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Children, Schools and Families Bill

My Lords, this is a curate’s egg of a Bill but I am bound to say that the good parts are very much outnumbered by the bad. Given that this will probably be our only opportunity to reflect from these Benches on the matters proposed, the lack of debate on some parts of the Bill in another place, the last-minute amendments introduced by the Government and the fact that my noble friend Lady Sharp is recovering from an illness, I may have to speak for longer than I normally would. I hope that your Lordships will accept one longer speech instead of two shorter ones on this occasion. It is tempting to start with the parts of which I approve, but I think that it would be more logical to comment sequentially on the major issues as they appear in the Bill. I will look first at Clauses 1 to 6, which concern pupil and parent guarantees, complaints, home-school agreements and parental satisfaction surveys. In my view, the vast majority of this is meaningless, overprescriptive and bureaucratic. Clause 1 defines a set of ambitions for pupils and parents. My early ambition was to become a doctor; I then wanted to be an interpreter of foreign languages; I landed up as a biologist, a teacher and a politician. I really do not see that it is up to the Government to poke their nose into the ambitions of pupils or parents. In any case, the Bill is extremely woolly about the liabilities of schools in this regard and the mechanism for enforceability of these ambitions. Unless proper funding is available to provide all schools fairly with the ability to abide by the guarantees, this whole thing becomes a whingers’ charter and a waste of time for a lot of head teachers. At the Commons Report stage, the Government amended the Bill to provide stronger safeguards to protect head teachers and governors from liability on the basis of individual guarantees and from frivolous or vexatious complaints. However, there remains an issue of whether or not the guarantees constitute a contractual obligation. With school budgets under increasing pressure in the next few years, the delivery of all the guarantees will become increasingly difficult. In these circumstances, it must be up to the head teacher to prioritise, and their priorities may not be in line with those of an individual parent. It must be counter to the Government’s intended purpose if the guarantees are seen as merely another tick-box mechanism. I am aware that for certain pupils home-school agreements have been enormously helpful. However, it is quite unrealistic to expect a school of 1,000 pupils or more to individualise them and to do it every year. I believe that they work best when they are individualised. That is why I feel that, although parents and pupils should be expected to abide by or support the school rules and school behaviour policy, home-school agreements should be used to help pupils who are having problems and their parents to engage with the school. Parental satisfaction surveys are a survey too far. Many schools do them anyway, and local authorities have their own ways of finding out how well schools are performing. Asking parents questions about schools that their children do not yet attend will be a poor basis on which to gain sound information. Clauses 7 and 8, on SEN, have been widely welcomed. Indeed, they are crucial to many children. However, the proposals could be further strengthened by also allowing a child’s school to appeal. The pupil’s school will be well placed to know about the inadequacies of SEN provision. Where the parents are unwilling to take an appeal to the SEN tribunal, it may be in the best interests of the child to let the school do it. Clause 9, on exceptional provision, is welcome, but it is crucial that an appropriate independent person should be the one who decides whether it is in the best interests of the child to provide full-time education. This clause was amended during its passage through the Commons to make it clear that, in deciding whether it is in the interests of a child with physical or mental health problems to receive full-time education, local resources could not be used as an excuse. However, given the wide lack of understanding of conditions such as autism, several organisations have urged that appropriateness should be assessed by someone with experience and expertise in the child’s condition. The proposed changes to the primary curriculum, as recommended by Professor Jim Rose, appear in Clause 10. While I regret the Government’s dismissive attitude to the Cambridge Primary Review, I think that these proposals move in the right direction, although they are still far too prescriptive. The noble Lord, Lord Layard, has outlined the many good reasons for incorporating PSHE into the statutory curriculum, as Clauses 11 to 14 propose. I agree with him and I will not repeat what he said. However, the Government have watered down this measure until it is almost unrecognisable. My first disappointment was when I saw that they will allow parents to withdraw a child from PSHE until he or she is 15. Each year in England and Wales, around 300 girls under 13 become pregnant and, since 2002, there have been more than 63,000 pregnancies among those under 15. Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show that, since 2002, 15 girls aged 10 have been pregnant, so it is clear that the age of 15 is far too late for young people to obtain this information. These facts simply reinforce the need for this teaching for all children. The right of parental withdrawal was introduced through the Education Act 1993. It currently affects any child or young person up to the age of 19, so I suppose that the age of 15 is at least a step in the right direction, although it is insufficient. International human rights obligations towards children and young people are clear. As the European Court of Human Rights has ruled, the parental right of withdrawal is unnecessary and should be repealed. It found that, so long as the education provided is balanced, objective, critical and pluralistic and the child can access other forms of lawful education, the state can refuse parental withdrawal from sex education. Allowing a parent to withdraw their child from SRE interferes with the child’s rights under Article 10 of the ECHR, on freedom of expression, which includes the right to receive information. My second disappointment was when the Government inserted subsections (8) and (9) into Clause 11 at the last minute in another place, where they were hardly discussed. Many bodies, including the JCHR, have expressed serious concerns about this. Under the original wording, all schools were to teach PSHE according to the same sensible principles in Clause 11, but faith schools will now be able to ignore these principles where they believe them to conflict with the religious character of the school. As the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, said, the Bill now says that heads and governors can ignore principles such as accurate and balanced PSHE that apply without exception to other schools. Whatever the Minister says, that is the impression that has been spread about. On 5 March, the Catholic Herald said: ""Catholic schools uphold the teachings of the Church in all that they do. This applies, in particular, to all work about sex and relationships education. They robustly teach, for example, about the sanctity of life and do not and would not promote abortion. We do not expect the situation to change in the light of the Children, Schools and Families Bill"." That is a clear indication that these schools do not believe that they have to abide by the principles in the Bill. I think that the Government have let children down by doing this and it puts a black cloud over what should have been a major step forward for children’s rights. Clause 19 provides for school improvement partners, or SIPs, not only to give advice but also for other prescribed services. Without the ability to insert appeals into the Bill in this House, we on these Benches do not believe that these changes should be made. Clause 20 is about the new report card. We on these Benches have argued consistently that current school accountability mechanisms are unduly focused on pupils’ academic performance and should be more concerned with what schools do to support the development of the whole child. We do not believe that the new proposals address that. Any close reading of the report card prospectus can only lead to the conclusion that this has the capacity to become a bureaucratic nightmare. Had the school report card been proposed as a replacement for league tables, it would have deserved serious consideration. As it is, it appears to be an additional burden and difficult for parents to evaluate. The current system is inequitable and demoralising for teachers. A primary head told me recently about his local head teachers and how many of them were planning to leave the profession. He said: ""I work with many very talented head teachers, and in the last two years, four who work locally have decided to retire early as the demands are now too great. Teacher morale is very low in many schools due to excessive workload, and replacement head teachers are very hard to find"." I do not believe that these proposals will change that state of affairs. Clauses 23 to 25 are about the teacher licence to practise. There was limited scrutiny of this in another place, with more questions raised than answers given. In a recent speech, the Minister of State, Vernon Coaker, told a group of new teachers that the licence would be, ""included within the normal performance review mechanisms"." I ask the Minister whether this would mean that the appraiser could effectively remove a teacher’s permission to teach. Will the General Teaching Council have to have regard to whether a teacher has received a full entitlement to professional development, as determined by their annual performance management review? This proposal falls between two stools. It neither gives teachers a proper right to continuing professional development nor makes it any easier to get rid of incompetent teachers. Clause 26 deals with home education, which has been one of the most contentious issues in the Bill. The problem is that the Government have confused the child’s right to an education with a child’s right to safeguarding. They have ignored the powers that social workers already have with regard to the latter. The death of Khyra Ishaq was nothing to do with home education, despite what has been suggested in the press. It was a safeguarding issue. Social workers visited the house because of numerous calls from her head teacher expressing concern for her welfare. They did not see her alone and made no attempt to ascertain her wishes and feelings—clearly contrary to existing guidance. That only serves again to emphasise the need for primary legislation to make it quite clear that social workers must see the child separately in any care proceedings. If we had a Committee stage, I would have tabled that amendment. On the substantive issue of home education, we on these Benches support those who want to home-educate and understand that it is usually a positive choice. The noble Lord, Lord Soley, made a thoughtful and interesting speech, but his comments tended to reinforce my view that we need a whole lot more consultation. We want very light-touch regulation and not this regulation. We are concerned that the government proposals, which are rushed, ill thought out and heavy-handed, are in danger of enforcing a one-size-fits-all education. We regret that the Badman report has given the impression that home education is more likely to be related to child protection issues than school education. We believe that it is quite sensible for home educators to notify local authorities that they are home-educating to enable them to support local parents in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, mentioned. They cannot do that if they do not know where the children are. Of course, if children get in contact with the authorities, it will soon be spotted whether there are safeguarding issues or not. You get things done only if you take people along with you and it is clear that the Government are not taking home educators along with them in this case. At that point, you should stop and think again. Clause 28 extends the power of local safeguarding children boards to require individuals and bodies to supply relevant information to assist them to perform their "functions". While most organisations are happy to provide information for serious case reviews, they are concerned that the boards have a very wide range of functions far beyond those. In the drive to protect children, it is crucial that their rights to privacy and confidentiality are maintained. Many noble Lords have talked about the fact that these measures could deter them from asking for help. That is something that concerns me very much. Independent schools have also questioned whether the duties would contravene their contractual arrangements. How do these new provisions comply with obligations under the Data Protection Act 1998 to collect information for a specified purpose? The last highly contentious issue is the effect on children of the measures for reporting family courts in Clauses 32 to 42. While greater transparency in our justice system is desirable, the framework for the reporting of family proceedings by the media should always seek to protect the privacy and safety of the children and adults involved in an appropriate way. Along with many of the professional bodies involved, I have considerable concerns about the effect of these proposed measures—again, many noble Lords have said the same. The Government should first evaluate the impact on children, the courts and CAFCASS of alternative methods of improving transparency, including the current pilot initiatives to anonymise family court judgments that started only about three months ago and certainly have not been evaluated. We do not believe that changes to legislation should be made until this has been done. Finally, in another place an amendment was laid to clarify the law on the reasonable chastisement defence and limit it to those with legal parental responsibility. The Government, accepting that there is a loophole, have now asked the Chief Adviser on the Safety of Children, Sir Roger Singleton, to review the use of physical punishment in part-time educational settings and by others who may be acting in loco parentis and to report back by the end of March. At the Report stage, the Secretary of State confirmed that the Government would respond to the report on the day that it was published. In the light of the fact that we may not have time for a Committee stage in your Lordships’ House, can the Minister say how the Government plan to carry out Sir Roger’s recommendations and to fulfil the pledge made by the Secretary of State? There is evidence of children being mistreated in madrassahs, Sunday schools in some Christian sects and other voluntary forms of care. Beliefs that children can be witches or possessed by evil spirits and need to be physically punished prevail in certain African Christian churches within the UK. All physical punishment has already been banned in other voluntary provision and part-time education of 12.5 hours or more a week. There can be no justification for failing to protect children in the remaining voluntary settings. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.