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Baroness Massey of Darwen: I intervene very briefly in the debate on paragraph (f), which seems to have caused many issues to arise.

My noble friend Lord Wedderburn spoke earlier about the burden on teachers of undergoing inspections. As a school governor who has just undergone a school inspection, I appreciate that the present system is indeed a burden and causes tremendous pressure on staff, governors and parents. However, we should remember that the intention of the Bill is to reduce that pressure by having far less detailed inspections. We should not forget that these inspections are about inspecting the school development plan, which will, one would hope, be developed with governors and would involve parent governors at least.

I agree with much of what my noble friend Lord Hunt said. I believe that we could become involved in some obscure detail about what we mean by learning out of school, but I shall not elaborate on that. I wonder whether we could get round the problem by simply adding to paragraph (f) a form of words as defined in the Children Act and set out in the school development plan. The Children Act is fairly precise about outcomes, and I know that those are defined later in the Bill. However, I wonder whether they should be mentioned here, which would get over the business about the physical and mental areas to be developed in pupils and might indeed include everything that we are talking about, apart from the liaison with other agencies, which is due to be debated shortly.

Lord Hanningfield: I support much of what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said. I am not so sure about the task force that he proposed. As he said, we may not be quite so keen on it. However, I certainly support all the sentiments that he expressed about school trips. I have visited literally hundreds of schools during my pleasurable career. Sometimes one meets young people who would not have had a chance to develop by seeing all kinds of things and visiting all kinds of places without their schools having organised such trips. I certainly know from my own experience that if I had not visited many places when I was at primary school, I probably would not be here, as I am sure is the case for many Members of the Committee. Actually seeing the way that things operate has contributed greatly to our personal development. I have sometimes felt very depressed about the opportunities missed by young people as a result of schools failing to organise such outings for them.

I therefore very much support what the noble Lord said about school trips. Unfortunately, because of problems in recent years, I believe that not very many trips are currently taking place, and certainly people are withdrawing from them because of the culture of our society these days. I shall be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about that in his response.
 
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I now want to speak particularly to Amendment No. 26 in this group of amendments. We discussed this kind of issue when we debated previous amendments, but this is a serious and important amendment which would add to the inspection criteria. Together with the comment made just now, it is very relevant to the Children Act. It relates to how effective the school is at enabling vulnerable children to thrive within its environment.

It is estimated that about a quarter of all school children experience difficulties at some time in their schooling. Such difficulties could arise as a result of being disabled or handicapped or from statements of special educational needs, with which we shall deal later in this legislation, but also as a result of suffering from learning and behavioural difficulties.

I am a supporter of special schools for many of these requirements, but now more are being integrated and will be integrated into mainstream schools. That is the specific reason why this amendment is important. It is crucial that every school should do everything possible to ensure that these children benefit from the same learning and physical environment as their fellow pupils.

This amendment would be used by Ofsted to gauge how successful a school was in providing such facilities and how well it had achieved the objective of integrating these children, and, most importantly, in providing them with life chances and educational opportunities. There could be further advantages. With such knowledge, the parents of such children would be better placed to make informed decisions about which school was best suited to the needs of their children.

The Earl of Listowel: I rise to speak to Amendments Nos. 28 and 30 tabled in my name. However, before doing so, I also voice my support for the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt.

Having been involved previously in organising trips for 11 and 12 year-old children, having taken them ice skating, some of them for the first time, and having seeing their delight when they began to master that skill, I believe that it would perhaps also be of great benefit to teachers to be able to take pupils on such trips and to see them having such a good time and enjoying themselves. I also took a group from White City on a dry skiing trip, which I believe was a very good experience for them.

Both of my amendments concern children in local authority care. The first refers to the educational attainment of looked-after children in the school, and the second refers to the adequacy of the plans for looked-after children in the school. The purpose of my amendments is to ensure that inspectors consider very carefully whether the guidance regarding the education of looked-after children is being properly followed and implemented in schools.

Concerns have been expressed in the Government's Social Exclusion Unit report, A Better Education for Children in Care, about the consistency with which this guidance has been implemented. That has been
 
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supported by perhaps the first piece of really thorough investigation of the education of looked-after children in schools, Taking Care of Education, by the National Children's Bureau. The senior researcher who supervised that project, Dr Isabelle Brodie, recently sent me an e-mail in which she states:

"it seems that schooling experiences continue to be variable and the ways in which existing guidance has been implemented differ considerably between LEAs and schools . . . The evidence from the first phase of our study indicated that even when PEPs were being completed, the quality of the content was often poor".

The matter needs to be addressed and this guidance is fundamental.

There are particular challenges for children in local authority care. First, they come principally from very poor backgrounds; black children are over-represented; and black boys are likely to spend far longer in care than other children.

The people who work with such children, regrettably, lack professional development. Very often they are committed people but, for instance, in 1998, 70 to 80 per cent of residential care workers had no relevant qualifications to work with children in children's homes.

As to foster carers, in France people have to undertake an obligatory 240 hours of training before they can be registered as foster carers. In France and Denmark there is a very substantial remuneration for the work they do with foster children, whereas in this country, it is gratifying to learn, the Government have recently introduced a minimum allowance to ensure that payments for clothing and food are adequate. But that is a long way from what happens on the Continent.

Such children tend to lack the advocates that other children may have. For example, many children with disabilities have middle-class parents who are very vocal in getting what is needed for them, but children in the care system tend to come from poor backgrounds and both parents may not be able to act as powerful advocates for them. The people who look after them are often not professionally trained and therefore not necessarily the best and most effective advocates for such children. So that is one issue; one challenge.

A second challenge is that many of these children arrive in schools in the middle of the school year. Sometimes the schools which have places at that time of year are those to which parents would prefer not to send their children. So, quite often, children in the care system tend to end up in poorly performing schools. That is further disadvantage for them.

Thirdly, the Government's policy on statements is, quite rightly, to try to reduce the number of statements so that the money can be used to build up the capacity of the whole school to support children with particular needs. Statements tend to go to children with clearer physical disabilities rather than to those with emotional behavioural difficulties. Of the group of children I am discussing at the moment, because of their backgrounds and histories, 40 per cent have some
 
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kind of psychiatric disorder according to the Office for National Statistics. That compares with about 10 per cent in the general population.

So these children are disadvantaged by arriving in the middle of the year, perhaps, and by missing out on getting a statement and not necessarily getting the resources they need to be supported in the school. They make up only 1 per cent of the school population and so, again, it is easy to overlook the particular needs of these children.

It is important to recognise these challenges for such children and it is also important to recognise the challenges for the teachers. As I say, because of their experience, some of these children present quite challenging behaviour. So it is vital that the right processes are in place in schools to ensure that teachers know what is going on and can respond strategically to what is happening with the children.

Many of these children benefit from smaller settings—special schools—as the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, commented earlier. We also want them to be in the mainstream if at all possible and there have been recent innovations to make it easier for these children to be in a mainstream school. I emphasise that it is a diverse group; some children are very academically inclined and do very well, but others have more difficulties.

Perhaps I may briefly give an example from my own experience of working with eight and nine year-olds this summer. Anne Longfield, the chief executive of 4Children—formerly Kids' Club Network—kindly arranged for me to have some practice work with these children in north London. On the third day, the Wednesday morning, I was walking with the senior worker and one of the children, a nine year-old. We had been having some problems with the child, who had difficulties relating to the other children and with his behaviour. As we walked along he said, "Well, I have started my new parents now"—and that is how we learnt that this child had just moved from the care system and become adopted. It would have been extremely helpful if we had known that at the beginning of the week. Looking back on it, there are a number of things that we could have done that would have helped.

I was very pleased that we were able to do some good work with this child on the Thursday. Returning from a trip to go canoeing with the group, in the van back he had a good, long conversation with an eight year-old girl. She had been to Butlin's many times and he was going with his new adopted parents to Butlin's for the first time. So she was very happy to talk about her visits to Butlin's and he was very interested to learn what to expect when he got there. This was all mediated by a worker. It is an example of what can be done but it is helpful to have all the information when one tries to do that kind of work.

There is also the issue of confidentiality. For many of these children who are taken into care, their experience of the adult world has not been a positive
 
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one. Many express strongly the feeling that schools should not know anything about their backgrounds; that this should be kept in confidence. But they also say that they would like their experience to be acknowledged to some degree in some way. So there is a certain tension there. Those who have looked carefully at the issue think that such information needs to be shared, but I emphasise that the processes behind sharing that information have to be absolutely top notch.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, the experience of being in school can be a tremendously positive one for any of us, but for children who are experiencing a great deal of chaos in their home lives and a great deal of instability it is especially vital. The programme of the noble Lord, Lord Winston, I believe, bore that out. I should also emphasise, as I have found myself with a particular teacher, that a teacher who speaks to the child and has a good relationship with the child can raise that child's self-esteem and inspire the child to be involved with education. Again, Dr Brodie refers to this. Young people themselves report that teachers can play an extremely supportive role in their lives.

Perhaps my amendments are not the right instrument to ensure that this happens but the point I am trying to reach—and this should be on the face of the Bill—is that there is a real motor here to ensure that inspectors very carefully check procedures; check that there is a senior designated teacher in the school, who is given the time to liaise with local authorities; and check that personal education plans are not merely tick-box exercises and are continually up-dated.

This is a real opportunity to improve the educational experience of these children. I look forward to the Minister's response.

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