Schools: Faith Schools and Free Schools
Lord Bishop of Leicester Excerpts(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Nash
Faith schools and church schools are an essential part of our school landscape. Church schools represent 34% of all schools and 25% of all pupils are educated in them. Church schools consistently outperform other schools and have a superb record of community cohesion. We want to provide parents with diversity and choice.
The Lord Bishop of Leicester
My Lords, does the Minister agree that “faith school” covers a variety of different kinds of institution? Church of England schools are not faith schools in the narrow sense of providing an education for people of just one faith. In places such as Leicester they provide a rounded education for the whole community, including many of other faiths who value highly what they have to offer.
Schools: Bad Behaviour
Lord Bishop of Leicester Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Nash
The noble Baroness is quite right: we have indeed funded BeatBullying, the Diana Award, Kidscape and the National Children’s Bureau to deliver training for schools to prevent and tackle all types of bullying based on prejudice and intolerance. Tackling all types of bullying is one of our top priorities. Each of the projects will be evaluated to measure the impact of the training on reducing bullying overall. Due to the relatively small numbers involved, it is unlikely that these evaluations will measure the impact on specific groups of children but we believe that the programme should, for instance, have a significant impact on reducing any bullying of Gypsy, Roma or Traveller children.
The Lord Bishop of Leicester
My Lords, in view of the Minister’s clear endorsement of the policy of positive reinforcement of good behaviour, does he agree that we should be doing much more to promote a culture of mutual respect more widely in society so that the benefit of the positive work of many schools is not lost when our children step out of the school gate?
Children and Families Bill
Lord Bishop of Leicester Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Leicester
My Lords, I support Amendment 53 and speak in place of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford, who has lent his name to it but cannot be in his place today. Personally, I find myself on the side of those who want PSHE to be a formal part of the curriculum and Amendment 53 goes some way in that direction.
I have three brief points to make. First, we on these Benches see social, emotional and spiritual intelligence as a vital part of a child’s development. We are not just interested in raising children who can pass exams, but in creating opportunities for young people to take control of their lives and values. Secondly, it is clear that there is a strong and growing coalition of organisations involved in this work, which have some knowledge in this area, and which support this proposal, including the Children’s Society the Mothers Union and many others.
Thirdly, I speak as a former chair of the Children’s Society and as a member of the Good Childhood commission, which reported four years or so ago, and which took evidence from more than 5,000 children. It was not evidence on this specific point, but it was evidence on the general point of what children understand makes for their well-being. Over and over again, children said that one of their top priorities was their friendships. They were trying to find their way through a complex, labyrinthine world in which friendships, intimacy and relationships had to be understood in this technological age, which has been so vividly described by previous speakers, where it was children who were asking for help in this area.
That is the most telling contribution I want to make to this debate. We do not have children in this House; we do not have the voice of children here. If we listen carefully to what they are saying to us through the Good Childhood Report and in other ways, we will find that they want our generation to help them to understand who they are and who they are with others in this completely new world, which has not shaped the relationships or outlooks of any Members of your Lordships’ House. For that reason, I strongly support Amendment 53.
Lord Knight of Weymouth
My Lords, I do not wish to delay the House for long, because I do not think I can add to the speeches made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, my noble friend Lady Jones and the right reverend Prelate on the reasons that we should do this. I shall talk about the notion of the expert group. When I occupied the office that the Minister now occupies, I set up an expert group to look at compulsory sex and relationship education. It included young people, educationalists, experts from organisations such as Brook and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, and representatives from the major faith groups. There were representatives from the Anglican Church, the Catholic Education Service—I had very good conversations with Vincent Nichols and I warmly congratulate him on being made a cardinal—the non-conformist faiths, the Muslim faith and the Jewish faith. We achieved consensus around the need for compulsory sex and relationship education.
I therefore to some extent question whether we need to go around this track again. Once we had achieved consensus on the principle, we set up a second expert group to look at how we might implement it. So we have in a sense already been round this track not once, but twice. I urge noble Lords on all sides who are tempted to accept the sop of the expert group to remember that it is time to act. We have debated this long enough. I know it is awkward for my friends who are in the coalition that there is a Whip and that they have to do what they have to do, but I urge noble Lords who have been campaigning on this for a very long time to do what is right.
Children and Families Bill
Lord Bishop of Leicester Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Leicester
My Lords, as other noble Lords have said, there is much to welcome in this Bill, especially the important changes for looked-after and adopted children. I add the support from this Bench too for the broad ambition of the Bill to extend a greater level of choice, participation and long-term support for young people with special educational needs and their families. I declare an interest as a former chair of the Children’s Society and I am delighted that my successor, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro, will take part in this debate.
I want to touch briefly on three particular areas: care leavers, young carers and children with special educational needs. First, I am concerned that we may have missed an important opportunity during the passage of the Bill to make a much-needed change for care leavers. These are young people who are in need of special attention and ongoing support as they transition into adulthood. One particular category of care leavers who are seriously disadvantaged is those who are subject to immigration control. Many of those young people are here on their own with no parent or legal carer looking out for them and have come here from places such as Afghanistan, Somalia, Iran, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Eritrea to seek sanctuary. They have often lost their loved ones. They have experienced unimaginable violence and abuse. Some may have been recruited as child soldiers or have been exploited in multiple ways. However, when they come to the United Kingdom for safety, too often they are denied the protection they need due to the decision-making process within government departments. They can be left in a limbo where they are not recognised as refugees, but cannot return home because it is too dangerous for them to do so. As they turn 18, they get caught by immigration restrictions which put them at risk of being made homeless and going hungry.
A report by the Children’s Society entitled I Don’t Feel Human was published in 2012 and highlighted this issue by showing how young people who had come to this country on their own as unaccompanied children were ending up destitute and homeless. This was because they were being cut off from the local authority support as they turned 18 due to their uncertain immigration status.
Many of those young people are destitute and resort to self-harming and attempt suicide out of sheer desperation about their situation. We need to do what we can to ensure that those vulnerable young people continue to get the support they need as long as they are here. Would the Minister be open to exploring making an amendment to Schedule 3 to the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 to ensure that it does not apply to lone children and care leavers?
I want to say a brief word about young carers. The recent census from 2011 stated that there were approximately 166,000 young carers in the United Kingdom, but there is reason to believe that that is just the tip of the iceberg, as many young carers remain hidden from the view of the professionals. I know from my experience how many of them live lives that are profoundly restricted, demanding and exhausting, bearing responsibilities well beyond what is reasonable for their years. When the Children's Society looked into the long-term outcomes for young carers in its recent report, Hidden from View, it found no strong evidence that young carers are more likely than their peers to come into contact with support agencies, despite government recognition that that needs to happen. That research also found that young carers are 1.5 times more likely than their peers to have a special educational need or a disability. Young carers are more likely than the national average to be not in education, employment or training between the ages of 16 and 19.
That is why I welcome what the Children’s Minister in the other place said when he made a clear commitment to consider how legislation might be changed so that rights and responsibilities are clearer to young carers and practitioners alike in this important area. I also welcome his commitment to a “whole family” approach to the assessment of care needs. It is therefore important and encouraging that the Children’s Minister and the Minister for Care Services have come together to ensure that both the adults’ legislation in the form of the Care Bill and the children's legislation which we are discussing today can work together to allow for whole-family approaches.
Can the Minister update us on when we might see any proposed changes to legislation to support that approach? I would also welcome any update from the Minister about the work that his department is doing to support the linking of assessments across adult and children's services.
Finally, I would like to say a word about children with special educational needs. I welcome much that is here, but share the disappointment of the consortium of national specialist colleges that many of the amendments tabled in Committee in the other place proved to be unsuccessful. In particular, can the Minister provide greater clarity on the composition and functioning of the Section 41 list of providers that young people will be able to request for inclusion on their education, health and care plan? Can the Minister ensure that there is positive affirmation in the Bill that young people will be entitled to an education, health and care plan up to the age of 25 and ensure that local authorities will not end these plans too early?
On these Benches we warmly welcome the fact that the Government have chosen to give legislative priority to a number of very important issues that affect children and young people. We look forward to making our contribution to shaping this Bill in its passage through this House.
Children: Looked-after Children
Lord Bishop of Leicester Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Leicester
My Lords, it is a privilege and somewhat humbling to follow the noble Lord, Lord Laming, who has made such an impassioned speech. I express my gratitude to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for tabling this important debate, for his eloquent and passionate introduction and for his clear explanation of what it takes to introduce a damaged young person to the idea of trust and love as a basis for adult life.
Given the recent cases of child sexual exploitation in Rochdale, Derby and Torbay that have been widely publicised and the clear failures in our child protection system, this is a timely debate. The stories from those places seem to have a number of features in common. First, children and young people end up in residential care after multiple placement breakdowns caused by their challenging behaviour, or rather caused by the inability of adults to support their needs and uncover what is behind such challenging behaviour. As one young person involved with the Children’s Society put it recently, “No one thinks there is a problem with the placement; it is always the child”.
Secondly, these incidents involve adolescents who have experienced serious abuse and neglect or have witnessed very traumatic events in their lives. Such children need high-quality support but, as others have said so persuasively, they often experience the very opposite. Thirdly, they have run away or have gone missing on numerous occasions, especially while in residential care and those episodes have not been adequately responded to. Fourthly, the most important common thread is that these children were often seen by professionals involved in their lives as troublemakers, unco-operative and beyond help, rather than as troubled young people, crying out for help.
It is important for us to grasp these things if we want to understand why, in many cases, residential care is not meeting the needs of children and young people. It would not be possible to erase a child’s past experience but patience, empathy and perseverance, combined with knowledge and clear systems for multi-agency working and accountability, should help each child to be able to look, with hope, into the future.
It is not only the cases of child sexual exploitation that demonstrate some of the failures in our care system. Serious child case reviews show children in care taking their own lives or dying of drugs overdoses. One of the key indicators that a child is at risk is if they run away. Many of these children have had difficult starts to their lives and experienced neglect, abuse or trauma. As a consequence, these children are often extremely vulnerable, and when they go missing they are in great danger of being physically or sexually exploited.
The recent all-party parliamentary group inquiry into children who go missing from care highlighted, as others have said, the failure of the state to look for the most vulnerable children and laid bare the often appalling and shocking results. So my first major point is that running away should be seen as a sign that a child or young person needs help.
As has already been pointed out, it is estimated that around 10,000 children go missing from care every year, but many of these children go missing repeatedly, amounting to more than 40,000 incidents a year. The link between frequent episodes of running away and the risk of sexual exploitation is absolutely clear. The APPG inquiry into children who go missing from care found that perpetrators target children’s homes specifically because of the high vulnerability of the children in them and how easily they can make contact with the children. I would like to raise with the Minister a point that has already been mentioned. When will the new definitions of “missing” and “absent” currently being piloted by ACPO be published? Will it include an assessment of the risks related to children categorised as absent?
My second point is that placement stability is one of the most important factors determining the success of care experiences, and has a significant impact on long-term outcomes for children in care. Of the 65,000 children looked after in England in 2011, 14,500 children, which is 22%, had two placements during the year, and 11% had three or more placements. Children in care need stability and to build trust with the people in their lives. How can they feel safe if they are moved so many times a year?
I know that the Government are also concerned about the number of cross-boundary placements. From April 2011, local authorities have a duty not only to ensure that there is enough provision in their local area to meet the needs of the children but that decisions about placements outside their local area are made only by request to a senior nominated officer in the authority. Justification has to be presented in each case to demonstrate the benefits of such placements to the young person.
Surely there is a need now to ensure that local authorities are complying with that duty and that children are placed outside of the authority only when it is clearly in their best interests. What are the Government’s plans to ensure that local authorities comply with those duties?
Thirdly, when the Children’s Society consulted with young people in care about the quality of care that they received, young people said that they wanted an opportunity to have regular chats about their lives with someone. Some suggested that it would be good to have informal meetings with their social worker every six weeks “because sometimes you do not understand the badness of the thing you are in”. For young people placed away from their families and friends, “the care system is an isolated place and you do not want to isolate people further”.
Although young people have a right to express their views when decisions are made about their care to and participate in review meetings, and the local authority has a duty to ascertain their wishes and feelings, they often say how powerless they feel and that they are not in control of events that shape their lives. As a result, running away is one of the only ways that they can express that control.
Research demonstrates that where children are listened to, take part in decisions about their care and get explanations about the decisions made, they are more likely to be happy about their placements, more likely to achieve stability and to share information if they do not feel safe. Advocacy is instrumental in ensuring that children are supported to participate in these decisions. What are the Government doing to ensure that children and young people have the support of an advocacy service when they need help with communicating their wishes and feelings to those who make decisions about their lives?
Finally, as others have said, the support and quality of the workforce in children’s homes is critical to a young person’s experience of care. The variable quality of staff in children’s homes working with very vulnerable children is a concerning issue, with standards often unacceptably low, as others have clearly demonstrated. Workforce development and the academic standard of the residential care workforce in England is much lower than in other European countries. The poor levels of training for staff are also often exacerbated by the high changeover in children’s homes due to low pay and an overreliance on agency workers. What are the Government doing to ensure that staff who work in children’s care homes have the same high standards of qualification and training as in other European countries?
Above all, changes are needed in attitudes. As one young person put it to the Children’s Society, “Basically, I used to go missing all the time … and I mentioned to one of the workers, I went to a girl’s house and there was like prostitution going on there. I went back and told one of my care workers about what had happened. They just saw it as prostitution, they thought ‘she might be a prostitute’ and that’s all they wrote down. They never took time to listen to how I felt about it”.
The phrase “they never took time to listen”, is telling. That, above all, illustrates the need for cultural change in residential child care that we must seek in the years ahead.
Education: English Baccalaureate
Lord Bishop of Leicester Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
The Government’s position is, and has been for some time, that teachers without QTS may work in free schools. That has been extended to apply to academies. The Government’s view is that that is a space for innovation that is very likely to be only at the margin of the system as a whole. We think that the freedom for people with particular expertise who have not been through the qualification process to come in and offer it, as they do in independent schools, should be extended to academies.
The Lord Bishop of Leicester
My Lords, in the light of the Minister’s reply to the noble Lord, Lord Singh, will he assure the House that religious education will not eventually disappear from the qualifications register and thus disappear from school timetables altogether?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I will give as much reassurance to the right reverend Prelate as I can—not least because RE is a compulsory subject and, as I said, the evidence is that the number of young people wanting to take a qualification in it is increasing, which is a good thing. It is also the case that the English baccalaureate certificate for six subjects represents only a core. Having that small number will provide space for a whole range of important subjects, including RE, to continue to be taught, offered and examined.
Sure Start
Lord Bishop of Leicester Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
I do not accept in any respect the point that the noble Baroness makes. From our debates during the passage of the Education Bill—I will not bore the House by repeating them—she will know about the money and funding that the Government have put into a whole range of priorities, including addressing the children in greatest disadvantage and seeking to help mothers and families who are struggling with those problems, as well as a whole series of initiatives and trials. We will continue with those. But to come back to the point made by my noble friend Lady Walmsley, there is a difference in the way certain local authorities have prioritised their spending, which we have to accept.
The Lord Bishop of Leicester
My Lords, in the light of the recent riots and mounting evidence that the first three years are crucial to personal development, do the Government have any concerns about any possible correlation between social unrest and the closures that we have been discussing?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I hope I have made clear in all my answers, particularly to the question asked by the right reverend Prelate, that the Government accept entirely the importance of the services delivered through Sure Start children’s centres. One whole focus of the Government’s work is to seek to increase funding into greater concentration on the early years. That is continuing despite the difficult financial situation that we face. I agree that the more one can do with young children to help them become ready for school and to achieve and to learn, the better they are likely to do later and the less chance there is of them going off the rails when they are older.
Children: Parenting
Lord Bishop of Leicester Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
As I said in my earlier reply, my honourable friend Sarah Teather will respond in her early years foundation statement to the important points that have been raised. We will look at precisely these points and respond to Allen.
The Lord Bishop of Leicester
My Lords, does the Minister agree with the thrust of the Good Childhood report, published by the Children’s Society a couple of years ago when I was chair, that argued that if PSHE education is to be undertaken in schools it is absolutely vital that it is undertaken by properly trained and qualified teachers who have as much experience and qualification as in other major subjects?
Lord Hill of Oareford
Yes, my Lords, I take that point. The right reverend Prelate will know of the Ofsted report that referred to three-quarters of PSHE education in schools being good or outstanding, but it also pointed out that there were some other areas of weakness. As I have already said, part of the review that the department will carry out, which I hope will benefit from the views of outside and expert opinion, is precisely to look at the kind of support that needs to be provided to help teachers provide good quality PSHE.
Education Maintenance Allowance
Lord Bishop of Leicester Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I will pass on the endorsement by the noble Lord. I fully accept that it is about judgment. Overall in the settlement got by the Department for Education, particularly on the schools side, we managed to maintain cash flat per pupil and to fund a pupil premium. One would always like to have more but I accept the point about judgment. The Government made the judgment across the piece that the priority was to cut the deficit and get those interest payments down. In due course, we will be happy to be judged on that judgment.
The Lord Bishop of Leicester
My Lords, does the Minister accept that among the categories that may require special attention under the review are black and minority-ethnic communities who often place a high value on education but come from poorer homes and are more dependent on this kind of help than many others?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, the Government want to look at a number of groups carefully in the replacement scheme. One group is children in care. There are issues to do with rurality and transport, as my noble friend has raised. I also accept that there are particular issues of the kind that the right reverend Prelate has raised. In all this, we want to make sure that the most effective help is delivered locally to those children who need it most.
Children: Sexual Exploitation
Lord Bishop of Leicester Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Leicester
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure the safety of children, especially of children in the care of local authorities, from being groomed for sexual exploitation.
The Lord Bishop of Leicester
My Lords, following the recent cases of child sexual exploitation that we have seen in the media, I am glad to have this opportunity to raise this important topic today. I very much look forward to hearing contributions from all those who are here. What I have to say arises partly from my own pastoral experience as a parish priest and a bishop and partly from my more recent experience as the chair of the trustees of the Children’s Society.
As noble Lords will be aware, child sexual exploitation, as defined by the Department for Children, Schools and Families in 2009, is sexual exploitation of children or young people under the age of 18 that involves putting the child or young person in exploitative situations, contexts or relationships in which they receive something, whether it is food, accommodation, money or drugs, in return for performing and/or having others perform on them some form of sexual activity.
Sexual exploitation can occur through the use of technology without the child’s immediate recognition of the exploitation, such as being asked to post sexual images on the internet or on mobile phones without immediate payment or gain. Recent reports by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre and Barnardo’s have indicated the use of the internet in child exploitation as a growing issue. The Barnardo’s report, Puppet on a String, which I commend to your Lordships, has highlighted that a number of primary school children have admitted to meeting someone whom they previously met only online.
In all these cases, the person doing the exploiting exercises some form of power over the child or young person by means of their age, gender, intellect or other factors. Violence, coercion and intimidation are common and can involve the child or young person being plied with gifts, alcohol and drugs, which often form part of the grooming process. This all helps to explain why it is often very difficult for some children or young people to accept the true nature of their relationship and to take the risk of exposing the perpetrator.
Any child or young person may be at risk of sexual exploitation, regardless of their gender, race or social background. However, we unfortunately know that factors such as living in care or being runaways or having mental health problems all increase a young person’s vulnerability to sexual exploitation. In particular, we know that the link with running away or going missing is an extremely strong indicator of risk. I shall return to that point later.
As we know, child exploitation has devastating consequences for the individual being exploited. It has an extremely damaging effect on a child’s or young person’s self-esteem, mental health and, indeed, lifelong ability to form secure relationships, yet, in spite of this, there are no national statistics to map the prevalence of child sexual exploitation. This lack of data works against the children of our country, as it keeps a vital child protection issue somewhat obscured.
I want to draw attention to five issues in particular. First, children of course have a right to be protected from sexual exploitation. This is enshrined in law at national, European and international levels. In this country, local safeguarding children boards are responsible for co-ordinating local responses to child sexual exploitation, yet initial research from the University of Bedfordshire has demonstrated that many local safeguarding children boards still do not consider child sexual exploitation as a priority and have failed to identify resources or plans to address this, with less than a quarter of the boards even having a protocol for child sexual exploitation. This leads to a group of very vulnerable young people being left without adequate and timely services and the support that they so desperately need. I urge the Minister to look into this issue seriously and to let us know what measures he can put in place to rectify this situation.
Secondly, I want to mention the inadequate training for professionals across the front line. Many professionals who work with young people remain unfamiliar with the risks or indicators of sexual exploitation and show little understanding of the issue. Indeed, they often do not know how to support a young person in an exploitative situation who is going through the courts with a case against their abusers. This situation is often exacerbated by the fact that many young people are not willing to identify themselves as being exploited or even to recognise that they are at risk of harm. In keeping with this lack of understanding, the behaviour of children and young people affected is often identified as disruptive rather than indicative of need and they are often met with punitive rather than welfare responses. Research from the Children’s Society has shown that victims aged 16 and 17 are particularly unlikely to receive a safeguarding response. These are the young people who are often seen as a low priority, despite the law stating explicitly that they should be responded to and safeguarded as children until they are aged 18. The lack of data and awareness of the issue of child sexual exploitation has led to a significant lack of resources for specialist support services for children and their families.
Thirdly, I take this opportunity to raise the issue of the inadequacies of current law enforcement and police responses to child sexual exploitation cases. These remain primarily reactive rather than proactive. The prosecution relies heavily on the young person to make a complaint and to give evidence in the court against their exploiter. The process of grooming to which children are subjected and the use of threats and coercion make it extremely difficult for them to go through the criminal justice process. The sexual exploitation of children is, of course, a form of child abuse and should be seen as a child protection issue. It is extremely important that investigations are carried out by officers who are trained in child protection procedures with families showing risk indicators for child sexual exploitation. It is vital that the police work closely with partner agencies to develop a co-ordinated response to ensuring that the welfare and safety of the child is paramount. What is most ironic is that children aged 10 years or over still remain criminally liable for the commission of a prostitution offence such as loitering or soliciting. This is clearly at odds with the intention to make it clear that sexually exploiting children is a form of child abuse. Often it is the fear of being prosecuted under this legislation that prevents children from coming forward to seek help to get out of exploitative situations. I urge the Minister to ensure that it is explicitly clear that any child who has been sexually exploited is supported through the justice system, which is meant to protect them, and that their exploiters are dealt with accordingly.
Fourthly, I want to make a point about the importance of co-ordination and joint working between local authorities and police forces to tackle child sexual exploitation across boundaries. Effective cross-department and multidisciplinary working can make a huge impact on safeguarding children, especially those in care, who are often failed due to a breakdown in communication between different agencies or who get lost in the gaps between them. The Government and local authorities have a duty, of course, to protect all children, especially those who rely on them as corporate parents.
Finally, I urge the Government to respond to the needs of these vulnerable children. I call on the Minister to take the necessary steps to ensure the safety of children, especially those in the care of local authorities, from being groomed for sexual exploitation. In particular, I hope that the Minister will pay close attention to the link between running away and sexual exploitation. I fear that, despite great efforts in recent years to develop statutory guidance and an action plan on runaways, this issue has fallen down the list of political priorities at the DfE. I hope that the Minister will reassure us that this is not the case and that action is being taken to prevent children from being exposed to such horrific abuse, which is happening in far too many of our towns and cities today.