New Clause 2
Education and Inspections Bill
5:45 pm

Annette Brooke (Children & the Family, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; Mid Dorset and North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Christopher Chope (Christchurch, Conservative)

With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 3—Education of children in immigration removal centres—

‘When a local authority has within its boundaries an Immigration Removal Centre it shall ensure that all duties and powers pertaining to education of children are applied to any child resident within an Immigration Removal Centre.'.

Annette Brooke (Children & the Family, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; Mid Dorset and North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

When we discuss children in custody or asylum seekers’ children in detention centres, we talk much about “Every Child Matters”. I often feel, however, that those two groups are excluded in many ways, so the two new clauses are important in the context of education. There have been had long debates and, indeed, High Court cases about the position of social services as regards children in custody, but education is the topic today.

I turn first to new clause 2. On 31 March 2005, 2,204 15 to 17-year-olds were in prison and 234 12 to 15-year-olds were in privately run secure training centres. As we are all aware, many children in prison have a background of severe social exclusion. Of those of school age in custody, more than a quarter have the literacy and numeracy levels of an average 7-year-old. Sadly, more than half of those under-18-year-olds have a history of care into the bargain. In young offenders institutions, just under a third of the population has basic skills deficits, while the reading ability of 48 per cent. of the overall prison population is at or below level 1, compared with 21 to 23 per cent. in the general population.

Education is important because it gives us the opportunity to put an end to that revolving door syndrome. Otherwise, the problem builds up, with that  basic lack of literacy and numeracy still showing itself in the adult population and making some contribution to reoffending.

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, Conservative)

I am listening with interest to hon. Lady and I am sure that I will agree with almost everything that she says. What is interesting and alarming, however, is that 23 per cent. of the general population are not at the required reading level. That is the real figure to worry about. Of that group, a large chunk will go on to commit crime. Although I am unlikely to disagree with the hon. Lady’s conclusions, should we not focus on dealing with that 23 per cent. illiteracy rate?

Annette Brooke (Children & the Family, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; Mid Dorset and North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

I am concerned about the education of all children and all adults. Obviously, I am concentrating on new clauses, because by not covering education for children in custody the Bill has a deficit.

New clause 2 seeks to address that deficit. I understand that section 562 of the Education Act 1996 effectively permits the Secretary of State, local education authorities and parents to opt out of any obligations under the Act if the child is detained by the order of a court, although the LEA may make arrangements for such a child to receive the benefit of educational facilities provided by it.

I do not apologise for referring yet again to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. The UK’s second report to that Committee said that it was particularly concerned that children deprived of their liberty in prisons and juvenile detention centres do not have a statutory right to education, that their education is not the responsibility of the Departments responsible for education, and that they do not have support for special educational needs. I am sure that Opposition Members will be particularly supportive of this special educational needs aspect, which is heightened, yet again, among children in custody.

Prison Service order 4950 stipulates the requirements for prisons holding children. It specifies that education should be provided for all young people under school-leaving age for at least 15 hours a week but the remaining 15 hours of constructive activity that are not spent in education must be spent in accredited educative activities, which may include work-based learning. That is in line with the requirements of the Youth Justice Board with whose work much progress has been made. However, according to the chief inspector of prisons, in 2004, no juvenile establishment had yet succeeded in meeting the target of 30 hours per week in education and training.

I have further concerns relating to an answer provided by the Under-Secretary to a parliamentary question in July last year. It did not answer the question but it provided me with some useful material for today, for which I am grateful. A table shows the weekly average number of hours of education and physical education undertaken by 15, 16 and 17-year-olds at each young offender and juvenile establishment in 2004-05. On average, each institution provided just eight hours of education per child per week. If every child matters, surely we must do something about that. The situation needs to be addressed and it should not be omitted from the Bill.

A further point, raised by youth offender teams, is that when a child or young person is released from custody, it is difficult to reintegrate them into full-time education. It might take time to find a placement and there are gaps, all of which adds to the severe problems. Surely education in a secure estate should not mirror that provided in the main community; it should be better than that. Children in a secure estate often have been failed by mainstream education, and custody presents a valuable opportunity to make up some of those deficits. Why do we not make them up? I hope that we can establish a statutory right to education for children in custody and feel that we have made a great contribution, perhaps not in terms of large numbers but in the impact on the individuals involved and on society.

New clause 3 is, in many ways, designed to probe whether the duties placed on local authorities under the 1996 Act apply to children in immigration removal centres. This is a difficult issue, but what emerges time and again from inspections of such centres is that the provision for children’s education is unsatisfactory and depressing. A March 2005 report on Yarl’s Wood said:

“Accommodation for older children was poor, and the broad range of ages and abilities prevented effective work. There was an over-reliance on agency staff, insufficient resources and no system to measure the quality, rather than the amount, of teaching. Three children had been removed from school just before GCSE examinations, to the great detriment of their education.”

A report from Amnesty International has a case study repeating that important point. Jean

“was kept in detention with her son pending the granting of a travel document by the authorities of her country. Her son, who is of school age, received little education at Oakington. He had been assessed by an educational psychologist prior to being taken into detention after concern had been raised about his disturbed behaviour at school. No further steps had been taken because he stopped attending school as a result of being taken into detention.”

As a consequence, we have stoked up a large range of problems for that child.

The Amnesty International report also made the point that during detention children have a right to education, which should optimally take place outside the detention premises to facilitate the continuation of their education upon release. A September 2004-August 2005 report from Her Majesty’s inspector of prisons reiterates that point:

“M, aged 16, had been at his local college since 2001.”

At the time of his detention, he was

“due to sit his GCSE examinations imminently. Both he and his 13-year-old brother, removed from the school at the same time, had excellent records of school performance, attendance and behaviour.”

The college believed that his education

“had been seriously affected by his removal at such a critical stage.”

I am pleased to say that the family was released from detention after inspectors raised the case, but obviously inspectors cannot go in day in and day out.

That report makes the point that

“the quality and range of education provision for children also caused concern. Resources to support teaching were generally inadequate.”

The same point comes up over and over, but what are we doing to improve things? Teachers work hard to deal with groups that are very mixed in language needs, age and ability. In one establishment, one small, cramped classroom accommodated 12 young people aged between 5 and 17. That is what we currently provide. Save the Children’s report makes a further relevant point that we encounter in surgery cases: children whose age is disputed are treated as adults. That has a knock-on effect for education.

I have spoken at great length. I normally speak briefly in Committee, but these are such important and serious points. Both groups are in danger of being overlooked. There is evidence that education is not being provided at an adequate level, let alone a compensating one. We should be compensating in both cases. Will the Minister give some assurances that the right of children in immigration removal centres to education is safeguarded by their inclusion in the relevant local authority duties? That is important. If not, what steps could be taken?

John Hayes (Shadow Minister (Vocational Education), Education; South Holland and The Deepings, Conservative)

I do not intend to detain the Committee by speaking at length. The hon. Lady makes an interesting and powerful point reflecting the argument put forward by the Children’s Society, which has made clear its concerns about children detained under court orders. The hon. Lady will know that local authorities are able to make provisions for educational provision for such children. I hope that the Under-Secretary will tell us of their record for doing so—it would be useful if the Committee had some feel for how local authorities typically behave in that regard—and perhaps give some examples of best practice.

Secondly, the hon. Lady and I—and, incidentally, the Under-Secretary—are concerned about the education of young people in prisons. The Government recently reviewed their position on prison education. The Under-Secretary and I have discussed the matter at length, and he will know that there is a broad measure of consensus between the Government and the Opposition on the need to ensure that those who are detained receive the opportunity to be trained and educated to best effect.

The Under-Secretary will know that one of the big weaknesses of the existing system—the hon. Lady did not mention it, but I know that the omission was not deliberate—is inconsistency in provision. From time to time people are moved around, and having started education of one kind or another, they have it broken or disturbed by such moves. I speak of people in custody, so there may be considerable disruption both in the course that they are studying and in the person who is teaching them. I know that the Under-Secretary is aware of this, and I would be interested to hear his views, particularly in respect of the very young to whom the hon. Lady referred.

I would also be interested to hear the Under-Secretary’s perspective on the amount of time for which young people in custody are involved in education and training. Evidence highlighted by the Children’s Society and others suggests that young  people in custody receive quite a small amount of education during the day or the week. I wonder why that is and what the Government intend to do about it.

As for new clause 3, to which the hon. Lady also referred, I fully appreciate that the Government need to retain the power to detain; it is an essential part of protecting the integrity of and public confidence in the immigration controls, which we all believe should be in place. However, if children are involved it is important that their welfare is high on our list of concerns. I want assurances—I am sure that the Under-Secretary will have no trouble in offering them—that all staff working with such children have undergone enhanced criminal record bureau checks, that any other staff are subject to the appropriate checks, and that full training is available to those involved with children and families.

We need a robust system for monitoring the process and for regularly checking whether the circumstances that apply in detention facilities serve such children adequately. I appreciate that the purpose of the centres is short term; we must therefore ensure that there is no perverse incentive for their being anything other than that. We should not put in place things that provide an excuse or an incentive for keeping people for longer than desirable in circumstances that are not ideal. I imagine that there is a fair amount of agreement on that point between the Government and the Opposition.

With what I hope have been helpful questions, and knowing from my discussions with the Under-Secretary that he takes the matter seriously, I welcome the amendments as an opportunity to explore whether the Government have got their act together. The Under-Secretary would not expect anything less, and the Opposition would not let him off the hook if the Government had not got their act together.

Sarah Teather (Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Education & Skills; Brent East, Liberal Democrat)

I shall not detain the Committee long, but merely put on the record my support for the two new clauses moved ably by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole. Many Committee members will have met similar examples of young people who have moved from care to prison and back to care again, with a consequential disruption to their education. That has a lasting impact on their future life opportunities, but is a notable deficit in the Bill. Opposition Members take that issue seriously and are likely to push the new clause to a vote, although I shall listen to the Minister’s response to the points raised by my hon. Friend.

With respect to new clause 3, I meet many families in my constituency who have to wait for lengthy periods to hear from the Home Office about their asylum cases, and consequentially may have to spend time in detention. Often, those families, and in particular the young people, already have serious psychological barriers preventing them from accessing fully the opportunities that education may provide. Many of them have travelled across the world, and some may have travelled independently of their family—I have met many young people, some aged 11 or 12, who have travelled independently, and whose family may arrive at a later date.

The distress caused to, and the long-term impact on, those young people, who may have lost family  members in their country of origin or lost touch with family in the United Kingdom, is enormous. The young people who manage to overcome such barriers and succeed in the school system often have displayed huge courage. I have met many such individuals at schools in my constituency. Of course, they face barriers relating to the English language, as well as disrupted housing provision, particularly if they have moved between housing provided by the National Asylum Support Service, detention and, possibly, private accommodation. It is tremendously difficult for those young people to keep up with their education, so it is particularly important that when they are in detention, education provision is thorough and seeks to meet their needs, which may be considerable because of their difficulties.

In particular, I echo the point that my hon. Friend made about age disputes. It is common for young people, particularly those who have travelled alone, to find that their age is disputed by the Home Office when it is considering their asylum case. That leads to extensive problems in their ability to access education which may have a considerable and long-lasting impact, so that it becomes difficult for them to overcome those problems, even if they eventually win that dispute.

Phil Hope (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Education and Skills; Corby, Labour)

The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole spoke movingly. Clearly, she is committed to the vulnerable and challenging groups of young people in the systems described in new clauses 2 and 3. That was reflected in the contributions from the hon. Members for South Holland and The Deepings and for Brent, East.

The Government have sympathy with the new clauses. I shall speak first to new clause 2. Each year, an estimated 70,000 school-age offenders enter the youth justice system. I think that we all agree that keeping those young people engaged in education and learning is a critical part of helping them to stay away from crime and to thrive.

There are genuine issues of concern for the 900 or so young offenders under the school-leaving age who are in custody at any one time. The education of young people in custody is delivered to a demanding specification set by the Youth Justice Board, but evidence from Ofsted inspections—the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole herself gave evidence—and the Youth Justice Board’s monitoring reports suggest that delivery in young offender institutions is patchy, particularly with respect to literacy and numeracy.

I shall elaborate slightly on the figures that the hon. Lady quoted from an answer that I gave to a parliamentary question. She is right to say that the figures for 2004-05 suggest that young offenders have received an average of eight hours of education per week. However, that includes young people age 15 to 17, and those aged 18 to 21, because often young offender institutions house both age groups, but separately. So the figure hides the fact that those of school age will have been receiving more education. The fact that there are many more offenders over 18 helps to account for the low average numbers of hours of education per week. The good news, such as it is, is  that the Youth Justice Board report for 2004 says that young people under 18 in young offenders institutions were receiving at least 24 hours of education per week, compared with just seven hours in 2002. There has been quite an improvement in the past two or three years.

Annette Brooke (Children & the Family, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; Mid Dorset and North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

I accept that correction, but would the Minister not agree that there is a deficit in the skills of those 18 to 21-year-olds, so they need more than eight hours per week?

Phil Hope (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Education and Skills; Corby, Labour)

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I was dealing with the issue of people under school-leaving age—the 15 to 17-year-olds. Nevertheless, she is right: levels of illiteracy and innumeracy among the prison population aged over 18 are high. To address the point made by the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, a major programme that the hon. Lady will know about—our “skills for life” strategy, launched in 2001, for which I have responsibility—has led to dramatic improvements. I have visited prisons and spoken to older offenders working with other offenders to increase their literacy and numeracy levels. However, there is a huge mountain to climb and it is important that we do that.

I am pleased that some 3.5 million adults took part in “skills for life” courses and that 1.25 million have received their first level 1 qualification since we launched the strategy. I will not go into other figures now, but will try to stick to the new clause. There is a huge need and there is work to do if we are to achieve our goals of reducing illiteracy among the adult population as well as reducing the numbers of young people, with poor levels of literacy and numeracy.

I agree with the hon. Lady that there is a challenge, but there is cross-party support for addressing it. However, simply removing the sections in the Education Act 1996 which disapply the powers and duties that the Act confers on the Secretary of State, local education authorities and parents to anyone detained under the order of a court, as has been proposed, is not the right way forward. A range of detailed duties are already in place to condition the education provided to children detained under an order of court, and those will require substantial unpicking and reconsideration. Simply inserting the new clause will not do that; in fact, it would create inconsistent and, in some cases, conflicting duties for the Youth Justice Board and LEAs.

We addressed the issue clearly in the Green Paper, “Reducing Re-Offending Through Skills and Employment”, published jointly by my Department, the Home Office and the Department for Work and Pensions last December, with which I am sure the hon. Lady and other Opposition Members will be familiar. We acknowledge that there are problems with the current arrangements and we set out clearly as a key priority our commitment to consider the issues affecting school-age offenders and their education. We said that we will involve relevant Departments and agencies in developing a new strategy to develop these issues and that we would publish proposals in the  second half of this year. That commitment holds good and it is, I think, a better way of addressing the issues raised than simply accepting the new clause.

We are putting forward a comprehensive proposal that I hope will persuade the hon. Lady to withdraw the amendment, knowing that we have an active process under way, with proposals to be published later this year.

John Hayes (Shadow Minister (Vocational Education), Education; South Holland and The Deepings, Conservative)

I alluded to that document when I spoke. The Minister will recall that the discussion that we had about it highlighted the problem of disrupted provision. Often, people are moved when they are on courses, or their regime or teacher may change, which is particularly critical in respect of the younger people to whom the hon. Lady referred. Will the Minister give us any perspective on that?

Phil Hope (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Education and Skills; Corby, Labour)

The hon. Gentleman is right. The Green Paper’s proposals are wide-reaching and will have a huge impact throughout not only the prison system, but the probation service and the new National Offender Management Service that is currently being developed. There will be dramatic changes. A thorough educational assessment programme will be carried out at the start for the small proportion of young people who go into custody. On the basis of that initial assessment, young people go through intensive programmes to address the deficits that might well have developed as they have gone out of school and into care or some form of custody.

In 2002, the Youth Justice Board produced the national specification for learning and skills, which requires that the service provided in custody matches that to which young people will be entitled in school or college provision. The new investment that the Youth Justice Board has put into prison education has improved the provision to achieve the change in performance that I have mentioned.

I turn now to new clause 3. We need to recognise the scale of the issues. Of the three immigration removal centres that hold families with children, two hold families for a maximum of 72 hours. One is in Scotland, and so the Bill does not apply to it. The capacity of any local authority to react to the frequent movements into and out of those centres and to provide a personalised learning experience for the children held there is likely to be extremely limited.

The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole referred to the immigration removal centre at Yarl’s Wood. She is right that, where necessary in individual cases, families with children are held there for longer periods. Most will be held for just a few days prior to removal from the UK. As part of the requirements on the operator, the centre provides education based on the national curriculum, which is tailored to the needs of the individual children in the centre. Efforts are made to link the learning provided with that received by the children in the schools they may have attended prior to detention in the centre. The inspectorate of prisons’ inspections of Yarl’s Wood are supported by Ofsted.

To extend local authorities’ duties to the children held in those few immigration removal centres would place a significant burden on a few authorities. The arrangements for providing education in Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre are established through the contract by which the centre is operated and run. Although the most recent inspection report on the establishment identified some significant areas for improvement, providing an education service specifically tailored for the small but inevitably diverse population of the immigration removal centre through the contract rather than as a small adjunct to a local authority’s general responsibilities remains, I believe, the better way forward.

I assure the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings that of course all staff with access to children have appropriate CRB checks, training and so on, so that they can provide the services that are required. I hope that the new clause will be withdrawn, on that basis.

Annette Brooke (Children & the Family, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; Mid Dorset and North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

I thank the Minister for his comments on new clause 3. I said clearly that it was a probing clause, because it is difficult to see how to solve the problem when we are still locking up children who have done nothing wrong. It seems to me to be a mistake in our society that we should do that at all. However, I look forward to the next inspector’s report and hope to see those improvements coming forth and achieving results. It is important that MPs continually raise the issues that affect asylum-seeking children, who can be forgotten children.

I accept that the wording of new clause 2 might not be appropriate. However, the principle is so important that we would like to push it to a vote. We do not wish to withdraw the clause, on the premise that there is so much more to be done. We would be failing in our duty if we did not keep highlighting those problems and keeping them at the top of the agenda. It is good to hear that things will improve in some months’ time, but since I became an MP we have said many times, “Things will get better when such and such happens”. We want to make the statement today that the Bill should cover all our children and improve all their educational prospects.