Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 (Risk of Being Drawn into Terrorism) (Guidance) Regulations 2015 — House of Lords, 2015-09-17
Topic: Education
Merlin Hay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I want to say a few things about these regulations because of the opportunity they give me, as the revised Prevent duty guidance is also being reissued in general. I rise because my wife is the chair of governors of a moderate learning difficulty academy in Bedford. She was finance governor for a long time and then took it to academy status as chairman. She has worked very hard for it for many years but the burden on the governors now of all these sorts of things is becoming unbearable, to the extent that all the good people will probably be lost. She has been told several times by the local authority that she has a strong board of governors but they are reaching the end of their tether because of the weight of things that come up under inspections, criticism and provisions such as these. Your Lordships should realise that the academy is not a large establishment When the school’s member of staff who was the child safeguarding officer, and who was therefore Prevent-trained, happened to leave they suddenly realised, because something had changed, that the person they thought was properly trained was no longer properly qualified. So suddenly, overnight, they were threatened with closure—the advice given from outside was that they should not open over the weekend—because they would not have a member of staff who had the right training in position on the day. They got around it because over the weekend one of the governors went through online training, which was held to be adequate. However, there is the weight of trying to get through this sort of stuff for a person who is trying to do another full-time job. People are well qualified in other areas but they all now have to know about it. It is not just this but all the other stuff that goes with it for the school. In those governors’ case, because they are dealing with children with difficulties they also have to understand all the different monitoring systems for achieving targets. They have to monitor whether statements are being upheld while maintaining privacy and anonymity, because they are not allowed to know who the children are—only certain members of staff can. At the same time, they also have to make sure that these systems all work. If they fail, the governors are held responsible now, as there is a legal requirement for them to do that I am saying this only because the regulations are very well meaning. We do not want this sort of stuff going on in our schools: we do not want what is now called radicalism preached or people’s minds being warped. I entirely agree with that. But the Government must just be careful when they introduce these regulations that they do not lose all the good people who are currently, voluntarily, running schools and such like. Otherwise, who will run these things? The Government will have a big and expensive problem, because they will have to pay people to do it properly. They will not find enough people, because the other thing we have noticed is that when these schools need to hire new people, the staff are not available—there is huge competition for people in this area. The Government will suddenly find that they have to close schools because of the regulations, as they cannot get the people. That will be a problem, and children will just not be educated. I do not know what the Government are going to do about that. It is a government problem, so it goes back over to them. This is only a general point, so I do not particularly need a reply, but I would like the Minister to take this back to the Department for Education and to all the other bodies that these things come out of and just ask them to look at the compound effect of all these things.