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Less than 50 per cent reaching their targets is pretty appalling, especially when we know that improving levels of education and training to help a young person get a job is one of the most effective levers to help them to avoid reoffending and to keep out of the downward spiral that is too often the result of getting involved with the criminal justice system. Furthermore, a recent inspection report of Her Majesty’s young offender institution, Wetherby, published in January 2005, found that four out of 10 of the young people were not accessing education or training.

The Government in their recent Green Paper, Reducing Re-offending Through Skills and Employment, recognise these serious deficiencies in the current arrangements. In the light of the Government’s own plans, the Government stated during the Committee stage of the Bill in the House of Commons that they do not feel that the repeal of Section 562 is either necessary or desirable. I find that very puzzling. I believe that by failing to end this discriminatory exemption the efforts to improve the situation will be undermined. As long as that section remains in place, it will continue to be a major barrier to the effective provision of education for children in custody.

Amendment No. 26A probes whether the duties placed on local authorities under the Education Act 1996 apply to children in immigration removal centres. Under that Act, children subject to an order of court are currently exempt, but the situation relating to children in immigration removal centres is not clear. Children in those centres are not placed there by order of court. However, there are clear differentials in standards between education provision in mainstream schools and in immigration removal centres, which calls the status of their education provision into serious question.

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The following quotation was taken from a recent inspection of Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre last March. It said that the provision for children’s education was unsatisfactory and depressing and that:

When this issue was debated in Committee in another place, the Minister, Phil Hope MP, said that due to the very low numbers of children detained in IRCs it

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would be disproportionate to extend local authorities’ education duties to include them, and a more appropriate way to tackle the current deficiencies in the system was through the contract to run the centre. He said:

while at Yarl’s Wood,

If the scale of the problem is so small, it would be a very small burden on local authorities.

Besides, we refute the contention that the scale of the issue is quite that small. Government figures show that of the 540 minors recorded as leaving detention, excluding Oakington, during the fourth quarter of last year, 465 were asylum detainees, a rise of 19 per cent from the third quarter of that same year. Three hundred and eighty-five of all minors had been in detention for seven days or less, 60 of them eight to 14 days and 70 had been detained for something between 15 and 29 days. That is a considerable period of time during the education of a child. A recent report from Save the Children estimates that the numbers are much greater than those quoted by the Government. I will not detain your Lordships by quoting it, but the report is easily available.

The fundamental objection to the current situation is that segregated education provision is regressive and discriminatory. One of the founding principles of the Education Act 1944 was that school-based education should be universally available. Allowing a child’s immigration status to determine whether or not they can attend a mainstream school is a dangerous and unprecedented attack on that principle and may violate the right of the child to be educated under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The Earl of Listowel: I support Amendments Nos. 24 and 26. I apologise to the Committee if I have to slip out in the course of the Minister’s response, as it is the annual general meeting of the Associate Parliamentary Group for Children and Young People in Care, and my presence is necessary to make that quorate.

Clause 4, identifying those children who are not receiving education, is very welcome. It seems to me, however, as it does to the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, only to go halfway to meeting the need. I shall give the case of Traveller children as an example. Recently a charity, the Ormiston Children and Families Trust, made a presentation on the needs of children of Traveller families. Three such children spoke of their experience of bullying in schools, of their need to hide their identities as Travellers in schools and, on one occasion, of having a brick thrown through their family home. They also spoke with pride about the occasions when they were encouraged at school to go and speak to their fellow pupils about their cultural heritage, and the impact that had on reducing the bullying towards them.



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Nearly 40 years ago the Plowden report identified the concerns about Traveller children not taking part in education, and a report from Ofsted, The Education of Traveller Children, indicated that possibly 10,000 Traveller children were not receiving secondary school education. I know that the Government are taking several important steps in addressing this problem. The development of early years childcare, which can help to draw these families into the education system and build their trust in it, is particularly welcome. Will the Minister say—perhaps he can write to me—what progress has been made on that figure of 10,000 children?

I have no wish to burden schools any further than they already are. I welcome the prioritisation of looked-after children in the admissions for schools. We recognise that these children have been let down badly in the past. I welcome what the Government have done, but I hope that they will consider what more could be done for these other children who have been excluded.

I turn to Amendment No. 26. I believe that 28 per cent of juveniles leaving the prison estate reoffend within two months of doing so. On a recent visit to a secure training centre, the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland of Asthal, and I spoke to a 16 year-old young man, Paul. He told us that he had not been in school for several years and that he did not feel that he had much time for it. In the course of his sentence he made several years’ progress in reading ability. The education at that establishment was clearly first rate, although the Committee will be aware that the quality of provision in secure training centres and young offender institutions is variable. What really came through very clearly from all the people we spoke to on that visit, including the wonderful teachers, the social workers and the psychologists, is that when those children leave that setting, it is as if they come off a cliff. That is a recurrent theme. It is particularly true of young people in care who, sadly, too often enter custody. When they leave custody, there is no connection with services to ensure that they are properly cared for. I hope that the amendment will enable a more thorough approach to connect these children with the services they need when they move on. I hope that the noble Lord will consider that.

Will the noble Lord also consider holding a meeting on this and other matters with the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland? If the noble Baroness is to achieve her goal of reducing reoffending, which is very much a priority of hers, clearly the noble Lord’s department and that of the noble Baroness will have to work together much more closely. If I may say so, the closer the Home Office and the noble Lord’s department work together, the better will his responsibility for vulnerable children be discharged. However, I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, carries a very heavy burden and I do not wish to add to it any more than is absolutely necessary.

I am moving to a conclusion. I believe that the National Health Service was charged with the health of those in prison in about 1999, taking over from the Prison Service. Everyone clearly recognised what an important advance that was. When I visited Feltham

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young offender institution about a year after that event and spoke with the health department, I particularly noticed the significant decline in children and young people harming themselves. It is widely acknowledged that that was an important step forward. So there is a reasonable expectation that if local education authorities were to take responsibility for the matter we are discussing, there might be further improvement in the consistency and quality of education provision in these settings. One per cent of children entering the juvenile estate have a statement of special educational needs, but it is estimated that 50 per cent actually have special educational needs. That is another argument for better joining up the services provided in prisons with those outside. That might well be done by placing these responsibilities on local education authorities.

In conclusion, for all our sakes it is vital that we improve the consistency of the quality of education offered to juveniles and that we ensure they have a school place when they complete their generally short stay in custody or on remand. Both these amendments might conduce to those ends. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Baroness Thornton: I speak in support of Amendment No. 26, to which I have added my name. One year and several months on I once again find myself speaking on the very significant matter of Section 562 of the Education Act 1996, which denies young offenders and others the statutory right to a normal education.

In February last year, with very many of the same cast but with a different Minister, and with the support of my noble friend Lord Judd, we tabled an amendment on precisely this matter. I feel that we have probably not made much progress since then. I feel strongly that it is our duty to ensure that young offenders and those with mental health problems have, at the minimum, the same rights to education as all non-detained children.

I am not going to run through the arguments, which have been so ably outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. I remind the Committee of what the Minister at the time, my noble friend Lord Filkin, said about the issue, because he was not at all dismissive. He committed himself and his department to,

My noble friend also undertook to look into the research that many noble Lords, including me, outlined in that debate and to look at the evidence—some of which has been repeated today. He also said that he would ask his officials at some stage to organise a workshop with some of the organisations referred to in the debate that are experts in this area, to discuss with the department how best to take that forward.

I am not necessarily expecting my noble friend the Minister to report on that, because he was not the Minister at the time. But I hope that we might see some progress on this important matter and that we will take the opportunity of this Bill—which is about

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good education for all children—to deal with these children who are outside the Act, and outside the jurisdiction of the department and local education authorities.

Baroness Williams of Crosby: I follow with great appreciation the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. It is not often in politics—and I have had a long life in politics—that one suddenly sees the clear answer to a problem emerging between all parties in an intelligent and thoughtful debate such as this one. But it is increasingly clear—the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, put this very well—that the problem of a very high recidivism rate among young offenders in prisons and young offender institutions can be met only with much closer co-operation between the Department for Education and Skills and the Home Office. I do not want to add much to the eloquent remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, or the highly informed remarks of my noble friend Lady Walmsley, beyond one or two rather stark comments .

A small percentage of children—probably only between 5 per cent and 10 per cent—follow what might be called a “fateful” path. That path often begins with their exclusion from school. Last year no fewer than 389,560 children were excluded from school, in some cases for only a very short time. But they suffered the experience of exclusion, itself a mark of the trouble that the child is in. Some of those children go on to receive anti-social behaviour orders, and some go on to young offender institutions. The one strand that is absolutely clear from the beginning to the end of this fateful process is that these children are neither educated nor trained to enable them to be a part of modern society, demanding as it is.

I was shocked by figures from the then Home Office Minister, Paul Goggins, in a Written Answer to a Question tabled two years ago in the other place by Charles Hendry. Those figures—the most recent I have been able to find—say it all. In 2004, 81.7 per cent of young offenders—more than four-fifths of the total—had a level 1 or lower standard of literacy. In other words, they were at best semi-literate and in some cases absolutely illiterate. Some 78 per cent were innumerate, nearly four-fifths of the total.

We are considering young men and women who already have, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said, profoundly troubled backgrounds. Then, at a very early stage in their lives, they fall out. They cannot keep up with the education opportunities offered to them. Then, year after year, decade after decade, they sink ever more deeply into a situation in which they can neither cope nor be a part of our society. It is not surprising that such a large number of them end up in young offender institutions and then, all too quickly, end up in prison. Then they are all too quickly written off as members of society other than as those attacking society’s underlying strength and order. The answer lies very much with us.

5 pm

I wish to cite only one other figure before I say something about Amendment No. 26A. That figure also says it all. My noble friend Lady Walmsley has given the detailed indications of how ineffective so far

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the attempts to educate young offenders have been, although I give full credit to the Youth Justice Board for the efforts that it has made against an almost impossible challenge. But there is another astonishing figure. It costs £34,924 to keep a young person in a young offender institution and, at present, the annual average figure for those in such institutions is about 6,500. Noble Lords should not forget the figure of more than £34,000. Set against that is the cost of £3,800 for a youngster in secondary education.

The gap between the two, given what the noble Earl said about recidivism, means that year after year, as a society, we pay huge amounts to keep youngsters in prison who—had we caught them early enough, given them proper literacy training and intensive extra support on the lines that the Government, to whom I give credit, are suggesting with personalised education—might have been taken out of this fateful journey which, apart from ruining young lives, costs our society huge sums of money. I am talking only about the costs of keeping them and not the desperate costs for the victims of sustaining the injuries and the crimes for which such young people are responsible.

The answer leaps out. We have to catch these youngsters much earlier. We have to give them the intensive training and help that they need. Frankly, even the Youth Justice Board’s idea of 15 hours of education a week is a poor joke compared with the 30 hours that we expect children who are not in trouble to have, and we have to put that right. This Bill could give the Government the opportunity to tackle the causes of crime in a radical, far-reaching and exciting way.

I wish briefly to mention Amendment No. 26A, which concerns immigration removal centres. I should declare an interest as a patron of the Gatwick detention centre, of which I am extremely proud. It recently received a Queen’s award for the outstanding nature of its work with detainees. In addition to what has already been said by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and my noble friend Lady Walmsley about immigration removal centres, we should bear in mind another fact. My noble friend gave the figures, which are relatively limited—even the Save the Children Fund estimate of £2,000 a year is not huge. But noble Lords will have noticed that, in the past couple of days, the Government said that they cannot accept the proposal for an amnesty for illegal immigrants, but will take steps to remove them.

Some illegal immigrants have been settled in this country for years—sometimes for more than 10 years. Their children are in school, and they have families that are settled and are sometimes working in this country. You will have a much greater problem removing them; there will be a lot of legal defences and attempts to bring cases; there will be support from neighbours; and there will be the voices of NGOs. Those people will not be deported in a matter of days, which means that, if the Government are serious in their effort, far more children will find themselves in immigration removal centres.



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I plead with the Minister to consider carefully the case made by my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Judd. Those youngsters could be there not for four weeks, but for months on end or even a year or more. It is absolutely vital that the Government take steps to make education available to those children who have already been traumatised by the fact that their families are about to be removed. They are even more traumatised if that whole process is slow, long and drawn out and there is bitter controversy, as I fear will be the case.

With that background, I think many of the arguments advanced by the Minister in another place against accepting Amendment No. 26A fall to the ground. I strongly support my noble friends who have tabled it.

Baroness Darcy de Knayth: Having put my name to Amendment No. 26, I wish to add a warm word of support to those so cogently spoken by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and to the convincing support of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, who referred to the debate on this amendment and to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, on 24 February 2005.

Today, I have just received an update from the National Children's Bureau on the statistics that were given earlier. The bureau still says that it is very difficult to access accurate statistical information and to understand whether the number of young people who end up in prison with special educational needs is because they have fallen out of the school system as a result of their learning difficulties not being identified. I hope that some of the amendments to the Bill will help in providing better training for teachers and support people, and in the identification of needs. I hope that my statistics will dovetail with those given by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, rather just being repetition.

The DfES tries to clarify the legal position by admitting that,

That is from the Offenders Learning Journey for juvenile offenders published by the DfES in 2004. The Youth Justice Board also says that it expects STCs and YOIs to comply with the code, but whether they do and whether the expertise of SENCOs is available to every juvenile custodial establishment is unclear. I have not given the Minister notice of that question but I hope that he may be able to touch on it when he replies. If not, perhaps he could write to me before Report.

Interestingly, on its website the Learning and Skills Council, which has responsibility for education provision in YOIs, states that:

As my noble friend Lord Listowel and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, have indicated, although the Youth Justice Board has prioritised the provision of education and training, health and mental

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health care, and support in finding accommodation post-release from custody, the way in which a secure regime works makes it difficult to offer consistent, targeted and meaningful services. Sentences tend to be short and transfers between YOIs frequent. For example, the take-up of education in different institutions ranges from 80 per cent in one to 39 per cent in another. My source is People leaving Young Offender Institutions, published by the Learning and Skills Council West Yorkshire in 2004. The same report concludes that, unsurprisingly, research shows that,

as the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, said—

I hope that the Minister will respond very positively to the amendment in his reply and that he will give serious consideration to the idea of the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, who spoke of setting up a workshop and involving the organisations that have been briefing us on this subject. He said:

I hope that we have a positive reply from the Minister.

Lord Dearing: Briefly, these amendments are among the most important on the Bill. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, on Clause 24 and the cost of our failure of these children and young people.

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