Queen’s Speech

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Blake on her excellent speech and the noble Lord, Lord Lebedev, on an interesting one. I add my good wishes to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth as he leaves this House.

I echo others in regretting the absence of proposals on social care and workers’ rights from the gracious Speech, both urgent issues to which this Government need to turn their attention. I am pleased that the Government have turned their attention to education and talked of an ambitious and long-term package of measures to ensure that pupils have the chance to make up their learning over the course of the Parliament. Sustainable recovery may take some time. I endorse the remarks of my noble friend Lady Morris, who highlighted the absence of detail about this package.

To date the Government have, I believe, set aside only £250 per pupil, according to the Education Policy Institute. This compares rather poorly with proposed investment in the Netherlands of £2,500 or the United States of £1,600, for example. It must be borne in mind, too, that schools, already underfunded before the pandemic, have had to bear significant costs over this period, with the result that many may face financial difficulties and possible cuts to staffing. This is not a desirable situation, as children need more attention and smaller classes.

Your Lordships’ House has debated the issue of remote learning and the difficulties some families—including perhaps as many as 1.7 million children—have faced due to their lack of hardware and access to broadband. There is an acknowledgement that online learning of this kind may continue to have some place after the pandemic so this digital divide needs to be addressed, as do questions on the appropriateness of the curriculum and, in particular, the place of oracy within it.

A recent report carried out for the Oracy All-Party Parliamentary Group found:

“The absence of oracy education hampers children and young people’s long-term opportunities and capabilities”.


Teachers, employers and young people themselves recognise that oracy skills support young people’s transition into further and higher education and into employment—as they do, of course, during earlier stages in education. During the pandemic, many children have missed out on language development. Two-thirds of primary and nearly half of secondary teachers say that during the period of school closures, their negative effect was noticed on the spoken language development of students eligible for the pupil premium, compared with advantaged pupils. Against this background, and in line with levelling up, will the Government reconsider the change to the pupil premium census dates, which I understand will take £150 million out of school budgets for the most disadvantaged pupils?

Many pupils have missed out on language development but they have also missed out on learning collaboratively, and on opportunities to participate in physical, practical, cultural and creative activities. Catch-up should not just be about literacy, numeracy and the academic curriculum. The gap between the advantaged and the disadvantaged has widened and it must be narrowed by a focus on reducing, and ultimately eradicating in short order, child and family poverty.

I want to say a word about the summer break. First, we must ensure that no children go hungry but, secondly, if local authorities are properly resourced they can provide excellent programmes so that children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, can enjoy an exciting and fulfilling time engaging in sporting, recreational, cultural and creative activities, and regaining some of their childhood, which, as an earlier speaker said, has perhaps been lost in lockdown. A contribution to this might well be engagement with the Reading Agency’s Summer Reading Challenge. This is not about phonics and testing; it is an opportunity for children and young people to enjoy reading for pleasure, so that children can begin to develop those skills which will take them into adulthood with reading as a pleasurable activity. I look forward to engaging in further debate on this issue.