Education and Inspections Bill

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. 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 their 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. 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 and secure estate and would not improve the education available to those in detention. We are taking forward a process of continued investment and reform inside the service. 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 be made, but we do not believe that simply extending legal responsibilities of local education authorities would enhance the rate of those improvements. The operators must take responsibility for that issue, and we intend to see that that happens. 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.