Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Bishop of Lincoln Excerpts(3 days, 10 hours ago)
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(e) to have due regard to the need to remove or minimise the disadvantages suffered by looked-after children and relevant young persons.”Member's explanatory statement
The amendment seeks to expand and strengthen Clause 21 by replacing the light-touch duty to be “alert to” their needs with a stronger requirement for public bodies to have “due regard” to eliminating disadvantage and to take reasonable steps to mitigate any harmful effects of their policies. The amendment intends to create a legally enforceable, lifelong safeguard for anyone who has ever been in care.
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln
My Lords, I move the amendments in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester. In relation to Amendment 146B, 120 councils around the country have already committed themselves voluntarily to embrace the “due regard” implementation, but this amendment intends to create a legally enforceable, legislative and lifelong safeguard across government for anyone who has ever been in care.
The tragic case of Nonita Grabovskyte starkly demonstrates the urgent necessity for this amendment. Nonita’s death highlighted severe systemic failures by the corporate parent and associated agencies, as identified by the recent inquest. These failures directly contributed to her preventable death, underscoring how critical it is that public bodies proactively mitigate the disadvantages faced by care leavers. Had all parties exercised due regard to eliminate these disadvantages, Nonita’s death might have been prevented.
Ground-breaking research from University College London reveals that care leavers are 70% more likely to die prematurely than their peers, living on average 20 years fewer. Adults who spent time in care between 1971 to 2001 were significantly more vulnerable to premature mortality, including unnatural deaths such as suicides or accidents.
Terry Galloway, who campaigns passionately for these changes, personally embodies these stark statistics. Terry and his siblings, Hazel and James, were all care experienced. Tragically, Hazel and James died prematurely, embodying the cruel reality highlighted by UCL’s research. Shortly before Hazel was murdered by domestic violence, she and Terry made a solemn promise to change the care system to prevent others from enduring their experiences. Terry’s journey through care was marked by abuse, repeated separations from his siblings and frequent moves involving over 100 different placements.
Children who have experienced abuse and neglect prior to, or during, their time in care may remain at heightened risk of similar abuse as they enter adulthood and beyond. The clause in the Bill that requires public bodies merely to be “alert” to these issues is insufficient. Having due regard requires active, preventative measures through impact assessments, to genuinely protect vulnerable young adults from repeated victimisation.
The urgency is not only in terms of the policy enaction of the corporate parent system and the Government but around the cultural context. This amendment is necessary not only for legal clarity, but to counter negative perceptions of care-experienced young people, exemplified by a recent Reform councillor’s statement characterising children in care as
“not just naughty children, they can be downright evil”.
Such harmful rhetoric underscores why robust legal protections and proactive obligations are essential for systemic cultural change and safeguarding the well-being and futures of care-experienced individuals.
Amendment 147A strengthens the existing duty, moving beyond simply being aware of the needs of children in care and requiring much more active engagement. If a school policy affects children in care, the school must consider how that policy might disadvantage them and take steps to mitigate any negative impacts, such as providing additional support or adjusting the policy. This would strengthen the corporate parenting responsibilities in a way that will actually make a difference to people’s lives.
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister. I want to pick up on what the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, was saying about needs. It is really alarming that nearly a million young people aged between 16 and 25 are not in education, employment or training. I am a member of the Select Committee of your Lordships’ House on social mobility. While not wishing to pre-empt what our chair will say in her report, I am sure that this will be a strong recommendation from the committee. We are very keen to know, especially if I do not press the amendments in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, what the Government’s intention is within the operation of this Bill to address this urgent and damaging situation for such a significant number of young people, some of whom are not able even to leave their bedroom and have insufficient support. What is the Government’s intention in this regard? I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Primary Schools: Mental Health Problems
Lord Bishop of Lincoln Excerpts(4 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness makes an important point about the support available to children at the very earliest age. This and developing the healthiest generation of children are key objectives for my colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care. We have set a clear objective in our Plan for Change to ensure that we increase the proportion of children who arrive at school with the development to enable them to then learn and make a success of the rest of their lives. I am sure that this will play an important part in achieving that.
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln
My Lords, the Rural Mental Health report produced in the other place highlighted that
“NHS mental health services are often not fairly accessible for rural communities”,
with services largely centred in towns and cities,
“creating barriers to access, compounded by the limitations and weaknesses of rural public transport and digital connectivity”.
I declare an interest because 65% of small, rural primary schools across England are Church schools. When developing plans to improve mental health provision in primary schools, how does the Minister intend to ensure equity of access and quality for students in small, rural settings?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The right reverend Prelate makes an important point about the challenges for schools in rural areas to access the mental health support that we will make available. He identified the considerable difficulties for young people who really need child and adolescent mental health services in accessing them. That is why this Government will fund an additional 8,500 mental health workers to support both children and adults. As we continue to develop the policy to ensure that there is access to a mental health professional in every school, we will certainly bear in mind the important points that he made about the particular needs of rural schools.
Children’s Rights
Lord Bishop of Lincoln Excerpts(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
In line with the UNCRC, we recognise the age of a child in the UK as being under 18 years of age. In that way, children are treated differently from adults. However, we do have an age of criminal responsibility of 10, and we do not intend to change that at this time.
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln
My Lords, Article 28 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child recognises the fundamental right of all children to a free primary education and access to different forms of secondary education. Noble Lords may know that 1 million children are educated in Church of England schools at the moment, and the Church of England’s vision for education is rooted in a Christian ethos for the common good and the holistic well-being of every child, including those of all faiths and none. The Statutory Inspection of Anglican and Methodist Schools framework, which informs best practice in church schools, has a strong and effective focus on children’s rights in accordance with Article 28 in the UN convention. Will the Minister ensure that the substantial and compelling learnings from church schools can be highlighted and shared within her department’s ongoing review of potential reforms to current accountability measures?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The right reverend Prelate is right that there are very many children receiving excellent education in schools run by and sponsored by the Church of England, including the school that I attended—although I think that the accountability and inspection regime has probably been updated since then. I can certainly assure him that we will want to learn from good-quality inspection and accountability, such as he has outlined, in taking forward our reforms.
Special Needs Schools
Lord Bishop of Lincoln Excerpts(7 months, 4 weeks ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Lincoln
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Baroness Monckton, for securing this debate and offer my admiration for her commitment and eloquence in this field.
I formerly served as the chair of the National Society, as the lead bishop for education. In that capacity, I was given a very wide view of the brilliant provision that is made where specialist schools and colleges exist. I can point to such a school in north Wiltshire where teachers were so dedicated they were prepared to face a 150-mile round trip every day to serve in that special place.
I am also the bishop for the L’Arche community in the UK. With the Church of England, L’Arche, as part of its vision, seeks to educate people to live well together in a community. That seems to me something that is—or should be—a special part of any school, not least our special schools.
Along with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, I want to see an integrated ecology of special and mainstream schools. When I was Bishop of Ely, we won a bid with the DfE to have a single campus with a free school in partnership with a special school on the same site. I appreciate that there were expense issues in relation to that, but it seems to be an excellent model of an integrated approach.
I understand that the Minister in the other place talked this morning about wanting to have most children with special needs in mainstream schools so they can be with their friends. Of course, if you had an integrated campus, you would not only have friends but perhaps siblings meeting in the same setting as well.
We cannot get away from the fact that, at the moment, 150,000 young people across England attend specialist schools and colleges, but there are 1.9 million children and young people who have special educational needs—a figure identified in January 2024. The special schools we have, doing a marvellous job under huge pressure, are systematically underfunded and underresourced. In its report published today, the National Audit Office calculates that the demand for education and healthcare plans has increased by 140% since 2015. There are simply not enough places and this needs to be addressed in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, eloquently described. Individualised and complex support cannot be provided in blanket terms in mainstream schools. Nor can mainstream schools provide what I have witnessed broadly: the key importance of college places for people with a disability up to the age of 25, and all that has already been said about how important that is for accessing employment and, as part of the vision for education that the Church of England sustains, how we exercise a proper understanding of the rare dignity of all people, not least those living with disability.
The deficit in special needs education in mainstream schools is also very clear. I recently opened a new building at one of our 142 Church schools in the diocese of Lincoln: St John’s, Spalding. The school is experiencing a serious rise in the number of children with profound SEND needs. Clare Robinson, the head teacher, emphasised to me the impossible position that her staff face when SEND funding is entirely insufficient to cover the cost to employ the requisite personnel with training and expertise. This is also where specialist schools come into play, as they can actually send out experts to support mainstream schools in the delivery of special education in those other places. Clare and her colleagues have gone to extraordinary lengths to support their students. For instance, this has involved making a new multi-purpose area to serve as both a kids’ club and a space for interventions with SEND pupils. I saw this for myself, and it is a marvellous development, but the measure merely scratches the surface of what is needed because the school can cater for only its youngest students in this way.
I plead that the Government make sure that special schools not only continue and grow but continue to offer the specialist medical care, occupational and physical therapy, small class sizes, and all the activities and bespoke support which provide and ensure consistency of care for children and mitigated stresses for families.
As I said, the Church is committed to educating for dignity and respect. Given that Church schools are in such demand, I hope that it is possible for the Government to consider the Church being allowed to engage in developing special schools, not least because of falling school rolls and the reallocation of Church school buildings, which could become Church-based specialist schools. This, I hope, would help to improve the access for children in any kind of need.
I submit that denying children and young people with special needs the access to the specialist support they need is in fact a fundamental issue and affects everyone’s human rights. I am delighted that the Government are determined to continue to expand their work in this area, and I look forward to full developments brought to us very closely in the near future.
King’s Speech
Lord Bishop of Lincoln Excerpts(11 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Lincoln
My Lords, I share your Lordships’ appreciation of the noble Baronesses, Lady Barran and Lady Jolly, and I welcome the appointment of our new Ministers. The noble Baroness, Lady Merron, will know as much as I do about Lincolnshire and that, particularly in its coastal towns and rural areas, Lincolnshire suffers from intergenerational poverty, which has a very direct impact on children. I think your Lordships’ House has received two reports in the last 15 years about the poverty in our coastal towns, but nothing much has changed. If I have heard the Government correctly, I am glad to hear them express their intention to pay more attention to rural and coastal poverty, which is often hidden away when it is not in our big cities.
Therefore, I also particularly look forward to the progress of the children’s well-being Bill and the work of the newly announced child poverty unit. In moving forward in this area, how do His Majesty’s Government plan to involve faith communities in addressing these needs, particularly considering the concentration of faith communities in areas of poverty and deprivation, as my right reverend friend the Bishop of London referred to earlier?
I follow other Members of this House, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, in drawing attention to children with special educational needs and the Government’s intention in relation to what has already been said in the gracious Speech, requiring all schools to co-operate with the local authority on school admissions, SEND inclusion and place planning by giving local authorities greater powers to help them deliver their functions on school admissions and ensure that those admissions account for the needs of communities. The challenges facing provision for children and young people with special needs cross all sectors, and the Government can assist by tackling the long delays and ongoing bottleneck in assessments, and by increasing the support offered to schools. The current system has created a shortage of school places in specialist schools, as has been said, and insufficient resources are provided in mainstream schools to offer support for children’s needs.
This all has a real impact on children’s mental health, especially in relation to poverty as an additional burden. I applaud the work and ambition of the Children’s Society, which intends to create a whole series of mental health hubs for children and young people in Newham and the rest of the country.
I hope that we will continue to tackle poverty by joining up all sorts of agencies and bodies within government and beyond, as expressed in the letter recently issued to all Members of this House. On the bus to school when I was a teenager, the conductor regularly told the passengers to hurry up and take our time. I know the Minister will agree that there is a real urgency to the task group’s work, the fruits of which will need to be seen in sustained investment and action to support schools, children and young people in the long term. We need justice for each one of those 700,000 children who need to be lifted out of poverty.
Ofsted: Pupil Absence Rates
Lord Bishop of Lincoln Excerpts(1 year, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
The noble Lord will be aware that Ofsted has been involved in a number of prosecutions of illegal schools. We remain very concerned about those—indeed, the Private Member’s Bill to which I referred earlier will go some way to addressing this issue.
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln
My Lords, I express gratitude to the Minister for the way in which the data has been produced; I understand that more is to come, and that will be examined in great detail. As an unrepentant pedant, though, I am as interested in the adverbs as the nouns—in how the data is to be applied. How do we get more children across the line in terms of the culture of school? Some years ago, the Children’s Society’s Young Commissioners looked deeply into child poverty in school and how children are identified as those, for instance, receiving free school meals or who are not able to purchase the very expensive school uniforms from the agreed seller. How is school culture being encouraged by government further to change in order to get children across the line? How, indeed, do we expect Ofsted to become the “office of encouragement”?
Baroness Barran (Con)
As the right reverend Prelate knows, Ofsted is about to start its Big Listen exercise, so maybe that is one of the questions that could be asked. He asks an important question about how the data will be used. There is more we can do within the department on analysing and breaking down the data into more actionable insight for schools, and we will start engaging with trusts and local authorities on that very shortly. We need to be careful to make sure that children who really have major barriers to coming to school and whose attendance is very poor are not conflated with those who are in school nine or nine and a half days out of 10. It is about how we get those ones, too, over the line.
Schools: Special Educational Needs
Lord Bishop of Lincoln Excerpts(1 year, 4 months ago)
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Lord Bishop of Lincoln
My Lords, I welcome everything that the Minister has said, but we all know that, even with the initial screening online, a full diagnosis for many children with any of these needs can take years to confirm. I am interested in what the noble Baroness has to say about how families—and the children themselves—are accompanied through several years of negotiation with the NHS and with local authorities, especially when, as has already been said, certainly in Lincolnshire, staffing costs outstrip the need that is expressed within our schools.
Baroness Barran (Con)
Again, I stress that not every special educational need requires a diagnosis. Children should get support regardless. If we look at the age at which children get an education, health and care plan as a proxy for diagnosis, we see that around a quarter receive an EHCP under the age of five, with almost half getting one between the ages of five and 10. That has been very stable over the last 10 years. The remaining quarter are above 11. I understand that these can be stressful, difficult times, but there has been relative stability over many years at the age of diagnosis, although there is greater identification of specific issues—in particular, autism.
Special Educational Needs
Lord Bishop of Lincoln Excerpts(6 years, 2 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Ely
My Lords, I understand that the purpose of the 2014 set of reforms was to ensure a holistic approach by health, education and social care services in the support of children with special needs and of their families. But when appeals take place, I understand that it is not uncommon for social care services to say that they do not know the child. Are the Government ensuring proactive co-operation between health, social care and education services in supporting such children and their parents?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
To reassure the right reverend Prelate, I can say that we are learning from the process. I mentioned earlier the area inspections being carried out. Indeed, a number of inspection reports have required improvements. I shall give a recent example: Rochdale was inspected and asked to provide a written statement of action only in January. An update report showed improvements including educational outcomes, timeliness of response to children and young people, and promotion of understanding of services provided by the LA to those with SEN.
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy
Lord Bishop of Lincoln Excerpts(6 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
Yes, as I mentioned a moment ago, newly qualified teachers in their second year will have 5% taken off their teaching timetable—that is in addition to the 10% taken off the timetable in the first year. High-quality, freely available curricular and training materials will be designed to complement the early-career framework. There will be funded early-career framework training programmes and support from a trained mentor, including funding to take into account the additional call on mentors’ time in the second year of induction.
The Lord Bishop of Ely
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his Statement and for this way forward. First, he knows that the Church of England runs many small rural schools, and recruitment and retention is always a creative challenge. Have the Government considered how the strategy is to be rural-proofed for full application across the country? Secondly, Chapter 3 talks about further leadership development. Can the Minister tell us whether the Government are going to continue to encourage bodies such as the Church of England Foundation for Educational Leadership in developing professional qualifications for middle leaders and heads of MATs?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
I share the right reverend Prelate’s concerns about rural schools. We have particular funding pots within the overall formula—sparsity funding, for example—which give a typical small rural primary school an additional £135,000 a year and a small secondary school £175,000. We are committed to the various ongoing training programmes. Only this morning, I was addressing a group of some 80 people involved in professional development training and encouraging them in what they were doing. I absolutely support what the right reverend Prelate has said.
Education and Society
Lord Bishop of Lincoln Excerpts(7 years, 6 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Ely
My Lords, as the lead Bishop for education in this House, I am grateful to my most reverend friend for the opportunity to address the crucial place of education in providing value and enabling every member of our society to contribute and flourish. We must continue to develop the curriculum to suit our developing industrial and commercial needs. This means that we must work to nurture and support our children and young people so that they may be employable on the grounds of their skills and their rich and steadfast character, and give them the support and foundations for good mental health that will be necessary throughout their lives, as we have already heard.
We are currently experiencing a period of great uncertainty politically, socially, financially, industrially and morally. While we may not know exactly what things might look like come March 2019, we do know that we must continue to prepare for the longer term to meet the demands of our changing industrial and commercial landscape and be ready to face the competitive markets we will engage with. People therefore must be skilled, adaptable and resilient. This will be possible only if we tackle inequality of access to the acquisition of life and technical skills. Inequality of access is the scourge of our generation. I applaud the commitment to social mobility and the tackling of educational disadvantage of the Secretary of State for Education and the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, the Minister in this House, but we are not doing anywhere near enough.
Faith in the City, the report that came out in 1985, inspired me, as an ordinand, to seek ordination in the north of England in a poor community. The Church continues, with other institutions, to be passionate about seeking to reach out to the most excluded to relieve need and to renew dignity in the home, school and workplace. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, about the challenges faced by schools in some of our northern towns. I was visiting church schools in Blackpool myself earlier this year and saw the challenges that they face. Severe deprivation, of course, does not happen only in urban areas, but also in some of our coastal towns and more remote rural areas, where I live. As this year’s Good Childhood Report from the Children’s Society shows, disadvantages accumulate. For example, children living in poverty or family debt are more likely to experience mental and physical health deficits, as well as an impoverished life of the imagination. All these factors have an impact upon a child’s educational and life outcomes. We must seek out those in need and use education provision to fuel and enable aspiration so that we can ensure that no member of our society is hampered by their background.
I am very encouraged by the policy of Her Majesty’s Government for opportunity areas, with targeted funding to tackle disadvantage in education. The Church of England is a recognised partner in the working of this policy, not least in east Cambridgeshire and Fenland, where I live. Her Majesty’s Government are working hard to develop a curriculum and qualifications that meet our future industrial needs, most notably through the recent introduction of T-levels and the continuing development of apprenticeships. I am thrilled that the diocese of Chelmsford is a founder member of the London Design and Engineering UTC in London Docklands, the country’s first school to be an approved apprenticeship training provider. The Church of England is committed to opening more secondary schools, such as the free school we have won in Huntingdon in my diocese, to take to the next stage the model of a single campus providing academic and innovative technical pathways on the same site, with a special school which we have also created a partnership to run. We aim to foster a student-focused, economically ambitious approach to education. It must also be prophetic enough to equip young people for an agile and robust 50 or 60 years of wholly human adult productivity in a global setting not yet visible to us.
However, education is not simply about imparting skills or knowledge. As the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, said, this is fundamentally about character and about creating an educational environment that goes beyond the metrics of the core curriculum. We need a holistic attention to each individual child and young person, a large part of which includes being attentive to their mental health needs, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, said. The arrival of the Government’s Green Paper on mental health provision and schools is timely. I am pleased to read that the Government are committed to ensuring that every school and college will be able to play a vital role in identifying mental health needs at an early stage, as well as promoting positive mental health practices from the very beginning of a child’s education. I regularly visit the students at the Phoenix Centre in Cambridge, where they can continue their education while in hospital receiving treatment for their self-harming and eating disorders. It is a constant pain to me to see these children, whose needs might have been met sooner.
The work of St Catherine’s College in Eastbourne, a disadvantaged coastal community, is a perfect example of a school engaging with children’s mental health needs at a very early stage. As part of the Church of England education office’s national project, Unlocking Gifts, St Catherine’s is running a project to help overcome mental health disadvantage through early identification and targeted support for children who have mental health needs.
It is very easy to dwell on the negatives, but the Church of England’s vision for education is rooted in hope, the hope offered by Christ to us all and the opportunity we can all have for fresh starts and the full dignity of our humanity in Him. We do not despair in the face of cumulative deprivation. We seek to tackle it head-on and make a significant difference to the lives and confidence of young people and their families.