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The other aspect of the
clause that I want to consider is the business of the pupil not being
in a public place. To say that the child should be confined in a
private place is to argue that they should be in their room with their
television and Gameboy doing absolutely nothing constructive. I know
that this is how we treat prisoners these days. We think that they
should not be educated; they should just be stuck in front of the
television 23 hours a day and not be part of the real world. But if you
want to socialise a child and give the parent who has been dragged away
from work to look after their child for three or four days a real
opportunity to get the child back on the straight and narrow, you have
to ensure that they can be out doing educational things. The parent
wants to be with their child in museums, in the library and engaging in
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3.15 pm
Baroness Williams of Crosby: This group of amendments, among other things, includes reference to the decision of our Benches to oppose Clauses 96, 97, 98 and 99 standing part of the Bill. The clauses deal almost entirely with the exclusion of children, the giving of notice for excluded children, the issue of penalties for excluded children and the regulations that govern those penalties. I begin by saying that I very much appreciate and strongly support the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, who time and again in this Committee has brought an awareness of human life to bear on all kinds of legal aspects of the Bill. I want to say how much I feel that the Committee has benefited—as I have personally—from some of his remarks and insights.
I shall deal briefly with two aspects of this group of amendments concerning excluded children—by looking at the children and then at the parents, and at the things that characterise each of them. I begin by pleading with the Minister, who is an extremely conscientious and thoughtful Minister, to reconsider this part of the Bill. Anybody with experience of parents who have great difficulties holding their families together, who may have not just one child but several children, and who find it extremely difficult to cope—particularly single parents with the strains and pressures put on them—knows that such parents would find this legislation impossible to live by, however hard they tried.
I shall try to explain why I say that. I speak with some insight having myself been for some years a single parent. Of course, I was a far more advantaged single parent than most of those whom we are considering in society more generally. Also, in my children’s families, both parents have full-time jobs, which is a lesser version of the single parent family in terms of the extraordinary difficulties that will arise from trying to obey and live by the proposals in the Bill.
First
I shall say a word about children. In 2003-04, 344,510 children were
given periods of exclusion from school in England and Wales. Of those,
84 per cent were in secondary education. That tells us that the
problems that parents have with children in secondary education are
much more acute than those with children in primary education. A key
reason is that teenage children are much more likely to defy and
challenge their parents than younger children, who, by and large, can
be expected to obey them. The typical exclusion is short—over 85
per cent are for five days or fewer—which is where these clauses
bite,
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Now let us look at the parents. In a recent study, 63 per cent of parents who will be affected by the Bill said that their children had been affected by bereavements, breakdowns and problems that arose in the family therefore it was not the school but some external factor that inspired the behaviour that led to the exclusion. Any of us who are aware of the impact on a child of the loss of a beloved parent or even a grandparent, or of how children react to deep disturbances in their families—not necessarily the break-up of the family but constant quarrels and parents shouting at one another, difficult neighbours and all the rest of it—will know that that is often reflected in children’s behaviour and it may not be a lasting or deep-seated problem but an acute one at that time. Most families pass through periods of great difficulty and emotional storm in relationships. According to research for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in 1996, eight out of 10 families evicted for anti-social behaviour—a deep disturbance for children—were headed by single parents. This Committee is aware of how commonly the multiple burdens borne by a family make it almost impossible for it to sustain itself and maintain calm and good order.
The Government have rightly gone a long way to encourage single parents back into work relatively rapidly after the birth of their youngest child. That means that many parents are clinging to often ill-paid, unattractive jobs with unconcerned employers of the kind to which the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, referred. Those parents are the most likely to lose their jobs if they fail to turn up or to explain why they have not turned up. As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, if they have to respond to a notice on the same day, how do they begin to explain, even to a reasonably sympathetic employer, that they cannot come to clean the hospital ward or wash the dishes after the restaurant is closed? It is ludicrous to suppose that a parent who is already under stress as a result of an unruly child can somehow persuade an employer within a matter of hours to accept her reason for being away.
Much of this part of the Bill is simply
not reasonable. I shall give another instance. As the noble Lord, Lord
Lucas, has said, reasonable justification is defined in guidance to
local authorities and schools. That guidance will depend, to some
extent, on the local authority. But we already know that the reasonable
justification of shopping is likely to be disallowed. It is one thing
if shopping means going out to get the latest in bikinis because you
are going to Spain on holiday next week; but if shopping means that you
have run out of nappies for your younger child, that you have no milk
for your middle child, that you cannot get to the shops or that it
takes you time to get to the shops because you do not have a car, it is
absurd to suppose that in those circumstances it is not a reasonable
justification. Most of us in the Committee, especially those of us who
are parents or grandparents, are acutely aware that that is a real
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For all these reasons, I hope that the Minister will consider the points made in this short debate and bear in mind the extraordinary strains on single parents, be they mothers or fathers. Incidentally, they will be made more acute by the winding-up of the Child Support Agency, which means that in some cases we will be looking at families that have simply run out of money, and the money they are legitimately entitled to may take months to reach them now. On top of that is the pressure on single parents to go back to work. All these circumstances mean that the provision badly needs to be recast, taking into account what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said—with great respect to him, that is the bare minimum. One day’s notice to a parent that they have to be with an excluded child is an incredibly narrow period. I would have proposed three days’ notice, but since the Government say no days’ notice, then one day is not an unreasonable amount to ask for.
I plead with the Minister to look carefully at this group of amendments and at the clauses, whichplace unreasonable demands on some of the most desperately pressed of our fellow citizens.
We are not sufficiently imaginative about this group of children and their parents. The Prime Minister said that we should address not only crime but the causes of crime. Deep in the causes of crime are excluded children. They are the children who will almost certainly be the offenders of five or 10 years’ hence. We need to look more imaginatively at their plight. I ask the Minister to consider three—there may be many more—possibilities. First, how far community support officers could be brought in to assist families with secondary-age children, where the child is unwilling to accept the exclusion order and takes no notice of it. Some community support officers could be trained to deal with this situation to help the parent who is unable to cope. Incidentally, it would also be very good evidence of their inability to cope. A second area which we should certainly look at is parenting classes in dealing with difficult children, particularly teenagers.
Finally, and much more radically, one of the most distinguished chief education officers this country ever had, Sir Alec Clegg of the East Riding of Yorkshire, proposed a long time ago that many children at this age could be rescued through extra support, not only financial but emotional, involving such measures as “adoptive grandparents” and, in extreme cases, boarding provision. He said that this should be done before their almost inevitable detainment at young offenders’ institutions and prisons, where for the rest of their lives they would be an expensive problem for a community to which they could no longer contribute. I support the amendment.
Lord
Sutherland of Houndwood: I sympathise with the
amendment and the views of the two previous, eloquent speakers. For
some parents, such an order would be not only punitive but potentially
destructive and unhelpful. On the other hand, some parents would
benefit immensely, as would their children,
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I put it to the Minister that exclusion does not come unannounced. There should be some sort of trail or record to indicate those cases where parents have already paid little attention to overtures from the schools. For them it may well be the moment for firm action, but it should be possible to do otherwise for parents and families who would clearly not benefit.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: It is with some diffidence that I follow the eloquent speakers, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, who have so clearly outlined the issues for these families.
I thank the Minister for his letter in response to the points that I raised with him in writing. This is the opportunity to pay tribute to how he so carefully pays attention to issues, responds to and discusses them. Therefore, it is always with sadness that I have to disagree fundamentally with him, as I do on this issue.
I remain unconvinced by the arguments in the Minister’s letter. The families I have dealt with—and I speak from experience of working with families—are deprived and come from our poorest communities. We have had a long debate this afternoon about children with a learning disability and their families. We have looked at them with sympathy and interest and at how we might help them. Yet these are the families to whom we are being punitive in these clauses.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, when thinking of this week and what we would be doing, I was struck by how I would have looked at this situation as a social worker. If a child had been locked in a room for a week in this heat, I suspect that I would have taken out a child protection order and removed that child from the home as needing safeguarding. Those are the kind of repercussions we need to look to. These are not families with several rooms and a garden; these are families who live on the sixth floor of a tenement block of flats where people are afraid to go out at night. These are mothers who, as has been said before but I repeat, are in jobs where they do not want to explain that they have difficulties. Indeed, many of them are ashamed that they cannot cope with their children. Others have simply given up all hope of being able to cope alone with a teenager who is already taller than them. They could not lock them in a room even if they wanted to.
I realise that police swoops have gathered in children with their parents—children who should have been in school but who had been on the street. I am grateful that they were with their parents on the street rather than elsewhere. That does not make it right. As the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, said, we need to be imaginative in thinking of alternatives.
When I was a young
social worker, we had people called education welfare officers. They
seem to be a lost breed. They were social workers who worked with the
local authority and in education to ensure that, where children were
missing school or were likely to be excluded—which picks up the
point made by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland—they would
intervene
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I suspect that the Minister is under some pressure from his Government to ensure that the clauses remain in the Bill. With the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, I plead with him to think about it again, because I believe that it will punish families who are already punished time and again.
Lord Adonis: Any concerns raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, such as those that she has raised here, merit my full consideration and I give her the undertaking that she sought. I will reflect fully on what she said. However, it is my duty to set out the Government's thinking behind the amendments so that she may reflect on what we have to say and, when we come to Report, we may further the debate. Of course, I take immensely seriously what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, who also brings a great wealth of personal knowledge to this area.
I shall make three introductory remarks before I deal with the detail. First, from the remarks made by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, there may be a belief that the policy was entered into lightly and without due consideration. I should emphasise that that is absolutely not the case. Many speakers in debates on earlier clauses made reference to the report on behaviour and discipline produced by the working group chaired by Sir Alan Steer. That was a group of practitioners of great knowledge, wisdom and length of service who were expert in the area. It produced a whole set of recommendations which we are seeking to take forward. It placed great emphasis on meeting the needs of individual children and ensuring that schools do that more effectively by training, support and so on. The recommendations that it made in this area are precisely what we are taking forward inthe Bill.
Paragraph 147 of the Steer report is headed, “Making Exclusions an Effective Sanction”. It states:
- “We consider it
important to ensure that exclusions are an effective sanction and are
not seen as a ‘reward’ (time off school) but as a
punishment. We also consider it important to ensure that excluded
pupils are not wasting time and making a public nuisance of
themselves”.
With all due deference to the other views that have been expressed in this debate, we have been recently debating the issue of knives in schools. I say that because an incident is very much in my mind. The fatal stabbing of a pupil in a school in north London recently involved a pupil who had been excluded who was at the school gate. The issue of excluded pupils making, as Sir Alan Steer’s report says, a public nuisance of themselves, is real and one that we as a community must seek to address.
Sir Alan Steer’s report continues:
25 July 2006 : Column 1703
I appreciate the experience that the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, brings to this, but I grew up in a community where there were many very challenging parents who had to deal with these situations. We do not properly recognise the responsibility that parents are capable of taking on. We assume that all parents who happen to be poor and have challenging lives are not capable of taking responsibility for their children when they are excluded for one or two days. Perhaps I should stress that 50 per cent of all temporary exclusions are for one or two days, and 26 per cent are simply for one day, so I implore the Committee to get this into perspective. In the great majority of cases covered by the amendments, we are talking about exclusions for one or two days, or at the outside three days, and saying to parents that they should take proper responsibility for their children and not as a matter of course regard it as acceptable that their children are unsupervised and not subject to proper parental discipline.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: I, too, come from a tough working-class estate, and therefore absolutely agree about the many parents who come from poor and difficult backgrounds. I would not like it to be on the record that I had suggested that these parents could not take responsibility. There are, however, some parents with whom I have worked who are vulnerable. This is particularly true of single mothers who have a poor background and who have had educational difficulties themselves. All I am pleading for is help rather than punishment for that group of people.
Lord Adonis: I absolutely accept that, and I completely endorse what the noble Baroness says about the need for help and not simply punitive measures. May I, as a prelude, also point out two other important elements in the package of reforms before the Committee? A key part of this part of the Bill and the Steer report is that schools and local authorities should take responsibility for making provision for excluded pupils from the fifth day of exclusion. One of the things that I found most shocking about our existing pattern of provision when we were considering the Steer report and the measures that we should take was that, at present, local authorities and schools are responsible only from the 15th day. That means three whole weeks of exclusion from school when no public authority, be it a school or a local authority, has any responsibility whatever for making this provision.
25 July 2006 : Column 1704
Under the provisions, which I believe will come to be seen as bringing about extremely important changes, schools and local authorities—it is actually the local authorities who have the duty, but much of it will be exercised in conjunction with schools—now have responsibilities for making proper provision, including the kind of supported provision and education-related provision to which the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, referred, after the fifth day. That is a substantial improvement on the status quo. The issue that we then have to address is what we seek to do in the case of exclusions for fewer than five days.
We could simply have done nothing. That would have been perfectly possible, and we could have left the status quo to continue. We could have extended the duty of local authorities from the first or the second day; indeed, we gave that considerable consideration. Our conclusion was that there were serious practical issues in expecting schools and local authorities to make that provision for all excluded pupils, given that the numbers involved are very large; as I said, 50 per cent of all temporary exclusions are for just one or two days. We looked at this in some detail and decided on balance that the right course for those first few days of exclusion was to expect parents to make proper supervisory arrangements for pupils, but subject to the defence of reasonable justification when it came to their capacity to make that provision, which is there. I stress that the only statutory responsibility on pupils in the Bill is with regard to their appearance in public places. They have a defence of reasonable justification if it is claimed that they are not fulfilling their responsibilities.
In the letter dated 18 July on reasonable justification, which I sent to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas—I do not think I copied it to the Committee, but I am happy to do so after the sitting—we set out in some detail what we thought would and would not constitute reasonable justification. I shall quote from it because this has been raised by a number of speakers.
The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, gave the example of a parent who wanted to take their child out of doors possibly because of cramped surroundings or lack of a garden, a point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth. The offence is quite clear. The parent must ensure that their child is not present in a public place during school hours in the first five days of exclusion without a reasonable justification. The letter states:
We have prepared draft guidance to local authorities on reasonableness. The guidance explains that,- “authorities
should not conclude that some justifications are automatically
unreasonable. Some, such as a medical emergency, are probably more
straightforward: hospital records, doctor’s certificates etc.
will help in the consideration of an individual case. Other
justifications, such as the pupil needing a haircut or shopping for
clothes, are without more evidence unlikely to be reasonable, for these
activities could readily be carried out at the weekend, after school
hours or after the first few days on which the duty
applied”.
25 July 2006 : Column 1705
- “However, every
case should be considered on its merits and all relevant evidence
provided taken into
account”.
Taking account of what Sir Alan Steer said, the interpretation that we have set out in our responses to the points raised and the evident challenges that we face to see that pupils are properly provided for when they are excluded from school, the provisions in the Bill are reasonable. I hope that Members of the Committee are able to reflect on what I have said, just as I will reflect further on what the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, has said, in particular.
I made those general remarks because we were having a debate on these clauses standing part, but I shall turn now to the specific amendments. Amendment No. 240, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, would amend Clause 91 to preventthe imposition of parenting orders where the misbehaviour of the child is substantially due to actions or omissions of the school. We do not accept that schools and local authorities will apply for a parenting order in cases where parenting is not a significant factor in the behaviour of the child, or without significant efforts having been made to investigate and resolve the issues prior to any consideration of compulsory measures. The approach is set out in guidance and we will seek to further emphasise these points in due course.
Amendments Nos. 243 and 245, also tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, would limit the scope of the offence of a child being in a public place by allowing excluded pupils to be in a public place during school hours for any reason, provided that they are accompanied by their parent or another authorised adult. As I have said, we believe that such an approach would render exclusion a less effective sanction. A significant proportion of truants found on truancy sweeps are in the company of an adult, and the presence of an adult or parent will not necessarily mean that the purpose of being in a public place is appropriate.
We understand the desire to ensure that parents are able to go about their business, but nothing in the clause prevents them doing so. I stress that the clause does not require parents to supervise their children personally. The clause provides for a defence that there is “reasonable justification” for excluded children to be in a public place, which should allow for emergencies, such as either the child or the parent requiring medical attention.
Amendment No. 244
would remove the five-day limit on a parent’s duty towards their
children and enable the head teacher to have discretion to specify the
days on which the duty is to apply. I have already partially explained
the reason for the five-day limitin terms of the practicality
of imposing such an extensive additional duty on schools and local
authorities. On giving additional discretion to head teachers, it is
important that any legislation which places a duty on an individual
clearly defines the limits of that duty as well as the requirements. We
therefore do not believe that we can support this
25 July 2006 : Column 1706
Where a pupil is excluded from the school in the morning, the duty will arise in the afternoon of that day and notice will have to be given to the parent prior to the afternoon session. Of course, the notice has to be given before there is a requirement on the parents. If such notice is given, the period of parental responsibility will start as soon as the notice is given to the parent and not on the following day. However, I should stress that it is good practice at the moment when children are excluded in the course of the day for the parent to be notified immediately. Indeed, a school would not be acting responsibly if it did not seek to contact a parent or guardian at the point of exclusion if it is necessary for a pupil to be removed from school, not least because the duty of care for the school extends to ensuring that there are proper arrangements if pupils have to leave the school at very short notice. But, as I have said, here again we are subject to the defence of reasonable justification.
I hope that I have been able to set out the Government’s case on these issues and explain why we regard the duties we are imposing as a significant improvement to the current regime, which I stress again imposes no duties on anyone in respect of excluded pupils for the whole of the first 15 days of exclusion, and why we believe that these provisions—including the new duties on local authorities beyond the fifth day and those on parents not to allow their children without reasonable justification to be in public places during the first five days—represent a major step forward from the status quo.
3.45 pm
Lord Dearing: Perhaps I may go back, first, to the remarks made by my noble friend Lord Sutherland about a track to this, which is the important element. Secondly, I should have thought that in normal cases, especially when the new arrangements for joint pupil referral units come into being, this would have been a normal part of the track. It is an impossibly difficult problem, but the points he made were apt. In addition, I want to say to the Minister only that these pupils are more of a problem for their parents than they are for the school. It is impossible for parents to control them and that is why we have to get to the root of the problem through the pupil referral unit.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: I thank the Minister for what he had to say in response to this useful debate. I also pay particular credit to him for the fact that arrangements will now be in place from the fifth day. It is extremely important to ensure a continuing educational experience for young men and women who have got themselves into difficulties and have been excluded. It is a long step forward and one for which we on these Benches are very grateful.
An additional factor
in any issue surrounding reasonable justification needs to be taken
into account, and it is hoped well before the parent
25 July 2006 : Column 1707
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