B

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 3 February 2026

Debate

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Contribution

My Lords, I will speak very briefly. I strongly support Amendment 233, as I did in Committee, as well as the other amendments in this group. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, who reflected what many of us have been saying: the children’s well-being Bill has been short on well-being. Earlier—much earlier, yesterday now—we were talking about sport, culture, PSHE and citizenship education. But we need to see what does and does not work if we are going to deliver some of the changes that are clearly so urgently needed. I will refer to one survey: the National Parent Survey 2025, conducted by Parentkind, which found that unhappiness among children doubles between primary and secondary school. The parents said that the chief reason that their children were unhappy was that they were finding lessons uninteresting: the figure was 42%, which really is telling. I return to the Children’s Society’s Good Childhood Report 2025, already referred to, which of course was reporting on the opposite. One of its recommendations was: “Introduce a national wellbeing measurement programme”. It is just such an obvious thing for the Government to do.

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