Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Tuesday 16th September 2025 Lords Chamber

One problem we face is a cultural assault on discipline, per se. Those who advocate discipline in schools can be described as authoritarian or as enjoying meting out cruel punishments on pupils, and can be accused of bullying children. The term is used regularly by those who argue for discipline in schools. Even as I say “discipline”, I feel a frisson, with people thinking that I mean get out the stick. I simply mean adult authority. The truth is that adult authority is under attack in many ways. That is why it is so important that we have Amendment 502YV, on the presumption against the reinstatement of children engaging in extremely serious behaviour, and Amendment 502YYA, on the right to exclude. Teachers need to have those tools in their educational toolbox. It is only fair on pupils that they know there are lines that they cannot cross. Adult authority in schools is in crisis and we should do everything we can to bolster it, not undermine it.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 502N, in my name, would insert a proposed new clause after Clause 62, which raises the issue of seclusion in education, particularly in the form of isolation rooms.

Isolation rooms have serious implications for the emotional and psychological well-being of children, especially disabled children and young people and those with special educational needs. This is a probing amendment that would introduce a statutory definition of seclusion. It would empower the Secretary of State to regulate its use through consultation. If regulations are made, my amendment requires minimum protections: banning seclusion as discipline, notifying parents, recording incidents and ensuring internal safeguarding oversight.

The experience of seclusion impacts too many children today—children with speech, language and communication needs—whose communication may not be understood, recognised or supported in that moment. Children with ADHD may find it hard to regulate strong emotions without timely support, and yet instead of being supported they are removed, placed alone and not free to leave, in rooms with such labels as isolation, calm, breakout room, nurture space or any other number of euphemisms. What they experience is seclusion, whether it happens in a locked room, a space with a closed door, or an area where the child is simply not permitted to leave. The impact is the same: a loss of connection and potential safety.

Disabled children and those with special educational needs are disproportionately affected. Some children are removed daily, and there is no guarantee that parents will be told. These experiences can be isolating, traumatic, and deeply damaging to a child’s sense of safety and belonging. Other sectors, such as healthcare and secure settings, already regulate seclusion and deprivation of liberty. Education should not be an exception.

The Department for Education acknowledged the issue in its 2020 guidance, but guidance alone does not close a legal loophole. This proposed new clause invites us to act thoughtfully and proportionately, to close a legal gap that has persisted for far too long. It is not a radical proposal. It is a proportionate, enabling amendment, grounded in evidence, shaped by lived experience and guided by the principle that no child should be left unsupported or invisible in the name of behaviour management. Seclusion happens in our schools, even if we do not call it that. This proposed new clause would not ban it but would give us the tools to see it, define it and scrutinise it. At the very least, we should agree that when a child is confined and not free to leave, we ought to know and we ought to care.

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 502YF, proposed by my noble friend Lord Nash, and Amendments 502YV to 502YYA, proposed by my noble friend Lady Barran.

There has long been a lot of discomfort about permanent exclusions. No one likes the idea that there are children who cannot thrive in mainstream schools or who are too likely to harm others to be allowed to attend them, but last year’s youth justice statistics show 12,000 convictions of children for offences of violence, 3,000 for knife-related offences and 1,400 for sexual offences. Serious misconduct does not begin only once children have left school. There is also a lot of hope that keeping children in mainstream schools, no matter what they may do, will avert later criminality, but in fact excluded children are more likely to have come into contact with youth justice services before they are excluded than after. Because we have been remarkably successful in reducing the number of children in custody, there are more children with very serious behaviour problems in the school system who might once not have been there.

What I saw at Ofsted is that the vast majority of schools work extremely hard to keep children in mainstream schools. Relatively few exclusions are unjustified. Many parents, especially those with children who have been harmed by other children, believe that there is too much pressure rather than too little on schools not to exclude. The vast majority of exclusions are a culmination of a long period in which a school does all that it knows how to do to support a child and help them to progress academically and socially.

As a result, I believe that we have a problem of a different nature. Many teachers will tell you that it is often possible to spot the children who are most likely to fall out of school as early as reception year, or even earlier, but the pressure is always to keep them in mainstream schools, even when that school can do little more than warehouse a child with teaching assistants until this becomes manifestly unhelpful for the child and the parent succeeds in obtaining an EHCP and a special school place.

We do not start contingency planning for those children as early as we should and could, which contributes to there not being enough specialist provision. Even at the point of permanent exclusion, our laws and processes are focused on the legitimacy of the exclusion and the process that has been followed. What is not part of any of those processes is a pragmatic assessment of what kind of education to adulthood will give the excluded child the best chance in life, by which I mean reaching adulthood with basic skills in place, functioning within social norms, being willing and capable of holding down a job and, in the longer term, being capable of sustaining a marriage or stable relationship. The amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Nash will help to concentrate minds on how best to do what it is in the power of the state to do to help excluded children to the best possible future.

My noble friend’s Amendments 502YV and onwards in this group would also help to direct attention appropriately. They reflect a pragmatic recognition of the circumstances in which the harm to other children from reinstating a child is likely to exceed the benefits to the excluded child of reinstatement. For example, it is well known that sexual offending tends to be a persistent pattern of behaviour, and I referred to one such case in an earlier group. I add that the bullying survey suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, might be useful in showing how much fear and unhappiness can be induced in many other children by a very small number of their peers.

For many years, there has been a strong presumption that children should be reintegrated in mainstream schools as soon as possible after exclusion and policy and processes have been designed on this basis, but there is good data that shows that pupils who have been permanently excluded and returned to a mainstream school very rarely stay in mainstream to age 16. Nearly all will be moved into alternative provision subsequently, with or without another permanent exclusion, or drop out entirely. It would be useful to know what proportion of managed moves are in fact effective in the long run and which kinds of children and problems are most likely to be effectively dealt with in this way. My noble friend Lady Barran’s amendments, relating to a presumption against reinstatement for certain children, dovetail with my noble friend Lord Nash’s amendment to steer schools and local authorities towards constructive and realistic planning for the children with the greatest difficulties in their lives.

I echo some of the concerns expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. The last thing we need is more measures that could be weaponised and potentially cause more divisions in schools and society. When two young children fight, labelling the tussle as racially motivated may not help those two children get along and may in fact encourage factions in the class. Promoting and focusing on what we have in common and should value together is at least as important, and probably more important, than labelling and division if we are to achieve the social cohesion that we all aspire to.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Gove (Con)]

My Lords, I rise—briefly, I hope—to urge the Minister to reject all three amendments. They come, I am sure, from the very best of intentions, making sure that disadvantaged children, children who labour under the additional difficulty of having a special educational need and children whose parents are in prison are deserving of our compassion and our support, but the means by which the Minister and the Government are being urged to support those children is a diversion of resource, an addition to bureaucracy and an impediment to progress.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, requests that we have a national tutoring guarantee. That seems to me to be an entire misdirection of resources. We should be concentrating on making sure that children are actually in school in the first place. When we have a level of persistent absence at the rate that we have at the moment, and when any national tutoring service would be staffed inevitably by people who are already stretched and are hard-pressed members of the teaching profession, it seems to me to be—I hesitate to suggest that such a thing would ever come from the Liberal Democrat Benches—a performative attempt to secure publicity rather than a thoughtful analysis of what is actually going on in our schools. If we want a national tutoring guarantee, perhaps we should make sure that, across the nation, tutors—or, as I prefer to think of them, teachers—are guaranteed the support they deserve in the classroom.

The children of criminals and those in prison deserve our support: the sins of the father and mother should not be visited on the son or daughter—absolutely. But equally deserving of support are the children of veterans, those who work in our emergency services and others in homes where daily stresses and pressures increase the likelihood of anxiety or depression in that household. To single out and devote administrative resource to the children of one vulnerable group rather than others is simply to divert the energy of the Minister’s civil servants from the work that they should be doing. Believe me, it is vital that we improve education in the criminal justice system, but it is the job of the Ministry of Justice to improve education in our prisons. That will make far more difference to ensuring that, when people who are currently incarcerated leave, they can be useful members of our society and supported in their parenting roles.

Most striking of course is the need to improve education for children who have special educational needs, but the term “SEND” has become so stretched and capacious that we have almost lost sight of what we are really talking about. There are children who have high-impact low-instance special educational needs: those living with severe learning difficulties, visual impairment or hearing loss, who need discrete tailored support—as well as children with physical disabilities, who will need significant investment in order to achieve everything of which they are capable. But there is a larger and growing group of children who have behavioural, emotional and social difficulties. They certainly deserve our support but occupy a very different category from those who are living with neurological, physical or other barriers to learning.

I know that civil servants currently working in the department and Ministers are paying attention to that. A royal commission—it is a cliché, but it is true—which takes minutes and lasts years, would not provide the focus required to deal with those children. It would be a diversion once more. Having been in the department and worked with the outstanding civil servants there, I know just how hard-pressed they are and that, almost every day, there are new calls on their time from well-intentioned lobby groups that have compassion in their hearts but will only lower the morale of those seeking to improve our schools.

The one thing that I say to the Minister is that we have actually seen, in living memory, a narrowing of the attainment gap in state schools. It happened as a result of the policies introduced by the coalition Government, which was as a direct result of giving front-line schools greater autonomy, making sure that Ofsted provided appropriate and rigorous scrutiny, with transparent judgments on schools that parents could understand. This was allied to strengthening our curriculum and our accountability measures at the end of key stage 2 and through GCSEs and A-levels. I am afraid that, overall, this legislation puts in peril some of those gains that saw the poorest children catch up with the wealthiest in our schools.

So, as well as urging the Minister to reject these well-intentioned but deeply flawed amendments, I hope she will be able to persuade the Secretary of State, for whom I have the highest regard, to think again about those measures in the Bill that will do damage to the gains that were made and that were supported once upon a time by every party in this House.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I was delighted to put my name to Amendment 490, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, because it took me back to thinking about my experience at school, which admittedly was a while ago. My parents used the work of Baroness Warnock to threaten to sue the Secretary of State for Wales over my right to go into mainstream education. Without that, I would not have had the career that I now have. The system that existed back then took a tiny percentage of disabled children and gave them a great education, but everyone else was left languishing in a special school system that did not even allow children to sit exams. At the school I nearly ended up in, I would have been able to sit three CSEs at most. So there was nothing around looking at the ambition of disabled children.

I had hoped that things would have moved on by now, but the reality is that disabled children in the UK still face a significant educational attainment gap compared to their non-disabled peers. Studies show that they are significantly behind in key exams and assessments and are less likely to achieve higher qualifications or degrees. The Education Policy Institute has research that shows that disabled children are some of the most educationally disadvantaged children in the English state school system. Around four in 10 children are identified as SEND at some point between the ages of five and 16. These children have been shown to have multiple grades lower than their peers. I find myself in a slightly interesting situation: I agree with some of what the noble Lord, Lord Gove, said about making sure that children are not absent, and I am certainly not seeking to expand the definition of “SEND”, but there has to be something in the middle of where we are now and where I came from through my educational experience. To me, it is about getting the right support to the children who need it.

Disability Rights UK has reported on the situation with the gap. There is a huge gap for disabled children, and it is even larger for children with an education, health and care plan. In 2019, children with an EHCP scored grades that were 3.4 places lower than a those of a non-disabled child, and by 2020 that gap had increased to 3.6 places lower. Whatever we are doing, it does not feel like we are able to educate and support disabled children in the best way that we can.

We already know that, when disabled people apply for jobs, they need at least a qualification higher than a non-disabled person. If the job requires a degree, a disabled person needs at least a master’s or a PhD to have a chance of getting it. If we do not get this right, we are not giving disabled people the chance to work, pay taxes or contribute to society.

Like other Members of your Lordships’ Committee, I feel that we need to understand where we are and what is required, whether through a royal commission or however it works out. This amendment fits with amendments I have tabled in other groups that talk about teacher training, because there is more that we need to do to make sure that teachers are in the best position to educate and teach everybody in the class. At the moment, that gap for disabled people is just too big.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I will say just a few words, inspired particularly by the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson.

We know that there is an attainment gap for those with disabilities, and we also know that bits of the education system do not help. The biggest one for me—and I remind the Committee yet again that I am president of the British Dyslexia Association—is English and maths, because guess what, the British Dyslexia Association also covers dyscalculia.

About three days ago, I sat down with a child who said that they had a brother with dyscalculia who had been made to sit English 14 times and still had not achieved a pass. What an incredible waste of time, because we have decided that English and maths are gatekeeper exams. People have a better target with English, because they seem to understand it a little better, but maths is a real problem. Getting some degree of flexibility and understanding and looking at the attainment gap and what causes it would be very helpful.

However, I must slightly disappoint my two, shall we say, noble colleagues on this—I do not think that I am allowed to call them noble friends, although I hope that they are friends—by saying that we would have to say, “identified special educational needs”, because we might know somebody who is blind or deaf, or who has impaired movement, which is pretty obvious. We know that, for instance, well over half of the dyslexics in the country are never identified. We do not know the situation for the others—dyspraxia, et cetera—and we are still very bad at identifying them.

Therefore, we could adjust this amendment to say that we should have a look at the attainment results of those who have been identified. That would give us an idea of how the system properly fails, because we know that there is a problem, we just have not addressed it. There is a problem that is running through here. When the Minister replies, I hope that she can start to address this, because we know that there is a problem here. We know that something is going on. If we have that information already, which we should if the problems are identified, we might be able to bring it forward, because addressing the problem itself would help.

Briefly on the other amendments, tutoring, if properly targeted, will help these people, especially if the tutors are trained to support. Also, for those in prison— I have worked in the prison sector, not extensively, but I have worked there—the fact that a child is disadvantaged or comes from an environment where everybody is expected to fail will probably work into the other two groups. As a dyslexic, I still say that the only time I have ever sat in a group of adults whose educational attainment was below mine was with a group of prisoners, and I am pretty badly dyslexic. How we address this problem, this idea and this culture is very important.

I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some idea of the general thinking of the Government. It is very important—if we are starting to address these deep-seated problems, which we have, in many cases, given lip service to in the past—to get support for which you do not have to fight and be a tiger parent to obtain. That is where we are coming from now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and I congratulate him on all the work that he continues to do in this area. I thank my friends, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lord, Lord Watson, for cosigning my Amendments 491 and 498. I will take them in reverse order, with Amendment 498 first.

Quite simply, it addresses the issue we discussed in the previous group: current SEND provision is not working. It is not working for the SENCOs, who try their utmost; it is not working for the teachers, who strain every sinew to educate all in their classrooms; it is not working for the parents; and, most importantly, it is not working for children with special educational needs or a disability. Yet it can, if we start from the provision of inclusive by design and set out an approach where the funding is identified and ascribed to that SEND provision. The department should and must reach out beyond its budgetary constraints, because the reality is that this is far more than an issue of education. For example, there is a clear causal relationship between the education attainment gap and the subsequent employment attainment gap for those with disabilities.

Other departments must also pull their weight in addressing this issue of special educational needs and disability provision. This is why in Amendment 491 I suggest a practical, reasonable and achievable measure to make a difference across government: to introduce a mentorship scheme for those young people with special educational needs or disabilities.

Before the question arises of distracting departmental officials from their incredibly important work, or of putting more pressure on already overstretched resources, I suggest to the Minister that this would be an ideal situation for an effective, practical and achievable public-private partnership. Imagine how local, regional, national and international businesses could get involved to help support and be part of the delivery of such a mentorship scheme for children with special educational needs and disabilities. Imagine the empowerment for those young people in hearing from adults in successful careers, professions, jobs, activities and third-sector work, across the piece, who have lived experience of being a disabled person and have come through, succeeded and achieved. That is not just mentorship; that is leadership and empowerment, enabling all those young people.

The scheme could be brought in with minimal, if any, disruption or resource pressures put on the department. The difference it would make for those children with special educational needs and disabilities could be profound, impacting their educational experience, setting them up for life and enabling them not only to positively be part of closing that education attainment gap but subsequently closing the employment attainment gap. Any Government should have this as one of their core provisions. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 491 and 498, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, to which I have attached my name, and Amendments 502U and 502V in my name.

With regard to Amendment 491, we have already spoken about how disabled children are being left behind. I worry that we are wrapping some disabled children in cotton wool. The noble Baroness, Lady Verma, talked in an earlier group about resilience. We have to do more to ensure that our disabled children in schools can build resilience. This is one way in which they can do that.

This amendment is not about physical activity, but disabled children are routinely excluded from physical activity in schools and physical activity is one way that they can build this resilience. There are myriad excuses—“Well, they are sent to the library”—which are often wrapped up in health and safety. It sometimes feels that we are writing off disabled children before they have been given a chance. Often their world is smaller: there is less opportunity and a lack of ambition that is placed upon them.

This is something that I would like all children to be offered. It is probably dependent on what His Majesty’s Government are thinking of on enrichment around the school day. I declare an interest here as chair of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, and we are talking to the Government about what this enrichment would look like. I believe that providing mentoring will help. It is about not just grades but building skills for life.

Amendment 498 simply seeks a view of SEND provision and how it is funded. Amendment 502U links to amendments that I have in other groups, but this one sits better in this group. I do not think that we have got right the support that disabled children are getting in school, and we must think about what more we can do.

The organisation Contact a Family and the Independent Provider of Special Education Advice surveyed 2,000 families with children and young people who have SEND but do not have an EHCP to see how the process was working. The survey concluded that there was not enough SEND support in schools, which leads many families to seek an EHCP to secure support for their child’s needs. This does not feel like the right way that the system should be supporting disabled children. It leads to school avoidance, absenteeism, pupils being put on part-time timetables and exclusion, and therefore an ever decreasing circle of support and ambition. This amendment seeks to ensure better support.

I am keen that access to the curriculum for disabled children is not reliant on a single member of staff. I do not, in this group of amendments, seek to debate the role of TAs. It is about how we get the right support beyond that so that we do not limit children’s opportunities. I know that there will probably be some discussion of whether, under this amendment, their role should sit under the supervision of a qualified teacher.

Finally, on Amendment 502V, we need to know how much we spend on SEND provision. In a previous group, the noble Lord, Lord Agnew of Oulton—admittedly not talking about this—said how important it was to identify how every penny is spent in schools. We must have a better understanding of how SEND money is spent. I do not mean to place a lot of additional work on schools, but we need to know that we are getting value for money and, ultimately, that we have the right provision for disabled children to thrive.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 502Q, 502R, 502S, 502T and 502W in my name. Amendment 502R is supported strongly by my noble friend Lady Bull, who has expressed sincere regrets at not being able to be with us tonight because of a long-standing engagement.

These amendments seek to achieve co-ordination between criminal justice services and schools in relation to children with special educational needs. The amendments are the product of a review carried out by the Michael Sieff Foundation, chaired by Professor Cheryl Thomas KC of University College London, of which the membership included Sir Robert Buckland, the former Lord Chancellor. And I had a part in it too.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Longfield (Lab)]

I shall add something on those points, although I do not want to drag this on. Clearly, this arouses a lot of emotions, but we are mixing a lot of things up. There are rooms full of evidence on how these effectively work, not least on the things that the noble Lord is putting forward. I do not think that schools are being asked to undertake surveys—it is about giving information to schools, which is a completely different aspect.

What we should all be talking about here is keeping children well, which means intervening when they need help; it does not mean taking them to clinics or overmedicalisation but it is about providing positive environments in which children can flourish. Also, it is not something that we are asking schools to take on; schools have had to take this on, because it comes through the door. We are talking about other professionals —health professionals, youth workers and others, who know about well-being—being able to work with schools to support those children. This is a win-win for everyone, and children and their families are the last ones who want to overmedicalise this and come up with what has been described as an industrialisation of a medical complex. That is not what anyone wants, and I do not think that it is there in any of the intentions that have been put forward.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest in that I am chair of Sport Wales. I strongly support Amendment 472 in the name of my noble friend Lord O’Donnell, and I agree that it is one of the most important things that we can do. At Sport Wales, we carry out a school sport survey, and we had responses from 116,000 children who gave their opinion on sport and well-being. We do not use it only to focus the funding; it is to help them to be part of the solution, to think about how their well-being might be improved.

I have my name on Amendment 500. I make a plea for physical literacy, and for giving it the same status as literacy and numeracy. We know that, if we teach children good physical literacy skills, it helps their mental well-being. The reason why we need to do this is that we are in a time of crisis. UK Active data shows that we have a generation of children who are more likely to die before their parents because of inactivity. A press release issued by the Department for Work and Pensions on 18 June 2025 stated that one in eight young people is not in education, employment or training. I realise that that cuts across age groups and is looking at something different—but we have up to 93,000 young people between 16 and 24 on personal independence payments. This is not to criticise the Government, but the system is not sustainable in this current format. We cannot keep just pushing young people on to benefits, so we have to do something differently. This group of amendments is part of the solution to helping young people. In a Bill that has well-being in its Title, it would make sense that we measure well-being.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

The hour is late, so I shall be brief. This group of amendments has brought out the best in your Lordships. How people have spoken on each of these amendments I have found truly caring.

Stupidly perhaps, earlier on I was saying how the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, made me consider more closely particular issues, but I have to say that on this issue I think she is wrong. For me, the most important thing in schools is not just getting children learning; it is about how they learn about themselves, and their well-being and mental health is so important. The sooner they can get the feeling of a sense of well-being and get any mental health problems sorted, the more their learning will accelerate—not as the noble Baroness suggests. We know that about ourselves; when we feel good about something, we give of our best, do we not? I know that I do. If I feel down and miserable and things are not going right for me, I do not give of my best. So it is important to get mental health issues sorted.