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Education and Skills Bill

The noble Baroness has said many of the things I wanted to, so I shall begin by explaining why I could not support the earlier amendments. I feel that large categories of young people are generalised although they are the individuals who need real opportunities. That was the point of my question after the Minister’s response. Many young people, when given the right support, like the young mother mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, might well benefit from education, but the support has to be carefully constructed and put in place at the right time. From a long career of working with severely disaffected families, I know that a young person does not necessarily desire to be in the position they are in and that the whole family has led them to that point. I find it extremely difficult, therefore, that a 16 year-old who has been given very little opportunity fails to go further in education because of difficulties in their family. As I said at one of our consultations with officials, I feel that this is somehow a white middle-class issue. I say that because it is often young people from a steady background, from whatever culture, who have the opportunity to go into further education. That is why I am very keen to see support services developed before we introduce any compulsion. I have a problem to do with exclusions. I ask the Minister what will happen to those young people whom the noble Lord, Lord Elton, was probably referring to: those excluded from school because of bad behaviour. Many of the young men and, increasingly, young women I know will find techniques to ensure that they get excluded if they are compelled to attend school. That will create some difficult problems to do with the criminalisation of young people. How will we tackle a situation where we decide that young people should not be in school because of their behaviour but where they are to be criminalised if they are not in school? There are real dilemmas. I come from a pretty tough background. I am immensely grateful that I had to go to school, even though I travelled for an hour a day to get to a decent one. I would like to make sure that every young person has that opportunity. Again, therefore, I would like to be sure that structures are in place to give every young mother not only support and day care but emotional support—the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, often talks about this—to separate out in her mind what she really wants from the day-to-day pressure that she faces. We could then look at whether compulsion is an option. At the moment I feel that there are too many difficulties to move in that direction.