Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I hope that on two of the three points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, I can give her complete satisfaction and that, on the third, I can satisfy her that our approach is appropriate. She asked whether the designated person with responsibility for promoting the educational achievements of looked-after children would be a teacher. It is our firm intention that that person should be a teacher. We intend to achieve that by regulations under Clause 17(3). She also asked whether the training would be for real. Clause 17(2) introduces a strong legal requirement that the governing body, "““must ensure that the designated person undertakes appropriate training””." That is as strong as it gets in terms of new legislative requirements. I can assure the noble Baroness that this will be underpinned by guidance to spell out what it should mean in practice. For example, we will look at whether there should be accredited national training, which is what we have done in the case of special educational needs co-ordinators where we are improving the national training requirements following the Education and Inspections Act 2006.