Education and Adoption Bill (Fourth sitting)

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Edward Timpson]

I thank hon. Members for tabling amendment 8, which would require the Secretary of State to publish a statement of the criteria to be followed in selecting prospective adopters to assess.

I commend the motivation behind the amendment, which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak has just articulated extremely well. While I have some sympathies with that thoughtful intent, I am concerned that it has the potential to be detrimental to children waiting to be adopted. It also might be detrimental to the hopes and dreams of prospective adopters, which must be avoided. I will explain why I believe that.

It is important that agencies prioritise the needs of children who are waiting and that they actively recruit, assess and approve suitable adoptive parents who can meet those needs. I am also conscious of the national picture and the need for agencies to work together for the good of children across the whole system. Too tight a focus on meeting the needs of a small group of children in one area at a specific time may well mean that an ideal prospective adopter for a child in another area might be missed, or have their hopes dashed by being told that they are not needed or do not have the skills to become an adopter. That means that the whole system, not just that agency, will lose a person whom we should treasure, as was said a few moments ago, for having taken a big leap of faith in putting themselves and their family forward for an adoptive placement.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

While we are debating this amendment, I take the opportunity to say that we had written evidence from Link Maker Systems making the point that getting arrangements wrong could result in the downside of too many placements. Multiple placements cause children additional emotional damage, making matters worse, not better. Does the Minister agree that the point of this probing amendment is to ensure that we do not end up making a situation worse? Getting the balance right is essential, and that is what my hon. Friend’s amendment, which was signed by a number of us, drives at.

[Edward Timpson]

As I said, I commend the motivation behind the amendment and understand its purpose. Of course we want to ensure that a balance is struck in every case between making a decision as swiftly as possible and basing it on good-quality evidence that there is enough support for the placement to be durable for the rest of the child’s life with that family. We know from research by Julie Selwyn at Bristol University that the adoption breakdown rate is only about 3%, which suggests that there are some good-quality decisions being made on matching children with the right families with the right support.

We will discuss during debate on future clauses how we can enhance the support required so that we do not see cases such as the ones highlighted in Julie Selwyn’s research, in which things go wrong and parents and, most importantly, children suffer the consequences. I have read of many similar cases and talked to adoptive parents in my constituency and in my role as Minister. We do not want to risk making that an even more frequent occurrence.

I reassure the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak about the rigour of assessment and approval. Anyone who has been through the process of becoming an adoptive parent will know that it is a warts-and-all exercise, and that every aspect of their life is scrutinised from every angle. Not just the prospective parents but people who know them or who might have met them once have a part to play in building a picture of who they are as individuals and as a family, what challenges they face in their own lives and whether they have what it takes to take on the exciting but often challenging role of an adoptive parent.

Back in July 2013, we introduced the new framework for assessment and approval of adoptions, so that we could get the balance right between ensuring the required rigour of scrutiny and doing things in a timely manner, so that those who have taken the decision to put their names forward get the chance to build up a relationship of trust and feel that they are sharing their information securely, while being fully aware of what they are embarking on. That framework has now been in place for almost two years, and no signs have come to light that the assessment and approval process is not working well. We have ensured that the earlier part of the adoption process is well supported, with an additional £200 million to local authorities in the last Parliament to achieve that.

Of course, local authorities and their voluntary agency partners, and the new regional adoption agencies, will be best placed to know the needs of the children waiting in each area. Introducing regional adoption agencies means that agencies will be able to match the needs of children waiting with prospective approved adopters far more effectively. In addition, the Adoption Leadership Board collects and publishes data to help individual agencies see the regional and national picture of children and adopters waiting in other areas. I am sure the hon. Gentleman had the best intentions, but the publication from the centre of specific criteria for recruiting adopters at the level of detail required would not be helpful. I therefore hope that, having given him that reassurance, he will withdraw the amendment.

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[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. Amendment 9 is about ongoing support for families who adopt. There is a danger that a successful adoption placement is often considered the end of the story when it certainly is not. Although it is wonderful when a child is placed with a new family, we should never fool ourselves into thinking that their story ends there or that the case is closed. Matching a child or children to their adoptive parents begins with a paper match when the profiles of the adopter and the child are perceived to work, but a real assessment of that match can only happen when the introductions begin. No matter how well a child is matched to their adoptive parents, the process of bonding is never easy and there will always be challenges. Likewise, for adults who adopt, the difficulties of parenthood are joined by extra challenges when they have not lived with the child from birth. If that child has been attached to multiple foster-carers, they will take even longer to attach to their new family.

Children who have experienced instability in early life and have been through the care system are more likely to develop mental health issues. About 45% of children in care experience a mental health disorder, compared with 10% of the general child population. In the worst-case scenario, those combined factors can lead to adoptions breaking down and we should do everything that we can to avoid that, which is why it is essential that families who adopt get the ongoing support that they need after the adoption process is completed.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak said, needs assessments for families detail the support that is needed but, in practice, those assessments are often stored away in a filing cabinet and the support is never provided. A family in one area may get ongoing counselling and support but another family with the same rights, who have a child with similar, or even more, needs receive nothing. That kind of inconsistency is just not acceptable and it is bad for families.

It is in no one’s interests for an adoption to break down. The local authority will have put years of work and substantial resources into finding an appropriate placement. Breakdown is the worst-case scenario. For many more children, the transition into their new home is made more difficult than it should be.

There is a gap in post-adoption services. Just as proper support services can prevent family breakdown and the need for adoption in the first place, ongoing support can prevent adoptions from being disrupted and can keep families together. The Bill needs to reinforce the responsibility of local authorities to meet the needs of the adopted children and their parents, which is why I am supporting the amendment.

[Bill Esterson]

I, too, have my name on amendment 9. I want to comment briefly on the identified support needs of adopted children.

As my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields said, there is often a lack of services for supporting mental health problems. Perhaps the Minister will take on board her well-made point about the need to improve child and adolescent services, particularly for children who end up in the care system. For those of us who have adopted children, the lack of ongoing support can make the process even harder. From personal experience, I can say that the promise of ongoing support by the placing authority is not the same as its delivery once the child is adopted.

An area of concern that has recently come to my attention is the damage done by alcohol consumed by mothers during pregnancy. The damage caused to babies by foetal alcohol spectrum disorders can continue for their whole lives, as the brain damage is irreversible. In this country, we are only recently coming to realise how much of a problem foetal alcohol spectrum disorders are. One estimate is that 7,000 children are damaged each year in that way, but the true figure may be much higher. The all-party group on foetal alcohol spectrum disorders was formed just two days ago—I happen to be its chairman. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Thank you. I urge all Members to follow our work in raising awareness and attempting to improve support. A high proportion of the children who are damaged by alcohol during pregnancy end up in the care system, and a significant number end up being adopted. The members and supporters of the Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Trust and other groups that are supporting the APPG are often people who have adopted children who have been damaged by alcohol during pregnancy.

There is a need for better identification—that is certainly true in the context of adoption—and for much greater support. The evidence I have seen shows that behavioural problems among children who end up in care or being adopted, with which we are all familiar, are far worse among children who have foetal alcohol spectrum disorders. I want to draw the Minister’s attention to that serious problem. The problem is not growing, but awareness of it is, so perhaps he will refer to it in his response.

Amendment 12 states:

“the Secretary of State shall consult children who have experience of adoption functions, adopters and such persons as he considers appropriate.”

I think that we mentioned in passing on Tuesday that we may have been remiss in not hearing evidence from children and young people. I repeat that comment now. It would have been a good idea had we had written or, in particular, oral evidence from children and young people themselves.

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[Edward Timpson]

I chaired both.

[Bill Esterson]

I thank the Minister. He chaired both groups, so he is well aware of the good practice over a number of years of taking evidence from children and young people.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for the work that he has done, through various all-party groups, for looked-after children or children in the care system. He will have listened to evidence from care leavers as a member of the Education Committee in the previous Parliament. Does he agree that it is not simply children currently in care who need a voice, but those who have recently left it?

[Bill Esterson]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. We served together on that Committee in the previous Parliament. We held inquiries into leaving care and the quality of 16-to-19 care options and, indeed, a further inquiry into residential care. Previously, there was an inquiry into child protection. All those things are in the space that we are discussing under this aspect of the Bill and all will probably lend themselves to slightly fuller discussion under some of the other amendments. She is right to say that we should listen to what those who have left care have to say about their experiences. The experiences and life chances of children and young people who end up in the care system, whether they go on to be adopted or, we hope, into other forms of permanence, are affected very much, and for the same reasons. As parliamentarians looking to get this right for that group of children and young people, we should take every opportunity to listen to what children and young people and in particular, as she says, care leavers have to say.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)]

May I make this point while we are talking about children and, in particular, adopted children? There should be some flexibility in relation to the visits by social workers after the adoption, particularly in the early days, because quite often the social worker’s visit creates the fear that they might be taken away again. We need flexibility on how this is done, which is why I will not support the amendment. There needs to be a wide variety of ways for local authorities to perform the function. I know from personal experience that children get very upset if they think that there will be frequent visits by social workers or there are laid down guidelines. I would like to see much more flexibility.

[Bill Esterson]

Yes, and I realise that the hon. Lady has her own experience of these matters. When social workers become involved, which from time to time is right and proper—I am sure that she was not suggesting otherwise— what is important is continuity and that relationships between children and social workers and between families and social workers are, as far as possible, built on a basis of trust and longevity. A breakdown in trust between children and adults is one of the problems that lead to challenges as children grow. Often, what one social worker or professional may say to a child is contradicted by subsequent events. It is very important—I know that the Minister is aware of these matters—

[Steve McCabe]

I am very conscious of the point that the hon. Member for Portsmouth South has just raised. I simply want to suggest to my hon. Friend that, of course, consultation does not have to mean a social worker visiting someone’s home. In fact, that is a classic old-fashioned social worker view of consulting someone. Consultation could mean a variety of models employed by social workers or others to ensure children who have particular experiences can share them with the rest of us, so that we learn and do better next time.

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend is of course right. There have been suggestions about how to ask children for their views without putting them in a situation where they are uncomfortable or stressed, as the hon. Lady indicated. Good practice can be taken on board; I know the Minister is aware of some of that good practice, so perhaps he can refer to it in his closing remarks. I want to draw attention to the fact that the amendments raise important issues about a child-centred approach that takes in such considerations. I am pleased that we have been able to discuss them in this way. I look forward to his response.

[Edward Timpson]

I would like to speak to amendments 9 and 12 and proposed new clause 1. As we have heard, the amendments concern the functions that can be included in a direction, in particular about the adoption support function. The new clause would require the Secretary of State to report on the fitness of agencies to deliver the functions. Amendment 9 would add

“support identified in needs assessments of adopted children”

to the list of functions that can be included in a direction under the new clause. Amendment 12 would require consultation with children, adopters and other relevant people before any amendments to the type of local authority functions that could be included in a direction. The new clause would require the Secretary of State, before giving a direction, to commission and publish a report on the fitness of the authorities and agencies that he or she intends to direct. It would also require the assessment to consider specifically agencies’ ability to deliver support for education and adult employment for adopted children, mental health assessments and support services, and matching services.

I am grateful to the hon. Members on both sides who contributed to the well-informed debate on the amendments. I can understand the reasons why the amendments were proposed; it is certainly imperative that we ensure that the list of functions that regional adoption agencies can deliver is the right list and, as the Committee would expect, I wholeheartedly agree with the ambition to ensure that those carrying out adoption functions are fit to do so. That is particularly true when it comes to the needs of adopted children and their families for good, timely adoption support services.

Let me turn first to that last point, which is particularly raised by amendment 9. The amendment would add the wording proposed to the list of functions that can be included in a direction under the new clause. The amendment seeks to ensure that local authorities are under a duty to provide the adoption support identified in the needs assessments of adopted children. I should note that the wording does not describe an existing function and therefore it cannot be added to a list of functions in the way proposed. The clause already enables the general adoption support function to be covered in any direction. However, I fully appreciate the hon. Members’ reasons for proposing the amendment and seeking to ensure that local authorities are under a duty to provide adoption support identified in needs assessments of adopted children. As the hon. Member for South Shields said, we can all see the strong moral argument for providing high-quality support to children and families who are dealing with the impact of early abuse and neglect. There is also a strong financial imperative, for obvious reasons.

It is in no one’s interests for adoptive placements to falter, or even break down, in ways that could have been avoided had good support been available at the right time. I know from my family’s experience of adoption that unless there is support and a good assessment of the needs of not only that individual child but the family coping with the fallout from that child’s early life experiences, it can cause unnecessary harm and damage to the prospects of that family. It is also the support that will best ensure that the underlying causes that have created the behavioural difficulties, outbursts or friction in the family are understood and dealt with.

That is precisely why I was determined to establish the adoption support fund, which rolled out this year. We are providing more than £19 million of funding to support adopted children and their families. That means that when local authorities assess the needs of adopted children they can now draw on the fund to provide a wide range of support services. I am delighted that already more than 250 families have been supported through the fund since it began in May, accessing around £1.5 million of the overall funding pot.

As I argued during the passage of the Children and Families Act 2014, I believe that the adoption support fund is a better solution to the ongoing challenge of meeting the needs of adopted children and their families, compared with imposing a duty to provide on local authorities. By adding significant extra money into the system, the fund will help both to improve access to adoption support services and build provision of those services. It will enable local authorities to assess properly and not be tempted, as they could be under a duty to provide, to under-assess, and do it consistently in the knowledge that there is an additional source of funding to pay for packages of support.

In addition, we expect that the fund will help to stimulate the opportunity for adoption and support providers to grow by acting as a commissioner of services. Those benefits would not have been realised through a duty to provide.

I shall take this opportunity to share with the Committee one of the stories that have already started to emerge from the adoption support fund, about a family that has benefited. The family said that Jacob had settled really well into his family but, as a result of experiencing parental drug use, domestic violence and neglect in his birth family, he had been having some emotional problems at home and school. An application was made to the adoption support fund and, as a result, Jacob, his mum and dad are taking part in a course of Theraplay. The money provided by the adoption support fund has meant that the therapy has been able to happen quickly in their home town and is delivered by a worker whom they trust. That opportunity has had a significant impact on the family and it means that Jacob has the best chance to settle into his school and continue to be loved and secure in his family. That is exactly the sort of outcome that we hoped for when we set up the fund at the beginning of last year.

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[Edward Timpson]

I assumed that the hon. Gentleman did not refer to amendment 12 because his argument was so strong that he did not think he had to make it. I took the opportunity to respond to the amendment, but I thank him for his clarification. I have set out the direct conversations and dialogue that the Department and I have with children and young people, which is an important part of the consultation.

In relation to decisions on adoption, adoption support and the functions there may be in any part of the country, we have the Adoption Leadership Board, which comprises the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, Adoption UK, the British Association for Adoption and Fostering and others. Each region has its own leadership board. Those charities and boards are excellent forums through which to elicit exactly that type of knowledge, so that when we consider the vision of adoption support, it reflects the needs and desires of the children who will benefit from the fund and the support that flows from it.

Crucially, the whole design of the regional adoption agency approach is based on the need of children, adopters and agencies to eradicate unnecessary delays and inefficiency. Successful matching relies on being able to access a wide range of potential adopters from the beginning. Operating at a greater scale will allow social workers to do that, which will help reduce delays. The evidence is overwhelming that delays in the system cause lasting harm to vulnerable children. As Professor Julie Selwyn found,

“delay…has an unacceptable price in terms of the reduction in children’s life chances and the financial costs to local authorities, the emotional and financial burden later placed on adoptive families and future costs to society”.

We will, of course, expect regional adoption agencies to factor in adopters’ needs and views when they are developing their delivery and practice models. We are already demonstrating our commitment to ensuring that the voice of users is able to influence service provision in adoption. On top of the leadership boards, we are currently grant-funding Adoption UK to improve the adopter voice across the adoption system, and particularly to engage with agencies on a range of issues, including prospective adopters’ experience of matching. We expect that learning to feed in to the development of regional adoption agencies. Having listened to hon. Members this afternoon, I will take the opportunity to discuss with Adoption UK and others how they can make the voice of adopted children somewhat more prominent in their work, so that we get as good a picture as possible.

Finally, I turn to the proposed new clause. I will not speak at length as I have covered a number of the relevant points, particularly about what we are doing to ensure strong adoption support to adopted children and families. As hon. Members would expect, I wholeheartedly agree with the ambition to ensure that those carrying out adoption functions are fit to do so.

I also agree that supporting adopted children through their education, into employment, in their mental health and in the original matching decisions is vital. I commend the hon. Member for Sefton Central on the formation of his new all-party parliamentary group on foetal alcohol syndrome because that remains a feature of the lives of far too many children and it needs to be tackled. I welcome his interest and look forward to hearing of the work of his group in due course.

I reiterate that the purpose of the adoption clause in the Bill is to ensure that adoption services are provided at the right scale and to a high quality.

[Bill Esterson]

I thank the Minister for his words about the APPG, and take the opportunity to invite him to give evidence to the inquiry that we will hold in the autumn.

[Edward Timpson]

I will look forward to receiving the hon. Gentleman’s letter.

I firmly believe that the process of moving to regional adoption agencies provides opportunities to tackle the geographical barriers in the system and to build on existing strong practice while eradicating weaker practice. Our implementation approach, set out in the now seminal “Regionalising adoption” paper published last month, is clear that improving the way we deliver adopter recruitment, matching and support functions is a central aim of the programme.

Any directions that we issue to local authorities will be based on the need to form regional agencies that can operate on a more efficient and effective scale and deliver an excellent standard of practice. This is also an opportunity for authorities and agencies to innovate and consider the wider benefits of regionalisation, including, for example, the development of regional centres of excellence for therapeutic support, which agencies could make available to looked-after children as well as those who have left care through adoption. It is worth noting that local authority duties for adoption support remain unchanged, even if they are delivered through a regional model. We strongly believe that regional adoption agencies will improve children’s outcomes, and we are delighted that many in the sector have expressed their support. There are many benefits to regionalisation, not least enabling children to be matched with their forever family more swiftly and giving providers the confidence to expand their adoption support services so that vital services are widely available and provide better value for money for the taxpayer.

We are determined to make this work. We are absolutely committed to working with all those who have an interest in developing regional adoption agencies, in order to ensure that the structure and quality of service delivery are set at the right level, and that voluntary adoption agencies form part of that solution. We will provide financial and practical support to those who volunteer to rise to the challenge of transitioning to new arrangements. If it proves necessary to use these powers, we will need to ensure that all new arrangements are fit for purpose. Agencies will, of course, continue to be subject to Ofsted inspections. The Bill includes a power for the Secretary of State to issue a direction to terminate arrangements, that could be used where there are concerns about a regional adoption agency.

I hope that I have provided reassurance, and in view of my earlier points, I urge the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak to withdraw his amendment.

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[Steve McCabe]

I confess that when I first drafted this amendment, I sought to include the words “special guardianship orders”, “fostering”, “kinship care” or “a return home” because I was anxious that somewhere in the Bill we had the opportunity to debate those matters that so many people feel have been missed as a consequence of the Government’s decision to draw this legislation so narrowly. I think that the subsequent amendments address those points.

We heard Mr Elvin say that the most significant change he would like to make to is to substitute the word “permanence” for “adoption” throughout the Bill. Mr Andy Leary-May suggested to the Committee that the problems with finding suitable foster parents are similar to those associated with finding suitable families for adoption. Mr Thornbery of Adoption UK told the Committee that we needed to move from a focus purely on adoption agencies to looking at the broader issue of permanence arrangements.

For all the Minister’s good intentions, this is what he risks getting wrong with the Bill. As the Court of Appeal indicated in its 2013 judgment, Re B-S (Children)—the case was that of a mother seeking leave to oppose the adoption of two of her children—a court must consider all available options when coming to a decision, and evidence, including a proper analysis for and against adoption, must be presented to the court.

As Mr Elvin suggested in his evidence, by separating adoption from other forms of permanence, the Government risk elevating it to a special status of greater importance. That would make it difficult to comply with the requirements of the courts. We must surely ask how one model of permanence—one that, as we know, accounts for about 5% of the children in the system—can be of much greater importance and significance than any other. Surely, in each case, we want a permanence arrangement that is in the best interests of and affords the greatest prospect of a secure and loving family environment for that child or those children.

My own experience is that that can sometimes be achieved with the child’s natural parent or parents, but that often requires a lot of support from the authorities, and, as I said earlier, sometimes does not work out. That is exactly the point made by the president of the Court of Appeal in the judgment that I mentioned. Sometimes, there can be no realistic prospect of a return to the natural parent or parents, but there are wonderful examples of grandparents or other relatives—including older siblings, aunts and uncles—who take over care and provide a loving home for the child, allowing them to retain a family link and some cultural connections. We should value and promote those models of permanence just as much as adoption. Likewise, we should not underestimate the contribution of long-term fostering.

With the amendment, I therefore seek to ensure that, whatever arrangements the Minister decides to put in place for adoption, they do not happen in isolation, divorced from other models of permanence, with adoption as the Rolls-Royce model and all other options relegated to an inferior position. He has said little about his plans for other permanence arrangements, so I hope that he will respond to the amendment in the spirit in which it is intended and tell us briefly of his plans for those. I also hope that he will assure us that he values grandparent and other forms of kinship care just as highly as adoption and that the best interests of the child are at the core of all his ambitions in this regard.

I think that I have gone as far as you will allow me to within the scope of the amendment, Mr Chope. I hope that the Minister is clear about what I am asking him to consider, so I shall leave it there.

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend finished his contribution by saying that whatever we do must be in the best interests of the child. His comment says everything about what we should do for vulnerable children and children who end up in the care system, whether or not they are adopted. Everything we do should be done with that in mind. The principle of paramountcy matters above all else. The interests of the child should come above the interests of any adult. That is why these three amendment are important. I put my name to amendment 11. It seems that I was slightly more fortunate than my hon. Friends on the Front Bench, in being allowed to use the term “foster care” in my amendment. My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields went further and managed to get “kinship care” and “residential care” in her amendment.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

Job done.

[Bill Esterson]

Indeed.

I have a sense that the Bill is a missed opportunity, and I said as much on Second Reading: it

“raises concern that adoption is being considered the gold standard”—[Official Report, 22 June 2015; Vol. 597, c. 647.]—

at the expense of other forms of permanence. That point has been put to me on a number of occasions. Let us bear in mind than only a very small number of children end up being adopted. The best way forward for the much greater number—in excess of 90%—of children who end up in the care system is to be kept with their families, perhaps extended family, with special guardianship orders or in foster or residential care. It is a great shame that the Bill does not pick up on that. We heard in evidence that point being made in one way or another by a number of witnesses. Annie Crombie was probably the first witness to touch on it when she suggested that it is only right to think more broadly and not think only about adoption:

Many of the voluntary organisations that work in this area provide services across more than just adoption; some do not, some are very adoption-focused, but many do.––[Official Report, Education and Adoption Public Bill Committee, 30 June 2015; c. 47, Q10.]

Most of her remakes were about adoption, but she also made that point.

The other witnesses spoke in more detail. When Andy Leary-May spoke about the challenges in adoption that the Bill was trying to address, he mentioned that there are barriers within fostering, too. The essence of his remarks was that, by focusing only on adoption, there was a danger of missing a

“large part of the picture”––[Official Report, Education and Adoption Public Bill Committee, 30 June 2015; c. 56, Q25.]

When I asked him and the other witnesses on that panel about the Bill’s impact on other forms of permanence, he made the point that a number of local authorities have already created permanence teams and he expressed the concern that, unless the changes the Government are considering are carried out very carefully, they may create what he called “a separation”. I think that he was saying that there is a danger that we will damage existing services, and that is what my amendment seeks to avoid.

[Steve McCabe]

Is it not the case, and the pertinent point of my hon. Friend’s amendment, that if we continue to focus energy and resource on adoption to the exclusion of other permanence options—I am thinking of the £16 million for the expansion fund and the money for the adoption support fund—and if there is no move to permanence teams and we continue to focus the resource in this fashion, eventually people will conclude that adoption is the only option and the other options will wither on the vine because they will be squeezed out of the system?

[Bill Esterson]

There is a danger of that, and it is right to highlight the danger. The last thing I wanted to do in tabling the amendment was to undermine any good practice, and that was not what my hon. Friend was seeking to do, either. However, it is only right and proper that we express the concern that if all the focus, attention, energy and resources are directed towards something called adoption when that is not necessarily right for the child, other forms of permanence will not receive the same support and the best life chances for children and young people will not be provided.

We are all familiar with the very sad state of affairs that large numbers of children in care end up in the criminal justice system. They end up not getting good results at school. They find it difficult to establish stable relationships in adult life and find it difficult to get decent, well-paid employment. We have already talked about the mental health problems that young people in care suffer. All those indicators, all those problems, start early in life. The damage is done in the early years, is it not? So we should invest in support for children and young people as early as possible to improve their chances later in life.

If we focus only on adoption, we are focusing, sadly, on the few. I certainly do not want that to be at the expense of the very many for whom, sadly, the end result is as I have described, despite a lot of investment, intervention and good work by dedicated professionals, volunteers and people who act as formal or informal carers, with the support of people in schools, the health service and beyond. There is massive investment and support over many years, yet there is a stubborn lack of improvement in the life chances of this group of children and young people, with a considerable cost not only to their life chances but to society. The cost of young people who end up in the prison system is enormous. We need to consider the numbers who come through the care system first. If only there was a way of reducing those numbers, it would make an enormous saving further down the line, so my hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that point.

We heard evidence from a number of witnesses. I have quoted Andy Leary-May already when I was talking about permanence teams. He called for the Bill to look at other forms of permanence in full. Another witness, Andy Elvin, an experienced adopter, was able to give evidence from a personal perspective, and we should listen carefully to that. He made the point that we cannot overstate the importance of early, stable and permanent placements. He talked about concentrating not on one solution—the Bill refers only to adoption—but on permanency. When asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West what change he would make to the Bill, Mr Elvin said that he would substitute the word “permanency” for “adoption”. Improving the outcomes in all permanence options would make a big difference. That improvement would make the legislation right. He said that this was not about adoption numbers but about increasing the quality of permanence. He spoke of the value of special guardianship orders and foster care, and urged us to consider how we, as a Committee, could help with those permanence options.

It is, of course, important that we do the best we can for those who are adopted. A number of Members have spoken about Julie Selwyn’s research, which showed that adoption is on the whole a very good thing for children. Hugh Thornbery, who also mentioned that research, made the point that while adoptive families struggle through tough times and survive them, adopted children still have very challenging needs. To paraphrase his evidence, it is clear that adoption offers a greater chance of stability, hence the low number of breakdowns in placements—3%—that we have talked about a number of times. However, if adoption is the solution for only 5% of children who end up in care, how do we ensure that we provide solutions that give the other 95% the best chance of permanence and stability, so that they can make the best of their lives and we do not end up with the poor outcomes that I mentioned for so many children and young people?

[James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that the Government are, in fact, very concerned about all the different forms of permanence? The Bill focuses on one such method—adoption—without in any way devaluing the other forms of permanence. It is appropriate to do so when, as Sir Martin Narey pointed out, there has been a massive decline in adoption since 1975.

[Bill Esterson]

We also heard evidence that there has been a worrying fall in the number of children being adopted recently.

[Steve McCabe]

Does my hon. Friend also recognise that Opposition Members have been pursuing the matter because this is the Government’s second bite of the cherry on adoption in less than a year? We have yet to hear the Government make proposals for other forms of permanence. It is fair to say that there has been a fall-off since ’75, but there has been a much more recent levelling-off of adoption. We need to know exactly what that is about. The danger of legislating in isolation is that we might not learn those lessons.

[Bill Esterson]

That is absolutely right. Whether it is about adoption or other forms of permanence, we have to find more people to come forward to look after children. In my experience, there are many things we could do to make it easier and more attractive. The issue of support came up in the evidence, for example. We need to improve support for adopters or others who care for the children who end up in the care system.

[Kevin Brennan]

Would my hon. Friend care to commend the Adoption and Children Act 2002, which dealt with measures to improve adoption, but also took the trouble to introduce—by amending the Children Act 1989—special guardianship orders? They should surely be included in any debate or legislation about adoption in order to get a proper picture of all the permanency options available.

[Bill Esterson]

Yes. We heard evidence from Andy Elvin about the increase in the number of children who are subject to special guardianship orders, so something is clearly working for those children, and he said that the outcomes were just as good.

We have 65,000 children in the care system, and we might have a piece of legislation that deals only with 3,000 or 4,000 children a year. Although it is important and right that we do as well as we can by those 3,000 or 4,000, we must do something for the other 61,000 or 62,000 as well. My worry is that this is a missed opportunity. It is a second missed opportunity, as my hon. Friend has reminded us. Perhaps the Minister will tell us when the Government will introduce equivalent proposals to address the support for the much larger group of children and young people—the 61,000 or 62,000—who are not covered by the provisions in the Bill.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I would like to speak briefly to amendment 11 tabled by my hon. Friends and to my own amendment 26, which at this stage is a probing amendment.

I and my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Selly Oak and for Sefton Central have said before that the Government treat adoption as a special case and focus on it at the expense of other approaches. There is a danger that clause 13 could go even further in setting adoption apart as a preferred option, relegating other types of permanence arrangements to second-order solutions. That would be a mistake.

At the very least, there is a danger that, because the reforms are applied to adoption services only, the process for adoption will be separated from other forms of permanence such as fostering, kinship care, special guardianship or long-term residential care. Such options exist because, as we all know, the job of finding a home for a child is never routine, and children’s needs and family circumstances are far too varied for one single answer to be applied in all cases.

If clause 13 is to be effective, fostering and other arrangements need to remain properly integrated with adoption. We cannot have a two-tier system in which the process for adoption differs from that used for fostering or kinship care. That is a sure way to create a disjointed procedure and encourage confusion and delay.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry]

I think I should just say yes, Mr Speaker, but I would add that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was actually talking about all businesses, not just those here.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

I am sure that businesses will tell the Minister on Twitter what they told Ernst and Young, which is that the number of regulations has gone up, not down, under this Government. Is not the reality that this Government are all talk and no action when it comes to getting rid of regulations?

[Anna Soubry]

I am tempted to say, “The hon. Gentleman would know, wouldn’t he?” I am really surprised at his churlish attitude, and I absolutely do not agree with what he has been told. We know, because it was properly evaluated, that under the previous Administration we actually achieved £10 billion of savings for businesses by cutting red tape. The hon. Gentleman should welcome and praise that.

Education and Adoption Bill (First sitting)

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2015 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I am afraid we have time for only one more question, and I hope it will be brief.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Q 18 We have talked predominantly about secondaries. What about primaries? What is the impact of the draft regulations on coasting when it comes to primaries?

Robert Hill: It is a threshold measure, as I understand it. If you get above the 85%, you are let off the hook. There will be a lot of primaries that will be above that measure where there will potentially be quite a lot of coasting going on. It seems to me that when people thought that the Government was going to act on the concept of coasting, they thought it was going to be seeking out underperformance in good or outstanding schools. In primaries the extent it might do that will be pretty limited.

[Bill Esterson]

Q 19 Rebecca, you said that identifying coasting primaries would be more difficult.

Dr Allen: I did. On the current definition, which includes a threshold measure—65% achieving level 4—and a median progress measure, by including the threshold measure you are knocking all of your schools that serve affluent communities out of having any risk of being deemed to be coasting. You have to be okay with that happening. If you are not okay with that happening, there is a simple solution: just cross out the threshold part of the measure and base it purely on progress. I would recommend that that happens.

The second thing to say about primary schools, which is serious, is that some primary schools are very small. When you have small schools, the measures of progress made by children from one year to the next are a relatively poor reflection of the true underlying quality of teaching and learning that are taking place in the school. The consequences of that are not quite in the direction that you think. A small primary school is going to have very volatile progress measures, which is not necessarily bad, under the definition of coasting; under that definition, a school has to be bad for three years in a row. The risk is that for very small primary schools—by which I mean a one-form entry and below—there will be poorly performing schools that manage to always just about escape being deemed to be coasting, because they maybe get lucky one year in their intake. This is an issue and means that the proportion of schools that are deemed to be coasting will relate to the size of primary schools.

[The Chair]

Thank you. I am sorry that the evidence session was shorter than we might have wished, but thank you for your contribution.

Examination of Witnesses

Malcolm Trobe, Sir Daniel Moynihan, Richard Watts and Emma Knights gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan]

Q 46 On that point, Councillor Watts, the Minister used a piece of data at the beginning. He said that sponsored academies have improved more quickly over the past four years than all local authority schools, which is hardly surprising, is it?

Richard Watts: I am sure it is not. Some of the most interesting comparisons are like-for-like ones. Putting to one side the politics of this, I urge the Committee to consider the Sutton Trust report on this, which looked at the capacity of schools. It found that of the 20 academy chains considered, three produced above-average results, including Harris—on which, enormous congratulations to Daniel—and that of 100 local authority schools, 44 produced above-average results. As I say, you can pick data that show any point you wish. I do not think there is any overwhelming data that show the governance model to be the defining thing in the quality of a school.

[Bill Esterson]

Q 47 Should high-performing local authorities be allowed to take over coasting academies?

Richard Watts: There is a real challenge that the Government will face in pushing through this legislation: the capacity of high-quality sponsors to take on more schools. There are some excellent sponsors and there are some not so good sponsors. We have seen that capacity problems can develop where sponsor chains expand very quickly. The Department for Education has rightly intervened in a number of those rapidly expanding chains. If you are going to expand the pool of high-quality sponsors, it is common sense that good quality local authorities, or even outstanding maintained schools, should be able to become sponsors.

[Bill Esterson]

Q 48 Sir Daniel, do you agree that local authorities should be able to take over if they are high performing?

Sir Daniel Moynihan: I don’t, actually. No.

[Bill Esterson]

Q 49 Okay. So we are not interested in high quality.

Sir Daniel Moynihan: It depends. How do you define local authorities as high performing? They are not directly responsible for the management of their schools, so what does that mean? If the schools in a local authority are doing well, does that mean the local authority is high performing? I think the headteachers of those schools would have something to say about that; their view would be that they have delivered.

Emma Knights: Or the governors.

Sir Daniel Moynihan: So if those heads and governors could take over schools, yes, I would agree with that.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

Q 50 While we are talking about data, the Local Schools Network has managed—incredibly, given the lateness with which the Government made public the regulations last night—to crunch the data and has found that 814 secondary schools would be defined as coasting under the Government’s regulations. Some 342 of those are academies, a high proportion of which are converter academies. That is surprising given that, as the Minister points out, those would have been good or outstanding when they were converted, but 125 of them had a progress 8 value added measure. Is progress 8 wrong, or is the Government’s definition of “coasting” wrong?

Sir Daniel Moynihan: Do you mean that they had a positive progress 8 measure?

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Nokes]

Q 66 We heard from the last panel—apologies, but this is again directed at Zoe—that geography is important when it comes to multi-academy trusts and that the region had an impact. It was easier to manage academies if they were in close proximity to each other. From your experience, what do you think there is by way of capacity in your area, were a number of the primary and secondary schools to be required to become sponsored academies? Is there the capacity there in the shape of sponsors?

Zoe Carr: One of the successes of the regional schools commissioner board for the north of England has been to increase the number of small sponsors coming forward who are prepared to take on one or two more schools. That has been a real benefit of the work that our regional schools commissioner has been involved in with the wider board over the past year that they have been in office.

I certainly see proximity as an important factor. We have staff who I know personally, because I have worked in each of the four schools. If I see a particular need on leadership in a school, we bring together our teachers and our leaders at all levels to work together to solve the problem, or to coach or to mentor. In that way, I have seen the rate of improvement in our schools go up much more quickly than if we did not have that talent bank within our organisation to draw on.

It is important that, within that local context, you stay connected to the local area. One of our schools is a teaching school, and we have lots of schools within the alliance that are both academies and maintained schools. It does not make any difference to me where the support comes from. We work with outstanding maintained schools and with outstanding academies to serve our own ends. Wherever the support is most appropriate, that is where the support will come from.

[Bill Esterson]

Q 67 Dr Major, the evidence that the Sutton Trust came up with suggested that, overall, multi-academy trusts—chains of academies—are not performing as well as local authorities, when it comes to looking after the schools they are responsible for. Given that academies are increasingly where we are going—and this legislation is going to accelerate that process—what is the answer? How do we make sure that sponsors improve so that they are outperforming the existing system?

Lee Elliot Major: We found that overall there was a variation. Some academy chains were doing incredibly well and improving attainment progress and others were not. We tried to look at the factors behind that. Basically, they are the things that we all know about: good leadership and a focus on teaching in the classroom. All our evidence suggests that that is the one major issue in schools. If you have good leadership that focuses on that, you will get results. It sounds simple, but that is the basic issue that the evidence throws up.

Over and above that, we found that the successful chains had steady growth. They were not taking on too many schools too quickly. They had a clear strategy for school improvement. They had geographical clusters of schools, which I think you were alluding to earlier.

What should you do to encourage that? I am in favour of Ofsted inspecting chains of schools as well as schools themselves. We are heading in that direction. We may come to this point later, but I think the accountability measure should explicitly look at disadvantaged students as well. When we talk about thresholds of 60% or 85% being over a certain grade, or progress measures, we should apply those to children as a whole, and also to those children from poorer backgrounds. I would therefore measure academy chains alongside those data.

[Bill Esterson]

Q 68 Will you say a bit more about the accountability measure you are looking at for disadvantaged children?

Lee Elliot Major: Our argument would be that the accountability measures that we are discussing here, for example, for coasting schools or for inadequate schools are as follows. At the moment, you have general accountability measures, which say that children need to get over a certain proportion of grades to be successful. We would say that you should have an explicit separate measure, to which schools should be accountable, which would measure that for disadvantaged children—those on free school meals.

[Bill Esterson]

Q 69 You mentioned the quality of leadership and teaching. Emma Knights mentioned that the accountability measures and the increasing complexity are not helping governors to recruit school leaders. What are your thoughts on what Emma Knights told us?

Lee Elliot Major: There is some real challenge here. I would argue that one of the biggest challenges facing schools now is recruitment. You will all know about the situation with both maths and English teachers. We all need to think about that. One of the big challenges is getting good teachers into the system. The second challenge is how to develop teachers. I still do not think that we have a strong enough system in this country to develop teachers to observe and appraise each other. The biggest variation in teaching is within schools, not between them. It is perhaps outside this Bill, but we need a stronger programme of development and learning for teachers and we also need the leaders. We need more leaders and I think that will come from the system.

[Bill Esterson]

Q 70 Coming back to the point about accountability measures and the changes that the Bill will bring about, are there things that you think we should look at as we examine the Bill line by line? Are there things we should look at changing to reduce the concerns that Emma Knights raised about recruitment?

Lee Elliot Major: It is difficult. I think you have to go outside the Bill. I totally agree that you have to have strong accountability measures, but they have to be counterbalanced with very strong professional development of teachers. All the international evidence suggests this. The countries that do best in education have strong autonomy and accountability, but also a very strong sense of how they are going to develop their teachers. I am not sure whether that is in the scope of the Bill, but I would say that you need that counterbalance.

[Bill Esterson]

Q 71 A question for Tim Coulson. Where will the additional sponsors come from to meet the expansion in the number of academies?

Dr Coulson: The additional sponsors will come from schools that Zoe has described. The really big trusts such as Harris have limited additional capacity, although they are terrific and we are delighted when they do agree to take on another school. However, even in the last couple of months since the direction of the Bill was announced, I have been encouraged that I have been contacted by more schools in the region I work in which are interested in stepping up and starting to set up their own multi-academy trusts. For me, the big capacity to generate is, locally, the very best school in an area, to set up a trust that is capable of running three or four schools. That is the main area of capacity that we need to grow.

[Bill Esterson]

Q 72 How will you assure the quality of those sponsors? We have seen some high-profile problems. How will we avoid those?

Dr Coulson: There are two things. One is that the system is learning a bit about sponsors—those that have been successful and those that have been less successful. The work that Zoe described about headteacher boards has brought greater scrutiny by headteachers of those kind of decisions. That has been a very helpful development in the last year. When someone wants to be a sponsor, they have to go through various processes when they apply. Potential sponsors now have to go into a level of detail, and they have to demonstrate why they would be any good at this, what the governance is and all those kinds of things. Certainly on this the bar has been raised very significantly, even in the last 12 months.

The second thing is the work we have begun to do in the last year to hold academy trusts accountable much more quickly when schools do not appear to be doing as well as we would expect. There is also the use of mechanisms in the funding agreements that allow us to give warning notices and pre-warning notices to academy trusts, which make clear that, unless things change, we will have to move schools from one trust to another.

[James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)]

Q 73 I should say that I am a primary school governor. Dr Coulson, there are different tools for improving academies. Could you briefly explain a little about those? I understand that the Government will extend those methods to failing and coasting schools.

Dr Coulson: In terms of improving academies, when those academies that I have got to know in the last year have not been going successfully, crucially, the kind of measures which led to improvements have brought much greater local support. Typically those schools that have struggled are rather dispersed from other schools in their trust. They are schools which do not really have a local understanding of their area, and have struggled to succeed in the progress debate of the children, who typically are in quite low attaining schools. It has been about leadership, as you have heard many times. It has been about the academy trust being able to draw on the local leadership capacity that perhaps they had not previously had. It has been about bringing in fresh leadership to have a fresh look, and sharing some of the key people, whether they are heads of English or heads of maths. This gives a fresh look at departments where children have not been making the kind of progress which you would expect, certainly in these key subjects.

In terms of the second point about failing and coasting schools, there is a big distinction between failing and coasting. In failing schools, I would absolutely expect to see the kind of measures I just mentioned, so an academy trust would immediately take responsibility for the school and do the same kinds of things. In coasting schools, I think that there is a considerably wider group of possible interventions, of which joining an academy trust is one. There are some of the things which Emma Knights talked about, such as interim executive boards; some of the other measures that the Bill mentions, such as insisting on joining up and making arrangements with strong partners for support, and making use of teaching schools and national leaders of education. All those kinds of things are some of the measures we would expect to see a coasting school engaging in. The important thing about the Bill is that there is an expectation that the plan works, one way or another, and that we use every single tactic until we have made sure that it does. That then might include moving to academy status if necessary.

Education and Adoption Bill (Second sitting)

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2015 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Q 6 Dr Homden, I think you were about to answer the question before we went to vote.

Carol Homden: In establishing regional entities, which Coram has already done, local authorities have taken a range of different views in what will best meet their needs, and have used a procurement and contract process in order to align those needs. Different local authorities will apply different modules and commission different services.

We have in process the formation of such an entity with a set of five local authorities, which will see those different approaches taken, but all of them will benefit from a centre of expertise with resilience in practice leadership and social work retention and, therefore, offering added benefits to children and adopters locally on a hub-and-spokes model. You are quite correct, Mr McCabe, that this is about taking a power, but I am sure that good sense would prevail: if excellence in practice is being delivered and something is not broken, then it does not need to be mended, irrespective of questions of scale.

Annie Crombie: What we want is a local authority to look as widely and swiftly as possible for the best possible match for a child, and not to be constrained in doing that by looking only, or for a long time, introducing delay, within their own local authority area. We need to ensure that in moving towards regional adoption agencies we do not introduce a disincentive for local authorities to look outside a regional adoption agency if the right placement is outside rather than inside. It is that kind of issue that is again around that sequential decision making, which we need to ensure we address as the policy on this develops.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Q 7 The relevant clause in the Bill talks only about adoption, but there other forms of permanence. In fact, for most children in care, the other forms of permanence are where they end up. Do you have concerns that the measure will exacerbate an existing gap in the quality—or perceived quality, at least—of adoption and fostering, residential care and kinship care?

Sir Martin Narey: I do not take that view. I think the Government, certainly encouraged by me in my role of the past few years, are encouraging adoption because adoption happens to be the disposal that has been in such long-term decline. I am puzzled when people talk about the emphasis being given to adoption, as opposed to other disposals. The number of special guardianships, from a zero start in 2006, has now caught up with adoption. There were 5,000 adoptions last year and 75,000 fostering placements.

Adoption has been in long-term decline, despite some spirited attempts to revive it by the Labour Government, who inherited figures of about 2,000 adoptions and got them up to about 3,700. The figures then immediately fell away again. This Government have brought great leadership to it and have got the numbers up to about 5,000. In 1975, there were 24,000 adoptions a year in England. Adoption has been in long-term decline, despite the evidence that it offers quite extraordinary advantages in terms of permanence and outcomes for children.

Despite all the difficulties that adoption can present, it offers quite extraordinary options for changing the lives of neglected children. Even after the recent slowdown in placement orders, we still have children waiting for adoption who need it as soon as possible. We are right to try to make sure that we have a system that is more fit for purpose and can fill that gap.

[Bill Esterson]

Q 8 Before I come to Dr Homden and Annie Crombie, is there anything in the Bill that will help children who are placed through other forms of permanence?

Sir Martin Narey: There is nothing in the Bill that will do that. I believe, however, that the emphasis on adoption has had significant advantages for other forms of placement. The emphasis on responding to neglect means that the Government have done other things to make long-term fostering easier—the development of and financial investment in special guardianship. A lot more has happened in dealing with neglect and adoption, but adoption is still not meeting the role it could play in responding to neglect.

Carol Homden: I agree with that. Adoption is not in conflict with other forms of permanence. It is an exemplar of when the care system works correctly for children for whom the risks are so great that the decision has been taken, by due process, that they need to be placed in a new, loving family. We need to guard against putting up different forms of solution for children as if they are somehow in conflict with one another. We need to aspire to ensure that the appropriate decision making is in the timescale of the child, and that children’s need for continuity of relationships and attachments is foregrounded in all those decisions and in the actuality of practice.

All too often, children from the care system report repeated changes in social worker and in placement. That is where our attention should sit, but the Bill focuses on seeking to accelerate and accentuate a direction of travel to ensure the maximum benefit for children for whom adoption is the right plan. I commend to you a further focus and emphasis on the benefits of concurrent planning and foster-to-adopt approaches—particularly concurrent planning, which offers a fully fair, appropriate and transparent way to foreground children’s need for attachment, while allowing all proper support and opportunities for birth parents to demonstrate their capability to change.

[Bill Esterson]

Q 9 As far as you are concerned, will the Bill’s provisions help with the challenges you have outlined?

Carol Homden: It certainly will. It is not possible for very small agencies, however noble their intent, to provide sufficient opportunities for concurrent planning, which is a specialist form—for example, within a very small social work team. Having a larger base of resilient social work will allow that kind of opportunity to become normalised for more children.

For example, in the establishment of Coram Cambridgeshire Adoption—the first voluntary adoption agency into which Cambridgeshire County Council has delegated its adoption functions—we simultaneously introduced concurrent planning. Twenty-five per cent. of adoption placements in Cambridgeshire were made through concurrent planning last year, with significant benefits for the timeliness and for those children’s attachments.

[Bill Esterson]

Q 10 Will the Bill help with children who are sometimes regarded as hard to place—sibling groups or children with disabilities, for example?

Carol Homden: In my view, absolutely; definitely. Those are the circumstances in which the principle that Annie indicated—the principle of having the widest possible range of adopters and specialist services available to provide the necessary ongoing, reliable and consistent post-adoption support—is more likely to be resiliently achieved within a larger grouping of agencies that have a common purpose.

Annie Crombie: I agree with much of that. The point about scale and the specialism of adoption services is important. If regional adoption agencies work well, it could allow agencies that really specialise, or develop specialist expertise—such as some that I represent—to offer their services in a much more structured way across a wider number of local authorities, rather than it being a question of an individual relationship or a happy coming-together in the margins of a conference with a local authority making an arrangement with a particular voluntary adoption agency that has a specialism in a particular type of work. We could see those sorts of services being made available in a more systematised and structured way, which would benefit more children.

To come to the earlier point that you made, I welcome the way that the Government document published to support this opens the door to arrangements that go wider than adoption. Many of the voluntary organisations that work in this area provide services across more than just adoption; some do not, some are very adoption-focused, but many do. It may well make sense to think more broadly than just adoption, but there is something about specialism here that is important, and which I think we all want to see developed in relation to some aspects of adoption.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

Q 11 Good afternoon. My question is to everyone in turn. The Bill states that an authority’s functions may be taken on by either another local authority or another adoption agency but there is nothing to say which criteria the Secretary of State will choose for the preferred option. I was wondering whether the panel could help out the Secretary of State and suggest what kind of criteria she might use.

Annie Crombie: I do not imagine that the Secretary of State would disagree that it is really important that quality should be at the heart of any regional adoption agency and that we need to think about expertise in the different elements of what is needed to be able to provide a good adoption service. If a group of local adoption authorities without any particular strength in low incidence adoption support—without any specialism in particular provision of therapeutic services—were to come together, it would not provide a strong service for children in the area. If they include someone with a specialism or real, and proven, expertise in adoption support, then that would be much better. So it is about quality across all the different elements of what an adoption service needs to do.

Carol Homden: Quite clearly, excellence for children is what needs to drive us. That is our sole focus and concern. Therefore, in making any decisions on intervention, I think that the Government would wish to consider the criteria that it applies in other circumstances where there is a shortfall against national standards. In considering how we might take forward regional adoption agencies we, as an organisation that already provides regional adoption agencies, have given considerable thought to this and would recommend including six key criteria that should be taken into account—we would be prepared to give written evidence of those recommendations.

The first is that bringing weak things together does not in itself make a strong thing. Any hub should therefore include at least one agency, as the lead, that is rated either good or outstanding. The aim must be to replicate good practice, not to concentrate less good practice. Steps should be taken to ensure that not all the agencies forming the arrangement are characterised by a high turnover in social work staff, since relationship continuity is essential to the support of adopters and children and effective planning. Data collection and case-tracking systems are directly related to performance management and should be robust in at least one agency. There is considerable complexity in the different systems used by local authorities and the more of them that are involved in any regional agency, the more complexity and difficulty there is in managing risk and optimising outcomes. The definition of a cluster should relate to road transport and not to the other forms of consideration around what might constitute a region. The important factor here, as it is for a special school, would be the travel distance involved for adopters and children to access the services that they need.

Any hub should explain how it will build upon the cross-regional system support that is already provided in our nation. This includes, for example, First4Adoption, which has demonstrated the benefits of consistent customer service and could do far more on a cross-national basis. Every hub should undertake a market risk assessment if it is excluding any voluntary adoption agency, since more than 90% of voluntary adoption agencies are good or outstanding. Any loss of that excellence in the system could only be a disbenefit to children.

Sir Martin Narey: I will not give you six criteria but just one. I have not given much thought to the criteria for how this will be used, because I genuinely believe that there will be a significant move towards regionalisation, which will occur of its own volition. This was poised to happen before the election. For me, the overwhelming criterion when we look at adoption—or indeed other forms of permanence—is how quickly we rescue a child from neglect and put them into a home in which permanence is achieved, and where the reparative work can begin.

We have made great strides with recruitment, but matching still takes far too long. The main criterion for me is how quickly we can improve the process of matching and achieve greater pragmatism in matching. Matching between adopters and children sometimes takes too long as we search for the mythical set of perfect parents, but the sooner we get children into permanent homes, the sooner and more complete will be their recovery from the desperately adverse consequences of being brought up in neglect.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Trevelyan]

Q 23 You mentioned in your written submission that this may prove more difficult for children with complex needs, although it might be successful for children who are less needy. Could you expand on why you think that is the case?

Andy Leary-May: Yes, it is based on some anecdotal evidence, but also on the study that the DFE commissioned in 2010, which is referred to in the briefing paper on this. It points to the fact that, as the study found, some local authorities—some agencies—wait too long to look widely for a match for children. It is quite right that that causes harm. It also specifically pointed out that the larger local authorities were the worst at this. From talking to agencies in my role, I see that there is a tendency for the larger local authorities to feel so self-sufficient in their own supply of adopters that they feel there is less need to look outside for placements.

If you accept the fact that interagency placement is not working, and you do not try to address that problem, in some ways increasing the scale of the agencies would help, because there would be a larger pool. Our service has only been running for a year and we have only matched just over 250 children, but our experience is that half the placements that have been made—and these tend to be the harder-to-place children that we see—are between neighbouring regions. That indicates to me that there are children for whom it is necessary to go outside their region to find the right placement—the right family. I worry that if we increase the scale of agencies, and I think there could be many benefits to consolidating and increasing their size, unless we address the problems that exist—the barriers to inter-agency matching—the children with the most complex needs may wait longer to find a suitable placement.

[Bill Esterson]

Q 24 You said earlier that you wanted to clarify what the problems are that the Bill is addressing. You mentioned issues around children with complex needs; is that the primary one or are there others?

Andy Leary-May: Not defined by who it is trying to help, necessarily, but I think it would be helpful if, rather than looking at the number of adoptions, for example, there were measures looking at the outcomes for the children, if at all possible, and some measure of how agencies may already be collaborating together. We did a quick survey last week of the adoption social workers using our system, and by far the majority of them commented that they felt that they were already collaborating as well as they possibly could. That is not necessarily true in all cases, but I think the possibility that there may be a group of agencies doing everything that you would hope that they would be doing should be looked at. There should be something that would help local authorities and agencies to know if they are doing as well as expected.

[Bill Esterson]

Q 25 Okay. In the last session, I think we heard the suggestion that the Bill will help with other forms of permanence, so even though it concentrates just on adoption, it will help with fostering, residential care and kinship care. Do you both agree?

Andy Leary-May: For me, not to the extent that I think it could. There are still issues in adoption with children finding the most suitable placements, and they are barriers that will probably not be solved by increasing the scale of agencies. Whatever barriers and organisational issues there are within adoption, the same issues are within fostering, and to a much greater extent and affecting far more children. I do not think that we should look at one or the other. It should not be a competition between them as to which gets the focus; not to address the same kinds of issues that exist within fostering would miss a very large part of the picture.

Hugh Thornbery: The Bill itself does not tackle any issues beyond changing the infrastructure that delivers adoption. Very helpfully, and I think this has been a development in terms of Government thinking, the discussion paper, which is what we are hoping will initiate a bottom-up-led approach to this, talks about the potential to move beyond the narrow confines of adoption and think more broadly about permanence. If local areas, in thinking about taking a regional approach, were to exclude too early the broadening out to other forms of permanence, that would be a real mistake.

We have seen over the past 12 months or so, a significant decline in the number of children coming into the adoption system and a big increase in younger children going to special guardianship. That informs us that we are working in an environment where pathways towards permanence can be unpredictable. We have seen significant changes recently, and I think that if we had put a lot of effort into setting up regional arrangements just around adoption, we would be missing a trick. My view is that the opportunity is there at a local level to broaden this out. That would be the right thing to do. I also think that it is right to continue to improve the adoption system. As you heard from Sir Martin Narey, adoption can do things that other forms of permanence cannot in providing total long-term security and continuity for children. We know that the outcomes for those children are better than if they stay elsewhere.

[Bill Esterson]

Q 26 Do you think the Bill helps with or hinders other forms of permanence?

Hugh Thornbery: Looking at the legislation, I think it forces people to think about adoption, but it does not necessarily hinder the development of a broader approach to permanence. I say elsewhere that the Government are encouraging that in the paper they produced. It is quite difficult to think about how the same degree of direction as is contained within the clauses of the Bill could be applied to wider permanence. I think it is easier to focus that direction on a document. Whether that is the right thing or not is questionable.

Andy Leary-May: Could I add that local authorities that have decided to treat permanence holistically have already created permanence teams? For those local authorities, if they are required to form an adoption service jointly with others, that may create a separation.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)]

Q 27 How do you think the local authorities will work in this regional way? Will it mean that they work better with and have better relationships with voluntary organisations?

Hugh Thornbery: The opportunity is there for better relationships because we will change the way that things are done at the moment. As I said earlier, there are varying degrees of willingness to work with the voluntary sector in different parts of the country. Local authorities and regions have different cultural approaches. I would hope that every region would be carefully considering who the potential constituent parts of a regional or sub-regional approach could be and fully involving them from the beginning.

The other critical thing, which I have not heard discussed at all and is mostly missing from everything that I read, is what adopters think about this. Inevitably, I would say this, representing so many adopters through our membership: what really struck me during Adoption UK, having had previous experience with adoption, is just how often I heard complaints about being ignored, not listened to or done unto. There is a risk of missing the opportunity of involving adoptive families, who are the ones who can tell us, from the best possible position, what is required, what good would look like, what does not work well at the moment and what would improve the quality in the future.

Andy Leary-May: On the point of what adopters think about it, which is very valid, we did a quick survey last week of the adopters using our system. About 600 responded. There was a lot more optimism for the changes that could be brought about through regional agencies among adopters than the social workers that responded to the survey. Due to the current issues within adoption, for adopters, a lot of whom have been waiting for a very long time and are desperate to find a family, there may be some sense of feeling that anything will create an improvement compared to where they are now.

I hark back to a point a little while ago about choice for adopters; that was a concern that I had and asked the people using our system about. It was interesting that 40% of the respondents said that, at some point, they had had cause to consider changing agency because of the experience that they were having. The ability to look to a different agency is important. If we lose that, we need to be careful that there is still some recourse for adopters at any point in their process if they feel that they are not being treated well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve McCabe]

Q 33 Thank you. You have all got different experience of the issues of placing children. Do you recognise the problem of the harder-to-place children? Who in your judgment are harder-to-place children, and how will these proposals specifically help them?

Andy Elvin: I am very wary of labelling children as harder to place. Generally, it is not that children are harder to place; it is that we as a state have failed them at some point. There are far too many children who undergo multiple placements, and there really is no excuse for that. Often first placements are made in an emergency; it can happen when you do not know the family or late on Thursday and you go with the carers that you can find.

When you are into the second and third placements, there is no excuse for not getting that placement right. It is children who are labelled harder to place who tend to be in their fifth, sixth, seventh placement. It is not their fault. They have given up on making relationships with adults, which makes them very difficult to care for, no matter how skilled the carers. My worry about this move and this legislation generally is that it ignores that permanence for the vast majority of children who are looked after is not adoption. It is long-term fostering, it is being looked after within the extended family and, for a certain number of children, it is residential care.

We cannot separate out permanence options, because providing long-term, stable, predictable families for children is what we should be doing. We should be getting permanence right earlier. If we start separating out and creating a hierarchy of permanence options, we are not going to serve the whole looked-after population well.

What we should really be legislating against is multiple placements. Real failure is failing to find good placements, and permanent placements, for children early. That does not just exist in adoption. The outcomes are just as good for children on SGOs—special guardianship orders—with extended family and for people in permanent, long-term foster care. We must not forget that. The hierarchy that seems to be being pushed for is dangerous, and is very, very clearly objected to by children, particularly children in foster care, who are often made to feel second rate because they are not going forward to adoption.

Alison O'Sullivan: We know from experience that older children—those over the age of five, six, seven—can be quite hard to find the right family for. If it is in the interests of children to be placed with siblings, placing sibling groups can be challenging. And children with particular needs, either because they are traumatised or have special needs or learning difficulties—that combination of things can make it harder to find the right family. But certainly from a local authority point of view, we do think it is important to persist in trying to find placements for those children. It can take longer.

If the emphasis on making early and speedy decisions, which is absolutely right for the vast majority of children, were to deny those children the opportunity of a permanent family, it would be an unintended consequence. We are making judgments in each individual case. For some children, we will try very hard for a longer period to find them a placement and that will be a great success. They will not necessarily be waiting in an unsatisfactory situation. They might already be with very caring foster-carers that they may have been with for some time, but their need is for permanence, and if it takes us 18 months to find them that permanent family—that forever family—that is what we will do.

Anna Sharkey: In terms of the experience that my family had, the fostering that was started in the late ’60s was for pre-adoption babies. We would have two or three at a time for six weeks, then they would move to their adoptive parents. As we moved into the ’70s, the children placed with my parents had more complex needs, and they are the types of children that we place for adoption. By “more complex” children, I mean older children, sibling groups, children who had experienced significant abuse and neglect, and children who were born drug withdrawing and with alcohol problems. Those were very different in terms of adoption outcomes, because the adopters that we had in the late ’60s and early ’70s were looking for those little babies who were going to be fairly straightforward, and the children became more complicated and more complex.

Our agency has always specialised in harder-to-place children, and that has been to do with the supply of children. Local authorities needing to place the relatively straightforward child do not need to come outside of their internal resource, so they will come to the voluntary sector to find their harder-to-place placements. The children that we place, predominantly, are over the age of four, are in sibling groups or have disabilities.

Of the placements that we have undertaken since we have been operating, we have had 68 single children, 45 sibling placements of two children, and five sibling groups of three. The youngest was six months old, but that was the youngest child in a sibling group. The oldest child we have placed was 10 years and two months. It is a wider range and they are children who bring with them many more complex needs than those very little people to start off with, which means that they have many more needs when it comes to the longer-term support for their adoptive families.

[Bill Esterson]

Q 34 May I pick up on the point you were just making? What needs to happen to get more people to come forward as either adopters or foster-carers? Are there issues around education, awareness and being much more honest with people, or is something else needed to increase the number of people available?

Anna Sharkey: It is interesting that we have had an increase. There is the recruitment activity, which was very definitely promoted. First4Adoption was very involved in that—the education and highlighting options for people. The fact that a very different cohort of people is coming forward as potential adopters and foster carers has been significant.

In terms of bringing more people forward, the education challenge is about which children actually need placements, in comparison with where someone’s starting point might be in terms of the type of family they thought they were going to be. That is the bigger challenge for adoption agencies and fostering agencies in managing the longer-term outcomes for those children. That stage becomes more of a challenge.

Alison O'Sullivan: It is important to help prospective adopters to have in view the kinds of support that are available. On the one hand, we should be being more direct about the sorts of needs that children requiring adoption may have. But in the same breath we need to be able to say, “And this is the kind of help that you could reasonably expect,” which will include financial support in some circumstances. It is important that we raise awareness but are also equipped to support those more complex children over a longer period of time.

Andy Elvin: I would echo that point about support. It is not just about recruiting carers; it is about keeping them. That is with foster-carers, doctors and those family members taking children on special guardianship. Far too often the support is not there—it is not there in a timely manner, it is not there in a non-judgmental manner—and that is what we need to get right. Our job is to support the placement. Sometimes the mistake is made of thinking that the child protection task is the main task. That is 10% of the work; 90% of the work is helping that child to recover from trauma and go on to have a successful adult life. Far too little support is given post the permanency placement order, whichever order that happens to be.

[Bill Esterson]

Q 35 You mention the trauma—would you comment on the state of mental health services and support from child and adolescent mental health services?

Andy Elvin: The biggest complaint that we get from our foster carers, the No. 1 complaint, is the lack of support from CAMHS and from other related physical health services—late assessments, long waiting lists, lack of support in an appropriate manner, lack of support in their postcode or their region—that is usually the No. 1 complaint. No. 2 is generally poor information given by the placing authority, which does not flag up some of the issues that they find they are dealing with in their home 24/7.

Anna Sharkey: I would say that it is varied. We place children all over the country and it is different depending on where they are. Some CAMH services are very good, some are very overstretched, but there are also other services that are available for children. The adoption support fund is a really important development and how that pans out over the next few months will be very significant, and how those assessments work. One of the things that the Bill talks about is the responsibility for undertaking those assessments of need for children. Those need to be done so that adopters feel that they are being listened to. Certainly one of the most important messages that came out of the recent research about violence by children against their adopters was that adopters felt at last that somebody believed them and that they were being listened to. If that is something that is coming through, then the adoption support fund is significant and the different sorts of services that are available through it are important. That is what we need to be supporting—including how it is assessed at an early stage.

Alison O'Sullivan: I think that it is important that universal services are tuned into the needs of adoptive children and adoptive families. Mention was made by previous witnesses of the importance of support in school; raising awareness in schools for all adoptive children is important. The virtual school headteacher may have a role, quite a complicated one, and some discussion will take place on how effective that might be, but mental health support for children and young people is critical. I am hopeful that the “Future in Mind” paper—

[The Chair]

Mrs O’Sullivan, can I ask you to raise your voice ever so slightly? It is not your fault; the acoustics are really bad in this room, as is well known to all the Members, and it would help us if you could speak up a little.

Alison O'Sullivan: I will speak up. The “Future in Mind” paper recently published about children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing services has a whole chapter devoted to recommendations to improve support to children with particular needs and it talks about adopted children. Arguably, some of the support that people might look to from the adoption support fund ought to be met through mainstream child and adolescent mental health services. If they are improved in the period to come then that will help.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan]

Q 51 A final question. Could the whole issue of coasting schools be dealt with in the inspection regime? Is there a danger that there could be confusion about accountability if we have two separate regimes running side by side?

Russell Hobby: That danger does exist. We now have two separate systems with no read-across between the Ofsted categories of “requires improvement”, “good” and “inadequate” and the new definition of coasting. You will find schools in every Ofsted grade that will fit that definition—in fact, I think you will find slightly more “good” schools than schools in “requires improvement” meeting the definition.

There is a risk that schools will feel that they are working towards two distinct and different sets of criteria. We have always thought that schools should be accountable, but it is helpful if they are accountable in one direction and have one set of standards so that they can focus their efforts on that.

[Bill Esterson]

Q 52 If having a good headteacher is the best indicator of success in a school, what would you like to see in the legislation to increase the numbers of good headteachers?

Russell Hobby: We have taken the first step, which is to move away from vague generalisations of what a coasting school is to start to define what coasting schools are. One of the risks was that a lot of schools were looking over their shoulders, wondering whether they were coasting and, therefore, a lot of people were thinking, “That’s not the sort of school that I would want to go and work in” if there were extra pressures arising.

In favour of the legislation and the regulations being provided, although I have my concerns around the definition, we have now got a more graduated response to those schools that are judged as coasting. Rather than the default assumption being that you will sack the headteacher and academise the school, it is now proposed—at least as written—that you will look for a credible plan of improvement within the school and look to partner the school with other good local schools or national leaders of education. Only then will you move down into forced academisation. I am not sure that that message has reached many school leaders yet. If it does, that might reassure some of the people working in these coasting and challenging schools.

At the same time, some of the checks and balances have been removed or are proposed to be removed. The regional schools commissioners now have a great deal of discretion in determining whether the plan of improvement is credible and who the school should be paired up with. A school’s ability to represent and defend itself is not particularly enshrined within the regulations. School leaders will be wondering, “It’s all very well having the challenge, but do I have the chance to make my case or will I be rushed through a change?” I would look at strengthening those aspects, if possible.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)]

Q 53 A quick question: are you happy with the concept of using a progress measure and not just an attainment measure to define a coasting school?

Russell Hobby: Yes. It is essential that you use a progress measure. If I have understood it correctly, it is an either/or—a school can demonstrate either high attainment or high progress. If it reflects the approach to the current floor standards, that is good. It is possible for a school to exceed the floor on attainment alone, as currently proposed, which means that a school with a high-attaining intake could benefit from that. For example, I believe that a few grammar schools fall within the definition of coasting at the moment. The balance between those might need to be looked at. I understand that you switch entirely to progress as a measure at secondary level in three years’ time, when we have the new progress 8. In primary, it remains a balance.

I should emphasise that none of us are entirely sure what the progress measures will look like. They have not been used or tested. The level at which the bar is set remains to be defined and is, in fact, defined in retrospect for each of those years. The very structure of the primary progress measure and how it relates to either the reception baseline or key stage 1 has not yet been explored either. There is a lot of uncertainty on what progress looks like when used, but it is the right measure to use.

Education and Adoption Bill

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I am not giving way to the hon. Gentleman, because he will have a chance to tell his hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State what he would like him to ask.

Our expectation is that local authorities should work alongside regional schools commissioners to prioritise the schools in greatest need and decide the most appropriate powers to deploy in each case. The education measures in the Bill are about ensuring all children have the same chance to fulfil their potential, expanding opportunities and bringing real social justice to our country.

Let me deal with the part of the Bill that concerns adoption. During the previous Parliament, the Government took decisive action—[Interruption.] It is a great shame that some Opposition Members—and certainly Opposition Front-Bench Members—do not want to listen to what I am saying about an important part of the Bill that deals with adoption. Opposition Back-Bench Members are listening to what I am saying about the important provisions on adoption.

During the previous Parliament, the Government took decisive action to reform an adoption system that was too bureaucratic and time-consuming, leaving children waiting for far too long or causing them to miss out on being adopted altogether. To drive improvements, we have established the National Adoption Leadership Board, chaired by Sir Martin Narey; given £200 million to local authorities through the adoption reform grant; invested a further £17 million in the voluntary adoption sector; and launched a £19.3 million adoption support fund to provide therapeutic support to adopted children and their families.

The numbers prove that those reforms are working. Adoptions have increased by 63% in the past three years, from just over 3,000 in 2011 to more than 5,000 in 2014. Children are also spending less time waiting to be adopted, with the average time between coming into care and being placed with a family down by nearly four months. Those are achievements to be proud of.

The current system is not working as well as it could, however. It is still highly fragmented, with about 180 different adoption agencies, many of which operate on a very small scale.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Nicky Morgan]

I will if it is about adoption.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bill Esterson]

It is. I think it was remarkable that the Secretary of State would not give way to my Front-Bench colleague.

Adoption is the right outcome for only a relatively small number of children who end up in care. Although the measures in the Bill on adoption are undoubtedly welcome, will the Secretary of State acknowledge that, for more than 90% of those children, fostering, residential care or kinship care is the right option? The Bill says nothing about that, which raises concern that adoption is being considered the gold standard, when it should actually be only one of a range of options, which should be considered in full.

[Nicky Morgan]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Of course, the routes available for giving children a loving, permanent, stable home were considered in full towards the end of the previous Parliament during the passage of the Children and Families Act 2014. Adoption is important, because it gives children a stable upbringing and permanence so that they can progress with their lives and meet their full potential. The Bill addresses one particular aspect of the adoption system that is not working as well as it could, but he is right. Of course the courts will consider all the different options before they get to the point at which adoption agencies operate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tristram Hunt]

This Bill gives an extraordinary amount of new powers to the Secretary of State, but the Government are asleep on the job. Why have they not acted on St Peter’s school or on the Woodard academy chain? We do not dispute that this Bill gives a great deal of power to the Secretary of State; we just do not think that she is competent to act on the powers that she has been granted. The whole purpose of this Bill is to narrow school improvement—effectively to reduce it to academisation.

As I have already argued, Labour supports academisation as one option for effective intervention in failing schools. The evidence of the sponsored academies programme is clear. We also accept the evidence from the Sutton Trust and others which shows that progress for disadvantaged pupils continues to be faster at those schools than it is at other schools. Had Labour won the general election—we can but dream—I would certainly have expected our new directors of school standards to force through conversions of failing maintained schools and be answerable for those decisions.

When scrutinising this legislation, we do not need to question whether some sponsored academies have a positive impact on progress, standards and achievement. We know that they do. The key question is: why would the Secretary of State constrain herself in clause 7 to this method alone—this one policy of academisation—for school improvement? The reality is that some of the fastest improving schools in the country are maintained schools, particularly in the primary sector. Schools such as the Wellfield Community School, which I was delighted to visit with my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson), went from special measures to good without converting. The extraordinary Hartsholme Primary School in Lincoln jumped from special measures to outstanding. Indeed, between 2012 and 2014, Ofsted data show eight maintained schools going from special measures to outstanding and 201 maintained schools going from special measures to good.

Academisation is not always the answer. Post-conversion inspections show that 8% of primary sponsored academies and 14% of secondaries are currently rated inadequate. The best chains, such as Ark or United Learning, are an important architecture for spreading high standards, but chains such as Woodard and E-ACT show that poor performance and complacency are just as easily exported. Pupils at schools run by Prospect Academies Trust were wholly let down by this Government, and children under the Park View Academy Trust in Birmingham were, arguably, put in danger of radicalisation.

The Sutton Trust report shows that the variation between academy chains is “enormous”. It found that the rate of progress for disadvantaged children was lower than the average across all state schools in around one half of the larger academy chains. As was pointed out, the Education Committee report on the academy programme found that the evidence is not sufficient to draw conclusions on whether academies in themselves are a positive force for change.

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, and I commend him for that. He has drawn attention to the fact that, in the report, it is very clear that the Labour academies were a success—the evidence has been taken over a long enough period to make that judgment. We should rightly praise the previous Labour Government for their intervention and their selective use of academies as a school improvement measure. We took evidence from the Charter School movement that suggested that only a small number of schools should convert at a time. Does he agree that one fundamental problem is that the Government have tried to change too many things at once within the education system and have converted too many academies?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

Order. Interventions are getting very long. The hon. Gentleman is on the speaking list, so he may want to save his gunpowder for when it is his turn to speak. The interventions need to be much shorter. Otherwise, we will not get everybody in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) mentioned the freedoms that academies enjoy and, undoubtedly, the academies legislation provides for additional freedoms. But most of the freedoms that heads in academies have used could have been used when the school was maintained. That was the finding from the evidence that the Education Committee took. The legislation has not led to wholesale change in how such freedoms are used.

Several hon. Members have talked about coasting schools, which is one of the issues of greatest contention in the Bill. The Education Committee looked at the issue of coasting schools, and we found that schools that were doing well—with a good or even an outstanding Ofsted grading—were not necessarily doing the best by their students. A coasting school can be doing very well, but should be doing better, and the difficulty for Opposition Members is understanding exactly what is meant by “coasting”. Is the Secretary of State targeting schools that are already doing well but should be doing better, or is she looking at schools that are perhaps not doing so well by their children? The definition needs to be addressed in Committee.

What should we be looking at today on Second Reading? I would hope that any proposed legislation on education would consider how education can deliver long-term prosperity and success for our young people and for our economy. Education is a critical factor, if not the critical factor, in determining how well young people are prepared for the wider world, in particular the world of work. Employers look to us to deliver an education system where young people can turn up at work and be ready to get going and to contribute, yet throughout the five years of the previous Parliament the Education Committee heard again and again from employers that far too often that is not happening. Young people are not coming out of school prepared for the world of work. Work experience is one example of where things have gone backwards in the past five years.

The Select Committee produced a number of inquiries. On more than one occasion, it came up with evidence which has been mentioned by many Members: the most important factor in providing great education is the quality of teachers, in particular head teachers. That came up in the inquiry into great teachers, but was repeated again and again in the past five years. What is happening in the world of education to deliver great teachers? The education element of the Bill looks at making academisation easier, but it has nothing to say on the quality of teaching. That is a great pity.

It has been suggested by many that the Government want all schools to become academies. Given that the term “coasting schools” is so broadly defined, it occurs to me to ask whether that is really what the Government are trying to do. By failing to define it, are they saying that they want all schools to become academies, without being quite so bold as to actually state that? If that is the intention, Ministers really ought to say so. Perhaps the Minister, in winding up, will confirm whether that is what he wants to do. From what he has said in the past, I think that is his intention.

[Kevin Brennan]

On that point, I wonder whether my hon. Friend saw recently in Tatler—I am sure he is an avid reader—the comments of the headteacher of Wymondham College in Norfolk, Mr Melvyn Roffe? He said that he had been told becoming an academy would mean more freedom and autonomy, but what happened was the reverse. He said:

“We have had more control from central government rather than local government…I don’t believe he”—

referring to the former Education Secretary, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove)—

“intended academy status to reduce autonomy. I wish he had the courage to say there are schools doing a good job and they should be allowed to do a good job.”

He regrets the college becoming an academy, so it is not always the case that heads welcome it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bill Esterson]

Like my hon. Friend, I am of course an avid reader of Tatler. The Select Committee found that schools in multi-academy trusts or chains did not have the autonomy they thought they would have, and that everything was controlled from the centre. The Government prided themselves on localism in the past five years, but if anything they reduced local accountability by removing councillors’ responsibility and involvement. Localism in its widest sense has been reduced because everything became even more centralised, either through people running multi-academy trusts, or because every one of those schools is controlled, ultimately, from the desk of the Secretary of State in Whitehall. The creation of just eight regional schools commissioners does not go very far, given that there are more than 4,000 academies—or 500 each. That is centralisation. My hon. Friend makes a very important point, which should concern us all.

The Select Committee concluded that the Government should review the lessons of the rapid conversion of secondary schools to inform any future expansion. It highlighted the fact that a programme devised by Labour— as I said earlier, the Labour academies have been a great success according to the evidence presented to the Committee—for a small number of secondary schools was not necessarily appropriate for primary schools. The Government have completely failed to address that point. They acknowledged the point in their response to the Committee’s report, but did not have an answer. The international evidence suggests that the expansion of the academies programme was exceptionally fast and perhaps something we should be concerned about.

We would all say that, alongside having the very best teachers, school improvement should be a priority. The Labour programme of academies was an example of massive investment in school improvement, with many successes. The best example of school improvement over an extended period in recent years was undoubtedly the London Challenge. London schools went from being the basket case of schools in the country to being shining examples of success. That was based not on academisation, but on collaboration between teachers, institutions and local authorities. The Government, when they came into office, should have looked far more closely at the success of the London Challenge and spread it around the country, instead of being hellbent on the rapid expansion of an academy system that was not designed for the purpose it is now being used for.

On adoption, I mentioned earlier my disappointment with the relevant elements of the Bill, which, although there is nothing wrong with them per se, do not mention other forms of permanence for children. There is no mention of foster care, residential care or kinship placements. That is a missed opportunity. It leaves nagging doubts regarding the Government’s intentions for all children. As many as 75,000 children are in care at any one time. The Government have pulled the funding for the College of Social Work, which again leaves grave doubts about the future of the profession and its ability to support children, including those being put up for adoption.

There are many questions to be answered, whether on adoption or education. I am sure we will probe them more deeply in Committee.

Skills and Growth

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt]

My hon. Friend is totally right. He has made the case in Dudley—and the same is true of Stoke-on-Trent—that we need many more young people to be doing level 3, 4 and 5 qualifications. I would like to see a much more amphibious relationship between our universities and apprenticeships, so that young people can move in and out of them and at each stage go up the value chain with the qualifications they need.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that each young person needs to be offered the right opportunity, whether it be vocational or academic, and that it should be about whatever is right for the individual? Does he share my concern that, under the last Government, there was a big increase in apprenticeships for older people, but not for 16 to 19-year-olds, and does he agree that we must target that latter group if we are to address the skills issue highlighted by his proposal?

[Tristram Hunt]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. I urge the Government to move on from playing the fatuous numbers game of highlighting 2 million or 3 million apprenticeships. They should think about the quality of the apprenticeships, rather than just re-badging Train to Gain. They should think about what these people are actually learning and focus on quality as much as quantity. At the moment we are not seeing that kind of focus from this Government. Indeed, the Government’s plan to solve the problem—Alice in Wonderland-like—is not to work to improve the quality of apprenticeships. The Skills Minister has said instead that they will establish in law that apprenticeships are equal to degrees, as if such statist hubris and a Whitehall edict will solve the problem.

I do not want to get bogged down in party political bickering. As an early sign of our bipartisan approach, I am willing here and now to support the Education Secretary’s new ministerial edict on stopping children swinging on their chairs, which follows on from her predecessor’s edict on having children run around playing fields as punishment—which I think she reversed. What is more, I am happy to endorse the Education Secretary’s appointment of Mr Tom Bennett as the anti-low-level classroom disruption tsar. Who knows? One day the Conservative party might think that teachers need to be trained and qualified to teach in a classroom, but we are not quite there yet.

We have far too unequal a distribution of skills, and our young people have poorer levels of literacy and numeracy compared with their older contemporaries. We need a serious shake-up of secondary education, to broaden the skills base and boost productivity, and so that it values what people can do alongside what they know and prepares young people for the rigours of the modern workplace by nurturing their character, resilience and wellbeing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nicky Morgan]

I agree very much with my hon. Friend. I welcome her to the House; this is the first time I have heard her speak. She put her case passionately. I am delighted to hear about her maths degree. I hope she will take the opportunity presented by her position in this House to visit local schools and encourage all students, but particularly girls, to study maths to the highest possible level. We know that the higher the level at which people study maths, the greater their earning power. The subject is important in tackling issues such as the gender pay gap.

I was talking about the legacy of the Labour party on equipping young people with the skills they need to succeed. Despite the daily dose of painstaking soul-searching that the Labour party is subjecting us to, it simply has not learned its lesson when it comes to education.

[Bill Esterson]

When the Conservative party came to power in 2010, work experience was a common feature of the work of secondary schools and that was supported by education business partnerships. The last Government removed work experience and cut the funding for EBPs. I urge the Secretary of State to reconsider the use of EBPs and to work in co-ordination with business to get work experience back into schools, because businesses value work experience and say that it prepares young people for the world of work. Taking forward the skills agenda must be a fundamental part of our efforts to address the productivity gap.

[Nicky Morgan]

I know how passionately the hon. Gentleman feels about work experience. He raised it with me in the last Parliament as a member of the Education Committee. The issue is that even if something is compulsory, that does not mean it is of high quality. Young people were going on work experience weeks, but were gaining no skills at all. That is why we are focusing on high-quality, meaningful work experience post-16, the age at which students can acquire those skills. There are other ways of gaining meaningful interactions with the workplace that inspire young people before they hit the age of 16. Many employers were also reluctant to offer work experience because of the red tape surrounding it. We have taken that away.

Education gives every child the chance to reach their full potential, so it is the key to delivering true social justice. It is through good education that we can ensure that all young people are prepared for adult life and sustained employment in an increasingly global world. Good education also lies at the heart of a strong economy. Our analysis, which is backed by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, shows that the increased number of pupils getting good GCSE grades since 2010 will add more than £1.3 billion to the country’s economy. Achieving five GCSEs at grades A* to C, including in the vital subjects of English and maths, adds £80,000 to a student’s earnings over their lifetime.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Monday 15th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Edward Timpson]

It is wonderful to see the hon. Lady back. She was extremely vocal on these issues in the previous Parliament, and very effective in raising them to the profile they deserve. They are often missed at local, as well as national, level. The truth about children’s social care is that, at a time when it has been difficult for local councils, good decisions have been made to protect spending on children’s safeguarding. That is something I hope they will continue, while considering how they can be more effective and efficient in delivering those services. That is one of the reasons why the adoption Bill, which the House will soon be discussing, considers how they can work more closely together to achieve better services for children wherever they are from in the country, so that we have greater consistency everywhere.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

The Education and Adoption Bill will presumably mention adoption, but will it contain provision for improving the quality of fostering, residential children’s homes and kinship care, which in the past the Minister has agreed are incredibly important opportunities for children? This is about finding the right way forward for children, not necessarily adoption for all.

[Edward Timpson]

The hon. Gentleman is right that, whatever the route to permanency a child has, we must ensure they have the right support and that the best decisions are made in their interests. The Bill, which we will be discussing in the next few weeks, will deal with the post-decision issue and ensure that we can access a wider pool of adopters to get children matched more quickly. At the moment, we have over 3,000 children in care waiting to be adopted, half of whom have been waiting for more than 18 months. We need to address that, but I agree that we need to do better to ensure that foster children and those with residential or kinship care arrangements get better deals.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have made good progress, but from an unbelievably low base, having taken over from a Government who told people they only needed to do media studies or some such waffle to have a good career. We are picking up from a disastrous inheritance and making good progress, and with his support I know we will make further progress in the next parliamentary term.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

I was at a school in my constituency on Monday where the students told me of the difficulties they had studying engineering and other STEM subjects. The school said the problem was it could not recruit the teachers. There has been a shortfall in the number of teachers recruited to STEM subjects in the last few years as well. Does the Minister agree that this is a fundamental problem and that the action taken by the Government on teacher training has not addressed it at all?

[Nick Boles]

It will not surprise you, Mr Speaker, to hear that I do not agree at all. Through the outstanding Education and Training Foundation, we have invested a great deal specifically to put further education teachers into a position to teach the vital skills of English and maths. Take-up has been substantial, and as a result further education colleges can continue to teach people maths through to 18 if they have not achieved successful results. We have also set up more university technical colleges—a great deal more than the last Government. These are long-term plans to turn around the situation that the hon. Gentleman’s Government did nothing to deal with in 13 years.

Child Sexual Exploitation (Oxfordshire)

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

Although many statutory agencies will be responsible for dealing with these issues in supporting victims and their families, my hon. Friend is absolutely right to pay tribute to the charities and the voluntary and community sector, which provide that support as well. This afternoon, for example, representatives from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Barnardo’s and Rape Crisis are attending a summit on this. I know from my role as Minister for Women and Equalities—the policing Minister will appreciate this too—that smaller organisations often find very valuable support in communities. We absolutely want to help them to do their job.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

When the Education Committee carried out a year-long inquiry into child protection, we found that more needed to be done to support professionals in responding effectively and consistently to the early signs of neglect. Neglect causes long-term damage to thousands of young people every year. Therefore, should not prevention of neglect be as much of a priority as finding the perpetrators and supporting the victims, which the Secretary of State has talked about, and should that not include support for professionals, as recommended by the Committee and accepted by the Government two years ago in their response to our report?

[Nicky Morgan]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the need to deal with neglect, and I entirely agree. Sadly, there are many vulnerable children across our country. I am sure that we see them in our role as constituency Members of Parliament and work with them and their families. I mention to him the work that this Government have undertaken through the troubled families programme, which is turning round the lives of thousands of children. We also have the new knowledge and skills statement for children’s social workers that has been prepared by the chief children’s social worker, Isabelle Trowler, who does a fantastic job in my Department, and the wider reforms that I have announced in training for children’s social work. It all very well to have lots of children’s social workers, but it is also very important to ensure the quality of their training and of the work that they do in supporting vulnerable children and families.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

I share the hon. Lady’s desire that every school should offer three separate sciences at GCSE; that is very important. That is why the EBacc is such an important measure. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, we have seen a 70% increase in the numbers taking those core academic subjects, which are vital to keeping opportunities open for young people.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

The Minister says that he wants more young people to be taking maths and science subjects, but does he acknowledge that there is a chronic shortage of teachers applying for STEM subjects? Why has that happened, and what action are the Government taking to reverse this serious problem for young people and for the wider economy?

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. That is why the Prime Minister recently announced a new £67 million package of measures over the next five years to increase the skills and subject knowledge of 15,000 existing maths and physics teachers and to recruit an additional 2,500 teachers over the course of the next Parliament. As the hon. Gentleman will know, bursaries of up to £25,000 are available to trainee teachers with high degrees in maths and physics. As he will also know, some 17% of teacher trainees now hold a first-class degree and 73% of current trainee teachers hold a 2:1 degree or higher.