Education: Development of Excellence

Lord Broers Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Broers]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, on calling this debate and on her outstanding opening speech. I find myself unusually in full support of the Government’s proposals—at least those of Mr Gove that I read about in the Times yesterday about post-16 education. I have long called for an end to the extreme specialisation required by the A-level system as it is used in the majority of cases. This has left many scientists and engineers with little practice in expressing themselves literally or orally, and their intellects without the key benefits that learning at least a second language provides. On the other side of CP Snow’s cultural divide, it has left those who opt for the arts and humanities insufficiently numerate and without a knowledge of how the increasingly technological world around them functions.

We have been alone in the developed world in allowing—even encouraging—such specialisation. It has meant that our students possess more advanced knowledge in their specialisation than, for example, American students when they leave school, but find much later that they lack the complementary skills needed to be effective in the real world—either to be able to persuade others of their position or to understand the complexities of the modern world. They then have to acquire these skills when their minds are less agile. Our society has almost encouraged this. Many still hold to the vision of the back-room scientist or engineer, who is extremely clever but lacks the overall vision or ability to lead. We still hear our leaders and politicians almost boasting about their lack of technical understanding and their inability to distinguish between megawatts and gigawatts.

I brought this up many times since joining this House. Six years ago, in the opening paragraph of the summary of recommendations of the report of the Science and Technology Select Committee on science teaching in schools—an inquiry that I chaired—we called on the Government to replace A-levels over the long term with a broader-based syllabus for post-16 students. The Labour Government’s response was to encourage people to expand the availability of the international baccalaureate diploma, but in reality little happened. The proposals of Mr Gove, therefore, are very welcome, although I know that they will receive some resistance from those academics who take a narrow view and are interested only in students excelling in their specialities and do not want them distracted by other topics. This issue extends into higher education and it has long been my position that more universities should follow MIT in having a compulsory humanities, arts and social science component in their science and engineering degrees. Things seem at last to be on the move, and I strongly support the proposals for a broader-based syllabus for post-16 students.