Lifelong Learning

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, lifelong learning should be the central element of our future educational strategy. It would apply to every citizen and constitute a completely new way of rejuvenating and perpetuating knowledge in the present and bringing fulfilled lives to all our citizens.

I declare an interest as president of Birkbeck. Lifelong learning exists already in London’s only specialist provider of part-time higher education. Some 13,000 of Birkbeck’s 15,500 students are part-time because they have full-time jobs. Over 8,000 of those students are over 30, some are over 60 and one or two are even over 80. They manage to mix a life of work and earning with study and application. I went along to a session where a lot of young people—at least, people younger than me—were studying accounting, having come from accounting companies. The way that they learned was to interrogate the teacher as much as the teacher interrogated them, because they brought to their learning the background of their daily job. That is a wonderful way of perpetuating the skills of one generation and confronting the dilemmas of the next. This revised way of learning might well change the way that the human psyche learns and passes on information. It is only when that has happened for the whole population that it will be successful.

The people who come to Birkbeck have full-time jobs yet study for full-time degrees. The master of Birkbeck often says he wonders what other students do with their days because our students graduate with honours to full-scale university degrees. Indeed, it is a commonplace that an employer who gets a CV that says “Birkbeck” on it will put that CV pretty near the top of the list, because Birkbeck students want to learn, are highly motivated and combine their jobs, their incomes and their working experience.

I have a vision that, in future, working life throughout the country will include regular financially supported breaks for further learning. That should be built into the expectations of today’s schoolchildren and graduates as it has the potential to bring fulfilment to the whole population. What matters crucially now, not least for the Minister, is finance. It is difficult to finance these enterprises, but the Government have said that they support part-time maintenance loans. There is to be an official consultation on this, and I ask the Minister when that can begin. It cannot be too soon.

Schools

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Lord is quite right to point out the difficulty of recruiting teachers in some areas. Teach First, which has been a very successful programme, has recruited 1,441 applicants, the majority of whom will be going outside London. It is having quite a lot of success at sending young teachers into certain locations such as coastal towns, particularly when they are sent together so that they feel part of a group. It is very important that they are placed in schools that welcome them and where they have good career development opportunities such as, in particular, in multiacademy trusts, where there are obviously much greater career development opportunities than in single schools. We also have plans, through the National Teaching Service, to send more teachers to what we call “cold spots”.

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister acknowledge, when he speaks of the great support there is for an increase in grammar schools, that most parents who support them do so in the belief that their own children will get in? How will he deal with the disappointment of the parents whose children fail?

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness makes a good point about what has happened in the past. But, as I said, we believe that although this happened in the past, if we have the strong requirements on the opening or extension of selection that we set out in our consultation document, which is to have wider access to more disadvantaged pupils and to support the wider school system, we can devise proposals that will benefit the wider system.

Higher Education: Part-time and Mature Students

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I have already made a similar point to the noble Baroness: we are aware of the decline. We are keen to stimulate further but it not just about university education; for instance, our higher and degree-level apprenticeships are the fastest-growing part of our apprenticeships programme. This is all about widening access and helping people to develop the skills they need so that British industry can be competitive internationally. More than half of the people on these courses are over 25.

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, I ask the Minister to address the solution to this problem, which lies within the remit of the Government. I speak as the president of Birkbeck, which has been very badly hit. Part-time education is being prevented from moving forward, and what is needed is the repeal of the 2008 policy that makes equal level qualifications not available for grant. If that folly of a policy was repealed, it would make a huge difference to those coming into part-time education. The Government are missing an important strand of policy, which would bring them great benefit.

[Lord Nash]

We have already relaxed that policy, which was introduced by the Labour Party, in relation to student support for those taking a second degree in part-time education in technology, computer science and engineering.

Schools: Local Oversight

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Monday 28th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

Our solution to ensuring better local accountability is to have a system of regional schools commissioners which is run by head teachers. Personally, I trust head teachers to be better wired into their local systems than bureaucracies and bureaucrats are, any time. We are also increasingly seeing the emergence of regional multi-academy trusts, which are proving particularly effective.

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, after the Trojan horse allegations, it has been reported that teachers who spoke out at the time are now suffering harassment and the threat of losing their jobs. What do the Government propose as a way of protecting whistleblowers locally so that they are given enough courage to come forward and speak out?

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness raises a very good point. We are doing all that we can to ensure that that does not happen. Indeed, there are some teachers we are particularly concerned about who had themselves been causing harassment and who have now been suspended from their jobs. We are talking to Ofsted about expanding its whistleblowing arrangements to cover exactly this kind of situation.

Schools: Careers Guidance

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, the revised guidance will make it clear that schools should have a strategy for the advice and guidance they provide to young people. The strategy should be embedded within a clear framework linked to outcomes for pupils rather than an ad hoc set of activities. It should reflect the school’s ethos and meet the needs of all pupils. We will share case studies so that schools can learn from the very best practice. The revised guidance will also set out clearly what schools can do to ensure that pupils have information about all the types of education and training they can pursue, and hear directly from different types of providers, including further education and sixth-form colleges, and employers delivering apprenticeships.

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, there is an ongoing problem of informing young people about apprenticeships. This is a long-running story, found to be inadequate by the Ofsted report, which said that the careers advice being given in schools is not addressing that. The dilemma is that when a teacher on the staff of a school is also the careers officer, their loyalty to the school inclines them to advise children to stay on in the sixth form. What can the Government do to generate a new national careers service energy, so that this particular problem is more swiftly answered?

Schools Careers Service: Apprenticeships

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Wednesday 11th December 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Bakewell]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that career services in schools make pupils fully aware of apprenticeship opportunities open to them.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)]

My Lords, schools are legally required to secure independent careers guidance for 12 to 18 year-olds, and that includes information on all education and training options, including apprenticeships. We will publish revised statutory guidance to help schools deliver better support to pupils, including about apprenticeships. Young people are most likely to be influenced by hearing directly from employers and apprentices. We will be strengthening the importance of partnerships between schools and businesses via the National Careers Service. Ofsted is ensuring that careers guidance and pupil destinations will be given greater priority in inspections.

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that Answer, but given that the House of Commons Business, Innovation and Skills Committee report of 2012-13 found that,

“awareness and resources in schools and colleges remains lacking”,

expressed disappointment with the National Apprenticeship Service and recommended that the NAS should be given statutory responsibility for raising awareness of apprenticeships, can he explain how far these recommendations have been carried out?

[Lord Nash]

The National Apprenticeship Service funds the Education and Employers Taskforce, which is a programme to deliver knowledge about apprenticeships to schools. We also had 70 advisers from the National Careers Service and Jobcentre Plus stationed at the Skills Show in November. The National Careers Service and the National Apprenticeship Service ran a jobs bus road show, and we are pursuing a number of other measures in this area.

Schools: Admission Policies

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Bakewell]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have plans to encourage religiously selective schools to adopt more open admission policies.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash)]

My Lords, the coalition supports inclusive admission arrangements. New faith academies and free schools may admit only half their intake based on faith where they are oversubscribed. The Government also remain strongly committed to faith schools, which play a long-established role in our diverse education system. They allow parents to choose a school in line with their faith and they make a significant contribution to educational standards in this country.

[Baroness Bakewell]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. However, in the light of the government announcement last week of a funding initiative for 6,000 new schools, and given that this year the Department for Education has already accepted 16 new Christian schools and six Muslim schools, and that the Cantle report into the 2001 riots cited religious and ethnic fragmentation as an underlying cause, will the Minister tell us whether this Government believe that the children of this country should be integrated or segregated?

[Lord Nash]

This Government believe strongly that one of the secrets for success in this country is that children should be integrated and that all schools should teach a balanced all-faith curriculum, even if they have a particular faith-based thesis. We will not make a long-term success of this country unless we can succeed in doing what the noble Baroness has mentioned.

Schools: History

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell]

My Lords, I support everything that the noble Lord has said about the teaching of history and commend his appalling account of the record of history teaching as it now stands in our schools. I deplore that situation and I call on the Minister to see that it is rectified as soon as possible.

Let me quote WH Auden, who wrote:

“I and the public know

What all school children learn,

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return”.

It is a legendary phrase that he wrote in his poem on 1 September 1939. The phrase “all school children learn” was one that he could use then and everyone accepted it. That is no longer the case. All schoolchildren do not learn. A consensus has gone.

The consensus has gone because over the recent generation there have been what you could call curriculum wars. They arose because a generation of postmodern writers analysed history and came to the conclusion that it was merely entirely subjective and a narrative that was the propaganda of one particular segment, and that being subjective no-one could decide whose history to teach. Those wars went on in academic circles to the detriment of young people. You could imagine that, for example, over the teaching of the history of Ireland. Do we teach the Catholic or the Protestant version? Whose version? One person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. Whose version do we teach? The chaos of these arguments over the teaching of what truth is—when can you call a fact a fact and not propaganda?—created a crisis in the teaching of history itself.

Bernard Williams, a philosopher, in his book Truth and Truthfulness, drew on what has been an ongoing debate since the time of the Greeks—the postmodernists did not invent it, although they aggravated it. Bernard Williams quoted Clemenceau who, when asked what future historians would say about the First World War, said:

“They will not say that Belgium invaded Germany”.

We can also be confident that Archbishop Ussher, the Primate of All Ireland, was wrong to claim in the 17th century that the world began on 23 October 4004 BC—that that was the day of creation. He believed it, he spoke it as truth, and he was wrong. Knowledge changes over time.

We know that the victors write the history. We have in this building a painting that demonstrates that Wellington defeated Napoleon and that the British were the victors at Waterloo. The Prussians beg to disagree; but the overriding fact was that Napoleon was defeated. These curriculum wars have brought us to this sad state of affairs and it is important that we reinstate history for the three benefits that I shall name. I am sure that noble Lords will mention many others. History teaches us the timeline of humanity. It teaches us chronology and what it means for the human race. I was asked by a small child, who was not that small and should have known better, “Did the Tudors come after the Victorians?”. They need to know. There is virtue in knowing about the Normans, the Plantagenets, the Tudors and the Stuarts because in that way children can understand the nature of monarchy in this country today. That is very important, enriching and a pleasure to know.

Secondly, history teaches cause and effect, as the noble Lord, Lord Luke, said. Have we ever resolved what the causes of the French Revolution were? Have we always gone on writing essays about them? How fruitful it is to revisit such a subject—the causes of the Industrial Revolution or the Russian Revolution? Revolution figures quite a lot in these causation debates. Only this morning, Andreas Whittam-Smith, writing in the Independent, asks, “Is the world heading for a new revolution?”. In his article, he cites the circumstances of 1848 when, as noble Lords will know, Europe was swept by revolution. He cites the causes of the 1848 revolution and suggests that they are available today, and that we should think about that. Understanding cause and effect will make us think about our present society.

History teaches judgment. Over the years, history has taught us to judge the slave trade. It has taught us to judge Victorian society—its virtues as well as child labour and squalid industrial circumstances. It has taught us to celebrate the emancipation of women. Recently, the Tricycle Theatre in London put on a series of 12 short plays in groups of four, running over three nights. Called “The Great Game”, it is about British involvement in Afghanistan since 1940. It sold out. Sir David Richard, the Chief of the Defence Staff, said that it was as historically accurate as you would get in any lesson. The audience was full of people from the Ministry of Defence, soldiers, civil servants, Sandhurst cadets, and people who wanted to know the history of British involvement in Afghanistan. The British were not the only ones. The plays then went to Washington and were played at the Pentagon.

There is a greed for history. There is a greed to know how we got here. How did this situation arise? It is directly significant in all our lives today. There is a yearning for history in people’s hearts. People may miss out at school, but when the new archive building opened at Kew, it was inundated with people seeking their genealogy—those who wanted to know about their ancestry and to feed their identity.

The television programme “Who Do You Think You Are?” has a big following. It teaches people how to go to church not for the religion necessarily but to seek out records of births, marriages and deaths and of their families. History is also expressed in the civic pride we find when cities are full of plaques on the walls, indicating to us where important people lived and what they contributed. With my background, I am particularly fond of one on a rather posh Manchester hotel that records Peterloo and what that massacre stood for in the movement towards democratic reform.

History gives us our identity and a perspective. It allows us to understand the issues of the past about which we might feel some guilt—a wish to apologise even—but it teaches us who we are. It gives us local, civic pride and national pride. We must not deprive our children of that.