Academies Bill [HL]

Lord Layard Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Lords Chamber

Finally, perhaps I may seek clarification about how the amendment stands in relation to providing parents with the right to withdraw their children from sex education, which obtains in all other schools.

[Lord Layard]

My Lords, I strongly support the two amendments in this group. In the past 40 years, there have been four surveys of the mental health of 15 year-olds in Britain. These show that the number of young people suffering from emotional and behavioural problems is twice as high now as it was 40 years ago. That is a shocking fact. It is terrible for young people and for the rest of us. We are talking about the health not only of young people, but also of the society that is affected by their behaviour. If we take into account the extraordinary costs for young people and for adults of the problems of young people not knowing how to live, we cannot turn our backs on the emotional and behavioural aspects of their education. We have been moving towards a disastrous situation in which our schools have increasingly become exam factories—factories for helping people to earn a living, not to learn how to live.

It is possible to teach people how to live. This can be done not only through the school’s ethos, which is extremely important—as has rightly been stressed, this could be the most important thing—but also through structured teaching of life skills. We already know a lot about how to do this, and we are learning more. For example, the Penn Resilience Programme, now used in 30 schools in this country, has been shown to reduce teenage depression markedly, and to increase school attendance, with emotional and behavioural consequences. Many other equally effective programmes cover areas such as developing altruism, learning about healthy living and avoiding risky behaviour, learning about mental health and learning about parenting—there are programmes that teach young people how to be parents, and others that cover nearly all the topics in the QCA’s excellent programme of study for personal and social well-being.

There is also plenty of evidence of the effectiveness of sex education. For example, one striking case is the comparison between our country and the Netherlands, where sex and relationship education, including parenting, begins in primary schools. There, the teenage pregnancy rate is one-fifth of the rate in this county. Therefore, we have plenty of evidence on which to proceed.

These are difficult subjects to teach and that is why I am enormously worried about the coalition Government’s approach of leaving them to individual schools. If they are difficult to teach, the most obvious thing to do is to have a concerted programme of teacher training. That can be done only at the national level but, as many speakers have already said, it will not happen unless there is a clear statement that education in life skills is a key element in the complete education of every child.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I speak on this matter in a personal capacity and I absolutely support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. I also support much of the spirit behind the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, although I think that it is a bit too late to provide sex and relationships education to 14 year-olds, given the hundreds of girls under the age of 14 who get pregnant every year. Good PSHE includes all the information that young people need to lead an ordinary but successful life, or even an extraordinary life. It is not academic but what are schools doing if not preparing young people for the lives that they will lead when they leave and, indeed, the lives that they lead while they are still at school?

Much has been said this afternoon about the importance of teaching about parenting, and I absolutely agree. Noble Lords may have heard about the programme in which school nurses give out baby dolls to young women. These dolls scream in the middle of the night, they need burping, they need their nappy changing and they need feeding regularly. I recently heard about one school nurse who gave out a batch of these dolls and when they came back at the end of the week most of the young girls said, “Oh my goodness. I couldn’t possibly”, apart from one who said, “It was wonderful. I can’t wait to get pregnant”, so it does not always work.

Over the years, I have said a good deal on this subject in your Lordships’ House, so, in an effort not to repeat myself, I did some new front-line research last week with two teenagers who are doing work experience in Parliament. One told me about a girl in her sister’s class at school who at the age of 13 had a one year-old baby. Both of them said that they have to go to PSHE lessons but to quote one of them, “We don’t do anything”, and to quote the other, “We watch a lot of videos”. One said, “We had a lesson on drugs recently and they just said, ‘Don’t do drugs. Drugs are bad’. It was useless”. She also told me that she did not have any sex education until she was 17 and that they do not teach about contraception or abortion in their Catholic school except in RE, where they say, “Don’t do it; it’s a sin”.

That is just not good enough. I realise that this is a very small sample of hearsay evidence but it lines up with what I have heard from many other teenagers over the years. It tell me that, first, teachers are not properly trained to deliver PSHE; secondly, teachers are not confident to teach PSHE, and that is why they rely so much on videos; thirdly, the quality of PSHE varies immensely and is very poor in some places; and, fourthly, some children are not receiving the information to which they are entitled and which protects their well-being.

The only way to deal with all those things is to make the subject part of the national curriculum in maintained schools and mandatory in academies and all other schools that do not have to follow the rest of the national curriculum. All establishments which educate children and young people have a duty to have regard to their well-being. However, they cannot do that successfully if they do not give them the information that they need to live a happy life. Young girls’ life chances are being severely affected because they may not have the information or the self-confidence to avoid unwanted pregnancies, and often the state has to pick up the bill in the interests of the young girl and, in particular, her baby. Unless children have information about the dangers of tobacco, alcohol and drugs, they may unwittingly become addicted at great cost to themselves and the country before they can turn round.

Much has been said about teacher training and, as usual, my noble friend Lady Williams has put her finger on it. Fully trained teachers cannot be produced in an instant, but her suggestion that the Government should show their intention to make the subject mandatory, given sufficient time to undertake the training of new teachers in initial teacher training or CPD for existing teachers, would be a solution to that problem. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said that often the subject is given to Joe Bloggs the geography teacher. In my experience, it was given to Jill Bloggs the biology teacher or, in my case, Joan Walmsley the biology teacher. I taught it but I was not properly trained and I did not have the necessary confidence. I did my best but it was a very long time ago and the problem is that that is still happening.

I know that the Government are to have a curriculum review, which will be an opportunity to look very carefully at what we teach our children in schools. We need to give them the tools for life and not just academic qualifications for work. We must redress the damage that was done before the election when this measure very nearly got into legislation, but was prevented by the vagaries of our parliamentary procedures. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me that this subject will be considered during the curriculum review.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I thank all those who have spoken in this interesting debate. As someone said, this is not a political issue; it is about the welfare of children and about how schools deal with this important subject, as well as engaging parents. The noble Lord was lucky to have a hen and egg when he had sex education; I had to knit a uterus. I will test him on that.

As we have said, personal, social and health education is about living not just in the future but now. Children live now. Three clear issues have emerged. One is about engaging parents. Of course I agree with engaging parents in personal, social and health education. Sadly, some parents do not want to be engaged and some simply cannot. They do not talk to children about relationships or health issues. Perhaps if we taught personal, social and health education to this generation of children, they would be able to talk to their children about personal, social and health education. Let us try to break the cycle.

Another issue was trained teachers. I still maintain that, if something is statutory in the curriculum, you will get teachers trained and you will get curriculum materials circulated. If it is not statutory, you will not get that; it will be at somebody’s whim—it will be Joan Walmsley teaching whatever she was teaching at her school. There will be no curriculum materials. Both are essential.

Another important issue is saving money. It also saves potential misery. The noble Lord, Lord Layard, spoke about the misery of depression, drug use and teenage pregnancy and about the importance of breaking the cycle of deprivation.

I look forward to the curriculum review, which many noble Lords have mentioned. However, I do not want this to drag on. We could end up with it just faltering. I noted with interest the suggestion of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby. I need to think about the question of delaying this for three years. This is an urgent issue. Children are suffering from the misery of not having the chance to discuss issues about sexual relationships, drugs, alcohol and so on. We have to get on with it.

Would the Minister be prepared to meet with a group of us to talk about this before Report, because the curriculum review will clearly not be issued before then? I intend to withdraw the amendment for now, but I will certainly return to the issue at Report if we do not get a satisfactory response.

[Lord Layard]

I am most grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. Because I will not have an opportunity to speak later, I just wanted to say that I strongly support her suggestion.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

I ask the Minister to meet with a group of us. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment for now, but I will certainly bring something back at Report unless this issue is resolved.