Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Carter of Haslemere Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I draw the Committee’s attention to Amendment 441, which is tabled in my name. It is not the most elegant amendment that I have ever tabled, but it is designed to get the Government to set out their thinking on supporting those with special educational needs through the use of assistive technology.

I have a couple of obvious interests. The one I should declare is that I am chairman of Microlink PC, which makes adaptive technology for the workplace and education. More importantly—I show off how bad a dyslexic I am—I cannot function or deliver a letter without using it. Let us take English and somebody who is dyslexic. If you are bad enough, you will not achieve in English without having someone to dictate to unless you use assistive technology. You will fail at learning a language using the modern processes because the language-processing parts of your brain and your short-term memory do not work that way. You may have a choice of failing dramatically or just simply failing, but you are not going to achieve. Using assistive technology means that you can access that part of the curriculum, get through and possibly hand in work without having somebody else there. You have your independence.

I was trying to get the Government to set out their attitude towards this, which is a great way of addressing some of the problems of special educational needs. Get in early and get them away; they can maintain themselves and will be adaptive. If we could know about this in this part of the Bill, it would help us in the future. I hope that the Government are friendly to it.

There are all sorts of things attached to this. For instance, there are great things about not having mobile phones in school, but they are a very good platform on which to carry some of this technology. This may not be the only way forward—there may be other ways—but getting some idea of the Government’s thinking on this would probably help the forthcoming debates. It may not be a silver bullet, but it is certainly something that can help. I would be very grateful to hear what the Government’s attitude is.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 443 in my name. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for supporting it. The amendment would provide that an order or regulations made under or by virtue of any provision of the Bill that would amend primary legislation shall not apply to an academy school.

Academies’ proven success has been based on their freedom to depart from the national curriculum and to apply a curriculum tailored to their pupils’ needs. This Bill, however, is making a far-reaching change to the way that academies work, because the Government will, in future, be able to control the content and application of the national curriculum to academies. As I pointed out at Second Reading, this will be done not by primary legislation, as one would expect, but by secondary legislation that amends primary legislation. Yes, it is our old friend Henry VIII who lives on in these draconian powers, which raise real questions as regards compliance with the rule of law.