Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (First sitting)

Patrick Spencer Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)]

Q I would like to ask about the requirement for local authorities to offer Staying Close. We have seen some success with that in Southampton, but from the direct work of both your organisations, do you think that the Staying Close offer meets the most pressing needs of care leavers, or are there other things that the Bill should consider?

Anne Longfield: Carol will probably talk about the detail more than I will, but in principle it was a really important change to be made and a really important commitment. Young people I have met have appreciated it and seen the value of it. I do not think it is yet at the point where most care leavers would say that it is meeting all their ambitions, nor of course is it anywhere. Having it as part of the Bill, to extend and strengthen it, is important, but it is there to be built on. We know from the outcomes for young people leaving care that it is crucial that that level of stability and support is in place.

Dr Homden: We support the extension of support to care leavers in the Bill. Provisions need to ensure greater consistency across the country in the support that is offered. It is important that the introduction of Staying Close provisions in this case will be offered to care leavers only where the authority assesses that such support is required. It is also important that that does not dilute the role and responsibilities of personal advisers. Young people speak very passionately in our Bright Spots surveys about the importance of the emotional and practical support that they provide. We must take care that that is not undermined.

Staying Close must mean what is close for the individual. This also extends to the legal duties to publish a local offer, which already exist, but really the question is whether we can achieve greater consistency and transparency for young people. For example, our young people in A National Voice, the national council for children in care, have been campaigning on the fact that almost two years after the Department for Education announced the increase for their setting up home grants, 10% of local authorities are still not applying it. All too often, these young people therefore experience a form of postcode lottery. Finally, our research has shown huge disparity in relation to the appreciation of levels of disability and long-term health conditions among care leavers. This needs to be a key area of focus.

[Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

Q Family group decision making is a well-evidenced practice, yet this Bill mandates it. Do we really need a Bill to mandate it, especially considering that a lot of children come into these situations when they are at risk of neglect from their carers? Cannot the virtue and the hope of this amendment, and the idea of family group decision making, be instructed through guidance? Does it need to be mandated through a Bill?

Anne Longfield: I think it does need to be mandated, because it is at the cornerstone of the different way of working. It is about intervening earlier. The majority of families in that situation are living with adversity and are not coping with adversity. The whole ambition behind this is to bring in not only parents, but families around them and others.

[Patrick Spencer]

Q What about children who are at risk of neglect at the hands of the carer? Do you think family group decision making is an appropriate step that a child safeguarding team should be mandated to practise at that point?

Anne Longfield: I think a mandate makes a very clear distinction in terms of a route of travel. It is well evidenced. Carol will talk about the risks to families and to children, but it is the broader family and in some cases the other support network—

[The Chair]

Order. I am going to interrupt you there, as we still have two more people to get in.

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[Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)]

Q We heard in earlier evidence that spending on early intervention has reduced while crisis costs have significantly increased. What do you think will be the impact of early intervention, including family group decision making, primarily on outcomes but also, in the longer term, on costs?

Ruth Stanier: We very much think that the measures in the Bill will help to pull funding to the left, further upstream into prevention. We warmly welcome the Government’s recent investment in the children’s prevention grant. We think that the measures should help to improve outcomes and reduce costs over the longer term.

Andy Smith: It is absolutely a false economy not to invest in early help and early intervention. We know that the evidence base is so strong on children escalating into higher-cost services. My authority has invested in early help services, and we have an edge of care team that targets children on the edge of the care system. When we are able to prevent them from going into care, we track the cost avoidance, looking at what a typical placement might have cost. We have saved in excess of £5 million over the last three years in cost avoidance.

The case is well argued. The challenge is that councils are at different starting points because of the way in which funding has been eroded over the last 10 years and the fact that many councils have to prioritise the higher-cost services, which often take away from early intervention. It is a false economy. If we can get the funding right, the Bill offers us an opportunity to invest in family help and early help services and start to see impacts much more consistently. We are beginning to see some of that from the 12 Families First pilots that are taking place.

[Patrick Spencer]

Q I completely agree on the need for stable safeguarding teams, and they are in the better interests of children, but can you completely rule out any risk that a statutory cap on the use of agency workers will lead to people leaving the profession?

Andy Smith: I cannot absolutely rule that out. We have significant churn in social work, and that is part of the challenge—that we are struggling, as a system, to recruit and retain social workers. We have lots of routes into social work, and we are doing lots to promote the role. I am a social worker. I love it, and it is brilliant, even though I have not practised for a number of years now. The measures in the Bill will go some way in setting some rules around how and when social workers can move into agency social work, but I cannot guarantee that it will stop or prevent the churn in the system. The Bill outlines one tool that will help with the stability that we need in the workforce, and that ultimately leads to better outcomes for children.

[Matt Bishop]

Q With the requirement for registers of electively home-educated students, do you anticipate a sizeable decrease in the number of children missing education?

Ruth Stanier: It is an interesting question. I am not sure that that would necessarily follow. As Andy has set out, we see these very clear upward trends at the moment, in part driven by the significant problems in the SEND system and the challenges that many children face, with the schools that they are in, in accessing the support that they need, including mental health support. I am not sure that that would necessarily follow.

Andy Smith: You have to overlay the implementation timeline of this Bill with what needs to happen around a new system for an inclusive education. That will start to impact on some of the cohorts of children who are missing education or being electively home-educated. There is such a strong SEND component now, in a way we did not see before the pandemic. We have to overlay the two things to understand what those impacts might start to look like.

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[Patrick Spencer]

Q I want to talk about school improvement. Paul, I think you said earlier that you were confident in the RISE teams as a policy. When we FOI-ed commitments to the RISE teams, we found that the east of England, where my constituency is, will have four people from the RISE teams. We have thousands of schools, and probably hundreds that require improvement, yet only four people. Can you qualify why you have confidence in the RISE teams to deliver a school improvement offer? Can you also speak to what more could be done in the Bill to ensure that there is a proper school improvement offer?

Paul Whiteman: I am not sure that I have said that I have confidence in the RISE teams. I think I referenced the RISE teams as having a role in improving standards, in that they will come and support as well. I do not know whether there is a word-for-word record to check that, but if I was saying that I had confidence, that was not intended.

I think the problem with the RISE teams, and all the rollout of the Bill’s intentions, is to do with the practical application of the Bill’s provisions later on. Of course, making sure that those teams are properly resourced and funded so that they work is a challenge. There are other issues about the context in which they work, and I think the change of context from a discussion of intervention to a discussion of support is a much more positive footing for those teams to interact with schools locally.

Julie McCulloch: It is important to remember that the RISE teams are as much about triage as they are about delivering support. We need the kind of recognition that I started with of where the expertise sits in the system, which is largely within schools and trusts.

[Patrick Spencer]

Q Do you think school improvement is best delivered at the Department for Education in a big office somewhere, or in a school with people on location?

Julie McCulloch: I think there is a role for both. There is a role for central co-ordination and central support. If the RISE teams deliver, that is what they could provide, but that support for schools does need to be done on the ground. That links to parallel conversations that are going on about how we might change inspection and accountability, as well as doing more to recognise the role that schools and trusts play across the system for school improvement, not just in their own individual institutions.

Paul Whiteman: Just to add quickly, I do not see the RISE teams as the only participants in that school improvement. We see one of the roles of the RISE teams as identifying helpful local practice and trying to broker collaboration which, at the moment, sometimes does not happen in the way that it might. Access to multi-academy trusts could do something very well to schools that are not in their local authority.

[Patrick Spencer]

Q How do you see the role of local authorities with multi-academy trusts? Are they just replacing what was already going on?

Paul Whiteman: Unfortunately, local academy trusts looking outside their own boundary does not happen quite as often as we would like in terms of helping schools that are not part of their trust, unless they become formally part of it. What we need is more collaboration across all school types in local areas.

[Ian Sollom]

Q I think I am quoting you correctly in saying that academisation was not a silver bullet. Could you elaborate on the factors that are in play where it has not worked in particular areas?

Paul Whiteman: The data we look at shows quality schools and improvement outside the academy system as well as in the academy system. Where you get particular schools that are very difficult to broker, or have been re-brokered on a number of occasions, we need a different answer. I think it sits with the locality, and the local education networks and economy, to run to the aid of that school and try to improve it. I was also careful to say that my comments are not an attack on academies or the good work they do. It is about finding the answer for the individual school.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting)

Patrick Spencer Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

First, I will ask the Minister a bit about process. The questions we ask in Parliament are often rhetorical; we do not expect answers to them from Ministers, and nor do we get them, but this is the Committee stage of a Bill’s passage, known as line-by-line scrutiny, where quite often he questions we put are questions about facts or the intent of the legislation. I have asked a number of questions at different points in this Committee stage that have not been answered, but nor has the Minister necessarily been saying, “I will write to the hon. Member in response.” Does he intend to do that, or, if any questions have been left hanging, are we required to put down a written parliamentary question to which the Minister will respond?

For the avoidance of doubt, what I am about to say is not in the category of question that requires a factual response or note of intent. The misconduct regime covered in the clause is clearly exceptionally important for the protection of children, public confidence and maintaining the very highest reputation of the profession. I welcome what is new in the clause, because it is right and proportionate that we should be able to take action regardless of when the incident took place and whether the individual was a teacher in the profession at that time. I also welcome online education and independent educational settings being brought into scope, as well as the ability to investigate a suspicion or an incident regardless of how it came to light.

I want to ask the Minister about something related to the regulatory regime. It would not technically require primary legislation, but there are quite a lot of things in the Bill that do not require primary legislation to be effected. I am referring to the matter of vexatious complaints. In the world we live in, particularly with the influence and prevalence of social media, we have heard teachers express the feeling that sometimes, in a small minority of cases, complaints may be made against a teacher neither for the right reasons, nor because of a genuine safeguarding concern. Of course there should not be barriers blocking people from any background raising concerns; the ability to do so should be available to everybody. Equally, however, there is a concern sometimes that when seeking to remove barriers, we risk going too far the other way.

We must ensure that there is a process to go through so that all genuine concerns and complaints do come through, but that we do not end up with an excessive volume of vexatious complaints. These are, I am afraid, sometimes fuelled by social media.

[Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

Let me state on the record that I have not met a single teacher who has not received some form of vexatious complaint at one point in their career. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will speak to this issue when he responds.

The Bill expands the scope for potential dismissal. Dismissal processes are incredibly cumbersome and costly for schools, so will the Minister speak to what provision he will make for schools to be reimbursed for what they are going through? The Bill also expands the capacity to look back into the previous career of someone who has started up a school. Would bankruptcy, for instance, prevent someone from being considered worthy of running a school? Will the Minister therefore also speak to whether a perfectly reasonable business experience might cause the Secretary of State to intervene?

[Stephen Morgan]

I appreciate the questions and contributions from the Opposition on this important clause. The right hon. Member for East Hampshire is right to ensure that he gets responses to all the questions that he raises, and I know from my own postbag that he does not shy from submitting written parliamentary questions, so I am sure he will find that route or any other appropriate route. He has asked a number of detailed questions and I am very keen that we are scrutinised in the way that we are taking this Bill forward, so if there is anything we have not responded to, obviously I shall be delighted to do so.

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The hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich kindly asked a question about reimbursement, to which the simple answer is no. More broadly, on the new burdens placed on these settings, there will be a requirement to understand the regime and a duty to consider making a referral to the Teaching Regulation Agency where a teacher is dismissed for serious misconduct, or would have been dismissed if the teacher had not resigned first. We will engage with stakeholders to ensure that they understand what they are trying to achieve. Once the Bill receives Royal Assent, we will explain the changes to the settings affected and how they can manage them.

[Patrick Spencer]

Does the Minister expect the number of misconduct hearings and cases brought where teachers are subject to potential dismissal to increase considerably? I am concerned that the consequences of the Bill will be huge for many schools and that they will be burdened with a huge cost. Does he expect the numbers to go up?

[Stephen Morgan]

We will consider these matters extremely closely as we progress the Bill further. I will take that point away to officials. With regard to the hon. Gentleman’s question about bankruptcy, the Teaching Regulation Agency considers only cases involving allegations of the most serious misconduct. Cases of misconduct that are not serious enough to warrant a lifetime prohibition from teaching and all cases of incompetence are more appropriately dealt with by employers at the local level. I commend the clause to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 39 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 40

School teachers’ qualifications and induction

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[Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward. I rise to support clause 40 and to argue that the amendments under discussion are unnecessary. I very much welcome this measure. It underpins the ambition that the Government have to ensure that every child gets the best quality of education. Although this will not necessarily be a shared view, the top quality of education comes not through obsessing about structures, but about getting the right people in place. This is simply a common-sense proposal to ensure that, across the board, no matter the structure of the school, parents can be reassured, and as children set foot in that school they can be reassured, that they are getting the best quality education.

[Patrick Spencer]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Darren Paffey]

I will make some progress and then will be happy to give way.

I ask Opposition Members to reflect on the logical fallacy of applying this laissez-faire approach in a way that they probably would not do—or at least I hope they would not do—for other professions. I think it is uncontroversial to ask for assurance that, when I take my car in for repair, I am not just giving it over to someone who is enthusiastic about car repairs, but is actually qualified. The stakes of that going wrong are high; someone who does not know how to fix brakes will cause significant risk. When I visit the GP, I want reassurance that I have not just got someone who has done health tech, had a great 20-year-long career in that, and has decided to swap over and offer their expertise there. I want someone who is absolutely qualified in that practice.

I reiterate what my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North said: no one doubts the quality of subject experts. No one doubts that those with significant top-quality experience can come in and be absolutely inspirational, but by saying that that is enough, Opposition Members suggest that qualified teacher status adds no value to that subject expertise. What about the skills in effective student development, pedagogy, collaboration, class management, assessment, feedback and differentiation? Those are not things that come naturally with subject expertise.

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[Darren Paffey]

Who is diving in first? I will give way.

[Patrick Spencer]

If the hon. Member takes a moment later today to listen to the Secretary of State’s interview on “The News Agents” podcast, Emily Maitlis said, “You can have a terrible teacher with qualified status, but a fantastic teacher who is not qualified…can’t you?” The Secretary of State’s response was, “Absolutely”. Does the hon. Member agree with her?

[Darren Paffey]

What I agree is, that if someone is not performing up to scratch, the response should not be to remove the qualification for everyone else, but to deal with that individual teacher and drive up standards within the school. That is once again, completely common sense.

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[Damian Hinds]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Southampton Itchen. I enjoyed his speech and I think he made several very good points, a number of which the Opposition would agree with. We certainly agree with the importance of the foundation of qualified teacher status, and a lot of work rightly went into reforming the core content and framework of initial teacher training, as well as the early career framework. Those are incredibly important foundations for a successful career in teaching.

With the present Government’s plan to recruit just 6,500 teachers over the next five years, which is a material slow-down compared with the Parliament just ended, it should be more straightforward to hit those recruitment targets, but I do not think this discussion is really about the numbers that we can recruit into the teaching profession. It is about getting the right people, which the hon. Member for Southampton Itchen also said. It is not about obsessing over having the structures but getting the right people, and this is about getting the right people in front of children in school settings. By the way, presuming we are not just talking about academics, that also applies to sport, music and art.

[Patrick Spencer]

Can my right hon. Friend answer me this question? Which is better, an English graduate, with QTS, teaching maths in a primary or secondary school, or a maths graduate, without QTS, teaching maths in a primary or secondary school?

[Damian Hinds]

I think this is where the whole House comes together. The best of all worlds is to have someone who is both a subject specialist, with their own excellent academic record, and QTS, and who is also a really inspirational practitioner. Of course, those three things come together on many occasions, but sometimes there are choices that have to be made.

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[Amanda Martin]

No, I had finished—I do not know why the hon. Member intervened.

[Patrick Spencer]

I will not bore everyone with another rendition of the credit of non-QTS teachers. I will just say that I spent Friday at Debenham high school. When I spoke to the headteacher, he sighed in frustration at suddenly having to look down the barrel and find qualified status for his language teachers. He has a Spanish teacher who works at the high school who he will now to need to train. I know we are having an argument about immigration policy in this country, but trying to stop foreign teachers coming to this country and teaching in schools in Suffolk is not how the problem will be solved.

My point is about costs. A Policy Exchange report suggested that getting all non-QTS teachers trained was going to cost in excess of £120 million—six times the budget that the Government have allocated to solving stuck schools, and six times the budget we are going to spend on getting teachers to jump over regulatory barriers. So can the Minister confirm the estimated cost of getting teachers qualified status and whether the Department will cover that cost, or will the Government just end up burdening schools with the cost of getting over this regulatory hurdle?

[David Baines (St Helens North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward.

I was not going to speak in this debate, but I have sat here in increasing bafflement—a bit like the debate we had in a previous sitting on branded school uniform items. I think most ordinary families watching or listening to this debate will share my confusion. We have heard time and again from Opposition Members about whether the measure is needed. I have QTS—I was a teacher in a previous life 10 years ago—but I am speaking as a parent. I have one child at a maintained primary school, and my eldest child is at an academy secondary school. I do not care what kind of school they go to, as long as it is a good school and they get a good education with good outcomes. For me, this is about expectations and high standards. As a parent, I am entitled to expect that both my children are taught by qualified teachers.

[Patrick Spencer]

The hon. Gentleman has just made two completely different statements. He said, “I will send my children to a school that will deliver an outstanding education that is right for them,” while simultaneously saying, “Ah, but this is about making sure that teachers have qualified status, and my expectation that they have qualified status, whether my children get a good education or not.” Failing schools that academise are three times more likely to improve an Ofsted rating than—

[David Baines]

Will he give way? [Laughter.]

[Patrick Spencer]

I did not hear that, but I am sure it was one of the hon. Gentleman’s funnier comments.

[Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham North) (Lab)]

He asked you to give way.

[Patrick Spencer]

The hon. Gentleman just made two different statements, so can he clarify what he means?

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Tenth sitting)

Patrick Spencer Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Damian Hinds]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston has mentioned, it has long been the case that some schools have not had to follow the national curriculum. Even under the proposals in the Bill there will be some schools that will not have to follow it. One of the reasons why I have been banging on for so long, Sir Christopher, is because I have been through a lot of these points already and I am being asked to restate them. I have to ask the hon. Gentleman to forgive me but, as I have set out, it is a broad framework, and there is nothing wrong with having a little bit of innovation within that.

I want to come to a close. There are serious people working on the curriculum review and I wish them well in their work. We must of course await the outcome, not prejudge it. So far we have heard only the good stuff—the things we are going to add. In politics, it is always easy to talk about adding things. We are adding more creativity, art and sport, and those are all things that I welcome. It is great to have those opportunities for young people. The difficulty may arrive when we ask, “What does that mean?” Does it mean a longer school day, which is one option? Or does it mean that something else has to go to make way for those things? I do not have the answer, but it is a relevant question.

To come back to the ceiling point—whether the national curriculum is a floor or a ceiling—it depends how much headroom is needed. In a very loose national curriculum, schools can innovate and so on, but in a heavily specified national curriculum, they cannot, because the floor is already close to the ceiling and there is not that much room to play with.

I do not know whether the hon. Member for North Herefordshire is on Professor Francis’s working group, or what will be in the review document, but there are three problems with insisting on 100% adherence to the national curriculum. First, we are being asked to agree to it before we have the outcome of the national curriculum review. Secondly, Ministers are not obliged to adopt that independent review; they may decide to do something slightly, or more than slightly, different. Thirdly, they are not obliged to stop there. I say “they”, but it is of course not only them. The Bill is going to be an Act of Parliament: we are not legislating for what happens between 2024 and 2029; in the absence of another piece of legislation to replace this one, we are legislating for all time. We cannot know who might come along in the future and decide to do something of which colleagues here might not approve.

We do not have large numbers of schools teaching unscientific facts, creationism and what have you. We do have Ofsted, which evaluates all schools on whether they follow a broad and balanced curriculum. We know that, the great majority of the time, the great majority of schools follow the national curriculum, but some innovate, and that can have some benefits. Like others, I am left asking Ministers, what problem are we trying to solve?

[Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I had a long speech prepared, but it does not include Keats, Semmelweis or Callaghan, so I will cut it short. Teachers want to be trusted to teach, to read their class and to choose what to teach, when to teach and how to teach it. My concern is that the Government are bringing all schools under the same framework and that that will allow them to fundamentally change what is taught in schools.

We have all read the news about the Becky Francis review trying to broaden the curriculum, dumb it down, dilute it and move it away from a knowledge-rich focus. Will the Minister confirm the Government’s intention to retain the national curriculum’s focus on knowledge, and the attainment of knowledge, as opposed to skills? I know she will say that the Francis review has not reported, but the Government have no statutory obligation to accept its recommendations. Will Ministers please confirm that they want to keep the national curriculum focused on knowledge and core knowledge subjects?

It is clear that the intention is for all schools to teach the national curriculum. Can the Minister assure me, and thousands of teachers who want to do the best for their students, that the curriculum will be kept broad to allow them to teach as they see fit, in the best interests of their students? Again, the Government do not have to follow the guidance from the Becky Francis review.

What has been proven over time is that the current framework works for academies. I will keep saying this in the Committee: academies have been proven to produce better results for children who come from a low-performing or failing state school—they have been proven to do much better for children in the long term. [Interruption.] They have; that is what the evidence says.

[Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)]

I hope you are enjoying the debate, Sir Christopher. Although national curriculum reform is not mentioned in the Bill, it is going forward.

The previous Government introduced a number of curriculum changes. Those were often implemented quickly and not considerate of the profession. In 2010, one or two years were given to implement the changes, depending on sector. The consultation was top-down and was criticised for not reflecting classroom realities. In 2013, the Government had one year to implement the changes. There was a wider consultation, but despite that the original proposals were unchanged. In 2016, there were almost immediate changes to the curriculum, but, again, no fundamental changes were made to the original proposals after the consultation. In 2019, there was one year for implementation, and in 2020 and 2021 the changes were immediate, albeit that that was linked to the fallout from covid and the attempts to rectify that. Again, some changes involved input from the profession, and some did not.

A national curriculum should do what it says on the tin and be a “national” curriculum. It should have a core basis. We should consult the profession. I found it really difficult to sit here and listen to the ideas that have been put forward, when the previous Government did absolutely none of that.