Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, even though I am speaking so far down the list, I am still unsure what the purpose is of the “Schools” part of this Bill. The Bill prioritises tinkering with governance, focusing on fixing a problem that does not exist—namely, stripping academies and free schools of the autonomy that has allowed so many of them to thrive—yet it avoids problems that need fixing, such as the huge challenges of discipline and behaviour in classrooms or the growing SEND crisis.

How can we scrutinise whether the Bill will fix problems when one of its key solutions is to impose a centralised new curriculum on academies before we know what that curriculum contains? It is a cart-before-horse move. The Government are not publishing their own curriculum review until the autumn, long after the Bill is due to pass. This curriculum review matters. When any Government outline what is taught, politicians reveal what they think schools are for. Are they places where we, as adults, pass on the historic body of canonic knowledge to new generations as an entitlement, regardless of background or cultural identity and notwithstanding important arguments about what constitutes the best that is known and thought? Or is this new curriculum a skills-based or therapeutic model in which knowledge is a mere second-order vehicle for the main goals of social mobility or social engineering?

Recent curriculum overhauls by devolved Governments should act as a warning. These allegedly child-centred experiments in interdisciplinarity—the Curriculum for Wales, and Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence, if ever there was a misnomer—have both led to a disastrous collapse in attainment.

I am not reassured by Professor Francis’s interim review, with its focus on educating pupils through a social justice lens to reflect contemporary diversities. It sounds like a recipe for an EDI curriculum on stilts. Recently, government advisor Professor Lee Elliot Major described school trips to

“museums, theatres and high-brow art galleries”

as elite “middle-class pursuits”, condescendingly suggesting more relevant art forms such as grime, rap and brass bands—what?—for us plebs. Of course, I am speculating based on my political preoccupations and prejudices, but I have no choice but to speculate because we do not know the facts. Should we not know before we impose that curriculum, with no opt-out, on all schools?

We always need to study the detail when Governments start issuing central diktats on what is taught. We need to guard against schools being used for politicised stunts or ideological manipulation. For example, was the Prime Minister’s TV announcement that every school must screen the drama “Adolescence” really educationally motivated, or even appropriate, especially as it will potentially mislead pupils about an important distinction between fact and fiction? I am equally critical of the previous Government’s carelessness in allowing another fact/fiction conflation to become classroom orthodoxy. Children of all ages have been taught as fact that a person can literally change from one sex to another, due partly to poorly worded, centralised 2019 RSHE guidance. Worse, parents’ reasonable concerns about such lesson content has led to them being chastised by teachers as bigots.

This leads to my final point. I am genuinely baffled about why the Bill uses such disproportionate, draconian regulatory powers to target home-schooling. Unlike others, I am less of a fan of home-schooling per se—it sometimes seems a bit odd—but I am more worried about the Bill undermining important principles and freedom. The state does not own children. It needs to be wary of overreach and mission creep into families, which is why, historically, parents have the right to choose how their children are educated.

I am afraid the Bill’s intrusive data collection and monitoring, which insultingly conflate home education with safeguarding risks, is a bit of a cheek. I remind noble Lords of the terrible safeguarding record of the state acting as a parent in children’s homes. I also mention the grooming gangs. I would not trust the state. I do trust parents. I hope that in this Bill we look very carefully at that undermining of parental autonomy.

“For Women Scotland” Supreme Court Ruling

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 24th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I very much hope that trans people will still believe that this is a country where they are welcome and where their rights and dignity are upheld; that is certainly the position in law. My noble friend raises an important point around hate crime. We are working with the Home Office to equalise the approach taken to hate crime to ensure that all of it, including that against trans people, is manifested as an aggravated offence in the way in which he is asking.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, this is not party political: Front-Benchers on all sides shunned across Benches. We were shamed, shunned and shushed for simply asserting women as adult human females. But can the Minister clarify and reassure that not one trans person’s rights have been removed by the Supreme Court? Does she agree that the problem is that, as legislators, we misled trans people and institutions about the law by encouraging the myths of gender ideology or gender identity being the same as biological sex? Will she ensure that the Civil Service is now properly informed so that we, as lawmakers, no longer peddle mistruths—and, in fact, misinformation—as we have been for some time?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I am sure that the Civil Service, we as lawmakers and all public bodies will look carefully at this ruling and the statutory code of practice that will be brought forward by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. I add that, the last time I was asked, I referred to a woman as an adult female from this Dispatch Box—that was before the ruling.

Schools: Special Educational Needs

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes a fair point about us being as clear as possible about which interventions are most effective for children, as well as the broader reform that is going to be necessary. That is why, to be fair to the noble Baroness, some of the work that was started under the change programme is identifying where there is good practice in relation to EHCPs. That is why, in the engagement that this Government have started, led by Christine Lenehan as the strategic adviser for special educational needs and disability, we are looking at what is working effectively and what we need to change. I take the noble Baroness’s point about how we more quickly identify what high-quality interventions are and how to spread that as quickly as possible across the system.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, we are in a situation where we need to get early assessment for those who need it, but, as the Minister will know from recent discussions on welfare and on the number of very young people particularly on sickness, how does she think we should deal with the problems of overdiagnosis and of pathologising and medicalising young people who are having difficult times but are actually keen, or their parents are keen, to get a label when it is not appropriate? It seems to me that that is skewing the figures and damaging the system.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Baroness identifies the crucial role of identifying early where there are difficulties or particular needs that children have. That needs to start really early, which is why the Government have improved both the training and the advice available to early years practitioners to be able to identify that. In the range of measures that I outlined in my initial Answer, there is more scope to identify and to start to take action early to prevent the early signs of some of those conditions, which can then become more serious, from escalating in the way in which the noble Baroness said. In relation to welfare reform, ensuring that we are preparing all children, particularly those with special educational needs and disabilities, for their future working lives—as I was able to see in a recent visit to New College Worcester for visually impaired young people, for example—is also incredibly important so that people can start their life able to work and achieve the best outcomes that they can throughout their lives.