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Debate on the Address

My Lords, we will take a decision on that before the Bill reaches Committee. However, any amendments relating to abortion will certainly be subject to a free vote on the government side. Children in care are a vulnerable group about which Members of the House—not least the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, who addressed this issue with his customary passion today—have long been concerned. We seek to improve the lot of children in care through the Children and Young Persons Bill. There are 60,000 children in care at any one time, the majority of whom are in care because they have suffered abuse or neglect. They deserve the best possible support and nurturing, but as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester so rightly said, the reality is that their levels of educational attainment and progression into employment remain deplorably low. They have improved, but are still deplorably low. My noble friend Lord Darzi gave statistics earlier in the debate. As the Minister for special educational needs, I should add that 28 per cent of children in care have a statement of special educational needs, compared with the national average of 3 per cent. The startling statistic, which we simply cannot get away from, and which the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey, mentioned, is that a quarter of adults in prison today have spent time in the care system. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, talked about the plight of those in custody with his customary eloquence, as did my noble friend Lady Massey. I could not agree more that the quality of education in prisons and young offender institutions has a major bearing on rehabilitation rates. That is why we have increased funding substantially for prison and young offender education. In the past six years, our spending on the education of young people in custody has increased fourfold, alongside significant increases in the number of hours and the quality of provision made available to them. My noble friend Lady Massey asked what my department was doing to liaise with other departments on youth justice. Following changes to the machinery of government in June, youth justice policy, including the sponsorship of the Youth Justice Board, became the joint responsibility of the Ministry of Justice and my department. The Youth Justice and Children Unit has now been created. One of its key aims will be to ensure that children and young people in contact with the criminal justice system achieve all five outcomes of Every Child Matters: to be healthy; to stay safe; to enjoy and achieve; to make a positive contribution; and to achieve economic well-being. The joint unit will be launched with external stakeholders at the Youth Justice Board convention on 13 November. The Bill seeks to promote good parenting on the part of professionals in the care system, and will provide a stronger voice for each child in care. It will also give great emphasis to ensuring stability for children in care, recognising, as so many speakers have said in the debate, that it is the lack of stability in care placements that goes to the heart of the problems that so many young people in care experience. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, emphasised that although the provisions that we have put in place for ensuring that children remain stable in their school placements in years 10 and 11 are good, it would be ideal if we could extend them more widely. I can tell her that part of the role of the designated teacher in respect of children in care, which we are putting on a statutory basis in the Bill, will be to liaise much more closely with social workers, foster carers and others to address the educational needs of children in care, not only in years 10 and 11 but much earlier in their education. The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, raised the serious issue of school exclusions and the impact that they can have on children in care, which is disproportionate compared with the impact on other children. As she will know, the number of permanent exclusions from school has reduced substantially since 1997. But she is right that the disruption caused to the education of children who are excluded, often for compelling reasons, is an issue that we need to address. It is precisely for that reason that we have invested in full educational provision for children who are permanently excluded, which did not exist at all before, and that we provided in legislation enacted by the House in the last Session for support for children who are excluded after the sixth day of temporary exclusions rather than the 16th day of temporary exclusions, which used to be the case. That will mean that fewer children will be on the streets not properly provided for. That reform of provision for children in care will be supported by some £300 million additional investment over the next four years, including additional support for social workers, a group rightly identified by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, as crucial in all that we do in this area. The next education-related Bill is the one that will raise the education participation age to 18. We value the general support given to this reform by noble Lords, but I recognise entirely that it will amount to nothing unless all the component parts—vocational provision and education before 16 and the range of provision available to those aged 16 to 18—are making a reality of near-universal participation by those ages by the time we come to raise the participation age in a phased way, to 17 in 2013 and to 18 in 2015. It is important that the actual raising of the participation age is, by the time it happens, a formal change reflecting practice that is already taking place and is not seen as a new, punitive regime. In that respect, everything that we are doing in the earlier phases of education, right back, as the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, said, to pre-five education, is as important as the changes that we are making beyond 16. There have been substantial improvements in rates of achievement before 16. I could trade statistics with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris; we do that from time to time. She quoted some selective statistics, but I could quote back a whole sheaf of statistics, including pointing out that, on all the key measures, standards are significantly higher than they were 10 years ago. The crucial point that we need to make, however, is that if we look at the current rate of improving standards at 16, and the practice of other countries internationally, we believe that this is a sensible next step if we get in place the four key building blocks enabling us to raise the participation age to 18. Those four key building blocks are, first, a curriculum and qualifications that provide the right learning opportunity for every young person and which are personalised to their needs, aptitudes and aspirations. That includes a solid grounding for all in functional skills in English, maths and ICT, as well as stretching A-levels and having GCSEs with less focus on coursework and diplomas that mix the best of theoretical and practical learning. I am very grateful for the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Pilkington, on a personal level. We have exchanged remarks across the Chamber over a number of years on the failure of vocational education over the past century—or to be more precise, as the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, put it, over 140 years. Historically, this has been one of our great failings in the education system. The situation has progressively improved over recent years as a result of the growing range of vocational qualifications being taught in schools—reasonably successfully. However, we are taking forward a significant improvement of vocational education with the introduction of the new diplomas, which are absolutely focused on the key vocational areas that have historically been of concern to the country and to which the noble Lord, Lord Pilkington, referred. The first five diplomas in construction—the built environment, creative and media technologies, engineering, information technology and society, health and development will be available from next September. From 2009, diplomas in environmental and land-based studies, manufacturing and product design, hair and beauty studies, business administration and finance, and hospitality will be available, and from 2010, diplomas in retail, public services, sport and leisure, and travel and transport will be available. There will be diplomas for all those great national industries where we require young people to be trained specifically. Our projections are that by 2010-11 there will be more than 300,000 learners studying for diplomas, which is 10 per cent of the 14 to 19 year-old population, on the basis of the work being done with the 14 to 19 partnerships which are gearing up to prepare for their introduction next year. The second key building block for the reform is, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, rightly said, enhanced advice and guidance to help all young people to make the right choices, with clear specifications for local authorities to provide every young person with guidance on the educational choices available to them. Thirdly, there needs to be improved financial support, so that no one is excluded because of costs. That will include an expansion of the successful education maintenance allowance scheme to support a broader range of courses and entry to employment programmes. Fourthly, and vitally, there needs to be enhanced employer engagement, including an expansion of apprenticeships. There has been a substantial increase already in the past 10 years, but there will be an extra 90,000 apprenticeships for young people by 2013, so that work-related routes are much more widely available than at present. On additional places—another issue which was raised—declining demographics in this age range mean that there will be little difference in the total number of 16 and 17 year-olds in schools in 2015 compared to this year. There will be a small increase in FE for which we will prepare. This also takes place in the context of massive capital investment in this area. Capital investment in schools will total—