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.