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First, I commend warmly to the Minister the words “suitable education” in Amendments Nos. 24 and 26A. Any old education will not do, especially for those whom education has failed. It must be apt for these young people, or it will fail again.
Secondly, I do not know exactly what the intentions for the amendments’ delivery are, but I see the local authority being the champion of these young people’s educational interests, with the power and duty to ensure that they get the suitable education they need. It is getting it that matters. They need a champion, which has been lacking, to see that they do.
Baroness Warnock: I endorse everything that my noble friend has just said. I support these amendments; they are some of the most important amendments we shall discuss during the passage of the Bill.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood: I also support the intention behind these amendments. I shall not attempt to repeat the eloquence of so many speakers around the Floor. The Committee clearly regards this as important. I simply ask a question of logic in supporting, for example, Amendment No. 24. Clause 4—which I warmly welcome—imposes a duty to identify children not receiving an education. The logic is that, if we were to go to the primary care trust and give a duty to identify ill people, we stop there. The point is that they should be treated and supported
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Lord Adonis: Clause 4 imposes an important new duty on local authorities to identify children missing from education. The various amendments seek to amend that new duty in different ways, introducing new provisions for children in custody or otherwise in detention.
Amendment No. 23, in the name of my noble friend Lord Judd, extends the duty on local education authorities to identify children on a school roll who are not receiving a suitable education, as well as those who are missing education altogether. We completely endorse and support my noble friend’s concern on this issue, but the amendment is unnecessary. Schools are already under a statutory duty to monitor attendance through the daily attendance register and can access support from the LEA education welfare service when there are attendance issues.
Moreover—and this goes to the heart of the duties on local authorities referred to by my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland—schools are also already required by the Education (Pupil Registration Regulations) 1995 to notify local education authorities of the name and address of every registered pupil of compulsory school age who fails to attend regularly or is absent from school for a continuous period of more than 10 school days. It is then the duty of the local education authority to take appropriate action. The issue of precisely what they do must of course be kept under review and, I am sure, can be improved in some cases. Absence of duty is not the issue, however. Equally, the duty proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, in Amendment No. 24, which requires local education authorities to provide suitable education for children identified as not registered at a school and not receiving suitable education otherwise than in a school, already exists under Section 19(1) of the Education Act 1996.
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Amendments Nos. 25 and 26, which were tabled by my noble friend Lord Judd and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, concern children detained under a court order but not receiving suitable education. I endorse everything that the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Williams, said so movingly about the fateful path leading from failure to engage properly with the opportunities of school, and to socialise properly in that context, to the problems of youth offending and the huge cost to those individuals, their families and society of them developing in that way. We regard the needs of that group of extremely vulnerable children, most of whom have had a very poor experience of education, as a key priority. We also regard the needs of Traveller children, who were referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, as a key priority; I will write to the noble Earl with the figures that he was seeking.
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However, it is not the case that we have been inactive in this area. The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, referred to the Youth Justice Board, which took responsibility for overseeing the youth justice system in England and Wales in 2000. Funding of prison education at large, including youth offender education, moved to my department then, and we have seen much closer working between the Home Office and my department as a result. My honourable friend Phil Hope is the Minister directly responsible for these issues, and most people in the field regard the fact that the education department has direct responsibility for educational provision and outcomes in the Prison Service as a significant improvement.
The responsibilities of the Youth Justice Board include responsibility for the funding of education and training in the three types of secure institutions for young people aged under 18. There has been significant improvement in this regard. During the 2004-05 academic year, the average number of hours of education delivered was 24.4 within young offender institutions—a three-fold increase from only seven hours in 2002. In no small part, that is due to a quadrupling of spending on young offender education from some £5 million to £20 million between 2002 and 2005. While I would be the first to accept that there is still more to do, I believe that we have taken significant steps forward and need to keep up the pace of improvements. Further improvements carried out by the Youth Justice Board in addition to increasing the number of hours of suitable education and training include major capital investment, a national audit of need, the introduction of individualised literacy and numeracy programmes and the employment of a large number of extra learning support assistants and additional specialist expertise.
We accept that there is more to be done. Earlier this year, we published the Green Paper Reducing Re-Offending through Skills and Employment, which pledged us to take further steps. One of them was the establishment of a joint policy team involving my department, the Home Office and the Youth Justice Board, on school-aged offender education. That team will consult relevant partners and agencies to develop proposals and I give an undertaking to the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy de Knayth, that there will be consultation with those in the sector. I am happy for that consultation to include noble Lords, and I will honour the commitment made by my noble friend Lord Filkin on that. We will produce further proposals later in the year.
However, we do not see Amendment No. 26 as an effective way forward, although we wish to keep this matter under review as we seek to improve services for young people in custody. Amendment No. 26 would simply apply the existing duties conferred on the Secretary of State, LEAs and parents under the Education Act 1996 to anyone detained under the order of a court and we believe that it would cut across the detailed framework of duties and powers already in place, which we have enhanced, to implement and regulate the education that is provided to children detained under a court order. Simply inserting the new clause proposed here would create significant legal confusion about who is responsible for what inside the prison
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Amendment No. 25, which was tabled by my noble friend Lord Judd, raises two issues. The first is whether young people in custody are receiving a suitable education; I have already set out the steps that we have taken on that. The second is whether to place the duty of identifying children who are not registered pupils at a school and not otherwise receiving suitable education on the LEA within whose area the custodial establishment is located. One problem with that is that that local authority will seldom be the local authority to which the young person will return after he is released from his custodial sentence.
We completely understand the issue that my noble friend raised about the immediate continuity of education after the completion of a sentence. It is precisely to meet that concern that today we have laid regulations that will require schools to keep young offenders who enter custody on the school roll for a minimum of four months. At present, a child can be removed from the roll after four weeks. The new regulations will allow removal from the school roll only where the proprietor of the school does not have reasonable grounds to believe that the pupil will return to the school at the end of the custodial sentence. These changes will apply in England from 1 September and will mean that many more young people are released from custody directly into a school place that is already theirs so that they can experience continuity of education.
Amendment No. 26A is, the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, a probing amendment on immigration removal centres. Three immigration removal centres hold families with children, two hold families for a maximum of 72 hours and one is located in Scotland, to which this Bill does not extend except for technical purposes.
The immigration removal centre at Yarl's Wood, to which the noble Baroness made specific reference, may, where necessary in individual cases, hold families with children for longer than 72 hours, although most will still be held for just a few days prior to removal from the UK. The figures that I have relate to the last two quarters in 2005 and show that nearly 70 per cent of the 995 children who left detention did so in seven days or fewer from immigration removal centres; a further 11 per cent left within eight to 15 days; a further 14 per cent left within 15 to 29 days; and 5 per cent left within one to two months. We know of only one or two cases where detention lasted for as long as three to four months. I think that those figures put the issue in perspective. That is not to say that we do not recognise our substantial obligations for the education of those held at Yarl’s Wood.
As part of the requirement placed on the operator, the centre provides education based on the national curriculum and tailored to the needs of individual children. Ofsted is part of the inspection team that covers Yarl’s Wood. The noble Baroness referred to the recent inspection report on Yarl’s Wood. This inspection report identified areas for significant improvement, and we expect those improvements to
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I hope that I have been able to give a full response on the issues raised. Work is ongoing on the further steps that we will take to improve education for young people in custody, and we are anxious to continue engaging with noble Lords on that.
Lord Lucas: I have a couple of questions arising from what the noble Lord has said. He referred to Section 19(1) of the Education Act 1996, which allows part-time education. Clause 94 of the Bill imposes an obligation for full-time education on the local education authorities for excluded pupils. Therefore, to match that, should we not amend Section 19(1) so that for the other children, about whom we care presumably just as much, the obligation is there for full-time education?
Secondly, the noble Lord referred to this strange diaspora of children who are in prison or being educated in this or that way by local education authorities or otherwise. Can we have some form of reporting system on the performance of these children about whether the various obligations are being met, so that we can see where the problems lie, how big they are and what we must do about them? I am not aware that the educational performance of children in prison is published. Surely it should be. The educational performance of children in PRUs tends to be pretty patchily reported. Especially as these are children about whom we care deeply—because if we do not look after them well, they will have a great deal of trouble in their lives and we will have a great deal of trouble as a result—we should have a better reporting system than we do.
Lord Adonis: It may be helpful if I respond to that specific point. Pupil referral units are inspected by Ofsted, but I shall write to the noble Lord and copy to the Committee the set of measures that we have in place for tracking performance of the pupils whom he mentioned. Section 19(1) of the Education Act 1996, which I have in front of me, states:
“Each local education authority shall make arrangements for the provision of suitable full-time or part-time education at school or otherwise than at school for those children of compulsory school age who, by reason of illness, exclusion from school or otherwise, may not for any period receive suitable education, unless such arrangements are made for them”.
I am happy to take further legal advice, but I take that reference to “suitable full-time or part-time” as meaning that, where suitable education is full time, that should be the arrangement that the local education authority makes.
Lord Lucas: That has certainly not been the case in the past. Local education authorities have used that section to provide part-time education for excluded pupils, which I think is why Clause 94 is in the Bill, making full-time provision compulsory. I do not share the Minister's optimism about how that section has been read in the past.
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Lord Northbourne: I share the view that the issues raised in this debate are hugely important, but I shall not delay the Committee. It seems unrealistic simply to throw more and more responsibilities at the local authority. In my experience, there is no evidence that all local authorities either have been able to or have in fact honoured their obligations in any of these respects, especially in relation to excluded children.
More important, I did not hear the word “family” mentioned once. Even when children are very detached and damaged, they have families and they work in a context—they are not individuals floating around. Part of the rethink that we should be having about the needs of those children is how we can integrate them either back into their own family group or, if their family group is totally unsuitable, into some other group so that they can have a feeling of belonging.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: I shall pursue two questions with the Minister very quickly. First, he gave very encouraging figures about the Youth Justice Board and the big increase in the amount of education. I accept that, but can he say whether what is sometimes called “churning”—moving people from one institution to another—has had any substantial effect during the past year or two on the continuity of education in youth offender institutions? A difficult problem has arisen from looking for additional places and beds, which tends to disrupt the educational flow. The other question is whether, given the figure of £34,000-plus that I gave, as against £3,800, he has considered the possibly radical thought that some young people coming out of young offender institutions might go to boarding school.
Lord Adonis: We are indeed considering placing vulnerable children in boarding schools where that would be appropriate and where boarding schools feel that they can take responsibility for them. I agree with the noble Baroness; boarding schools could have a role to play. Indeed, if there was better engagement with the boarding sector, one would hope that some of those children would not end up in the youth offender institutions in the first place. We are considering promoting more boarding education for children in care or at risk. I will write to the noble Baroness on her first point.
Baroness Walmsley: Before the noble Lord, Lord Judd, withdraws his amendment—or perhaps he will not—I will respond on my amendments and thank noble Lords who have supported them. On Amendment No. 24, the Minister said that local authorities already have such a duty. Then why is it not happening? Why are there children who are not receiving suitable education? Perhaps local authorities need reminding.
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On Amendment No. 26, I, too, pay tribute to the work of the Youth Justice Board in delivering improvements, but clearly it is not enough. There are three very good reasons for putting the duty on the
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Secondly, the local authorities have a great deal of expertise with children with special educational needs, on which they can call. There are dozens of SENCOs in local authorities whose expertise could be brought to bear. It is quite clear that those who currently have the contracts for delivering education in prisons do not have that range of expertise.
Finally, it is an anomaly that the National Health Service can have responsibility for the health of all prisoners, without any difficulty with legal clarity, yet the DfES and the local authority cannot have the same responsibility. The Minister said that the legal duty as to who is responsible for the education would be in difficulty, but it does not seem to be a problem for the NHS. It has the responsibility for health, and the prison authorities have the responsibility for security. The split would be exactly the same. I really do not see the difficulty with it.
On Amendment No. 26A, the Minister still seems to stick to his figures and to think that the problem is very minor. I did not burden the House with the figures from Save the Children, but it believes that more than 2,000 children are detained each year. The detention period for those interviewed as part of its report ranged from seven days to 268 days, and half of all the families interviewed were detained for more than 28 days. Some families were detained significantly in excess of that. There is clearly some dispute about the magnitude of the problem, but that disagreement does not detract from the current situation in which the education of these children is being severely disrupted. They should have the same right to an education in the mainstream that any other child has while they are in this country.
The Earl of Listowel: I shall not detain the Committee for more than a moment, but I had not realised that the Government had quadrupled their investment in the education of children in the juvenile estate between 2002 and 2005. I warmly welcome the commitment shown by the Government to these children. I also welcome what the Minister has said about the continuity of education and the fact that school rolls will be kept open for four months. That is an important step forward, which I welcome. It was news to me.
Lord Dearing: I shall ask a very brief question. Does Ofsted inspect the quality of the provision of education to young people in detention centres and prisons? Who is their champion?
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Lord Judd: There will be general agreement that this has been a particularly good debate. I would like to express my own appreciation for the contributions made by those who have spoken to amendments that are kindred to my own. I hope that the Minister has listened—I am sure he will have done—not only to the force with which the arguments were put but to the strength of them. I shall make a couple of comments.
The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, mentioned immigration, and I am very glad that she did. It would be obscene if we, as a country that regards itself as civilised, were to deprive children who were suffering all the trauma, uncertainty and upset of the immigration processes, whatever the outcome at the end, of the right to education. These children have not generated the situation in which they find themselves. We as a responsible nation must fulfil our obligation to support them in every way possible.
I should like to make one further point which I hope will not be regarded as over the top, because I believe it to be highly relevant. We are so often in our deliberations in this House concerned with security and the battle for hearts and minds. How can it be helping in the battle for hearts and minds to send away children who find themselves in a process of that kind, having, on top of everything else, not had the opportunity of any kind of educational support? Is that winning the battle for hearts and minds? Or is it indirectly assisting in the process of alienation on which the extremists play?
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has again spoken—and again particularly powerfully—on rehabilitation. I think that the whole House respects his direct experience, commitment and genuine belief in these matters. I do not understand how it makes sense in any of our penal policy to punish without a commitment to rehabilitation. I of course accept completely the need for punishment, but the challenge is rehabilitation and how we turn people who have offended, wherever possible, into decent, constructive, productive members of society. That is the big challenge. Locking them up is the easy part. The challenge is to win them back to a constructive part in society. That is a challenge to all that we say is the basis of our civilisation, but it is also economic sense. As has been said in this debate, if we do not do that we are piling up trouble and extra expense for ourselves.
I was very struck by what my noble friend said on the measures that he has just put in place on assisting with continuity of education in this context. We will all be watching with great interest and it was extremely encouraging to hear that. But—I hope that he will forgive my saying so—I do not think that he dealt fully, in his otherwise helpful reply, with my amendment, which was specifically targeted at those who are informally excluded. I believe that the informally excluded is the real issue. Whatever our intentions, I do not think that it is a problem which will easily go away. It would be helpful therefore to give the local education authority a direct responsibility for ensuring that it is tackled.
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