Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bousted Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

The greatest regret for me, as someone who has been heavily involved in education, is that there was a very bad philosophy of taking education away from the support and encouragement of local authorities. There was the suggestion that they were not delivering well, so we created more and more academies in the hope that they would do well. Education needs to return to local places, and Amendments 198, 199 and 230 are trying to reorganise our education system so that it not only imparts knowledge but draws out knowledge from every child. When that happens, schools will thrive.

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak against Amendment 199, and I am following the very wise words of my noble friend Lady Morris in doing so. I just do not understand how this amendment would allow the management of school places and the good use of taxpayers’ money. Year 7 places in the capital, London, are expected to fall by 7.6% in the next five years and reception places by 6.4% in the next four years. That means that those schools will see altogether about a £45 million cut in their budget. That cannot just be left to chance.

There needs to be a way of managing the school population, ensuring that taxpayers’ money is well spent and that children are placed in schools that are viable and have enough pupils that they can be offered a full curriculum. We do not want the situation in Northern Ireland, where the grammar schools fill up and the secondary modern schools are left with completely variable roles year on year and are unable to offer a full curriculum or to give the children in Northern Ireland who most need it the education they deserve.

Amendment 199 would take market forces to a ridiculous level and would mean that the Government and the local area could not manage school places to ensure a broad and balanced curriculum for each child. That would be particularly the case with the new curriculum, which will be broader and more balanced and is long overdue. It is important to reject Amendment 199 because there needs to be a mechanism for the most vulnerable children.

I am afraid I have to disagree with the former chief inspector. Everyone knows there are certain schools that do not take the children with special educational needs that they should, and that other schools are then dumped on since they have to take far too many children with profound special needs, to the real detriment of those children and other pupils in the class. Everyone knows that in reality, that happens. The noble Lord, Lord Nash, is nodding—it is true.

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

Can the noble Baroness say at what point I said that there were schools which did not take children? I do not think I did.

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

If that was the case, let me apologise for saying that. They have got better at inclusion, and the noble Baroness is quite right to upbraid me on that.

However, it is really important that there is a power to direct schools to take pupils in order that they get an education. Secondly, we need a way of organising an admissions system which allows all children within the locality to have a viable education with a full, broad and balanced curriculum.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, some of the points the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, makes are important to consider. But let me remind the House that, over the years, Governments of various political persuasions have said how important it is that there is parental choice. They have encouraged parents to look at a school’s results, to read its prospectus, and to visit the school. Sometimes it is done by word of mouth. Sometimes those parents even look at how the children behave at the bus stop while they are waiting to go home of an evening.

I guarantee that nearly every single person sitting in this Chamber wanted the best possible school for their child. There were Members of different political parties who espoused strong views on this issue but, when it came to their own children, they often chose a school which was not in the local catchment area or was not the school the child was subscribed to go to. In some cases, they chose an independent or private school. The body politic has encouraged the notion of parental choice. We know that, as pupil numbers rise, this puts all sorts of pressures on schools and becomes very hard to deliver in all sorts of ways.

I am sorry to go on about Liverpool, but it is my home city and I learn lessons from it. I remember in the late 1960s and the 1970s, the then council decided to build two brand new state-of-the-art comprehensives: Paddington, in the inner city, and Netherley, in the north. They were built as 12-form entry schools. They had fantastic facilities: drama, you name it. The parents preferred the small secondary schools with three-form and four-form entry. Various Secretaries of State wrestled with this problem as the numbers dropped and dropped. I remember going to see Shirley Williams, then Secretary of State for Education, and saying, “Look, Paddington comprehensive is now only a two-form entry school. Why not make it into a tertiary college?” She said no, and I used to tease her about that decision. This is not an easy thing to do. We know that primary numbers are declining—the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, gave the figures. In Liverpool, we can already see that even so-called popular primary schools have spare capacity.

How do we sort this problem out? The answer is not to try to be the professor of admission numbers, chopping numbers off here and adding them there. Sadly, we have to do what we promised parents: we have to let them decide. The answer is not to say that we are going to make a particular school survive—as in the case of Paddington—by reducing the form entry, or, in some cases, closing a school so that children have to go to another particular school. That is not the answer at all.

I hate to say this—I never thought I would say this in my political career—but I think we have to let educational market forces take their course. If we believe in, and have promised parents, parental choice, we have to allow that. To say that we should cut the form entry—the PAN—of so-called popular schools is not the solution. Actually, there are academies that are not popular. Let us not think that all academy schools are going to gain from this. I know several academies—I will not name them—where numbers have dropped dramatically. Again, that is because of parental choice, and that is probably the right thing. So when it comes to this amendment, I will have to hold my nose but I think it is probably the right thing to do.

On Amendment 198, the noble Baroness, Lady Morris—as always—said what we on these Benches think. I say to my noble friend Lord Addington that I have never understood off-rolling. I can see children being taken off roll because their parents want to move or want to take them out of the school. I can see off-rolling when a pupil is permanently excluded from school. I can see off-rolling where a child has special educational needs which cannot be met at the school. But I cannot understand how schools were allowed to off-roll pupils for no particular reason at all. There are examples of where parents were given advice by schools which was not the right way to progress. I just think that off-rolling should not happen at all. In fact, I said to my noble friend Lord Addington, “Why do we need to review the practice? Isn’t the practice just not allowed, and we move on?” I look forward to the Minister’s reply.