Sports Participation in Schools
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Berridge (Con)
I am moved to hear of my noble friend’s experience. I think that those of us who watched the Euros were aghast at the events there, which showed us that the speed with which Christian Eriksen was resuscitated is vital in such circumstances. I can assure my noble friend that all new free schools and refurbished schools—the 100 schools we have announced—will have AEDs as standard, and we encourage all schools to have them as part of their first aid equipment. In health education at secondary school, students are taught how to use that equipment, as well as how to perform CPR.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, given the noble Baroness’s obvious commitment to school sports, can she tell me why, since 2010, 215 school playing fields were sold off? Will she put a stop to the practice?
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, on school playing fields, there is a policy only to permit; the Secretary of State has to give consent. There is a variety of circumstances in which the policy allows playing fields to be sold, but there is a recommended allocation which every school should have, and the department benefits from the advice of the School Playing Fields Advisory Panel on any suggestion. But the policy is to retain land within the school estate wherever possible.
Early Years Foundation Stage (Miscellaneous Amendments) and Childcare Fees (Amendment) Regulations 2021
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I support my noble friend’s regret Motion but, like other noble Lords, I go further and say that never is the right time to introduce these absurd baseline tests for four year-olds. They should be allowed to wither on the vine. But this is all on a par with Michael Gove’s introduction of rigid exam systems, built on by Nick Gibb’s rote learning and testing, rather than the development of skills that would be useful to pupils in later lives and work, and actually stimulating during their school years.
I recall Ed Balls deciding there was too much testing in education and withdrawing the SATs for key stage 3—for 13-year-olds. They were pointless and have not been missed. We are all aware that SATs increase stress for the pupils who undertake them and the staff who run them, and we are aware of the perverse incentives they give to head teachers. In what way does this improve the education of young people? As the More Than a Score campaign group has put it,
“statutory tests have been cancelled for two years now with zero negative impact on pupils’ education or on school performance. Paradoxically, while their absence has barely registered, their presence creates unwarranted stress on young children and schools, narrows the curriculum, and generates a fear of failure within the whole school community”,
and, as I said, they lead to perverse behaviour by head teachers under pressure.
Has anyone heard from parents, staff or children a cry of, “Oh no, we didn’t have year 2 or year 6 SATs?” No, because they are pointless. It is interesting that private schools do not have to do SATs. In 2018 it was calculated that only 18% of them do so. Schools that have the choice do not generally use them; state schools do not get that choice. Yet the Government now want to introduce the additional test for children starting school at the age of four—and they seem to think that September, after 18 months of Covid restrictions, which have had a big negative impact on the development of children, is the right time to implement this.
Looking at Covid, we know that childcare settings and support have been closed or limited and that parents are under intense pressure and often less able to devote time to the development of their preschool children because of the pressure to support the education of school-age children. We know that half of parents questioned said that their child was not spending time playing with friends in their home, meaning that they were missing out on vital socialising skills. How on earth could the Government think that this is the right time to introduce such a deeply flawed approach to education? Why would anyone want schools across the country to devote time to these baseline assessments rather than support young children often worse prepared for formal education than their predecessors?
The Government have said that each child will need to be assessed by a teacher for 20 to 30 minutes to collect data for the Minister’s department. This data will not benefit the child in any way. For a class of 30 children, that is a minimum of 10 hours’ learning time in the first weeks of school. It could be 15 hours. The data will not be used to support children. As we have heard, it will be used by the DfE to judge the school. The data will be collected by teachers at just the time when they should be settling young children into the school environment, not wasting their time testing them.
We know that there are serious questions about the reliability of these tests based on pilot testing. My noble friend Lord Knight speaks with great authority on that. We have already heard about the educational experts who have written to the Government about the RBA, saying that it was pointless and damaging. I know that this Government distrust experts, because they want to hear only prejudice. Is it not time, however, that they listened to the evidence and began to trust teachers and head teachers?
Kevin Courtney, joint general-secretary of the NEU said:
“In yet another end-of-term announcement, the government is confronting schools with new, unnecessary and harmful policies.”
What do the Government have against our teachers? I hope the Minister will be able to respond.
One advantage of home education during Covid is that parents have seen what a restricted and tedious curriculum this Government have forced into primary schools. As one parent put it:
“The curriculum is joyless, both to teach and to learn. In some parts it is developmentally inappropriate. For example, too little time is spent on the foundations of maths.”
Another commented:
“I was shocked and dismayed by the content of the English curriculum. It appeared that children were learning how to classify language to satisfy testing requirements and nothing more.”
How damning that is about the wretched education system this Government are putting on to our children.
I hope the Minister will listen to what is said tonight. This baseline testing really goes to the heart of the dreadful education system that the Government are putting on our children, which is having such a negative impact on their development.
Children with Genetic Conditions: Specialist Support
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, the department funds a range of voluntary organisations through the £42 million that helps, for example, to deliver whole-school SEND, as well as providing support through the Family Fund, but I will ensure that the noble Baroness’s request is taken back to the department to ensure that we are aware of the full range of voluntary organisations. Of course, during this time local authorities have also had £6 billion of unring-fenced money to support the kind of organisations that the noble Baroness outlines.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I would like to add to the list that the Minister is going to take to the Department of Health and Social Care. This is about CAMH services. Clearly, the last 12 months have been very difficult in terms of providing CAMH services, but there is evidence that for some of the children involved this has now become a very urgent need. I wonder if she could discuss that matter with her colleagues.
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, we work closely with them because of the nature of the work involved in EHCPs, and we cannot underestimate the effects of this period. During Mental Health Awareness Week, we announced £17 million that should allow 7,800 schools to have a lead mental health practitioner within the school to provide the kind of support needed. By making school places available during lockdown, we allowed school leaders to identify vulnerable children who needed to come into school for all kinds of reasons, including mental health issues.
Queen’s Speech
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab) [V]
My Lords, the Queen’s Speech promised yet another major structural change in the NHS. Well, it is no surprise that the Government want to do away with the wretched Health and Social Care Act 2012, which cost billions and wasted years, but I question their timing. Right now, the NHS, local authorities and the voluntary sector are still battling Covid-19. In implementing these proposals, the risk is that health and care services will be distracted from dealing with the crisis at hand and the tremendous backlog of patients who need urgent treatment.
Nothing in the legislation will address the chronic staff shortages, deep health inequalities and urgent need for long-term reform of social care. The proposals represent a marked shift away from the focus on enforced competition that underpinned the coalition Government’s 2012 changes. That is welcome. At the heart of the changes is the proposal to establish integrated care systems—ICSs—as statutory bodies made up of two parts: an ICS NHS body and an ICS health and care partnership. The ICS NHS body will be responsible for NHS strategic planning and financial allocation decisions. What is not clear, as NHS Providers has reported, is how the accountabilities of all parts of the local health system will align without duplication, overlap or additional bureaucracy.
It is even less clear when it comes to the ICS health and care partnership, which will be responsible for developing a plan to address the system’s health, public health and social care needs. It appears to have no authority, with the ICS NHS body and local authorities required merely to “have regard to” what this new body says. Why has local government not been brought more into the core of decision-making and accountability? Why are the largely ineffective health and well-being boards to continue to operate separately?
NHS Providers has also spoken of its concern that the Government’s planned powers of direction for the Secretary of State are too far-reaching. Many of the proposals give Ministers far greater powers over NHS England and other arm’s-length bodies, including the power to intervene earlier in local decisions about the opening and closure of NHS services.
I certainly worry that the forthcoming Bill gives too many powers to Ministers through secondary legislation. The White Paper argues that these are needed to enable the Secretary of State to respond more flexibly to rapidly changing circumstances, such as those seen during the pandemic. Yes, but those powers are not needed outside the pandemic, and it is not clear why reducing parliamentary involvement in this way is merited. If Ministers insist on seeking direct control of NHS England, that means they can no longer hide behind the decisions of a quango and will have to report and account to Parliament on many more detailed issues than now. I hope they realise that.
The proposals predominantly aim to reform the NHS. However, the NHS does not work in isolation—public health, social care and the NHS are closely connected. There is clearly a risk that, in setting out fixed plans for the NHS, the options for public health and social care reform become limited.
What about the needs of non-acute services? It is noticeable that the White Paper has not made it mandatory to have representatives of mental health and community trusts represented on each ICS board. Why not? What about community pharmacy, optometry and dental services?
It is also clear that the restructuring has little to say about the real challenges facing the NHS and social care. On social care, we are told virtually nothing. After decades of reviews and failed reforms, the level of unmet need rises, the pressure on unpaid carers grows, the supply of care providers diminishes and the strain on the undervalued care workforce ever increases. Social care remains severely underfunded, with the most deprived areas being worst hit. More than a million adults who need social care are not receiving it—the system is riddled with unfairness. There is no confidence that the Government will come up with anything near a coherent and funded plan. Until they do so, the promised NHS Bill can be only a pale shadow of what is required.
Gender Recognition Act 2004
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Ministerial Statement by Baroness Berridge on 22 September (HLWS457), what further advice they intend to give to public bodies following the conclusion of the review of the Gender Recognition Act 2004.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Department for International Trade (Baroness Berridge) (Con)
My Lords, the Government recently announced our response to and the results of the consultation on the Gender Recognition Act. We are now focusing on digitising and streamlining the process, and reducing the fee. We hope these changes will make the process less bureaucratic for transgender people. At this stage, we are not proposing further legislative guidance, but we will keep this under review.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab) [V]
My Lords, does the Minister accept that in sensitive discussions about the interaction between the Gender Recognition Act and the Equality Act, those most affected, namely women and transgender people, should have freedom to speak, and that intimidation and no-platforming are not acceptable? Will the Government reiterate their belief in the importance of single-sex places provided by the Equality Act, and make it clear to public bodies that it is not acceptable to insist on gender-neutral services at the expense of providing women-only safe spaces in refuges and rape crisis centres?
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord that freedom of speech in this area, on all sides, needs to be conducted in a manner that is respectful of people with very differing views. Yes, the Equality Act has an exemption, so that single-sex spaces can be provided and, where justified, somebody can be refused access to that space.
Gender Recognition Act Consultation
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, indeed, the Government want every individual to be respected and to be able to live their lives freely and prosper. I am grateful for the noble Lord’s comments. We hope that there will be a balanced and sensitive debate after this response to the consultation. Indeed, on single-sex spaces, where it is justified, whether in an NHS ward or a refuge, there is the potential to exclude people on the basis of their biological gender, but only where it is justified.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I welcome the Statement and the aim of improving healthcare support for transgender people, but I would like to follow up my noble friend Lord Young’s point. The fact is that a number of public bodies have made policies which make it almost impossible to provide the single-sex spaces that are allowed under the Equality Act. Will the Minister urgently look at guidance to those public bodies about ensuring that they act within the spirit and the law of that Act?
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, as I have outlined, as there is no legislative change, there is not a case for renewing wholesale the guidance. The Statement makes clear the law around single-sex spaces, and I believe that most people who responded to the consultation felt that there will be no change to the use of those spaces in that regard. However, we keep the guidance under review.