Baroness Barran:

Moved by Baroness Barran

459: After Clause 62, insert the following new Clause—“Duty for schools to report acts of violence against staff to the police(1) Where an act which meets the conditions set out in subsection (2) takes place which involves the use or threat of force against a member of a school’s staff, the school must report the incident to the police.(2) An act must be reported to the police where—(a) it is directed towards a member of school staff or their property, and(b) it takes place—(i) on school property, or(ii) because of the victim’s status as a member of a school’s staff.(3) The provisions of this section do not require or imply a duty on the police to take specific actions in response to such reports.”Member’s explanatory statementThis new clause seeks to create a duty for all schools to report acts or threats of violence against their staff to the police. It would not create a requirement for the police to charge the perpetrator.

My Lords, this is a very important group of amendments as it seeks to understand the Government’s attitude to behaviour in our schools and, in particular, how to balance the rights of children who have been excluded or have committed acts of violence with the rights of other pupils in the classroom, as well as how best to address bullying in schools.

Amendment 459 aims to bring clarity about acts of violence or threats of violence towards school staff. Pupils should understand that any such act would be referred to the police. We have made it clear that this is not intended to criminalise children, but we believe it would help to reset expectations on behaviour and give the police and children’s services important information about those pupils. I recognise, of course, that schools know their pupils very well and are able to exercise their professional judgment; but even with that, we are concerned that there might be pressure on the Government to move to a position such as we have seen in Scotland to reduce the use of exclusions and suspensions.

Noble Lords will be aware of the disastrous impact of the Scottish Government’s policies in this area, which have led to violent assaults by pupils on teachers with no power remaining to exclude them. More recently, the Mayor of London has launched an inclusion charter to reduce suspensions, and at an event hosted by the Children’s Commissioner last week, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, suggested that he would like to see all pupil referral units abolished.

Head teachers need and deserve reassurance that they will be backed to exclude or suspend when necessary, and the presumption will always be that the rate of these strategies should not be considered too high unless there is good reason to think otherwise. The correct rate of exclusion is “when necessary”; it is not “as low as we can make it”. Amendment 502YYA seeks to clarify this. We are concerned about the impact of councils pursuing zero-exclusion policies, either directly or indirectly, by asking schools to sign up to reduction charters or similar. Such policies create an implicit expectation that head teachers should not exclude, which, frankly, would be disastrous for pupils and staff who have to face the impact of these decisions.

Pupil referral units and alternative provision schools are similar to intensive care or high dependency units in hospitals, where the students presenting the most challenge receive the high-intensity support and the boundaries that they so badly need. To reduce these vital institutions would condemn schools to enormous violence and chaos and damage the very children who could no longer access them.

Experts in this field tell me that such naivety of strategy indicates the unfamiliarity that advocates have with the challenges of working with these children. Rather, we need to learn from the best pupil referral units and alternative provision schools and ensure that their pupils do attend daily and, when they are there, that they get a full day of education because they need that structure and support perhaps more than the average child.

Concerns about this shift among senior leaders in the Labour Party, such as the two mayors I cited earlier, explain why we tabled Amendments 502YV and 502YW, which would make the presumption that pupils who have committed serious misbehaviour, including violence and sexual assault, and those who have been permanently excluded twice from mainstream schools would not be reinstated in a mainstream school.

Mainstream schools can and do move mountains, but they cannot perform miracles. Children whose needs exceed mainstream capacity, budgets and systems cannot thrive in a mainstream environment any more than a surgical patient can obtain the treatment they need in a GP surgery. Non-mainstream environments such as pupil referral units are vital support mechanisms to help children turn their lives around in a specialist setting. It is not a failure of mainstream that these children need the PRU or AP environment any more than it is a failure of an optician to cure cataracts. It is a positive movement, not a negative one. Again, we see the innocent but dangerous unfamiliarity with the reality of these children’s lives in the words of those who seek to mainstream every child, regardless of how extreme their behaviours are.

Balancing the rights of the small number of pupils who threaten the safety of the classroom and that much larger group who need a calm environment to focus on learning is not easy. We need to improve and expand the quality and quantity of alternative provision, but we also need to uphold the rights of the Majority. That is what these amendments aim to do.

Building whole-school systems that offer preferential treatment for the minority of violent and chaotic children at the expense of the vast majority of children—who are also potentially vulnerable, and who also deserve dignity, safety, and a calm learning environment—is an insult to the principle of good governance and, ironically, helps neither category of child. Every child matters, which means that every child matters equally.

Amendments 502YX and 502YY would require the Secretary of State to publish an annual report on the impact of behaviour on both teacher recruitment and pupil attainment. We are very keen to see the annual behaviour survey being continued. The former Minister in the other place was not clear in Committee whether this would be the case, so I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm today that it will be continued. We know from a range of different polls, including Teacher Tapp, that behaviour is one of the biggest factors driving teachers out of the profession. For pupils, it is crucial, with the last behaviour survey showing that on average one-quarter of learning time is lost to poor behaviour. That is equivalent to 44 days per year. It is crucial that there is real visibility on this issue. As Peps Mccrea, the founder of Steplab, wrote,

“just communicating expectations is rarely sufficient … behaviour must be taught, not just told … Helping students achieve behaviour for success isn’t just good for safety and learning, it’s critical for equity too”.

My noble friends Lord Nash and Lord Bailey will speak to our Amendment 502YF. We know that there is, rightly, great caution around permanently excluding a pupil. We felt that if a child who was permanently excluded qualified automatically as a child in need—in my language—this amendment would offer some automatic protection and support to that child. The fact that a pupil cannot study effectively in a mainstream school does not mean that they are not worthy of support—quite the reverse. As I have already said, we need to see the best of alternative provision, and pupil referral units being developed further, but this amendment would provide those children with timely support from children’s services and other local support services.

Although there is some brilliant alternative provision, typically it does not offer a full school day. These are just the pupils who are clearly most at risk of abuse and exploitation. Our amendment seeks to give the local authority a duty to support these pupils. I beg to move.

My Lords, I echo the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran: head teachers need and deserve reassurance that they will be backed to exclude or suspend where necessary. I would like to pass on the experience of a head teacher who told me recently that he had had to permanently exclude two pupils who had set the school on fire; they were successfully moved back to a PRU.

I am now in the rather bizarre situation of speaking against an Amendment to which I put my name: Amendment 459. As a teacher, I thought that this amendment was eminently sensible, given that the police would still be able to decide whether or not to act. But I found out that it is more complex than that. Rebecca Warren, the executive principal of the Mossbourne trust, says:

“I agree that on the face of it this appears eminently sensible as one would think it is vital to ensure that all services are alerted to ensure that the perpetrator … and victim are offered necessary support. Given that the police service is one of the three arms of Safeguarding Boards (along with the council and healthcare) then police should be alerted and equally responsible for the welfare and safeguarding of children. An act of violence against an adult in a school environment is, in itself, a safeguarding concern.

However, I am dismayed that once again no duty is placed on the police to respond or act. So, in the absence of a collegiate approach, I worry this will become just another duty for teaching professionals with no duty placed on fellow services. I must emphasise that this should not become yet another safeguarding duty placed on the shoulders of schools, with schools being potentially penalised if an act is not reported. Reporting to the police is very likely to erode the trust between child/home and school. This is only worth risking if there is a definite response and support from the police for the child and family.

My question is why the professional judgement of educators is deemed to be less worthy than the professional judgement of the police ie: educators have a statutory duty to report (and must always support) but Social Care and the Police have no statutory duty to support when a report is made”.

Peter Hughes, the chief exec of the Mossbourne trust, makes this plea:

“This Bill is in danger of treating schools as if they are full of idiots without the ability to make sensible decisions. Schools, as the second class citizens in the safeguarding arena, spend more time with children than the other three safeguarding partners combined. We are the only service that is in loco parentis 190 days a year from the age of 4-18. Like any good parent, we need to make judgments about what is in the best interests of our children balanced against society and the other members of our family (students and staff). I would ask that we are afforded that right”.

My Lords, I support Amendment 501 by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and will speak to Amendment 464 in my name and those of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln, the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for all of whose support I am most grateful. The amendment implements and supplements an excellent recommendation of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry. It is difficult to understand why it has been left on the table when racism has been acknowledged as a problem in schools for so long.

Gypsy, Traveller and Roma parents have reported racist incidents as a reason for opting for home education for as long as I have been concerned about these communities. One of the problems in their case is that, because the children are usually white, they are often not recognised as members of a legally defined minority ethnic group. But they are ill-treated, ostracised and bullied for that membership just the same. Now, we also have seen religious prejudice, incidents and taunts demoralising children and undermining their motivation. This totally belies the right to freedom of religion and belief. It really is time to put this right and record and report such incidents. They should have no place in the conduct of the school day. Unless the data is captured, the position will not be understood and improved. This is an amendment, surely, whose time has definitely come.

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 502YF in my name and those of my noble friends Lady Barran and Lord Bailey, to require an assessment under the Children Act when a child is permanently excluded. The reason for this amendment is that, in my experience, when a pupil is permanently excluded without an adequate handover or adequate liaison between the school and the local authority, there is a risk that the pupil disappears into a black hole. I have sat on, thankfully, few PEx panels—we really do not like excluding pupils in my trust. I have always hated having to exclude a pupil, not just in its own right but because they just disappear from view.

In my view, schools should continue to have some involvement, if not responsibility, for PEx students to ensure that they receive adequate provision. As things stand, they have no say in where children go when PExed, often because the local authority has an arrangement or a contract with one or two AP providers such that there are no other options—and, of course, in some areas, the AP providers have no capacity. As I have said, that is why we desperately need more such provision. I would like to see schools with greater involvement in this. I understand that, in Milton Keynes, there is a model where about a dozen secondary schools—11, I think—co-operate well with the local authority on this. That could perhaps be a model for the future.

I also support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran in this group. Poor behaviour by a few students has a dramatic effect on the effectiveness of a school. Teachers spend a disproportionate amount of time dealing with a few pupils who exhibit very poor behaviour, and they are increasingly acting as social workers. We must protect the other pupils in the school, and we must support our teachers. There comes a time when the disruption this causes to other pupils and to teachers means it is necessary to exclude certain pupils.

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 464 knowing that, had my right reverend friend the Bishop of Lincoln been in his place, he would very much have wanted to contribute to the debate. If passed, this amendment would introduce a duty on schools to record and report any incidents of racism or faith-based bullying on school premises. It would also help diocesan boards of education in collating and monitoring such cases and better assisting those church schools which might benefit from support.

In preparing for this speech, I spoke to our own director of education in Chelmsford diocese, whose team oversees 139 church schools. She told me that this proposed amendment had the potential to help the board of education strengthen anti-bullying and inclusive practices in partnership with schools.

Every child deserves to feel safe at school, yet we know that racist and faith-based bullying is a significant driver behind school exclusions. A report published last year by The Difference and the IPPR revealed that black Caribbean children are 1.5 times more likely to find themselves permanently excluded from schools than the national population. Irish Traveller children are three times more likely, and Romani, or Gypsy, and Roma children are four times more likely.

Last November, the Traveller Movement published its Fought not Taught report, which traced examples of coercive exclusions from school settings. The organisation defines “institutionally coerced exclusion” as a situation in which a school setting, either through action or inaction, becomes a toxic environment with

“conditions that make it untenable or unsafe” for a child to remain enrolled. To name one example, the Traveller Movement’s research has revealed that, tragically,

“67% of young Gypsies and Travellers in London had experienced bullying from teachers that they felt was directly linked to their ethnicity”.

In relation to that, my right reverend friend the Bishop of Lincoln will host the launch of the Traveller Movement’s follow-up publication on Thursday 23 October in your Lordships’ House.

Tell MAMA, or Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks, is an independent and confidential support service to record incidents of Islamophobia in the UK. Between 2023 and 2024, there was a 43% increase in the number of reported hate crimes targeting Muslims. Some 10% of these incidents occurred in a place of education. To make matters worse, parents often feel that their concerns are ignored due to a lack of formal mechanisms for accountability. Maintaining a clear record of incidents is the first step towards building trust and fostering more collaborative partnerships between parents, schools and local authorities.

However, this amendment would take one step further. For the collective safety and well-being of all pupils, educational environments must be prepared to take concrete action to address and, crucially, to prevent racism. By requiring schools to record actions taken in response when incidents occur, we could ensure that actively anti-racist practice in our schools is the expectation, not the exception.

In 2021, the Archbishops’ Anti-Racism Taskforce published From Lament to Action, which set out recommendations to eradicate racism in the Church of England. Education surfaced as a priority area for action, with commitments to ensure racial justice featuring as a core element of curriculum, staff training and school assemblies. There is, of course, much more work to be done, but this amendment would enable us to make long overdue progress.

My Lords, I will make a couple of comments. When children fail, it is usually the result of a cocktail of inputs. One of those is frequently special educational needs. If you do not believe it, just look at the prison population—a gross overrepresentation of virtually every single special educational need you can mention. We do not get this right or spot it early enough. There are several more groups that touch on this, and I hope that when the Minister starts to sum up, she will have in the back of her mind how this all fits together.

Often, both the victims and the perpetrators of bullying have special educational needs—somebody does not fit in, they look for somebody weaker, and so on. It is disruptive to a classroom, and it affects everybody else. If you get in early enough, along with the other considerations made here—and I fully endorse the comments made about racism and so on—it can bring the whole thing together. How are we doing that? How are we working it in? I would hope that the Minister has an answer.

I would also hope that it does not fall on the teacher in the classroom. We are asking them to do a superhuman task anyway. What support are we going to give? We are going to come to this again and again. We may not get the Government’s strategy on the special educational needs bit in full until later on. If we could get some idea of the thinking, it would help in future debates on the Bill, both at this stage and on Report.

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 502E in my name. I entirely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Addington, just said. To judge by the numerous safeguarding and similar cases in which I have been involved as a lawyer, it is the failure to share information that causes huge damage and often leads to that cycle—the revolving door of children going in and out of school, which leads to many of them going into custody for crimes when they are not very old.

My Amendment 502E is an uncomplicated attempt to provide consistent standards and process in the way in which individual schools focus on bullying. I am grateful to the Anti-Bullying Alliance for providing me with information on this subject. The truth of the matter is that huge numbers of children are bullied, and we see it every day.

A few days ago, I was on a bus in north London at the time when children are just going home from school. There were three noisy, normal-looking 11 or 12 year-olds on the bus laughing and pointing through the window at something. I realised that they were pointing at another boy, on the pavement, who was actually the largest of the group. I deduced from what I saw that they had tricked that boy into getting off the bus at the wrong stop and then had got back on themselves. Off the bus went, and they were laughing at the disconsolate fourth boy as the bus passed him by. It was a small example of bullying, but what I saw was evidence—possibly, at least—of a much larger bullying issue relating to that fourth child.

It is a heartbreaking reality that over one in five children and young people report being bullied each year. That figure comes from the Office for National Statistics. It is a pervasive issue which not only disrupts their childhoods, mental health and education; its repercussions can persist well into adulthood. Many of us know people who have been affected by bullying, particularly at school, which they suffered from at a very young age.

There is plenty of evidence that children who are bullied are significantly more likely to suffer from mental health issues. I used to be the chair of a mental health charity called Addaction, now called We Are With You, which has to deal with many people who, among their multiple and often complex issues, suffered from bullying when they were young, either at school or possibly in the home. Children who are bullied often miss school, have a very poor sense of belonging and achieve poorer academic results. Parents learn that their children are being bullied, but they do not know how to deal with it because, in many schools, they are not given any real guidance on how to approach the school or what the school will do if their child is bullied.

The effects of bullying are even more pronounced among children with special educational needs—about whom we will soon be talking in another group—children in poverty, young carers, care-experienced young people and other at-risk groups. It really does not have to be this way. My suggestion is that something like my very straightforward Amendment 502E would at least ensure that schools have a consistent approach to these issues.

I respectfully suggest to the Minister that, in pursuance of their duties, head teachers of relevant schools in England should appoint a member of staff simply to be the school’s anti-bullying lead, just as they have leads in the sixth form and individual subject heads. The primary role of the anti-bullying lead should be to develop the school’s individual anti-bullying strategy, and that strategy should include details of the steps being taken by the school to prevent bullying in all its forms among pupils, including of course those with protected characteristics. There should be a standard way of recording incidences of bullying, just as there are standard and required ways of recording incidences of injury at school. Staff training on bullying should be available for all staff. I submit that this amendment is just common sense, and it would make a significant contribution to the way in which bullying is dealt with at school, to the advantage of children.

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendments, but I really want to follow on from what the right reverend Prelate said about racism. Racism has been rife in schools from as far back as I can remember, but at that time social media was not there to inflame it further. Over recent years, it has become racism about not just colour but religion. The right reverend Prelate mentioned Islamophobia, but most underreported acts of bullying against faith are not Islamophobia.

People from my community endure it quietly. Where do they report it when, as often as not, it is the most misunderstood way of bullying? Parents say to me that children have told them that they will burn in hell and that, if they do not change their faith, this or that will happen. We have to find solutions that involve not just the teachers—they have more than enough to do already—but making sure, first, that what we say and do is reasonable. Secondly, families cannot abdicate from their duties in what happens in and out of school. They need to be part of the solution because, unfortunately, we have a lot of dysfunctional families— not by choice but, often, because of the economics of everything. We need to find ways for every child to go to school knowing that they will learn, like every other child, and not be fearful of going.

I grew up in a fearful atmosphere. That fearful atmosphere is back—even more now than ever before. It is amplified by social media. So I say, on my noble friend’s amendments, that yes of course the police have a duty; so do local authorities. They need to be the support mechanisms for the teachers, not standing on the sidelines waiting to offer help. They should be intrinsic in the integrated plans to make sure that we can respond to the needs of children who come with problems—not of their own making, mostly, but from their surroundings and their environment. We should not make excuses and say that it is acceptable and that everything should be on the teachers. It is not fair, and they are not well enough equipped.

As a child who went through a miserable time at school, I knew what bullying is like, dreading to go into school in case you are be beaten up by the next skinhead around the corner. I did not become a bully; I actually became resilient. We have to make sure that resilience is part of the teaching of our children.

My Lords, I will raise some reservations that I have about Amendments 501 and 502E, on bullying in schools, and Amendment 464, on the reporting of racism or faith-based bullying.

Bullying is a label that has been subject to the phenomena of concept creep. Bullying has now expanded enormously. It is an elastic term and so a wide range of behaviours can be described as bullying. I fear that it is becoming a vehicle to encourage pupils to lack resilience —a point was just raised about how we deal with the issue of resilience. I have written about this extensively. For now, I note that, via anti-bullying initiatives in schools already, pupils are taught that words hurt and damage, that words can become interchangeable with violence, and that name-calling is on a par with physical intimidation. Inevitably, that can lead the young to believe that speech is violence. I think all of us can acknowledge that that is a problem at the moment, with people who say that speech is violence then feeling able to use violence to deal with speech they dislike—a very current issue.

It is also the case that harm can be subjectively defined as psychological, not physical harm. We know that many of the problems that we have—for example, on university campuses—happen when students arriving from school feel that it is appropriate to no-platform speakers whose views they consider to be psychologically harmful and interchangeable with violence. When words and speech are posited as the equivalent to physical force, that creates problems, and we should at least consider that. It is the case that the accusation of bullying can be weaponised—and regularly is, by the young pointing their fingers at each other for bullying.

I urge caution about the further institutionalisation of anti-bullying initiatives in schools. We should at least look at this with a bit more critical thinking. We have to look at the detail of the schemes that are being put forward. Not all of them are the same or of the same quality. Just because they use the words “anti-bullying”, we should not just give them the nod but should think about it.

From my own experience, I remember when a young family member was hysterically crying because she was being so badly bullied at school. You can imagine how terrified we all were—we had visions of her having her head kicked in or something awful. She would not tell us what had happened. We eventually found out she had not been invited by her two friends to the pictures on a Friday evening. I reassured her that she was not being bullied and that she was not to worry. She brought back the school’s anti-bullying policy, which had the words “Exclusion from friendship group: a very serious form of bullying”, and said that I was wrong and she was right. By the way, she made up with her friends.

On Amendment 464, on the recording and reporting of racist or faith-based bullying in schools, I worry about the real danger of treating young children as would-be racists. We have to think very carefully about this. The contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, was incredibly interesting. At the very least, it showed how complicated this is. It is not as straightforward as just saying that we have got to fight racism in schools and that we have to report racist incidents. Young children in particular are unencumbered by adult fixations on race, and I worry about the danger of mislabelling pupils and so on.

There was an interesting report, film and book, written by researcher Adrian Hart, on this very topic a few years ago. One of the things he noted was that a reporting regime can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, with a growing list of incidents being written down as evidence that there is racism. One of the reasons why that happened was that schools were getting in trouble because they did not have enough incidents of racism written down and therefore they were seen to be ignoring racism, so they were literally going around hunting the racism to add to the list to prove how diligent they were being.

I note that children can behave cruelly; often they fall out a lot and they call each other names. I am not trying to say that it is all an enjoyable time. But there is a danger of seeing the sometimes crass language that children use as racist. The fact that the teachers who reported a child wearing a union jack dress to school had recently been on a racial literacy course is an indication of the fact that maybe things are not all so well.

In that sense, anti-racism education is contentious. Increasing numbers of schools deploy anti-racist strategies and have adopted uncritically, for example, critical race theory. They argue that a colour-blind approach—that is, not focusing on skin colour—is itself racist. They parrot the line that there is white privilege. For many young white children, that can be guilt-inducing. In other words, it is a dangerously politicised area and we should at least consider that.

I broadly support the group of amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, which importantly suggest that there should be reports on the impact of the behaviour of school children on teacher recruitment and educational outcomes. I said at Second Reading that behaviour is a hugely challenging issue in schools at present that is not given much attention. I hope that we can tackle that.

One problem we face is a cultural assault on discipline, per se. Those who advocate discipline in schools can be described as authoritarian or as enjoying meting out cruel punishments on pupils, and can be accused of bullying children. The term is used regularly by those who argue for discipline in schools. Even as I say “discipline”, I feel a frisson, with people thinking that I mean get out the stick. I simply mean adult authority. The truth is that adult authority is under attack in many ways. That is why it is so important that we have Amendment 502YV, on the presumption against the reinstatement of children engaging in extremely serious behaviour, and Amendment 502YYA, on the right to exclude. Teachers need to have those tools in their educational toolbox. It is only fair on pupils that they know there are lines that they cannot cross. Adult authority in schools is in crisis and we should do everything we can to bolster it, not undermine it.

My Lords, Amendment 502N, in my name, would insert a proposed new Clause after Clause 62, which raises the issue of seclusion in education, particularly in the form of isolation rooms.

Isolation rooms have serious implications for the emotional and psychological well-being of children, especially disabled children and young people and those with special educational needs. This is a probing amendment that would introduce a statutory definition of seclusion. It would empower the Secretary of State to regulate its use through consultation. If regulations are made, my amendment requires minimum protections: banning seclusion as discipline, notifying parents, recording incidents and ensuring internal safeguarding oversight.

The experience of seclusion impacts too many children today—children with speech, language and communication needs—whose communication may not be understood, recognised or supported in that moment. Children with ADHD may find it hard to regulate strong emotions without timely support, and yet instead of being supported they are removed, placed alone and not free to leave, in rooms with such labels as isolation, calm, breakout room, nurture space or any other number of euphemisms. What they experience is seclusion, whether it happens in a locked room, a space with a closed door, or an area where the child is simply not permitted to leave. The impact is the same: a loss of connection and potential safety.

Disabled children and those with special educational needs are disproportionately affected. Some children are removed daily, and there is no guarantee that parents will be told. These experiences can be isolating, traumatic, and deeply damaging to a child’s sense of safety and belonging. Other sectors, such as healthcare and secure settings, already regulate seclusion and deprivation of liberty. Education should not be an exception.

The Department for Education acknowledged the issue in its 2020 guidance, but guidance alone does not close a legal loophole. This proposed new clause invites us to act thoughtfully and proportionately, to close a legal gap that has persisted for far too long. It is not a radical proposal. It is a proportionate, enabling amendment, grounded in evidence, shaped by lived experience and guided by the principle that no child should be left unsupported or invisible in the name of behaviour management. Seclusion happens in our schools, even if we do not call it that. This proposed new clause would not ban it but would give us the tools to see it, define it and scrutinise it. At the very least, we should agree that when a child is confined and not free to leave, we ought to know and we ought to care.

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 502YF, proposed by my noble friend Lord Nash, and Amendments 502YV to 502YYA, proposed by my noble friend Lady Barran.

There has long been a lot of discomfort about permanent exclusions. No one likes the idea that there are children who cannot thrive in mainstream schools or who are too likely to harm others to be allowed to attend them, but last year’s youth justice statistics show 12,000 convictions of children for offences of violence, 3,000 for knife-related offences and 1,400 for sexual offences. Serious misconduct does not begin only once children have left school. There is also a lot of hope that keeping children in mainstream schools, no matter what they may do, will avert later criminality, but in fact excluded children are more likely to have come into contact with youth justice services before they are excluded than after. Because we have been remarkably successful in reducing the number of children in custody, there are more children with very serious behaviour problems in the school system who might once not have been there.

What I saw at Ofsted is that the vast Majority of schools work extremely hard to keep children in mainstream schools. Relatively few exclusions are unjustified. Many parents, especially those with children who have been harmed by other children, believe that there is too much pressure rather than too little on schools not to exclude. The vast majority of exclusions are a culmination of a long period in which a school does all that it knows how to do to support a child and help them to progress academically and socially.

As a result, I believe that we have a problem of a different nature. Many teachers will tell you that it is often possible to spot the children who are most likely to fall out of school as early as reception year, or even earlier, but the pressure is always to keep them in mainstream schools, even when that school can do little more than warehouse a child with teaching assistants until this becomes manifestly unhelpful for the child and the parent succeeds in obtaining an EHCP and a special school place.

We do not start contingency planning for those children as early as we should and could, which contributes to there not being enough specialist provision. Even at the point of permanent exclusion, our Laws and processes are focused on the legitimacy of the exclusion and the process that has been followed. What is not part of any of those processes is a pragmatic assessment of what kind of education to adulthood will give the excluded child the best chance in life, by which I mean reaching adulthood with basic skills in place, functioning within social norms, being willing and capable of holding down a job and, in the longer term, being capable of sustaining a marriage or stable relationship. The amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Nash will help to concentrate minds on how best to do what it is in the power of the state to do to help excluded children to the best possible future.

My noble friend’s Amendments 502YV and onwards in this group would also help to direct attention appropriately. They reflect a pragmatic recognition of the circumstances in which the harm to other children from reinstating a child is likely to exceed the benefits to the excluded child of reinstatement. For example, it is well known that sexual offending tends to be a persistent pattern of behaviour, and I referred to one such case in an earlier group. I add that the bullying survey suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, might be useful in showing how much fear and unhappiness can be induced in many other children by a very small number of their peers.

For many years, there has been a strong presumption that children should be reintegrated in mainstream schools as soon as possible after exclusion and policy and processes have been designed on this basis, but there is good data that shows that pupils who have been permanently excluded and returned to a mainstream school very rarely stay in mainstream to age 16. Nearly all will be moved into alternative provision subsequently, with or without another permanent exclusion, or drop out entirely. It would be useful to know what proportion of managed moves are in fact effective in the long run and which kinds of children and problems are most likely to be effectively dealt with in this way. My noble friend Lady Barran’s amendments, relating to a presumption against reinstatement for certain children, dovetail with my noble friend Lord Nash’s amendment to steer schools and local authorities towards constructive and realistic planning for the children with the greatest difficulties in their lives.

I echo some of the concerns expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. The last thing we need is more measures that could be weaponised and potentially cause more divisions in schools and society. When two young children fight, labelling the tussle as racially motivated may not help those two children get along and may in fact encourage factions in the class. Promoting and focusing on what we have in common and should value together is at least as important, and probably more important, than labelling and Division if we are to achieve the social cohesion that we all aspire to.

My Lords, this debate has been very thought-provoking. I always want to listen to what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, has to say; she always challenges my own thoughts.

We all know the saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never harm me”. But, of course, words can harm you—sometimes tremendously so. They can almost “destroy” a pupil’s resilience and well-being. I think about a little girl called Millie, who was eight years old and a very good footballer. Her grandad took her to play football every Saturday morning on the fields by Otterspool Prom. Because she was so good, the other girls became quite jealous of her, so they contrived among themselves never to pass the ball to Millie. Millie just could not understand that; she wanted to take part in the game, but together they bullied her by not passing her ball.

She went to the parent who organised and refereed the football; one of his girls was part of this little group saying, “Let’s not pass the ball to Millie”. He said to her, “Oh grow up. Go away. You’re a footballer, come on, you can take it”. She went home feeling completely “destroyed” and chose not to play football again. I tell that tale because we actually forget the bully in that situation; the bully needs help and support as much as the person who has been bullied. We often do not consider that in school policies on anti-bullying.

I just want to say to the Minister that when we briefly discussed bullying in another group of amendments, she mentioned that schools have behavioural policies. I was arguing that we should have separate anti-bullying policies, because—I think I am correct in saying this—not every school has to have them.

This Amendment simply says that we should know where we are. I will perhaps criticise myself a bit—as did the noble Lord opposite. All these amendments are seeking more information, quite rightly, on racist incidents, bullying and so on. But who has to collect that information? The school. Who in the school has to collect it? The teacher. When we talk about workload pressures on teachers, let us be aware that, all the time, we are creating more workload pressures for them. Nevertheless, some of these things are important. Certainly, information on racist incidents should be collected; we should know exactly what is happening with that. We should also know about bullying incidents, so that we know how to react and where we should go next.

My noble friend Lord Addington made an important point, picked up by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, that while we might be good at collecting information, we are not good at sharing it—and it is a fat lot of good collecting the information if we do not share it with other people, particularly other agencies. I was going to share the details of why we want to do this, but the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, very eloquently spelled out the information that we were supplied by the Anti-Bullying Alliance. Those figures are quite shocking in respect of the number of children in our education system who are bullied.

Bullying comes with all types of events. I mentioned football but I could equally mention the sly little pinch every day from one child to another. I could mention a whole host of things. I think of my own friends, now are in their 60s and 70s, who were affected by bullying as young people and it formed part of how they behave and react to things. We need to address this issue, but we can do so only if we know how serious it is. So, despite more workload pressures for teachers, I hope the Minister might agree that this is an important route that we should follow.

I want to mention briefly, as time marches on, the amendment from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester. It is important: teachers and head teachers may not be aware of how many children have parents or a parent in prison. We had thought it was somewhere around 31,000 but, in fact, according to figures, the number of children with a parent in prison is nearly 193,000. That is something that we need to address. I do not want to go into all the details but I very much support the right reverend Prelate’s amendment as well.

My Lords, we have had a good, wide-ranging debate on this group, which concerns how schools deal with acts of violence against their staff, pupil behaviour management, and tackling bullying in schools, including incidents that are racist or faith-based.

Violence and bullying in schools are never acceptable. No teacher should feel unsafe or face violence or abuse in the workplace. The department will always support teachers to ensure that they can work in safe and calm classrooms.

All schools must have a behaviour policy to regulate the conduct of pupils, to help ensure that teachers and pupils are protected from disruption and, most importantly, that they have a safe school environment in which to work and learn. When misbehaviour occurs, schools can use sanctions as a measure to improve behaviour; in the most serious cases, exclusion may be necessary to ensure that all pupils are protected from disruption and can benefit from the opportunities provided by education. To provide some assurance to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, we believe that pupil referral units have an important role to play in this.

To reiterate the importance with which the Government view this, we have recently announced the launch of new RISE attendance and behaviour hubs, focusing on supporting senior leaders to develop safe, supportive school cultures with high expectations for attendance and behaviour. Their role will include using data to identify and address areas of concern. We have now appointed the first 21 lead schools in this programme.

Amendment 459, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, would require schools to report acts of violence against staff to the police. I want to be completely clear that, as I have already said, all forms of violence against school staff should be taken seriously. It is never acceptable for anyone to be harassed, intimidated or attacked.

The primary duty to take reasonable care for the health and safety of all employees rests with the employer. The employer is responsible for doing what is reasonably practicable to ensure the health, safety and welfare at work of all employees and should take appropriate action where they are aware of any matters that could detract from that. Where violence is involved, schools should take immediate and appropriate action. Should the incident constitute a potential criminal offence, it would be for the school employer to consider involving the police, having followed the advice in WHEN TO CALL THE POLICE Guidance for Schools & Colleges from the National Police Chiefs’ Council, written in partnership with the department and the Home Office. Given those provisions and that guidance, we fear that this amendment would be likely to impose additional burdens on schools without necessarily strengthening protections for staff.

Amendment 464, in the name of my noble friend Lady Whitaker, would place a duty on local authorities to require schools to record and report racist incidents or faith-based bullying, and the action taken. I wholly support the views of noble Lords who have identified how reprehensible these incidents are and how important it is that action is taken within the school to identify and educate students about the significance of that element of bullying.

Under the Equality Act 2010, every school in England has an existing legal obligation to not discriminate unlawfully on the grounds of a protected characteristic. We have confidence in the seriousness with which head teachers take any incidents that breach this requirement, as these would. Further reporting requirements for schools would risk creating a new burden and risk unintended consequences, as some noble Lords have touched on, discouraging children and staff from disclosing to school leaders due to privacy concerns and increasing the threshold at which schools may identify and respond to incidents due to perceived risk of reputational damage. We want children to be as open as possible within the school environment so that head teachers and teachers can determine the appropriate action.

I will take Amendments 501 and 502E together as both aim to address the importance of tackling bullying in schools and recognise the profound impact it can have on children’s lives. Amendment 501, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, seeks to introduce a duty on the department to collect and publish national data related to pupils’ experiences of bullying in schools. The department already monitors young people’s perceptions of bullying through the annual National Behaviour Survey, and I can confirm to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, that that survey will continue. It enables us to develop our understanding of bullying prevalence and trends.

Amendment 502E, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, seeks to mandate the appointment of an anti-bullying lead in schools to develop an anti-bullying strategy. In my introduction to this group, I referred to the legal requirement for schools to have a behaviour policy. In response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Storey, the law is clear that a school’s policy should include measures to prevent bullying. Schools are held to account by Ofsted and the Independent Schools Inspectorate on that.

School leaders are, and should be, free to tailor their approach and this can include deploying a lead for anti-bullying. Mandating how schools meet their obligations to prevent bullying, particularly in terms of staffing, does not recognise the need for flexibility in schools to ensure that approaches can be tailored to meet the needs of different settings and cohorts of pupils. This in no way suggests that we do not take this issue seriously and that is why the Department for Education is launching a procurement for an expert- and evidence-led review into best practice on preventing and tackling bullying. The learning from that best practice review will inform the support to be given in the longer term by the new attendance and behaviour hubs that I have already mentioned. This approach has been informed by recent engagement with a range of stakeholders, including teachers, parents, academics, charities and young people, to understand more about the issues around bullying.

Amendment 502N relates to a very important topic and it is right that the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, raises it. The department recognises that the misuse of seclusion in schools can have a significant and long-lasting effect on the pupils, staff members and parents involved, and we are committed to minimising its use in schools. Earlier this year, we held a 12-week public consultation on the draft Use of Reasonable Force and Other Restrictive Interventions in Schools guidance. We have listened to the views of the sector and taken the decision to pursue secondary legislation that mandates the recording and reporting of the use of seclusion in schools to parents. This important work is already under way. It is a significant and positive step forward for pupils and their families, and will support schools to have consistent, transparent policies on the use of reasonable force and restrictive interventions which aim to safeguard everybody within the school community.

Amendments 502YV, 502YW, 502YX, 502YY and 502YYA in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, recognise the importance of behaviour management and staff safety in schools through a series of new statutory duties and presumptions. I am clear that every pupil deserves to learn in a safe, calm classroom, and we will always support our hard-working and dedicated teachers to make this happen.

The statutory suspension and permanent exclusion guidance is clear that head teachers can use exclusion as a disciplinary measure to improve behaviour and maintain environments which are safe for all pupils. In the most serious cases, permanent exclusion may be necessary to help protect pupils from disruption and to restore a safe environment. All decisions to suspend or permanently exclude a pupil must be lawful, reasonable and fair, but within these requirements, schools need to be able to set and enforce behaviour policies that reflect their ethos and the specific challenges that they face.

The department is therefore clear that head teachers should use their professional judgment when implementing a behaviour policy where both staff and pupils can work in safety and are respected. We also trust head teachers to use their professional judgment based on the individual circumstances of the case when considering whether to exclude a pupil, and we will protect their right to do that.

In all cases, we expect school leaders to consider early Intervention strategies and the use of multi-agency assessments to address the underlying causes behind a pupil’s disruptive behaviour before issuing an exclusion. Given all the statutory duties and responsibilities in place, this amendment would be likely to impose additional burdens on schools, risks limited flexibility in complex cases and could disproportionately affect vulnerable pupils.

Finally, Amendment 502YF, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Nash, proposes that local authorities assess the needs of children who are permanently excluded from school. Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 already places a general duty on local authorities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in need. Naming specific groups would risk narrowing the cohort of children and limiting local flexibility in providing support.

The statutory guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children makes clear that local authorities and partners should identify emerging problems and unmet needs, including for children facing multiple suspensions or permanent exclusion. Our reforms to family help and multi-agency child protection, supported by over £500 million this year, which we talked about earlier in the Bill, will embed people with education experience within multi-agency teams.

We are also introducing a duty on all safeguarding partners to ensure that education and childcare settings are properly represented at strategic and operational levels. I hope that, following this wide-ranging and important debate, noble Lords will feel reassured that the Government have in place positive measures to address the range of serious and important issues highlighted by this group of amendments and recognise how important it is that our teachers can carry out their jobs safely and that our children can benefit from safe and calm classrooms in which to learn. For the reasons outlined, I urge noble Lords not to press their amendments.

My Lords, I thank the Minister. I felt much happier listening to that reply than to her earlier one. As the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, said, it is important that head teachers know the Government have got their back in terms of managing very difficult situations with such dedication day in, day out. The Minister’s comments about the importance of safe, calm classrooms, her focus on the guidance that already exists in relation to suspensions and exclusions and her reassurance about the discretion that head teachers have on behaviour and permanent exclusions when they are necessary—and that the Government protect the rights of head teachers to do that—are important for them to hear, and I am grateful to her for making that very clear.

I am sure everyone in this Committee would echo her sentiment about early Intervention strategies. That was picked up by my noble friend Lady Spielman. I warmed very much to the contrast she drew between the current focus on following process versus the opportunity to think about a plan for the future for each child who sadly finds himself in that position.

On Amendment 502YF in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Nash, I think I heard the Minister say that those children already qualify under Section 17 as children in need, and I agree with her. I wonder whether it would be helpful if, where that is not happening in practice, we bring those examples to the department for it to consider because clearly that is both the letter and the spirit of the law, and we all want to see that happening in practice.

I will skate over my minor fallout with my noble friend, as I hope I can call him, Lord Hampton. Things have been going so well and to fall over at 7 pm on Day 11 seems unfortunate, but there we go. I hope we can recover before Day 12 is out.

Briefly on the amendments regarding bullying in schools raised quite rightly by the noble Lords, Lord Carlile and Lord Storey, I very much share their concern about the impact of bullying, but I argue that this is all about having a strong school culture where bullying and other forms of poor behaviour are not accepted. I worry that if you make an individual person responsible for it, rather than it being something that every member of staff upholds, that might not work as effectively as noble Lords would wish.

On information and data on bullying, I was relieved to hear that the behaviour survey will continue to be published. I am hoping that means it will have the same questions as in previous years, to allow for comparability. The noble Baroness might want to put that as a “PS” on one of the many letters she is going to write to me. The survey gives detailed information, and we also know from the response of the charity Parentkind that, in parental complaints, bullying peer behaviour, safety, safeguarding, behaviour and discipline —it is all very overlapping—are the top areas.

I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, is happy with and reassured by the Minister’s comments on seclusion rooms. Of course, we are able to offer the Minister the simplest way to reduce bullying in schools, which is for the Government to accept our ban on smartphones in schools. I say this with a smile, but in all seriousness, we know that this is the source of much bullying nowadays and it continues not just in school but out of school. [Interruption.] I am not sure what the noble Baroness is muttering, but if the Government do not want to listen to me then maybe they will listen to Esther Ghey, the mother of Brianna Ghey, who has recently bravely launched a campaign against smartphones in schools, highlighting the terrible bullying and impact they had on Brianna. With that I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

May I just refer to my Amendment 502YF? I heard what the Minister said about the general duty under the Children Act, but I am still concerned about the black hole I spoke about. This is all part of improving the liaising between schools and local authorities on how we provide for these children. I will reflect on that, but I am still concerned. As far as my noble friend’s point about smartphones in schools and bullying goes, of course, bullying does happen outside school, when they still have those smartphones. It happens on social media, and that is why I am pleased to see the National Education Union and others pushing for increasing the age restriction in respect of social media to 16. As I say, I commend them in that endeavour.

Amendment 459 withdrawn.