Contribution
My Lords, I start on this group of amendments by declaring an interest as a board member of the Education Authority in Northern Ireland, which is responsible for around 90% of education spend in Northern Ireland and, most pertinently as regards these amendments, has direct responsibility for all special educational needs education there.
I would be broadly in favour of all these amendments. I had one caveat as regards Amendment 460, but to some extent the noble Lord, Lord Storey—I am sure that he will be pleased to hear—allayed some of my concerns during his opening remarks. These amendments are important because they highlight the issue of the attainment gap in their different ways. Across different jurisdictions, while there may be some slight degree of variation in which groups have particular issues around attainment gaps and the extent of those gaps, we know that issues around educational underachievement and attainment gaps are universal in whatever part of the United Kingdom and, indeed, internationally. Three of the areas that seem to be particularly true in all jurisdictions are around children of socioeconomic disadvantage, children of prisoners and SEND children, so these amendments are apposite.
Given that challenge, whenever I was a Minister in Northern Ireland I saw one of my key priorities as tackling educational underachievement, ensuring that we could take whatever steps we could in a strategic manner to address the attainment gap. I established an expert panel to draw up a report on the issue—very much as a template, if you like, for some of the proposals put forward today. That panel was drawn not simply on the basis of ensuring that it had the right mix of a cross-community element and those drawn from educational sectors; it is particularly pertinent to the proposals in front of us today that, whether on a single report or a royal commission, we need to draw from a range of expertise. It was critical that we had people who came from an educational academic background, those who were involved with education from a community background and those who had the direct experience of leadership within schools. It was only with that mix of skills that the best report could be produced. I commend the efforts of that panel in Northern Ireland, which produced a report called A Fair Start under the great leadership of Dr Noel Purdy.
A lot of the conclusions reached in that report will not surprise the Committee. One of the major lessons that we face with any of these reports is that there is not a single solution that then closes the attainment gap. It is about a cocktail of measures, including ensuring that we have the right early intervention. It is also important that, whatever is developed at a strategic level by government, if we try to do it on a top-down basis and impose it on people, it will have a limited success. You have to get buy-in from the grassroots up as well.
Also of particular relevance was one of the conclusions of that report, which touches on Amendment 460: the advantage of small-group tutoring. It recommended an expansion of nurture units in Northern Ireland, and additional finance was able to be put into those. The one caveat I had was that, if this were to be done on a universal basis, an expansion of that nature could be very costly and difficult to achieve in the short term. However, I think that the model put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Storey—which in many ways was to look at a replica of, or something at least drawn from, the national tutoring programme at the time of Covid—is a good example. In Northern Ireland, we had our version of that called Engage, which was able to be set up and was very successful. If that is the type of model we are looking at, the Government would be wise to look at replicating that on a long-term basis.
I will touch on some of the specifics of the other amendments. It is right that, for a couple of major reasons, we focus on attainment issues for children of prisoners. First, on the basic principle, while I appreciate that the previous speaker made reference to Holloway, there is the old saying that the sins of the father should not be inflicted on the children—we know that, with a few exceptions, most prisoners are males, so that is perhaps particularly apposite. Ensuring that children are not punished in a system for something that is no fault of their own is important from an educational point of view.
From a societal point of view, we often talk about investing in society to save money in the long run. An issue that we will face within various families is a cycle of social problems that goes from generation to generation. If, through education being the great liberator, we can ensure that there is positive support for the children of prisoners then that is one important area where we can help to break that kind of cycle.