Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marks of Hale (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 175A. The Government and the Secretary of State for Education in particular have rightly been vocal in confronting antisemitism in education, but that commitment must extend beyond condemning violence or bans towards Jews. The Government cannot condemn violence and bans against Jewish people and then ban or close down their faith institutions.

The Government make no secret of the fact that Clause 37 consciously seeks to close down or entirely alter yeshivas. In their analysis of the Bill since its launch, the only faith community they ever mention is the strictly Orthodox Jewish one. The Bill leaves no lawful space for long-established religious institutions, which provide only religious instruction and operate alongside registered home education.

Yeshivas are safe and safeguarded institutions. They are not schools. They do not provide academic education and cannot be turned into schools without destroying their religious purpose. They exist to inculcate a lived faith. That some noble Lords may raise an eyebrow at that purpose says more about the distance of our own society from faith traditions than about the yeshivas themselves.

Alongside attending yeshivas, these boys are home-schooled. That home education is serious and improving. I have seen their new communal platforms personally, and they are now in active use.

The amendment before the House is narrow and proportionate. It ensures the continued safeguarding of yeshivas; requires registered home education, regulated, of course, by the local authority; and prevents the misclassification of religious institutions. In short, it allows the Government to achieve their aims of maintaining child welfare and education while recognising the lawful set-up of the Haredi Jewish community.

Report is the final opportunity to correct this in primary legislation. To use biblical imagery, the Government’s heart and lips must be aligned. The Haredi Jewish community and its yeshivas must continue to flourish, their children safe and home-schooled. The amendment is the only way that this can happen.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I wish to speak against Amendment 175A. It is tabled in the same way as it was in Committee, but I accept that it was the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford rather than the right reverend Prelate Bishop of Manchester who spoke to it on that occasion. I do not want to rehearse all those arguments again. It was a good debate, so I will perhaps sum them up and express a few further points.

The Bill is not trying to abolish yeshivas; that is not the intent of the legislation. I join both speakers so far in saying that I cherish and welcome the fact that we are a country that values education for all children and allows people of all faiths to reflect that faith in their own education. I have, sometimes at my own political expense, defended the state system, which has Roman Catholic schools, Church of England schools and many other schools. Politically, there are many people who think that we ought to not have faith schools at all. I have always defended them, because that is an important tenet of a free society, and I value the contribution they make to our lives.

I feel the same about people of any faith. This is not about the Orthodox Jewish faith. The amendment could be used by people of any faith to start a school and have 10 hours a day of religious instruction and home education in the evening. That point is very clear.

However, I am opposed to the way some faiths are organising their education at the moment. Without rehearsing the arguments, it comes down quite simply to this: if a child, maybe under 11, is in a yeshiva or any other school—but the yeshiva has been the one that has been mentioned—from 8 am to 6 pm, I do not believe that they can be home educated effectively in the evening. I do not think that is what we are about. If we take faith out of that and think of the needs of the child, we cherish our differences, but we are only a cohesive society if we cherish the things that we hold together.

One of the “samenesses” of our society is that we believe in the right of a child to have a broad and balanced education. I do not see how, in this structure, with yeshiva from 8 am to 6 pm and only religious education, sometimes not in the English language, then home education from 6 pm onwards, we are delivering that to those children. It is as simple as that. I have met people who have been educated in the yeshiva movement. They would not describe it as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester described it. It is the same as any other school. There are people who like it, people who do not like it, people who say it has served them well, people who it has not served well. It is as simple as that. Let us not go down this line because we think it is one form of education that everybody cherishes and wants to preserve. There is as much of a difference of opinion in this as there is in anything else.

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[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

We have moved slightly faster than I expected us to move, which I am sure is greatly welcomed by most Members of your Lordships’ House. I begin with the group of amendments concerning Clause 40. Government Amendments 176 to 183 and 185 principally concern the Bill’s provisions on the material change regime, which governs the type of change that independent schools require Secretary of State approval to make.

When the Bill was first published, concern was raised that minor or secondary changes, such as bike sheds or classroom conversions, would be unnecessarily captured if changes of buildings at a school’s already registered address were treated as material changes. The Government have listened to these concerns and the amendments now make clear that building changes at a school’s registered address do not require material change approval. Importantly, the same principle applies to any additional addresses that the department registers after approving a change of building. Further changes of building at these addresses will not be treated as material changes.

These amendments take a proportionate approach. They reflect that a registered school making use of new or unfamiliar addresses may be placing pupils at higher risk of harm. Under these changes, the focus will be on any addresses beyond the school’s registered address and any additional addresses registered following an approved change of buildings where there is no prior assurance that standards are met. In addition, these amendments clarify that only changes to how an institution providing special education is specially organised constitute a material change and require ministerial approval. Actions taken solely to meet an individual pupil’s needs do not constitute a material change.

The Government have worked closely with interested parties to ensure that the original policy intent is properly captured. It is right that, where independent schools make changes to their operations that may place children at risk of harm, the Secretary of State is made aware of that and is given assurance that these changes are safe. That is an important principle, and these amendments are a sensible balancing act between strengthening oversight and avoiding unnecessary bureaucracy.

I turn to Amendment 184. In Committee there was broad support for Clause 43, which aims to strengthen Ofsted’s powers to investigate suspected illegal, unregistered independent schools and registered schools operating unlawfully. These additional powers have been drawn with an awareness that the powers currently available to Ofsted in Section 97 of the Education and Skills Act 2008 are inadequate to identify suspected criminal behaviour. Therefore, when drawing up Clause 43, the Government listened closely to the chief inspector to make sure that these powers can be put into operation.

The amendment is aimed at giving greater confidence to the chief inspector when operating under these new powers. It is the Government’s experience that demonstrating offences in this space relies heavily on gathering documentary evidence. Some of that evidence may, under ordinary circumstances, be considered confidential or otherwise fall within existing legislative restrictions. The amendment therefore facilitates the chief inspector’s access to such information when acting under the authority of a warrant, where that is relevant to deciding whether a relevant offence is being or has been committed. It further ensures that independent judicial oversight, in the form of a warrant, is sought before such documents are inspected, copied or, when necessary, seized in reliance on these powers. This approach strikes the right balance between protecting the rights of the individual and ensuring that the chief inspector is able to properly inspect potentially dangerous settings. I beg to move.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a quick question for the Minister on Amendment 184, which she described towards the end of her speech. I agree with the purpose of this and most of the details, but I am not quite sure what is meant by “excluded material” or “special procedure material”. Is that anything to do with data protection? If it is an unregistered school, would the inspector be able to go in and seize, copy or have access to a register or pupil progress file without having to go and get a warrant? If they gain access and then have to go and get a warrant before they can see the register or the pupil progress information, they are not going to be able to do their job effectively—but that hangs on what is meant by “special procedure material” and “excluded material”. Does that include things such as school registers?

[Lord Storey (LD)]

Again, the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, has taken the words out of my mouth. This is an issue that I have felt strongly about for a number of years. I know from talking to Ofsted that one of the barriers has always been getting the evidence. I presume that the Minister has had detailed discussions with Ofsted and that, as a result, this wording fulfils what needs to be done. I hope the Minister will confirm that.

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[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 193A and 193B in the names of the right Reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth and myself. These amendments are very simple. They seek to address a small technical omission regarding the inspection of multi-academy trusts when they are the proprietor of one or more schools with a religious character.

When Ofsted inspects schools with a religious character, one of the organisations it is required to notify of the outcome of state inspection is the religious authority responsible for running the school. My noble friend the Minister’s amendment to introduce inspections of multi-academy trusts is welcome, but I feel that the amendment does not replicate the duty of notifying religious authorities for these inspections.

Multi-academy trusts play an important role in creating and upholding the ethos and community in which schools with a religious character operate, so it is essential that the result of any inspection of the trusts that contains such schools must be shared with the relevant religious authority. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth has already said, it is an issue of communication.

These amendments would ensure that the inspection of multi-academy trusts which contain schools with a religious character is consistent with the individual inspection of those schools. I have worked closely with the Catholic Education Service and with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth in bringing these amendments to your Lordships’ House today, and I am sure that the representatives of other religious groups which run schools would also support them. Therefore, I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to accept these amendments today or give her assurances that under the Government’s amendment the relevant religious authorities will be notified about the results of multi-academy trust inspections when those trusts are the proprietors of schools under their denominational jurisdiction. I also support Amendment 193C in the name of the right reverend Prelate.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a big change in the education service. I welcome the Government bringing this amendment, because it was not there in Committee and I think it is a response to speeches made on both sides of the House, so I want to put on record my thanks to the Minister and her team for working in between Committee and Report to give us something. It deserves a longer debate than it will get at this time of the night, so it is a shame that it has arrived so late.

I want to seek one reassurance. It must get the prize for the longest amendment because it is pages long. But it also gets the prize for the longest amendment that does not say very much. That is basically the first question I want to ask. Will the Minister give assurance that we will have opportunity to discuss the detail of this? It is a big change, and some of the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, need to be addressed. Secondly, and this is the most important thing for me, could the Minister give an assurance that she will endeavour to make the inspection such that schools do not feel they have been inspected twice, and that it is an inspection of the MAT ownership or governance and not the schools themselves?

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak chiefly to Amendment 196A in my name and to Amendment 197 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, to which I also attached my name. Given the hour, I am going to restrain myself on a lot of things. It is a great pity that we are doing this important business at this hour. The Minister, in introducing this group, talked about the need to improve the accountability of multi-academy trusts, which has not kept pace with the growth of MATs. We have heard agreement on that from right across the House. With that in mind, I am going to start with Amendment 197, which we have not yet heard the formal introduction of. I will not go through it in detail, but it looks at the remuneration of chief executives of multi-academy trusts. It includes the provision, under parliamentary scrutiny, to impose limits on that pay.

It might be a difficult job, but I think I am about to shock the House at 11.23 pm. A few days ago, the website Education Uncovered produced some figures on the pay of CEOs of multi-academy trusts—not the biggest ones but the group of the next biggest ones, ranked from 11 to 25 on the number of pupils. A £220,000 salary is becoming standard for these multi-academy trust CEOs—and you can add a pension of about £50,000. This is significantly more than the Prime Minister is paid. We have a fat-cat pay problem right across our society, but here we are talking about public funds allocated for children’s education going to fat-cat pay.

I said that the Education Uncovered figure was for 2025. For the largest trusts, I had to go back to a Schools Week investigation from last March looking at some of the highest pay, and a year ago the CEO’s pay at one of the multi-academy trusts had crossed the £500,000 a year threshold, while three more were on more than £300,000 a year. Unsurprisingly, the National Governance Association told Schools Week that benchmarking seemed to be leading to inflationary pressure—something some noble Lords here who know quite a bit about the financial sector have seen happening. It really is obscene that this is happening in our schools.

The Education Uncovered study shows that the larger trusts are spending more per pupil on these highly paid staff and less per pupil on pupils in the classroom than are smaller trusts and, particularly in England, local authorities and local authority schools. This is a huge problem of accountability, and I commend the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on bringing forward this amendment and seeking to deal with it. I cannot think of a reason why the Government would not think this a good idea.

I come now—very briefly, given the hour—to my Amendment 196. This follows attempts that I made in Committee, with the assistance of the National Education Union, to create something that would allow schools to get out of this mess when they are just fed up with it. It would allow parents fed up with multi-academy trusts that are not working—we have seen a lot of examples recently of multi-academy trusts imposing on local school communities disciplinary rules that have caused a great deal of upset, concern and fear for the well-being of pupils—a way to get schools out of this system that is not working for them.

In Committee, I brought forward the idea of an academy reversal order. It is very complex, given that schools in multi-academy trusts no longer have their own legal entity, but I made an attempt at doing that. I also attempted to say that it was a duty of the Secretary of State to produce an order like that.

Now, on Report, with Amendment 196A I am calling for the Government to create a duty for them to produce a report on the demand for, desirability of and mechanisms for the conversion of academy-run schools to maintained schools, within two years of the Act calling for a report. That would not direct anything to happen, but it asks for a direction to the Government to think again, in a Bill that already acknowledges that there are huge problems with the academy trust model, ends the presumption that all new schools must be academies and removes the duty to force schools into multi-academy trusts. We are clearly heading in that direction. Let us get ahead of the game and prepare for a future where we put schools back under local democratic control.