2nd reading in the Lords
The Lords gave the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill a broadly welcoming Second Reading, with wide cross-party support for Part 1's child-protection and care reforms, but sharp Conservative opposition to Part 2's restrictions on academy freedoms.
T(opened the debateThe Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)Lab11:51 HansardThis Bill is a landmark opportunity to improve children's social care and schools. It places a duty on every primary school to provide free breakfast clubs — saving parents up to £450 a year — limits branded school uniform items, and requires Clause 1 family group decision-making before care orders are sought. Clause 4 introduces a unique identifier so no child goes unseen across agencies. On schools: over 80% of secondary schools are now academies — the system has changed. The Bill gives us new tools, including RISE teams, to tackle underperformance wherever it persists, while requiring all academies to follow the national curriculum and meet a teacher pay floor. Every child deserves a high-quality local school, and this Bill delivers the framework to make that real.My Lords, while I might have felt offended by the exodus of so many people at the end of Oral Questions, I am reassured by the large number of people who want to contribute to this debate today. It is an honour to move the Second Reading of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, for there are few topics that unite Members of both Houses more deeply than the well-being of children. The numbers of contributors demonstrate that today. This Bill has been ably steered through the other House by my ministerial colleagues, and I want to acknowledge those across political parties and from key external organisations who have spoken so passionately and sensitively in support of child safeguarding and ensuring that every child has the opportunity to thrive. Their voices have been invaluable in shaping this debate, and their commitment to protecting children’s present and future is deeply appreciated. I am also particularly pleased to be working alongside my noble friend Lady Blake, whose expertise and dedication in social care and education is invaluable. I am grateful for her support as we take this Bill forward together in this House. This Bill represents an enormously important opportunity to improve our children’s social care and school systems. The chance to make meaningful change to the lives of children and families through legislation of this kind is rare, and I look forward to the thoughtful, impactful debate ahead. It also delivers on manifesto commitments to drive high and rising standards in our schools, ensuring that every child has the opportunity to achieve and to thrive. I know that all Members of this House share the fundamental belief that our children deserve more, but, currently, children’s life chances are limited by systemic obstacles. Children at risk of abuse are falling through the cracks of our safeguarding systems. At the same time, while the best schools and trusts have shown how collaboration, strong leadership and innovation can transform educ…
We on these Benches welcome the ambition to protect children, and Part 1 — much of it drawn from the Independent Review of Children's Social Care — deserves careful scrutiny, not opposition. We will press on kinship and foster carer support, deprivation of liberty protections for children as young as seven, and the unique identifier design. But Part 2 is a different matter: stripping academy freedoms that drove England from 21st to 7th in the PISA maths rankings is serious and risky, and the Confederation of School Trusts shares our concern. There is also no ban on smartphones in schools — only 11% of schools have an effective ban — despite the scientific evidence linking phones to poor mental health. And 79 of the 750 breakfast-club early adopters have already dropped out, citing underfunding. The Government must explain that.My Lords, I thank the Minister for the comprehensive way in which she has set out the purpose of this key legislation. His Majesty’s Official Opposition welcome the Government’s ambition to protect children and ensure that they have the best opportunities in life, regardless of any challenges they may have faced during their childhood. As your Lordships’ House is aware, this Bill comprises two halves. While both parts focus on the well-being and future of children across the country, there are some real and distinct differences between them. The former seeks to improve the children’s social care system. Noble Lords know that outcomes for children in the care system remain stubbornly poor, despite efforts from repeated Governments to improve them. Part 1 includes many elements that were recommended by the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, commissioned by the last Government and published in 2022. As noble Lords are aware, it was ably led by the now honourable Member for Whitehaven. There are areas in Part 1 where we will seek to probe, develop and clarify the practical implementation of the Bill, but, in the round, the importance of this part is recognised and the need for legislation is understood. It is a huge responsibility to do one’s collective best to represent the interests of children and young people who have been so disadvantaged through no fault of their own. In doing so, we will focus on areas where we think the Bill could be strengthened, including support for kinship carers in particular and foster carers more broadly. We are keen to see support for care leavers be as effective as possible. We will encourage the Government to consider what support can be given to mothers who have already had one or more children removed from them by the local authority. We will press the Government to improve the protections for children deprived of their liberty—some as young as seven; a truly chilling thought. We will press for greater clarity on the imple…
Part 1 addresses the hardy perennials of the care system — welcome at last — but I want to know how the data-sharing provisions will actually work in practice rather than in theory. On Part 2: the converted academies, those forced to change, are the weakest cohort. Acceptance that compulsory academisation is not the answer was already reached. The real problem is SEND: the current system is a hideous mess whose primary beneficiaries are lawyers and expensive diagnosters. We must use this Bill to lay the ground for easier, earlier intervention for neurodiverse children — many of whom ended up home-educated precisely because their needs were not met in school. On breakfast clubs: the bus is occasionally late, and rural delivery will be a genuine challenge. And on Clause 63: can the Minister explain how Henry VIII powers tucked at the back won't leave the Secretary of State with virtually unchecked authority to change things by regulation?My Lords, I agree with a couple of things the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, said, including that we have the great and the good of education gathered in this House today. There are many here who have been involved in education, and in the current education system’s construction, for a long time, and I look forward to hearing what they have to say. I have worked against some of them and I have worked successfully with others; they may have cursed me or praised me, but we have striven forward. Part 1 of the Bill reads like the Government dealing with the hardy perennials of the care system. There is much in there that has already provided us with debate after debate, many of which were quite depressing. I thank the Government for bringing this forward so that we can all have a look at them. There are many issues which we have heard about in an untold number of debates, and they have not gone that well. The way that the Government choose to implement the passing on of information might be one of the most interesting issues, because often mistakes have arisen due to a lack of co-ordination. I look forward to seeing how we can advance and check that, as far as we can by debate, to make sure it is going to work properly. This is not an easy topic, as most people involved in it would accept. There may not be perfect answers, but improvement is certainly possible. We should have had a cohesive look at this, together, a while ago, so I thank the Government for bringing it forward. Many of my noble friends, including my noble friend Lady Tyler, are going to weigh in on a lot of the Bill. Looking round at these Benches, I see others who I cannot imagine will be quiet. We have discussed this a lot, and I hope we can have an open mind, given the experience here in the House, as we go through the Bill. I will be spending more of my time and consideration on Part 2 of the Bill. Before I go into that, I will say something about a matter that is not included. Anybody who has been in t…
Child safety is the first priority of the whole education system, and we should never forget it. Clauses 2 to 4 are right to place education settings as participants in multi-agency safeguarding — but they should be *equal partners*, not merely participants, because schools are often the first to know when a child is in danger. Faith-based and community organisations must also be written in; they are overlooked in the Bill just as they can be overlooked on the ground. And on the unique identifier: every child abuse inquiry since Maria Colwell 50 years ago has found the same failure — agencies not sharing information. Our Public Services Select Committee called it in 2021 a long-standing problem that 'endangered vulnerable children'. This is the chance to fix it properly — let's take it.My Lords, by any measure, this is a landmark Bill and I welcome very many of its provisions. However, in the very short time available today, I will focus only on the part of the Bill that concerns child protection and safeguarding, in particular in Clauses 2 to 4. I will do that because child safety remains the first priority of schools, the education system and the Government, and we should never forget that. Schools themselves are safer places than they were back in the days when I chaired the Soham inquiry. The vetting and barring scheme, more rigorous staff interviews, designated safeguarding leads and better training for all staff have played their part in that. But, as the Children’s Commissioner said recently, schools also play a wider and “fundamental role in keeping children safe and protecting them from harm”. Children simply trust schools; they trust teachers and they trust teachers’ assistants, and those teachers are often the first to know if children are facing challenges in their lives. So it is important that we ensure that the knowledge that schools have is available to all who are tasked with protecting children. That is why the Bill places a duty on safeguarding partners—local authorities, the police and health—to secure the participation of education settings in multiagency safeguarding to ensure that the education view is heard. That is a step forward, but I agree with the Children’s Commissioner and others that schools should not just be participants; they should be equal partners to properly underline their status and responsibility in the safeguarding process. I also think that the Bill should recognise and reference faith-based and community organisations in the safeguarding process to avoid gaps in oversight, especially of marginalised children. Well-being and safeguarding are not the sole responsibility of the statutory organisations; they are also the responsibility of community organisations that play such an important part but at the m…
Barnardo's research shows 39% of care leavers aged 19 to 21 are not in education, employment or training — almost two in five of those we are supposed to have helped. What they get depends entirely on the whim of their local authority. We need a universal offer: free prescriptions, bus travel, rent deposit guarantees, over-25 universal credit rates, and proper support for those going to university or apprenticeships. I will table amendments to explore that shape. I will also be pressing on care experience being embedded in equality assessments. Separately: the Bill as drafted will force yeshivas — which supplement home schooling for Haredi Jewish communities in Salford and elsewhere — to close, because they cannot and will not register as educational institutions. The Government's own human rights memorandum concedes it. Can the Minister assure us there will be genuine consultation with faith communities on the regulatory framework under Clause 36?My Lords, I begin by expressing my thanks to all noble Lords who have reached out to me following the announcement that I will be taking up the role of Convenor of the Lords Spiritual next month. I look forward to working with all noble Lords. I also look forward to hearing today the maiden speeches from the noble Lords, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley and Lord Biggar, the latter a fellow clergyman and a theological mind of some high repute. Debate during the recent passage of my own Private Member’s Bill through this House highlighted the severe disadvantages faced by many care leavers. Research by Barnardo’s showed that 39% of care leavers aged 19 to 21 are not in education, employment or training, compared with 13% of young people in general. We are failing almost two in five of those who have care experience. Moreover, care leavers I met through the charity Become highlighted how much depends on the whim of their particular local authority. Young people who move away for work or further education are especially prone to losing support. We need a universal offer for young people leaving care that local authorities are obliged to meet. At a later stage, I will be seeking to explore the shape of such an offer, potentially including free prescriptions, bus travel, help with rent deposits and guarantees, eligibility for the over-25 rates of universal credit and greater support for those who go on to apprenticeships or university. Moreover, as care-experienced people are disproportionately represented in almost every area of disadvantage, from homelessness, unemployment and poverty to poor health, low educational attainment and involvement in the justice system, I have been looking at amendments to embed care experience in equality assessments so that public bodies put care leavers at the heart of decision-making. I am grateful for the comments from the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, regarding foster parents, who provide such a vital service in helping children flourish and thr…
I was an enthusiast when academies were introduced — they were a tool to urgently improve failing schools, not an ideological symbol. They worked. But over 80% of secondary schools are now academies: academisation cannot be the answer when it is already the dominant model. The debate has drifted from standards to structures, from outcomes to ideology. My plea to the whole House: return to first principles. Judge every school — academy, maintained, free, faith — by its outcomes. Be utterly relentless when a school is failing children. The current rebrokering process takes years, during which children are still being let down, and that has to change.My Lords, I draw attention to my interests as set out in the register. I just want to talk very briefly about schools today. I say clearly that I have seen at first hand the transformative power of academies to deliver excellent education where there has been failure. When academies were introduced—and I was involved enthusiast—they were a tool for the urgent improvement of schools, not an ideological symbol. The idea was simple but radical: open up to new energy and expertise, allow great leaders the freedoms to create enthusiastic teams and raise standards and, crucially, to make sure there was accountability so that schools that were failing children, particularly from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, could not carry on failing the next cohort. It worked, and many of us around this House were involved in that mission. I fear that we have lost sight of the original purpose. The debate in recent times has shifted from standards to structures, outcomes to ideology. Today, over 80% of secondary schools are academies—the landscape has fundamentally changed. Academisation alone cannot be the answer when it is already the dominant model. In some cases it has delivered hugely, but it is not a panacea. What we need now, again, is to refocus relentlessly on standards and outcomes for every child in every school, whatever its structure and whatever the badge on the school gate. We should remember what has worked and replicate that, including earned freedoms. We should be totally and utterly impatient and relentless about poor quality in any school, whether academy, maintained, free school or faith. Any school that is failing its pupils should be given a short, focused period to improve dramatically. If it cannot, leadership must change. Handing over a school to a poorly performing provider of whatever label is not acceptable, ever. Quality and rigour are what matters. Every year a child spends in a failing school is a year of potential lost, and the disadvantage gap and…
There is much to commend here — the Bill rightly seeks to strengthen collaboration between education and social services. But the Government claims to want high school standards while attacking the academy freedoms that have driven England up the international tables. I also question loading local authorities with sweeping new responsibilities without the funding or capacity to carry them out.My Lords, there is much to commend in the Bill, not least because it seeks—as did the last Government—to strengthen collaboration between education and social services for the benefit of the life chances of all our children. However, it is regrettable that, while the Government claim their enthusiasm for driving up school standards, the Bill attacks the very freedoms of academies which have achieved just that since their introduction. In that time, as has already been said, the UK has moved from 21st to seventh in international league tables in maths, and in science from ninth to seventh. In the many cases where academies have replaced failing schools, they have given fresh hope to children, often in disadvantaged areas. I also question the wisdom of loading local authorities with so many obligations to set up new bodies and practices at this very moment when they themselves are facing massive change and uncertainty through the Government’s plans for devolution. Those changes will of course be necessary; it is just the timing that seems to be a bit questionable, especially as some of them are due to come into force within two months after the Act is passed, according to the Library. Will devolution be fully in place in two months? Will we know which local authorities still exist in their present form and which do not in a completely different framework? I do not think so, and it would be helpful if the Minister could comment on this point in her wind-up. It seems to me that there is something of a mismatch of expectation at this stage. I welcome the planned involvement of Ofsted in unregistered and therefore illegal independent schools, and, importantly, private providers, including those for SEND pupils. I also welcome—very guardedly, because it is an extremely sensitive area—the introduction of a register of children not in school. Many of those educating their children at home, which can include SEND pupils, understandably regard the measure as intolerable intrus…
A Bill called Children's *Wellbeing* should represent the full swathe of children's rights — including protection from digital technology during school hours. A 15 year-old told me this week that it 'gives us brain rot, prevents us sleeping and stops us concentrating'. The evidence is clear; this is one of the easiest and cheapest things we could do. The Bill should include it.My Lords, my remarks will focus primarily on technology in school, but I want to take this opportunity to say that, over the time I have spent in your Lordships’ House, I find myself increasingly in situations where children’s needs are being now balanced with the proportionality principle of others’ adult freedoms, with no recognition of the broad swathe of rights that we are obligated to give them. I start by saying that the well-being Bill should represent that broad swathe of children’s rights and meet their needs in that sense. It strikes me that one of the easiest and cheapest things we could do is to give them a break from the well-documented intrusions of digital tech while at school, which, as a 15 year-old earlier this week said to me, “gives us brain rot, prevents us sleeping and stops us talking to each other”. Ministers cite excessive device use at home as the greater culprit, rather than the smartphone disruption at school, for the decline in children’s well-being and attainment, but that logic normalises smartphones’ constant presence in a child’s life and actually does nothing at all to tackle phone use at home. Evidence that I will bring to Committee shows that restrictions are helpful to school communities, not only for learning but for peace in the school community and for friendship and human flourishing. The current guidance—which is excellent—puts pressure on teachers that statutory rules could relieve. While Ministers are slow on smartphones, they are increasingly evangelical about bringing edtech into the classroom. I recognise that there is very good evidence that those with disabilities or special needs benefit from such tech, but for most children there is no such evidence at all. There is no oversight, no pedagogical criteria, no understanding of its efficacy and no proof of learning outcomes. In a similar vein, I have now sat down with four Ministers of Education and explained the risks of uncertified safety tech, yet we still do not hav…
The past four months have seen the most misleading rhetoric about Part 2 of this Bill. Our job in the Lords is to lower the temperature and get to reality. If amendments are needed to clarify it, we should make them — in the interests of children, not of structures or ideology. What really matters is what happens in classrooms, and teachers across England have kept the system going and raised standards throughout decades of structural debate. Let us focus on that.My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness. I offer a very warm welcome to and look forward to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley. I know that he will remind me of just how old I am by reflecting on his childhood when I was leader of Sheffield. Over the last four months, there has been the most misleading rhetoric about Part 2 of this Bill. It is our job in the House of Lords to lower the temperature and get to the reality. If there are amendments to be made to clarify it, we should do so. That is our role, and I hope we can do that in the spirit of coming together in the interests of children. I take up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, that what goes on in the school and in the classroom is what really matters. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Shephard, Lady Morris and Lady Morgan—I will not pay tribute to myself—but I think they would accept immediately that we did not transform the ability of children to succeed or develop their talent, or their ability to shine through. It was the world-class leadership in schools and the first-class teaching and support staff who did that job. That is what we must build on. Let us set aside the disagreements about whether multi-academy trusts or maintained schools have done better. The stats from the House of Lords Library are very interesting, but I have not got time to go into them. I can pay tribute to the sponsors and leaders of multi-academy trusts, because I was the Secretary of State who floated the academies in the first place. Let us get it right. We have put the record straight about minimum rather than maximum pay and conditions. We can put the record straight on what happens with schools that are failing their children and the interventions that are needed. We can put the record straight on misleading comments about admissions, where the drop in pupil numbers will be catastrophic and there will need to be co-ordination i…
Clause 54 — the requirement for all academies to follow the national curriculum — is very radical and constitutional: it moves power from schools to the Secretary of State on a scale that those of us who created the national curriculum never intended and never wanted. UTCs in particular will be threatened, because their distinctive technical curriculum is precisely why students choose them. This is a constitutional Bill, and the House should treat it as such.My Lords, I am delighted to follow my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. He was an outstanding Education Secretary who enormously improved literacy and numeracy in primary schools, but what endears him to me is that his two grandsons are going to the University Technical College that I established in Sheffield for a high-quality technical education. We now have another one on the outskirts. This Bill threatens the existence of UTCs, but I will come on to that in a moment. Clause 47 is very radical. It would mean a major change of power in this country. The clause makes this a constitutional Bill, because it gives powers to the Secretary of State and the department that the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and I never had and never wanted. It moves all the power from local areas to the centre. There has been no consultation on this. There have been no research papers. It has just been plucked out of the air and added to this Bill. I think it is very harmful indeed. Schools have done very well by being academies. I established the first early ones in the 1980s. When I introduced the national curriculum in the 1980s, my Permanent Secretary said to me, “You can’t instruct schools to follow it and you can’t tell them to do it. You can make suggestions and recommendations”. This was because, since 1870, schools have been run by elected local school boards, by local authorities and now by multi-academy trusts. All the powers of those trusts are now being transferred by Clause 47 and other clauses to the department and the Secretary of State, giving them powers that I never had and which never existed. When there is a huge change like that, with no checks and balances, there is usually consultation. There should be, but there has been no consultation on this. I do not believe this measure was in the manifesto of the Labour Party. It is a major constitutional change and we have to think very carefully about it. The schools that I promoted do not follow a national curriculum—or…
Despite having 'wellbeing' in its title, the Bill currently lacks measures to actually improve children's mental health. According to the latest PISA data, England's young people have the *lowest* level of wellbeing in Europe. To attend, attain and thrive at school, a child needs to feel safe and emotionally supported — that has to be in this Bill, not just in the title.My Lords, so much to say, so little time to say it. I welcome this Bill and many of its measures, but there is plenty of scope for further strengthening and improvement. I am also very much looking forward to hearing the two maiden speeches. Although my main interest is in Part 1, I want to emphasise the interrelated nature of the two parts of the Bill. In order to attend, attain and thrive at school, a child needs to feel safe, secure and well supported and have good mental health and emotional well-being. Despite having the word “well-being” in its title, in my view, the Bill currently lacks measures that will improve the mental health and well-being of children. It is of real concern that, according to the latest PISA data, England’s young people have the lowest level of well-being in Europe. Evidence increasingly shows the link between school absences and poor mental health. There is also growing recognition of a gap in mental health support for children and young people who need a greater level of support than is currently available in school mental health teams, but do not require or are not eligible for specialist treatment from CAMHS. I intend to press to rectify this gap, based on my current Private Member’s Bill requiring a suitably qualified mental health professional in all schools, primary and secondary. Linked to this, I strongly support the introduction of a national well-being measurement programme for children throughout England, and I pay tribute to both Be Well and Pro Bono Economics for all their work in this area. Data on children’s well-being and mental health is currently fragmented across the NHS, schools and local authorities. We should take the opportunity to introduce a national well-being measurement to focus efforts and provide a measurable standard from which we can mark progress. This will give all children a voice on the issues that matter to their well-being, allow regular tracking of national progress, support detailed cross-agency…
We are entering our third decade of debating school structures in England. Throughout all of it, teachers have kept the system going and raised standards. I hope this can be a turning point — that we finally put the structural debate behind us and focus on what makes the real difference: what happens in classrooms. Decades of discussion have taught us what works. Let us build on it.My Lords, I shall restrict my comments to the clauses in the Bill on schools. By my reckoning, we are probably entering our third decade of discussing the structure of schools in England. Interesting and important though that may be, it has not been the easiest of discussions. There have been a lot of piecemeal changes. Two government Bills on this subject have been completely withdrawn because of differences of opinion within the Conservative Party. Throughout all that time, teachers have managed to keep the school system going and raise standards. I hope most of all that this can be a turning point when we put behind us this debate on the structure of schools and begin to focus on what makes the real difference: what happens in the classrooms. We have got to learn from those decades of discussion and years of change, and without doubt, there are more good schools than there were before. Without doubt, the birth and growth of academies has contributed to that. Academies have brought something new to the system. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, referred to them as a disruptor. They brought outside expertise that it was not always easy to get into schools, they have brought an energy, and they have helped to raise standards. But there is no evidence that I can find that shows that they should be the universal model—that only within that model can excellence be achieved. There is often, among some people in the Chamber, a lack of generosity of spirit in acknowledging that that excellence, that innovation, that improvement, exists in maintained schools as well. Academies do not have the monopoly of excellence, nor of innovation, nor of turning round failing schools. My conclusion is that both types of schools should be allowed to flourish as part of a strong school system. If you want a choice on governance—because that is what it is about—if you want to leave the partnership of the local authority and the partnership of schools, if you want to take on those extra resp…
We rightly emphasise a broad and balanced curriculum, but we also need a broad and balanced education policy. There must be scope for teachers to bring their own passions to their teaching — that inspires pupils with a love of learning that too often seems lacking. The Bill risks crowding that out in the name of uniformity.My Lords, I support much of the Bill but will raise some issues about the schools part of it. We rightly emphasise the need for a broad and balanced curriculum, but we also need a broad and balanced education policy. It is clearly important to ensure that every school meets certain minimum standards. The report of the Education for 11-16 Year Olds Committee, on which I sat, speaks positively of a “mandatory national curriculum that ensures a common entitlement for all pupils”. At the same time, there needs to be scope for teachers to bring their own passions and predilections to their teaching if they are to inspire pupils with a love of learning in a spirit of discovery and enjoyment which all too often seems to be lacking. Many of us will recall teachers who made the most positive impact on our own learning. I was lucky enough to be taught by three remarkable classics teachers, from whom I gained, and have retained, an enduring love of classical languages, art and civilisation, which affect our lives in so many ways. I continue to attempt the Times’s Latin crossword on Saturdays. I also learned that, often, the most inspiring teachers are those who seem least constrained within rigid rules, syllabuses or teaching methods. The pendulum seems to be swinging too far towards the need to meet fixed minimum standards and away from inspirational and mind-expanding teaching. I worry that the Bill may take it even further in this direction by imposing a degree of rigidity and conformity well beyond the requirement of a common entitlement for all pupils—for example, by imposing a standard curriculum on all schools, by reducing or removing academy freedoms and through the proposed restrictions on required qualifications and payment arrangements for teachers. The education committee also highlighted a lack of balance between academic and technical or vocational subjects in the current curriculum. Again, the Bill looks as though it may exacerbate this. Skills-based subjects re…
Starting with Clause 54 on academies and the national curriculum: I entirely agree with Baroness Morris and Lord Blunkett that we need a debate about quality, rigour and standards — not structure. With the expertise gathered in this House I am confident we will improve the Bill. The issue is not the national curriculum itself but ensuring the freedoms that have driven improvement are kept while accountability is strengthened.My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak in this debate on such important topics. I declare my interest as chair of the national Careers & Enterprise Company. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord; I agreed with his comments and those made by all the speakers so far. Unsurprisingly, I will start with Clauses 47 and 50, in relation to academies. I entirely agree with the sentiments expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and my namesake, the other Baroness Morgan, who exhorted us to remember that we should look for a debate about quality, rigour and standards in our schools. I think we are going to have a good debate in your Lordships’ House. With the expertise here, I hope the House is going to help to improve the Bill and ask the right questions of the Government in relation to both academies and maintained schools. In my experience, the challenges of maintaining two systems are in relation to both funding and accountability. One of the questions we will explore as part of Clause 50 and school improvement is: if academisation is not the answer in particular situations, then what is? How is school improvement, which has, after all, been the holy grail of Governments over many decades, going to be achieved and who does that most affectively? As the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, has just said, we should want freedoms and for the national curriculum to be a minimum standard, but as, we have also heard, a number of specialist schools feel strongly that the national curriculum is not right for them. As the Minister said at the beginning, we have the curriculum review at the moment. Former Education Secretaries and Ministers are very good at speculating about what goes on in the classroom. Even better than that, we love talking about what is happening in the curriculum and what should be taught; we all have views on that. We await the forthcoming review with great interest. That will be relevant to the curriculum that we want all…
Bold, top-to-bottom reform is long overdue. Systems have consistently leaned *away* from vulnerable children — the pandemic made that undeniable. This Bill begins to close those gaps and put the most vulnerable children at the very centre. It is a good start, and I support it.My Lords, it is a huge pleasure to take part in this important debate, and I draw attention to my interests in the register. All of us in this Chamber want the children of our country to succeed, but I think we also know that many will not do so without extra help. If we are in any doubt about that, we should look at what has happened in recent years since and during the pandemic, when it was revealed that systems consistently failed vulnerable children. I have been arguing for decades that we need to have bold reform from the top to the bottom, and we need to close those gaps in systems that have leaned away and continue to lean away from vulnerable children, and put those children at the very centre of our systems, protecting them from harm and boosting their life chances. This Bill is a commitment and an opportunity to do just that. The measures to improve our safeguarding and education systems are very welcome. I really welcome the conversations we have already started in this Chamber today about the importance of putting children and children’s outcomes at the centre of these debates—not the structures or the systems, which are all means to an end that we need to make work. It has to be about the children’s outcomes. A good education, of course, is a crucial foundation for all children, but we know that hundreds of thousands of children are missing school, either through poor attendance or because they are being home-schooled through elective home education. I have heard thousands of parents telling me that they feel they and their children are pushed out and ignored by the system. They are left with no other option than to home-educate, despite often not feeling that they are well equipped to do so. We also know that there are children who have been taken out of school deliberately so that the harms they are coming to are not seen. There are children who are not in school and go off the radar, falling into the hands of those who want to groom and exploit them,…
I arrived in the UK from Kashmir in 1977, aged four, and was raised in Tinsley, Sheffield. The schools and youth services of that city shaped me. Every child deserves what those institutions gave me: a sense of belonging, aspiration and the belief that their background need not define their future. That is why this Bill matters — and why getting it right for the children who most need it matters most of all.My Lords, it is with profound humility and sincere gratitude that I rise to make my maiden speech in your Lordships’ House. Never did I imagine, as a child born in Kashmir to parents from a humble farming background, that I would stand here among your Lordships, not as an observer but as an equal, entrusted with responsibilities to speak up for communities like the ones that raised me. I arrived in the United Kingdom in 1977 at the age of four with my mother, Khadija Bi, to join our family in Tinsley, Sheffield—a proud community, poor in material wealth but rich in spirit. The contrast could not have been greater: from the clear, ice-cold streams of the valleys of Kashmir to the smoky steel mills of the Lower Don Valley. Yet it was here that I learned resilience, solidarity and the value of opportunity. My journey here has not followed the traditional path that one might expect of a Member of this House. My father, Mohammed Saddique, grew up working small pieces of land with his siblings. They all lived in a simple, fragile house made of mud, straw, rock and wood. Life was harsh—often, food would consist of a chapatti and a raw onion—while they harvested the wheat by hand in the gruelling, searing midday sun. When the opportunity arose to work in Britain’s steel industry, he grasped it, bringing with him the dreams of a better life for the generations to come. The steel mills of Sheffield gave my family hope, but their decline in the early 1980s took much of that security away. Like many others, my father lost his job, and like many others, we relied upon the state for support. I grew up receiving free school meals and free clothing from Sheffield City Council, which at the time was led by a very youthful leader. I emphasise the word “youthful” because he was known as David Blunkett. I wonder what happened to him. Although I excelled at school, particularly in mathematics, family necessities meant that at the age of 16 I entered the world of work through the youth t…
A liberal society can and must accommodate a wide range of educational settings, including independent schools and properly regulated home education. But the wishes of parents and religious groups must be balanced against the rights of the child. The measures targeting illegal, unregistered schools are broadly welcome for exactly that reason — every child has a right to a broad education, adequately protected.I am used to having him behind me, heckling, but now he sits beside me in your Lordships’ House. I wish him well in his endeavours and I am sure he will add to our work here in this Parliament. Turning to the Bill, I want to talk about the provisions that address the issue of illegal, unregistered schools. A liberal society can and must accommodate a wide range of educational settings, including independent schools and properly regulated home education as well as, of course, state schools. However, in accommodating such education, the wishes of parents and religious groups need to be balanced against the rights of the child. I therefore broadly welcome the measures within the Bill that are aimed at ensuring that all children can have their right to a broad education, adequately protected. Although no precise figures are known for the number of children currently in unregistered schools, the former chief inspector of Ofsted, Amanda Spielman, estimated it was likely to be in the “tens of thousands”. She described conditions in some that “you wouldn’t want to put a dog in, let alone a child”. Earlier this year, a report from the Jewish Policy Research Institute found that over 6,600 children in ultra-orthodox Jewish communities were not attending registered schools, suggesting that many are being sent to unregistered faith schools, which represents the same pattern in other religious faith groups. These are concerning figures, given the repeated findings that many unregistered religious schools fail to deliver tuition in subjects outside religious instruction, denying students skills vital to a successful and fulfilling life, with some pupils even left unable to write English. Moreover, the existence of unregistered schools poses a significant safeguarding risk. Evidence has documented children being taught in deplorable conditions, alongside instances of physical and sexual abuse and an alarming absence of safeguarding procedures. The kind of religious education offer…
I am a teacher in a Hackney academy, a kinship carer of twin 13 year-olds, and — as a hereditary Peer — this could be my last major piece of legislation. So I am quite invested. On wellbeing: much to like, many amendments needed. On schools: the Bill as drafted risks undoing the progress made in the last 20 years. The two halves are so different that they deserve separate scrutiny; squashing them together muddies both.My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, on his excellent and inspiring maiden speech, and I greatly look forward to that from the noble Lord, Lord Biggar. As ever, I declare my interest as a teacher in an academy in Hackney. I am an unpaid trustee of the Elephant Group education charity, a kinship carer of twin 13 year-olds and a parent of two teenagers. I am also a hereditary Peer and this could well be my last major piece of legislation in your Lordships’ House. So, as you might say, I am quite invested in this Bill. What a Bill it is: 137 pages, 67 clauses and four minutes to talk about it. As everyone has said, it is a Bill of two halves. On well-being, there are many things to like—the Bill needs a lot of amendments, but basically there is a lot to like. Sadly, it misses out on the ending of the defence of reasonable punishment—what better place to put that in than a Bill that talks about children’s well-being? The evidence from Wales is pretty conclusive on that one. However, if we are to describe the “schools” part as a curate’s egg, if I were the curate, I would just eat the toast. Head teachers should be the best people to make decisions about their schools, whether they are academies or maintained. The Bill does not deal with the lack of respect of parents for schools. It decreases innovation. It takes away the autonomy and entrepreneurial spirit that has made the outstanding academies flourish, such as the UTCs already mentioned, which provide practical technical education alongside industry to get students into skilled work. At the school where I teach, Mossbourne Community Academy, students can choose public speaking, film and media, and yoga among other mainstream subjects. How are these trailblazing schools going to continue to innovate if they have to follow slavishly the rigid and, dare I say it, rather uninspiring national curriculum? I know that charities such as Tender are worried about the lack of a national PSHE strat…
Children's wellbeing is in the title of this Bill, yet the only educational outcome we measure is exam results — and what you measure becomes what you treasure. That is a catastrophe. The only way to change it is to measure wellbeing too, alongside qualifications. Many countries do this — the Netherlands, South Australia, and now Manchester. I will be pushing for this Bill to make that measurement mandatory.My Lords, children’s well-being is referenced in the title of this Bill, and so it should be. Obviously, children’s well-being matters, but it is also the best predictor of how happy the child will be in their subsequent life, predicting it far better than the qualifications which they obtain. However, the only outcome of education which we measure is those qualifications—and, of course, what you measure becomes what you treasure. Exam results have become the only touchstone of a school’s success, which is a catastrophe. There is only one way to change this, and that is to measure well-being as well, to put something else into the balance. That is what happens in many countries. It happens in the Netherlands and in South Australia, and in England it now happens in Manchester, as has been mentioned, and in Hampshire. The system is quite simple, and I think it is what we need. The Government design the questionnaire and hold it on a central platform. If a school wants to participate, it arranges once a year for the students in the school to complete the questionnaire, which takes about 20 minutes. The results are analysed centrally, and the findings are sent back from the centre to the school. From this, the school gets vital information about how well it is doing on progressing the well-being of its students. It is left up to the school how it uses its information. Participation in the survey is voluntary for both the school and the individual, and the individual responses are totally confidential to the individual. This is a change which could transform what happens in our schools. It would give them the incentive to do more for the well-being of their children, and the justification, which most of them want, for paying more attention to it. There is no conflict between doing more for well-being and improving academic performance. All the evidence shows that extra time devoted to life skills improves not only well-being but academic performance—or certainly does it…
I am a retired professor of Christian ethics. Much of the debate about this Bill has been framed in terms of freedom — parental freedom, school freedom, freedom from state interference. But freedom without formation is not freedom: it is licence. Children need to be formed in virtues, in knowledge, in the capacity for self-governance, before they can exercise genuine freedom. That is why a broad, shared national curriculum — taught well — is not a constraint on children but the very foundation of their future liberty.My Lords, I begin with the customary round of thanks, which I give with my whole heart. Black Rod, the doorkeepers and all the administrative and service staff I have encountered in this House have been extraordinarily helpful and patient. Mr Thomas there just brought me a glass of water without me asking for it, and I thank him very much. I thank my noble friend Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, who are long-term mentors of mine, who introduced me to this House at the end of January. I hope that, in due course, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, will forgive me for having chosen to sit on the Conservative Benches. When I tell the House that I am a retired professor of Christian ethics, I imagine some of your Lordships may mutter to yourselves, “That’s nice, but what’s he doing here?” If so, I would sympathise since I think that intellectuals, especially from the arts and humanities, are best kept well clear of politics, since we tend to suffer grievously from the virus of wishful thinking. Being conservative, however, I have long sought to educate my moral ideals with reality. In 1998, the year of the Belfast or Good Friday agreement, I ran a conference in Oxford under the title, “Burying the Past After Civil Conflict”. At the beginning of the conference, I started to talk without embarrassment about healing and reconciliation until up stood Ulrike Poppe, twice imprisoned by the communist authorities of East Germany because of her political dissidence, who said, “I now live on the same street as the man who informed on me. I didn’t know him then and I certainly don’t want to know him now. So, what exactly do you mean by healing and reconciliation?” I look forward to being further educated by the vast array of practical experience that this House, being unelected, contains. In recent years, I have been preoccupied with colonial history for political reasons. As an Anglo-Scot, I had a dog i…
It was a privilege to know the noble Lord, Lord Biggar, as my college chaplain. Even then his intellectual generosity and humility were evident. Those qualities will serve this House and this Bill well. On the Bill itself: some of what we have heard today conflates the academy structure with the outcomes it produces. The evidence from Scotland and Wales — which did not adopt England's reforms — is instructive. England rose; they did not. That comparison deserves honest examination before we unwind what worked.My Lords, what a privilege and a pleasure to follow two such outstanding maiden speeches, one from my former Euro colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, and one from my former college chaplain, the noble Lord, Lord Biggar. Even 35 years ago, as an undergraduate and prey to the slight self-absorption that we have when we are teenagers, I was able to recognise the qualities that will so enrich our counsels here—his humility, his intellectual curiosity and above all that generosity of spirit, that largeness of soul that makes him consider other arguments and other people on their own merits. It was not obvious that he had such intellectual diversity and future controversy inside him. I remember when I first came across him, he looked like any other scruffy academic—he read the Guardian, had a short little beard and dressed like every other academic—and I would have been surprised had I been told then that out of him was going to come this extraordinary ethical balance sheet of colonialism. I think it surprised a lot of his colleagues too, and because he brought to bear that empiricism and that calm curiosity, which should be valued, above all in academic settings, it triggered, as sadly these things do in our rather deranged culture war, a very negative reaction. His book was initially denied a publisher and then it was howled down by people who plainly had not read it when all he was doing was trying to be balanced, in a way that I am sure he will in all our debates here. The reason why he does this, and the reason why he can be so indifferent to public opinion, is that he has a genuine faith in something bigger than public opinion. Not everyone has the gift of religious faith, but all of us, I hope, can at least exercise the self-respect that allows us to be honest and true to ourselves in difficult times. I sincerely thank all the former Secretaries of State for education, not just for having been Secretaries of State but—on both sides—for having presi…
This Bill is a valuable opportunity, but it misses the deep-rooted barriers facing disabled children. In 2024, 55% of children cited school failings as a reason they are not in mainstream education. If the Government are serious about getting disabled people into work, inclusion in education must be addressed here. ALLFIE's briefing is clear: the Bill as drafted does not go nearly far enough.My Lords, I draw noble Lords’ attention to my entry in the register of interests: I am president of the LGA, chair of Sport Wales, chair of the Duke of Edinburgh Awards and a trustee of the Foundation of Light. I thank ALLFIE, the Alliance for Inclusive Education, for its briefing and for its commitment to improving education for disabled children. The Bill before us presents a valuable opportunity to enhance the well-being of our children and ensure that no child falls through the gaps—sadly, too many do. However, there are many missed opportunities in the Bill and an ongoing failure to address deep-rooted barriers for disabled children. If the Government are serious about getting disabled people into work, education is a key part of that. In 2024, 55% of children cited school failings as a reason for starting home-schooling. It works for many but should not be a last resort due to incorrect provision or used in a way that further segregates disabled children. The National Audit Office has revealed that funding for SEND support has risen by 58% over the past decade to £10.7 billion. It is not sustainable and needs urgent reform. In the same report, published in October 2024, the NAO called for education to become more inclusive. Parents have to be experts in every part of their disabled child’s life. I was lucky. I was in mainstream junior school when I became paralysed and my parents used the work of Baroness Warnock and, citing my right to be educated in the best environment for me, threatened to sue the Secretary of State for Wales over my right to go to mainstream school. It was a long, protracted battle. My parents won and I received an amazing education, but my life would be very different now if it were not for my parents. What has changed in the last four decades? Not enough. Parents of disabled children are still fighting, and I receive numerous emails about disabled children not receiving the education they need. One parent wrote to me this week and said…
Our academy group has had 11 schools rated outstanding in the last five months alone. That is because our schools have the freedom to run themselves properly. Over 85% of our schools are rated good or outstanding. The evidence is in the results — do not strip the freedoms that produce them.I thank the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, for his kind words, but it is not about me. It is because of our principals, teachers, support staff and children that we are so successful. We have many academy groups that really do well and get fantastic results such as good GCSE results. They are run well because they have the freedom to run schools how they should be run. Since 26 November, five months ago, we have had 11 schools rated outstanding; four more might be outstanding, but the rule is now that if you are good you cannot become outstanding until the inspectors come back a second time; and two schools were rated good. On Friday this week we got another outstanding, which I cannot mention, and yesterday we had another outstanding—so the record is pretty good, with over 85% of our schools rated outstanding. We are grateful to all our staff and what they do. I would like to talk about one school. I come from Peckham, which has a school that in 75 years has never been rated outstanding. It takes in the bottom 3% of the country. On the last inspection, four weeks ago, it was awarded outstanding by Ofsted. The inspectors said: “The education provided by this school is transformational for many of its pupils … A large proportion of pupils join after Year 7, with many coming from overseas … Despite this, pupils go on to achieve consistently above national averages by the end of Year 11”. This is because it can move the curriculum around. If somebody comes from abroad and cannot speak English, there is no point trying to teach them other subjects. That is one thing we should look at. I hope we look at it to see that we do not stick to a standard for every school. We have taken over quite a lot of failing schools. Why are we giving them another two years? They have probably been failing for a couple of years and will have another two years of failing. We took over a primary school in Croydon that had failed for five years under the state system and five years under another…
The Bill is a welcome beginning on childcare, safeguarding, home-schooling and the registration of illegal schools. Local authorities should also be able to establish new maintained schools where they can make a well-argued demographic case — the Bill should enable that. I will not engage today on the academy debate; others have done so with more expertise.My Lords, I welcome this Bill as an important beginning to remedying a number of long-standing problems in childcare and the safeguarding of children, the operation of home-schooling, the registration of illegal schools and the strengthening of Ofsted’s powers in this area. The failure of the previous Government to tackle these issues and their decision to withdraw legislation that would at least have made a start is disappointing. I do not propose to cover today the second part of the Bill concerning academies and how they compare with local authority schools in the way that they are run, but I will say that local authorities should be able to establish new maintained schools where they can make a well-argued case, particularly on demographic grounds. They are in a position to assess this and to identify appropriate sites where new schools can be established. In some areas where the population is declining, they may need to merge schools to create a new institution where falling rolls have made existing schools unviable. Such decisions are for local authorities. I turn to Part 1 of the Bill. The fact that many children in care suffer terribly is a scar on our society. As the Minister set out, children in care are likely to have the worst outcomes in terms of educational performance, mental health, being sexually abused and committing crimes. Serious underfunding and the lack of coherent national structures to support them properly have contributed to their neglect. It is horrifying that the number of children in care has increased by 28% since 2010 and it reflects badly on the Opposition when they were in Government. Better prevention is urgent to stop this figure increasing. I therefore welcome the Bill’s aim to keep families together while ensuring children are safe, for example through statutory family group decision-making, as well as a statutory requirement to run multiagency child protection teams. Whether the Bill goes far enough in providing support for fam…
Early identification and intervention are everything. I knew a year 1 teacher in Andover who, within weeks of term starting, could identify which children were likely to end up in trouble. Many teachers have that skill. The Bill needs to underpin it with a comprehensive SEND reform plan — because councils won just 1.3% of SEND tribunal appeals in 2023-24. That statistic alone tells you the system is broken.My Lords, when I was in the other place, I went round a primary school in Andover whose catchment area was from the less well-off part of the town. The year 1 teacher had been there for 20 years, and she was also a local JP. She told me that, within a few weeks of the beginning of term, she could tell which children were likely to end up in trouble. There are many other primary school teachers like her. So early intervention for children who need support is crucial. That brings me to SEND. The current system is failing too many children, too many parents and too many other children in the class. One statistic makes the case. Councils won just 1.3% of appeals in 2023-24. So, to underpin what is in the Bill, we will need a comprehensive SEND reform plan to give the children who need the support the support when they need it, without all the current delays. Because of some of the problems with SEND, many families are home-educating. Along with the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, I sit on the Social Mobility Policy Select Committee. Last week, we heard from witnesses that, within the cohort of children educated at home, there are a few for whom it was not an active choice but a decision of last resort—in many cases as a result of bullying, and sometimes after encouragement to deregister. Some of those children may then fall through the various safety nets, so I agree with my noble friend Lady Morgan of Cotes that we need to make sure that we look after those children through this Bill. On that subject, Clause 30 requires local authorities’ consent for certain children—mainly those who have protection concerns—to be withdrawn from school. I am vice-chairman of the APPG on young carers, and there is concern that some young carers are being withdrawn from school to increase their caring responsibilities at home. That means that they could have even more responsibility foisted on them, and also cuts them off from the support that they would ge…
As chair of the Children's Society I commend the data-sharing provisions, including with and from faith communities, and the push to reduce school uniform costs. As we await the child poverty strategy, I also want to see the free school meal provisions made as strong as possible — no child should go hungry at school.My Lords, I welcome this Bill and the Government’s commitment to improve children’s lives and their outcomes. My faith teaches me that, in this work, we echo Jesus’s commitment to place children at the heart of God’s transforming work— “of such is the kingdom of God”. As Nelson Mandela said: “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children”. I declare an interest as the chair of the board of trustees of the Children’s Society. I register my support for the calls for better data sharing to protect children, including with and from faith communities. As we await publication of the child poverty strategy, I commend provisions to reduce the cost of school uniforms and to expand the availability of sustainable, healthy and accessible free school breakfasts. Poverty is a primary factor in the well-being of children. I am pleased to hear that the noble Lord, Lord Bird, who cannot be in his place today, will be tabling an amendment seeking to introduce a new clause to place a new duty on the Government to set targets for the reduction of child poverty. I add my voice in support of the Our Wellbeing, Our Voice coalition in its calls for the establishment of a national well-being measurement programme to offer demonstrably, evidenced-based data to shape and track holistic interventions to improve childhood well-being. We know that schools across England are already engaged in excellent anti-poverty, anti-racist and anti-neglect work, for example. As we have heard, some are already benefitting from collecting and monitoring well-being data to inform their interventions. I trust we can agree that there is value in equipping schools with a comprehensive picture of the well-being of their students. I seek reassurance from the Minister that this recommendation will be reviewed. I welcome the intention of the Bill to cap profits for children’s homes providers and independent fostering agencies. I ask that this oversight be extended…
Fifteen years ago I introduced the Academies Bill at that Dispatch Box. What we were trying to do was build on Labour's foundations, extend professional independence, drive improvement in the weakest schools, and create a culture of accountability. The question before this House is whether the measures in Part 2 help or hinder those objectives. I will be testing that in Committee — honestly and without ideology.My Lords, 15 years ago, almost to the day, I had the privilege of standing at that Dispatch Box to introduce the then Academies Bill. I thought it might be helpful, as we think about this new Bill and what it will mean for academies in future, to set out what we were trying to achieve back in 2010. First, and very much our starting point, we aimed to build on the foundations laid by the previous Government. We could not have been clearer at the time about the debt we owed to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and to many other noble Lords we have heard about today, reaching all the way back in the apostolic succession to my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking. Secondly, we were trying to extend professional independence and give schools more freedom to run their affairs as they thought best. Thirdly, we were seeking to increase parental choice. For at least 20 years, successive Governments have sought to defend and extend academy freedoms—freedoms that were entrenched in what were supposed to be legally binding funding agreements. By contrast, this Bill breaks that consensus. It sets out explicitly to reduce academy freedoms and professional independence, with less freedom over the hiring of staff, the curriculum and the expansion of popular schools. That begs the question: why? What is the reason for this change of direction? Have some problems arisen from academy freedoms which the Government, quite properly, need to fix? For example, has the ability of academies to take on non-QTS teachers led to a drop in standards? Has the freedom for academies not to have to follow the national curriculum led to worse results? Have popular academies which chose to increase their numbers let down their pupils in some way? If they had, I feel sure that the Government would have told us. Perhaps I missed it, but I have not seen any explanation of the problems that these measures seek to address. Until we hear a convincing explanation of what the problems were and how removing these free…
King's College London Maths School exists because of academy freedoms. So do all the other university maths schools. Funding agreements already give the Secretary of State major powers over academies — so why does Clause 56 need *additional* statutory powers to intervene merely because the Secretary of State is *satisfied* that a proprietor is *likely* to breach a duty at some unspecified future point? That is a very low bar, and I do not understand why it is needed.My Lords, I declare an interest as deputy chair of governors at King’s College London Maths School, which is a high-achieving 16 to 19 academy. We are very grateful to this Government and previous Governments for their support, and we are aware that the school’s existence, and that of other university maths schools, was made possible by academy freedoms. In that context, while welcoming much of this Bill, I echo concerns raised by other noble Lords about reducing these freedoms. Academies’ funding agreements already give the Secretary of State major powers, so I do not really understand why, for example, the Secretary of State needs major new statutory powers to intervene just because they are satisfied that the proprietor of an academy is “likely” to breach a relevant duty at some unspecified time in the future. I hope very much that we will return to this in depth in Committee and get some clearer understanding of why these powers are being introduced. My main concern is the Bill’s emphasis on ensuring that teachers are all qualified—which of course does not in any way refer to their mastery of their subject but only to whether they have a teaching qualification. The vast majority of teachers, including in academies, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, pointed out, and in the independent sector, do have teaching qualifications, and these play a very useful role in preparing people to teach effectively in many contexts. However, I have spent a large part of my life working on skills and vocational education, and I am concerned that this direction of travel is misguided and potentially harmful for vocational and technical subjects. These are, obviously enough, best taught by professionals with first-hand knowledge of their occupation and extensive practical experience. Over decades, I have seen many professionals, craftspeople and experienced practitioners inspire young people and teach them effectively, not only by giving them particular skills but by transforming thei…
I strongly support the child protection measures in Part 1. The addition I want to see is a ban on social media before the age of 16 — no measure could do more for children's wellbeing. On home education: 10 to 15 years ago there were perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 children being home-educated by capable parents. There are now perhaps another 100,000 who are effectively invisible to any authority and receiving little or no education. The Bill must be robust enough to reach those children — not just the ones we already know about.My Lords, I declare an interest as the chair of Future Academies. I strongly support the child protection measures in the first part of the Bill, and I commend the Government for bringing them forward. The addition to this part that I would like to see is a ban on social media before the age of 16—no measure could enhance our children’s well-being more than this. I support the measures in Part 2 on home education, but I have one major concern. Ten to 15 years ago, there were probably 20,000 to 30,000 children being home educated, many by parents perfectly capable of doing so—the so-called home education lobby. These are not the children or parents I am concerned about. There are now probably up to another 100,000 children apparently being educated at home, many of whom are not receiving any suitable education, or any education at all, and some of whom are involved in gangs and crime. Particularly for children not known to social services, how is the local authority to know that they are not receiving a suitable education without a right of inspection? I am sure LAs would not use this power very often—many would not be staffed to do so—but I think they should have it. If an LA was, for instance, to sample 100 children and find that the vast majority were not receiving a suitable education, it would throw the whole issue into higher profile. While Sara Sharif had previously been under a CPP, she does not appear to have been so at the time of moving into home education. On the part of the Bill on schools, it seems most odd that the Labour Party, having invented the academy movement—albeit building on the CTC reforms introduced by my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking—now seems intent on dismantling it, despite the obvious success of the academy and MAT movement in the substantial increase in the performance of our schools. Rather, the Labour Party should be taking the credit which it deserves; it was a brilliant piece of innovation. Why is it determined to deny future…
Good home education exists, and it is good. There are two distinct populations: children at risk who need protection, and children who are lovingly educated by their parents and thriving. The Bill's assumptions tend to conflate them, and that risks real harm to the second group. We should be precise and proportionate in our interventions.My Lords, I will speak briefly and positively about good home education. I disagree with some of the assumptions that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, has just made about the majority of people being home educated, and I will come to that in a moment. I absolutely understand and—like all other noble Lords—support the Government’s ambition to protect children and deal with the very real problems of non-attendance, disappeared or abused children, and children at risk. However, these laudable intentions as presented in the Bill will risk damaging the education of thousands of children who are currently receiving good home education. There are two distinct populations here: those children at risk who need protection and those who are being lovingly cared for and educated by their parents, whose efforts deserve support. The Bill treats both groups in the same way. Several parents in the second group said to me, “We are already too often treated with suspicion, as though we are criminals, even before the provisions in the Bill are introduced”. More than 110,000 children are being home educated, of which about 60% have special needs. Many are diagnosed or non-diagnosed autistic or have learning disabilities or difficulties. More than half the increase in recent years is of children who have been enrolled in schools which have failed them. It is these children I am particularly concerned with. Their parents have acted in their children’s best interests, often at great personal cost, emotionally, time-wise and financially, and many are on benefits. They provide education themselves but also use online resources, joint sessions with other children and support from museums and other institutions which run programmes for home-educated children. The Bill, however, puts many obstacles in their way. A register may be a useful tool in tackling risk, but my concern is with the detail of the register. Its requirements for information are intrusive and unnecessary and create bureaucracy for…
This Bill has effectively been named twice — because it contains two very distinct, very good parts that each merit a Bill of their own. Multi-agency protection teams will help stop children falling through cracks, but there needs to be clearer distinction in the Bill between 'children in need' and 'child protection'. On kinship care: I welcome the definitional work, but I want to see the House push the Government harder on proper financial support for kinship carers.My Lords, I very much welcome this Bill. It reminds me of that Frank Sinatra song about New York—so good they named it twice. The Bill has in effect been named twice, because it contains two very good and distinct parts, which merit being Bills in their own right. There are so many elements that I want to comment on, but through lack of time will not be able do more than namecheck some of them. Keeping families together and making children safe should not even need stating as aims, but, sadly, of course, they do. Multi-agency protection teams will help to avoid children falling between the cracks in terms of the support that they require, but there needs to be clarity as to the difference between children in need and child protection. The Bill has much to say that is positive on children in care, leaving care and kinship care. It has less to say on the value of fostering and nothing at all to say on adoption, which I do not understand. Children in foster care should have the same support to the age of 25 as those in residential care, but the Bill does not provide that. I believe it should. Proposals for regulating unregistered children’s homes are most welcome—in fact, we might ask why there are such things as unregistered children’s homes at all—as is the provision for the excessive profits of private children’s homes to be capped. Moving on to schools, I welcome enshrining in law the benefits of universal, free school breakfasts. However, there needs to be a guarantee that these can be effectively reached and support the most vulnerable pupils, including those with special educational needs and disabilities, for whom access to a nutritious start to the day can be life-changing. On many occasions in your Lordships’ House, I have advocated a register of children not in school. Fundamentally, this is a safeguarding issue and it is one that Conservative Ministers, whom I faced at the Dispatch Box, consistently supported—I cite the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, and the noble…
Forty speaker 32: it is already quite challenging to find something new to say. But on wellbeing: despite calling itself a wellbeing Bill, it does not adequately address children's mental health. It should. And the Bill should also mandate that all schools have access to bereavement support resources — up to one in 29 children experience a bereavement, and too many schools are left without specialist help.My Lords, at speaker 32, it is already quite challenging to find something new to say, and my sympathy goes out to the speakers towards the end of this debate. I am sure we will be tolerant if they find themselves repeating something that has already been said. I very much welcome the maiden speeches today of my noble friend Lord Mohammed and the noble Lord, Lord Biggar. They will both bring great talents and skills to this House, and we look forward very much to hearing them speak in future. I have to say that in the heady days of the coalition Government, I was the education Whip to the noble Lords, Lord Hill, Lord Nash and Lord Agnew. I am delighted to see that I did not manage to put them all off education entirely, and to see them back speaking on this Bill. A Bill calling itself “Children’s Wellbeing” should surely merit the support of all of us, but there are elements in the Bill which the Government have included which are going to be contentious. I mention to start with, in Clause 4, the consistent identifier. I thought that this was proposed many, many years ago. The simplest solution obviously seemed to be the NHS number, which is given to every child at their birth, which would follow them to school and enable local authorities to be mindful of children who disappeared off their radar. The lack of a consistent identifier across services impedes joined-up and responsive support. It makes it much harder to match records and share information confidently and safeguard children who are in touch with multiple services. It is possible that migrant or asylum or Traveller children may not have that number, but they jolly well should do, because they will have as much need as anyone else of healthcare and education to give them a better start in life than they had at the beginning. My noble friends will be talking about different areas where we have concerns, but I raise the issue of the national pay rules, which will be extended to academies, many of which have…
If the English education system is to plunge back into the badlands of 20 years ago, it will be because Part 2 of this Bill strips away the accountability and independence that drove real improvement. Academy freedoms were not ideological — they were practical. The evidence from nations that did not reform, and from the weakest academy cohorts, is consistent: structure alone does not explain outcomes, but freedom with accountability does.My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register, in particular as the founder and chairman of an academy trust with 11,000 children and 18 schools. In the short time I have available, I will focus on one specific area in the schools Bill. In Part 1, I broadly agree with the move to improve scrutiny of home education—it has become a very worrying issue. Many parents, clearly unable to educate their children, are taking them out of school and we cannot do anything about it. The Government are to be commended on their action, and we will no doubt get into the details as the Bill progresses. However, if unaltered, the schools part of the Bill will plunge the English education system back into the badlands of 20 years ago, before the previous Labour Government had the courage to begin the reforms that we had built on. I will focus on one area: the watering down of academisation of failing schools. The proposals introduce ambiguity on whether a failing school should be academised. This will present a “get of jail” card for the incompetent management of those schools. Organisations rot from the head down: schools do not fail because of the teachers but because of the people who manage them. Having taken on at least nine failing schools in the last 12 years, I can say, very simply, that the academy trust I founded employs hundreds of teachers who today do a magnificent job under good leadership. Previously, those schools were failing children on an industrial scale. In defence of this retreat, the line trotted out by the Government is the marvellous new concept of RISE teams: 65 people brandishing clipboards who will run around the country offering advice. If only the Government would listen to those who have tried this before, they would save time, money and, most importantly, not repeat something that has failed comprehensively in the past. Under my stewardship in the DfE, we had a national leaders of education programme—does that not sound wonderful? RISE teams are jus…
Any legislation on safeguarding and opportunity in schools cannot ignore digital technology. Safety and risk in 2025 are not the same as they were a decade ago. The Bill must address the online world as it actually exists for children today — not as it was when the last major safeguarding framework was designed.My Lords, I am pleased to take part in this important debate. I draw attention to my interests set out in the register. In bringing forward this Bill, the Government should be commended on their many laudable objectives in strengthening the safeguarding of children, removing barriers to opportunities in schools and improving the safety of the education system. However, any legislation addressing the subject of safeguarding children, and opportunity and safety in schools, cannot ignore the impact of digital technology on the lives of children and young people. Safety and opportunity—and, indeed, risk—have to be seen in relation to the contemporary world of 2025 and not the world as it was well over a decade ago. We all appreciate the many benefits that the online world can bring to children and young people, so we do not need to rehearse those here. However, a visit to the NSPCC website provides a helpful listing of harms that children can suffer. It expands beyond the four classic categories of abuse to list 13 types of abuse. Most of these, including cyberbullying, emotional abuse, sexual abuse and exploitation, and grooming can be carried out online and even during school hours. It is not, however, just deliberate harm that should concern us; that is just the tip of the iceberg. There are multiple other risks associated with digital technology that have been discussed in this House, including adverse effects on learning, attention, sleep, educational attainment and mental health. Addictive apps are a particular problem, especially for boys. My noble friend Lady Kidron and I recently hosted a meeting which brought together Peers with clinicians and academics in the field of child health. Among them were senior leaders within the medical community. The group was clear that we cannot wait for the evidence to give us all the answers about the adverse effects of digital technology and how to mitigate them. The evidence we already have, coupled with the views of young p…
This Bill is shot through with the spirit of 'the state knows best'. Centralisation will squeeze out good performance and undo progress made over 20 years. On home education: Clauses 37 to 41 give local authorities sweeping powers to demand information from families who are doing nothing wrong. The assumption underlying these clauses — that children belong to the state rather than to their parents — is one the House should scrutinise very carefully indeed.My Lords, it is a pleasure and an honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, who has done so much, of course, for the rights and well-being of children in her work. It will probably not surprise colleagues to hear that I do not think that this is a good Bill. As other noble Lords have said, it is shot through with the spirit of “the state knows best”, of state control, of seeing education as a vehicle for indoctrination and children almost as the ward of state rather than as the property of their parents. The centralisation that the Bill is going to bring in will squeeze out good performance in schools and undo the progress that has been made over the past 20 years. However, others have said that, and I do not want to dwell on it. I want to spend a moment or two speaking about the provisions in the Bill for home education, which are in Clauses 32 to 35. These are represented as pragmatic changes to the current set-up, but actually they are not; they are going to be a major change to the current home-education arrangements and a big change in practice to what happens currently under the 1996 Act. The core provision in the Bill is a register for children who are being educated at home—so far, so good—but there is much more to this register than the word suggests. Those educating at home will have to provide a vast amount of very detailed data about their children, set out in great depth in the Bill. To add to that, new Section 436B(3), to be inserted by this Bill, says that the register “may also contain any other information the local authority considers appropriate”. In other words, there is no real limit to it. It also requires data on “education providers”—which is very widely defined as anybody who provides any sort of teaching to children—to be submitted to the local authority. Here, we see some of the hostility to anybody teaching privately that we have come across in other situations as well. This is going to make a huge change. I did not home-educate my…
Thirty-five years in the classroom — south London, south Wales — tell me that teachers arrive every day to do the best for the children in their care, and that children want to learn. The pandemic profoundly disrupted that, and the road to recovery continues. I welcome the LGA provisions and the Government acting on councils' long-standing call to have a proper role in place planning.I declare that I am a vice-president of the LGA. My 35 years as a teacher, working in such diverse areas as south London and south Wales, give me a little insight into this subject. Despite the differences in the demographics of London and Wales, there is a golden thread that runs through that experience. Teachers arrive at school every day to do the best for the pupils in their care, and children and young people, on the whole, want to learn and enjoy their school experience. We saw how that was profoundly impacted by the pandemic, and the road to recovery continues. The Bill brings important changes that this Labour Government want to provide for our children and young people. I am pleased that the Government are acting on a long-standing call by the LGA for councils to have and maintain children not in school registers, something we almost achieved in opposition during the passage of the now abandoned Schools Bill. Unique identifiers for children are a very welcome step, facilitating better information sharing and, most importantly, adding to the security and safety of the child. It is positive that, within the responsibilities of corporate parenting, there is now a legal undertaking for local authorities to collaborate with each other when performing their corporate parenting duty. An important further addition is that councils will have greater powers to direct school admissions, and failing council-maintained schools will not automatically become academies. The Bill will legislate to allow councils to open schools again and make academies follow reformed national teacher pay scales and conditions—a long overdue reform of the Academies Act 2010. Furthermore, the Bill amends that Act so that, as well as being “balanced and broadly based”, an academy’s curriculum must include the national curriculum, and this is intended to apply to the revised curriculum following the conclusion of the current review. An important safeguarding measure is that parents will lose t…
Every generation owes it to the next to give them better life chances than their parents had. Nowhere is that more urgent than in special educational needs. Lord Addington's earlier speech on that was excellent, and I add: the Michael Sieff Foundation's report, launched here last week, identifies justice for children as the necessary complement to welfare — children who are failed by education often end up entangled with the criminal justice system. The Bill must keep both in view.My Lords, I thank the Government for introducing what I hope will leave this House as an improved example of vital legislation for children. Every generation owes it to the next to give them better life chances than were experienced by their parents. Nowhere is this more important than in the area of special educational needs legislation and provision. I applaud the excellent speech made earlier in this debate on that issue by the noble Lord, Lord Addington. When she was opening this debate, the Minister cited some excellent reports that have appeared in recent times. I am about to add an additional report that was launched last week in this building by the Michael Sieff Foundation, with which I have worked for a number of years, on issues related to children’s justice. The launch was attended by two government Ministers. The report seeks to show how to provide the best life for children with SEND and neurodivergence issues which, in many cases, bring them in front of the criminal justice system. In England and Wales, 80% of children cautioned or sentenced within the youth justice system are from the SEND cohort. That is a shocking figure, and it is carefully measured. Children with neuro-disabilities enter custody at higher rates, from an earlier age, receive longer custodial sentences, are associated with higher rates of reoffending, commit more violent crimes as adults, and spend many more years in prison. That can be resolved by attending to those children’s needs in the education system earlier in their life and keeping them out of criminal justice activity. Each year, more than 100,000 children under 18 have encounters with the criminal justice system. Some of those encounters scar them for life, because the criminal justice system, try as it does, is not always very good at dealing with children due to a lack of training and of understanding of the issues that are being dealt with. The proportion of children remanded in custody is at a record high. The number…
The party opposite claims education was transformed on its watch. Let me offer a corrective. The 'forgotten third' — the third of all 16 year-olds who failed to reach grade 4 in GCSE English and maths — grew under the last government. Off-rolling, a suppressed special needs crisis, a teacher recruitment collapse: these were the reality. The teachers this House has rightly praised — 500,000 NEU members — have kept the system going *despite* those conditions, not because of the structural choices made in government.My Lords, the party opposite claims that education was transformed during its period in office and that this Bill will undo many of the gains made. In the short time I have available, I would like to set some of the record straight. During that period I was general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers and, from 2017, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, which represents 500,000 members—teachers, leaders and support staff—who, as many Members in this House have affirmed, are the professionals who teach and support our children and young people, and I commend their work today. Under the party opposite, there was the scandal of “the forgotten third”—the third of all 16 year-olds who failed to get a grade 4 at GCSE English and maths. Under the party opposite, they were denied the help and support they so desperately needed in order to take their place as productive members of society. They were condemned to endless resits of GCSE English and maths, with very low pass rates, unable to get an apprenticeship or to access other routes into training and learning to turn their fortunes around. The party opposite left the most deprived young people stranded. As the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said recently, there are now 750,000 youngsters under 25 who are permanently unemployed. That is a disgrace, and it happened on the watch of the party opposite. Money talks. Figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies show that, from 2010 to 2020, spending per pupil in England fell by 9% in real terms. That had huge consequences for the education that schools were able to provide and was compounded by a huge rise in child poverty. But, shamefully, schools serving deprived communities saw the biggest fall in funding of all schools, of 14%. The party opposite professes to care for the most disadvantaged, but in practice during this period it reduced the amount of support needed by the most vulnerable children and young people. Then there is the party oppo…
Clause 13 on deprivation of liberty is a good first step: it brings roughly 1,000 vulnerable young people held under the court's inherent jurisdiction into a statutory framework. But that section will still refer only to looked-after children, and the Children's Commissioner's report on this group is clear that children outside the care system are also placed under these arrangements. Will the Minister confirm whether the inherent jurisdiction will still need to be used for those children? And will she clarify the range of provision planned, so that children deprived of liberty are not simply sent to adult mental health units or police cells?My Lords, the Bill contains a first step, possible underreach, possible overreach and, I think, a bonus. Clause 11 is a good first step as it brings about 1,000 vulnerable young people who are deprived of their liberty under the inherent jurisdiction of the courts into a statutory framework. High Court DoLS, as they are referred to, have developed when there is no secure children’s home place under Section 25 of the Children Act, or that is not an appropriate placement for them. However, that section will still refer to only looked-after children and the report by the Children’s Commissioner on this vulnerable group makes it clear that it is not only looked-after children who are under this regime. Could the Minister clarify whether the inherent jurisdiction will still have to be used for those children? Before statutory instruments are laid, can we have some more details about the definition of “relevant accommodation”? On the underreach, it seems that under Clause 32 a preliminary school attendance order can be made only when a child is under a Section 47 Children Act inquiry, not for a child in need or a child protection plan. It is my understanding that Sara Sharif was actually a child in need, so could we actually have bizarre underreach in that we have not covered the main mischief, the main sad case, under these provisions? The overreach, as noble Lords have said, is in relation to special educational needs and disabilities. For many of those parents, this is not elective home education; it is sadly withdrawing your children when mainstream education has failed. I implore the Minister to have another go at stakeholder engagement with the many groups. There are fears, founded or unfounded, of local authorities coming through your front door and asking you probing questions about your curriculum and how you are educating your children. It is important to recognise that this is a very different environment for education. I make the comparison with Ofsted, which…
The UK is ranked lowest in Europe in children's wellbeing. That reflects poverty, poor housing, poor food — systemic obstacles the Minister rightly named. The Bill addresses some of them. But let us also be honest about the contribution that off-rolling, school exclusion and a narrow exam-obsessed curriculum have made to that ranking. This is a good Bill, imperfect, and worth strengthening.My Lords, I rise in the middle of a long, important and well-informed debate. I first felt it was getting to the heart of what this Bill really should be about with the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. He showed appropriate preparedness to accept responsibility for the state of childhood in the UK today, with many children being failed by expulsion, off-rolling and schools that in no way meet their needs, suppress their energy and enthusiasm and fail to value their talents. We are so keen on league tables, but why are we not focusing every day on the fact that the UK is ranked lowest in Europe in children’s well-being? That reflects the poverty, poor housing and poor food that so many children are forced to survive—the kind of systemic obstacles the Minister referred to in her introduction. I am very keen to see the Government doing a lot more about that—see the two-child benefit cap—but I am also sad to say that it reflects the very structure, nature and direction of our schools. The two parts of this Bill, sadly, are working against each other. Schools are damaging well-being, and that is not how it should be. I stress that I am blaming not teachers—who are forced to turn their classrooms into exam factories and their corridors into battlegrounds, suppressing all the natural inclinations of young people—but the directions from the centre, from successive Governments in Westminster who have seized control from local authorities, removing local democratic control, and enforced their own ideas and those of commercially linked giant academy chains. I will focus briefly on one school, Southchurch High School in Southend-on-Sea. It has just brought in so-called silent transitions, where being caught saying a word to a friend or exclaiming in anger during the changeover between lessons will result in a one-hour detention. One parent of a neurodivergent child shared how impossible it would be for his son to cope with the rule, reflecting points raised by t…
From 2018 to 2025 I was lead non-executive director of His Majesty's Prison and Probation Service, including the Youth Custody Service. The number of children under deprivation of liberty orders has more than doubled in five years — 1,280 in 2024. They are all over the country, equally boys and girls, 90% over 15, all well known to local services. The Bill's provisions on accommodation for this group are welcome, but the House should push hard for an adequate supply of appropriate placements, because right now these children are placed wherever there is a bed, often far from home.My Lords, I declare my interest: from 2018 to 2025 I was the lead non-executive director of His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, which includes the Youth Custody Service. I welcome the Bill for its important ambitions on children’s social care, in particular to improve the supply and quality of accommodation for children under deprivation of liberty orders. The number of children under these orders has more than doubled in five years. In 2024, 1,280 children were subject to deprivation of liberty orders, either because they are a risk to others or because others are a risk to them—principally the risk of grooming and exploitation. These children are all over the country, they are equally boys and girls, and 90% of them are over 15 years old. All these children are well known to local authority children’s services, and often to criminal justice and mental health services. Many have moved more than 10 times while in care. They have faced trauma, violence, crime, sexual exploitation, parental neglect, rejection, abandonment and criminal exploitation. There are many other problems: county lines, gang affiliation, substance misuse and, inevitably, long periods out of school. It is a familiar litany but is without a familiar solution. A quarter of them have physical disabilities or neurodiverse needs and, unsurprisingly, many now have severe and lasting mental health problems, including persistent self-harm and attempting suicide. The deprivation, adversity and poor prospects that these children face are a deep scar on our society’s commitment to children’s well-being and opportunities. As the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, said, once the court makes an order, the accommodation can be of poor quality, unregulated and privately provided. Children are moved all over the country, and unscrupulous actors are involved in this lucrative business. A shortage of accommodation means they can name their price, creating considerable financial strain for local authority childr…
Where this Bill deals with genuine children's wellbeing, I support it. Where it curtails academy freedoms — and academies now make up over 80% of secondary schools — it actively harms children's interests. I will support amendments in those areas. Ark schools serve tens of thousands of children in some of the most disadvantaged communities in England; their results come from the freedoms the Bill proposes to strip.My Lords, I refer to my entry in the register of interests, especially as a director of Ark and Ark Schools. I find this Bill a bit like the curate’s egg, as it has been described already—very good only in parts, sadly. The clue to my views on the Bill is in its name: the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. Wherever it genuinely deals with the short-term and long-term well-being of children, I support it. I regret to say, though, that in several areas it seems to try to reduce the freedoms offered to academies and free schools, which today make up over 80% of secondary schools as well as a large number of primary schools. Truthfully, I believe that some of these curtailments are absolutely not in the best interests of children, hence I will support amendments in these areas. As my noble friend Lord Hill of Oareford said, a number of provisions in the Bill destructively strike at the absolute heart of the wonderful academy movement, which throughout the last 20 years has, in general, delivered improved outcomes and innovation and raised aspiration across communities that had long been underserved by our education system. Indeed, 20 years ago, when I began my journey into schools, I discovered that a disadvantaged young person in a poor inner-city school had a greater chance of ending up in a young offender institution than going to university. That is shocking. I praise the academy movement’s origins, begun by Tony Blair and the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and accelerated by Michael Gove and David Cameron in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. I believe it actually had cross-party support. It was the freedoms offered to academies, together with the passion and dedication of philanthropic sponsors—several of whom are here in this Chamber—many inspirational head teachers, committed governors and, we should remember, hard-working professional teachers, that led to this improvement. To be clear, I do not support freedoms if they allow students to be let down, and I do…
The Secretary of State called this 'child-centred legislation through and through'. The wellbeing framing is important — children are beings, not just future workers. Free breakfast clubs and uniform limits are real barriers removed. But child poverty must be addressed directly: the Bill says nothing about the two-child benefit limit, which traps families in poverty and limits everything else we might achieve.My Lords, I welcome what the Secretary of State has described as “child-centred legislation through and through”,—[Official Report, Commons, 8/1/25; col. 854.] brought by a “truly child-centred Government”. The emphasis has been on the Bill’s contribution to the opportunity mission, but the well-being framing points also to the importance of action to improve children’s childhoods—children as beings as well as “becomings”. An holistic measure of child well-being could play a valuable role here. The Bill promises to remove barriers to opportunities in schools through action on free breakfast clubs and school uniforms. There may be some debate on the details—for example, around the number of branded items permitted, whether breakfast clubs could be more flexible and why there is no action on free lunches—but broadly, these measures have been widely applauded in the context of the shocking level and depth of child poverty. Evidence from charities and teachers underlines how educational opportunity is stunted by hardship and hunger, which also damage children’s well-being. But as Action for Children and others emphasise, these measures can represent only a minor element in the much-anticipated child poverty strategy, which has to address family incomes directly, including investment in our tattered social security system, starting with abolition of the two-child limit and benefit cap, which are key drivers of the increase in child poverty. What is disappointing is that this child-centred legislation makes no mention of children’s rights. My noble friend the Minister acknowledged, earlier this year, that “we must consider children’s rights in all our policy-making”.—[Official Report, 27/1/25; col. 9.] However, unlike in Wales, Scotland and Jersey, here, there is no general legal duty to do so, even though we have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Organisations such as the Children’s Rights Alliance for England have argued that this matters because fa…
The intentions in Part 1 are good, and I support most of them — particularly Clause 7 on staying-close support for care leavers. Too many young people leave care with nothing but a criminal record. On Part 2: the provisions are unlikely to generate the improvements in opportunity they aim for. School structure is not the primary driver of outcomes; teaching quality is. The Bill should double down on the latter.My Lords, a Bill that has at its heart the aim of improving children’s well-being can only be welcomed, and its good intentions are clear. I support most of the measures in the Bill, particularly in Part 1, but I have some qualms about Part 2, not least that it will fail to generate the improvements to opportunities that should be its driving force. Let me start with the moves to safeguard children and young people who spend time in social care. Currently, the outcomes for far too many of these youngsters are desperately poor and the only qualifications they end up with are a criminal record. There are initiatives to improve the outcomes, and I welcome them, particularly the provisions in Clause 7 for staying close where necessary. Those who, for one reason or another, do not have any family to rely on need to know that there is someone watching and caring. However, that need goes far beyond what is covered in the Bill. Equally, the Bill boasts the concept of family group decision-making, and makes it a right in most cases that, before crucial decisions are taken about the future care arrangements for a child, parents or other family members should be offered a meeting. Ensuring that that offer reaches the right people will not be easy. All too often, it becomes clear too late that abused children were in situations that excluded any contact with members of an extended family, including grandparents. Sadly, often, children at risk are kept in near isolation from those who might be concerned about them. I would like to be sure that every effort would be made to offer to those people the chance to be directly involved; only then might they become aware of what has been happening. Indeed, it might be the first opportunity a child has to confide in someone they can trust. In Scotland, the idea of every child having an appointed guardian from outside the family was mooted. It has been adopted to a certain extent. Such is the dysfunctionality in some parts of our society…
Part 1's additional safeguarding requirements are welcome, but the Bill loads local authorities with significant new duties. Many are already struggling. What additional resources are coming? And the Bill goes further than the previous Government's own safeguarding legislation that was withdrawn — so let us probe whether we have the implementation capacity to deliver it.My Lords, I declare my interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and as a member of the Beckfoot multi-academy trust in West Yorkshire and of the Leeds Diocesan Learning Trust. The Bill before us today is, in part, a disappointment. While some parts go some way towards further protecting children through additional safeguarding requirements, it is unfortunate that great amounts of the Bill are in danger of driving down standards in our education system and of winding back many of the successful education reforms introduced by the last Conservative Government. As the Shadow Secretary of State remarked in the other place, this Bill can be seen as “nothing less than educational vandalism”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/1/25; col. 863.] The last Conservative Government left office with educational standards on the up. As we have already heard, within international league tables, England rose from 21st to seventh-best in mathematics, while Labour-controlled Wales slumped to 27th. That Government left us with an educational system that was working for students. But I worry that this Government have weaponised this Bill, based on ideology as opposed to what is best for children in this country. For example, this Bill rolls back a lot of the freedoms gifted to academies during the coalition years, particularly with respect to pay. We should uphold the principle that academies can decide for themselves how much they wish to pay their staff. If academies want to set competitive salaries as a means to drive up standards in schools and deliver better results for students, we should encourage them to do so. The plans outlined in this Bill to bring academies in line with the same core pay conditions as in other schools risks cutting pay for more than 20,000 hard-working teachers. We must seek to listen to the experts. The chief executive of the National Education Trust said that the Bill seeks to “inhibit academy freedoms that have led to innovation” and “r…
Every year, 13,000 young people leave care without the support they need. As vice-president of Barnardo's I know that legislation to improve children's happiness and health is long overdue. But we must go further on early support for families before they reach crisis point — local agencies need stronger obligations to intervene early, not just after things have broken down.My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Mohammed on his passionate maiden speech; he makes a great addition to our Benches. I welcome the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill because legislation to improve children’s happiness, health and well-being is well overdue, and this Bill intends to deliver on transforming childhoods. However, Barnardo’s and other children’s charities believe we must go further, and I declare an interest as vice-president of Barnardo’s. We believe that enhancing obligations on local agencies to provide early support for families before they reach crisis point is crucial. Public finances are tight, but investing in our children—especially early years—is an investment worth making. Every year, some 13,000 young people leave care without the support they need. Outcomes for these young people remain much lower than for their peers. We believe there should be a new minimum standard of support for care leavers—a national offer regardless of where they live, which should include measures recommended by Barnardo’s. The charity First Star Scholars, of which I am a patron, has a high success rate of getting care leavers into university. We want to work with the Government to expand this programme across the country, to enable more care leavers to succeed in higher education. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss this further with the Minister. Barnardo’s also believes that children deserve protection from smacking. Some 68 countries have banned the physical punishment of children. This Bill has the power to do the same across the UK—so let us do it. The Bill, as it stands, will have unintended consequences and risks harming, rather than helping, young performers. It is my primary concern that, by including children who perform and receive tuition outside their school setting within the proposed register, the Bill threatens to divert vital attention and resources away from the children it was intended to protect. While it makes positive str…
I spent years as a grammar school teacher and have a grandchild who was home-educated from five to fourteen. Home education can be and often is excellent. The register of children not in school should be a research tool — not a surveillance instrument. I am concerned the Bill, as drafted, will reduce educational diversity to children's detriment, because children themselves are diverse and thrive in different environments.My Lords, I thank the Minister for the care and sensitivity that she has displayed in introducing this important Bill. Balance is very important. I must declare two interests: first, I was for many years a grammar school teacher; secondly, I have a grandchild who was exclusively home educated from the ages of five to 14. For those reasons, I wish to comment on some aspects of the Bill that touch on home education. I am concerned that an unintended consequence of the Bill will be a reduction in educational diversity. That would be damaging to children’s well-being, purely because children themselves are diverse. The register of children not in school is presented as a research tool, enabling the Department for Education and local authorities to better understand the different learning strategies used in home education. For example, many home-educated children learn to read and write when they feel ready, with some learning at three and others at seven. However, if officials compare these children to their counterparts in British primary schools, it may appear that only half of them are receiving a suitable education. The risk of officials viewing the data through a pro-school lens has been noted by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. If staff use age-related attainment targets set in British schools, they may conclude that the education being provided is not suitable and serve a school attendance order on the child. This undermines the very reason for home education: to introduce learning at a time that both suits and appeals to the child. The Bill also contains provisions for local authority staff to enter and inspect the homes of home educators and, if refused, to apply a school attendance order. We should not use threats of court orders to force people to give up human rights. We should remember that, if local authorities have reasonable grounds, they already have plenty of powers to enter homes and safeguard children. These include the Education Act, th…
Mens sana in corpore sano. Physical and mental wellbeing are inseparable, and yet physical education and sport are almost invisible in this Bill. The evidence is clear that sport taught only at school stops when children leave school. We need provisions in the Bill that actively connect schools with outside sports clubs — and with drama and music organisations — so that participation continues into adult life. That is a lasting contribution to wellbeing that a Bill with this title should make.My Lords, the Minister in her opening sentence stated that there are few subjects which unite people more than the well-being of children. I fully agree, and for that reason I believe there will be a constructive approach across the Committee when it comes to seeking ways to strengthen the Bill and achieve that objective. The Roman poet Juvenal coined the famous phrase: “Mens sana in corpore sano”— a healthy mind in a healthy body. That emphasises the eternal interconnectedness of physical and mental well-being. It suggests that prioritising both is crucial for overall health, happiness and well-being. A healthy body can support a healthy mind by providing the physical energy and resilience needed for children to navigate life’s challenges. Conversely, a healthy mind can positively influence physical health for children by reducing stress, promoting better sleep and enhancing immune functions. In the educational context, physical exercise is an essential part of mental and psychological well-being, yet here we have a Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill in which, if you run a word search through it, there is not one mention of sport, physical activity or even physical education. In the build-up to and during the London Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012, as chairman of the British Olympic Association, I called for a sports legacy from the Games which would reach every pupil, whether they were in the East End of London or the northern parts of Scotland. The UK needed a radical new national school policy for sport, health and well-being. The situation has deteriorated year on year since then. The Bill turns a blind eye to the importance of physical education and sport and today’s concerns over the well-being of our pupil cohort, and instead recognises a world of growing obesity, declining participation rates, reduced PE hours, poor teacher training, inequalities in access, particularly for girls and children from lower-income backgrounds, and funding cuts. The Yout…
This Bill is wholeheartedly welcomed. Clauses 37 to 41 on children not in school are the most important provisions for children who are genuinely failing to receive any education. Some parents home-educate excellently. But there is a significant group not receiving any education at all. The mandatory register is not an attack on home-educating families — it is a safety net for the children who are invisible.My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. Nevertheless, this Bill is wholeheartedly welcomed. It tackles issues which have been neglected for 14 years, as well as new ones such as the devastating drop in attendance following the pandemic. I will focus on the all-important provisions for children not in school, Clauses 30 to 35. I also briefly commend the further crackdown on unregistered schools, whose so-called teaching is damaging the fabric of our society. While it is still of prime importance to make it easy for children to thrive in school—learning together, making friends and benefiting from pathways to further education and satisfying work—there is at present a significant number who do not get there. There are some parents who cope well with, or choose, home education and carry it out well. They will not be interfered with by the obligation to register their child. But I strongly agree that many of the reasons why children drop out of school show that a managed system of home education is vital. Children may find school intolerable, but their parents may well not have the time or the capacity to teach them. Particularly among Gypsy, Traveller and Roma children, prejudice and discrimination play a large part in their attitude to school. I declare an interest as a holder of several positions among these communities’ organisations. Bullying is still widespread and, while some schools are welcoming, I have heard many examples of teachers who have not supported the bullied child. One said, “Drop the Traveller thing”, for instance. Sometimes when a child is bullied, they hit back—but they are the ones who are excluded. Suspensions of Gypsy, Traveller and Roma children are increasing—in the case of some groups over the last five years, from 21.26 per 10,000 to 33.71, with a comparable proportion among permanent exclusions. We all know that that often leads to county lines and all sorts of really sad behaviour. Then there is the demoralisat…
Clause 1 on family group decision-making is welcome, but the Government should strengthen it. The Family Rights Group points to Scottish legislation mandating local authorities to *offer* family group decision-making — its lack of precision meant a third of Scottish councils still failed to deliver it properly. We need the duty here to be clear, specific and enforceable. Relationships and prevention are what Josh MacAlister's review emphasised throughout, and the Bill should reflect that with precision.My Lords, I will focus my comments on Part 1, particularly on areas recommended or inspired by Josh MacAlister MP’s independent review of children’s social care. I was on his design group, and Josh’s emphasis throughout was on relationships and prevention: preventing children going into local authority care in the first place or being further damaged in the care process. Enabling them to maintain or develop good relationships while in care is a key protective factor to that end. I welcome Clause 1 on family group decision-making, but will the Government strengthen it? The Family Rights Group points to the impact of the 2016 Scottish legislation mandating every local authority to offer family group decision-making. Its lack of clarity and precision meant that a third of local authorities in Scotland still do not offer FGDM. The requirement to offer this is based on evidence from family group conferencing, so reproducing its benefits requires implementation fidelity to this model. For example, older children and their families must be in the driving seat when determining who is involved. Neighbours and family friends can be fictive kin, referred to as aunties and uncles. Others in the support web around them are vital for children’s welfare. Their voices should be heard when the family says so. Also, legislation needs to ensure that FGDM represents a process, rather than a one-off meeting, to avoid this becoming a mere formality that local authorities go through. This process does not always mean that a child goes into kinship care, but it does increase the likelihood of it. Where they end up in local authority care, FGDM should lead on to and facilitate another highly beneficial process referred to as Lifelong Links. Lifelong Links builds rather than breaks relationships and enables children in the care system to have a lasting support network of relatives and others who care about them. All those involved in the FGDM and others important to a child should not simply…
What plans does the Government have to ensure all schools are alert to bereavement — affecting perhaps one in 29 children — and have access to specialist resources beyond themselves? And on curriculum: I hope the current review will genuinely address the narrowness of the current curriculum, provide access to arts and technical subjects for all children, and allow local curricular initiatives. It was always wrong that only academies had these freedoms.My Lords, there are certainly many welcome aspects of this Bill, not least the proper recognition of the importance of children’s well-being. What plans do the Government have to ensure that all schools are alert to the issue of bereavement and have access to resources beyond themselves to support any child or young person—perhaps as many as one in 29, as the Childhood Bereavement Network notes—who suffer a bereavement? On the question of the curriculum and assessment, I earnestly hope that the review currently under way will address in full the narrowness of the existing curriculum, provide for much greater access for all children to arts and technical subjects, and allow for local curricular initiatives. It was always wrong that only academies had these curricular freedoms, as my noble friend Lady Morris said. I ask my noble friend the Minister when we can expect to see the final report and what she expects to be the lead time for what I hope will be welcome changes in both curriculum and assessment. We have a lot to learn on this from other jurisdictions and, clearly, from my noble friend Lord Layard. In relation to the pay and conditions of teachers, the Bill in its original form would have required all state-funded schools to follow the school teachers’ pay and conditions document. I regret that it has been amended to simply “have regard to”. As many will know, there is broad flexibility in the STPCD—in my view, less would be desirable, certainly in regard to the excessive salaries paid to some academy CEOs. However, the full range of conditions of service appear not in the STPCD but in the Burgundy Book: the national conditions of service document, most recently revised in 2023. It covers appointments, resignation, retirement, occupational sick and maternity pay as well as trade union recognition and facilities, and it should be followed, in my view, by all state-funded schools. At a time of a deepening recruitment and retention crisis which is deleterious to…
Scotland is a warning. Over the past decade, despite a 13% increase in education funding, the SNP's centralisation has seen falling standards — confirmed by OECD PISA tables. What went wrong? The inspectorate was merged with the curriculum body, losing its independence. There is now no bulwark against failing standards, no independent voice. This Bill risks repeating exactly that mistake in England. An independent inspection regime is not bureaucracy — it is the guardian of standards.My Lords, if the Bill is to succeed in breaking down barriers to opportunity and severing the link between background and success, let me give the Government a warning from Scotland. These aims have also been a much-publicised priority of the Scottish Government. However, over the past decade, despite a 13% increase in funding, the SNP’s centralising of control has seen falling educational standards, as evidenced—as other noble Lords have said—by the OECD’s PISA league tables. What went wrong? The amalgamation of the inspectorate with Learning and Teaching Scotland to form Education Scotland removed its independence; it became answerable to government. There is no bulwark against falling standards and no voice to be raised against ineffective teaching methods, inadequate curriculum content or restrictive curriculum structures. The implementation of our new curriculum for excellence—as it is called—was ill thought out. One of its original purposes was to broaden the secondary school curriculum, but evidence reveals that students in S4—the equivalent of GCSE level—are studying fewer subjects, and enrolment in non-compulsory subjects such as modern languages and expressive arts continues to decline. Choice has been restricted. Most damningly, the attainment gap between Scotland’s richest and poorest schools has increased. An attempt to give all children in Scotland a “named person” was ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court because it breached the right to private and family life. The Bill is in danger of making some of the same mistakes. In contrast, I have looked at England’s increasingly improving and diverse education system with a degree of envy. We do not have the choice of academy schools. There is only one mainstream school in Scotland not run by a local authority—Jordanhill—which consistently tops the league tables, even this weekend. However, houses in Jordanhill’s catchment area are some of the most expensive for any Scottish school, doing nothing to close the…
The evidence from the Commons Second Reading and Committee is that 87% of academies are good or outstanding — many of them previously failing schools. The top five state schools in England are academies. Dame Siobhain McDonagh, a Labour MP, cited the Harris academies in Merton as a key to success because of their 'aspirational curriculum'. If we change the framework that produced these results without clear evidence that the change will improve outcomes, we risk children's futures for ideological reasons.My Lords, I will focus on the aspects of this Bill relating to academies, and I have two points. First, I have read the Second Reading and Committee debates in the other place very carefully, and especially the evidence given about the performance of academies. This was to the effect that 87% of them are good or outstanding, even though many were previously failing schools which became academies for that very reason. Apparently, the top five state schools in England are academies. The Labour MP Dame Siobhain McDonagh gave examples at Second Reading from her constituency. She cited the Harris academies in Merton and Morden, and the St Mark’s Academy, which are all marked “outstanding” by Ofsted. She said that one of the keys to success of the Merton academy has been the “aspirational curriculum”, which is tailored to pupils’ needs. Forcing such schools to teach the national curriculum risks undermining that. All this is evidence that academies work well as they are, and their heads know how to run schools better than the Government, so why are the Government removing their flexibility to do so? My second point is more technical and affects how future changes would be made to the way academies have to operate the national curriculum. The bottom line is that it would not be done by primary legislation but by statutory instruments amending primary legislation. This is in addition to Clause 63, which the noble Lord, Lord Addington, has already mentioned. It is a rather “long and winding road”, but the essence is as follows. Clause 47 of the Bill inserts a new Schedule 1A into the Academies Act which mandates the application of the national curriculum provisions in the Education Act 2002 to academies. However, in doing so, it also applies to academies all the order-making powers enjoyed by the Secretary of State under the Education Act. These order-making powers enable the Secretary of State to amend the Education Act and are therefore Henry VIII powers which will now als…
Education means to *draw out*, not shove in — educare. Each child is unique, and when we legislate for children in the plural we must never forget that what actually faces us is each individual child. Every education Act in my lifetime has sought the perfect solution — there is none. What we can do is create the conditions for good teachers to reach each child. That is where the Bill should focus.My Lords, I am not sure that I am really the right person to talk about the Bill, but I thought it might be worth giving a few reflections. I cannot even count how many education Acts have taken place during my lifetime, but it is a very considerable number. It is absolutely clear that there is no final solution. The reason why is that each child is unique, and when we talk about children in the plural, we have a tendency to forget that what actually faces us is each individual child. I was brought up with a classical education, and know that education means to draw out, not to shove in—educare being the Latin word. That is a great challenge. Education starts extremely early, and, as my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham said, it is better to get into it straightaway. Indeed, parents are the primary educators. By the time a child reaches the age of five, something is being delivered that is pretty well formed already. We are talking about the journey of a child finding out who they are and of what they are capable. Very often, when we talk about, for example, the care system, which has 86,000 looked-after children at the present moment, we are talking about a time when, to a large extent, the horse has bolted. That is a huge problem. It leads me to say that there will never be any centralised answer to these problems, There is a place for professional independence, which my noble friend Lord Hill laid emphasis on, and a place for experiment, in trying things that work and responding to what happens. Thinking about the first part of the Bill, on the care system and the no doubt welcome sophistication of the existing system, I am impressed that, nevertheless, there are now more looked-after children than there have ever been before. What we are looking for is some way of tackling this particular problem, so that we achieve improvements. On the second part of the Bill, whatever the rights and wrongs of how much control there should be over the academy system, it has pr…
I have twice introduced a Bill to repeal the legal imposition of collective worship in all publicly funded schools. It passed this House; it ran out of time in the Commons. The amendments I and others will table on inclusivity policy — including removing the compulsory daily act of collective worship — will be laid before the House. A truly child-centred Bill should ensure that every child feels included in their school community, regardless of faith or none.My Lords, I declare my interest as vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group—I guess I am on my own today. Given the scope of the Bill and the number of speakers, I will restrict myself to issues of inclusion and community cohesion within our schools. I have twice introduced to the Chamber a Bill to repeal the legal imposition of collective worship in all publicly funded schools. I first introduced it more than three years ago, when it passed the Lords but fell in the other place due to lack of time. I introduced it again three months ago, and it has passed Second Reading. I am hopeful, but I fear that time may not be on my side again. The amendments that I and others intend to lay before the House will work to introduce inclusivity policy and to get rid of the bizarre position where the UK is the only sovereign western democracy to enforce mandatory worship. The School Standards and Framework Act requires all state schools that are not of a religious nature to hold daily acts of collective worship that must be of a wholly or mainly Christian nature. Children cannot withdraw themselves from prayers without parental consent. This contravenes children’s rights under the Human Rights Act and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Mandatory collective worship is by its very nature illiberal and divisive. It imposes religious activity in a blanket manner. Even in schools that do not have a religious character, it forces parents to choose between allowing their children to be part of school assemblies that are so valuable for the school community or ostracising them, leaving them in corridors and classrooms with little or nothing to do. I believe that it would be far better for school assemblies to be inclusive, strengthening collective school communities and contributing to schools’ spiritual, moral and cultural development without prejudice towards a single faith. Similarly, I argue that we should use the opportunity of a schools Bill t…
Part 2 is ideological and divisive — written at the behest of teaching unions, careless of standards, parental choice, teacher recruitment, local autonomy and innovation. Even sensible Labour figures have acknowledged it is a betrayal of the Blair-era academy reforms. It risks poor outcomes and worse life chances, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The wellbeing provisions in Part 1, including kinship care — an area I campaigned on in the other place — deserve to pass. Part 2 as drafted does not.My Lords, this portmanteau Bill has its strengths, which I concede and welcome, particularly on child protection and safeguarding, pupil absence and kinship care—an area close to my heart that I campaigned on in the other place. It is also deeply flawed, particularly in Part 2, which is ideological and divisive, written at the behest of the teaching unions and careless of fundamental priorities around standards, parental choice, teacher recruitment and retention, local autonomy, innovation and independence. As more sensible Labour figures have rightly noted, it is a betrayal of the laudable record of not just the 2010 coalition Government but the first two Blair Administrations from 1997 onwards. It may well result in poor outcomes, social immobility and worse life chances, particularly for children from modest backgrounds. My focus today is squarely on some troubling aspects of Part 2, which is predicated on the misguided belief that micromanagement by officials, whether in Whitehall or the town hall, will somehow enhance child safety or education standards. This may be the natural direction of travel of a bureaucracy, but it is one that this House must firmly resist. To echo the remarks of my noble friend Lord Frost earlier, the trend is starkly evident in the mandatory registration scheme for children not attending school. Consider the sheer intrusiveness of the data demanded. It compels parents to report the number of hours each of them spends educating, but parents educate their children constantly—when cooking a meal together, opening a bank account, or simply talking and living life together. Home education is often an extension of this integrated approach. It is not institutional provision for classes of 30, following rigid timetables. How are parents expected to delineate their specific hours with each child? The requirements extend to the names, addresses and hours of everyone else contributing to each child’s education: grandparents, Sunday school teacher…
This Bill will finally define kinship care in law — something kinship carers have waited years for. I am delighted. The needs of care leavers are in the Bill too: no longer classified as intentionally homeless, local authorities required to publish their services. And I am delighted that the provisions on staying-close support have been included. Every kinship carer I know has given everything they have; it is long past time the law recognised them.I started my working life as a residential social worker, and I am godmother to a beautiful boy being cared for by his wonderful grandparents. Kinship care is a great solution for many young people whose parents are unable to take on parenting, and this Bill will, thankfully, finally define kinship care in legislation, recognising the tremendous work of so many carers whose dedication is often overlooked and underappreciated. I am delighted. While I am on the topic of being delighted, I was also delighted to see that the needs of children leaving care are contained within this Bill. I am delighted that care leavers will no longer be classified as intentionally homeless and that local authorities must publish more information on the services available to care leavers. I am also delighted that Staying Close support will be rolled out universally or nationally. That is all good, but we know that many children in care face challenges adjusting to their new life and 41% have emotional and behavioural assessment scores which are a cause for concern, so I was saddened to hear that the Government have reduced the grant available for assessment and therapy each year to £3,000. I am hopeful that the Minister will keep this decision under review, because I know she will agree that preventive mental healthcare for a child often reduces the cost to the state for the adult they become. I want to talk about food, because hungry children find it difficult to learn. Creating breakfast clubs in all primary schools for all schoolchildren will provide proper nutrition and, hopefully, install healthy eating habits in growing children. But there is a wider crisis. The Food Foundation tells us that 18% of households with children are currently experiencing food insecurity—that is 18% of all households with a child or a parent who is going hungry. As I have said in this House before, I have been told by children that it is not their turn to eat that night. The provision of good-quality sch…
I welcome the child protection provisions and the kinship care clauses. In Committee, I want to probe the funding for breakfast clubs — the Minister briefed us herself, and the funding shortfall is real. Of the 750 early adopters, a meaningful number have already dropped out. That cannot be ignored in a national rollout.My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to debate the Bill. I take this opportunity to thank the Minister and the Secretary of State for the briefing they gave us and the opportunity to express, in my case, the concerns I have about the resources and funds available to run the breakfast clubs. I declare my interest as a patron of the National Association of Child Contact Centres. I welcome the provisions in the Bill setting out child protection and safeguarding and working towards keeping families together as far as possible. I also welcome the kinship care provisions. In my capacity shadowing early years in the other place, I was acutely aware of the role that grandparents and other close family members wished to play but in many instances were not able to do so. In Committee, I would like to explore the opportunity and the increasing role that could be played by child contact centres and other venues, which offer space for parents to meet and spend time with their children in the event of a family break-up. I urge and encourage the Government to promote and support child contact centres and the vital role they play. My other main comment at this stage relates to admissions policy—in particular, access to, and the cost of, school transport. Previously, rural counties such as North Yorkshire enjoyed good relations between local education authorities and schools, which is possibly why the take-up of academies was less in those education authorities than others. Recently, however, tensions have been created over the funding of home-to-school transport. In my view, that is a direct result of the Government cutting the rural services delivery grant. In 2024, that grant provided £110 million to 94 rural authorities to help maintain essential public services. Ending the grant has deprived rural areas of around 40% of funds, so they have 40% less money to spend per head than urban areas. I hope the Government will take the opportunity of the passage of the Bill to urgently add…
Clauses 37 and 38 on home schooling cover pages 50 to 64 of the Bill — a substantial and sensitive intervention. Many parents home-educate excellently. The register is not inherently wrong, but the obligations around it must be proportionate. Speaking as someone who is 59th on the list today, the pleasure is in the earlier speeches — and I commend the four former Secretaries of State on all sides for the quality of their contributions.The pleasure, my Lords, in speaking quite late in a debate such as this one—I think I am listed as the 59th speaker—is the opportunity of hearing excellent earlier speeches. In that regard, I refer to the speeches of the four former Secretaries of State: the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard of Northwold, the noble Lords, Lord Blunkett and Lord Baker of Dorking, and my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley. I am so glad that three of them are here to hear this praise. I wish to address the subject of home schooling. This is covered in Clauses 30 and 31 of the Bill, covering pages 50 to 64. Clause 30 is directed to “Local authority consent for withdrawal of certain children from school” and Clause 31 is directed to registration of children not in state school education. These provisions cover altogether 14 pages of the Bill and are, I suggest, too long and too complicated. Regrettably, we no longer legislate on principle but in tight definitions. As a result, we have before us a very detailed Bill of some 137 pages—not as long as other Bills that your Lordships are currently considering, but still, I suggest, too long. I first got to know about home schooling during the ill-fated passage of the last Government’s Schools Bill in 2022. Home schooling covers only about 1% of all schooling in the United Kingdom, but it remains very important. A common characteristic of home-school parents is that most, although not all, have had a university education. Why do they want to home-school their children? It can be said very simply: to obtain a better education. I will give two examples of that. First, their children get one-to-one education at home, as opposed to in a school class of 30 or more pupils. Secondly, they have a choice of subjects not available in their local state schools. I refer, for example, to classics. The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, spoke earlier about the value to him of having had a classical education. I should disclose at this stage that I have one grandchild…
Our forebears fought to defeat totalitarian ideologies that sought to control the upbringing of the next generation. The Education Act 1944 — I accept it is not in our hints — established that parents, not the state, bear the primary responsibility for their children's education. This Bill tips that balance sharply toward the state. The home education provisions, the data demands, the surveillance infrastructure: these are not minor administrative adjustments; they are a fundamental shift in the relationship between family and state that the House should confront directly.My Lords, it is with a heavy heart that I rise to speak today—heavy because the legislation before us cuts to the very fabric of our democratic society, which was built on freedom of thought, parental responsibility and the rights of citizens not to be monitored by an overreaching state. Our forebears fought two world wars, at unimaginable cost, to secure the freedoms we now risk throwing away so casually. They fought to defeat totalitarian ideologies that sought to control not only public life but private conscience and, crucially, the upbringing of the next generation. They knew, as we should know, that the surest route to tyranny is to hand the state unchecked power over the education of children. It is a matter of historic record that, when Parliament passed the Education Act 1944, it deliberately safeguarded the right of parents, not the state, to determine their children’s education. Those drafters had seen the rise of fascism and Stalinism and understood that a truly free society must trust its citizens to raise their children in accordance with conscience, not dictate their upbringing through bureaucratic edict. Yet here we are. I am a parent of home-educated children, and it is to the home education-related clauses that I now turn. The Bill proposes a mandatory registration system for all home-educated children. On the surface, some may see this as benign, yet it is far more than that. It represents an unprecedented intrusion into family life, granting local authorities sweeping powers to monitor, inspect and ultimately veto the parental right to educate outside the state system. Starting with children deemed “vulnerable”—a term dangerously undefined and open to broad interpretation—it imposes a presumption of state control where there should be a presumption of parental competence. We are legislating to allow bureaucratic diktat over the most sacred responsibilities of family life. The Government argue that this intrusion is necessary for safeguarding, but…
Children who experience physical punishment are up to 2.6 times more likely to experience mental health problems and more than twice as likely to become victims of serious physical abuse. The definition of 'reasonable punishment' is unclear in English law — as Worcestershire's safeguarding review into the murder of nine year-old Alfie explicitly said. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health strongly supports equal protection for children from assault. This Bill must include it.Children are the fabric of the future, to paraphrase the excellent maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed. Legislating for the welfare of children is crucial, and we must take this opportunity to provide equal protection of children in law from assault. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health strongly supports such amendment. Its report last year showed that children who experience physical punishment were up to 2.6 times more likely to experience mental health problems and more than twice as likely to be victims of serious physical abuse. This is because the definition of “reasonable punishment” is unclear. Last year, Worcestershire’s safeguarding review into the murder of nine year-old Alfie flagged up the difficulty in distinguishing “between what is lawful and proportionate and what is harmful and abusive”. The preceding year, after the death of Child AK, Norfolk’s review concluded that the current law was confusing by allowing a defence of reasonable chastisement in criminal prosecutions for assault. I was glad to hear others raise this and hope the House will support this overdue change. Scotland and Wales have already tackled this; giving children equal protection against being assaulted in the name of chastisement does not criminalise parents. The Scottish Government’s implementation group has not noticed a significant impact on work in the Procurator Fiscal Service or Police Scotland. Wales introduced a rehabilitative alternative to prosecution with no increased criminalisation of parents. We cannot leave the current legal confusion in place and leave children living in fear of common assault. Ten years ago, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health called for a single unique identifier, using the NHS number, but we failed to get it into previous legislation. Sadly, the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel reported that 485 children were affected by serious child safeguarding incidents in 2023-24 and the Independent Review of…
The Bill is silent on three critical areas: fathers and their role in children's lives; parenting support and skills; and the link between family instability and poor child outcomes. Parent Gym supports families with the greatest need across the country. I have been advocating for parenting intervention for over a decade. A truly child-centred Bill should address the family environment in which children grow up, not just the school they attend.My Lords, I declare my interests as the founder of Parent Gym and the part owner of Mind Gym. Parent Gym is a programme supporting families who have the most need across our country, and I have been advocating for parenting interventions and training for families for over a decade. I am also a commissioner at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, something I omitted to record last week when I spoke at Questions. We welcome a lot in the section of the Bill on care, particularly the encouragement of kinship care. That really has my support, as I hope to see an increase in the number of children who are kept with family when there is no provision available from their own parents. But I am sorry to say that the Bill seems to be entirely silent on three really important areas, which I hope can be rectified in Committee: breaking intergenerational cycles of dysfunction; meeting the national crisis of the shortage of foster carers; and providing real accountability in residential care, which is essential. We all need two things to ensure that we go into adulthood in a functional way: a minimal amount of trauma, and secure attachment. We can now measure the level of trauma that individual children experience using the adverse childhood experience scoring system. The children we are talking about today are some of the most damaged and vulnerable in the country, with very high adverse childhood experience scores. But this is not just about measuring: we know now that these scores—this level of trauma—is directly correlated with their health and socioeconomic outcomes. Children with a score of more than four in their adverse childhood experiences are three times more likely to develop heart disease, respiratory issues and type 2 diabetes. They are 15 times more likely to commit acts of violence and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. Trauma has an enormous cost to the child for their future as well as a huge cost to society. No one speaking today does not care about…
Even at this point in the list, I am still unsure what the purpose of the schools part of the Bill actually is. It prioritises tinkering with governance — stripping academies and free schools of the autonomy that has allowed so many to thrive — while avoiding the real problems: discipline and behaviour crises in classrooms, the SEND catastrophe, the growing numbers of children unable to cope in school. How can we scrutinise whether the Bill will fix problems when a key solution is imposing a centralised new curriculum before we even know what that curriculum contains? The Government's own curriculum review is not due until the autumn — long after this Bill is due to pass.My Lords, even though I am speaking so far down the list, I am still unsure what the purpose is of the “Schools” part of this Bill. The Bill prioritises tinkering with governance, focusing on fixing a problem that does not exist—namely, stripping academies and free schools of the autonomy that has allowed so many of them to thrive—yet it avoids problems that need fixing, such as the huge challenges of discipline and behaviour in classrooms or the growing SEND crisis. How can we scrutinise whether the Bill will fix problems when one of its key solutions is to impose a centralised new curriculum on academies before we know what that curriculum contains? It is a cart-before-horse move. The Government are not publishing their own curriculum review until the autumn, long after the Bill is due to pass. This curriculum review matters. When any Government outline what is taught, politicians reveal what they think schools are for. Are they places where we, as adults, pass on the historic body of canonic knowledge to new generations as an entitlement, regardless of background or cultural identity and notwithstanding important arguments about what constitutes the best that is known and thought? Or is this new curriculum a skills-based or therapeutic model in which knowledge is a mere second-order vehicle for the main goals of social mobility or social engineering? Recent curriculum overhauls by devolved Governments should act as a warning. These allegedly child-centred experiments in interdisciplinarity—the Curriculum for Wales, and Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence, if ever there was a misnomer—have both led to a disastrous collapse in attainment. I am not reassured by Professor Francis’s interim review, with its focus on educating pupils through a social justice lens to reflect contemporary diversities. It sounds like a recipe for an EDI curriculum on stilts. Recently, government advisor Professor Lee Elliot Major described school trips to “museums, theatres and high-brow…
This is two Bills in one and, squeezed together, they mix the message. Part 1 protects children's wellbeing — praiseworthy. Part 2 dismantles successful educational reforms — not. In Committee, I will focus on: removing the academy order requirement; Clause 54 imposing the national curriculum on all academies; and the pay and conditions provisions that will reduce the flexibility schools need to recruit and retain the best teachers.My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, and my noble friend Lord Biggar on their excellent maiden speeches. Committee on this Bill is in a few weeks. Today we are exploring many important topics covered in the Bill yet, as quite often recently, we are getting just four minutes to speak. It is hard to cover much at all in that time, and this is two Bills in one. The first is praiseworthy because it protects children’s well-being. The second is not so much because it dismantles much of the successful educational reforms of recent decades. Squashing these two together into the same Bill mixes the message. In the rest of my short speech, I will discuss only the second part of the Bill and a few of the concerns I hope we can focus on in Committee. First, removing the academy order is baffling. We have no clue what the Government will offer as an alternative. What question was this the answer to? It attacks the successful academy concept invented by the Labour Peer, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, who is much missed here. It fails to acknowledge the increasingly obvious superior organisation and success of multi-academy trusts, as has been shown in several speeches today by those who founded and ran them. Some justified removal of the order by saying that a lot of the worst schools are academies. That is because for years the worst local authority schools have been transferred to MATs. We know that they then improve as a result. This practice should be continued, and without a two-year wait. Secondly, on curriculum, the Bill is yet more of, “We know best”. Head teachers should be allowed to tweak their curricula according to their classes’ specific needs and levels of ability. It is strange indeed to want to remove that constructive flexibility, when we all know that one size never fits all. Thirdly, requiring that only qualified teachers may teach will hit teacher numbers, both in general and for specific subjects, particularly STEM subjects. Teacher numbers…
Policies fail when you are not clear about the outcomes you want. We have heard many former Secretaries of State describe the exam result improvements of the last two decades — and they are real. But the same PISA evidence base shows that England's children's wellbeing results are abysmal: near the bottom of the OECD. Those are not separate problems; they are connected. This Bill has 'Wellbeing' in its title. I would like the House to hold the Government to account for actually delivering it — measurably — not just on exam results.My Lords, this is a really important occasion for the House of Lords, and for the world to see that the House cares about children’s well-being. We have such great speakers in this debate. We have had some brilliant introductions but, in my experience, policies fail when you are not clear about the outcomes. I see the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Huyton, nodding—she was very clear on outcomes. The noble Lord, Lord Hill of Oareford, asked what problem the Bill is trying to face. We heard a number of former Secretaries of State, across all parties, talk about the improvements we have had. We have had significant improvement in exam results. What is the area that we have failed in? What is our problem? The same evidence base—PISA—shows that our well-being results for children are abysmal; we are bottom of Europe. That is the problem we are trying to solve—let us be clear that it is all about children’s well-being. If this were the children’s maths Bill, we would have a number of ideas about how we improve maths teaching and all the rest of it. Then we would have national testing to see who had done it and who had not. That is the doughnut: a brilliant Bill, wonderful on the outside, but with a very large hole in the middle—which is that there is no national testing, so we will not know what works. Noble Lords have great ideas; some may work and some will not—I am not an educational expert. I have been looking at all the material for quite a long time, and my charity—I declare an interest as honorary president—has looked at the impact of various things. It is mentioned in the impact statement for this Bill, so it is doing some relevant stuff. Basically, we need raw data and a national programme. The Bill provides a real opportunity to embed physical activity at the heart of school life by introducing statutory measures. If we do, we can inspire the next generation to be more resilient and thrive mentally, socially and physically. If we do not, we are guilty of failing…
I chair E-ACT Multi-Academy Trust, which applies the national curriculum and has recent outstanding Ofsted judgments. The argument that the national curriculum stifles innovation is not borne out by our experience. The reality facing schools is that absolute performance in reading and maths has stagnated in PISA, and our SEND system is failing thousands of children. This is a good and necessary Bill.My Lords, I declare my education interests as set out in the register, in particular my chairmanship of the E-ACT Multi-Academy Trust, where we are enjoying recent “outstanding” Ofsted judgments in schools, while applying the national curriculum. This is a good Bill. It is necessary legislation to tackle a legacy in which vulnerable children have become more vulnerable, and schools are struggling on multiple fronts. I will focus my time on the part related to schools. Today we have heard some argue, in effect, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, pointing to improvements in England’s PISA rankings for reading and maths as an indicator of the success of the current system. This ignores the reality facing many schools. Our absolute performance in reading and maths has stagnated in PISA, and in science it has declined. Most worryingly, as so powerfully set out by the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, the life satisfaction of our young people has plummeted. Persistent absence remains high, teacher retention is poor and NEETs are way too high. As others have said, we must use this Bill to drive ambition on standards and well-being, regardless of structures. Academies have, by and large, worked well—but I do not believe that is because of the freedoms initially promised. A Schools Week survey of 120 academy trust CEOs found that the majority believe that the removal of academy freedoms relating to pay, curriculum and the employment of unqualified teachers would have little or no impact on their ability to run and improve schools. The success of academies is much more due to strong governance and effective leadership than so-called freedoms. Good governance is the bedrock of school improvement: it safeguards quality and challenges poor performance. When I took over as a academies Minister from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, I was conscious that it was the likes of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, putting his personal reputation on the line, that ensured strong governance and the deliver…
The way to measure the success of England's education reforms is to compare us with Scotland and Wales, where the same reforms were not adopted. England rose in PISA; they did not. That is a natural experiment in policy. Before this House reverses what worked, it should have a compelling evidence-based case for why the reversal will produce better outcomes. I have not heard one.My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of the Knowledge Schools Trust and a trustee of the Knowledge Schools Foundation Trust. It is a great privilege to follow the excellent maiden speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, and my noble friend Lord Biggar. The education reforms that the Government are seeking to reverse in the second part of this Bill have been a great success. It has been a natural experiment, because education is a devolved area of policy. The way to measure the success of the educational reforms, dating back at least to 2000 and beyond, is to compare the performance of schools in England, where the reforms have been embedded, with those of Scotland and Wales, where they have not. I will not repeat the PISA data that has been cited by numerous people on this side of the House, but it shows very clearly that the education reforms embedded in the English state school system have been a success. Given how successful they have been, I am astonished that the party opposite, and indeed the Lib Dems, do not want to share some credit for it. As several noble Lords have pointed out, the education reforms that began with the creation of city technology colleges by my noble friend Lord Baker, as created by the Education Reform Act 1988, were continued by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, in the Learning and Skills Act 2000, which created city academies, and built on by the Academies Act of the coalition Government, as my noble friend Lord Hill pointed out. The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said earlier that he hoped all sides could work together in this House. But that is precisely what has been happening for the last 37 years, and it is his party that has decided to abandon this cross-party consensus, not mine. The part of the education reform programme I care most about is free schools, having helped to set up four of them. In a nakedly ideological act, the Government have pulled the plug on the programme, in spite of its success. The English secondary sch…
Strong on children's rights and nutrition — the Healthy Start scheme helps young families buy fruit, veg and milk, but too many eligible families are not enrolled. The Government must use every lever to ensure children are properly nourished. And on physical and sexual violence: there are clear evidence links between poor wellbeing and child poverty; the Bill should be explicit about the connection and mandate protective measures in schools.My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend Lord Mohammed, and the noble Lord, Lord Biggar, on their maiden speeches. The noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, is absolutely right about the child well-being problem, which is why I focus my interventions on the well-being aspects of the Bill, including children’s rights and voices and physical, mental and emotional well-being—specifically, their nutrition and protection against physical or sexual violence. Research shows strong links between poor well-being and child poverty. Children from low-income homes often go hungry or have a very poor diet. That is why the Government must use all their levers to ensure that children are properly nourished. The Healthy Start scheme has helped young families buy fruit, veg and milk for their children. However, uptake is low as many eligible families have never heard of it, let alone applied for it. The value of the vouchers has not kept up with food inflation, and this must change. Will the Government welcome an amendment from me to auto-enrol eligible families to ensure that children get their entitlement? The second lever is the food served in schools. I welcome the new school breakfast clubs, but they must serve healthy food. It is important to distinguish between a breakfast that fills the tummy and one that nourishes. The school food standards have not been reviewed for 10 years, and they hardly mention breakfasts. Does the Minister believe that current school food standards are strong enough to guarantee that children will be getting nourishing food in breakfast clubs? Will she welcome an amendment to update the school food standards, as recommended by the report Recipe for Health of the Lords committee, which I had the honour to chair, including clear rules on what a nutritious school breakfast must look like? Breakfasts are not the only problem. There are still children who meet the narrow entitlement for free school meals but do not get their free meal, so we also need auto-enro…
There is genuinely wide cross-party support for the child protection and safeguarding measures — a unique identifier will be significant if it enables more effective, joined-up, timely multi-agency work. There is much work to do to get that right, and the House has expertise to help. On Part 2: I share the concerns about rolling back academy freedoms. I appreciate that Tony Blair is not the flavour of the month on the Labour benches right now, but the academy movement was his, and it worked.My Lords, most measures that come before your Lordships’ House are a curate’s egg: good can always be found. There is wide, cross-party support for many of the measures in this Bill that aim to improve child protection and safeguarding. Some of these measures, such as introducing a single, unique identifier, will be significant if they enable much more effective, timely and joined-up multi-agency work. I suspect there is much work to be done to get this right, and there is a wealth of experience in this House that the Government would be wise to draw on. On the second half of the Bill, I share all the concerns of my noble friend Lord Effingham and other noble Lords across the House about the rolling back of academy freedoms. I appreciate that Tony Blair is not the flavour of the month on the Benches opposite. For me, the most important of his many achievements was heralding an era of education reform that abandoned dogma. The work of successive Education Secretaries of both parties, many of whom we have heard from today, in improving schools and driving standards is a real example of a long-term approach across Governments and decades. I hope the Government will take seriously and respond to the deep concerns that have been expressed today and take a more consultative approach going forward. I want to focus on technology in schools, which we addressed in the data Bill when it was before this House. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, my noble friend Lady Morgan of Cotes and others highlighted concerns about the use of so-called edtech in schools. I thank 5Rights and others for their briefing. First, I want to make clear that I am not against tech in schools and its use by children and young people. I remember visiting Cambridge, when I chaired your Lordships’ Communications and Digital Committee, where we saw remarkable work by Google and others that had developed glasses with AI-assisted technology and cameras and a discreet earpiece. Designed for and worn by blind ch…
The care system's negative outcomes ripple across society. We do not have enough foster carers, especially from minoritised communities, and the Bill is largely silent on fostering. I support all three points Baroness Cash made about what is missing. And on kinship care: I welcome the definitional progress, but kinship carers deserve the same financial allowances as foster carers — without that, many will continue to struggle.My Lords, I welcome the Government’s intention to improve the lives of young people in the care system, which is where I am going to focus my attention. As other noble Lords have pointed out, we are familiar with the negative outcomes arising from being in care. Systemic inadequacies not only affect the individuals and families directly involved, but the ripples spread across society. Fostering is a critical component of the care system, but as the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, said earlier—and by the way, I support all three points that the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, made about what is not in the Bill—the situation is stark. We do not have enough foster carers, especially from minoritised communities. The deficiencies in this part of the care system result in a damaging lack of options for children who cannot live with their birth families. Children’s homes are a potential alternative, but it has recently been acknowledged that, “the quality and safety of children’s homes in England is simply not good enough”, and that there was, “much more that we need to do together to put the rights and needs of vulnerable children at the heart of our policymaking”. —[Official Report, Commons, 18/11/24; cols. 24-29.] As public authorities, local authorities are responsible for the rights of children in their care. There is concern that a recent ruling declared that a private care home was not a public authority, despite the placement in question being funded by a local authority. Since more than 80% of children’s homes are run by private companies, where, then, does that leave the rights of those children in those private sector-run homes? There is a lack of clarity there which needs to be sorted. What steps are the Government taking to address this problem? Without clarity over their rights, how will the Government deliver on their aim to place vulnerable children at the heart of policy-making? Both through membership of the All-Party Gro…
Education has always been about shaping free minds and raising thoughtful citizens. This Bill does not modernise education — it centralises it, stripping away the freedoms that helped schools succeed and handing power to bureaucrats. The children from working families will lose the most: less choice, lower standards, fewer chances to break through. The home education provisions are particularly concerning — demanding personal data, club attendance and anything local authorities consider 'appropriate' reflects a mindset that the state knows best for every family.My Lords, education in this country has always been about shaping free minds and raising thoughtful, moral citizens who can think for themselves. The Bill threatens that proud tradition. It does not modernise education; it centralises it. It strips away the freedoms that have helped so many schools succeed, handing power to bureaucrats. It is the children from working families who will lose the most—less choice, lower standards, fewer chances to break through. I support the Government’s aim to protect children, but I fear that the Bill overreaches. As it stands, the state is grabbing sweeping powers, especially over home-educating families, demanding personal data, club attendance and anything local authorities consider appropriate. My concern behind this is the mindset that the state knows best, and that parents cannot be trusted and need to be managed. Authoritarian regimes always start by inserting themselves between parents and children, and demanding conformity of thought and value. Is this really the path we want to take? Many parents turn to home education because the system failed them, or because of special needs, safety concerns or different values. They are doing what they think is best for children. I was home educated for two years. It was not ideal, but I survived, and I even went to university. We lived in a part of the world where schooling was not possible. My parents could have sent me to a boarding school but, being French, to be separated from children was not part of their beliefs, and I was only seven years old. Does that mean that, according to the Bill, my parents would have been criminals? Meanwhile, this Bill also goes after some of our most successful schools—high-performing academic schools that have transformed lives, especially for children from tough backgrounds. What is their crime? They are different. They are independent, but they work. Instead of learning from them, this Bill seeks to drag them down, imposing an unpublished nationa…
As a Coram governor and Foundling Museum trustee I welcome the Bill overall. My one regret is that my great friend Lady Massey of Darwen is not here to take part. If I sense that children's wellbeing is being drowned out by political and ideological skirmishing about school structures, I may not find myself able to stay silent. To the Minister: what would your ex-headmaster Bill Lucas — whom I understand your college colleagues called 'Batman' — think about the tone of some of the schooling debate we have heard today?My Lords, I declare my interests as a governor of Coram and a trustee of the Foundling Museum, both of which institutions work across adoption, fostering and, particularly, the care system. Overall, I welcome the Bill. I have one cause for regret and sadness, which is that my great friend, the late Lady Massey of Darwen is not here to take part. I do not intend to get involved in Part 2, I think, but if I sense that children’s well-being and best interests are being drowned out by political and ideological skirmishing, I may not find myself able to remain silent. In particular, I say to the Minister that I wonder what her ex-headmaster, Bill Lucas, whom I believe she and her college colleagues called “Batman”, would think about the tenor and temper of some of the debate about schooling and what is in the best interests of children. I will concentrate mainly on Part 1, and the simplest way to declare my interest is to say that I will be all over it like a rash. There are some issues with SEND, and I particularly commend the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and my noble friend Lord Carlile on their knowledge, focus and passion for that issue, which I am sure we will hear much more of in Committee. With Clause 17, on care leavers, there is still a danger that there will be a postcode lottery. There is a strong case for having a clear national offer regarding what care leavers can expect, rather than it being left to individual areas. In Clause 10, when it comes to regional care co-operatives, I beseech the Government to learn from what I think we all recognise is the failure of the creation of adoption regionalisation, which really has not worked and certainly does not benefit the children. On Clause 19, trying to reduce the use of agency workers in children’s social care is very important. In particular, I suggest that the Minister and her colleagues might benefit from talking to the MP for York Central, Rachael Maskell, who is my co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Gr…
Babies, infants and early years are missing from this Bill — and the title says 'Children's Wellbeing'. Coram's brief is clear: the earliest years are the most formative. I know work on early years is ongoing, but if we title a Bill around children's wellbeing, surely we must address the start of that wellbeing, not just school age. I also want to raise Roots of Empathy: programmes that build empathy in children from the earliest age have the most powerful long-term effects on their social and emotional wellbeing.My Lords, do not worry about cross-party co-operation between the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and me. We hope to influence the Bill in some ways. I am delighted to welcome this early Bill and the priority that my Government have given to this issue. I also congratulate the noble Lords who made today’s maiden speeches. I want to raise two matters. One is about what is not in the Bill and one is about what is. I agree with Coram’s brief that babies, infants and early years are missing from the Bill. I know it is not because there is not work being done on early years, but the Bill contains “Children’s Wellbeing” in its title so surely we need to address baby, infant and early years well-being. I declare an interest as a trustee of the charity Roots of Empathy UK, whose programmes are about reducing aggression, increasing sharing, caring and inclusion, and promoting resilience, well-being and positive mental health. Its work would be an appropriate matter for discussion during the passage of this Bill. While I applaud free breakfasts to start the day, ensuring the school readiness of our youngest must include more—for example, speech and language development, particularly for those who need it. One in five children is faced with these challenges, and recent research says that children with speech and language challenges are being unfairly punished in our schools. The excellent work of organisations such as Speech and Language UK has informed the policy in this area for successive Governments, including my own, and during the passage of the Bill it would be good to explore the vital nature of this work and its importance to children’s well-being. Now turning to what is in the Bill, I welcome the commitment to improve the children’s social care placement market and tackle the profiteering going on there, which the party opposite has allowed to happen for the past 14 years. Measures include establishing a financial oversight regime to increase transparency for care provider…
Academies have been one of the most successful education reforms of our generation. What problem is the Government actually trying to solve in Part 2? Significant parts of the schools provisions appear designed to please unions rather than to benefit children. Lord Harris of Peckham has done more to help working-class children in south London than almost any other individual — his academies' record proves what freedom with accountability can do.My Lords, it is an honour to speak in this debate. I declare my interest as a governor of the Shoreditch Park academy in Hackney. I will focus on the proposed measures that I think threaten academies. Many noble Lords have already made brilliant, passionate speeches based on deep knowledge and expertise, not least our academy hero, my noble friend Lord Harris of Peckham. What is the problem that the Government are trying to solve? Academies have been one of the most successful education reforms of our generation. Why are the Government intent on sabotaging that success, other than to please militant trade unionists? Significant parts of the Bill are inspired by ideologues in hock to the unions, putting the interests of the allies of the Marxist Jeremy Corbyn ahead of children—yes, the very working-class children who would benefit from an excellent academy education. As a governor of a secondary school in Hackney—a pretty tough area—that is part of CoLAT, the City of London Academies Trust, I have seen the power that an academy has to change lives. Shoreditch Park was set up in 2017 in a portakabin with just 180 pupils and 20 staff. We now have 870 pupils in a brilliant new building and a thriving sixth form, with pupils from more than a dozen ethnic backgrounds—54% pupil premium and 14% special needs but with very good attendance, achieving fantastic grades at GCSE and A-level, with 100% of the 2024 sixth form going to university. That is astonishing, given that some pupils arrive at the school barely able to write a sentence, let alone with correct spelling and punctuation. Earlier this year, Ofsted rated Shoreditch Park outstanding in every category. How has that been achieved? By being part of a very successful trust that has the experience and freedom to make decisions. Why do the Government want to change a policy that is working and helps the most disadvantaged to succeed? I have visited hundreds of schools—I am sure many others have too—and I have seen what w…
Kinship care is overlooked and underestimated. Several parts of the Bill touch on it — but not always as clearly or decisively as is desirable. I welcome the Minister's wholehearted words on kinship care in her April reply. Now those words need to be matched in the Bill's text: a clear, enforceable kinship local offer, proper financial support for kinship carers, and recognition that these carers are often the difference between a child thriving and a child being lost to the care system.My Lords, this Bill is a complex and sensitive one which will deserve careful and detailed scrutiny in Committee and on Report. I intend to concentrate my remarks at this stage to those parts of the Bill that relate to kinship care, an often overlooked and underestimated aspect of the state’s responsibility for children in difficulties in their earlier years. In so doing, I declare an interest as a member of the All-Party Group on Kinship Care. Several parts of the present Bill touch on kinship care, but not always, I suggest, as clearly or as decisively as is desirable. First, I thank the Minister who opened the debate today for the very wholehearted contribution she made on kinship care when replying to a question on 3 April. That was very welcome, and so were the supportive remarks made on the same subject by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, who at the time was a Minister, when she replied from the Dispatch Box some months earlier. So there is an element of bipartisanship—demonstrated by the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, in the reference in his speech to kinship care—about that aspect of the subject, although perhaps not some others, which I suggest ought to continue. Why is kinship care so valuable and at the same time so neglected and underfunded? If one looks at the way the state contributes to the problems of abused and neglected children—foster care, institutional care and kinship care—one sees clearly that the third category receives the fewest resources, and at a time when resources are singularly stressed. Kinship care gets less, even though it is even more cost effective than the other two. That is not to denigrate the other two, which often provide valuable relief, even if they have their serious weaknesses, particularly in the case of institutionalisation. Then there are the complexities and the costs of the legal hoops which must be gone through before kinship carers can gain recognised status for their role. Little wonder that many are scared off setti…
After 77 speeches there is great cause for hope that this opportunity will not be missed. The Bill gives us the chance to build on existing successes in schools, tackle new problems — including the post-pandemic absence crisis — and ensure all children get the best possible schooling. I welcome it fully and look forward to improving it in Committee.My Lords, I start by congratulating my noble friend Lord Mohammed of Tinsley and the noble Lord, Lord Biggar, on their maiden speeches. I also of course welcome them to the House. Today is an important day and this is an important opportunity to make the lives and well-being of our children and young people, and their families, so much better. I have listened to all 77 speeches, which give me great hope that this opportunity will not be missed by your Lordships. The Bill gives us the opportunity to put right important issues that affect children and families in all sorts of different circumstances. In our schools, it gives us the opportunity to build on the successes already achieved, tackle new problems that have arisen and ensure that all children get the best possible schooling. Of course, we all want the best education for our children and to see them thrive at school. We want our schools to be places of learning where children learn, discover and play, and where we ignite the joy of learning. We want children and young people, whatever their background and circumstances, to want to come to school, to learn and to discover. The Bill builds on the successes that have been achieved but also deals with the new-found issues that are holding our children back. Let me start with well-being. Only yesterday, the Global Flourishing Study on well-being was reported. The study, which questioned more than 200,000 people from 22 countries, found that the UK came third from bottom for well-being. The mental health of young people impacts on not only their learning but, of course, their well-being. We must not forget the profound effect that Covid had on children, in particular the lack of socialising with other children. One in five children has a mental health condition and 500 children a day are referred to mental health services. We on these Benches require a qualified and fully funded mental health practitioner in every school. For schools with fewer than 100 pupils, it m…
Every child deserves safety, dignity and a fair shot at life. We will engage constructively where the Government are doing the right thing — and the child protection provisions are the right thing. But there is work to do on schools, and we will do it honestly: no child's education should be made worse by this Bill. My noble friend Lord Biggar's maiden speech on the importance of our national story and liberal education will, I hope, inform our Committee debates.My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Biggar on his excellent maiden speech on the importance of our national story in liberal schools. I also thoroughly enjoyed the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley. I welcome them both to your Lordships’ House. We have heard many powerful and moving speeches from across the House, and they confirm that this Bill matters. It will affect the lives of the nation’s children intimately and profoundly, and it is important that we get this legislation right. We will engage constructively where the Government are intent on doing the right thing, but, as so many noble Lords have pointed out, there is work to do to improve the Bill, most particularly in its impact on schools. Every child deserves safety, dignity and a fair shot at life, and we support the aims of Part 1: to provide stronger support for children in care, to build a child protection system that protects and to end the unchecked profiteering from services meant to nurture, not exploit. These are not just policy goals but moral imperatives, and they speak to the kind of country we ought to be. Much was done by previous Governments—most conspicuously under the coalition by Ministers such as Sarah Teather, David Laws and Edward Timpson—to improve the lives of children in care, but we acknowledge that there is more to be done, more even than the Bill currently allows for. We heard compelling evidence from expert witnesses in Committee in the other place that the Bill misses clear opportunities to intervene earlier and more effectively in children’s lives. My noble friends Lady Cash and Lord Farmer spoke of the need to break the cycles of dysfunctionality. One example is the timing of family group conferencing during care proceedings. Used too late, its value is diminished. The same is true in private law proceedings, where earlier use could help defuse conflict before it escalates. When it comes to deprivation of liberty orders for children, the Bil…
- This has been a long, well-informed, genuinely expert debate — and it shows the shared commitment in this House to improving children's lives. Let me be clear: this Government backs academies. We want high-quality trusts to grow, and as of March we are supporting almost 700 schools voluntarily converting — more than under the previous Government at any point since 2018. But the system is not working well enough for all children. On the national curriculum: it provides a floor, not a ceiling. UTCs and studio schools will be *exempted* from the full national curriculum requirement — that was achieved through the combined weight of Lord Blunkett and Lord Baker. On SEND: we are not waiting for this Bill — £1 billion for high needs was announced at the Autumn Budget, and we are in detailed engagement with local authorities, schools and parents on reform. On kinship and foster care: an additional £25 million over two years from the Chancellor's transformation fund will fund recruitment, peer-to-peer support and stability for more children in care. On smacking: no child should be subjected to violence or abuse — we will discuss this in Committee. I look forward to working with all noble Lords to make this legislation as strong as possible for children.
My Lords, we have had a long, interesting and well-informed debate. Given the number of noble Lords who contributed, I will do my best to cover the key issues, but I will not necessarily be able to name-check all those who raised them. I welcome the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, who told us about his journey to Sheffield, education and youth work. I am sure that that will be important for our debates in this House, and we are all very glad that he got in safely. I also recognise the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Biggar. He will bring his historical perspective—as he has done today—his free thinking and his challenge to this House, and I look forward to future debates and engagement with him. The discussion we have had today has been both thoughtful and well informed, reflecting the depth of expertise in this House. It is also clear that there is a shared commitment among Peers to work collaboratively in improving our children’s social care and education systems. The Bill makes a significant contribution to this Government’s mission to dismantle barriers to opportunity. Reforming children’s social care and education systems is a key part of this mission, ensuring that hundreds of thousands of children have the start in life they deserve. By shifting the system’s focus towards early support that helps keep families together, we are breaking down the barriers that prevent children from thriving. Alongside and united with this, the Bill introduces measures to drive high and rising standards in education, ensuring every child has access to excellent teaching, strong leadership and a high-quality curriculum. We are committed to building a system that removes the obstacles to learning that hold too many children back, with all reforms underpinned by clear and robust accountability. The Bill includes many measures to keep children safe and prioritise their well-being, and I am glad that they have been widely welcomed across the House. Tu…