Education: 11 to 16 Year-olds

Debate between Lord Bichard and Baroness Barran

Thursday 8th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government’s view would be “both/and”. I think it is critical, for the reasons that the right reverend Prelate sets out, that modern languages form part of our curriculum. We are developing a new language hubs programme and offering significant training bursaries for language teachers and scholarships for French, German and Spanish trainees. We share the right reverend Prelate’s focus on this issue.

[Lord Bichard (CB)]

Is the Minister not especially concerned—maybe even embarrassed—that in 2023, some 35.2% pupils in state schools left without a grade 4 or above in English and maths? Has not the time come, as the Select Committee suggests—and what an excellent report that is—to look to again at whether those subjects as currently defined are the route to ensuring that children leave school with functional literacy and numeracy?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government absolutely share the noble Lord’s concern, and one of the things we announced alongside the introduction of the advanced British standard is a review of how we can improve outcomes, particularly in mathematics but also in English, for those children who currently do not achieve the grades. The noble Lord makes an important point.

Child Safeguarding

Debate between Lord Bichard and Baroness Barran

Monday 6th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I understand the spirit of my noble friend’s remarks. With respect to him, the thing that first the noble Lord, Lord Laming, and then others have brought out is the fact that so often in these cases different organisations, whether it be the school, the GP, the police or children’s services, have different snippets of information about a child. Critically, and very often, we need to share those to get an accurate picture of that child’s life.

[Lord Bichard (CB)]

My Lords, I associate myself with comments from other noble Lords about the tone of today’s Statement, which I think is a major step forward. However, will the Minister ask the two reviews if they will specifically look at the issue of sharing information and data? I ask that for two reasons. First, those of us who have been involved in these sorts of cases—I am afraid over decades—too often have seen perceived problems in sharing data and information behind the tragic outcomes. Secondly, we will tomorrow be debating the Health and Social Care Bill which includes a specific provision to improve the sharing of data where adults are concerned but says nothing at all about children. That surely could be one of the immediate things that we could do. Even if it was not a major problem in this case, it is a major problem too often, and we could do something about that.