National Curriculum

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Lord Sutherland of Houndwood

Tuesday 26th March 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for initiating this debate and for giving us all an opportunity to contribute to the consultation, which is clearly important. We have had a constructive and thoughtful debate and I want to continue in that spirit because, despite the very short timescale for the consultation, we have to hope that this is a genuine exercise and that our views will genuinely be taken into account before the final curriculum is put together.

This is undoubtedly a very important debate, not just among teachers and academics but among parents, employers and young people themselves. It lays the foundations of knowledge and skills for the next generation, and it is amazing how much we are defined by the years in which we were taught at school and by how much we and the next generation take them into our working lives. You can always tell how old you are by what poems you know and what books you read at school. They instantly give you away. The national curriculum creates a national presence and culture in society. There is never a perfect solution, and whatever we come up with, we will always be criticised. There will always be competing views on either side, but it does not alter the fact that we should always have an open and inquiring mind as to how we can get the best out of the curriculum and how it can be improved.

Before I comment on the detail, I should also like to give the Minister the chance to set the record straight on who drafted the proposals. He will no doubt have read the concerns from some of the department’s advisers on the history curriculum that the final draft bore no resemblance to the versions on which they were working as late as January. Can he reassure us that Michael Gove, in a fit of overexuberance, did not personally write the final version of the history curriculum?

I should also be grateful if the noble Lord can address the essential contradiction mentioned by several noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, of the national curriculum applying only to maintained schools, of which there will be a shrinking number as more and more schools become academies. If it matters educationally that the curriculum is updated, how much real flexibility are we prepared to give to academies that choose to flout the direction of the Secretary of State? At what point would Ofsted or the department intervene, and what sanctions are available if academies veer off course in a major way from what is prescribed in the national curriculum?

We share the ambitions of the Government that every child should be stretched to fulfil their maximum potential. However, we differ because we also see the immense variety of attributes and learning styles that make each child unique. We therefore reject the hothouse philosophy that underpins these proposals based on every child being crammed full of facts and examined to see how much they have been able to retain. Some children undoubtedly flourish in such an environment but, for others, learning becomes a miserable and frustrating treadmill that can put them off the whole educational experience. This is why we have major concerns about the move to revert back to exams as the sole measure of success. I was surprised to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, had to say on this because, contrary to him, I believe that that takes a lot of teacher creativity out of the system and inevitably leads to teachers being put under pressure to teach to the test. The noble Lord seemed to imply that that was a heresy, but there is probably a lot of anecdotal evidence to support my position.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

I thank the noble Baroness for giving way. I absolutely agree that the heresy is actually to follow those principles rather than to accept them.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

Perhaps this is something for a longer debate but some teachers would say that they are desperate to escape the straitjacket of being forced to teach to the test but are literally prevented from doing so. We can all see the absolute merit of teachers being freed up to inspire and be creative in the way that they teach.

A couple of references have already been made to the academics and professionals who wrote to the Telegraph and the Independent last week. I share a number of the concerns those people expressed. They said that the new curriculum will severely damage educational standards. Without boring noble Lords too much, because I am sure a number have read the letters, I will just illustrate the point with a couple of short quotes. They said:

“The proposed curriculum consists of endless lists of spellings, facts and rules. This mountain of data will not develop children’s ability to think, including problem-solving, critical understanding and creativity”.

They also went on to say:

“Inappropriate demands will lead to failure and demoralisation”.

These themes were illustrated very well by the excellent contribution of my noble friend Lady Whitaker on the significance of design as a creative, multidisciplinary, problem-solving subject, which is really what we are looking for in terms of a progressive education but which is not really captured in the current proposals. Can the Minister comment on the widely held concerns that there is an overemphasis on learning by rote at the expense of deeper understanding and creativity in the way that the curriculum is being designed?

The consultation document also emphasises the need to learn from international comparisons. We absolutely agree that we can learn from high-performing countries and aim to do better in the international league tables. However, there is an increasing controversy about the comparisons and the conclusions that are being drawn from the data. That is why our party has resolved to remove the interpretation of the evidence from politicians and instead set up an independent body, an office for educational improvement, which will verify the research and provide genuinely well informed learning points for practitioners in the field. Can the noble Lord comment on whether he agrees that a greater degree of independent analysis would be beneficial in this regard?

Turning to the specific subject areas, I do not intend to comment on every subject, but will just pick out some key concerns which are symptomatic of our wider concerns. A number of noble Lords have mentioned history but they have not really gone into the detail, so it falls to me to do so. We accept that there is a need for pupils to have a greater grasp of the chronology of events along the timeline. However, we also agree with the critique of Professor Chris Husbands that you cannot address this by starting at the beginning of time with the youngest children and working forward, as seems to be proposed, otherwise, as he says,

“you end up with a seven-year-old understanding of the Saxons, a ten-year-old understanding of the Middle Ages and a fourteen-year-old understanding of the industrial revolution”.

More fundamentally, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, we feel that there is a concern that the curriculum is focused too much on our island history and does not have sufficient material about our global history and our interconnections.

On geography, we share the concerns mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, that the debate about climate change has been cut out of the curriculum for children under 14, when many children will stop studying the subject. Young people need to understand the impact of melting glaciers, floods and drought on the physical landscape. Can the Minister advise whether this is a deliberate decision to remove the item from the curriculum?

On mathematics, we welcome the fact that personal finance, budgeting and money management are to be included and we agree that pupils need to understand the basic tools of maths. However, going back to my earlier point, there has to be a way of allowing teachers to be creative and inspiring, so that maths does not just become a memory test of facts and formulas but is something more than that.

On English, we agree that spelling, grammar and sentence construction are important. This was included in the 2007 curriculum. However, we are concerned that the shift to final exams and the removal of controlled assessment risks undermining the teaching of speaking and listening skills, which are critical to the world of work. Perhaps the Minister will comment on how these skills will be assessed in future.

Finally, we share the concerns mentioned by several noble Lords about the long-awaited PSHE review giving so little direction to schools on issues that are crucial to the health and well-being of young people.

We will continue to engage on the future curriculum, but we believe that flawed thinking undermines the proposals. At its heart is the assumption that every child must pursue an academic career. We take a different view. We see the rise of the leaving age to 18 as a great opportunity, so we are developing plans for a gold-standard set of qualifications that test academic, practical, creative and technical learning up to 18. We are taking the time to get these proposals right. This includes engaging with employers.

I realise that my time is up. I reiterate my thanks to the noble Lord for this debate and look forward to his response.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Lord Sutherland of Houndwood

Monday 12th September 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, again, I rise briefly to support the noble Lord’s amendment. Like my noble friend, when I originally read the amendment, I thought that it was self-evident. However, the more I have looked at it and listened to the debate this afternoon, the more it seems to me that, once all the other elements have been stripped out of the legislation and the provisions, we increasingly rely on Ofsted as the final fallback to guarantee standards.

The noble Lord, Lord Low, is right to say that if we are not careful SEN provision will be swept under the carpet and will not be seen as a major factor in provision within schools. Looking at this issue in the context of some of the other amendments that we will debate this afternoon, with the new emphasis on PRUs and alternative academy provision, if we are not careful there will, whether the Government had intended it or not, be a move to take a lot of pupils with specialist needs out of mainstream education into other provision, and the expertise that goes with it will be lost.

Therefore, the noble Lord’s amendment is helpful. It would be reassuring to have it in the Bill, and it would reassure people who see mainstream schools as having an essential responsibility to provide SEN provision and to make sure that it is high quality and high class. It would also reassure people about the intent in the other sections of the Bill.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I sympathise very much with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Low, but I also sympathise with the tensions expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. There are difficulties here. This is pretty much a sledgehammer amendment and I am not sure that I would want to go that far. However, I invite the Minister to say that he will take away the spirit of the amendment, as well as the comments, and look at how we can best improve the quality of SEN teaching. It is a very tall order to ask any school to be outstanding in all areas that might have to be dealt with under the general heading of SEN, and we might find a more subtle way of inviting them to apply for an outstanding rating in areas where they show expertise.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Lord Sutherland of Houndwood

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

I thank the noble Lord for his interesting contribution. Is it the Government’s intention that in future all schools should become academies? I think the answer—although the Minister did not put it in these blunt terms—is yes. It was interesting that in his response to the very wide debate that we have had and the comments from around the Room he did not seem to mention parents and communities.

The Government have decided centrally that in future all schools should be academies and that local democracy does not figure in this brave new world that we are creating. That is sad because it means that all the local choice that the Government have been talking about will not exist in practice in the future. The Government are sending out a signal that high-performing maintained schools, of which there are many around the country, are being classified as second class: that they are not the current or future game in town. That is sad, because if you ask most parents around the country they would really like choice. Of course they all want high-quality, high-performing schools, but they want choice— and I do not see where choice figures in Schedule 11.

Under the current arrangements, without Schedule 11 we already have the opportunity for schools to transfer to academies and for new schools to become academies. The figures have already been quoted about how many existing and new schools are becoming academies—the process is already happening out there—and Schedule 11 adds nothing except to give the Secretary of State undue powers to instruct that this will always be the case.

I would have liked to have heard more from the Minister on the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, about the expansion of the school role and communities being able to respond rapidly to and having some control over what happens in the locality.

I listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, and I was slightly disappointed with what he said. He seemed to be suggesting that we should not worry because there is a loophole. I would have thought that local communities want more than a loophole; they want the right to determine what should happen in their area.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

May I just clarify? That is the way in which the note is written. It seems to me that there is a power there that local authorities can use. There is an extra step—I concede that—but there is a power that they can use to create a school that meets the needs of the community if there is no alternative proposal that would meet them.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

If that is what we have to rely on, it is to be regretted. It should be much more of a forceful and enforceable right. I do not think I have anything more to say. In some sense this is an ideological difference between us. However, it is not about academies or no academies but about central and local control. We are very much on the side of parents, local communities and local democratically elected representatives. I do not think that the Government have fully acknowledged that. I am sure we will return to this subject, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Lord Sutherland of Houndwood

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, this amendment intrigues me, and it raises a question that I hope the Minister can answer. I hope that the proposal would not in any way affect the positive cross-border flow of teachers between Wales and England and between Scotland and England. There are benefits to both sides at the moment.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for giving us the opportunity to look at the issue of induction periods for staff and to consider who should have to go through that induction period and on what grounds.

Amendment 68, which covers international schools—or any “duly accredited school overseas”—seems to make eminently good sense. Obviously, the underlying issue is accreditation, which means that we need to be sure that the schools that are authorised to perform the induction really are able to provide the quality of teaching to the standards that we demand. However, given that young people these days, as part of their natural early adulthood, move around the globe far more than we ever did in our day, I think that it is perfectly reasonable to expect that young people might want to start their teaching career outside the UK and to bring those skills and experiences directly back into the teaching profession in the UK. Therefore, I very much welcome the intention behind Amendment 68.

On the other hand, Amendment 69 seems rather ungenerous of the noble Lord, because it implies that people who fail their induction will somehow use some underhand way of sneaking back in, so to speak, through the backdoor. When I read the proposal in the Bill, I saw it as much more a facilitative thing. As we have touched on in previous debates, some who start their training when they are very young may not really know in what age group or subject they want to specialise. Therefore, I can well imagine a situation in which some young people, having started off their induction teaching one age group, realise that that age group is not for them and, halfway through the induction year, decide to switch, for example, from secondary to primary or vice versa. I would hope that the regulations that will be set out would enable that to happen. It is not about allowing poor teachers who have failed to get back in; allowing that flexibility for young people to make different career choices seems eminently sensible. Therefore, I support the intent in the original Bill.