Baroness Hooper debates involving the Department for Education during the 2019 Parliament

Tue 12th Jul 2022
Schools Bill [HL]
Lords Chamber

Report stage: Part 1 & Lords Hansard - Part 1

Oak National Academy

Baroness Hooper Excerpts
Thursday 12th January 2023

(1 year, 2 months ago)

Grand Committee
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Baroness Hooper Portrait Baroness Hooper (Con)
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My Lords, I am grateful to have been allowed to make a brief intervention in the gap. I thank my noble friend Lord Vaizey for his introduction and the issues that he raised, with which I agree fully; indeed, I agree with most of what has been said in this debate, both in favour of Oak and what it has achieved as well as everything else. I declare my interest as the honorary president of BESA, the British Educational Suppliers Association, which represents the interests of many small and medium-sized businesses involved in edtech.

It seems to me that what is important is how children are taught and how well they are taught. To achieve the best possible results, it is also important that teachers are able to be creative and responsive to the needs of their pupils—as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, clearly was—and not bound by rigid, inflexible rules. However, in saying this, I appreciate that some teachers are more in need of support than others. My question for my noble friend the Minister is this: what provision is made in teacher training courses for digital awareness, including ways in which edtech can support and supplement their teaching skills?

Education Technology: Oak National Academy

Baroness Hooper Excerpts
Monday 7th November 2022

(1 year, 4 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Con)
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The procurement of materials for key stages 1 to 4 is largely discrete from the review. Oak will be providing resources only for key stages 1 to 4, and only digital resources. That procurement has just gone out, and we will wait to see what is delivered as a result.

Baroness Hooper Portrait Baroness Hooper (Con)
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My Lords, I declare an interest as the honorary president of BESA, the British Educational Suppliers Association, whose members have grave concerns about the Oak proposals, and who are mainly highly motivated and innovative small and medium-sized enterprises. Has my noble friend had time to read today's Times Educational Supplement, which points out that four out of 10 of all lessons on Oak started by pupils are not finished, with the worst take-up in disadvantaged areas? Can she comment on that? Could not the funding allocated to Oak be better spent working with tools on solutions that they know work best for their pupils?

Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Con)
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I will look at the numbers to which my noble friend refers. I wonder whether she is referring to lessons delivered by Oak during the pandemic, when they were online and children were working from home. Obviously, the resources that the department is funding Oak to develop in future will be for teachers to deliver in the classroom—although it also provides a back-up and support in the event, God forbid, of another pandemic.

Plurilingual and Intercultural Education

Baroness Hooper Excerpts
Tuesday 18th October 2022

(1 year, 5 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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Baroness Hooper Portrait Baroness Hooper (Con)
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My Lords, given that English is the most spoken language in the world and that Spanish, as a first language, is the second most spoken language, will my noble friend reassure me that priority will always be given to the teaching of Spanish?

Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Con)
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I thank my noble friend for her question. I am sure she will be pleased, as I am, to note that Spanish is now the second most popular modern foreign language at GCSE with almost 110,000 entries in the academic year 2020-21.

Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Hooper Excerpts
Baroness Hooper Portrait Baroness Hooper (Con)
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My Lords, I support the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, in his Amendment 42. I declare an interest as a co-chairman of the All-Party Group on Dance, as well as having been a pupil of the Royal Ballet School so long ago that it was still then called the Sadler’s Wells Ballet School and it was not then a boarding school. I can vouch for the fact that the academic needs of the children were so well catered for—alongside our specialist ballet lessons, of course—that after I returned to my previous school after an experimental year in London, in digs at the tender age of 10, I actually skipped a year. So, these specialist schools have a very good and fine academic reputation, but they also have an important international reputation and attract international pupils and funding to this country. I hope my noble friend will consider this amendment very sympathetically.

Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Con)
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My Lords, these amendments reflect the House’s interest in ensuring that the regulatory framework underpinning a fully trust-led system is fit for purpose. I will take Amendments 10 and 43 together, both of which have been tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. As I have already explained, the Government intend to withdraw Clause 4, to which Amendment 10 relates. This will enable discussion with the sector as to how to implement local governance arrangements for schools in all trusts, as we set out in the schools White Paper. In addition, we have already committed to consulting on the exceptional circumstances in which a good school could request that the regulator agrees to the school moving to a stronger trust. It would be inappropriate, however, to pre-empt the outcome of those discussions and the planned engagement with the sector.