My Lords, I welcome this Bill and its direction of travel.
I will raise four matters today. I turn first to the adverse effect on the mental health of children and young people of the disruption to education caused by the pandemic. In this I pay tribute to the important contribution of my noble friend Lord Altrincham. I am grateful to Barnardo’s for its briefing. Barnardo’s conducts quarterly surveys of front-line workers, and these have shown a steady increase in concerns about the deteriorating mental health of the children with whom it works. In January this year, 76% of Barnardo’s
front-line workers were supporting children who had not re-engaged in school. It identified unmet mental health and well-being needs as a primary reason for this. Only 39% of children and young people with diagnosable mental health conditions were being treated through NHS-commissioned community services in the year 2020-21. Supporting mental health in schools is critical to educational attainment. It is good news that the Government are committed to improving mental health support through the rollout of mental health support teams but it seems that, under current plans, only 36% of learners in England will be able to access such a team in their school by 2023. Can we do more? This is the opportunity.
This leads on to school absences. In March this year the Children’s Commissioner estimated that, in the last autumn term, 1.7 million children were persistently absent and 124,000 were missing over 50% of sessions. I am pleased that this Bill will ensure that schools publish a clear attendance policy. Better attendance will also be helped by addressing unmet mental health and well-being needs. This strengthens my plea for mental health support teams to be expanded.
Now I turn to bullying, which is also highly relevant to attainment and attendance. Reports in the Times have raised an important matter. A sixth form girl spoke at a school meeting discussing gender issues. She appears to have asserted that women are defined by their biological sex, not self-identified gender. For this, it seems, she was abused as a transphobe. In parenthesis I add that it is clear that identity issues are now prevalent in a lot of schools and must be difficult for teachers to manage—and we have already heard something about that. Schools will need policy help and advice from those experienced in this, and I ask the Minister to consider that.
Although in this case the school appears initially to have supported this sixth-form girl, later on that support was withdrawn. The girl was told she would have to work in the library if she said anything “provocative” in lessons—in other words, anything that other people did not agree with. In due course she could not face that; she left the school last December. I am gratified that the Times reported that the Secretary of State called the incident “hugely concerning” and said:
“Schools have a responsibility to protect that student.”
If open discussion is not adequately protected, this Bill is an opportunity to introduce any necessary amendments to ensure safeguarding or, if there are existing powers, to lay appropriate regulations. I invite the Minister to review that.
Finally, I read that the Scottish Government plan to remove the current requirements for a gender recognition certificate to be granted. It seems that, in future, anyone ordinarily resident in Scotland over the age of 16 will be able, without the need for any diagnosis or medical evidence, to apply to change their registered sex and achieve this in as little as six months.
This could be important to English schools for two reasons. First, a person of male sex might seek to rely on such an ill-founded certificate without any medical backing or any physical changes to use school facilities intended for women and children—by which I mean girls. Secondly, depending on how it is interpreted,
such legislation might enable an ill-motivated person—I stress, an ill-motivated person—who has, without physical change, changed their registered sex in Scotland, and hence their identity, to later revert to their original sex under yet another new name by adopting the same procedure, with no checks. This will pose difficulties for DBS and other record checks for schools and other establishments where checks are required, because identity will have changed.
For these two reasons, I seek assurance that the United Kingdom Government will not agree to recognising such certificates elsewhere in the United Kingdom, outside Scotland, and will look carefully at the measures necessary to ensure that our children and young persons in schools are safeguarded in these respects.
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