Asked by: Lord Judd (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they intend to establish an independent inquiry into variation in access to children's services across England and the consequent impact on outcomes for vulnerable children; and if so, when.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
Under the Children Act 1989, local councils have responsibility to provide services for the purposes of safeguarding children and promoting their welfare. It is important that every local council has clear criteria for taking action and providing help across the full continuum of need. Local Safeguarding Children Boards (and their replacements under new multi-agency safeguarding arrangements) should agree with the local council and their partners what services are to be commissioned and delivered so that the right help is given to children at the right time.
The government is supporting best practice, for example, through the dissemination of learning from the £200 million Social Care Innovation Fund, through which we have invested £5 million specifically to test targeted support to improve outcomes for children in need. In future, the new What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care will become the first port of call for evidence and latest research on the impact of government programmes, helping to inform local service design.
The government does not have plans to establish its own independent inquiry into children’s social care but we are engaging with the All Party Parliamentary Group for Children’s newly announced inquiry into thresholds for children’s social care, a follow up to their ‘No Good Options’ report of March 2017. We will consider the inquiry’s findings in due course.
Asked by: Lord Judd (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to ensure that schools are places where children feel free and safe to learn and grow; and how they intend to ensure that schools are not subject to overt or indirect pressure to play an active role in the operation and policing of immigration policies.
Answered by Lord Nash
All schools are bound by requirements of the Equalities Act 2010. The Act makes it unlawful for the responsible body of a school to discriminate against, harass or victimise a pupil or potential pupil:
Further information on schools’ responsibilities under the Equalities Act is attached.
The school an individual child attends will hold information about that child which will be used by the school to help ensure the child receives the best possible education. Every term the school is required, by law, to send some of this data to the Department for Education (DfE) via the school census. This process has been in place for more than 10 years and the information is used to provide a clear picture of how the school system is working, at local and national level. It helps us to make sure we are allocating funds where they are needed and that no groups of children are missing out on the education they deserve.
This year we also asked schools for additional information on pupil nationality and country of birth as well as data on proficiency in English. The return of nationality and country of birth data is completely optional and parents are under no obligation to provide it if they don’t want to. These new data items on nationality, country of birth, and English proficiency will not be passed to the Home Office, or anyone else. They are solely for the Department for Education to use for research.
Separately, where the police or Home Office have clear evidence that a child may be at risk or there is evidence of criminal activity, including illegal immigration, limited data including a pupil’s address and school details may be requested from the Department for Education. It is right that we share this data if it helps to keep a child safe from harm or to prevent a crime. This does not include nationality and country of birth information recently introduced into school census. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the DfE and the Home Office, which is available in the house library, sets out how this process works and the data which is shared.