Schools: Arts Subjects

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I share the noble Earl’s passion for the arts and know that it is an area in which he has great experience. I am happy to report that key stage 4 entries for arts subjects have not significantly changed since 2007 and currently account for 9% of all key stage 4 entries. I assure the noble Earl that we take discounting very seriously. We are looking specifically at how it works as it is so important that schools are not incentivised to offer pupils a narrow curriculum, although it is equally important that pupils take subjects that are distinct from each other. We are reviewing how the discount codes for dance and drama work, and we are also considering whether to allow appeals against the discounting decisions that have been made in other areas if there is evidence to support reconsidering our initial consideration.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend accept that not only does studying the arts enrich the lives of those who study them but that there are marvellous careers in the arts and crafts and we ought to do more to encourage young people to consider such careers?

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree with my noble friend. It is important that we give all our students that core cultural capital that Diane Abbott has acknowledged in the other place as being essential, particularly for underprivileged children, to enable them to get on in life and that we encourage more careers. We now have a number of university technical colleges focused on the creative industries.

Schools: Independent Schools

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I was a trustee of Eastside Young Leaders Academy, which focuses on improving the life chances of black boys in the East End. It has already sent 21 pupils to private schools under full bursaryships. One of our concerns was integration and we spent a lot of time working on that. I know that schools that take pupils from diverse backgrounds work very hard to make sure that the transition works.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, did not the previous Conservative Government introduce the assisted places scheme and would it not be a very positive thing to reintroduce something similar?

[Lord Nash]

The assisted places scheme provided valuable support for pupils, who benefited from a place at an independent school, which their parents might not otherwise have been able to afford. The scheme was abolished by the Labour Party in 1998 so that that money could be spent in the state sector. We agree with that sentiment. Our policy is that resources should be targeted at improving state funding for all pupils rather than supporting a minority.

Education: PISA Results

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I know that the noble Lord is very experienced in these matters. I was recently visited by a delegation from Sweden consisting of MPs and others involved in education. They were here to study our accountability system because they acknowledge that they have half of the equation right—autonomy—but not the other half. They have been impressed with what they have seen here in Ofsted and our move to a more rigorous accountability system in examination analysis. That is why they acknowledged that they have failed; I do not think that it has anything to do with autonomy.

We are learning from Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai, particularly in maths. We sent 50 of our head teachers, with their heads of department in maths and science, to Shanghai earlier this year. I agree entirely that parents need to get more involved. When I first got involved in the academy programme, we had one ghastly meeting in Pimlico with all the antis. They were clearly not representative of parents, so to reach out to the parents, we organised eight one-hour meetings in Camberwell and Brixton, where the parents lived, to tell them what we were doing. There were 1,300 pupils so you would think that there would be 2,500 parents. I would like to ask noble Lords to guess how many parents turned up but I will tell you—one parent came to all eight meetings. We now have more than 90% attendance at parents’ meetings, because all state schools must now send out a message to their parents that if their children go to that school, they must turn up. That is what happens in independent schools and we must try to replicate that in the state system. I entirely agree with the noble Lord.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I follow on from the wise, perceptive question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Quirk, and my noble friend’s response to it. Is not one secret a proper, disciplined framework in every school? In 10 years as a schoolmaster and 40 years visiting schools in my constituency, it was always the case that where there was proper discipline—allied to parental enthusiasm, I would add with reference to the noble Lord, Lord Knight—and children could learn in a disciplined framework, they made real progress. Should not our primary aim when we are talking of rigour be to ensure that there is real, rigorous discipline in every school?

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with my noble friend. Across the academy system a great many sponsors have taken over schools where, frankly, the previous behaviour was very poor indeed, and put in place a very effective behaviour management system. I saw a behaviour management system in America which I thought was particularly effective. You start the pupils on the left-hand side of the page, where they basically behave because they will get into trouble if they do not, and you slowly move them across to the right-hand side of the page, where they behave because that is the society they want. They want a calm society in their school because that is the only way they can learn. More sophisticated behaviour management systems are coming into place. We have strengthened teachers’ ability to confiscate mobile phones, particularly in the appalling incidents of sexting, and given more power for detention, and so on, but I agree entirely with my noble friend.

Children and Families Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to have been tempted into the Committee by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, who asked if I would put my name to her amendment. I was very glad to do so.

To begin, I thought that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, made some very telling points in her speech. I often wish that we had never had the internet invented but the fact is that it is there, it cannot be uninvented and it has brought a new dimension to the lives of young people—a dimension with which they find it exceptionally difficult to grapple. The noble Baroness was very right to underline that.

Many years ago, because I have been in this building for 43 years, I was a schoolmaster for 10 years. When I talk to my grandchildren—three granddaughters and a grandson, ranging in ages from eight to 16—I realise what a very different world they are growing up into. The challenges and moral dilemmas they face are so different from those of the relatively simple and stable society when I taught in a Church of England school in the early 1960s. Perhaps the biggest problem we had to deal with was the odd Woodbine behind the bicycle shed. Now our young people, almost all of whom are computer literate and equipped with mobile phones—of a very advanced nature in many cases—have their privacy invaded and eroded in a way that most of them are not emotionally able to tackle.

I am not a believer in censorship. I never thought I would hear myself saying this in either House of Parliament but I am afraid that I have come to the conclusion that we must censor this heavy pornographic material which pollutes minds, distorts lives and destroys them, often even before they have properly begun. If that means being very tough with the purveyors of this filth, and denying adults access to it, so be it. Not a single life is enhanced by the filth and degrading material that we know about and read about. In Parliament, we must be adult enough and give leadership to provoke our Ministers and political leaders in all parties into accepting that we cannot solve these problems by pussy-footing around.

I am wholly with the noble Baroness in what she sought to say in referring to her amendment. I suggest to my noble friend the Minister that it would be no bad thing if he and the Secretary of State convened a meeting of Members of both Houses of Parliament to discuss ways and means of tackling this appalling problem. It must be Members from all political persuasions because this is not, in any sense, an issue where party should raise its head for a moment.

Now, I pass back to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, which I was very glad to sign. I am delighted that she has survived her encounter with a New York pavement. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, did, I congratulate her on her very cogent presentation of an amendment that is in fact a statement of common sense. That is why I strongly support it.

The noble Lord, Lord Nash, knows, because he has been good enough to see me on a number of occasions since the debate on citizenship, that I have a passionate interest in that. I have been able to convene a group of Members of your Lordships’ House from all parties and the Cross Benches, and we met with the noble Lord, Lord Nash, just three weeks ago to discuss our desire to see citizenship playing a much more important part in the curriculum. We would like to think that all young people, before they leave school have the opportunity to participate in their local communities in one way or another. The noble Lords, Lord Clarke of Hampstead and Lord Ramsbotham, talked about bodies such as the National Trust, which wish to engage the services of young people. It does not matter whether their interest is in helping the elderly or the young, or engaging in heritage or environmental projects. Each young person is a member of his or her community and should recognise that that brings with it obligations as well as rights. We have suggested to the Minister that we would like to see every young person, having engaged in community service, having the opportunity to have a citizenship certificate. That is not a cataloguing of academic achievement, but recognition of their participation in the community. We base this on the citizenship ceremony, which was denigrated before it happened. People who become British citizens go through this, and many of them think it is a wonderful rite of passage, which it would also be for our young people to have something similar. That was one reason, when I saw the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, why I was so glad to add my name to it.

There are other reasons. The noble Baroness talks in the preamble about:

“Duty of schools to promote the academic, spiritual, cultural, mental and physical development of children”.

That spiritual dimension is, sadly, all too often neglected. Without vision, they say, the people perish. Without a spiritual dimension, young people—all people—are impoverished. There should be this opportunity, and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, is so right to highlight that in bold letters at the beginning of her new clause. Following on from that, the pastoral care, about which she talked movingly, really ought to be at the core of any good school’s being. You do not know a pupil unless you know his or her home and social background, just as a doctor who only sees people in a surgery and never at home has a one-dimensional view. How many of the awful, dreadful things that have happened in recent years may not have happened if there had been a greater degree of pastoral care and real knowledge on the part of the school? The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, is so right to emphasise:

“focused on the safety and well being of pupils and which, where appropriate, works in conjunction with support systems”.

I would also say, “works in conjunction with”—if they have a religious faith—“the priest”, or “the imam”, or whoever. It is very important indeed.

--- Later in debate ---

In conclusion, the best people to help schools deal with changing technology are, in our view, the experts. Our SRE guidance directs schools to draw on the up-to-date advice produced by experts for use in sex and relationship education. SRE is a sensitive area, in which expert organisations and professionals have an essential role to play, but in our view that does not require the Government to revise existing guidance. We consider that publishing the information set out in the current school information regulations and academy funding agreements is the best way for parents to have access to the key information. Teachers should be given more freedom, not less, to decide the content of the curriculum. However, we do not disagree at all about what we are trying to achieve here. I would like to reinforce that point: we do not disagree at all, it is just a question of methodology. I would be happy to discuss further all the points raised today but I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Cormack]

Will my noble friend amplify that point? He very kindly said that he would be glad to convene a meeting to discuss this appalling problem of the internet. Could he give reasonable notice of that meeting and try to convene it as soon as is reasonably possible?

[Baroness Warnock (CB)]

Can the Minister answer the point made by my noble friend Lord Listowel about the ways in which teacher training could concentrate on this area that I roughly think of as moral teaching? There is no requirement that this should be taught in any particular way. I quite agree with the noble Lord about the futility of making lists but the point is that teacher training does not concentrate sufficiently on it simply because it is not part of the national curriculum. Can he say what he thinks about my noble friend’s point?

Schools: Unqualified Staff

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, we have just been told by the OECD that our school leavers—Labour’s children—are among the most illiterate in the developed world. Indeed, we are the only country in the developed world where our school leavers’ grandparents were better educated than our school leavers were. We have also recently been told by Alan Milburn that we are the most socially immobile country in Europe. That is why we need to bring teachers from whatever field we can into our school system to improve it, rather than to be dictated to by dogma.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, in spite of what the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, said, is it not crucial that truly qualified teachers are those who have a deep knowledge of their subject, a love of it and the ability to transmit that love enthusiastically to others?

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree with my noble friend. This is absolutely true and there are many such excellent teachers in the independent sector, many of whom work in partnerships with the state sector. I know that the Labour Party does not like to hear about the independent sector, because it is truly world class—

Schools: Careers Service

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, Ofsted inspects careers guidance through the leadership and management strand, and the extent to which the school is offering a broad and balanced curriculum. Schools are also held to account by destination measures.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, in a debate in this House in the summer, my noble friend responded positively to the suggestion that each secondary school would be well served by having a panel of local businessmen and women and professionals to advise on careers. Has he made any progress on that front?

[Lord Nash]

My noble friend’s example of a careers panel is an excellent example of good practice. I have seen other such examples. I recently visited Stoke Newington school and sixth form college—not an academy—where they follow excellent practice in offering careers advice. They have a speed dating careers day, which is very useful. There is a wide range of good practice that schools can use and a wide range of organisations such as Business in the Community, Business Class and the Education and Employers Taskforce with which schools can engage.

Al-Madinah Free School

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree with the noble Baroness on the last point. There is no place in our school system for such practices and we have made that absolutely clear to this school. As regards the monitoring of schools, our procedures are extremely tight. This situation developed quite rapidly over the summer, leading up to the head teacher’s resignation.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

Does my noble friend accept that dogmatism is not normally compatible with common sense? Does he accept that there are many teachers in some of the finest schools in this country, which produce some of the best results, who do not have a formal qualification, just as there are many schools where all the teachers have a formal qualification but where the results are less than satisfactory? We have to preserve a sense of balance in all these things.

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to my noble friend for his question. I agree with him entirely on both points.

Schools: Admission Policies

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs]

My Lords—

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords—

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords—

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

It is the turn of this side, but we shall be very quick and then we shall hear from the other side.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that throughout this country church schools, Church of England schools in particular, make an enormous contribution to the cohesion of their local communities, and that Church of England clergy play a big part in this, both by what they teach and by serving as governors on the boards of such schools?

[Lord Nash]

I agree with my noble friend. A 2009 independent report commissioned by the Church of England analysed Ofsted’s judgments on schools’ promotion of community cohesion. The report found that for secondary schools, faith schools contributed more highly to community cohesion than community schools and had higher average grades than community schools for promoting equality of opportunity and eliminating discrimination.

Employment: Young People

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I am sure that we can all say amen to that, and I hope that my noble friend will forgive me if I do not follow him into the foundry. I will begin by congratulating most warmly my noble friend Lady Shephard, not only on introducing the debate, but on the wise and firm manner in which she spoke. There is no one who is better at admonishing people with charm than my noble friend. I hope that the Minister will respond positively to someone who was one of the most successful Secretaries of State for Education in recent times.

I shall never forget when I talked to my honourable friend about some problems in my constituency, and head teachers having various difficulties. She said, “Bring them to see me”. I took half a dozen heads from the South Staffordshire constituency, who were completely bowled over when I said they were going to see the Secretary of State, and we went and had what was, for me, an unprecedented experience because she actually saw us on time. Ministers rarely do that.

Today my noble friend has given us an exemplary lead in what she said in her speech, and I would like to take up some of the points that she made. However, I would like to begin by saying that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, was kind enough to refer to the debate that we had last week on citizenship, I think that this debate is in many ways complementary to that one. I just hope that the Minister will be able to give a slightly more positive response to this debate than he felt able to give last week.

One of the things that I will major on, following the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is careers guidance in schools. This is absolutely crucial. It is a sort of add-on extra in many schools, and it should not be. The present Secretary of State is very good at telling people what he thinks should happen, and I think that he is a most excellent Secretary of State, but I believe that there should be a requirement for every secondary school to have not only a careers staff but a careers panel drawn from the local community. There would be industrialists relevant to the industry of the area, maybe a foundry, or farmers if it was in a rural area and, obviously, professional men and women. It would be a group of people who really knew what they were talking about.

I believe that it would also be sensible if, during the final year or two of their course, every pupil had the opportunity to go and see how a farm works, perhaps how a foundry works, or how a solicitor’s office operates. If they not only had the work experience—which is very important indeed, and my noble friend Lord Norton does it absolutely brilliantly—but had also seen how other places work, they would have a breadth of knowledge when they came to make the choice. They would also have something to aspire to. I really believe that the careers service in schools in our country leaves a great deal to be desired.

The other point that I would like to develop is this: in her speech the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, talked about apprenticeships, a subject which was echoed very eloquently by my noble friend Lady Brinton. There is still an unfortunate attitude, and I choose my words carefully, adopted towards those who work with their hands as though it is second best. There is almost a looking-down on the vocational aspect of the technical school or college. Frankly, I think that was compounded by the, in my view, misguided decision to make all polytechnics universities. They were different institutions that called for different talents, and they provided different opportunities. It is not a failure if a young man or woman does not go to university; it is a failure only if that young man or woman is unable to realise the full potential that they have within them.

I have been associated for many years with a body called the William Morris Craft Fellowship, of which I am chairman, and which I helped to found almost 30 years ago. Every year we give travelling fellowships to young men and women, and I am pleased to say that many of them have been women. They are craftsmen, builders, joiners, stonemasons, glaziers, plumbers—we have run the whole gamut. These are young people who have decided that they want to spend their lives repairing, upholding and adding to our built heritage. Only last week at a debriefing lunch in London, I was able to talk to last year’s craft fellows, one of them a woman bricklayer, another a woman stonemason, another a young man who was also a stonemason.

The breadth of experience that we are able to give those young people, mostly in their 20s, as they take themselves around a whole range of sites seeing disciplines other than their own at work, enriches them, makes them far better crafts men and women and puts them in a position—this is what we wanted to do at the beginning—where they themselves can take charge of major projects. We have been running now for 26 years, with well over 100 fellows—once a fellow, always a fellow—and already we have had several who have written books, while others have taken over companies. They have achieved a whole range of things, and they have gone into schools and inspired young people. I would like to see more of that. I do not believe that our young people are sufficiently alive to the opportunities and satisfactions of a career in the crafts.

We have the great good fortune of working in this most beautiful building, which did not just depend on the architectural genius of Charles Barry and Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin; it depended far more on the craftsmen—they were all men in those days—who carved the panels, created the stained glass and built the walls, and it still depends on the skilled craftsmen of today repairing and restoring those things and keeping this building in being.

Keats, of course, memorably said:

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness”.

We should inspire our young people with that thought so that they can take part in the crafts. Craftsmen make an imperishable contribution, in some cases, to the fabric of their country. We have so sadly, almost criminally, neglected and denigrated that as a career opportunity for many that we should be ashamed. As at least a couple of speakers have mentioned, the Germans do not take that attitude, and neither should we. In this country we have some of the finest and best crafts men and women anywhere in the world.

Another association that I am involved with as a patron is the Heritage Crafts Association, which is an association of individual crafts men and women making artefacts such as leather goods, pewter, silver and woodwork—a whole range of things—many of them one-man or one-woman bands, and many unable to afford to take on apprentices. I took a group from that association to see Mr Matt Hancock, the Minister with particular responsibility, a few weeks ago. We had a warm and receptive hearing, and I hope that that will lead to things. The Government should be helping those one-man band crafts men and women to take on others and pass on their skills. That is tremendously important.

My noble friend Lord Norton took up the word “aspirations” in the Motion. Yes, every young person should have an aspiration. It is our duty to give them the inspiration to have aspiration. I hope that my noble friend Lady Shephard’s Motion, in drawing attention to that fact, will help to persuade my noble friend on the Front Bench that, although things have been done, much more needs to be done.

We have marvellous debates in this House and we have had some admirable contributions today. One of the sadnesses is that what we say in here so often remains a state secret. I hope that what has been said today, and what I am sure what will be said in the following half hour or so, will get out into the wider world. My noble friend Lady Shephard has performed a signal service in drawing attention to this subject, and I truly hope that her debate will bear fruit.

Education: Citizenship

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Cormack]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to develop a citizenship programme in schools.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this important issue, even at the end of a long day, and to noble Lords who have indicated that they would like to take part in the debate.

This began for me in this House when we were recalled in August 2011 following those deeply disturbing riots. I raised the point then that we should perhaps consider some form of national service, or community service, for our young people, and look at the idea of a citizenship ceremony in which they recognised their rights and responsibilities. As a result of that, colleagues on both sides of the House contacted me and we had a series of meetings. The noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, who cannot be here today, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, were among Cross-Benchers who took part in the discussions. We were helped, too, by the advice that we received on the recommendation of the noble Baroness, Lady King of Bow, from Professor Ted Cantle. Those meetings inspired me to seek this debate.

There is a very serious and pressing case for formally marking the transition of our young people to full citizenship at the age of 18. It is a sad fact that young people are far less likely to take part in the democratic process these days, or even register, than used to be the case. Perhaps that is not surprising when we do so little to suggest that coming of age matters. Citizenship is about far more than voting. I do not suggest that there are not hundreds of thousands of young people in the country who are proud to be members of their local communities and give real service to them. This is not a critical speech but one that seeks to move forward. Although many make real and important contributions, the idea and the ideal of public service are not as fashionable as they once were.

We need to provide for all 16 to 18 year-olds the opportunity to engage in some form of structured community service, working with civic and voluntary organisations. This should culminate in a citizenship ceremony that could be a real occasion, not only for the young people concerned but for their friends and families. We already have a positive process for migrants and longer-standing residents who wish to become UK citizens, but there is nothing to acknowledge that our 18 year-olds have suddenly acquired new rights and responsibilities. When, for those who wish to become UK citizens, a citizenship ceremony was first mooted, many said that it was a jingoistic, flag-waving and pointless exercise. That has not proved to be the case. Many people in our country have taken part in these ceremonies, accompanied by their families and friends, with a real sense of pride and commitment. Anyone in your Lordships’ House who is fortunate enough to be a deputy lieutenant of a county might have experienced such ceremonies. I suggest to your Lordships that the sceptics have indeed been confounded, because those who come appreciate that they are being formally and publicly welcomed into the fold. They are very happy to take an oath of allegiance in front of the Queen’s representative.

I know the Government—this also applies to the previous Government, because there is common concern in all parties—have developed what the previous Government did and have begun to recognise the need to engage younger people with the idea of citizenship. The National Citizen Service is aimed at 16 and 17 year-olds. It introduces young people to volunteering in blocks of several weeks across the summer. Up to 30,000 youngsters take part. It is no doubt a very good scheme, and I warmly commend it, but I propose a scheme that is, first, much simpler and, secondly, made available to every young person. Around 700,000 young people come of age each year. The formal marking of the 18th birthday—of course, not necessarily on the exact day—with a ceremony supported by a short school or community-based programme would incur minimal costs and would have a great impact. I referred to the role of the lord-lieutenancy a moment or two ago. Every county has a lord-lieutenant who is supported by deputy lieutenants, often several dozen of them, who would be able to support such an extended role conducting ceremonies in the name of Her Majesty the Queen independent of government and political party and at minimal cost.

It would be possible to augment the citizenship process with a more tangible programme of citizenship, perhaps leading to a certificate, and there are many voluntary organisations that I have reason to suppose would willingly take part. One thinks of the National Trust, the RSPB and Age UK; one could go on. There are many such organisations. I envisage a voluntary programme supported by an expectation that all young people would participate in a community-based programme supported by existing citizenship work in schools.

It is crucial that schools and the community come together in this. There is no time to develop at length a series of examples, but noble Lords will know of environmental and heritage problems, and programmes in their areas, of the need to develop greater awareness of the importance of parenting and child development and of community cohesion and integration, and the need for young people fully to recognise their legal responsibilities, the damage that anti-social behaviour can cause and the damage that alcohol and drug abuse can cause.

I emphasise that this is all about service. It is about recognising, of course, the rights that one obtains at the age of 18 but also, and much more important in a sense, the responsibilities to help to build through this recognition communities that are more united, more integrated and more cohesive than many of our communities. Of course, I do not know the answer to this question, but I wonder whether, if we had had such a highly developed programme, those riots would have taken place two years ago. Whether they would or not, I suggest to your Lordships that this sort of developed approach has many benefits and few dangers, and I very warmly commend it to the Government because they are recognising in the curriculum and through the programme to which I referred the importance of developing awareness and responsibility in our young people as they mature and become part of the adult community. They recognise this as being vital. We all recognise this as being vital, and I very much hope that the ideas that I have briefly sketched this afternoon will commend themselves not only to your Lordships in all parts of the House but in particular to the Minister who will be replying from the Front Bench.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

My noble friend is perfectly right in what he says. Ofsted has to inspect on social, moral and cultural issues and carries out triennial reviews of all subjects, including citizenship. However, he is right and I will take his points back. Citizenship is part of the best eight.

I thank my noble friend Lady Byford for highlighting the excellent work that the House of Lords outreach programme does with young people. Almost 1,000 visits have been made to schools in every region of the UK, and House of Lords Chamber events have brought young people to Parliament to explore and debate a range of issues.

My noble friend Lady Byford also highlighted the fantastic work of the cadets programme. We know about the transformative effect that cadet units can have on schools by increasing attendance, engagement, participation at 16 to 18, self-confidence and discipline. The cadet expansion programme was a key strand of the Government’s Positive for Youth policy. Early work was based on a pilot of between 10 and 15 third-party funded units, but this number was increased following the announcement on Armed Forces Day last year by the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, who challenged departments to deliver 100 new units by 2015, with a longer-term goal of meeting all school requests for a cadet unit by 2020.

The Government are also committed to promoting the voices of young people at both a national and local level. That is why we are extending the funding to the British Youth Council. This funding supports initiatives such as UK Youth and local youth councils, where youth-led forums represent young people’s views.

In addition to a demanding curriculum, good-quality teaching is fundamental, as my noble friend Lord Norton said. There is strong evidence that links teacher quality, above all other school factors, to pupils’ attainment. The Government’s reform of ITT demonstrates our commitment to recruiting the very best graduates and to giving teaching schools more of a role so that schools close to the needs of particular types of pupils can develop the appropriate training. Teachers have access to a wealth of continuing professional development material and support through their subject associations. There is support on financial education, for example, through specialist charities, such as the Personal Finance Education Group, which are well respected, and private sector experts, such as the banks. Organisations such as the Association for Citizenship Teaching and the Citizenship Foundation also offer a range of support to teachers.

The importance of emergency life-saving skills and first aid were highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare. The provision of emergency life-saving skills is not compulsory and is a matter for local determination, but I will take back his observations.

I thank noble Lords for engaging in this debate. I believe our commitment to helping young people to develop as citizens is abundantly clear.

[Lord Cormack]

As my noble friend seems to be coming towards the end of his speech, will he undertake to give some consideration to the idea of a ceremony for citizenship that I mentioned?

[Lord Nash]

I undertake to do that. I was about to say that I know that our reforms do not go as far as my noble friend would like, but I listened carefully to what he said and I will take that back. We believe that our reforms of the national curriculum, together with the wider support I have outlined, will ensure that our young people have the support they need to take their place as active and responsible members of society.