argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
Philip Charles Harris (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank the Minister. She has been to one of our conferences with 200 people, and I am proud to say that she is coming to our conference in October, where we will have 4,500 teachers, and seeing some of our children. I am really passionate about academies. My noble friend Lord Baker got me involved in the first one at Crystal Palace 30 years ago. That was a very bad school, where 60 children a year were expelled. Over the last 30 years, it has been one of the best schools in the country. Last year, it had 5,000 applicants for 180 places. It is a world-class school for the second time, and 35% of its children are on free school meals The Harris Federation runs 51 schools, 52 this year. We have only taken over free schools from start-ups or failing schools. Some 90% of our schools are now outstanding, and we have five world-class secondary schools and one world-class primary school. I have to thank Michael Gove, Secretary of State at the time, for giving us that school seven years ago under a lot of opposition. It was in the worst 2% of schools in the country but now, seven years later, it is not just outstanding: it is world class. From the start, with my noble friend Lord Baker, and through to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, Tony Blair and Michael Gove, academies have made a great difference to many children in this country, as we have given them a better education. One of my ambitions is to see every child in this country getting a great education, because they only ever get one chance at it. They might have five or six jobs throughout their lives, but only one education Five years ago, everyone was against Michael Gove getting the school over the road to be a sixth form—Harris Westminster. I am so proud of that school. It was the eighth best in the country last year, with more than 50% of the children there on free meals. The seven that beat us cost anything from £50,000 to £100,000 a year to go to. It is all down to having great teachers, giving good service, making sure that children enjoy going to school, motivating them and making sure they do the best they can. That is what we should try to do with every child in this country. If we could do that, we would have a much better country.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
Arthur Wellesley (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I speak to Amendment 42 in my name, and I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Baker, for signing it. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, also wanted to sign the amendment—unfortunately, she is not here today—but her email to the Bill office arrived a few moments too late. But to have two former Secretaries of State from different parties supporting the amendment demonstrates that this is in no way a party-political matter; it is a cross-party amendment It is, of course, a small amendment in that it applies only to a very limited number of specialist schools. The Bill in general affects thousands of schools, but at the moment I believe there are only about eight maths schools and a similar number of music and ballet schools in the music and dance programme. They are all centres of excellence; they take children purely on their talent in that specialisation. A high proportion of the children come from disadvantaged households and ethnic minorities. In the case of the maths schools, all the children get high grades at A-level and all go to leading universities. King’s Maths School, of which I am patron, recently celebrated being named by the Sunday Times state school of the decade. I was sorry that, in the end, the Minister was unable to come to that celebration. She would have seen how incredibly important it is to preserve that and other maths schools The music and dance school I know best is the Royal Ballet School where, for 10 years, my wife was chairman. I can tell you that all the students from there, on leaving the school, were offered places in leading ballet and dance companies both in the UK and abroad The point is that these specialist schools are really worth preserving. I put down a probing amendment in Committee and I have re-read this morning in Hansard the response from the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, on behalf of the Government. She said, "it would be wrong to exclude any schools in the maintained sector with a music, dance or maths specialism from the benefits of being part of a strong trust."—[Official Report, 15/6/22; col. 1607.] I realise that this statement was meant to reassure me and others, but I must respectfully disagree with two presumptions in it. First, it is not at all clear that there would be any benefit for those schools to be part of a multi-academy trust. Secondly, it is also far from clear that multi-academy trusts are all strong.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
Kenneth Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): I support the amendment about specialist schools in the name of the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. It also touches on academies. As the founder of academies, I never at any time said that all schools should be academies. In fact, when we established them as city technology colleges in the 1980s, I said that they should be beacons for other schools to follow if they wanted to—I was not prescriptive. I was asked several times whether I would support that concept and I never have. It took a huge step forward under Labour when the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, who is in his place, persuaded Tony Blair to go for 200 academies and the Labour Party accepted this There is no doubt that some schools improve when they become academies, but there is a geographical spread. My friend the noble Lord, Lord Storey, emphasised how many of the successful MATs are in the south-east and south-west—the Home Counties areas, as it were. In the very depressed areas of Stoke, Sandwell or Blyth in Northumberland, where youth unemployment is 20%, there is no easy switch to say that if schools there became academies, they would suddenly get better. Many of these areas have what are called sink schools, which continue to be inadequate or require improvement, again and again. There have been studies on this recently, and making these schools academies does not necessarily have any effect on them, because a fundamental change in the curriculum is needed A specialist school makes a fundamental change in the curriculum. When I started to promote university technical colleges over 12 years ago, they were specialist schools that did not have to follow the national curriculum of Progress 8 and EBacc; rather, local people could decide what they wanted to specialise in. That was the breakthrough.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am attracted by the noble Baronesses’ Amendment 45. From a parent’s point of view, I think it is key that information should be available on what a multi-academy trust is about: what is its style, what are its beliefs, what atmosphere is it seeking to generate in a school? Within the structures of a multi-academy trust, particularly one that is strongly centrally controlled, this makes a great deal of difference to a school. In judging whether your child will flourish in and be supported by a school and will have their particular character and ambitions celebrated by a school, knowing how the multi-academy trust looks at things—not just the head teacher it has in place at that particular moment—is a really important part of the judgment. To have some narrative on that from Ofsted strikes me as being the best practical way of getting that information out to parents I am also attracted by the amendment proposed by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. I have not seen, in my experience of running the Good Schools Guide, schools groups that successfully embrace schools of a really different character. Schools groups are human organisations; they need to have a philosophy of life, a way of doing things, and to have within them schools of radically different philosophy poses great challenges. I cannot recall an example of that being done successfully. Usually, one philosophy or the other comes to dominate, and that produces, in those schools that really do not belong with that philosophy, a lack of tone and performance which reduces their value to the children attending them. This is a really difficult thing to do well, and therefore I support the safeguards proposed by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington The Government have the whip hand in the end. They are providing the money and can push something through against opposition. If it is ridiculous, they will not find themselves in an Ampleforth situation, because they are the paymasters. However, I think the decision to push a specialist school into a generalist trust is one that ought always to be taken with a great deal of care, and that is what I think the noble Duke’s amendment would produce.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
Gloria Dorothy Hooper (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I support the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, in his Amendment 42. I declare an interest as a co-chairman of the All-Party Group on Dance, as well as having been a pupil of the Royal Ballet School so long ago that it was still then called the Sadler’s Wells Ballet School and it was not then a boarding school. I can vouch for the fact that the academic needs of the children were so well catered for—alongside our specialist ballet lessons, of course—that after I returned to my previous school after an experimental year in London, in digs at the tender age of 10, I actually skipped a year. So, these specialist schools have a very good and fine academic reputation, but they also have an important international reputation and attract international pupils and funding to this country. I hope my noble friend will consider this amendment very sympathetically.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
Diana Barran (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, these amendments reflect the House’s interest in ensuring that the regulatory framework underpinning a fully trust-led system is fit for purpose. I will take Amendments 10 and 43 together, both of which have been tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. As I have already explained, the Government intend to withdraw Clause 4, to which Amendment 10 relates. This will enable discussion with the sector as to how to implement local governance arrangements for schools in all trusts, as we set out in the schools White Paper. In addition, we have already committed to consulting on the exceptional circumstances in which a good school could request that the regulator agrees to the school moving to a stronger trust. It would be inappropriate, however, to pre-empt the outcome of those discussions and the planned engagement with the sector.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
Joanna Penn (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, the amendments in this group primarily relate to schools with a religious character, along with an amendment regarding religion and worldview education for academy schools without a religious character. I will speak to the amendments regarding schools with a religious character first I thank the right reverend Prelates the Bishops of Durham and Chichester for their support in Committee. We have listened to the concerns and suggestions raised by them and other noble Lords on schools with a religious character. These amendments adopt similar principles to the amendments proposed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham in Committee.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
Diana Barran (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I would like to add a clarification to the remarks I made earlier about this amendment. There is nothing in the Bill or any existing legislation that would enable the Government to force a single-academy trust that is not subject to intervention to join a MAT. To be clear, when I talk about "subject to intervention", that could mean, for example, that a school had been judged inadequate by Ofsted, where the normal existing powers would apply. Furthermore, there are no regulation-making powers in the Bill, or in any other legislation that I am aware of, that would enable us to set regulations to change that. So there is nothing in this or any other Bill, either in regulation or in any other aspect, that would allow us to force a single-academy trust to join a MAT, either specialist or mainstream. I know the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, spoke about the maths schools as specialist schools, but in our language a "specialist school" relates to children with special educational needs. We see them as mainstream single-academy trusts Earlier there was debate, and questions were asked, about whether the Government would take a power to compel schools. The decision was taken not to assume such a power. I wanted to take this opportunity to underline more clearly the legal position in relation to single-academy trusts.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
Arthur Wellesley (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for yet another conversation that we have had on this subject; I am afraid she has had to listen to me quite often. I am grateful to her for her clarification, and I hope it goes far enough to reassure the King’s Maths School and other maths schools that there is no danger of that happening. I am grateful for this assurance. I may come back to it in some other format in the future, but in the meantime I shall not move my amendment.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
Diana Barran (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I start by responding to Amendment 57 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, on the importance of local flexibility within the direct national funding formula. The legislative framework in Part 2 of the Bill already allows for local authorities to determine and administer certain aspects of school funding. Clause 37 will require local authorities to determine supplementary allocations for each of their local schools if the Secretary of State provides for this in regulations. In practice, this means that schools will be able to receive top-ups to their budget, calculated by the local authority, in addition to the department’s national funding formula. This provides flexibility for local authorities to retain a role in the allocation of funding.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I encourage the Government to look in the directions that Amendment 63 is looking in. Generally, having a school counsellor is very positive: it adds a lot to the spirit, education and good running of a school because it deals with those people who, left to themselves, would generate a lot of unhappiness in the structure To my mind, a school counsellor is generally enough, someone that you know you can go and talk to, but that counsellor has to be supported in two ways. First, they have to be supported by the whole culture and structure of the school. Everyone has to know that they are able to speak to them. There has to be an open structure of communication through to the counsellor so that information flows in, and everyone is aware that that person is there to help.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
Joanna Penn (Conservative, Centre-right): I will start by responding to Amendment 62 and thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for this amendment. As he said, we have previously discussed these issues in Committee. As he knows, local authorities have existing duties to identify children and young people in their area who have special educational needs or disabilities—SEND—and to work with other agencies to keep under review the adequacy of provision available to meet their needs. The department supports local authorities in doing so I acknowledge the points the noble Lord made, but they are best addressed by our wider reforms to the SEND system. I reiterate that high needs funding is increasing by £1 billion in the current financial year to a total of £9.1 billion. Local authorities have flexibility in how this funding is used, particularly and including to support those with sensory impairments. Separately, pupils with additional needs also attract additional funding through the schools national funding formula, which includes proxy factors for SEND. I reassure him that this will continue under the direct national funding formula. This additional needs funding equates to £6.6 billion in 2022-23 and is not dependent on whether a child has an education, health and care plan. I take the noble Lord’s point about those who may have sensory needs not having education, health and care plans, but there is also additional needs funding in place that is not dependent on those plans being in place As the noble Lord, Lord Addington, referenced, the Government recently published their SEND and alternative provision Green Paper, setting out ambitious proposals to improve the experiences and outcomes of children and young people with SEND. He referred to a postcode lottery, and he will know that the Green Paper includes a proposal to introduce national standards for how needs should be identified, assessed and reviewed, as well as the support that should be available for children and young people with SEND, including those with sensory impairments. That is currently out for consultation until 22 July, and we do not want to pre-empt the response. The noble Lord talked about the litigiousness of the current system, and I agree with him. One of the aims of our reforms is to address that by having clear expectations across the country for parents and children. We hope to reduce that side of the system and take things forward in a more collaborative way Turning to Amendment 63, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for their amendment on statutory funding for mental health support in schools. Schools can play a vital role in supporting young people’s mental health. However, as we have discussed previously, tackling this issue cannot be the responsibility of schools alone, and it is not a school’s job to provide specific or specialist treatment interventions.
Schools Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-12
Topic: Education
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, that is a really good suggestion, and I sense that the House is at one on what we are doing here I did my work experience down a coal mine—I think that broadened my experience a good deal, as a boy from Eton. One of my work shadows from Yorkshire was, until recently, a government Minister, so respect to him for getting there and also for not being there Work experience is a real mind-opener for people. When, under the guidance of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, we did the report on seaside towns, one of the things we noticed all the way round the country was not a poverty of ambition in young people in seaside towns but a poverty of belief. All they saw was what was around them, and they did not believe that anything else was possible. To give them work experience outside that, and to bring in at primary level people who represent careers that are not obviously open to them, would be wonderful It is wonderful to do work experience with primary school children; they are so open. They are interested, chatty and fascinated. There is none of the, "Oh, whatever" that you get at secondary schools. Children’s minds are so open at primary school. I am delighted that we are moving in this direction, and I encourage my noble friend to carry this forward to whoever is in charge of things in a month’s time.
Front-loaded Child Benefit Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-08
Topic: Social Welfare
Michael Farmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions, albeit they have been somewhat critical. My noble friend the Minister was certainly negative I will respond first to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, on his point about the later years being more expensive. This Bill is actually about choice: the parents of a young child would have the choice whether to take more child benefit in the early years and less in the later years. My experience, and I think that of many other parents—I do not have the data here—is that, as children grow up, the parents work so their wages increase. They are probably both at work if they need to be One of my points was that the Bill would give an option for a parent—a kin, if you like—to look after the baby rather than pass it out to childcare, where that kin altruism is not so strong. As a child grows up to a teenager, not only might he be able to work in a shop to earn some pocket money but both parents and maybe grandparents would be in a better position. They would be earning more money and they would not have quite the same stresses that are prevalent in the first three years of life, with that tremendous stress that a new baby brings into the world with them It is a question of choice; my noble friend Lord Balfe made that point. You do not have to take it. You might want to take it to give up some of your childcare allowance in order to stay at home and look after the child. I will not go on about it because we have had a message from the Minister, but I will say to him that this is an enabling Bill. It is a lever and a gift to the Government. There is no flexibility on the statute book about child benefit at the moment. I made that point in my speech. It is a flat rate. At the moment, the Government cannot alter child benefit in any way. Fine, it is simple administratively, but times have changed, as I pointed out in my earlier words. Here is a lever that any Government, of either party, can use in future years when it is on the political radar screen that primary care in those early years is so important that parents need more money then rather than later It is a question of choice. All I am saying to the Government is that this is something that they do not even have to enable, but it would be on the statute book, which it is not at the moment. It is a lever that can be used by any future Government if they so require I thank noble Lords for the debate. I will not continue further. I beg to move.
Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-08
Topic: Labor
Deborah Stedman-Scott (Conservative, Centre-right): I think it is fair to say that the Government have a differing view from that of the noble Baroness and people on the Opposition Benches. It is exactly that our helping people to get a better job, if they can, and more income—plus all the support that we are putting through the welfare system—is the policy that the Government are pursuing. We want everybody to be able to find a job, progress in work and thrive in the labour market, whoever they are and wherever they live. Our support for people out of work is tailored—
Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-07-08
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew Sharpe (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the noble Lord for that point. I am aware, as he is, of the high-level discussions happening on the other side of the channel. I should refer to something that will make me extraordinarily unpopular, which is of course the Rwanda scheme. That was an attempt to sort this problem out, which noble Lords opposite do not like very much.