Schools: History

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, when it comes to a debate on history I am afraid I bring a little history of my own into this. The first time I got into a really nasty row with a member of my own party was about 23 years ago when I spoke on a debate on history in this House. It was when we were getting rid of the old O-level and replacing it with GCSE, and it was decided that this was not fact-driven enough. We had to do something else; we just could not have this new syllabus with things like empathy coming in. When I criticised the council leader who sacked a teacher who was, bizarrely, teaching to the then Scottish O-grade, I was attacked about it over the phone. I was quite joyful as a 26 year-old to tell a 45 year-old councillor to go and shove it and read the debate before he spoke to me again. Everybody has an opinion, everybody gets paranoid about history, because everybody assumes that the bit they are interested in is the bit we should be interested in—the bit that we find speaks to us should be the bit that somebody else should take on board.

The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, spoke about the 18th and 19th centuries. I did the 18th and 19th centuries because I was at school in the 1970s. I did the O-level system where you actually learned lots of facts—we had O-level memory and we did not have any history, to be perfectly honest. Yes, we could run off all the Prime Ministers and the Acts they passed, but it did not tell you anything. It did not tell you how they related to each other or how anything went on from that. The noble Lord referred to the Glorious Revolution, so called because of course in England there was not any fighting; it was all in Ireland and Scotland—not quite so glorious there, possibly. Every time you take a little bit of history you have to look at it.

Probably the most profound historical exercise I undertook was to do with being best man at a wedding in France, believe it or not. I was best man to a university flatmate who also read history. The families were arguing over who should sit where. Over the second bottle of wine at a dinner party it was suggested that I might want to put all the French people on tables named after famous English victories over them, with the most embarrassing paragraph about that victory on the table, and the English the other way round. This was an extremely fun project. The best one I found was Yorktown for the English. You could say it was a French victory—and we had a few Americans there so they got annoyed as well; it was great—because the army of America was of course paid for by the French and there were nearly as many French soldiers outside and a French fleet besieging it, which is an interesting little fact to take back and annoy people with. You then get the idea: “But that’s not really fair. No, that’s not it”. But that is what happened. Unless you look at and embrace your failures and the things that went wrong in history, you will ultimately get it wrong. In looking at history, we tend to look at what makes us great. We should look at what made us bad as well and remember the fact that any nation which has been out there could almost drown in its own sins of failure or perhaps straightforward misunderstanding at any point.

Earlier, we heard that when people were in colonial service they thought that they were bringing culture and superiority to the societies which we were imperially controlling. I suggest that India might argue with us that it had a valid culture and a valid history. Its civilised and recorded history is rather better than ours. It is more interesting and more colourful. India must look at why it allowed this ridiculous nation thousands of miles away to take over the whole sub-continent, which is an equally interesting question.

This comes down to the question of how one takes this information and puts it into a classroom. My noble friend Lady Walmsley got it right when she read out what is prescribed in the history curriculum. It is a huge task, which, if anything, is too big. It is possible only with specialist support. Perhaps we are too ambitious and ask everyone to do rather more than they are capable of. A limit on what you are trying to do might be important. How can we possibly bring this together?

We come back to the fashions in history. People of my age were taught about the 18th and 19th centuries. Now it seems to be World War II and the Tudors—possibly not, but they seem to be the fashionable subjects that come up most often. What is more valid? One could spend a lifetime discussing that question and still not come to a conclusion that means anything. As has been pointed out, they are part of the same continuous street.

I have met professional historians—indeed, the much missed Lord Russell, who I remember would say when you got slightly outside his spectrum, “Oh, not my period”. He might have had a rough idea of what was going on but it was not his period. Most professional historians are like that. The arguments about fashion come back to the idea of the marxist versus the revisionist or the post-modernists. All of them basically play with ideas. Then we all have an opinion on the ideas. We have all done a little history or have all done some education, in that most of us have been to school. The idea of fashion comes in and out and always different pressures will be put on people as regards fashion.

We should not read too much into this. The one thing that we can be sure about is that fashion changes. People now attacking the system and the status quo will be attacked because that is what academics and politicians do. They feed off ideas. If history gives us an idea of place and of our place within our country, it will depend on how we teach that and how we connect it.

I shudder to say this with my noble friend Lady Benjamin at my left elbow: the fact is that if you come from an ethnic minority you may have a different sense of what is important in history from, for example, a white hereditary Peer. I am sure that different family connections go back through the system here. I know that my family provided people for the colonial service for quite a long time. There were different perceptions of what you did and what you should not do. Once again, people can drown in a sort of self-loathing for things that were done in days gone by which they would never do today. That is fashion or perception.

I say to my noble friend who will answer this debate that when we talk about history, we should try to remember that there is not a right answer. There are merely answers that will give some help and understanding. Is it a narrative guide to what happened in the past or is it an academic discipline? On using history to discover other things, I had a moment from my nine year-old daughter, who asked, “What is rape?”. I said, “Why do you want to know?”. She said, “Boudicca’s daughters were raped by the Romans”. That was a slightly less worrying reason for being asked that question than many I can think of.

Once you use history for various parts of education, you will always have to make sacrifices. The sacrifice that you will ultimately have to make if you teach more history is whether we should teach more English and maths. We all know that English and maths is appalling and has never been as good as it was—as it always was in my youth and, indeed, my mother’s youth, apparently.

English is a very difficult language to learn because of its two origins—French and German, thanks to the fact that the English were ruled over by French kings for several hundred years—which is probably one of the reasons. Perhaps history can help us with that. There is always a problem somewhere in the curriculum. Ever since we have had a national curriculum, there has been a constant cry to spend more time on the pet subject of the person speaking at the time. Recently, we have heard about nutrition, parenting, English is always coming up and now history. We must make a limit on this. History must be fit in as a coherent part of that whole. We will never get it right. A degree of flexibility may be important in the approach but if we say that there is one right way and one wrong way, all we will do is set up another row, which, after all, may be what the professional historians want.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Luke, for initiating this debate. He has raised some challenging questions about the future of history teaching and the need, which he rightly identified, to narrow the knowledge gap between rich and poor so that all children can excel. We have also, thankfully, had a measured and extremely well informed debate today. I did not realise that there were quite so many history teachers in your Lordships’ Chamber but I have certainly found the debate enlightening. I have also very much welcomed the tone in which the debate has taken place. All too often when these subjects are debated they can dissolve into myth and political discourse.

We have also had some passionate contributions about the wider role of history in establishing truth and fact. I particularly commend the exposition from my noble friends Lady Andrews and Lady Bakewell on the wider benefits of a good grounding in history. I also look forward to hearing the response of the noble Lord, Lord Hill, who I understand is also an expert on this subject. I am sure that he will also give a thoughtful and reflective analysis of the problems which we are now confronting.

We all understand the importance of history in helping us to understand progress, the development of our society and our place in the world today. We also recognise the academic and personal skills that flow from learning to analyse and question, and to differentiate between historical fact and fiction. As my noble friend Lord Morgan rightly pointed out, it gives a good intellectual training.

As several noble Lords pointed out and argued persuasively, it also gives us a sense of identity and belonging and creates a memory of a nation. It also sometimes, as the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, pointed out, scandalously writes some of our citizens out of history, and that cannot be tolerated. As politicians we are keenly aware that we need to learn from history and that the two disciplines are closely intertwined. We are also aware that even in the hands of the most careful practitioner history can be subjective and distorted. This is why individual politicians should be wary of interfering in the shape of the syllabus. I am very pleased that Michael Gove enjoyed studying history at school. He obviously enjoyed a particular style of teaching, and I have no doubt that it works well for some people, but this does not justify him recreating his own teaching experience in every school in the country. Surely he should, instead, be drawing upon the best professional advice as to how children learn effectively and the best academic experience of history teachers in the classroom. It may well be that the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Bew, of a national advisory body of historians could provide focus for this.

Several noble Lords have quoted Simon Schama, who is one of the advisers brought in to shape the new syllabus. I understand that he will be working with Andrew Roberts and Niall Ferguson, notable academics in their own right. They have been very vocal in their criticisms of the current teaching of history, so at least that has helped to provoke a debate. However, as my noble friend Lord Davies argued, they have a particular ideological focus, which is raising some concerns among teachers and parents. Particular alarm bells rang for me when I read that Niall Ferguson had created a war games video to teach young people about the Second World War. He described how his two young sons had enjoyed playing it, but that his daughter had shown no interest in playing war games. That is no surprise. I found myself thinking that Michael Gove might have been better advised to ask some women to join his team of advisers. They might have had a better idea of the sorts of issues which would inspire the imagination of young women in learning history.

Nevertheless, on some things the advisers are right. We all are concerned about the fall in take-up of history GCSE. While history remains a statutory part of the curriculum up to the age of 14, the numbers taking the subject beyond this have been reducing, as we have heard, with only 30 per cent of students taking the subject at GCSE in maintained schools. As both Ofsted and the Historical Association have identified, there are a number of reasons for this. First, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, rightly pointed out, there is a lack of specialist teaching in schools, leaving many young people with little or no teaching from history graduates trained to teach the subject. Of course, this problem becomes self-perpetuating as the lower numbers taking the subject to A-level and beyond affect the future supply of qualified teachers.

Secondly, there has been a reduction in the time allocated to the subject as the curriculum is squeezed with other priorities or history is combined into a more general humanities course in which the specifics of the discipline can be lost. Thirdly, there are restrictions placed on the subjects that some young people are able to study at GCSE, with history not being an option, or only available if other humanities are dropped. Finally, there are concerns about the inconsistency of exam boards regarding marking, course materials and the criteria for assessment, which puts some students off. So there are undoubtedly a number of structural problems with the curriculum offer which militate against a large uptake of history at GCSE. Incidentally, I am not sure that these problems will be solved by the introduction of the English baccalaureate, which specifies that only one humanities subject should be part of the award.

This issue of the time available to teach particular subjects is more fundamental than might at first appear. It may be that the previous Government allowed the curriculum to become too crowded, but there is always pressure, as we have heard, to add new and justifiable subjects to the list. Conversely, it is rare for anybody to make a case for a subject to be dropped from the curriculum; and just as that applies to the curriculum as a whole, it also applies with individual subjects. I have listened carefully today to the many persuasive contributions on what should be included in the history syllabus, and it would be easy to agree with everyone. Issues raised have included the significance of the French Revolution, the origins of the slave trade, our links with Afghanistan, the history of our relations with the Middle East; the need to understand people’s history, social history, local history, the history of the four UK nations, the history of English literature and art; the development of science and technology and the history of multiculturalism, to touch on just a few. I endorse all of those. They all have a legitimate place in the curriculum. However, we also need to be realistic about what can be achieved in, say, two hours a week up to year nine and maybe three hours a week at GCSE over a 38-week academic year. It is simply not possible to have both the breadth and the depth that we might all desire.

This dichotomy has led to one of the central failings in the teaching of history, which is identified by Ofsted and on which we can probably all agree. It reported that pupils were being let down by a lack of chronological understanding of the subject. In particular, it reported that pupils at primary schools,

“knew about particular events, characters and periods but did not have an overview. Their chronological understanding was often underdeveloped and so they found it difficult to link developments together”.

I very much support the idea that a stronger strand of chronology should underpin the history syllabus, but this is very different from the Secretary of State’s apparent mission to return to learning dates by rote. At a time when our challenge is to excite pupils and capture their imagination about the past, there would be nothing more dull and uninspiring than to force feed them with dates of wars and of births and deaths of kings and queens.

It is an accepted fact among most educationalists that individual children have different techniques for learning and remembering. The real skill of a classroom teacher is to teach in such a way that every child can get the maximum benefit from the lesson. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, pointed out, the current history syllabus meets many of the concerns that have been raised today. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, disagreed, but this matter can easily be resolved by looking at the facts. The Ofsted report was much more positive about the current history provision than we have been led to believe by some commentators. It is an area in which myths have been flourishing. Just as it is not possible to avoid being deported by owning a cat, it is equally not true that Henry VIII and Hitler are the only individuals studied in the syllabus. In fact, as we have heard, the syllabus is littered with leaders, explorers, inventors and dissenters. As the noble Lord, Lord Addington, rightly pointed out, on any named subject at any time, we always believe that it was taught better in the past and are nostalgic for the way that we were taught it at school.

[Lord Addington]

I am not nostalgic for the way that I was taught history.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

Perhaps many of the noble Lord’s colleagues remain so. However, we need to scrutinise objectively what is happening in the classroom. In its report earlier this year, History for All, Ofsted praised the teaching at key stage 2, describing pupils as having a,

“detailed knowledge derived from well-taught studies of individual topics”;

while at secondary level it described how,

“effective teaching by well-qualified and highly competent teachers enabled the majority of students to develop knowledge and understanding in depth”.

It went on to identify that students displayed,

“a healthy respect for historical evidence”,

and had the skills to apply critical judgment to support their analysis. Throughout the Ofsted report the skills of the specialist history teachers who knew their subjects well and were able to inspire their pupils were a common theme. Surely we should value and celebrate the contribution of these teachers rather than alarm them with talk of further upheaval.

In conclusion, I hope that the Minister agrees with me that there is a need, first, to tackle the structural reasons why history teaching is in decline and is fighting for space in the school week. Secondly, we need to look again at how the syllabus can be adjusted to allow the chronology and sweep of history to be better understood. Thirdly, we need to engage with history teachers, value what they achieve and listen to their ideas for reform. Politicians should refrain from meddling in an educational agenda fraught with ideological divides, and should perhaps also recruit some women to advise on the really significant events in history and how they might be taught. Then we might inspire a new generation of young people to study history, develop the skills of analysis and apply the lessons learnt so that they can better interpret their lives today.

Education Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, perhaps I might be allowed to draw the Committee’s attention to Amendment 144C, which stands in my name. I hope that what I am about to say is not taken as cutting across the speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Layard and Lord Wakeham. This is inspired by a practice that has become apparent to me. It comes from a group of dyslexics who have discovered that as they cannot pass the English test, they are being removed from the apprenticeships process. I have raised this on the floor of the House, and I have raised it with the relevant Ministers. On every occasion I have received, shall we say, the general approval of your Lordships’ House, and the approval of the Ministers. What is effectively happening is that you are saying to a dyslexic, “You can’t pass a written English test—you can’t get an apprenticeship”.

Nick Gibb recently said in private to me before a meeting that a successful apprenticeship is as economically beneficial to you as a degree. Dyslexics cannot do this, but they can go to university. We have an established path. Indeed, I think I was one of the first people involved in it, actually going as a right. When you start to talk about yourself as part of a historical precedent—well, perhaps I am now a true Member of the House of Lords. It is an established path now. I have interests, both non-paid and pecuniary, in people who now provide these services.

Apprenticeships are probably more appropriate in helping many people who are dyslexic to actually get a job and maintain it, than, shall we say, an arts degree would be. They are more directly applicable. Fewer steps have to be gone through. However, because the English skills test here is one that you cannot pass, dyslexics are told, “No”. The thing is, we thought we had cracked it. The noble Lord, Lord Young, is here; we had discussions about this when the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act was a Bill, and we thought we had an answer.

What has happened is that the Ministers had a private meeting. I agreed with the Minister, John Hayes, that I could use this in a previous speech, and as I referred to it then I think I am safe to do so now. We had a meeting, and the National Apprenticeship Service was told by the Minister, “Sort it out—this is ridiculous”. The representatives were told to come to me, because they did not know what was going on about dyslexia and I would put them in touch with the relevant people. It did not happen, and in subsequent conversations I found myself talking to a person who said, “Our lawyers have told us that we don’t have to do it, so we won’t”. Maybe we—the noble Lord, Lord Young, and I—are at fault because we did not pin this down hard enough. But something has gone fundamentally wrong. It may be corrected over time, but I hereby give the noble Lord, Lord Henley, the chance here to tell us exactly what is going to happen about this in the immediate future, and what is planned.

I apologise for not having spoken at Second Reading and coming here today, but I hope that the Committee will understand why I have done this now, and why I suggest it is important that the Government give a definitive example of what they think should happen, given that I think we have unanimous support for the argument that dyslexics—10 per cent of the population—should not be excluded from getting a qualification that gives them a way of earning a living.

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, I would like to follow on from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, to make one very brief point. On my way to my brief point I will say that I very much support apprenticeships and the apprenticeships programme, and what this Government are doing to ramp that up, so I very much support the amendment that has been moved by the noble Lord, Lord Layard.

I do not know quite how the Government intend to respond to that, but the brief point I will make is to express the hope that if the Government are on the way to resisting or qualifying the amendment in any way, I hope that they will not do anything that will detract from the priority category status of the apprenticeship offer, which is in legislation, for students with learning difficulties and disabilities in the age group 19 to 24. I think that the Government have recognised that members of this group sometimes take a little longer to reach the point when they can appropriately embark on an apprenticeship. With that in view, they have accepted that it is appropriate to make a priority offer to this group in a somewhat later age category. I hope that they will be able to give assurances that the offer to that age group of students is still in place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Addington]

I thank my noble friend. I should have said thank you at the time. I hope he will appreciate that this is based on the fact that something is going wrong, not on some theoretical idea. It is based on practical problems at the moment.

[Lord Henley]

I am very grateful to my noble friend for putting it in those terms. That makes it even more important that he talks to the department and to my honourable friend and tries to secure some sort of agreement. We now have a reasonable amount of time. I know the noble Lord will be heading off to wherever the Liberal Democrats hold their conference but, in due course, he will be back and then discussions can take place in the appropriate manner.

I want to deal with a couple of other points. First, the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, raised a question concerning people with disabilities and the offer. I can confirm that disabled people aged 19 to 24 are covered by the offer and that that group will be prescribed in regulations. There is also the commitment given by the previous Government during the passage of the ASCLA—as we now seem to call it—to take on an inclusive approach. They are also being advised on this by external disability experts. No doubt we will be able to let the noble Lord know a little more in due course.

Finally, my noble friend Lady Sharp of Guildford asked about the response to the Wolf report on incentives to employers. We accepted that recommendation in the Wolf report. The National Apprenticeship Service has recently run pilots looking at incentive payments and we need to consider these and other research into employer payments to ensure that we avoid dead weight when implementing this recommendation. That is work in progress.

Before my voice finally gives out, I say that we are all travelling in roughly the same direction. We might be going at different speeds and there might be tensions in how we do it, but I believe that much more can be done through further discussions. I believe that we are all committed to the same outcome, which is seeing increasing numbers of apprentices across both public and private sectors and increasing employer participation in the programme. With those assurances, I hope that all noble Lords who have put forward their amendments and spoken to them so eloquently will feel able to withdraw them and, where appropriate, I hope that conversations can continue between now and Report.

Schools: Dyslexia

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Addington]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the high levels of illiteracy among London school children, what steps they are taking to promote dyslexia awareness amongst the teaching profession.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, the Government are funding the training of specialist dyslexia teachers, the development of online study modules for all teachers and the Dyslexia-Specific Learning Difficulty Trust to raise awareness of dyslexia among teachers, parents and other professionals. We are promoting systematic synthetic phonics as the best method of teaching children to read. We intend to introduce a phonics screening check at the end of year 1 to identify pupils, including those with dyslexia, who need extra help with their phonic decoding skills.

[Lord Addington]

I thank my noble friend for that Answer. However, would he agree that, even with the efforts made by the last Government, we are in the situation whereby we have several schools per specialist teacher in the education system? When are we going to have a unit of training in initial teacher training, as there is in Scotland, to identify dyslexics and to allow people to be able to cope with them better in the classroom without having to call in specialists?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

As my noble friend will know, in order to achieve qualified teacher status, teachers must meet the standards that require them to be able to teach children with a range of needs, including special educational needs. I agree with my noble friend on the importance of taking measures to help children with dyslexia, and the key to that, although he knows a lot more about this than I do, is early identification. It is our hope that having the phonic screening check in year 1 will enable that to happen, and then support can be put in place. We are increasing the numbers of specialist dyslexic teachers and working with ITT providers to look at ways of ensuring that primary school training teachers get the support that they need to learn how to identify and help dyslexic children.

Schools: Physical Education

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Addington]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the quality and quantity of physical education in schools.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, Ofsted’s report Physical education in schools 2005/2008 found that the overall quality of teaching in physical education was good or better in two-thirds of the schools visited, although it was more variable in primary schools. The PE and Sport Survey 2009/10 found that 84 per cent of pupils aged five to 16 participated in at least two hours of physical education per week in curriculum time.

[Lord Addington]

I thank my noble friend for that Question.

[Noble Lords]

Answer.

[Lord Addington]

Sorry, I thank my noble friend for that Answer.

Will the Minister give me an assurance that the Government will look at whether the type of education is of sufficiently high quality to allow people in schools to access school-age sport outside? Making a link with amateur clubs is probably the best way of keeping people involved in sporting activity after the age of compulsory schooling.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree with my noble friend. I know that there is research by Sport England that shows that, as one would expect, the earlier that children get involved with sports outside school thorough clubs, the more likely they are to carry on participating after they leave, and that most children, when they leave school, stop participating in an organised way. Sport England is working with the governing bodies of, I think, 34 of the national sports bodies to try to find ways of building links between school and junior clubs and to increase the number of participants going into junior clubs. More generally, I agree with my noble friend that we need to try to make that transition better so that children can carry on into adulthood and get the benefit of sport.

Education: Pupils and Young People

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, in speaking in this debate, I feel as though I am carrying on from our debate last week on special educational needs. I shall address other factors which I did not have the time to address then. Listening to the contributions in the debate, it has become apparent that there is a degree of consensus in the House. I can safely say that things are better than they were, although they are not perfect and not everyone has all the right answers at any one time.

In talking about excellence, it is easy to hide behind its definition. According to most of the statistics which I picked up from the Library in the usual good briefing pack, it is all about achieving a GCSE in English. I may have taken part in a debate on education when I did not mention dyslexia, but I cannot remember when it was. Considering whether you have achieved excellence or access to the system seems to depend on whether someone has passed English GCSE, but 10 per cent of the population has a condition which means that they have difficulty in processing language. Immediately, you have a problem, which will be obvious to everyone in the House. The question is: how do we deal with it?

Greater awareness of the problem has, undoubtedly, permeated through the system and greater knowledge is behind that. Last time, I spoke about the fact that the British Dyslexia Association thinks that it can train people in about half a day to spot—not to deal with—someone with dyslexia and to pass on information to the pupil and to the parents. I made a joke, which I shall not repeat, about the fact that if you get the parents on side when there is a problem in the school system, you can generally get something done. It may not be the right thing or may not be done quickly enough but something will happen. You will have problems unless you can get the information into the system, as many other people have said, and unless you can include the parents. Often, you will also need to identify parents who are dyslexic.

That ties in to many other things which have been said in the debate. My noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, both mentioned speech and language. Most of the ways in which you cope with dyslexia are with the use of speech and language. There is then the problem of what happens if a pupil comes from a household which is chaotic and which does not have resources, where developing the art of conversation is not something they experience and is not regarded as important. How do you deal with that? Everything is connected.

I return to the initial point: unless the Minister can tell us how we are starting to identify the problem with written language and the idea of excellence, we will always exclude that bottom group, and it will always be worse among those suffering social deprivation. How do we deal with that? Better teacher training and recognition is important but there will always be this group at the bottom which will be left behind.

We have taken the low-hanging fruit in educational improvement. It is understandable that the previous Government took that fruit because, if I had been them, trying to raise standards and wanting a press release to justify what I was doing, that is exactly what I would have done, because the low-hanging fruit is the easiest to reach. How will we get past that?

I want to show noble Lords how deeply ingrained this is in the education system. I will give you one example from a letter which arrived on my desk yesterday. Someone was told that they could not gain a City and Guilds qualification as a carpenter because they could not finish the English paper. That is probably illegal. We spent a great deal of time on this when debating the apprenticeships Bill. City and Guilds should not give that as a reason not to qualify a person. I leave you with that practical example.

Unless you get away from the obsessive idea that you must pass in something—maths comes just behind English—and unless you address this properly across the board, such people will always be left behind. We really must address that. If excellence means something more than achieving an extra A-level grade, you will have to address those at the bottom who have problems, which means that you must be able to understand their problems.

Education: Special Educational Needs

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, when it comes to a debate on special educational needs, I am afraid that I start to reminisce. It is about 24 years ago that I made my maiden speech in this House on the problems of dyslexia. If memory serves, I was standing almost diagonally across the Chamber from where I am standing now. The consistencies of the arguments are very much apparent to me: we have a much better system, and everyone is much better informed. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, I can thank the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, for the fact that I was allowed to get through and complete an education process. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, that I think the worry was more about what one might say than about what one actually had said.

However, many of the issues raised initially remain. We have heard from various speakers about the problems of inclusion versus specialist education. I remember that the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, almost had a fatwa declared against her by various people who had decided that she had changed her mind and said that we did not need mass inclusion any more. “How dare you change your mind?”, was their attitude. Other people said that no special school should ever be shut. The fact is that your experience will depend on the disability group with which you are most associated, and on your experience or, more usually, on that of your child. That will depend very much on the time you are living in and where you are living. That is the consistency. When the noble Lord responds, I am afraid that he has got this historical problem.

We have a complicated system, which I have been talking about for so long. The summary of the report points out, on page 8, that it is a very complicated system that we have added to over the years. I and others in this Chamber have helped to make it complicated. There are no two ways about it: many of the biggest offenders are in this Chamber, even if they are not all here today. We have added to it because we are always frightened that we will be ignored or not taken seriously because the measures are difficult or expensive.

The previous Government tried to get rid of statementing. I was one of the people who said no, because, although it was imperfect, it was the only show in town. This means that if you have special educational needs and want to get the best out of our state education system, you should select your parents well. I reckon that the best combination is a lawyer and a journalist. Then you have a hold on the system, because no teacher or education authority likes being hauled up in front of a court or exposed in a paper. That is the most efficient club that you can have—and we need clubs. This Government, of whom I am a supporter, have given an undertaking that they will do initial assessments. Also, it is clear that we need assessment processes for all the different disability groups that are represented within about four metres of me now—and there are many more noble Lords who know about them. A different assessment process is required for each one. Dyslexia is a disability that you will not be able to spot at two. You may well spot it at five now: we used to say at about seven.

The report also says that many people who are said to have SEN might respond to better teaching. I raise one big caveat. I know dyslexia well, and moderate dyslexia does not come from a background where education or the use of literature is in any way regarded as abnormal in the household. You may well say, “They could do with a little bit of extra teaching” when actually they are dyslexic. I am afraid that if you want to check this out, the experiment has been done and you will find the results in the prison system, alongside many sufferers from Asperger's. We have a reverse battlefield medicine idea about this—an expression that I have used too often in this House. On the battlefield, you patch up the easy ones first. Here, the most obvious problems are dealt with first and attract funding, so we miss the large group.

If you come from a working-class background and perhaps your parents have literacy problems, your chances of getting the best out of the system at the moment are very slim. If you come from a middle-class background and have a good accent and plenty of money, you will take them on and get the best out of the system—if we have a series of assessments and better teacher training for identifying problems. I am not asking for everybody to be an expert. The British Dyslexia Association, of which I am a vice-president, reckons that it can run a scheme that takes three hours for identification—no more than identification, but if you at least identify the problem and do not compound it by doing the wrong thing and labelling the child as stupid, you have taken an incredibly important first step. If you can do that with dyslexia, similar programmes can be provided for other groups. If we can work this in, back up any assessment programme—because whichever way you do it, you will miss people—and accept that we do not have one easy answer, we stand a chance of getting this right. Any progress that I hear about today will make me very glad.

Schools: Special Needs and Disabilities

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

No, my Lords, it clearly is not the Government’s wish that that should happen. On the noble Lord’s first question, as the whole House will know, I am not in a position to give forward commitments on funding, because we have to go through the spending review first. However, as I think the noble Lord will know, because my honourable friend Sara Teather announced it at the launch of a campaign with which I think he was associated, there will be a Green Paper in the autumn particularly to do with children with special educational needs and disabilities, and the raising of educational attainment is one of the specific issues we want to look at in connection with that. I am sure that he will make representations on that. I completely accept the thrust of his question, that as we look at what will come after Becta, we need to make sure that absolute priority is given to ensuring that children with special educational needs get the help with technology that they need.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, will the Minister assure us that the help needed and the legal obligations entered into are seen as priorities in any new negotiations? Will he also bear in mind the expense of giving assistance in terms of man hours as opposed to the comparatively cheap technology packages which are available at the moment? Will he also please remember that any reorganisation can become a cock-up—look at what happened to the student loans scheme?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I will very much bear in mind the noble Lord’s warnings as we work our way through the replacement arrangements for Becta. I also accept his point about the advantages of technology in delivering assistance to our neediest children. We have under way a number of pilots to test approaches, particularly for blind, visibly impaired and dyslexic children, and those are demonstrating the powerful effect that technology can have.

Education: History

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree with that point. Getting the best people to teach history at all levels in schools is an extremely important task.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, will the Minister accept that fashion in academic pursuits is very prevalent, and that we should not panic too much when a new fashion comes in and we do not like the hemline?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree with my noble friend. I would not describe myself as remotely fashionable in any respect. So far as concerns history, there are core elements, for example to do with chronology and the sequence of events, that one can divorce from fashion, but I agree that we should resist the blandishments of changing hemlines.