Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-05-23
Topic: Education
John Warren Shipley (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. I remind the House that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, made a number of very important points, comments and suggestions to the Minister on special educational needs and mental health, and he reminded us of some of the big problems that face the school system—not least recruitment and the cut in the repairs budget over the last decade. I have asked a few people over the last few days who are heavily involved in the school system if they could do one thing to improve life in their schools, what it would be. They said, "Repair our school buildings—have the money to do it", so that issue could be addressed outside the context of this Bill I agree absolutely with the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, too, about the concept of a family of schools and the role of governing bodies as local entities; both those points were very important. But as my noble friend Lord Storey said, there are a whole range of issues around multi-academy trusts that we need to address as a part of the passage of the Bill—the powers of the academy trust over the local authority, the school itself, its governing body, the head teacher, and, of course, the Secretary of State The purpose of this Bill is to "Level up opportunity by delivering a stronger and more highly performing school system that works for every child, regardless of where they live." That is most welcome, but it says nothing about overall resources, and nothing about the curriculum. I am doubtful if it can be done without both those issues being addressed I am content to support a national funding formula to eliminate some of the inexplicable differences that occur within the current structure, but some schools are small, some schools are rural, some are in very deprived areas, and we must look very carefully at the methodology of a new funding formula. To say that each mainstream school will be allocated funding on the same basis wherever it is and that every child will be given the same opportunities based on consistent assessments of their needs will prove very hard to deliver unless local authorities have a role in identifying schools in need of extra support. I hope the Minister might be able to respond to that point when she replies to the debate The briefing that accompanied the Queen’s Speech said that there would be four main benefits of the Bill. I think the Government should use "could" or "might" or "hope" rather than "would", because there is a huge problem around the issue of resources I recognise the importance of strengthening of the attendance regime, particularly post-Covid. Yes, all schools should publish an attendance improvement policy—attendance matters profoundly, as research shows us, so putting attendance guidance on to a strategy footing seems right. But we need preventive measures to encourage high attendance and there has to be a shared debate about what that means and what needs to be done to ensure that schools can increase their attendance There has been a lot said about safeguarding children wherever they are in education, and Parts 3 and 4 of the Bill are important: they address child protection and, as my noble friend Lord Storey rightly identified, this is about children’s rights, and we have to consider that in the context of what Parts 3 and 4 propose. I am in favour of registration by local authorities of children who are not in school; I think that most of the general public would be surprised to learn there is not a register of this kind. It will therefore be important for local authorities to have one and to provide support to home-educating families. Part 4 of the Bill proposes increasing the powers of regulation via Ofsted to inspect any place providing a majority of education for more than five children. I am interested to hear from the Minister why the figure of five has been decided on, as opposed to four or three. I understand the complexity of that question—there has to be a number—but the justification would be interesting because there could be a case for making it lower I agree that we should not allow more loopholes to exist that prevent Ofsted carrying out its legal duties, such as claiming that an educational institution is part-time or providing further education. I just say to the Minister that I would like to explore in Committee whether prosecution, where there is unlawful activity, should lie with Ofsted or Ofsted’s role should be as the witness and the local authority should provide the legal support In my final minute or so, I note that I hope that the Minister will understand the importance of confirming the role of a local authority handling appeals and exclusions, school place planning, admissions policy across a local authority area and guaranteeing the necessary standards for special educational needs I must say, however, that I find the Bill a missed opportunity. There is nothing about primary schools and careers guidance—careers guidance occurs only from year 7, but it should start much earlier so that there is no loss of aspiration when children move from primary to secondary school. As Sir James Dyson said recently: "Children are creative, they love building and making things … but as they get closer to GCSEs and A-levels all that is squashed out of them." I would like to explore what we can do to help the other 50% in our schools who do not plan to go to university.