure that these students get their work accredited?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am afraid that I cannot reassure the noble Baroness of that. She will be aware that we have carried out extensive reform of our qualifications and will know that, as of August 2022, we had removed 5,500 qualifications with low or no enrolments. However, we still have the most complicated and duplicative landscape of qualifications in this area —at least 7,000 available qualifications—which we will address through our reform programme.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, as ever, I declare my interest as a secondary school teacher. The Minister said that the ABS will develop maths and English capabilities. For anybody who has just guided their son through the maths GCSE and maths A-level—as I have, rather badly—are we saying that the maths GCSE is not good enough? Surely that is enough maths for anybody.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I do not think that it is enough maths for everybody. As the House knows, we are an outlier in the G7 in not requiring maths to 18. We have made tremendous progress with our maths hubs and teaching for mastery pro approach. We can see that in Ofsted’s recent report on school maths, which described how a

“resounding, positive shift in mathematics education has taken place in primary schools”.

We are determined to invest more in maths and give every child the opportunity to succeed in maths.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the Government’s interest in broadening the curriculum at age 18. Has the Minister had indications from universities that they are willing to broaden their admittance criteria too, so that students who follow a varied programme across the subjects are not disadvantaged relative to those who have followed a much narrower curriculum? Will she also ensure that, where children have to learn maths or English to 18, which they might naturally not wish to do, it is maths and English for which they will find a use in their lives and not maths and English which is directed towards getting into university?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The way we are thinking about this programme—I stress again that we need to consult extensively on the detail of it—is that it will offer children much more breadth and time, including a third more teaching time. That means that we can keep around 90% of the content of the current A-level for those going down an academic route and follow the occupational standards for those going down a technical or vocational route. The aim of the programme is to give children much greater choice so that they will still be able to access the same three-year degrees if university is their preferred option but also be well equipped for further technical education or the workplace.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister, in her initial Answer to my noble friend on the Front Bench, referred to the necessity for extensive consultation before the new qualifications can be properly embedded. I am sure she will agree that the burden of changing the arrangements for post-16 education will fall hugely on schools, and particularly on school leaders. Can she tell the House how extensively those people will be consulted? Without wishing to be disrespectful, how much notice will be taken of what they say?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am slightly surprised by the noble Baroness’s last remark. This programme clearly cannot work without the buy-in, understanding and support of school leaderships, so it would be a short-sighted Government who did not pay attention to their reflections on this. I am also slightly surprised by the noble Baroness’s hesitancy, because this approach was in the Labour manifesto of 2010 and recommended by the Times Education Commission.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my declared interests. Those with special educational needs, particularly dyslexia and dyscalculia, will clearly be put under a lot more pressure by this approach. When will the Government publish a plan to make sure that these people are not excluded from reaching an A-level standard or put under extra pressure? When can we relate it to the rest of the curriculum, or will we change the law so that you are allowed to exclude people and discriminate against them?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Clearly, we will not do the latter. It is incredibly important that we design this in such a way that we have the right offer for children with special educational needs and disabilities, those who have been in local authority care and those who have come from particularly disadvantaged homes. That is a clear commitment from the Government.

[Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate (Non-Afl)]

Perhaps the noble Baroness can help me. My wife is Polish, and she read in the newspapers recently that Polish is being offered at secondary school level, alongside Latin, as a second language. She was very surprised, and said, having been taught Latin as well as Polish at school, that Polish is more difficult to learn than Latin and just about as useful, which surprised me. Could the noble Baroness advise me on how I should respond?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Maybe it would make sense to talk to the school in question to understand its decision to offer Polish.

Cultural Education Plan

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fleet (Con)]

In begging leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I declare my interests as the chair of the national plan for music education.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, progress is continuing with the cultural education plan. Since May, the Department for Education and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport have conducted extensive engagement with external stakeholders across the education and cultural sectors—a comprehensive series of nearly 50 events. We also appointed an expert advisory panel in July 2023, chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Bull. Both the panel and the stakeholder engagement are helping to inform the development of the plan and its emerging proposals.

[Baroness Fleet (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for that Answer. Cultural education, like music education, is delivered not just in schools but by partnerships with cultural, voluntary and faith organisations and the third sector. Can my noble friend say how the plan will address the current lack of infrastructure to signpost opportunities and broker these connections? Music education has dedicated music hubs to do this; what resources will the Government put in place to fulfil this same function, in terms of education, for other art forms and disciplines?

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[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for her question. Obviously, she will understand that I cannot pre-empt the decisions and recommendations on the cultural education plan, but I absolutely agree with her about the importance of partnerships. I understand that the expert panel is looking at examples of good practice, of exactly the type that my noble friend set out, but also the barriers to implementing them, including in relation to infrastructure.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords—

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[Lord Bird (CB)]

Do the Government agree with me that one of the best ways of emptying our prisons is by investing in our youngsters who go wrong and using art and culture to bring about social transformation in their lives? I am a living embodiment of that: if it was not for culture in my early years, I would not be here.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord speaks with great authority on this. I absolutely agree with him that art and culture, as well as other extracurricular activities such as sport and other opportunities, are critical for young people at risk of offending or in prison.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, the number of creative studies teachers is on the decline in England: between 2011 and 2022, there was a 20% drop in drama teachers, 15% in music and 11% in art. The Government are still missing targets for recruitment to combat this decline. The impact is that fewer students are studying creative subjects, limiting children’s creativity and risking future talent pipelines for our creative industries. Notwithstanding the answer the noble Baroness gave to my question yesterday, what are the Government doing now to improve the picture for creative education in schools?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Well, unfortunately, my recognition of the noble Baroness’s figures has not changed since yesterday. My understanding is that, since 2014-15, the number of qualified music teachers has risen from around 89% to an average of about 95% in the last couple of years. Similarly, for art and design, 96.5% of lessons are taught by teachers with post-A-level qualifications. However, since yesterday I can share with the House that there will be a new survey on extracurricular music uptake, which will be published later this year, which shows much higher levels of participation in June 2023 in relation to singing and instrument lessons, access to live music performances and participation by children in live music performances. So the Government are not talking about it—the Government are delivering.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

We welcome this cultural education plan, and we have every confidence in the noble Baroness, Lady Bull. Of course, cultural education is not just about learning—it has to be about seeing, doing and having the opportunity to visit art galleries and museums, listening to concerts, going to theatres and seeing heritage. But, of course, children and young people from poor families really struggle to make that happen. How do we go about that?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question, because the focus of the cultural education plan is to tackle those disparities in opportunity and to promote more access for children in areas of significant deprivation, making sure that children have good cultural experiences in school but also outside school.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, the plan has highly laudable aims, but does the Minister not appreciate that the national curriculum and accountability measures being out of scope, as the terms of reference clearly state, is supremely unhelpful, if a major goal is universal access to the arts in schools, since this in effect limits the solution before the inquiry even gets under way?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I simply do not accept the noble Earl’s assertion. I will make two points. First, the knowledge-rich curriculum, which this Government have delivered, gives a foundation for children to exercise their creativity. Secondly, in all my visits to schools, of which I make many around the country, I see them doing extraordinary things, offering children all sorts of cultural opportunities across drama, the arts and music.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, there is no gentlemen’s agreement on this side, so I am going to keep standing. This is another plan with which I am not very familiar. Will the Minister ensure that the plan embeds this country’s rich heritage, which enriches our children’s understanding, knowledge and respect for history, which has been talked about? It created the anti-slavery movement and the movements against colonisation and apartheid, which has resulted in this country becoming a beacon of multiculturalism.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The plan is quite clear that cultural education has an important social value, helping children recognise the value and richness of the different communities that make up our great nation.

[Lord Mendoza (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register, particularly as chairman of Historic England. Following on from the noble Baroness, we know that heritage education as a part of cultural education has an enormous impact on young lives, particularly in building community and a sense of civic pride, providing an avenue for skills and jobs. I am concerned that the cultural education plan may not include its fair share of emphasis on heritage. Can my noble friend the Minister provide some reassurance that heritage will be taken very seriously, as the cultural education plan develops?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I take this opportunity to congratulate my noble friend on his appointment as chair of Historic England, and also to reassure him that we absolutely agree about the importance of heritage. On the panel, we have one of the teachers from the heritage schools programme, Ashley Bartlett, a history teacher from Leicester; Robert Peal from the West London Free School also brings expertise in this area.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, has any progress been made in discussions or negotiations with our European neighbours to enable youth orchestras once again to tour throughout Europe? It is a tragedy that this has been brought to an end. Can the Minister give some hope that it might be reversed and reintroduced?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I understand the noble Viscount’s concerns about our youth orchestras. I will need to co-ordinate with and talk to my colleagues in DCMS, but I am happy to write to him with an answer.

Schools: Music, Art, Craft and Dance

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have (1) to revitalise music, art, craft and dance, in state schools, and (2) to recruit teachers of these subjects.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government remain committed to pupils receiving a high-quality cultural education, including in music, art and design and dance. We are investing around £115 million in music and arts up to 2025, in addition to core school budgets. There are over 468,000 full-time equivalent teachers in state-funded schools in England, the highest since the school workforce census began. We are offering £10,000 tax-free initial teacher training bursaries for art and design and music from 2024-25.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that very positive reply. However, one of the very many damaging offshoots of the EBacc and Progress 8 has been to degrade—indeed, in some cases to eliminate —music, dance, art and crafts from state school curricula, but every young person deserves the opportunity to experience and enjoy them. What is more, the arts are major contributors to the nation’s economy. The Minister has mentioned funding; how are the Government funding music hubs? How specifically do the Government intend to recruit teachers for these life-enhancing subjects?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

To put the noble Baroness’s concerns in perspective, I point out that if one takes into account both GCSEs and technical awards, which I know she values, just over half of students—52%—take either a GCSE or technical award. We are funding the music hubs with £79 million per annum for delivery but there is an additional £25 million fund for the purchase of musical instruments. In my Answer I gave an indication of the bursaries we will be providing to encourage recruitment.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, as a former drama teacher and current chair of trustees of the Council for Dance, Drama and Musical Theatre, I know how important studying the arts is to children’s lives. When such access is limited in schools, it is the poorer students who are denied the benefits. Surely we all want young people to carry a love of learning that sets them up to achieve and thrive, and the arts are central to this. Can the Minister give an update on the progress of the cultural education panel? When can we expect its report?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government would not disagree with anything the noble Baroness said on the importance of arts and other wider curriculum subjects. She will be aware that we published our new music education plan in June 2022. We will be publishing the cultural education plan in the coming months.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, should we not note and commend the existence of nearly 1,700 partnership schemes through which state and independent schools are working together to develop the talents of their pupils in music and art subjects? Will the Government give vigorous support to the further increase and expansion of these valuable partnership schemes?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government have been very supportive of partnerships between the independent sector and state-funded schools. I absolutely recognise the important work done by the 1,700 schemes and I hope we see many more in future.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests in the register. We now have EBacc, Progress 8 and the new BritBacc—I presume that is what it is called—which all exclude creative subjects. Does the Minister agree that, until the Government stop their obsession with mandatory A-level maths and their focus on purely academic subjects, there is little chance of revitalising the teaching of creative arts in schools and therefore recruiting teachers to teach them?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

To clarify, there is no mandatory maths A-level; there will be the provision of maths to 18, which will take us to the same position as every other G7 country. The noble Lord is a teacher and understands better than I do how children learn but, through the EBacc, we are delivering an important rich store of knowledge from which children can apply their creativity, critical thinking and imagination.

[The Lord Bishop of Sheffield]

My Lords, many Anglican and Roman Catholic cathedrals regularly send professional musicians into schools to support them with singing, at minimal charge. For example, by 2026, Sheffield Cathedral plans to support 30 schools a year with high-quality, curriculum-based music teaching, mostly in our most deprived communities. Does the Minister think there might be scope here for partnership with government to maximise the potential of such schemes?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I very much welcome that initiative. That ecosystem between our different cultural institutions, including charities and, of course, religious organisations, is extremely important. However, in practical terms, local relationships between schools and local cultural organisations can work best, and our music hubs help to link those up.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords—

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[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased that my noble friend on the Front Bench added drama to this list, because I am sure that the Minister knows that it has been lost from the curricula of very many schools. Although 52% is more than half, it is simply inadequate: very many children in our schools get no exposure to art, drama, music or dance. I ask the Minister to meet with the professional bodies, particularly the teachers’ unions, to look at how we might review and keep under review the 11-to-16 and the five-to-11 curricula, to ensure that all children, in every school, have access to these subjects.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As the noble Baroness knows, drama is obviously part of the national curriculum, so I do not quite recognise her description that many children receive no exposure to drama at all. There has also been a massive expansion of technical and vocational qualifications. Since 2016, the numbers of pupils taking music VTQs have gone from just over 8,000 to almost 18,000. There was a similar increase, from just under 9,000 to just over 18,000, for speech and drama. Perhaps unsurprisingly in some ways, the huge expansion has been in multimedia studies, which have gone from just over 4,000 students in 2016 to 54,000 last year.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, can the Minister give us an idea of what the Government are doing to encourage people to take up the subjects here part-time or as hobbies, due to the huge benefit you gain from being involved in things like community activity in dance and drama? Where is this being done, how are those hubs being created, and are we sure we have people who know enough to make these things fun for those other than the incredibly talented?

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[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I meet many teachers who deliver these subjects, and I am struck by their commitment and skill. Close to 100% of teachers in art and design and in music have a relevant qualification post A-level.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I refer noble Lords to my entry in the register of interests. Earlier this year, I attended a performance of scenes from Shakespeare plays by year 5s from North Wootton Academy at St George’s Guildhall, the oldest working theatre in the UK. When I spoke to pupils afterwards, it was clear not only how much they absolutely loved the experience but just how much confidence they had gained from performing on stage and in front of an audience. Can my noble friend explain or outline what the department is doing in addition to the fantastic school-led initiatives, of which that is one, to try to ensure that children of all ages are able to perform in public?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend paints a wonderful picture; I think that the House can imagine the pleasure of those children involved. I was fortunate enough to go and see something similar with a number of school orchestras and choirs performing, and I absolutely agree with what she said. We continue to support such activities, and will do more in our cultural education plan. I remind the House that we have also included an hour of music a week as compulsory, as our expectation in the school curriculum.

Children’s Social Care Implementation Strategy (Public Services Committee Report)

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Wednesday 20th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, on securing this debate and express my thanks on behalf of the Government to the whole committee for the important work it has done and the valuable insights in its report.

As we have heard in a series of powerful speeches this evening, children’s social care has the potential to transform lives for the better. Sadly, as the independent review and two other key reports set out last year, the system is not delivering consistently enough for the children and families it supports. The Government have heard the call for whole-system change and are committed to responding. Earlier this year, we published our implementation strategy, Stable Homes, Built on Love, which set out our bold and ambitious plans to transform children’s social care. I heard clearly from the opening remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, the need to convince not just her but others in this House of the urgency with which the Government are approaching this task. We have previously debated in this House the tension between really high-quality implementation and speed, and I hear and will take back to the department the concern about and criticism of the Government’s approach. However, I will try to reassure the House that it is based on a determination to get the implementation right, even if that means some delay in national rollout.

We have also published our draft children’s social care national framework and dashboard, which sets out in one place the outcomes that should be achieved for children, young people and families through local authority practice. It will aim to set national direction and raise the quality and consistency of practice. The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, asked about the use of data. I reassure her that that is central to our plans.

We heard from thousands of individuals in our three consultations, which launched in February with the strategy. Most particularly, I acknowledge the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Willis of Knaresborough, and the personal story he told about one of the young people who gave evidence to your Lordships’ committee. I echo that the stories we heard from young people were the most powerful and were invaluable in helping to shape the strategy; we thank them for sharing them with us.

The committee launched its inquiry over the same period and assessed whether the reforms would achieve the transformative change the system needs. The report concluded that our strategy sets the right direction for the system. That mirrors what we heard through our public consultation on Built on Love. We will publish our response to this and the national framework consultation tomorrow—apologies to committee members that the timing did not quite align perfectly. We know there will be areas to go into further and that we will need to make available more detail on how we intend to deliver that reform, but we wholeheartedly support the case for urgent and extensive system-wide reform of children’s social care.

The £200 million investment over this spending review period sets the path for longer-term reform and provides an opportunity to test and learn from some of the most complex elements. Your Lordships made the comparison between the four-year national rollout in the independent review and the £200 million for the pathfinders. To be fair, we are not comparing like with like. The Government completely understand that this is not the scale of investment required for national rollout. Transformation on this scale will take time and commitment, and we need to balance the necessary reform with the need to ensure that we have interventions that we know work and that can be rolled out safely and effectively.

A number of your Lordships, including the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, asked about the wider package of support and commitment that the Government were making. This funding of course builds on the £3.2 billion announced at the last Autumn Statement for adult and children’s social care and on further investments we have made, including the £259 million over the 2021 spending review period to maintain capacity and expand provision in secure and open residential homes, £230 million over this SR to support young people leaving care, £160 million over the next three years to deliver our adoption strategy, and £142 million to take forward reforms to unregulated provision in children’s social care.

A number of your Lordships, including the noble Lord, Lord Bach, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, expressed very clearly their concerns about residential children’s homes. I absolutely hear and recognise some of the stories that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, referred to. When I worked in the area of safeguarding before joining your Lordships’ House, it was extraordinary how perpetrators could spot vulnerable children and adults like homing pigeons. So, sadly, I recognised the stories he told.

In addition to the capital investment and addressing the disproportionate role of private sector-run children’s homes in the sector, there is obviously the whole issue of recruitment and retention, which your Lordships understand very well and is a particular challenge in the residential children’s homes market. We are exploring options to introduce professional registration for staff working in children’s homes, alongside a national leadership programme aimed at recruiting new talent into the sector. We are clear that we need to raise the status and profile of those working in the sector to address the recruitment issues.

With regard to family help, as we heard in a number of your Lordships’ speeches, these reforms are central to ensuring that children grow up with loving relationships and stability. The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, talked about stable lives rather than stable homes. I would challenge him and say that the probability of having a stable life vastly increases if you start with a stable home. I do not think he would disagree too strongly—but, equally, stable lives are a great outcome also.

Through family help, we want to create a service that meets the whole needs of a family, works at building on their strengths, is delivered across multidisciplinary teams and makes sure that there is collaboration within local areas between partners. In July, we announced the first three local authorities that will be taking part in the Families First for Children pathfinder, to help us codesign this new model of working. It will go live in three areas in the autumn.

We also recognise the vital role that kinship carers play, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, acknowledged, in providing loving, safe and stable homes for children. We absolutely agree with the review’s finding that that support must improve. They are at the heart of our strategy. We have announced the local authorities involved in our family network pilots, which will promote the use of a family-first approach to children’s social care and test the impact of financial and practical support for families to support children to stay safely at home. We have also invested £2 million to deliver high-quality peer support groups, as we know from talking to families who offer kinship care that these groups can build very powerful supportive communities for them. We are also establishing a training and support offer, which will be accessible to all kinship carers within this SR period.

We are also rightly championing foster carers and all that they do to provide loving homes. We know that fostering can be hugely rewarding, but obviously recognise that it takes hard work, skill and dedication. We are investing £27 million to deliver a recruitment and retention programme so that foster care is available to more children who need it. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, will be pleased that this will start in the north-east—her voice has been heard—before a wider regional rollout. The pathfinder will be fully up and running in the autumn.

The committee raised some important notes of caution with regard to regional care co-operatives. We think that this new model will represent a radical shift away from the way the sector currently commissions and delivers care placements, which is why we are working closely with Health and Justice to co-design it. We have invited local authorities to express interest in setting up a regional care co-operative pathfinder; we are now in the second phase of that process. However, I will take back to colleagues in the department the concerns that the committee raised in this regard.

Our strategy made firm our intention to put loving and stable relationships at the heart of children’s social care. We must have a system that empowers children and young people to feel seen and heard, whatever their needs. I note the remarks from the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, about the important role that education can play. As I think the House is aware, we are exploring how we can increase the role of schools and other education settings in multiagency safeguarding arrangements. We have consulted on our statutory guidance, Working Together, and will use learning from that to form the proposals on whether and how to make education a safeguarding partner.

Obviously, advocacy is incredibly important; your Lordships who bring great experience to this issue will have heard that again and again. We want to update and improve the system so that we can help children navigate it, particularly at times of transition, but we also want to be sure that we include ways that standards apply to some special residential settings and develop new standards for non-verbal children so that they too can access advocacy. We plan to consult on the guidance and standards in relation to this.

I want to update the House on where we are in relation to supporting our social work workforce. If I may say so, I take slight exception to the remarks from the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, about the Government’s strategy overall, including in this area. She often makes reference to what is happening in Wales; she did not do so on this occasion but I remind the House that, in its annual report, Care Inspectorate Wales talked about the real challenges around recruitment and retention, the real shortages in provision for children with additional needs, and the unprecedented increase in demand for care. I in no way wish to diminish the challenges that we face, but they are not unique to England or this Government.

The Government are already investing £50 million each year during this spending review period to recruit, train and develop our child and family social workers. However, we know that there is more to do to ensure that we fulfil our ambition of having a valued and skilled social worker for every child who needs one. Since publication, we have appointed eight early adopter local authorities to help design our early career framework and we are supporting local authorities to offer up to 500 social work apprenticeships.

We are also tackling working conditions. We have launched a national workload action group to make recommendations so that we can support social workers to spend more time with children and families. We will respond to our consultation on the agency workforce rules later this year; a number of noble Lords raised that issue.

The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, asked about therapeutic support for children who are adopted. Since 2015, over £300 million has been made available through the adoption support fund to help fund therapy for adoptive and special guardianship families.

She and the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, asked what we are doing in relation to mental health for children in care. In the Government’s strategy is a clear mission to reduce disparities in both long-term physical and mental health outcomes for children in care and care leavers. To do that, we have to work closely with our health partners. We will set out clear expectations of practice, including service planning and commissioning, through updated joint guidance with the Department of Health and Social Care. We want to make sure that that reflects the most recent published research on the emotional well-being needs of care leavers. We will revise and strengthen levels of knowledge and skill in relation to mental health in the social care workforce, including through the early careers framework.

I will finish by outlining some of the additional steps that we will take in the coming months to progress further in delivering our reforms. The Government will shortly publish responses to our recent consultations. The families first for children pathfinder and the “foster with the north-east” support hub will be live in the autumn. We will publish a kinship care strategy by the end of 2023, setting out our national direction, and a children’s social care data strategy. We will publish the national framework as statutory guidance by the end of the year. The dashboard rollout will be phased from 2024 to help us all learn and understand how well we are achieving the outcomes for children’s social care.

By updating our key statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children, we will clarify and simplify the existing requirements of practitioners to reflect updated best practice and support new policy. Our national implementation board continues to support, advise and hold the Government to account for the reform programme. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, was particularly concerned about advocacy and the voice of children and young people. We are seeking to develop a children and young people’s advisory board to ensure that we hear the voices of those young people right at the heart of our decision-making.

I again thank the noble Baroness, all noble Lords who contributed to this important debate, and everyone who contributed to the inquiry and to our public consultations. I extend my particular gratitude for their courage to those with lived experience of the system who have spoken to us and to all the professionals whose work supports children and families across the country, every day. Delivering on this will take great commitment and focus from the Government, working together with local authorities and our partners in the system. We will prioritise working with those on the ground to make sure that we achieve the kind of change in children’s lives that everyone in your Lordships’ House wishes to see. I will end where the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, started: it is one thing to write words on a page, but we need to make it work in real life.

Schools: RAAC

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

My Lords, the number of schools known to be affected by the safety crisis is rising, but it is not just the number of schools affected by RAAC that matters: it is the lost learning, lost opportunity and disruption to pupils. Can the Minister confirm how many children’s education has been disrupted and how many of these are in their exam years? How will lost learning be made up for to ensure that children are not left behind?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness has focused on exactly where the Government are focusing, namely face-to-face education. I take this opportunity to thank all the head teachers and school leaders who have worked tirelessly to make sure that children can, wherever possible, be in face-to-face education. As the noble Baroness knows, this morning we announced an updated list of schools: the number of confirmed cases of RAAC had risen from 147, reflecting the data as of 30 August, and what we published today, which reflects the data from 14 September, shows 174 schools. I am pleased to say that with the exception of one school, all children are either in full face-to-face education—in 148 settings—while 23 are in hybrid education, one is fully remote and one is a very new case which we are triaging at the moment.

In terms of lost learning, there is access to the Government’s national tutoring programme, and we will of course talk to schools and responsible bodies. There are disruptions to the school year; it is not exceptional, sadly, that children miss a few days’ learning but, happily for most of these children, it has been just a few days. If there are extended periods, we will look at that with the responsible bodies concerned.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

The Minister may recall that one of the first acts of Michael Gove as Secretary of State for Education was to cancel Building Schools for the Future. I well remember the impact it had on the city where I live. Also, the Chancellor of the Exchequer—

[Lord Storey (LD)]

The noble Baroness is right, to our regret. I have not been heckled before—it is quite impressive. Under the then Chancellor, there was a plan to build 200 new schools, but the funding for only 50 was provided. Parents are worried; how do we bring transparency to this issue and how do we reassure them?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Just to be clear on the Building Schools for the Future programme, there are schools today where we have found RAAC that would have been in that programme and were among those cancelled. There are also schools that got funding through it where we found RAAC, so it is not fair to say that Building Schools for the Future would have solved this problem. We are dealing with a number of cases that had funding through that programme which did not remove the RAAC and where we are now dealing with that.

The noble Lord is right that the department argued, as every department does, for as large as possible a settlement from the Treasury. We are very proud of our school rebuilding programme, but I also draw the House’s attention to the amount of capital that has been spent over the last 10 years both on condition funding and on building new school places. During this Administration, there has obviously been a bulge in pupil numbers which has led to around £2 billion a year, on average, being spent on building new places for pupils by either extending existing schools or building new ones. In the last spending review, the budget for condition funding—maintaining our schools—was increased by 28%.

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, are there many leisure centres used by schoolchildren as part of the school curriculum that are impacted by RAAC?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am not aware whether there are leisure centres. The decision that we took in relation to schools reflected a number of factors. One was, obviously, the safety of pupils being paramount. Secondly, there was the speed with which we believed we could remediate most cases and, thirdly, the capacity and capability in estate management within the education sector. I am not an expert on leisure centres, but I assume that many will have dedicated expertise or have access to it.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, can the Minister enlighten us as to whether the Government have looked at whether specialist classrooms have been taken out as a result of this, and what effect that will have on the curriculum? For instance, science labs would be an obvious example. Also, in the creative subjects, if you have lost a theatre or an arts room where you were doing ceramics, you cannot complete the course. If the Government are finding this out, what process do they have to try to get some of that information in and, if they cannot do that, what arrangements will they make for people taking those exams?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

We have very good information on those issues. The noble Lord is right: it is extremely important that we establish that, and the Secretary of State was extremely clear in taking this decision that our operational response to support schools, which have been presented with a difficult decision at a difficult time in the school year, should be really well supported. For every school, we have a dedicated caseworker who co-ordinates all the strands of work that are going on to mitigate the RAAC. Then every school has a project director who is a technical expert; they will visit the school and work out with it the quickest mitigation plan. We have access to specialist classrooms and temporary classrooms for science. We have worked with the utility companies to ensure that the necessary energy, water and so on can be accessed, but there are some difficult cases. I am going on Monday to see a special school for children with profound disabilities. There are very significant requirements to make sure that those children also get access to the best education possible.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, RAAC was actually a popular building material in Europe and North America, Australia, New Zealand and Mexico, yet those areas do not seem to have had the same kind of problems. The Financial Times quoted the head of engineering at the University of Alabama, who helped to bring the product to the US in the 1980s, as saying that there seemed to be

“specific issues in the UK … with design, production and construction”.

Clearly, we are going to see a large amount of new buildings coming into schools, while there have been systemic problems in the long-term past. Is the Minister confident that the buildings coming in to replace them will be adequate and reliable for the long term? What is the Government’s standard length of building life when constructing a new school?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As the noble Baroness says, there have been suggestions—I think they are no more than suggestions and that it is a hypothesis—that what I call the recipe, which is probably not a very technical term for its technical specifications, for the RAAC that was manufactured in this country was potentially slightly different to those in other countries or that the installation of it was. There are questions about whether the overlap at the ends of the planks has been sufficient in all cases, but I would stress that those are just hypotheses as to why we face these problems.

The other issue is, genuinely, that we have been extremely proactive. We have spent the last 18 months working with schools. We were made aware in 2018 of the first plank failing at a school. Guidance was produced at that time and it has been updated regularly since. We have engaged with every school—98.6% of responsible bodies and schools in the country—to understand whether they have RAAC in their buildings, how they are managing it and whether they were mitigating the risk. It is through that proactive work that we identified these cases. On the design and production standards, we have been working closely with our chief scientific adviser in the department, who in turn has been working across government with CSAs in other departments, to ensure that our research and understanding of this building material and others is as high quality as it can be.

Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill

Baroness Barran Excerpts

3rd reading
Tuesday 12th September 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Barran]

That the Bill do now pass.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to express to your Lordships how delighted I am that the Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill is finalising its passage through this House. This Bill is a significant moment in transforming access to post-18 education and skills as the next step toward the introduction of the lifelong loan entitlement.

I thank noble Lords for their valuable scrutiny and input throughout the Bill’s passage in this place. I express my particular thanks to Members on the Front Benches, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Twycross, Lady Wilcox of Newport, Lady Thornton and Lady Garden of Frognal, and the noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Addington, for their positive engagement and overall support for the principles behind the Bill, as well as for their thoughtful scrutiny and constructive contributions. The debates have been engaging and we have benefited significantly from the deep expertise in this House.

I pay particular thanks to those former Education Ministers and Secretaries of State who provided us with their insight. They include the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and my noble friends Lord Willetts and Lord Johnson of Marylebone.

I thank the many other noble Lords who took part in the debates and who have a wealth of knowledge across higher and further education, including honorary fellows, visiting professors and members of many of this country’s brilliant universities and colleges. I am also grateful to those leaders in universities and colleges who shared their insights with me about the potential for the Bill, the learning from the pilots and what is needed to make the Bill have a material impact once it becomes law.

Life Skills and Citizenship

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, on securing the debate and thank all noble Lords for their brief but pertinent and thoughtful contributions.

Like every noble Lord who has spoken today, we want pupils to leave school prepared for further study, work and other aspects of adult life. That is why every state-funded school has a duty to offer a curriculum which is broad and balanced, which promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils, and which prepares them for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life. I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for his remarks on the important role of the family in all those aspects, alongside the school. I also thank him for raising awareness of the Living Well Together programme, which I have noted.

Subjects such as relationships, sex and health education and citizenship directly support the development of life skills. However, in the broad statutory framework, schools have considerable flexibility to organise the content and delivery of their curriculums. Schools can therefore reinforce personal development in other subjects, and through their whole-school policies and extracurricular enrichment offer, in a way that focuses on what their pupils need. From her experience in City and Guilds, the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, gave examples of subjects which were about one particular topic but gave skills in a number of other areas—that is exactly how the Government see the existing curriculum. That issue was also raised by the noble Lords, Lord Knight of Weymouth and Lord Hampton.

I turn to statutory relationships, sex and health education. This equips young people to manage their academic, personal and social lives in a positive way. Teaching in secondary schools develops knowledge about respectful relationships, including online, importantly, and develops pupils’ understanding of health and well-being, how to identify issues and where to seek help. The noble Lord, Lord Singh of Wimbledon, talked about the ethical principles that need to underpin some of these issues.

My noble friend Lord Farmer asked about the timing of the review of the RSHE curriculum. A public consultation is expected this autumn, with revised guidance being published in 2024, and an advisory panel is providing advice on what should be taught in RSHE and at what age. I can clarify for my noble friend that the Government firmly believe in the importance of religious education, which is why it remains compulsory for all state-funded schools at all key stages.

The citizenship curriculum is compulsory within the national curriculum at secondary school and prepares pupils to play a full and active part in society. It is organised around core content about democracy and the political system. The noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, and my noble friend Lady Lawlor both raised this. It enables pupils to understand their statutory rights, civic duties and responsibilities and to become the active citizens that your Lordships have described in their speeches today.

Other essential life skills such as financial literacy and media literacy are specifically included in citizenship education. My noble friends Lady Sater and Lord Sandhurst were among noble Lords who focused on the importance of financial literacy. I hope that the House knows that the Government feel that financial literacy is extremely important. It is covered in the national curriculum, within the maths curriculum at key stages 1 to 4 and within citizenship at key stages 3 and 4. That covers the functions and uses of money, including personal budgeting and money management. It also includes—unfortunately—taxes, debt and financial risk, as well as financial products. In the primary citizenship curriculum, pupils learn about where money comes from, how it can be used and how to save for the future.

Noble Lords did not particularly dwell on the importance of PE and sport within the curriculum, but the Government believe that it should be a core part of what every good school offers to pupils. It can help develop some of the essential personal qualities, such as resilience and the ability to work well as a team, which a number of your Lordships raised. That is why we have committed over £600 million over the next two years to fund high-quality PE and school sport in primary schools, with an additional £57 million up to March 2025 to support more sport outside school hours.

Noble Lords also touched on the importance of cultural education in developing life skills. That is why we are investing £115 million in music and the arts up to 2025, in addition to core school budgets. We have published a new music education plan and we will publish a cultural education plan in 2023 to support arts and heritage, working with DCMS and Arts Council England.

The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, was critical of the EBacc. However, one of the key elements of it, which I know many of your Lordships would agree with, is its emphasis on the importance of learning a foreign language, given how that equips students with the tools and the mindset to connect with people from different backgrounds—which the noble Lord, Lord Storey, raised—and giving them an appreciation of cultures, customs and history around the world.

I simply do not recognise the description given by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, of the National Citizen Service. It works very closely with and actively supports local grass-roots youth organisations, and in 2022 over 120,000 young people took part in its work, which is open to all 16 and 17 year-olds, with particular support available for the most disadvantaged. However, I would echo the recognition by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, of the important work of our uniformed youth organisations.

The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, asked about Ofsted’s assessment of citizenship and education. It looks at that in relation to both the quality of education and the school’s support for a pupil’s personal development, so at how a school prepares its pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of life in modern Britain, which many of your Lordships felt was extremely important.

I am left with some of the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Knight—I apologise if I misquote him—about how we can tweak or change the curriculum in a way to be able to fit in some of the life skills which your Lordships have alluded to this afternoon. I do not think that anyone in the Government disagrees with many of the aspirations with regard to life skills that were raised in the House today; the question is how we deliver them. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, put it very well when he gave the UNESCO definition of life skills but asked, “How do we prepare for those skills?”. Of course, the curriculum is an important part of that—although not the only part, as many of your Lordships recognised.

I point out to noble Lords who question our focus on a knowledge-rich curriculum that it is that curriculum which has delivered our extraordinarily successful creative industries and is delivering enormous innovation in technology, green skills and other areas. There are others in the House, including the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, who understand better than I do about how children learn, but my understanding is that without basic knowledge in fundamental subjects, children cannot access what the noble Lord, Lord Knight, described as the powerful knowledge. Therefore, I am concerned when I listen to the House suggest that we should take part of the knowledge-rich elements out of the curriculum and replace them with life skills, because we know what can happen if we do that. It is the deprived and disadvantaged students who will be told that they do not need to aspire or get academic qualifications, and that that is good enough for them. No one in this House wants to return to the soft bigotry of low expectations.

A Failure of Implementation (Children and Families Act 2014 Committee Report)

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, on securing this important debate on the Children and Families Act 2014. I also thank all your Lordships who carried out post-legislative scrutiny of the Act last year and all who contributed to the debate today. I join others in paying tribute to the noble Baroness and her work over many years to improve the outcomes for children who access children’s social care and the family courts. I also very much thank my noble and learned friend Lord Bellamy, who has reflected his commitment to this issue by being here in person to listen to your Lordships. To those noble Lords who are disappointed to get a Minister from the Department for Education, I say: you have two for the price of one.

As your Lordships have set out today, the Act took forward a range of commitments to improve services for vulnerable children and families. As we have heard in this afternoon’s short debate, it sought to support: children in the adoption and care systems; those affected by decisions of the family courts; those with special educational needs and disabilities; and families with their home and work life. Although those sound like solid policy objectives, all your Lordships brought to the debate the human issues and the absolute imperative to try to improve our response for children who do not have the benefits of stability and love as they start their lives.

With that in mind, I want to touch on the Government’s plans to reform children’s social care, which many of your Lordships raised. As the Committee is aware, earlier this year, in response to the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care and two other key reviews, the Government published an implementation strategy titled Stable Homes, Built on Love, which sets out how we plan to reform children’s social care. It sets out how we will help families overcome some of the challenges they face, keep our children safe, and make sure that children in care also have stable and loving homes and opportunities to fulfil their potential in their lives. I am glad that my noble friend Lady Wyld was brave enough to leave the section in her speech where she talked about the importance of understanding our responsibility in relation to our children and the importance of our supporting families to stay together within their limitations that she rightly raised.

Before I turn to the recommendations and the points your Lordships raised, there were a number of questions about whether we are confident that the approach we are taking to the reform of children’s social care will really deliver, in particular the test and review approach, which the right reverend Prelate raised and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, questioned. She raised the issue of funding for our reforms. Members of the post-legislative scrutiny committee understand better than most just how complicated it is to get this right on the ground. We believe that getting a balance between testing robustly and going as fast as we can—without going too fast—is the right approach. I would be happy to meet the noble Baroness again to talk about the unique child identifier; we met earlier but I am more than happy to meet with her again.

The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, asked about what progress we have made on the special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision improvement plan—less simply named than the elegant Children and Families Act—since March 2023. We have secured funding since then to design and test the proposals set out in the improvement plan and have identified local authorities in every region that will test many of the measures. They will start their work this autumn.

This ties into some of the questions from the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, in particular on the national frameworks being ready by the end of the year. We are still confident about that. We will respond this month to the consultation she referred to. I hope she will acknowledge the progress the Government have made on local authorities judged inadequate in relation to children’s social care. I share her deep unease at the thought of what that looks like on the ground and feels like for vulnerable children in receipt of services, but I hope she acknowledges that our strategy to date is already working. We very much believe that this new approach will also build on it. Finally, we will publish on kinship care by year end. If I have not covered any of her points, I am happy to follow up in writing.

I will update on progress against the committee’s recommendations. I heard disappointment from a number of your Lordships that there was no earlier post-legislative scrutiny of the Act. The Government found the recommendations made by the committee and the depth of the work it carried out extremely helpful, but I will move on to some of the practical issues for the future that noble Lords raised.

We published our adoption strategy in July 2021 and in March 2022 we announced that we would invest £160 million over the next three years to deliver it, including £5 million to improve the way in which we match children with families.

The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, quite rightly raised the issue of improving the response for children from ethnic-minority backgrounds and asked how we are addressing racial disparities in the adoption system. I am pleased to inform the Committee that the number of minority-ethnic adopters has risen from 400 in 2020 to 698 in 2023 as part of our recruitment campaign, You Can Adopt.

We are also working with regional adoption agency leaders, who have made a commitment to develop an overarching strategy to address equality and diversity issues. Statistics on ethnic-minority children waiting for adoption are published quarterly, and the latest figures show an average of 10 months from the court granting a placement order. The noble Baroness is right to raise the issue until we can bring that delay down substantially.

Alongside that, since 2015 we have made £300 million available through the adoption support fund for therapeutic services for over 44,000 children, young people and their families. My noble friend Lady Wyld stressed quite rightly the importance of that mental health support and the unpredictability about how long one might need it for.

On the family courts and family justice, it is a real priority for the Government to address the delays in the family courts, which many of your Lordships mentioned. My department has recently invested an additional £10 million to test new initiatives to try to speed up the process. I know that colleagues in the Ministry of Justice are convening a conference with local family justice boards so that they can look together at how we tackle delays in the family courts.

The committee was very clear about the importance of data sharing and data collection—the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, very much stressed that point. My department has invested more than £2.2 million to improve family justice pre-proceedings practice and data collection. I know that the Ministry of Justice is also investing in improved data collection so that we can give local family justice boards not just their own data but data from others so that they can compare, understand and improve their performance relative to others.

The noble Lord, Lord Bach, was very eloquent on the issue of private family law disputes and some of the problems that we and, more importantly, families and children are facing in that area. In March, the Ministry of Justice published a consultation so that we could support the earlier resolution of private law family disputes. The word “early” came up in many of your Lordships’ remarks. As the right reverend Prelate touched on, we are considering our response, particularly in relation to mediation, and the whole question of early legal advice is also under consideration.

I thank my noble friend Lord Farmer for his work on family hubs, his insights into the need for early legal advice and his explanation of the Norwegian and Australian approaches. He also raised the important issue of joint work between the family courts and family hubs and between my noble and learned friend Lord Bellamy and me. I will make sure that we can follow up that conversation, if that would be helpful to my noble friend.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Tyler and Lady Wilcox, raised the critical issues around presumption of parental involvement. We will review that before the end of the year.

My noble friend Lady Wyld raised the issues of strengthening and enhancing the voice of children during proceedings. This is a core aim of a new approach to applications for child arrangement orders and other private family law proceedings. Your Lordships already referred to the pilots running in Dorset and north Wales and we really want to draw on this experience more widely. Of course, although the pilot will not be reviewed until January 2025, we want to learn as we go along and emphasise a non-adversarial approach.

We absolutely agree that better information for parents is needed and that we need better connectivity between all parts of the family justice system.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, raised the important issue of kinship care. As I said earlier, we will be publishing our kinship care strategy by the end of 2023. We have already made progress, working with the charity Kinship to deliver high-quality support across England. Like the noble Baroness opposite, we absolutely recognise—and I express our gratitude to—those in families who support other family members. We want kinship carers to get the financial help that they are entitled to. That is why we have extended the adoption support fund to cover children under special guardianship and child arrangement orders. As the noble Baroness mentioned, the Ministry of Justice extended legal aid entitlements to prospective guardians making applications for special guardianship orders in private family law proceedings. We are also committed to establishing a training and support offer for all kinship carers and have committed £45 million to deliver the Families First for Children pathfinder and family network pilots, which will promote the use of family group decision-making, as well as test the impact of family network support packages.

My noble friends Lady Wyld and Lord Farmer raised important issues, as did other noble Lords, in relation to mental health support for children, particularly the join-up between different government departments. The Department for Education is working with health partners across government, including, obviously, the Department for Health and Social Care, but also NHS England, to consider how we can better work together to deliver social care and health services for children with the most complex needs. In Stable Homes, Built on Love, one of our six key missions for care leavers in particular was that, by 2027, we would reduce the disparities in the long-term mental and physical outcomes of care-experienced people and the activity to support that. I will happily write to my noble friend Lady Wyld to set out the pathway.

I always feel that something happens with the clock whenever I stand up to speak. If I may, on some of the comments in relation to employment rights, I will, with my noble friend’s permission, set out some of the points in writing rather than overrun even more than I already have.

There are clearly areas where we are taking forward recommendations from the committee. There are others where we absolutely share the committee’s aspirations in relation to vulnerable children, the family justice system and support for families, including those with children who have special education needs, but where our strategy and approach are slightly different from what the committee recommended. Our aspiration is very much the same.

I thank the noble Baroness and all noble Lords for contributing to this important debate and for the valuable scrutiny that they brought to the Bill. As my noble friend Lady Wyld said, our commitment to vulnerable children happily transcends party-political interests. I know that I can speak both for myself and my noble and learned friend Lord Bellamy in saying that we look forward to working across the House on these important issues.

Teacher Shortages

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of teacher shortages in schools in England, and what plans they have to address the issue.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, there are nearly 468,400 full-time equivalent teachers in state-funded schools in England, 27,000 more than in 2010 and the highest number since the school workforce census began. In July, the Government fully accepted the School Teachers’ Review Body’s pay recommendations, giving teachers and leaders the highest pay award in over 30 years—6.5%. This is a competitive salary and will help us to build on the record numbers of teachers in our schools.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

My Lords, on Monday we discussed the literally crumbling school estate and, today, the shockingly high teacher shortages. It seems that the entire school system is creaking at the seams, with our children paying the price. Almost one in 10 of the total teacher workforce in England resigned last year: 40,000 teachers left the profession and 4,000 retired. There are shortages across the board including in maths, science, modern languages, English, business studies and DT. Does the Minister have a plan and timetable to address these shortages?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

In mentioning the number of people leaving the profession, the noble Baroness omitted to mention the number entering the profession last year. There were 48,000 entrants, including 16,700 returning to the profession. I remind the House that the vacancy rate for teachers is 2.8%, which remains extremely low. However, I recognise that there are shortages in certain subjects and in certain parts of the country, which is why we are targeting our bursaries on them. I remind the noble Baroness that we should be proud in this country that the work of our teachers has resulted in us rising up the international rankings in primary reading, from 8th in 2016 to 4th in 2021—the highest in the western world.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the number of teacher vacancies has doubled in two years. The number of students wanting to go into teaching has declined by 79%. We then have the issue of specialist subjects; for example, there are 400 schools where there is no qualified physics teacher. Increasingly, we see our children being taught by supply teachers, which is not the best way to teach young people. How have we managed to get into such a situation? Did we not see this coming, and should we not have put together a plan to avert this crisis?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

First, I do not accept that it is a crisis. Secondly, if the noble Lord looks at the long-term numbers on this, in subjects such as mathematics, which is raised frequently in the House, in 2014-15 we had 75.8% specialist teachers. That is now 78.6%. There are subjects like physics where it has gone down slightly, but this has been a long-term issue, and I thank our teachers and leaders for the work they do to make our schools as good as they are.

[Lord Carrington (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register as a trustee of a large state secondary school in High Wycombe. What consideration is being given to extending the area covered by the London fringe allowance, given the increasing challenges of teacher recruitment in urban areas outside of London, particularly areas like High Wycombe?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am very happy to take the noble Lord’s point back to the department. I am aware that teacher mobility is much greater in London than in some other parts of the country. I appreciate that that represents challenges for schools, but I will take his specific point back.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

In 2018, the Minister’s own department published an analysis of why teachers were leaving the profession. Two of the reasons were being overworked and a feeling that they were unloved. This afternoon, she paid tribute to the profession for their achievements, which I welcome, but does she really think that the intemperate remarks of the Secretary of State yesterday give confidence to teachers, headteachers and schools that Ministers really value what they do?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am aware that the Secretary of State has apologised for her remarks. Working closely with her and my right honourable friend the Minister for School Standards, I can absolutely assure the House that we barely have a conversation where we do not express our gratitude to teachers and school leaders. We take workload very seriously and are continuing to work with the unions on that following the pay agreement.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, on the subject of intemperate behaviour, does my noble friend share my disgust that the Labour Party put out a message that the Prime Minister did not care about the safety of our children in schools? On issues such as the ones she has dealt with so well, we do not need people making party political points.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think the serious point here is that there is a serious situation in the handful of schools where we have had to intervene on the concrete. Of course, it could not be more inaccurate and unhelpful to criticise the Prime Minister personally in this regard.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that there is a particular problem with music teachers in schools, and that the shortage, coupled with the decline in people taking GSCE music, is really very worrying?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I know that the noble Lord has worked very hard in this area. We still have 81.1% of music lessons being delivered by quality—qualified; I am sure they are all quality—music teachers. That is down, as the noble Lord says, from 87.7% in 2014-15. I am delighted that the noble Lord is meeting with the Minister for School Standards to progress ideas on how we can encourage more children to be able to study music in school.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, in the last academic year, 94,900 children were listed as missing from education. The recruitment and retention of teachers is hugely important, but so is that of child welfare officers. Will the Minister recommit to the recruitment and retention of those? The issue of children missing from education has been much more prevalent since Covid, and they are vital in tackling that long-term problem.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend makes an important point. We are extremely concerned about the specific issue of children missing from education and, more broadly, about the impact that Covid has had on school attendance. Yesterday, the Secretary of State and the Minister for School Standards met the Attendance Action Alliance, trying to address exactly these issues and learning from best practice around the country.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, given the shortage that we heard about earlier of specialist teachers in subjects such as physics, what is the department able to do to broker partnerships with independent schools where teachers are available perhaps to enable pupils to study these subjects remotely so that they can gain the qualifications they want and enter the professions where these roles are so badly needed?

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[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a good point. We are extremely supportive of partnerships between independent schools and state-funded schools. That cuts across a wide range of areas, of which specialist teaching is just one. What I hear from independent schools when I talk to them about this issue is that it is very much a two-way street. It is not just about independent schools sharing their resources with their neighbouring schools. It is very much in both directions, and both groups benefit.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, following on from the question from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, if, as is clearly the case, bursaries are an effective driver of teacher recruitment, will the Government reintroduce them for arts subjects, including art and design and music, where recruitment is now falling well short of their targets—less than 60% in both these subject areas?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

We always keep these issues under review, but our assessment at the moment is that the greatest pressures are in some regional areas—hence our levelling-up premiums—and in certain specific subjects, which I know the noble Earl is familiar with, which those are.

Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 5th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, many interesting points have been made about the amendments. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, and the other speakers that we would like to see this progress; it is a good idea. We want to improve access to education, which means having more and better information about fees and recognising the fact that they cannot just continue uncontrolled.

Another point I endorse is that which the Minister said in a previous speech on this subject: that the Government had a “phased approach” to this. I think consideration has been given to the many points that have been very intelligently raised; I am sure that the Minister is grateful for them.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, ahead of speaking to the amendments tabled, I thank all noble Lords across the Chamber for their contributions and the support they have expressed, both for this Bill and for the wider programme to transform opportunities to build qualifications over one’s lifetime. We heard from the noble Baronesses, Lady Garden and Lady Wilcox, about the importance of filling skills gaps so that the economy can grow. I thank both my noble friend Lord Willetts and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton, for their support and acknowledgement that the Bill will open new opportunities for learners.

Amendment 1, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, would define a credit as equivalent to “10 notional learning hours” in the Bill. The Government believe that it is crucial that the definitions of credits in the fee limit calculations align to standard practice in the sector—a point the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, made. The Government plan to set out this detail in regulations, rather than in primary legislation. The power to do so is provided for in new paragraph 1B of Schedule 2 to the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, introduced through Clause 1 of this Bill. Specifying learning hours in secondary rather than primary legislation means that providers that might choose to use a different number of learning hours per credit will simply have those courses treated as non-credit-bearing for fee limit purposes. If we took the approach of this amendment, those same providers could instead be considered in breach of the fee limit rules as a whole, with all the regulatory consequences that might bring. I am sure that is not what the noble Baroness intends with her amendment.

To be clear, as I think the noble Baroness’s amendment seeks to do, the Government do not intend to change the number of learning hours in a credit unless standards in the sector change. Learning hours are, and should continue to be, based on sector-led standards. Regulations on learning hours will follow the affirmative resolution procedure, so Parliament will get the opportunity to debate and formally approve any changes to those regulations.

Amendment 2 and Amendment 4, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, and the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, would require the Secretary of State to publish a review of the impact of the future Act on the progress of the rollout of the lifelong loan entitlement. Amendment 4 sets out that such a review must be published ahead of regulations being laid, and Amendment 2 would require the review to be presented to Parliament before the end of 2026. I thank my noble friend Lord Willetts for being the very eloquent messenger of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. We absolutely agree with her point and that made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. Amendment 2 specifies that the review should include the impact of the credit-based method on sharia-compliant loans and skills gaps.

I thank your Lordships for these amendments. The Government agree with the sentiment behind them, if such sentiment seeks the department’s commitment to monitoring the impact of these measures on the transformation of student finance under the lifelong loan entitlement. As your Lordships will be aware, the Government published an impact assessment alongside the Bill upon its introduction in the other place in February this year. Subsequently, the department published an updated and more extensive impact assessment of the lifelong loan entitlement, more broadly, alongside the publication of the consultation response in March. As was committed to in the impact assessment published in March, and in accordance with the Better Regulation Framework, a more detailed assessment of impacts will be published at the point when the Government lay the necessary secondary legislation to implement the lifelong loan entitlement fully. Therefore, the Government already intend to publish an updated impact assessment covering all aspects of the LLE, including the measures in the Bill, when regulations are laid.

In addition, parliamentary accountability mechanisms are already in place to review Acts of Parliament and the impact that they have on policy, including post-legislative scrutiny in particular, but not exclusively. There will be continued scrutiny of the LLE and the impact of these measures in both this place and the other place, including the role of the Education Select Committee in scrutinising the work of the department.

I will just rest for a moment on the point about post-legislative scrutiny, which I understand the noble Baronesses raised at the briefing yesterday. The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, will be aware that under the current government guidance and as proposed in 2008, between three to five years after an Act is passed it should be reviewed by the government department and Parliament. I can assure the noble Baroness that the Government will seek to work together with the relevant Select Committee in line with that guidance. However, while we recognise the importance of reviewing the implementation, it should be not just of this Act but of the reform of the system—and again, I can commit that the Government would like to see that review happen.

On the specific details within the amendments themselves, the timing requirement in Amendment 4 would require a review of the impact of the Bill on the rollout of the LLE prior to regulations being laid. I want to be clear here that any impact assessment which is conducted ahead of laying regulations would not be any different to the impact assessment currently available for the Bill and the consultation process. The next point at which impacts can be assessed is when the regulations are laid and, as stated, the Government are committed to publishing an impact assessment at that time.

Amendment 2 relates to the impact of the credit-based method on sharia-compliant loans and skills gaps. First, it is important to note that fee limits are set on courses, not on students. Therefore, the credit-based method—like the current fee limit system—will not depend on any characteristics of individual students. All students on a course will have their fees determined in line with the same fee limit rules, regardless of whether they use their LLE, self-fund, or use alternative loan arrangements.

I take this opportunity to assure your Lordships that the Government remain committed to delivering an alternative student finance product compatible with Islamic finance principles. The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, questioned why it was taking so long. I will not rehearse all the arguments, but I think she will remember that we touched on this in Committee, and it really is linked to the complexity of implementation. Every element that changes within the student finance systems needs to be mirrored for the alternative finance product, so it is a more complicated process and is contingent, and it has to follow the building of the systems which will allow us to deliver the new approach.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, questioned our commitment to being able to deliver by 2025. I remind the House of the measures that we set out in the letter that I sent your Lordships on this point following Grand Committee. I am pleased to confirm that in August, the Student Loans Company commenced delivery planning for alternative student finance, and it is supported on this phase of work by experts in Islamic finance, the Islamic Finance Council UK. I continue to meet on a quarterly basis with the Student Loans Company, the Islamic Finance Council UK, the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, Stephen Timms MP and representatives from the Islamic community to discuss the steps the Government are taking to deliver alternative student finance as swiftly as possible. Because of the delays there have been, we need to be as transparent as possible to make sure that we build or rebuild trust with the community that we really will deliver on this. I will provide a further update on alternative student finance later this year.

On skills gaps, in response to the LLE consultation, the Government made it clear that they will be taking a phased approach to modular funding, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, reminded the House, focusing on higher technical courses which have the clearest employer value. It is important to note that fee limits are not a means to address skills gaps; they are to ensure that students have affordable access to higher education provision provided by those higher education providers who receive government funding to support course delivery.

Finally, it is worth noting that the LLE policy is much wider than the provisions of the Bill, and as such, the reviews sought through these amendments would focus narrowly on fee limits and not on the impact of the LLE as a whole.

For these reasons, while the department understands the sentiment behind these amendments, they would either have unintended consequences or would be unnecessary, as there will already be mechanisms in place to provide such review. Therefore, the Government cannot accept these amendments and I hope that your Lordships will withdraw or not move them.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response and her reassurance, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, and the noble Lords, Lord Willetts and Lord Berkeley, for their comments on this short debate.

Of course, we are all committed to encouraging lifelong learning—it is essential for the well-being of the country and of individuals—and we all want to make sure that it is encouraged. As I say, we continue to express concern that adults may not prepared to take on loans for this but, obviously, only time will tell. I thank the Minister for her remarks about sharia finance, because it is a concern that Muslim students are deterred from entering higher education because they cannot get the means to do so. With that, I thank all your Lordships and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, we have here a fairly formidable list of things, all of them important. I want to focus on subsection (2)(j) in the new clause proposed by Amendment 3, which concerns:

“the financial sustainability of the tertiary education sector”.

We note that student fees have not gone up in all the years they have been there and that universities now face intense financial pressures. I note that, in Committee, the noble Lords, Lord Willetts and Lord Johnson, put forward a suggestion that student fees should rise with inflation; that has not gone further but I wonder whether the Minister could give some succour to university vice-chancellors, who are desperately worried about how on earth they can balance their books as costs go up but income does not.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I now turn to Amendment 3, tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Twycross, Lady Thornton and Lady Wilcox of Newport, and the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. This amendment would require the Secretary of State to publish an annual review of the operation of the provisions of this Act and specifies several areas that the review must cover, including learner uptake, access to higher education and financial sustainability in tertiary education more broadly.

As mentioned in relation to Amendments 2 and 4, the Government published an impact assessment upon the introduction of this Bill in February and an extensive impact assessment of the lifelong loan entitlement more broadly in March. The Government intend to publish an updated impact assessment covering all aspects of the LLE, including the measures in this Bill, when regulations are laid.

There will be continued scrutiny of the Bill and the LLE via existing parliamentary accountability mechanisms, for example post-legislative scrutiny and the Education Select Committee. In addition, there are already systems by which the areas mentioned in this amendment are monitored. I will take each area in turn to provide reassurances as to the existing work being undertaken in these areas and the mechanisms in place for review.

In relation to the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, about three to five years, I was speaking specifically about post-legislative scrutiny. It is in the Cabinet Office guidance from 2008—a period that I imagine the noble Baroness might support. Obviously, as I have just listed, there are a number of other mechanisms for scrutiny.

The amendment lists a number of areas relating to uptake. I want to take this opportunity to refer noble Lords to the publications produced by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, which will continue to include data on learner uptake and enrolments. For example, the Higher Education Statistics Agency website allows anyone to view information about higher education student enrolments broken down by year, level of study, higher education provider, subject, mode of study and more. High-level national results are also published in its annual statistical bulletin.

Regarding uptake of modular and part-time study, the Government expect to see a shift in how, what and when people study as the LLE provides support for alternatives to full-time study. For example, Universities UK polling in 2020 on modular study indicated that 82% of prospective students polled who were either unemployed, at risk of unemployment or looking to learn a new skill would be keen to study individual modules of a university degree.

Turning to access, tackling inequality in higher education is a central part of the Office for Students’ mission. The OfS shares information through its access and participation data dashboard, which allows it and the public, alongside registered universities and colleges, to identify gaps between groups. The OfS also maintains an equality of opportunity risk register, which identifies key sector-level risks to equality of opportunity in higher education and highlights the student groups that are most affected by each one.

The Government recognise the importance of supporting access, which is why maintenance loans will be available for all eligible courses and modules that require in-person attendance under the LLE, as will targeted support grants such as the disabled students’ allowance and the childcare grant. The impact assessment published alongside this Bill notes that learners who will particularly benefit from the introduction of fee limits for short courses and modules are more likely to be older, female, from ethnic minority backgrounds or from lower socioeconomic groups.