Schools White Paper

Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am grateful to my noble friend. The key point around the school-based training is that the quality has to be extremely high. We have to work through the detail of how we will work up the new teaching schools but I will feed back her point about the cap on trainee teachers. My noble friend made an extremely important point about the new floor standards introducing a measure of progression, not just attainment. I accept completely the force of her remarks that judging schools on pupils’ progression, taking into account pupils’ backgrounds and initial standards, is just as important as judging them on attainment. We are working up the detail of how those measures will work and I will be very happy to discuss those with my noble friend. I take the point about the use of force and getting that right. These are sensitive issues. I will come back to her on that and we can discuss further how best to go about it.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. There is much that is good and valuable in this document. As a former teacher, I agree that teaching is a noble profession. However, it is a bit hyperbolic to talk about the melancholy trend under Labour. I cannot, of course, entirely agree with those remarks.

I welcome the importance of many issues that the noble Lord raised. I welcome the review of the early years’ curriculum; however, I am not sure how that can take place when one paragraph of the White Paper talks about removing the duty to co-operate with children’s trusts.

I have mentioned the reference to personal, social and health education and sexual relationship education. I see that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, is nodding. Many of us have for years supported those as great ways of encouraging young people to relate to each other and to improve their learning and ability to cope with life.

Paragraph 4.14 states that:

“Academies and Free Schools will retain the freedom … to depart from aspects of the National Curriculum where they consider it appropriate”;

yet there is a requirement for,

“a broad and balanced curriculum”.

Suppose that an academy or free school did not wish to teach personal, social and health education, for example. Would that not be against the best interests of the schoolchild and possibly the parents? I hope that the noble Lord can explain that tension. What exactly does the paper mean when it states that those schools can have freedom, given that it could possibly work against the best interests of the schoolchild?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am grateful for the comments of the noble Baroness that there is much in the White Paper that she can support. I am extremely aware of her strength of feeling on PSHE, and I have had an education at her hands on a number of fronts on that subject during the passage of the Bill, as I have also had from my noble friend Lady Walmsley. On the noble Baroness’s specific point about the curriculum, which we debated during consideration of the independent school regulations which cover academies, some aspects of sex education teaching would be covered by those regulations. It is important and we know that academies teach those subjects.