Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Baroness Smith of Malvern

Monday 9th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I warmly welcome the Minister’s remarks, because at the heart of this debate there seems to be a mischaracterisation and misunderstanding of Section 58 of the Children Act 2004 and a conflation of mild admonition with assault by beating, which obviously should be subject to the full force of the law. For the avoidance of doubt, and just to sum up, would she agree with the words of her colleague the Minister of State, Catherine McKinnell:

“As the law stands, quite frankly, any suggestion that reasonable punishment could be used as a defence to serious harm to a child, or indeed death, as has been asserted, is completely wrong and frankly absurd”?—[Official Report, Commons, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee, 6/2/25; col. 464.]

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I hope I did make that clear earlier, but I am very happy to reiterate. It would be wholly wrong. It would not be in line with the law for the types of cases that we have heard about in this debate to be subject to the defence of reasonable punishment. The Crown Prosecution Service has been clear, as professionals are clear, that that would get nowhere near to this defence. I know that noble Lords will be disappointed, with the exception of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, with the response of the Government, but I think it is a reasonable recognition of the very strong action taken when children are subject to violence and the need to learn from those who have recently changed the law. That is a sensible and appropriate way to go forward in this case.

Pupil Absenteeism

Debate between Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Baroness Smith of Malvern

Wednesday 7th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to support teachers and schools to reduce pupil absenteeism.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, improving school attendance is a top priority for the Government. We are providing schools and teachers with world-leading data tools, empowering them to identify quickly children who are at risk of non-attendance and to put the right support in place. Our 31 attendance hubs have helped 2,000 schools to adopt best practice. Our new regional improvement for standards and excellence advisers will also work closely with schools to reduce absence.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

The Minister will know that the cohort of children who are severely absent—those who miss more than 50% of their classes—which amounts to about 120,000 pupils, are the most at risk of ending up in gang activity and other serious criminality. The previous Government did a good job on tackling this problem, but what assistance are the Government giving to individual schools to collate and use data on absence to develop a plan of action to tackle the most acute attendance problems?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right that being absent from school, particularly persistently, not only impacts on your education but puts you in danger and makes you vulnerable to criminal activity in the way he outlined. That is why it is really important that we nip in the bud the attendance problems of those who start being absent before they are persistently absent. Through the Working Together guidance, we now expect that local authority teams will meet schools regularly to agree individual plans for severely absent children to get them back into school and to keep them out of trouble.