Mr.
Gibb: 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: 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?
Mr.
Hayes: 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. 6
pm 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: 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: 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. | 
