Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Warnock and Lord Quirk

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Quirk]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 79. Clause 40 requires the chief inspector to consider a familiar quartet: the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils. Amendment 79 would insert the word “linguistic”. In other words, we would wish the chief inspector to focus upon the child’s unique and very precious language faculty, and properly so, because language proficiency is not only essential for the other desiderata in Clause 40, for example social and cultural development, but, more widely, it is a precondition for the whole of education itself.

Many thousands of our children start school linguistically impoverished and hence cognitively impaired. The numbers extend far beyond the unfortunates with pathological problems that require serious intervention by speech and language therapy. These are a tiny unfortunate minority compared with the far greater unfortunates who by reason of family dysfunction or social circumstance have little experience of parental or sibling chatter let alone bedtime stories. They have been denied the rich linguistic exposure that more fortunate children can happily take for granted.

The language faculty depends crucially upon early intervention. Language development is something that has to happen as early as possible, pre-school preferably, as we have just heard in relation to Amendment 76A, moved by my noble friend Lord Northbourne, and as we did on his very first amendment, last week, when the elegant intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Peston, was especially memorable. If serious linguistic deficiency cannot be spotted before school, and if it cannot be spotted at least in the first few terms of primary school, then the consequences are disastrous.

None of this is controversial, and it is indeed in line with Her Majesty's Government’s policy. What we are talking about is language development that merely leads to the confident, competent command of English. Surely that is not a lot to ask of an English education, but at present we fall very far short of it. Employers are on record as preferring teenage recruits who learnt their English in Poland, Russia or China, because it is easier for everyone to understand their less sloppy diction and to read their better-formed sentences and clearer handwriting. We could go further. Without giving pupils a sound basis in English, how can we attract far more to go on and learn Spanish, German, even Mandarin? As noble Lords will know, one of the proposers of this amendment, the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, chairs the all-party group on foreign languages.

Among possible objections to our amendment, let me just mention two. First, adding the word “linguistic” may invite further additions—“mathematical”, for example. But language is different, and is genuinely unique. It is the precondition of all else, from the rules of maths to the rules of football. Secondly, it may be objected that the addition of “linguistic” creates a tautology, since it is implicit in “social” and “cultural”. We would disagree. Doubtless some degree of social and cultural development need not depend upon language—even, perhaps, enough for inspectorial hurried box-ticking. But inspectors must in our view be required to pause and address language development as an area requiring their separate and specific consideration. Indeed, so far from being superfluous, we would argue that the omission of the word “linguistic” from the clause should be seen as a glaring oversight, so much do its neighbours “social” and “cultural” depend on it as the faculty by which all other development is both inculcated and expressed.

This brings me to a further and final point in urging this amendment. Clause 40, to repeat, requires that the chief inspector “must consider” how pupils are developing in four different respects:

“spiritual, moral, social and cultural”.

This is a quartet, of course, that is quite familiar in Ofsted-speak. It has been on Ofsted’s agenda for some time. Perhaps the Minister can give us some indication of the success that inspectors have had in grading children according to their development in these four respects. What does the Minister expect the inspector actually to do before ticking, say, the “spiritual” box, thus declaring his satisfaction at the pupil’s spiritual development? Then, when he moves on to the box labelled “moral”, what does he actually do before ticking that all is well with their moral development?

Now, if the next box were labelled “linguistic”, I know—and, more importantly, I know the inspector would know—how a professional assessment in this crucial area would be made. I would have confidence in what a tick meant and know that actual, speedy attention would be given if a tick were withheld.

My point is obvious. Not only is successful development of the language faculty essential for progress in all else that education has to offer, but linguistic development is observable, quantifiable and objectively assessable to a degree that makes the inspectorate’s judgment of critical value.

[Baroness Warnock]

My Lords, I very strongly support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, as well as the amendment just spoken to by my noble friend Lord Quirk.

Linguistic deprivation is just as serious as any other form of deprivation that a child can suffer. An enormous amount of linguistic knowledge, practice and efficiency is learnt before the age of two or two and a half years. There are a vast number of children whose parents—or whose single parent, very often—are quite unable to supply the kind of stimulus that children essentially need, and from the deprivation of which they really cannot catch up. How can children start learning to read when they hardly have any vocabulary in the language they are supposed to be reading? It seems to me that before school is the crucial time, but as we have heard the most difficult and most needy children are very likely those who do not take advantage of pre-school provision.

Here I must repeat something that I have said a million times before, which is that I believe that the BBC has a huge responsibility for those children who are at home before school, and are not getting out of their home. The BBC should be providing radio programmes with songs and stories which supply what children’s parents very often cannot supply, namely constant exposure to language. I was also delighted when a noble Lord—I am afraid I cannot remember which—said at an earlier stage that one of the worst things that has ever been invented is the pushchair which faces away from the parent, so that the parent who is pushing the child cannot speak continuously to the child even before the child has any language to respond in.

I think that this is of enormous importance, and should be in the Bill, more so than all the stuff about spirituality and morality. I entirely agree that that can all go, because we cannot measure it anyway. What cannot go is what can be measured, which is the vocabulary of a child and his ability to communicate and respond to other people talking and singing to him.