Education for 11 to 16 Year-olds (Committee Report)

Earl of Effingham Excerpts

Friday 26th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, for moving this important debate, and the many noble Lords on the committee who are here in the Chamber to contribute and add value.

According to recent research, more than half of Britons say that the skills taught to them as children in the classroom have not helped them in later life. This indicates that there is a fundamental issue with the curriculum. Indeed, the committee concluded that the current curriculum gives

“little scope to engage with topics beyond the curriculum or apply learning to real-world issues”.

It was therefore encouraging to read that the new Government want a broader curriculum

“that ensures children and young people leave compulsory education ready for life and ready for work, building the knowledge, skills and attributes young people need to thrive”,

so that

“every young person leaves school or college with the best life chances”.—[Official Report, Commons, 19/7/24; cols. 15-16WS.]

If that is the aim, which it absolutely should be, I flag to the Minister that the top three life skills that students wish they had but did not learn at school are: how to go about getting a mortgage, how to buy a house, and how to set up a private pension as well as the value of doing that.

This confirms what we heard from several noble Lords in the King’s Speech debate last week: that relevant financial education is an absolute must-have in the curriculum. Those three life skills are easy to teach, and there should be loud alarm bells going off that children are not being taught such essential tools already. Notwithstanding the fact that this is actually being requested by young people, by setting up a private pension at an early age to supplement a state one in later life, the cost saving to the Exchequer would run into multiple billions of pounds. Financial anxiety is also a common cause of poor mental health, so by reducing that risk you again achieve multiple billions of pounds-worth of cost savings to the NHS.

Oracy was flagged in the committee’s report. I bring to the Minister’s attention a real-life example. I recently visited an academy in Hackney that is a shining example of what is possible with the right leadership team and strategy in place. It is achieving 65% Russell group university acceptance and 15% Oxbridge acceptance, and one of the key focuses for its improvement is oracy. You experience that when you meet and speak with the students, many of whom find it difficult to maintain constant eye contact during a conversation. When you look at the wider pool of schools nationally, only 23% of secondary school teachers are confident in their understanding of the statutory spoken language requirements outlined in the national curriculum. Oracy is a critical life skill, and it should be put on an equal footing with numeracy and literacy throughout the whole school lifespan.

The report touches briefly on the subject of physical education. In summary, it says that students are not doing enough of it. We know from other surveys that only 47% of children and young people meet the Chief Medical Officer’s guidelines of taking part in sport and physical activity for an average of 60 minutes or more every day. Sport and physical activity can change children’s lives. It improves cognitive abilities, and it boosts concentration and improves classroom conduct and behaviour, not to mention physical and mental health. We need it now more than ever.

I would like to focus briefly on two areas not mentioned in the report: food education and smartphones. One only has to look at the Times newspaper from yesterday, which asked, “How healthy are your kid’s snacks?” Noble Lords would be shocked at the very low nutritional content in some of our children’s favourite foods. Food education should be an important part of the curriculum. As I have mentioned before, “Healthy body, healthy mind” and “You are what you eat” are fundamental principles to the well-being of everyone, not just schoolchildren.

One of the most serious issues we have in schools currently is the use of smartphones. Some 25% of children and young people are, in effect, addicted to their smartphones. How can it be possible for any child to concentrate in class when they have their smartphone pinging away right next to them?

I would be grateful if the Minister could let us know how the Government plan to include relevant financial education in the curriculum, when we will be at a point when our schoolchildren will have the one hour of physical exercise that they need every day to be fit and healthy, whether the Government will use the new breakfast clubs as an opportunity to teach children more about food education, and who will ensure that the breakfasts provided are not ultra-processed foods high in calories and sugar. Most importantly, when will the Government act on the recommendations in the report from the Education Committee in the other place urging for a statutory ban on smartphones in all schools?