Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Storey Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Storey]

426B: After Clause 35, insert the following new Clause—
“Review: factory shutdowns and school attendance(1) On the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must order a review of the effect of factory shutdowns on local school attendance.(2) The review must consider the merits of varying local school holiday dates to minimise the impact of factory shutdowns on school attendance.(3) The review must be published within six months of the day on which this Act is passed and must be laid before both Houses of Parliament.”

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, this is a simple amendment. I will preface my remarks by saying that, obviously, it is important that a child is in school as often as possible because when they are not in school, they are not learning. Equally, it is important that they have quality time with their parents. The opportunity to be with their mum, their dad, with both parents, is hugely important, and they learn so much from that opportunity.

As a very young teacher in Prescot, I was conscious that three large factories closed down for a period so that the factory workers could have a holiday. It often did not coincide with school holidays. As a school, we were relaxed about that because, again, we thought it important that children should be with their parents. That practice is very limited now. There are not many factories nationwide, but there are some, particularly in the north, that close down for a set period. I hope the amendment is clear that we take cognisance of that in terms of attendance issues.

On Amendment 499, there is not much to say; it speaks for itself. It is correct that all the available attendance information should be complete, accurate and consistent, and that it should always be available to parents.

I beg to move Amendment 426B.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and to give a nod to his amendment. I rise to speak to my Amendment 499 in this group, the purpose of which is incredibly clear: every child is entitled to an excellent education, but that does not mean that every child should receive the same education. The great joy of being born human is that we are born with rich, bright, beautiful diversity from the moment of entering this human world.

The difficulty with the Bill as set out is that it does not fully appreciate this fact or the difficulties parents have in achieving that excellence of provision for their children. In no sense is that a criticism of anybody in the system. Teachers do tremendous work, day in, day out, often in the most pressing, difficult of circumstances. This amendment is all about recognising the particularity of individual provision—not least for children and young people who may be disabled or have special educational needs—the difficulty for parents in trying to get an EHCP, and the often prohibitive cost involved, even if they can go through that time-consuming and terribly intense process.

The amendment simply asks the Secretary of State to produce a focused, “support-first” attendance code of practice that understands the particularities of those circumstances and that does not have an almost forced presumption that school is necessarily the best and only place for excellent educational provision. As I say, the amendment speaks to children, young people and parents across the piece, but it is often children who are disabled, who have special educational needs, and the parents of those children, who find themselves at the sharpest end of this current situation. That is why Amendment 499 suggests a support-focused, support-first attendance code of practice. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

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[Lord Storey (LD)]

I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 426B withdrawn.

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I support the thrust of both my noble friend’s amendments. The Department for Education has an important role to play in helping local authorities drive up the quality of their relationship with and service for the home-educating community. The department can provide leadership on this by giving local authorities the feeling that the Government understand what they are doing, and that is the direction that the Government wish to take. That needs to be transmitted. Doing it in a way which celebrates the achievements of local authorities, and draws out the best of what is happening and makes a good example of that, is a motivating and constructive way to do this. I hope that the Government will take this direction. Local authority home-educating departments tend to be small, a bit isolated and stuck at the back end of safeguarding, and subject to all the pressures that come from that activity. The department has an important role to play in helping get things right.

On my noble friend’s second amendment, as the Government will know from my previous amendments, this is a direction I very much support. We should be looking at the child first and punishing the parent second. I listened to the Secretary of State’s speech at the launch of the Children’s Commissioner’s recent report, and that was very much the spirit that I heard then. I hope it will be reflected in the Government’s answer today.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, on Amendment 426D, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is right. It is important that good practice is shared between home educators and local authorities, and that the quality of home education is the best it can possibly be, and local authorities have a huge role to play in ensuring that happens. We already know—many noble Lords have mentioned particular examples—the sterling work local authorities have done with home educators.

I have a slight problem with the idea of the Secretary of State doing an annual report. We have seen dozens of other amendments decrying the fact that more information is required, but to put this annual report together would require doing exactly that—asking for all that form-filling and more information to come to the centre. There might be good practice where local authorities might wish to do a report—the amendment suggests an annual report—on the work that is going on with home educators and which could be shared with other home educators. To me, to put it in a formal way and say that the Secretary of State will produce an annual report is bureaucracy gone mad.

I am, in a sense, surprised by the second amendment. Schools are incredibly sensitive to the needs of children, particularly, as has been mentioned, those with neuro- diverse issues such as autism. They pull out all the stops to support those children. This amendment might create problems for the attendance policies of local authorities—policies that have been developed by the previous Government and this Government. We should recognise the work that goes on currently. Despite concerns, I can tell noble Lords that, in all the dealings I have had with schools, head teachers and teachers, they are more than sensitive to the needs of those pupils.

[Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard (UUP)]

My Lords, briefly, I have a query about proposed new subsection (2) to be inserted by Amendment 426E. I am wondering who would make the judgment around whether legal action would be required if it were to

“harm … a child’s welfare, or … on balance, … greater harm … a child’s education than if the legal action was not pursued”.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Storey. In my experience, schools have been very good at making the assessments and dealing with young people’s difficulties. The difficulty sometimes is in the relationship between the school and the authorities—I find that that can be problematic.

I am not clear about supporting the amendment because of that proposed subsection, as I am not sure who would make that judgment. Who would make the judgment as to whether the child or young person is doing that deliberately, or whether it is due to their mental health state or some other reason? I am keen to know who would make that judgment.

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[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I had not anticipated speaking until the next group. I declare an interest as a senior research fellow at Regent’s Park College, Oxford, which is researching freedom of religion or belief in the UK. A number of Peers have entered into talking about this human right without, I think, fully appreciating its impact.

In relation to the “institution”, as it is referred to in the amendment, if this amendment were accepted, can the Minister outline where it would sit with the other out-of-school settings work that is going on, because I think it would sit as an out-of-school setting? I do not think that they are charities, otherwise they would already have safeguarding responsibilities. Could there, in some respects, be good unintended consequences of the amendment, in that we take an out-of-school setting and bring it into the safeguarding world, with DBS checks, et cetera?

Freedom of religion or belief is not an absolute right. It is sometimes put into a debate as if it cannot be curtailed. It is important to remember that the children to whom we have been referring also have the right to freedom of religion or belief. Parents have the right to bring up their children in the faith that they wish them to have, but that does not mean an immersive experience that does not allow a child to exercise their right to know, through a broad and balanced curriculum, about the world and nation that they are growing up in and about other faiths and humanist and other belief systems. This is a very difficult world—not just in the Jewish context but in the context of Christianity, other faiths and some atheistic traditions—in which to try to shield a child from knowledge so that they never choose a different type of Jewishness or a different religion for themselves.

I hope that, whatever situation we end up in with regard to these schools, we bear in mind that these children have freedom of religion or belief and should have an education that enables them to exercise that right fully. I hope that that will be part of the considerations and the engagement with the community, as we come to a position on these institutions. It is accepted in the amendment that they are institutions of some category, not some kind of faith space.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I was head of a Church of England primary school and my daughter went to a Jewish school. I am conscious that, in my home city of Liverpool, one-third of the schools are faith schools. I want to reflect on what various noble Lords have said, and I want to speak very carefully because I am still considering everything that has been said. I have found it, at times, quite challenging.

Let me deal with an issue that I do not find challenging, which is my Amendment 451. Children who are suspended from school are the responsibility of the school, while pupils who are permanently excluded from school are the responsibility of the local authority. Secondary schools that have pupil referral units, called PRUs, are often able to put suspended students into the referral unit. I have visited many of them and been astounded and impressed by how they have supported students. Instances of expulsion—permanent exclusions, as we now say—are very limited.

Let us remember that young people who are permanently excluded from school often have severe behavioural issues, which perhaps could have been picked up when they were younger and perhaps could have been supported in a different way. Many of them have severe behavioural problems.

Many—quite a high percentage, I think, and certainly over 80%—have special needs. They are the very young people who should not be excluded from school; they should be in school but, clearly, schools have a right to teach, and pupils have a right to learn. When they are excluded from school, local authorities may put them into what we call alternative provision. There are two types of alternative provision. There is alternative provision that is registered, which means that it is inspected from time to time by Ofsted. I have visited two alternative providers and been incredibly impressed by what I have seen. Many local authorities choose to put permanently excluded pupils not into a registered provider but into an unregistered one. Why? Because it is much, much cheaper. That is no way to treat a young person, no way at all.

Some of those unregistered providers do not keep a register. The young person comes and goes. There are no proper qualifications among the so-called teaching staff, et cetera, et cetera. As I have mentioned in debates in this Chamber, that is not to say that some unregistered providers are not very good, but it is still no way to treat a young person. This amendment is very simple. All it says is that any alternative provider—those schools or units, because when we talk about a school, we are probably talking about a school of 20 pupils—should be registered. We should know that there are qualified staff, qualified support and quality learning for those pupils. We should know that all the things we expect take place and that there will be, from time to time, Ofsted reports on those schools. I have looked at many of those Ofsted reports and been incredibly impressed by the work those alternative providers do. That is the simple request: that we should not allow the most vulnerable children and young people in our society to be treated in this way. They have the right to go to a proper institution—a proper school.

I now come to the other amendments. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris—it used to be “I agree with Nick.” I am sorry, I am not comparing the noble Baroness with Nick Clegg. I want children—young people—to have an education, whether in a school or, in some cases, at home, which is broad and balanced, which equips them for life, which they enjoy and which brings out their best qualities. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, does not mind me mentioning this, but I remember that several years ago, she came to me in a discussion about a particular faith school—a Christian school, actually—where the pupils were treated in quite a challenging way. One boy, for example, happened to tell the school that he was gay, so he was pushed into a cupboard and locked in there until he came out and announced that he was not gay. I am not going to mention the school, but I think it employed its own inspection regimes. Because it was in charge of its own inspection regimes, that company—

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

I am not sure that the noble Lord is remembering the situation accurately, so it would be best in future to consult before referring to something that I think was many years ago. I say that with no disrespect to the noble Lord’s comments.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I raise it only because it is a shocking condemnation of a schooling situation where young people cannot be themselves or have a proper education. I respect different religions and their rights; as I say, my daughter goes to a Jewish school where there are Hebrew lessons, the children are taken out at various times and there is a whole range of different faiths. The children’s faiths are respected and there are opportunities for them to develop learning and an understanding of their faith. That is all good and positive.

I do not have an issue with any particular faith bringing up children and young people in that faith, but I do want to see those children and young people have schooling that is registered and/or inspected. That is all we should ask for as a society. Anything that does not carry on the tradition of this country—one of the most successful multicultural and multifaith nations in the world—or develop what we believe in, we need to legislate against.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I will keep my comments brief. We have had an excellent debate and these Benches support the aims of this clause: to ensure that children learn in settings, where they provide all or the majority of a child’s education, that are safe and regulated. I have a couple of technical points of clarification that might win the prize today for the most boring question asked of the Minister. I confess that I have read and reread the Bill and the policy notes and still do not quite follow it.

Section 92 of the Education and Skills Act 2008, which this clause amends, includes institutions that offer part-time education within the definition of an independent educational institution. I am unclear what the status of those institutions will be in future and why they do not form part of the revised definition. If the Minister wants to write, that would be fine. I am sure there is a simple and obvious answer that I have missed.

The regulation-making powers in this clause, if I have understood them correctly, are much wider than those in the 2008 Act. New Sections 92(3)(c) and 92(3)(d) seem to give the Secretary of State unlimited flexibility to redefine full-time education without proper scrutiny in Parliament. I suspect the Minister will tell me that it will use the affirmative procedure, but all of us know that that is very restricted scrutiny.

I am very pleased that my noble friend Lord Lucas has raised unregistered alternative provision, which benefits from neither safeguarding nor educational oversight, in his Amendment 427. It is extraordinary, as other noble Lords have reflected, that, rather like unregulated provision, we put very vulnerable children and young people in unregistered provision without any safeguards available. I agree with him that we would ideally have no unregistered provision but, at a minimum—this also applies to Amendment 451 from the noble Lord, Lord Storey—we would have some safeguarding regulation of those settings, even if children were going there for a short period. There is always the infamous “Dave the car mechanic” with whom some children apparently spend time. We should at least have appropriate safeguarding checks and I am interested in what the Minister thinks about that.

I now turn to the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Lucas, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and the noble Lord, Lord Glasman, all of whom have raised issues that can arise for children whose parents choose an educational path that aligns with their religious tradition. The Minister and the whole House have heard both sides of the argument very clearly today and the valid concerns that have been raised by faith groups about the impact of the Government’s legislation on their communities. Those were eloquently put in particular by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford and the noble Lord, Lord Glasman—who I promise we will still listen to however much he speaks.

I close by aligning myself with my noble friend Lady Morgan of Coates. We want to retain what I think the noble Lord, Lord Glasman, described as the “precious” tolerance that many of us, including my own family, have benefited from this country welcoming us with, but also to ensure that the rights of every child are upheld. I hope very much that the Minister will put her not inconsiderable abilities to the task.