Early Years Intervention

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend has stimulated an excellent debate, for which we should all congratulate her. Coming nearly at the end of the speakers list, the temptation is to spend your time saying how much you agree with everybody else. I would like to do that but I shall not, although I would like to say that I was particularly struck by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, which I hope I shall be able to reflect on by implication in some of what I say. The House will not be surprised to know that I want to talk about the arts in early years provision, but I am afraid that I am going to start on a slightly sour note, which I hope the House will forgive.

On 10 November last year, the Secretary of State for Education made a speech at the launch of the Your Life campaign in which she said the following:

“Even a decade ago, young people were told that maths and the sciences were simply the subjects you took if you wanted to go into a mathematical or scientific career, if you wanted to be a doctor, or a pharmacist, or an engineer”.

I am not absolutely sure that that is true but that is what she said. She went on:

“But if you wanted to do something different, or even if you didn’t know what you wanted to do, and let’s be honest—it takes a pretty confident 16-year-old to have their whole life mapped out ahead of them—then the arts and humanities were what you chose. Because they were useful for all kinds of jobs”.

So far, so good, you might think, but then she went on:

“Of course now we know that couldn’t be further from the truth, that the subjects that keep young people’s options open and unlock doors to all sorts of careers are the STEM subjects: science, technology, engineering and maths”.

Those remarks are deeply disappointing and wrong on so many counts and in ways which go directly to the heart of this debate. As we know and as we have heard, children are capable, if they are encouraged, supported and educated thoughtfully from early on, of learning many different things in many different ways. The flexibility of mind that comes from a broadly based education is exactly what employers look for in all fields. I thought that we had left the idea of two cultures far behind but apparently not. It is profoundly unhelpful for such simplistic distinctions to be made.

Many of your Lordships—perhaps most in this House—are parents. Some of us are lucky enough also to be grandparents. Over the past few weeks lots of us will have had the pleasure, albeit occasionally a mixed one, of taking young children to arts events and/or of just sitting on the sofa with them reading, or watching, for example, “Frozen”—a cultural reference for those of your Lordships who have very young daughters or granddaughters in particular. We will have observed their joy and their absorption, and the way in which that kind of experience moves them on. They find new language, new questions to ask and new ways of thinking about the world—even the very little ones do. However, as we have heard, not all children are lucky enough to get this kind of stimulation as a natural part of their family lives, which is why it is so important that we understand and value how it can be incorporated into other areas, particularly school.

I want to mention briefly one organisation which is contributing magnificently to this important work. Artis Education has been in business for 10 years. I stress the word business for it is not a charity. Schools have to pay for its services, which they do. Nearly all its schools are in the maintained sector. I was until recently a director and the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, who is not able to be in his place today, was involved in setting it up. Artis trains specialists from performance backgrounds to deliver inspirational cultural enrichment which can be, and often is, directly related to national curriculum requirements. Its programmes are of particular benefit in raising levels of confidence and self-esteem in young children, and are recognised by head teachers and other educationalists for contributing to increased concentration, improved behaviour and overall eagerness to learn.

I recommend the Artis website to your Lordships and especially to the noble Lord the Minister. It is an inspiring read. On it you will find, for example, a wonderful blog from the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, entitled “I am not an artist”, which gives 10 excellent, evidence-based reasons why arts education is so important for young children, for society and for the economy. You will also find details of Artis’s 10 tools for transforming the new science curriculum, which set out how teachers can use arts-based techniques to address science topics. Artis says:

“This sense of wonder and fascination with the surrounding world is as important in performing arts as it is in science, and the two disciplines have many points in common”.

Well, who knew? How very true and how very obvious, but not, apparently, to the Secretary of State. Perhaps her noble friend the Minister will put her straight after this debate.