Baroness Morris of Yardley: My Lords, I support the amendments and, in particular, will comment on Amendments 30, 31, and 33D. The amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Jones, which deal with the “expects to be” versus “which is” dilemma, just make sense, as I do not think that anyone here would not want parents to know what is being offered rather than what might be offered. The Government’s concern...
Baroness Morris of Yardley: My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Countess, Lady Mar. I do not know what the Minister is about to say, so it might not be necessary for me to speak. However, in case we are not entirely satisfied with the Minister’s response, I shall offer a few comments in support now. We may be missing an opportunity here. There has been a great improvement in blended and online learning over...
Baroness Morris of Yardley: My Lords, I support Amendment 2 and should like to comment briefly. What is strange is that it seems we are all in agreement. On the substance of the matter, there is not as much disagreement in this debate as I thought there would be when the Bill was published, which is interesting. To some extent, what we seem to be debating this evening is: what is the best way in legislation to give that...
Baroness Morris of Yardley: My Lords, I will address Part 3 principally in this debate on Second Reading. However, I acknowledge that many of the other parts of the Bill offer a great deal and I look forward to discussing them in Committee, particularly after the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Perry. I often find myself following her in these debates, and I think that this is the first time that I have agreed...
Baroness Morris of Yardley: I, too, am very grateful to the noble Earl for giving us this short amount of time to discuss this important issue. Two assumptions underpin this debate for me: first, whatever our difference of opinion may be this evening, there is a shared assumption that the knowledge, skills and experience that make up the arts are an important part of our society and how we live our lives. They are vital...
Baroness Morris of Yardley: I will try to do so. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, for bringing this debate to the House. From the number of speakers, your Lordships can see what a popular debate it is; the only consequence is that we have very few minutes in which to express our views. I want to concentrate on one aspect and illustrate it with a number of examples, and to begin by sharing some of...
Baroness Morris of Yardley: Why are the data less reliable with those schools than they are with non-special schools? That has been the thrust of the Minister's argument: that data are strong enough for us to be able to take this course of action. The data are the same for the special schools, so what is the problem?
Baroness Morris of Yardley: My Lords, I am surprised that this measure has come back as a statutory instrument, given our debate during the passage of the Bill. It is an ill advised piece of legislation. Like my noble friend who moved the Motion, I want to look at it on the strategic level and on points of detail. The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, made a significant contribution because there has been agreement over the...
Baroness Morris of Yardley: My Lords, I am glad to be able to contribute to this debate and congratulate my noble friend Lady Jones on bringing it to the Chamber. I do not think that anybody is going to speak against improving the well-being of children or meeting their personal and social needs. I shall wait to the end of the debate to see whether any noble Lord does-perhaps the Minister will. However, it is an area of...
Baroness Morris of Yardley: My Lords, I welcome this report and the interesting debate that we are having today. It must not just be one debate; we need a long debate about this nationally if we are really going to solve some of these problems. In a way, design finds itself in an unusual position: I have never known anyone who was against design. There is no army of people out there making a case against it. Sometimes...
Baroness Morris of Yardley: My Lords, I also support this amendment, on which there is a fair degree of unanimity across the Chamber. My position is approximately the same as that of the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland. We do not want schools where everybody has the same qualification. Over the past 10 to 15 years, we have very much moved to having different qualifications in schools. Clearly, what we want is for someone to...
Baroness Morris of Yardley: My Lords, I support this amendment. I shall start with what I think is going to be my only line of agreement with the Government on this. To take the attitude that intervention in schools should reflect the risk of schools doing badly, and to say that we should intervene less when schools are successful, is absolutely right. As my noble friend has just said, that is a principle that was...
Baroness Morris of Yardley: I see that the Minister is trying to be helpful and I entirely accept what he said about the Secretary of State having powers to take action to ensure that a school's admission arrangements are fair. I accept that and I think that the Minister has made that point on a number of occasions. However, the problem arises as regards co-ordinating different schools with different oversubscription...
Baroness Morris of Yardley: My Lords, I support the amendments and I, too, look forward to the Minister's reply. I learnt last week that I cannot speak after him, so I may as well speak now in anticipation of what he might say. I think that this is a really tricky issue. My noble friend was right to say that if more schools are becoming their own admissions authorities, that is when the problem sets in. The system can...
Baroness Morris of Yardley: My Lords, I, too, support the amendments put forward by my noble friend Lady Jones and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I think there is agreement across the House about the importance of the careers advice and guidance service. It has always been important, but never more so than now, when the world is very complicated. The more you give young people choice, the more you have an obligation...
Baroness Morris of Yardley: Before the noble Baroness concludes, will she also reflect that essentially what we are setting in place is a two-tier style of punishment? If you think of it from the teacher's point of view, what is underpinning this is that a detention on the same day as the crime that has been committed is more effective because it is closer in time to that crime. We will now have schools with two groups...
Baroness Morris of Yardley: My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendments-in particular Amendment 10 -and to say how much I welcomed the words of the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland. In a strange way, I do not think that there is a difference of purpose across the House about what we want to achieve. We understand the importance of good discipline in schools and we want to equip teachers to be able to secure that...
Baroness Morris of Yardley: My Lords, I welcome the chance to contribute to the debate, but, before doing so, I draw attention to my interests in terms of my employment at the University of York and at Northern Education. This is a disparate Bill, a rather bitty Bill. It covers a lot of different parts of education. I welcome some parts-I will to do so throughout Committee as well-particularly the extension of early...
Baroness Morris of Yardley: My Lords, I very much welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate and to join others in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, on initiating it. The noble Baroness has a long history of interest in this subject and it is good to hear that her passion has survived moving from opposition to government-and long may that be the case. There is probably unanimity about the...
Baroness Morris of Yardley: To ask Her Majesty's Government how many children are currently in receipt of free school meals; and what is the breakdown of that figure according to the ethnic background of the children.
