Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Baroness Bousted Excerpts(1 week ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, with this reinstatement of her original Amendment 102. I speak as the chairman of an academy trust; I have faced the dead hand of the bureaucratic tidying-up exercise. To the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton: just last year, it was suggested that we restrict our PAN at two of our best schools, so that failing schools nearby could be kept going. The inconvenience of having to enact cuts to their own schools, faced by local authorities in particular, is such that it is much easier for them to go after another body that has to bear the financial burden.
I accept that the letter, which arrived amazingly at the 11th and a half hour last night, makes some attempt at compromise. If the Government were serious about protecting improving schools, however, they would go with the amendment that is being proposed.
I can tell your Lordships’ House how hard it is to improve previously failing schools. The Minister may be interested to know that failing schools already receive a huge subsidy in what is euphemistically called “lagged funding”. In the year following a falling roll, they receive the full amount that they were been paid in the previous year with more children. The opposite effect occurs for improving schools with rising rolls. So this year, we are educating nearly 240 children for free in my trust, which is nearly £1.5 to £2 million. Next year, that will be 300 children. The question, then, is how difficult does the noble Lord want to make it to improve previously failing schools?
Baroness Bousted (Lab)
My Lords, I stand to support the Government in their attempt to create a situation where there is an adequate regulator for school admissions. At a time of greatly falling rolls, particularly in primary, this is especially important, and even more so when there is going to be a much broader curriculum as a result of the curriculum assessment review. It will be important that all schools can teach this broad curriculum. To do so, we need to have children in those schools. As I said in Committee, the problem with schools that simply expand is that very good schools can be left unable to operate.
I also have a question for the Liberal Democrats on the opposite Benches: in Committee, they supported the opposition to the local authorities having a say as an admissions adjudicator. The last Lib Dem election manifesto of 2024 promised parents and the public that local authorities would be given the power and resources to act as strategic education authorities for their area. This included responsibility for place planning, exclusions and administering admissions, including in-year admissions and SEND functions. I simply ask whether that is still the Lib Dems’ position. If it is, will they be supporting the Government’s position?
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, on these Benches we share the concerns expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, about the rigidity of the Government’s approach to trying to control school uniform costs. Indeed, we would have been quite happy if he had wanted to bring back his previous amendment unchanged. We also warmly welcome the Government amendment in relation to children with allergies in school, and I echo the remarks made by others across the House to recognise the incredible work of the Benedict Blythe Foundation—in particular, Benedict’s mother Helen—that has culminated in this amendment today.
My Motion L1 simply supports the rights of parents and pupils to attend the school of their choice and get the best possible education in an area. We understand the financial pressures faced by schools that are dealing with falling rolls, but the way to address them is not by reducing choice, nor by cutting places in the most popular local schools. Furthermore, if the Government are to be successful in closing the disadvantage gap, which we all want to see, they will need these schools and should not be shrinking them.
In the letter that the Government sent to Peers last night, they set out the principles they intend to follow in the updated regulations and School Admissions Code. I accept that the Government have moved and have tried to clarify their position. It is a pity that this arrived so late and that there has been no time to discuss any of this with Ministers, despite having requested meetings since early February. I am very open to discussing further with Ministers but, as drafted, I do not think that the proposed wording is as watertight as the intent of my Motion. In particular, the language of “long-term sufficiency” seems to give more wriggle room than is needed. At this stage, it is also hard to see the point of the measures in the Bill, given the statement that we have just heard from the Government. The Bill’s own impact assessment is clear that it will limit the ability of good schools to grow. We are in a bit of a muddle of policy-making now, with a different position in the Bill, a different position in the letter, and a different position in the White Paper.
As long ago as the 2002 Labour Party conference, the former Prime Minister Tony Blair asked:
“Why shouldn’t there be a range of schools for parents to choose from? Why shouldn’t good schools expand or take over failing schools or form federations?”
This remains a relevant question today, more than 20 years on. I only wish that the Government would listen to the views of their former leader, whose reform laid such important foundations on which subsequent Governments have built, and which have contributed significantly to rising school standards. The fundamental principle that we have set out in earlier debates on school choice is a crucial one, and it should not be eroded.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Baroness Bousted Excerpts(1 month, 4 weeks ago)
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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.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Baroness Bousted Excerpts(2 months ago)
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Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
My Lords, regarding the amendments by my noble friend Lord Storey, research has shown no correlation between the pay of the CEOs of multi-academy trusts and the schools they have responsibility for. I hope the Minister can say whether there will be a mechanism to look at the pay of some of these highly paid officials and what responsibilities they have. There could be cases where people have responsibility for eight to 10 schools but get paid more than people with responsibility for higher numbers. That does not seem fair or right. I know it is late, but I thought it important that I raise this point on behalf of my noble friend.
Baroness Bousted (Lab)
It is really late, but I tabled a similar amendment to this in Committee. Unregulated CEO pay is becoming an ever greater problem in the sector. Last year the policy think tank EDSK called for mandatory CEO pay scales capped at £263,000, with fines for those who did not follow that. The National Governance Association has said that the growing gap between CEO pay and that of other senior leaders—and, I would also say, teachers—risks undermining the collaborative leadership essential to school improvement. I hope the Government will look at this serious problem, which demands action.
Sexual Harassment in Educational Settings
Baroness Bousted Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I have to say I am not sure about the specific toolkit that the noble Baroness references, but last year we produced new guidance in respect of relationships, sex and health education, and we will be supporting that with additional training and support for teachers.
Baroness Bousted (Lab)
My Lords, in 2017 the National Education Union published, with UK Feminista, a report on girls’ experiences of sexual harassment in schools, called “It’s Just Everywhere”. The report found that over a third of girls experienced sexual harassment at school, a quarter experienced unwanted physical touching of a sexual nature, and over a quarter of secondary teachers did not feel confident in tackling a sexist incident. Does the Minister therefore agree that the Government need to emphasise secondary teacher training to spot and tackle misogyny and that high-risk pupils should be sent on behavioural courses? These measures are absolutely necessary.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I agree with my noble friend. There are unacceptable levels of sexual harassment and abuse of girls within our schools and universities. That is why, as part of the violence against women and girls strategy published in December 2025, specific resources are made available in our schools—in particular, three pilot programmes to support RSHE teaching, to encourage healthy relationships and to tackle harmful sexual behaviour—as well as an innovation fund to enable us to work out the most effective methods of tackling this abhorrent activity.
Teachers: Music, Drama, Art and Design, and Dance
Baroness Bousted Excerpts(4 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I am sure that the noble Lord’s wife is doing an enormously important job in developing an interest in harping in the pupils whom she teaches. We need to ensure that we have qualified teachers with access to the support for their specialisms—which, for example, the Government aim to provide through the new national centre for arts and music education—to ensure that all children, not just fortunate children, have the opportunity to benefit from arts and music. That is what this Government are putting in place.
Baroness Bousted (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the recruitment of qualified teachers is clearly essential, and that the Government have made great strides in that the picture of recruitment looks much better this year than it has done in the past 10 years? Does she also agree that the retention of mid-career teachers is equally important? The report of the Teaching Commission, which I chair, entitled Shaping the Future of Education, revealed that it now takes 10 newly qualified teachers to replace every seven more experienced teachers who leave teaching before retirement. Does the Minister agree that this trend must be reversed if we are to maintain educational standards and a broad and balanced curriculum, including for the arts?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend is absolutely right, and I thank her for the work she has done to support teachers throughout her career and continues to do now with the work to which she alluded. We need not only to get teachers into the classroom but to keep them there. I am pleased that this Government’s investment in teachers, through pay as well as broader support in the classroom, has not only brought new teachers to the profession but reduced the number of them leaving it to one of the lowest ever levels.
Curriculum and Assessment Review
Baroness Bousted Excerpts(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord. I do not think there is very much I need to add to that.
Baroness Bousted (Lab)
My Lords, I very much welcome this new curriculum and its emphasis on widening the scope to engage more pupils. Does the Minister agree with me that when the Opposition talk about dumbing down and powerful knowledge, the fact is that the current curriculum fails to engage far too many pupils? There is a 20% persistence absence that rises to 35% for disadvantaged pupils and pupils with SEND. We need a rigorous, knowledge-based curriculum but one that addresses the interests, the aspirations and the subjects of a great variety of our pupils, who can see themselves in the curriculum, see the diversity, learn about the arts, financial education and media literacy, and be provided with the skills they will need in the 21st century.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend is absolutely right; we need students to have the deep knowledge that is necessary to succeed in the world, but we also need them to have the skills that the modern world demands of them. This new curriculum will deliver both and, in doing that, will engage more students, as my noble friend says, to achieve success, both for themselves and for the future of the country.
Youth Unemployment
Baroness Bousted Excerpts(5 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I am always pleased to hear the views of the Daily Telegraph on issues around young people’s employment. I hope that the Telegraph, as well as the noble Lords opposite, will get behind this Government’s efforts on the youth guarantee and on cutting the unacceptably large number of young people who are currently neither earning nor learning. On the Employment Rights Bill, the Government aim to protect employees from arbitrary dismissal, including those early in their careers. A statutory probation period will be introduced with light-touch standards for fair dismissal based on performance and stability, and that approach appropriately balances worker protections with the need for employers to assess new hires confidently.
Baroness Bousted (Lab)
Does the Minister agree that a major factor in the persistence of youth unemployment is that 32% of 16 year-olds failed to achieve a grade 4 in English and Maths at GCSE in 2024? Does she also agree that the ongoing curriculum and assessment review, led by Professor Becky Francis, must reunite knowledge and skills in the school curriculum—they are two sides of the same coin—and provide routes for pupils to remain in education or training as a foundation for their future working lives?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend is absolutely right that the opportunities that young people have throughout their lives are dependent on the standards, quality and success that they experience in schools. That is why we have already taken action to ensure that new routes are available for young people post-16—for example, through foundation apprenticeships—and why we have increased the support available to young people in colleges to get the qualifications in English and maths that are so important for them later in life. It is also why, through both Becky Francis’s curriculum and assessment review and the Government’s post-16 skills and education White Paper, we will have more to say about how we ensure that there are clear, successful routes for all our young people post-16.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Baroness Bousted Excerpts(6 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, where did it all go wrong? I can look back to those halcyon days where, in primary schools, there were two lessons of PE a week timetabled, and PE covered a whole range of activities, from gym work to games and swimming—children regularly left school being able to swim 20 metres —and after-school sports competitions. In secondary schools, sport was thriving. As we have heard, that was beneficial for the well-being of children and young people and important for their health, with regards to obesity, and for teamwork, working together and understanding each other.
This is not something that can be laid just at the hands of the present Government. In fact, the present Government, in a former iteration, did a great deal of work on sport. People will think that I am a member of his fan club, but the Blair Government brought in some of the most radical proposals on sport that this country has ever seen. Whether it was a mixture of Covid, the recession or whatever, it all suddenly—
Baroness Bousted (Lab)
I am sorry, but I have to interject here to say that the narrowing of the curriculum and the teacher supply crisis was a direct result of austerity, teacher pay falling by 12% in real terms and chronic underfunding of schools, all of which were initiated during the coalition and continued until 2024.
Children absolutely deserve a rich and balanced curriculum, but that becomes much more difficult if they are not being taught by teachers qualified in the subject area but by unqualified teachers. The teacher supply crisis started and became acute during the previous Government. When we have this debate, we cannot ignore the practical consequences of chronic underfunding, chronic undermining of the profession and, from the start of the coalition, a policy of attacking teachers and leaders as being responsible for falling school standards.
There was also a deliberate narrowing of the curriculum through the EBacc to a range of academic subjects, which has meant a precipitous decline in arts and drama and a shorting of the experience that children get in physical education.
I am sorry, but I must put all that on the record. My friend the noble Lord is rightly asking these questions but he is coming up with a different set of conclusions.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, before the noble Lord continues, I do not recognise, luckily, the dystopian view that he has given. The primary school that both my children were at and the school where I now teach are full for before-school, lunchtime and after-school activities. I put on record in this Chamber that my daughter’s girls team won the under-15 Hackney cup.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Baroness Bousted Excerpts(6 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Bousted (Lab)
My Lords, I oppose Amendment 452, which has just been put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, which would limit local authorities’ interventions in admissions to situations where the admissions authority had failed to meet its admissions obligations or had behaved improperly.
Local authorities have a statutory responsibility under Section 14 of the Education Act 1996 to ensure that enough school places are available in their area for every child of compulsory school age. The provision in the Bill to create a duty on schools to co-operate with local authorities to enable them to carry out their place-planning duties as required by law and to co-operate on SEND inclusion and school admissions is entirely necessary and reasonable. It ends the nonsense of academies being allowed to set their own pupil numbers without regard to the number of pupils in the catchment area.
Multi-academy trusts are no longer outliers; they run over 46% of primary schools and 83% of secondary schools. The Government have a duty to ensure that local authorities, on which the legal requirement to provide school places falls, are able to do so. This must require local authorities and multi-academy trusts to work together to ensure that place planning is done effectively and cost-effectively. That is particularly important now, as we are experiencing a decline in the birth rate which is affecting primary places and will affect secondary places. The sustained rise we have seen in pupil numbers since the early 2010s has now been reversed. The number of pupils in England’s school system overall decreased in January, dropping by more than 59,000. Primary numbers have been falling for several years now, but secondary numbers are due to peak in 2027 before falling as the population bulge moves out of compulsory education.
These pupil demographics require co-ordinated place planning. We cannot have a situation where local authorities are legally responsible for providing places for pupils but have no powers to direct the majority of schools in their area, which are academies, to co-operate on place planning, admissions and exclusions. We cannot leave local authorities with the responsibility, but without the authority, to require co-operation on these legal duties.
Lord Nash (Con)
My Lords, it is a delight to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted. She may be pleased to hear that I have advised my noble friend on the correct pronunciation of her name.
I did not hear very well when we were here last week, but the word “devil” was mentioned. Having checked Hansard, I see that the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, seemed to think that when we had some dealings in the Department for Education, I thought she was doing the devil’s work in working for unions. I could not possibly think that—I always found her the most charming person to deal with—and, as opposed to the devil’s work, I commend the unions on doing what seems to me the Lord’s work in their campaign on smartphones. I look forward to talking to them about that. I welcome the noble Baroness back from her sojourn in the Arctic this summer, and I hope she is finding the atmosphere in the Labour Party at the moment somewhat less glacial than she found it there—although in the current circumstances, maybe not very much so.
I rise to support the amendments in the names of my noble friends Lady Barran and Lord Agnew. Life in the real world teaches one that the benefits of competition are that strong organisations survive and expand, and weak ones demise. While I accept that there may be remote communities where the availability of these schools is essential, as an overriding policy in schools, allowing competition has been proven to be a good thing. Take for instance the London Academy of Excellence in Stratford, which resulted in a rising tide lifting all boats. Apart from its own excellent performance, it has had a dramatic effect on the performance of the other sixth forms in the area. Good schools must be allowed to expand. To not allow this is to deprive children of their benefits, and they certainly should not be forced to shrink.
Turning to my noble friend Lord Agnew’s amendment, local authorities clearly have a conflict of interest under the proposed admission provisions. Surely there must be a right of appeal, as set out in his amendment. I also support my noble friend Lady Barran’s Amendment 502YC, as highly performing schools should be given the freedom her amendment asks for.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Baroness Bousted Excerpts(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)
My Lords, I was not going to intervene in this debate, because I find it quite difficult. I have some sympathy with the amendment that has just been moved, but my position is that teachers should have qualified teacher status. I have not got involved in the fringes of the debate because I think it is genuinely difficult to draw dividing lines. If I have to come down on one side or the other, I come down on the side of people having qualified teacher status. I strongly disapproved of the actions of the previous Government in taking away that requirement for either teachers in academies or for all teachers, I cannot recall.
I have always had sympathy with that range of subjects where, in my heart, I know that many people without QTS—instructor status or whatever—but with that practical experience could motivate children and deliver the curriculum, possibly to a higher standard and more effectively than other teachers. I know from experience as a teacher that very often what happens is that the teacher who is not a teacher of those subjects but who has qualified teacher status ends up teaching. I have sympathy with that and very much hope that, in the understanding that I think the Government have expressed, and in their promise to bring forward further information, some flexibility can be brought back around this arrangement of subjects. I am not talking about exceptions, because I do not want to go down that route; I am talking about an acknowledgement that we do not want to waste the talents of people who have got something to offer to our children. It would be a move that I would very much welcome.
Baroness Bousted (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak in particular to Amendments 436B, 436C, 437 and 437A. Before I became a union leader, doing the work of the devil, according to the noble Lord, Lord Nash, I was a teacher. I worked in university departments of education for over 10 years in York, Liverpool and London, and a big part of that job was to give teachers initial teacher training at MA level and at PhD and research level. I know that no education system can exceed the quality of its teachers and that the value of that training was essential.
It is not enough that teachers just have very good subject knowledge. They also need to understand professional concerns such as effective pedagogy. They need to learn about behaviour and safeguarding. In fact, initial teacher training is now completely transformed. The majority of it takes place in schools. There are various routes into QTS. It is much easier to work towards QTS while you are training or while you are a classroom assistant. Various Governments over a period of years have made the routes into initial teacher training and qualified teacher status much better. It is an important professional qualification which underpins not only the status of the profession but the quality of the education which children are getting.
I would also add that this is a social justice issue, I think, because the fact is that the children who most need teachers who are qualified in the subjects they are teaching are, at the moment, the least likely to get them. DfE evidence to the STRB in 2025 shows clearly that pupils in schools with the highest percentage of pupil premium are more likely than other pupils to be taught by unqualified teachers and non-specialists. They receive a narrower curriculum than other pupils, are less likely to be offered physics as a subject option, and are more likely to be taught by unqualified teachers and teachers teaching outside of their subject area. That is why, over the course of last year, I established and chaired the independent Teaching Commission, whose report, Shaping the Future of Teaching, examines the causes of the teacher supply crisis, which has been two decades in the making—in particular, its effects on pupils whose start in life is disadvantaged, who most need qualified teachers to compensate for the 40% disadvantage gap that is created by poverty before they start school.