Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Young of Acton Excerpts(3 days ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Young of Acton (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of the Knowledge Schools Trust and a trustee of the Knowledge Schools Foundation Trust. It is a great privilege to follow the excellent maiden speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, and my noble friend Lord Biggar.
The education reforms that the Government are seeking to reverse in the second part of this Bill have been a great success. It has been a natural experiment, because education is a devolved area of policy. The way to measure the success of the educational reforms, dating back at least to 2000 and beyond, is to compare the performance of schools in England, where the reforms have been embedded, with those of Scotland and Wales, where they have not. I will not repeat the PISA data that has been cited by numerous people on this side of the House, but it shows very clearly that the education reforms embedded in the English state school system have been a success.
Given how successful they have been, I am astonished that the party opposite, and indeed the Lib Dems, do not want to share some credit for it. As several noble Lords have pointed out, the education reforms that began with the creation of city technology colleges by my noble friend Lord Baker, as created by the Education Reform Act 1988, were continued by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, in the Learning and Skills Act 2000, which created city academies, and built on by the Academies Act of the coalition Government, as my noble friend Lord Hill pointed out.
The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said earlier that he hoped all sides could work together in this House. But that is precisely what has been happening for the last 37 years, and it is his party that has decided to abandon this cross-party consensus, not mine. The part of the education reform programme I care most about is free schools, having helped to set up four of them. In a nakedly ideological act, the Government have pulled the plug on the programme, in spite of its success. The English secondary school where children make the most progress is the Michaela Community School, a free school. The sixth form that gets the best A-level results in the country is not Winchester or Eton but a free school, King’s Maths School, where the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, is the chair of governors. The secondary school I helped to set up, the West London Free School, was named last year by the Sunday Times as the best comprehensive in London.
I note that my noble friend Lord Harris, who has done more to transform the life chances of children from disadvantaged backgrounds than anyone else I can think of, says his trust’s funding for 2025-26 has increased by only 1.3%, which will not cover the pay award of 2.8% that the Government has agreed with the teaching unions. Incidentally, the teaching unions have said that they want more. They are not satisfied with that and are threatening industrial action if they do not get more, even though it was agreed. I hope the noble Baronesses, Lady Bousted and Lady Blower, will urge their former colleagues to show some restraint. I want to tell my noble friend Lord Harris that, in the case of my trust, our funding has gone up by only 1.1%, not 1.3%, and the CEO of my trust tells me that the only way it will be able to remain solvent in 2025-26 is by making between 8% and 10% of the staff redundant.
It is not just our academy chains that are in this predicament. A survey by Teacher Tapp and SchoolDash published last week in Schools Week, found that one-third of primaries and 40% of secondaries in England will be forced to make redundancies in 2025-26 due to funding shortfalls. I regret to say that the staff most at risk of being made redundant across the sector are specialist SEND support staff. So much for this Government wanting to do more for children with SEND, and so much for wanting to find 6,500 more teachers. Incidentally, what became of the £1.7 billion that the Government’s VAT raid on independent schools was supposed to raise for state schools? I hope that the Minister can tell us what has happened to that in her closing remarks.
The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, said earlier that we should remember what has worked and replicate that. This Government should be replicating those reforms—dating back to the 1980s—that have worked, not trying to take us back to the 1970s. For the sake of our children, I urge the Government to be guided by evidence, not ideology.
Universities: Free Speech
Lord Young of Acton Excerpts(1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
We will hear from my noble friend Lady Levitt next and then from the noble Lord, Lord Young, after that.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend is exactly right: it is wholly possible to carry out the sort of important research that the noble Baroness referenced, including in the area of gender-critical research, and to treat trans people with the respect that they deserve and ensure that they are able to play their full role in our society.
Lord Young of Acton (Con)
My Lords, in the light of the Office for Students’ finding that Sussex University’s trans and non-binary equality policy is incompatible with the registration conditions imposed by the Office for Students on all English universities, which require them to uphold free speech and academic freedom, would the Minister advise all universities to review their EDI policies to ensure that they do not chill lawful speech and are not incompatible with their regulatory compliance requirements?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord is right that part of the ruling was about the specifics of the University of Sussex’s trans and non-binary policy and its failure to recognise the requirements on the university to ensure freedom of speech and academic freedom. I hope that all universities will look carefully at this ruling and will note its second element, which was around the governance to consider issues such as this. All universities need to be clear that these important decisions, and sometimes these challenging conflicts, need to be considered at the highest possible level and with the strongest possible governance.