Creative and Performing Arts Teaching Grants

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Absolutely I do, which is why, in the strategic priorities grant, we have focused on at least maintaining the funding that goes towards access and participation, including for students going into creative and performing arts subjects. This is why, as a Government, as part of the support of the creative areas, we have additionally invested in, for example, a wider spread of awareness of careers in the sector. In fact, there is a £9 million UK-wide creative careers service.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, given that the creative industries are one of the country’s most productive money earners, is it not perverse to cut grants to young people hoping to bring their skills and talents to the world of work? I was recently up at the Edinburgh Fringe, where brilliant young musicians, actors and dancers often to have to fund themselves, so tight are the purse strings for funds, yet they give such pleasure. How do the Government to propose to encourage more young people into these creative industries with these cuts?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

To be clear, this is not a cut of a grant to students; this is a cut of £130 per student to the institutions that run these courses. This is partly in order to safeguard, for example, the £20 million funding that goes to Uni Connect to open up opportunities to get into higher education for more young people. It goes alongside the expansion of other ways to develop skills in this area, such as higher technical qualifications, creative skills bootcamps and the lifelong learning entitlement, all of which provide support and opportunities for young people and people throughout their lives to get into the creative sector.

Skills, Vocational Training, and Further and Higher Education

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, for this debate and her masterly opening remarks. It is most welcome that this Government have realised how harmful has been the purely academic emphasis of the previous Government, which alienated the many young people whose skills and interests lie in practical, vocational subjects. It generated a harmful waste of potential in the skill areas which the country desperately needs: engineering, construction, hospitality, as well as the arts, music, dance—which the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, spoke about—and arts and craft skills. Some of those historic crafts have become endangered, as detailed by the Heritage Crafts Association, of which I have the privilege of being a vice-patron. Many of these crafts have regional associations and generate jobs and pride in their localities, as well as producing practical and beautiful artefacts which can be life-enhancing for those who have been marginalised by their formal schooling. Can the Minister say what measures are being taken to ensure that there are trained teachers in the vocational areas to ensure that all children find something at school to enthuse them?

We should also be mindful of speakers of other languages at a time when ESOL—English for speakers of other languages—provision has become fragmented for over 5 million people in England and Wales who do not have English as a first language. Time was when such classes were free and opened opportunities to many people to use their skills and talents in this country. Sadly, those days have gone, but community cohesion is increasingly important as we see divisions in race and religion becoming violent in some of our communities. Surely ensuring that we all have a common language should be given a high priority. Can the Minister say what provision is made available for ESOL classes to enable better integration of our citizens who struggle to speak good English?

As a former chair of the Cadet Health Check Team, I strongly support the words of the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, in pointing out the value of the cadet forces, which give life-changing opportunities to so many young people. I worked for City & Guilds for some 20 years on vocational qualifications, which opened my eyes to the amazing work of further education colleges, which are too often overlooked. One problem is that nearly all politicians and civil servants have taken the university route and are reluctant to give due attention and funding to a sector with which they have no connections and see as not so worthy. Yet FE carries the hopes and aspirations of millions of young people, and indeed of adults seeking to improve or change their qualifications and chances in life.

For many disadvantaged young people and those with learning disabilities, the prospect of going away to university is daunting and financially unrealistic, whereas their local college is accessible. Colleges offer such a wide range of programmes of learning, from basic skills through to occupational competence and indeed apprenticeships and degrees. Yet their staff are still underpaid and the colleges underfunded. What do the Government propose to do to support and enhance the vital work of further education colleges, which would also be a key factor in solving the NEETs problem?

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, at speaker 32, it is already quite challenging to find something new to say, and my sympathy goes out to the speakers towards the end of this debate. I am sure we will be tolerant if they find themselves repeating something that has already been said.

I very much welcome the maiden speeches today of my noble friend Lord Mohammed and the noble Lord, Lord Biggar. They will both bring great talents and skills to this House, and we look forward very much to hearing them speak in future. I have to say that in the heady days of the coalition Government, I was the education Whip to the noble Lords, Lord Hill, Lord Nash and Lord Agnew. I am delighted to see that I did not manage to put them all off education entirely, and to see them back speaking on this Bill.

A Bill calling itself “Children’s Wellbeing” should surely merit the support of all of us, but there are elements in the Bill which the Government have included which are going to be contentious. I mention to start with, in Clause 4, the consistent identifier. I thought that this was proposed many, many years ago. The simplest solution obviously seemed to be the NHS number, which is given to every child at their birth, which would follow them to school and enable local authorities to be mindful of children who disappeared off their radar. The lack of a consistent identifier across services impedes joined-up and responsive support. It makes it much harder to match records and share information confidently and safeguard children who are in touch with multiple services. It is possible that migrant or asylum or Traveller children may not have that number, but they jolly well should do, because they will have as much need as anyone else of healthcare and education to give them a better start in life than they had at the beginning.

My noble friends will be talking about different areas where we have concerns, but I raise the issue of the national pay rules, which will be extended to academies, many of which have different pay and conditions. We argue strongly that teachers in further education colleges should have at least as good pay and conditions as those in schools. FE teachers have demanding schedules and wide-ranging responsibilities. For too long, they have been underpaid and, indeed, overlooked, as they appear to be in this Bill.

We would like to see stronger partnerships between colleges and schools, because many 14 to 16 year-olds move to colleges if they find that schools do not meet their needs and their choice of study is better catered for in colleges. Some have been excluded from schools, some are home-educated but find colleges can enhance their homeschooling, and there are any number of those with special educational needs and disabilities and those who have become disengaged from mainstream education who find their way to college.

FE has always welcomed practitioners. I entirely endorse the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, in saying that the shortage of practitioners of practical subjects means that insisting that they have a teaching qualification will be incredibly negative. It will make recruitment even more difficult in subjects where we really need those skills to be taught—subjects which will be of benefit to the economy. What steps will the Government take to improve pay and conditions for further education staff? Can the Minister assure us that FE staff will not have to have a teaching qualification if there is a shortage in their specialist subject and there is a great need for their skills?

My noble friends will talk more about home education, breakfast clubs and school uniforms. Like the curate’s egg, these provisions are good in parts.

However, it is difficult to have this debate without the curriculum review. Our House of Lords committee in the last Session found that the current curriculum was not fit for purpose: it did not prepare young people for life and work and state schools had often given up music, dance and drama—the creative arts—which are great contributors to the economy as well as great factors in children’s well-being. What is being done to provide all children with the possibility of excelling at something, especially those for whom the academic curriculum is challenging and a constant source of failure?

This is a wide-ranging Bill. With all the expertise in the debate today and in your Lordships’ House, I am sure we will give it a thorough going over and I hope that it leaves us in better shape, because our children deserve no less.

Campus Antisemitism in Britain: Community Security Trust Report

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Wednesday 12th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right that encampments have been enormously intimidating and that they have attracted external activists on to campuses, often in a very intimidating way. Universities have already been working hard to improve on the situation from 2023-24, when there were a number of pro-Palestine encampments—at one point, there were around 40 active encampments. Some universities have taken legal action in order to secure possession orders in legal cases. Those cases were helpful for other universities contemplating or in the middle of possession proceedings against similar student encampments. So far, in this academic year, 2024-25, protesters have not been able to establish any kind of encampment lasting more than a few hours. Universities appear to be learning a lot from last year’s experience, both in being able to de-escalate incidents where possible and, where necessary, taking formal action to prevent disruption to core activities, including teaching.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, we will hear from the Lib Dems next and then we will hear from the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, can the Minister say whether all universities have designated places of worship for Jewish students and what security arrangements they are expected to put in place to ensure that Jewish students can work in safety?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I am not in a position to say whether all universities do, although, as I have previously identified, we are providing support to the University Jewish Chaplaincy to support student welfare on campuses. However, I think that is a fair question and one that I hope vice-chancellors will reflect on.