Education: Development of Excellence

Baroness Taylor of Bolton Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton]

My Lords, I think I must restrain myself and not follow directly some of the comments that have just been made. I start by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, and agreeing with what she said about the quality of teachers and how crucial it is that we continue to try to improve it. It is also important that we do all that we can to respect teachers and the whole of the teaching profession. I wonder where all this discussion about giving teachers more freedom sits with the Secretary of State’s apparent desire to prescribe the history curriculum in every detail. Perhaps we should remember what the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, said about the need for a division of labour.

I am not sure that I am quite as optimistic as the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, about the new examination system. I am not against a baccalaureate, but we are going to have a British bacc, a technical bacc, an A-bacc, new vocational qualifications, and I wonder whether we will have a totally cohesive and comprehensive system.

I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Baker, when he says that we should look at young people from the age of 14 to 18, or maybe 19. I appreciate his work on technical opportunities, and in particular the need for parity of esteem for those types of qualifications. We need a holistic approach to qualifications and opportunities for young people between the ages of 14 and 18 or 19. I believe that we can achieve that only by a credit accumulation system, which would include modular elements, as has been suggested. That is the only way to get real parity between academic and vocational achievements. It would also allow for acknowledgement of the work in arts, music and sport that others have mentioned.

I am surprised that there has not been more mention of the need to concentrate a great deal of resources on early years education. If we are talking about long-term excellence, we must concentrate a great deal of attention there. I am also surprised that mention has not been made of the Open University, which is a world leader and something which this country should be proud of and to which our other universities should look to in the support that it gives students, its course material, openness and approachability. Others could learn from that.

In a very limited debate, there is a lot that everyone wants to say, so I will confine my other remarks to one aspect: a word that has been mentioned many times today—aspiration. Much of what is said about how we want to raise and realise the aspirations of children, young people and adults no one would question, and I fully support that objective. However, if we are really going to provide opportunity for all, we must find better strategies to deal with those who are non-aspirational: the families, parents and children who feel incapable, threatened, insecure or alienated from education. That is a real problem.

The noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, talked about the influence of her mother. All teachers know that if you have motivated parents, it is much easier for the child to succeed. Unfortunately, some parents do not have a good experience of education. There are many reasons for that. We know that levels of illiteracy and innumeracy are far too high. Some are very fearful of any formal environment, some find their responsibilities overwhelming, and some do not want themselves or their children to be taken out of their comfort zone to an alien world of education that they find threatening. Sometimes, unfortunately, teachers accept that and do not have expectations for some children from families with difficulties.

The Government’s approach—some of the cuts that are being introduced hitting early years and the support for those families, and doing things such as not ring-fencing the pupil premium—will make the situation worse. We have the very real challenge of making opportunities a reality for those children and helping them to break through to make the progress that they could.