Independent Schools: VAT

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

I declare my interests, as in the register. I have three questions. First, in opposition, noble Lords made much of commitments to the performing arts. Why do they now attack schools providing specialist training in these disciplines? They rely on recruiting young people with talent regardless of the means to pay. Ability to pay will now trump talent, endangering the pipeline of young people empowering the creative economy, including the tradition of English choral music.

Secondly, what is the Minister’s advice to a pupil studying A-level music who is forced out of their school in an exam year with no local school offering that subject, which is highly likely as 50% of state schools no longer do? Is it home schooling or “give up on your dreams”?

Thirdly, £1.5 billion is a wild overestimate of VAT revenues because of pupil migration. Even if, in the Government’s economic la-la land, all the money goes on teachers, which it will not, because this magic money tree is also funding nurseries and breakfast clubs, it will add just one-third of one teacher to each school. Is this con trick not just raising unattainable expectations of increasing standards for vulnerable children?

Independent Schools: VAT Exemption

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as president of the Boarding Schools’ Association and the Institute of Boarding. This is an intensely personal issue for me. My beloved parents sent my brother and me to Brentwood School, an independent school. They were not at all wealthy—my father owned a shoe shop and my mother looked after the family. It was a real struggle for them, but they never regretted it. To their sacrifice, and an exceptional education at Brentwood, I owe everything. My parents were just the sort of people, battling to make ends meet to pay the fees, who would have been hit hardest by this spiteful policy. They would not have been able to cope with a sudden 20% increase, especially halfway through the school year, and we would have been placed in a state school, adding to their overcrowded classrooms. That is what will happen now—one of many reasons why this policy will end up costing taxpayers money. This truly is voodoo economics. Those affected will be young people at their most vulnerable. They are not statistics, but children with whose lives this Government are heartlessly toying.

Fifty years on, I am chairman of governors at the school, and I declare my interest accordingly. Abundantly fulfilling our charitable purposes, we play our full part in helping many from less well-off backgrounds. We spend nearly £2.5 million each year on over 120 bursaries, half of which are fully funded. We have an active programme of partnerships and volunteer programmes with the local community, and we work with many local state schools to provide sporting, musical and science facilities, as well as donating laptops. That is replicated across the sector. However, all that is at risk if VAT, alongside the removal of business rates relief, hits the financial sustainability of independent schools.

A prime duty of government in education policy should be to encourage excellence access—hallmarks of schools such as Brentwood. This policy does the opposite: it is a tax on opportunity and achievement. If I dare use this phrase, it is the first time in five decades that a Government have had levelling down as an aim of education policy, rather than levelling up.

Brentwood is also a boarding school. Boarding schools, both state and independent, are a vital part of the education sector, contributing £3 billion a year to the economy and providing 64,000 jobs, as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, said. They educate 70,000 children a year, with 25,000 coming from overseas, making them part of the incredible international success story of independent education. They play a particularly important role in training young people in music, singing and ballet. As such, they are a crucial part of the UK’s creative economy, especially at a time when music education is collapsing in state schools. They also provide indispensable continuity of education for military families, on whom we depend for our freedoms. The Government say that will not charge VAT on state boarding fees but will on independent boarding fees. Why on earth should they be treated differently, if not simply for ideological reasons? Should not fees for military families, and for students enrolled in music and dance schemes, be exempt, in the interests of wider public policy and at a cost of just a few million pounds?

This cruel policy—in sharp contradiction, I might say, of our obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—shamefully puts the interests of crude ideology before those of children, many with special needs. The Government must delay its implementation until September 2025, undertake a proper consultation, talk to the sector and come back with plans that are properly thought through, costed and practical. It is time to put children before party.

Independent Schools

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they have made any assessment of the contribution of independent schools to the education sector.

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare my interest as chairman of governors at Brentwood School.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, independent schools are a small but incredibly important part of our school system. The independent sector is extremely diverse: it includes large, prestigious schools which are household names, but also many settings that serve dedicated faith communities and special schools that provide much-needed support to some of our most vulnerable pupils. The sector also brings valuable international investment to the UK, with over 25,000 pupils whose parents live abroad and who attend UK schools.

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer. I agree with her that independent schools play a vital role, both in our education and in our economy. More than 600,000 children attend them, saving hard-pressed UK taxpayers more than £4 billion each year, because those pupils are not in the state sector. They are modern, diverse and inclusive, with a quarter of them, including many faith schools, being small schools educating fewer than 155 pupils, often with special educational needs.

Is my noble friend aware that 75% of independent schools, including schools such as Brentwood, are engaged in fantastic partnerships with the state sector and with their local communities, covering everything from well-being and sports to teacher training, and that more than 8,700 projects were delivered in the last academic year? Would she agree that imposing new tax burdens on independent schools would simply undermine such partnerships, to the detriment of thousands of children, and threaten hundreds of small schools delivering specialist provision to vulnerable pupils?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolutely agree with my noble friend, and I thank Brentwood School and other schools involved in the types of partnerships that he described. We have such an asset in our independent schools, and this Government are focusing on encouraging more partnership work and understanding how all our pupils can benefit from that.

Music Education in State Schools

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to support music education in state schools.

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. I declare interests as chairman of the Royal College of Music and a governor of Brentwood School.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to high-quality education for all pupils and music is integral to this. We are working with experts to refresh the national plan for music education for publication later this year. This follows the publication of the Model Music Curriculum last year. We will also invest around £115 million a year, for the next three years, in music, arts and heritage education, including the network of music hubs working across England.

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer. The sad, blunt truth is that music education in state schools is on life support. The number of pupils taking A-level music is down by a third since 2014—sadly, often because it is simply not available as a subject. GCSE applicants have come down by 17% over the same period and 29% of state schools have seen a reduction in the number of qualified music teachers, while the number of trainees is falling inexorably. Is my noble friend aware that while 50% of pupils in private schools get sustained music education, just 15% of state school pupils do so? Should this not be at the top of the levelling-up agenda? We need a national plan soon, so can she tell us more precisely when that is coming? Can we also be assured that practitioners and musicians will be able to have their say before it is implemented?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government share my noble friend’s concern about the importance of music education in all of our schools. We see it, along with other arts subjects, as integral to a good, strong curriculum. In relation to the numbers that my noble friend quoted on the music GCSE, I point out that while he is right that uptake of the GCSE has declined, uptake of the VTQ—the vocational qualification—has increased, so actually there are almost 53,000 children today taking either the GCSE or the VTQ, compared to almost 50,000 in 2016. On the timing of the announcement of the plan, as I said, it will be later this year. I will take his recommendations on further consultation back to the department.

Education: Music A-level

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to address the decline in the number of students taking music A-level.

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, in begging leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I declare my interest as chairman of the Royal College of Music.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, music is a vital subject. That is why we are allocating more funding to music education programmes—over £400 million between 2016 and 2020—than to any other subject except PE. These programmes include our network of 120 music hubs, which works with 89% of state schools. They also include opportunities for young people to study at the country’s elite musical institutions through our music and dance scheme and to perform at the highest level through national youth music organisations.

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

I thank my noble friend for that Answer. A-level music is a crucial gateway to a professional career in music. If it dies out, the future of music in the UK will be threatened. Is my noble friend therefore alarmed at the shocking decline in the number of pupils taking it—down almost 40% in eight years—earning it the unenviable record of being the fastest-disappearing A-level subject? More disturbing still, is he aware of research by Birmingham City University which has painted a devastating picture of provision, with 20% of entries clustered around fewer than 50 schools and four local authorities in the most deprived parts of the country not having any A-level music centres and therefore no A-level entries at all last year? Is he therefore as angry as I am at such indefensible inequality, with access to A-level music—and therefore the chance of a music career—rapidly becoming the sole preserve of the wealthy and of independent schools and disappearing completely from poorer areas?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, it is of course correct to say that A-level entries in music have declined in recent years. However, we want all students to have the opportunity to study arts subjects at A-level if they wish to, whatever their background and wherever they live. It is up to individual schools and colleges to decide which A-level courses to offer; they may wish to work together with other schools and colleges to maximise choice. I also point out to my noble friend that there are other routes into music. For example, on Friday evening I was in Norwich Cathedral with the choir; in the organ loft they are teaching children to sing in English, German, Italian and even Russian. All of this can lay the foundations for a future career in music.

Education: English Baccalaureate

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the performance of pupils taking the subjects that make up the English Baccalaureate.

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare an interest as chairman of the Royal College of Music.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, the Department for Education publishes school performance tables each year. Since the EBacc performance measure was first introduced in 2010, the proportion of pupils entering the EBacc has increased from 22% in that year to 38%. Research has shown that following an EBacc curriculum can increase the probability of pupils staying in full-time education and allows them to take facilitating subjects at A-level.

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer, but is not the truth that the EBacc is fundamentally flawed? The Government set a target of 75% of state-school pupils to sit it by 2022 but last year, as he said, only 38% did so. That figure has been completely static for five years and shows no sign of increasing to anywhere near the target. At the same time, the EBacc is destroying arts and creative subjects in state schools, with take-up of GCSEs in art, design and technology, drama, performing arts and, perhaps most worryingly, music—in other words, all the subjects needed to start a career in the creative economy—significantly down. That is a lose-lose scenario: all pain, no gain. Does my noble friend agree with Margot James, the Minister of State at the DCMS, that the impact on music and creative subjects is “very concerning” and that the EBacc bears some responsibility for that? If so, what will the Government do about it?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I am afraid that I disagree with my noble friend. The EBacc has been transformational, particularly in helping disadvantaged pupils. In 2011, only 8.6% of disadvantaged pupils sat the EBacc, while in 2017 the figure had risen to 25.4%. As I said in my Answer, we know that this is of direct benefit to the number of disadvantaged pupils able to get into good universities. I reassure him that the hours spent teaching music have barely changed over the past seven years. Indeed, in 2010, 3.1% of teachers taught music while last year it was 3%. There were 2.4% of teaching hours given over to teaching music in 2010 and it was 2.3% last year. We have put great emphasis on the arts and do not feel that they are disadvantaged by the EBacc.

Schools: Music Education

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2018 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

To move that this House takes note of the state of music education in schools.

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to lead a debate on what I believe is such a profoundly important subject. I am very grateful to all noble Lords who are taking part, many of whom have huge expertise in this area. I declare an interest as chairman of the Royal College of Music and a governor of Brentwood School. Indeed, for me, Brentwood School is a good place to start, because it was there that I fell in love with music. With the encouragement of my parents, I learned instruments, I played in orchestras, I sang in the choir and took O and A-level music. I did all the things that every young person should have an opportunity to do. I took that music education for granted as, back then, it was the birthright of every child.

The reason for this debate today is that increasingly few children have anything like such opportunities as I did. Instead of music being a fundamental right of all children, it is rapidly becoming the preserve of the privileged few at independent schools as it dies out in the state sector. As I hope that this debate will show, music in this country is now facing an existential crisis, which only urgent, radical action from the Government will be able to reverse.

Music matters first and foremost because it is the only universal language which connects all human beings, whether they live and work in a bustling city or dwell on the plains of a desert. Even in the world’s poorest slums, the refugee camps and the disaster areas, people make music and it is central to their lives. It is the most basic but important link to all our past and, if we so believe, paints the most powerful picture of the world beyond. Through its incredible blend of self-expression, energy and creativity, it moves, energises, soothes and uplifts in a way that nothing else can. It is what makes us distinctively human, enriching every life on the planet.

Music is also a formidable vehicle for economic growth. It is fundamental to the success of the creative economy, which is so important to UK plc. The UK creative industries, which generate £92 billion each year and make up 5% of our economy, are growing at twice the rate of the economy as a whole, while employment in the sector grows at four times the rate of the UK workforce, according to the Cultural Learning Alliance. One in 11 jobs depends on them, and they are long-term, sustainable jobs at no risk of automation. It is the UK music industry which powers all this.

Music is also part of our national identity and a formidable instrument of soft power. Ironically, I believe that while Brexit will have a catastrophic impact on our creative economy, our worldwide reputation for musical excellence must be one of the engines of prosperity in post-Brexit Britain. Our musical history is extraordinary, creating some of the greatest composers and performers in the world. From Tallis and Byrd via Elgar and Vaughan Williams to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Adele, the UK has a towering musical heritage. Nearly one in four albums sold in Europe during 2015 was by a British artist, making us one of the few net exporters of music worldwide. That means that music is not just an international calling card—of the sort we will desperately need after Brexit—but brings people flooding to these shores. An estimated 12.5 million people journeyed here last year for musical events, between them supporting 50,000 jobs.

My final point about why music matters is the vital role that it plays in the upbringing of children. Every survey shows the incredibly positive benefit that music has on the young mind. It improves cognitive ability by up to 17%, raising attainment in maths and English. It boosts mental health. By the time children leave primary school, one in five of them will have experienced mental health problems, and music is proven to help them find ways to cope with that. It benefits children from poorer backgrounds in particular. Students from low-income families who take part in musical and creative activities at school are three times more likely to get a degree and get a job. Music moulds young minds.

For all those reasons, music is vital to the proper, successful functioning of our society, our economy and our education system. It is not an add-on, pastime or “nice to have”; it is a fundamental building block of the country we want to be, as important as engineering, medicine and mathematics.

What supports all this—what is essential to the edifice that is UK music—is a steady supply of professionally trained musicians, who are the lifeblood of musical life throughout the UK. Whether it be “Salome” at the Coliseum this evening, the Tina Turner musical, one of 20 gigs taking place in Glasgow, Ed Sheeran in Leeds, Sondheim in Manchester or amateur choirs, orchestras and church organ recitals the length and breadth of the land, they all have one thing in common: they are made up of musicians who first learned their trade and their passion for music at school. To be clear, this is no elitist argument about classical music. The world of pop and light music, where Britain has led the way from the Beatles to Coldplay, will suffer just as grievously from the decline of music for that reason.

Probably more so than any other part of our economy, music-making by 50,000 performing musicians in the UK needs a pipeline of talent to be able to survive. It cannot survive without a steady supply of new, well-trained entrants to the profession who can both perform and teach. Many of them will come through universities or our great conservatoires. An institution such as the Royal College of Music specialises in preparing 300 graduates a year for the performing arts economy, ensuring that they are flexible and skilled enough to compete in national and international markets. In turn, UK students at college or university overwhelmingly were pupils who learned music academically and learned an instrument at school. That is where it all starts: the crucial entry point to the pipeline of talent.

Let us be clear: our great tradition in the creative industries is not because our nation is somehow innately creative; it is because we have created a strong arts education system with music at its core in which children progress through primary and secondary schools to further and higher education. Progression is the key. If music teaching in schools is undermined and eroded, that pipeline will dry up over time, with incalculable consequences for our musical life as a nation and for the creative economy. I fear that that is exactly what is happening now. Music is literally disappearing from our schools, and that is, I hate to say, a direct result of government policy.

This year, only 35,000 pupils completed a GCSE in music, the first staging post on the path to a professional career. That was down from 46,000 in 2010, a decline of a quarter in just eight years. Imagine the mayhem there would be in Whitehall if the number of pupils taking physics had declined by half as much. Now, one-fifth of schools do not even offer GCSE music and, of those that do, 11% have to teach it outside curriculum time.

Those shameful figures are part of a wider picture of music in ferocious decline in our schools. Consider these facts. The DfE’s own figures from last year show that the number of hours for which the arts, including music, were taught in secondary schools in England fell by 21% between 2010 and 2017. A survey of 500 schools from the University of Sussex published just last week shows that compulsory music for 13 to 14 year-olds is down from 84% of responding schools in 2012 to just 47% now—a terrifyingly steep decline. Over the same period, staffing levels in music departments are down by 36%, with 70% of surviving music specialists having to teach outside their subject to fill gaps. Many teaching staff are now part-time and some are unqualified.

Music outside the classroom is under equal pressure. UK Music estimates that, for children aged 11 to 15, participation in extracurricular music is down from about 75% in 2012 to 60% last year, partly reflecting the sharp decline in peripatetic teaching.

If one needed evidence of how this erodes the pipeline, one has only to look at the even more shocking figures for A-level music, where there has been an inevitable decline of just under 40% in entries in England since 2010. Only 5,485 pupils took A-level music in 2018—down from 8,790 only eight years ago. That should not be a surprise: you are unlikely to take an A-level unless you have done a GCSE, so the inexorable unravelling of the ecology of our national musical architecture begins in a way which makes the long-term future of music in the UK ultimately unsustainable. This is a warning not just about the future; we are beginning to suffer the consequences even now. Last week, it was revealed that the National Youth Orchestra of Wales—a part of the UK with music in its bone marrow—has been unable for the first time ever to recruit enough violinists. That is how it begins.

While other factors may be involved, much of the blame for this situation must lie with the introduction of the English baccalaureate, which does not measure achievement in artistic, creative, and technical subjects, and therefore means that secondary schools have no incentive to offer those subjects at GCSE. It downgrades and punishes arts subjects at the expense of sciences. I know that my noble friend will say, as he did yesterday, that there is no empirical evidence linking the introduction of the EBacc in 2010 with the decline in GCSE and A-level music, which also dates from that time. However, it is what schools and teachers are themselves saying. In a recent survey of 1,200 primary and secondary schools by the BBC, 90% of teachers said that they had cut back on creative arts subjects, and most blamed the combination of EBacc criteria alongside funding cuts. In a similar survey by the University of Sussex earlier this year, 60% of independent schools specifically highlighted the EBacc as having a negative impact on the provision and uptake of music in their schools. Many confirmed that they now steer lower-ability pupils away from music so that they can concentrate on EBacc subjects.

One of the terrible consequences of all this is that a huge divide is being opened up between provision of music in the state schools and in the independent sector which is, thankfully, not constrained by the stultifying straitjacket of the EBacc. As a result, music is increasingly becoming the preserve of the wealthy, whose children go to schools where GCSE music is still encouraged and who can afford to pay for music tuition. Half of children at independent schools have sustained access to music tuition, compared to just 15% in state schools. That divide is shameful in a civilised society.

I have no doubt that my noble friend, who I know is a doughty champion of music education, will say that the Government are tackling the problem in other ways, including through music education hubs. But this provision is a patchy postcode lottery at best and can never be a substitute for the proper teaching of music in schools, particularly when cuts to council budgets are putting severe stress on local authority music services. All such initiatives, important though they are, are at best a sticking plaster, and our musical life deserves better. I am sure that my noble friend will also point out that music is a part of the national curriculum, which means that schools are required to teach music up to the end of key stage 3. But that too is being eroded, not least because of the growing number of academies, which are not bound by the national curriculum. Their growth and the constraints of the EBacc mean that increasingly music is not offered even at key stage 3, irrespective of the demands of the national curriculum.

As the Incorporated Society of Musicians has made clear, the answer has to lie in wholesale change to the EBacc system—either by cutting it right back and retaining just the core subjects of English and maths but with six open spaces to give schools and pupils greater flexibility, or by reforming it in the imaginative way that my noble friend Lord Baker has proposed, ensuring that pupils study a creative GCSE from a list that would include music, art and design, dance and drama. Either way, the priority must be to give music and creative subjects equal billing in our schools in a way that they always had until this act of cultural vandalism.

We need to take immediate action because the situation is grave and urgent, as the figures I gave earlier underline. If we do not, history will damn us with those chilling words: “too late.” Once our world-renowned musical architecture crumbles—and without change it could well do so—it will be well-nigh impossible to rebuild it. The decline of GCSE music will continue apace. Fewer and fewer pupils will go on to do A-level music. Music departments in schools will shrink even further, meaning a decline in the quality of education for those lucky enough to still be able to take those exams. The gulf between the rich who can pay for music education and those who cannot will get wider and starker. The pipeline to our conservatoires and universities will rapidly dry up as music education disappears from schools—at just the time when our international competitors are seeking to emulate what we have achieved here in previous generations.

The supply of professional musicians into our creative industries in every region of the UK will inexorably diminish, damaging a vital and expanding part of our economy, with so much potential for soft power in a post-Brexit world. There will be fewer teachers to go into the schools where music still has a place, and so it will continue. Above all, many thousands of children—perhaps among them some with potential to be world-class musicians—will be deprived of something which should be their birthright: an understanding and appreciation of the beauty of music, which should be the right of all, not the privilege of the few. That is the greatest tragedy. There is a clear and present danger to the musical life of our nation, and the time to act is now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in what has been an incredibly important debate. To use a musical analogy, we have heard a stirring theme and variations. We have heard so many powerful illustrations from noble Lords with huge expertise in their areas of the clear and present danger to music education from the perfect storm, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, described it. We have heard excellent examples of how the decline is not something in the future; it is happening here and now. I was very struck by what my noble friend Lord Lingfield said about the ESO and the way in which school orchestras are declining.

We have heard many other examples of who will lose out. We heard about how children with mental health problems will lose out, in a moving speech from my noble friend Lady Redfern. We heard about the threat to church and Cathedral music and the Anglican musical heritage from the right reverend Prelate. We have heard about the problems that employers will face. The noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Lipsey, referred to how music education has a profound effect on training young minds, even for people who are not going into the music profession. I know that the CBI has also made that point. All noble Lords talked about the threat to the UK economy and the problems those from future generations who want to get into the profession will face. My noble friend Lord Clancarty set that out with characteristic aplomb.

Yes, there are glimmers of light. I pay tribute to the charities mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, which are seeking to plug the gap. In an important speech from my noble friend Lord Lexden, we heard about the role of independent schools in partnerships. They are terribly important, but I must say to both noble Lords that both independent schools and charities depend on the supply of well-trained teachers and professionals. If the decline continues over time, they, too, will find that they do not have the people to plug the gap as they do now. There may be glimmers of light now, but there is a danger that they will be snuffed out.

To use one final musical analogy, I hate to say it but I fear that the speech we heard from the Minister was the sound of fiddling while Rome burns. I fear that, as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, the Government are in denial about this, and that is extremely sad. I am very grateful to the Minister for his remarks and the way he set out what the Government are doing in music education, but perhaps he would take back a strong message from this House to the Secretary of State that it is time that the Government looked at the facts here, listened to what is going on on the ground from the experts here and beyond—the Incorporated Society of Musicians, the conservatoires and so forth, who have a day-to-day knowledge of what is happening—and then acted.

Motion agreed.

Education: GCSE Music

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have made an assessment of the number of pupils who took GCSE Music in the last academic year.

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and I declare an interest in the subject as chairman of the Royal College of Music.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, there were 31,000 entries to music GCSE in England this year, and the proportion of pupils taking music GCSE between 2010 and 2018 has remained broadly stable. Music is compulsory in the curriculum for local authority maintained schools for key stages 1 to 3, and pupils have an entitlement to study an arts subject, including music, at key stage 4 if they wish. We are investing more than £300 million up to 2020 in music education.

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

I thank my noble friend for that Answer, but he should be in no doubt that the situation of GCSE music in schools is very grave. The number of pupils completing it fell by 7% last year, which means a fall of 23% since 2010, with one in five schools not offering it at all last year. This is undoubtedly the fault of the EBacc, which punishes arts subjects at the expense of sciences. Does my noble friend appreciate that this merciless decline is the start of a destructive downward spiral? As fewer pupils take GCSE even fewer then take A-level, and fewer still will go on to study music at a university or conservatoire, thereby threatening the long-term sustainability of music in our country. Is it not time thoroughly to overhaul the EBacc before irreparable damage is done to music education and it has become the privilege of the children of the rich rather than the fundamental right of all pupils?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, there is no evidence that arts subjects have declined as a result of the introduction of the EBacc. Since the EBacc was announced in 2010 the proportion of young people taking at least one arts GCSE has fluctuated across the years, but has remained broadly stable. The best schools in the country combine a high-quality cultural education with excellence in core academic subjects. I reassure my noble friend of the importance, to my mind, of music to brain development, and I shall quote from a study on this; the education system needs to become more aware of it.

“Music’s pitch, rhythm, metre and timbre are processed in … the brain … Rhythm and pitch are primarily left brain hemisphere functions, while timbre and melody are processed primarily in the right hemisphere”.


Music is an integral part of our education, and so is EBacc.

National Curriculum

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on the admirable way in his excellent opening speech in which he summed up the issues facing us. This debate offers us all the opportunities that a bran tub presents to a small child—so many possibilities. Part of me wanted to talk, like the noble Lord, Lord Storey, about history. Part of me wanted to talk about music, but I hope that the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, may do so later. I want to talk about animal welfare and its place in the national curriculum, in particular relating to domestic animals and pets. It is proper for me to declare a feline interest as an owner of a venerable Russian Blue cat, Victoria, who is 17 next month. I had her and her welfare very much in mind while I have been putting together these remarks.

Despite the wonderful work of many animal welfare charities—I think in particular of Cats Protection, which is the UK’s leading feline welfare charity and has helped more than 1 million cats in the past five years—there is still an endemic problem within our society relating to animal welfare. In 2011, the last year for which a full set of statistics was available, more than 126,000 dogs were allowed to stray by their owners, which represents an increase of 30% in three years. In the same year, Cats Protection rehomed and reunited 48,000 cats and kittens. Blue Cross experienced an increase of 57% in the number of unwanted rabbits that they were asked to rehome. Most worryingly, PDSA research shows that of the estimated 22 million pets in the UK, more than 10 million may not be having their welfare needs met.

The reasons behind such shocking and alarming figures are no doubt complex. In some ways they reflect the state of the economy, among other things. However, it is inevitable that education, or indeed lack of it, about animal welfare is one of those reasons. Problems of neglect, cruelty and abandonment often happen because people do not understand what a pet needs and how to care for it. One of the best ways, over time, to tackle this issue is therefore to ensure that children are taught properly about how to care for pets. Children, after all, are the pet owners of the future. Yet, currently only 16% of children are taught about caring for a domestic animal, despite the fact that more than 60% of children will be from homes keeping a pet. This is not a marginal issue but one that clearly relates to the majority of children.

Our animal welfare charities, which so often are unsung heroes, do what they can to train young people in animal welfare issues. Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, Blue Cross, Cats Protection, Dogs Trust and PDSA delivered education talks to more than 175,000 children in 2011. There is a big appetite in schools for information and training in this area. A survey for the Pet Food Manufacturers Association in 2012 found that 78% of primary school teachers and 70% of secondary school teachers agreed that it was important to teach younger children responsibility through learning to care for pets. The RSPCA ran courses for nearly 4,000 teachers in 2011.

However, there will always be a limit to what voluntary bodies with tight resources, limited manpower and uneven geographical spread can achieve—and here the national curriculum is therefore vital. It is very good that the draft curriculum makes reference to the basic needs of animals within the year 2 primary science curriculum, but this relates only to survival and the need for water, food and air. However, an animal’s needs are not limited to those. There are, in fact, as the Animal Welfare Act 2006 sets out, five basic welfare needs—environment, diet, behaviour, companionship, and prevention of pain, suffering and disease—which contribute to a healthy and happy life for our pets. All need to be learnt.

A new subject does not need to be added to the curriculum to deal with this issue, nor does it cross the vital line that my noble friend mentioned of becoming involved in how a teacher teaches. All that is necessary is for the current reference to basic needs to be amended slightly to allow teachers the flexibility and scope to teach about all five welfare needs, linking them to scientific knowledge and concepts within their lessons. In short, the concept of development needs to be placed alongside survival in the year 2 curriculum. Such a tiny change could bring benefit of real significance, not just to many defenceless animals in the future but to the way in which children grow and develop. Teaching children from an early age about the importance of caring for pets will help them to integrate effectively with others and understand the importance of responsibility, something that has profound benefits for society as a whole.

It is, as they say, a win-win scenario that I urge my noble friend to accept, and one which will not make any greater burden on teachers or require surgery to the draft curriculum. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will undertake to look further at this matter.

Education Bill

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, despite the late hour I think that this debate should not be curtailed, because it is so important. I have to express my great disappointment in the Government for not listening to the arguments that were made so cogently in Committee and again by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips. I want to ask the Minister whether some of my experiences would not now be possible. For 13 years I was chief executive of Childline, the helpline for children in trouble and in danger, and this month that helpline is 25 years old. During the time it has been operating, it has cracked a large number of rings and groups and situations where teachers have been abusing children. Children have been able to telephone the helpline and describe what has been happening to them.

Let me tell your Lordships about two cases because they are crucial. We had a series of boys ringing independently from a particular school, all telling us about the same teacher and similar abuse. We were able to get those boys to talk to their parents, to get the parents to come together, and together to take that issue forward, which ended up in a very serious prosecution of that teacher who went to prison. The other situation was that of Crookham Court, a very famous case, where a group of teachers were preying, just as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, described, on a group of children. We intervened in that situation by getting the proprietor out of the school and getting my chair, who happened to be Esther Rantzen, into the school to bring the whole situation into the open. That was again a very famous case when a series of people went to prison for a long time for serial abuse of children in a school.

I believe that those two cases could not happen under these arrangements. We would be prevented from encouraging people to share information that brings serial abusers to court. I do not think that the Government intend that to happen. I do not wish to believe that the Minister and his colleagues would wish that to happen. I do not like speaking at length as it is late and I, too, would like to go home, but the only other point I want to make is that if the Minister had worked for years, as I have, with young people who have to come to court and describe their abuse—the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, made this point—he would know that it is extraordinarily difficult for children and young people to make allegations because they know they have to say it again. Would noble Lords like to have to stand up and tell me about their recent sexual experience? We ask children to talk about extraordinarily painful sexual abuse in court, which they find extremely difficult. That is why I spent nine years of my life working towards children, as witnesses, not having to face the court but being able to give their evidence behind a screen. I am proud of that achievement.

If the Government take it through, we will condemn a large number of children and their parents to terrific pain. I ask the Minister to take it back to his masters and convey the message in the strongest possible terms, otherwise I predict there will be cause to rue the day.

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

My Lords, I do not wish to detain the House for terribly long but I would be grateful if I can say a few words as I raised this issue for the first time at Second Reading and then talked with the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, about it in Committee. As this is an issue that affects the media, I declare an interest as executive director of the Telegraph Media Group. On Second Reading, I originally raised three concerns. The first was about the workability of these proposals and whether it was possible to muzzle the printed press and broadcast media in a digital age when gossip at the school gate would simply be transformed into dialogue on social media. The second was about the impact on press freedom and open justice, particularly because of the lack in this legislation of a public interest defence. The third, about which we have heard eloquent testimony this evening, was about the welfare of vulnerable children. Underlying all that was a belief that the case had not been made out for a substantial incursion into freedom of expression. The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, spoke earlier of the latest statistics showing that only 2 per cent of cases related to malicious allegations. That is a very small number and in none of those has it been proved that publicity was responsible for that.

Those were my concerns. All that said, I am very grateful to the Government for having taken a number of those issues on board. Amendment 44 goes a considerable way to protecting the rights of children. It gives the courts the opportunity to balance the victim with the perpetrator of the crime. Amendment 49, which relates to individual teachers putting material into the public domain, again goes some way to dealing with the impact on the media and open justice, and I think helps to bring this legislation much more into line with the Human Rights Act 1998, which protects material which is in the public domain. That seems to me to be of especial importance in view of the concern I expressed about the impact of social media on this legislation.

I wish that the Government had been able to go further. Indeed, I wish that this clause had not been in the Bill in the first place. However, these changes seem practical and welcome, and may go some way to ensuring that these provisions will have a much less significant impact on the rights of children and on the free media than when the Bill was originally drafted.

I should add that, as a result of these amendments, and the explanations that the Minister has given today, I see no need for my own part—although it is still a matter for the noble Lord, Lord Phillips—to press Amendment 48 or Amendment 51, and withdraw my name and support from those.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, we had a very good debate about this issue in Committee, and, although the hour is late, we have just had another such debate this evening. I recognise the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, made at the beginning: this is not a completely straightforward issue. There are difficult interests to balance. I understand the force of the arguments that have been made about the importance of safeguarding children. I am extremely clear that a huge amount of progress has been made over the years in making children safer in school, thanks to steps taken by the last Government, and no doubt Governments before that. To respond to the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, we have no desire to do anything to unwind or undermine any of that. I listened with care to the point she made about Childline. My understanding is that the Bill would not prevent children talking to Childline, and Childline talking to parents. However, I understand the force of what she was saying, and I will check that that is the case. Clearly one would not want a measure inadvertently to have the effect which she raised.

At the heart of this, and the reason why the Government are doing this, is the evidence that has been provided to us on this issue. I think that that evidence is not contested: I know that there is a difference of opinion about the strength of the evidence of the number of cases of pre-charge publicity in the press, but there is an acceptance that we have a problem, that there is a growing number of allegations made against teachers, that teachers are fearful of this trend, and that they are fearful of the effect that it has on their ability to exercise their position of authority in the classroom. We think that they have a particular position—