Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I support much of the Bill but will raise some issues about the schools part of it. We rightly emphasise the need for a broad and balanced curriculum, but we also need a broad and balanced education policy. It is clearly important to ensure that every school meets certain minimum standards. The report of the Education for 11-16 Year Olds Committee, on which I sat, speaks positively of a

“mandatory national curriculum that ensures a common entitlement for all pupils”.

At the same time, there needs to be scope for teachers to bring their own passions and predilections to their teaching if they are to inspire pupils with a love of learning in a spirit of discovery and enjoyment which all too often seems to be lacking.

Many of us will recall teachers who made the most positive impact on our own learning. I was lucky enough to be taught by three remarkable classics teachers, from whom I gained, and have retained, an enduring love of classical languages, art and civilisation, which affect our lives in so many ways. I continue to attempt the Times’s Latin crossword on Saturdays.

I also learned that, often, the most inspiring teachers are those who seem least constrained within rigid rules, syllabuses or teaching methods. The pendulum seems to be swinging too far towards the need to meet fixed minimum standards and away from inspirational and mind-expanding teaching. I worry that the Bill may take it even further in this direction by imposing a degree of rigidity and conformity well beyond the requirement of a common entitlement for all pupils—for example, by imposing a standard curriculum on all schools, by reducing or removing academy freedoms and through the proposed restrictions on required qualifications and payment arrangements for teachers.

The education committee also highlighted a lack of balance between academic and technical or vocational subjects in the current curriculum. Again, the Bill looks as though it may exacerbate this. Skills-based subjects require greater flexibility in the curriculum, in methods of assessment and in the teaching skills and experience required. The committee heard examples of successful schools which pursue different approaches to teaching and learning, such as the XP Trust, whose schools teach the curriculum through expedition-based projects, and the Bohunt Education Trust, which has outdoor learning at the centre of its curriculum. Other similar examples include specialist music and arts schools and, as we have heard, university technical colleges, which provide a more work-focused balance between academic knowledge and marketable, job-related skills. It is a pity that too many schools do not recognise apprenticeships as an equally positive destination as higher education.

I shall be anxious to ensure that the Bill when it leaves this House allows sufficient flexibility for schools to provide relevant knowledge and skills for all pupils—whatever their talents and aspirations—and to attract a wider range of people to become inspiring and memorable teachers, across the curriculum and beyond. Through this Bill, we should aim for a system that is not one-size-fits-all but one that fits all sizes.