Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 2
Monday 18th July 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Moynihan]

104: After Clause 67, insert the following new Clause—
“Provision of defibrillators in schools and AcademiesThe Secretary of State must ensure that all schools and Academies are provided with sufficient numbers of defibrillators so that the defibrillators are easily accessible from each classroom and sports facility.”

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 104 concerns the provision of defibrillators in schools and academies. My purpose in proposing this amendment requires me to declare my interest as chair of the board of governors of the Haberdashers’ Monmouth Schools, where we educate over 1,100 children, and place the highest priority on safeguarding their interests in every activity in which they participate. In this we are led by an outstanding governor, Jo Booth.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, who cannot be with us this evening, sadly; to the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thomson, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for putting their names to this amendment, for offering my apologies in Committee when I was hosting a key meeting at the Monmouth Schools that Monday evening, and for their subsequent support; and to my noble friend the Minister, who has been active and diligent in listening to our case and, I hope, will respond positively this evening.

The Monmouth case was particularly important to me. The schools form a close-knit society, and from governor to ground staff there is pride in our schools and a strong sense of community. So it was that one of our popular and talented students joined his friends in the cricket nets at the idyllic sports grounds in the Wye Valley, shortly before last term’s half-term, for an evening’s practice session. There he was taken ill and, realising the seriousness of his condition, the master in charge gave him CPR twice. After the second time, he regained consciousness, and by the time the ambulance took him to hospital, his mum and dad were with him. I pay tribute to the staff who cared for him throughout. Had it not been for their professional care and devotion to the well-being of the students, it is more than likely that he would not have been with his parents at the end. Later that evening, he passed away, leaving family, teaching staff and all who knew him reflecting with a heavy heart on the tragedy, which continues to be felt by us all.

Sudden arrhythmic death syndrome kills 12 young people under 35 every week. Callum Stonier, a remarkable cricket coach and committed teacher on duty that evening, had decided that if our young, outstanding student had not come round from CPR, we would have used one of the five defibrillators in the school—the nearest, rightly, being close to the cricket nets in the pavilion. A defibrillator at the sports centre nearby had previously saved a life at one of our school sporting events.

Many noble Lords on all sides of this Chamber have made the case for ensuring that defibrillators are not a voluntary addition to a school’s first aid equipment and required just in new or refurbished schools, as is currently the policy, but a mandatory part of the first aid equipment in all our schools. In fact, if there is a strong enough argument that they should be a legal requirement for refurbished or new schools, there is an equally strong legal argument for the compulsory purchase of defibrillators in every school, as there should be. We should not and cannot differentiate between two groups of children; all their lives are equally important, and I am glad that the Government recognise that.

The announcement yesterday by the Government that they intend to do exactly what we have been campaigning for is exceptionally welcome. No doubt we will hear more detail in a moment. It is not just we in this House who have been campaigning. The Oliver King Foundation has for much longer been exceptionally active in this context. It has done outstanding and important work in lobbying to ensure that all schools have a defibrillator. It appears that the Government are now building on their current open-ended policy of engaging with civil society to ensure that there are defibrillators in all our 32,163 schools in the UK. A statutory duty will save lives, and the important relationships with civil society are the vehicle to ensure that this is done.

I hope my noble friend the Minister will confirm what we heard yesterday on the radio. I heard it at 6 am when I was driving to St Andrews for the final day of the golf, and I was absolutely delighted to hear the news that the Government intended to follow the spirit of the amendment before the House. No doubt it was because the Government were more than aware that there would be an overwhelming cross-party vote in favour of the legislation this evening, and I am delighted if that was the case. They acted first and deserve the credit for doing so, because their being in favour of the objectives behind such a long-running campaign is critical.

We owe my noble friend the Minister a great debt of gratitude and our warmest thanks for her personal commitment to this subject, without which I really do not believe this would have happened. Maybe I am being too optimistic; we will need to hear from other noble Lords this evening, and whether the announcement on the radio and from the Government yesterday is accurate, and potentially receive more details from my noble friend the Minister. If it was accurate, we should celebrate this evening. As far as I was concerned, it was great news from the Government and made an outstanding day’s golf all the more memorable, because it was even more important than the opportunity I had yesterday. It will allow us, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, my noble friend in sport, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and many others in this Chamber, to take this forward from schools and to really look at the importance of making sure that defibrillators are available in community sports fields and sports grounds and throughout the sporting world.

If this is true, I very much hope that it will be a first, important step in that direction. On that rather happier note than in many of the other debates in this House today, I beg to move.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the president of the Local Government Association, and I have a number of other interests in this area. I know that my noble friend Lord Aberdare is disappointed that he is not able to be in his place tonight; he is actively involved in the Procurement Bill. As I have previously talked about, 40% of sports facilities in England are behind school gates, so this is not only about protecting children, it is about all those people who use sports facilities.

I am disappointed that I was not going to St Andrews when I heard the news yesterday; I was merely out with a friend and we saw it on the television. I was absolutely delighted to read the social media post by the Department for Education, which said:

“We’re making sure every school in the country has a defibrillator. These life-saving devices increase the chance of survival from a cardiac arrest, and will help keep children, staff and local communities as safe as possible.”


I was even more delighted when I saw that it had been reposted by the Minister. I thank her for recognising the Oliver King Foundation, because its work in this space has been absolutely tireless.

The only question I have tonight is about the process and timescale for this announcement, because it is so incredibly important that we do this. I am sure that my noble friends will be coming back for more because, as the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, said, we need to be looking at community centres and at widening this, but this is a really important step forward.

Education and Adoption Bill

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, these amendments concern the idea of what is coasting. Somewhat late in the day, the Government have given a not bad example of what they consider to be academic coasting. But I would say to my noble colleagues that I like the one about special educational needs—and shall we take my declaration of interests in that department as read? But unless you get that identified and the support and structure going through, you cannot get a good measure, even on the academic level. You just cannot because it takes different learning patterns and strategies. The noble Lord, Lord Nash, and I have—let us say—interacted quite considerably on this subject over the past couple of years, so we can take that as something that we will develop during the passage of the Bill.

However, as has already been pointed out, what about the rest of the activities that take place within a school? I also wanted to put into this the final outcomes of a school—“What are you doing to send people on?”. This brings me back once again to apprenticeships, in that how you access what comes next is surely the best definition of success—far better than any test or exam result. I would like to know how that is going to be brought into the equation because school is part of a process. We tend to talk about things as if they are entities unto themselves and you never leave: or you drop off the world and emerge somewhere else.

Then we come to my favourite part: why on earth, when we spend so much time talking about competitive sport and team games, do we not pay some attention to them? It is not just about the number of people you have or the number of trophies your school wins, it is how you get people to play sport after school. That is the primary function. A very successful school sports programme is something that fills out the second and third teams of various sports for a long time—much more so than the odd star you will get by luck or accident every now and again. The same could be said of the arts.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I offer my apologies for not speaking independently but I will be on my feet in a matter of minutes in the Chamber speaking about the Olympics’ sports legacy and regeneration. But I wanted to be present when the noble Lord, Lord Addington, introduced his amendment because I am strongly supportive of broadening the definition of coasting—looking at the arts and, in particular, sport. Physical education, sport and physical literacy in schools are exceptionally important. I have always believed that the Secretary of State should report annually to both Houses on the state of those three aspects in all schools, and the Bill gives us the opportunity for that report to be made on coasting schools. I support the intentions of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and I very much hope that when I have the opportunity at a later stage to read the response from the Minister, they will be well received.

[Lord Addington]

I thank the noble Lord for his support and appreciate that even he cannot be in two places at once—although he does a very good impersonation of it at times.

Unless you broaden, much of the hyperbole we have been getting and that all political parties indulge in about making it a broader experience is going to be missed. The academic model is great but it is always quantifiable; there are always changes and caveats. If you miss those, effectively you are labelling somebody who has done the best they can as failing, coasting, not achieving—call it what you like. Unless you give us an idea about how you are going to take the rest of this out, you are ignoring the real function; that is, the socialising function. Sport, arts and further adult life, basically—what is your foundation for expanding on here? If we do not get some definition, and it would be much better to have something in the Bill or something that at least directly tells you where to find it—big letters, nice and clear; we are bears of very little brain, show us where and show us the process by which you are going to change this—you are actually going to cause more trouble than anything else.

I hope that when the noble Lord, Lord Nash, replies, he will have something that really goes to the heart of this. If he does not, I have this vision of lengthy litigation and squabbling as we try to readjust and go forward. We have to know what we are talking about.

Education: Academies and Free Schools

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan]

My Lords, in speaking this evening I declare an interest as a patron of the Haberdashers’ Educational Foundation, and as a member of the Court of Assistants of the Haberdashers’ Company. The company has a deep and abiding relationship with education. To its academies it has brought educational experience, a strong and relevant brand, a long-term passion for education, a commitment to excellence and an apolitical approach, as evidenced by my fellow patron of the foundation, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis.

Its work is particularly important to me since it transformed Malory School, in my former constituency of Lewisham East, into an academy. Malory, now Knights Academy, went from being one of the worst failing schools in the country to the popular and successful academy it is today. It is, therefore, welcome that the aim of the academies programme was to challenge underachievement in the country’s poorest-performing schools. It was a development which had its roots in the earlier CTC programme, which was announced as long ago as 1986. While I was MP for the area, Hatcham College became a CTC after a long battle with Lewisham Council in 1991. Most of the original 15 CTCs have now converted to academy status.

The original purpose of the academies programme was to help struggling urban schools, as I have just mentioned. As noble Lords will recall, philanthropic sponsors promised £2 million and academies were given wide, necessary and welcome discretion over various aspects of the curriculum, admissions, teachers’ pay and conditions, independence from their local authority and, if necessary, multimillion-pound new buildings or refurbishments.

The Haberdashers’ Company first became involved in 2002. Hatcham College had for some time been seeking a partnership role with a local school, and at the same time Lewisham was looking for a sponsor to take over Malory School, whose GCSE results in 2004 were, as I have noted, the worst in the country. Conversion to an academy secured Malory government funding for a complete rebuild of the school.

Since 2007 both Hatcham, with its music specialism, and Knights, a specialist sports academy, have flourished. As my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking has alluded, sport is so important as a catalyst, capable of transforming many disenfranchised children into focused and successful young people. Hatcham College, due to its success as a CTC, was always oversubscribed, and remains one of the most successful academies in the country, with outstanding exam results at both GCSE and A-level, and with many students obtaining places at Russell group universities. In contrast, Malory School in the old days had a falling roll but, within one year of Knights Academy opening, the school was oversubscribed and in 2010 achieved an overall pass rate for all students, including in maths and English, of 40% at GCSE. I am delighted to say that many students now achieve places at university, as well as some significant sporting successes, both locally and nationally.

The Haberdashers’ Federation was innovative in being the first academies federation. The model, which has since been adopted elsewhere, was of an overarching single governing body made up of Haberdashers and Haberdasher nominees, parents, teachers and the local authority.

The success of Hatcham, Knights and the federation model pioneered by the governing body and SMT meant that the company was encouraged by the Department for Education to sponsor more academies. The company’s strategic vision, formulated by its education committee and endorsed by the court of assistants, was to provide “excellence in governance”. That meant that if the company was to be persuaded to open other academies, it would do so only if there were a Haberdashers’ school in the same area so that the skills of both the governing body and the SMT of the Haberdashers’ school could be brought to bear. If I could leave one key message with your Lordships this evening, it would be that excellence in governance is very important to the success of the academy and the pre-school programme.

The key differential between council-run schools and academies and free schools is that the latter can concentrate solely on the education of their pupils and operate responsively and quickly to ensure that the best education possible is made available to them. Therefore, important as independence in direction, the benefits of academy design, direct funding, reporting to central government, curriculum design and admissions are, independence in terms of governance and the freedom that comes with that is also critical.

Education Bill

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, perhaps I may help the noble Baroness, which would be unusual from my position to hers. The Minister sent me a most useful document, Customer Voice Research: Behaviour and Discipline Powers in Schools, for which I thank him very much. It is extremely helpful to me in my arguments, I fear, in several places. As regards powers of discipline, a teacher commented that she was completely,

“unaware … of the ‘main powers’ available to teachers”.

Teachers say, for example, that the powers sound “really antiquated”. They have said, “I don’t understand it”, and,

“I don’t feel confident that the Head would back me up”,

if I was to do this. It seems to me that this is about knowledge, culture and leadership, and not about legislation. We should not be legislating for executive powers; we should be legislating for strategic options, the things which I have just mentioned.

[Lord Moynihan]

My Lords, my friend in sport, my noble friend Lady Massey, will not be surprised to see me rise to address the subject of sport in the context of Amendment 74, particularly in respect of a brief but important issue.

In subsection (2) of the proposed new clause to be inserted by Amendment 74, my noble friend uses the phrase “for teaching physical skills”. As he knows, and as I am sure the Committee knows, physical skills cover cardiovascular and respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, co-ordination, agility, speed, balance and—from memory—accuracy. However, I think that my noble friend is focusing on sport and recreation in schools. Sport requires participants to compete in physical activities and we should also cover recreation.

Standardising the language in legislation is extremely important. I hope that if my noble friend withdraws his amendment and brings it back later, he will focus on ensuring that, in this and in all contexts, we are talking about sport and recreation in schools. It is very important that recreation should be included to encourage dance, for example, among young people in schools, and not just competitive sport and the traditional sports. In that context, I simply offer that brief observation to my noble friend, who I hope will consider it when he is considering his reaction to the Government’s reply.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, has said. My concern is that physical contact happens in schools, whether it is in music, sport or a whole range of things. If you try to codify it and say, “These are the areas in which you can have physical contact”, what about the other areas—for example, when a four or five year-old wants reassurance and wants to hold the teacher’s hand in the playground? If that is not in the guidance, does that mean that that should not happen? We need to be very thoughtful about this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I thoroughly support the idea of balance in schools and education, but there is a difference between a balanced education and an attempt to produce a balanced curriculum. I agree with the idea of a national curriculum. It was a very important innovation and has had very positive results over the years. However, this is tempered by my experience of sitting in and watching my good friend Ron Dearing, as he was then, trying to chair a meeting of the national curriculum advisory group. It was basically a Mecca for every lobbyist in the business. In addition to the topics we have listed here, which come after literacy, numeracy, understanding of science and exposure to languages and before the ones that are not mentioned: parental education, financial education—many of us would think that important—and emergency life skills, which we are going to see proposed as part of an essential curriculum. This is a road to indigestion and madness. It will not work in that form. A national curriculum, yes, and it has to be a core curriculum but if core subjects are inevitably boring—I say this with all respect to my colleague and noble friend Lord Knight—we might as well give up now. If teachers cannot teach core subjects in a useful, good and stimulating way, we have really failed the children in our schools.

What do I suggest? I suggest a fairly minimal prescription both in terms of core and time. There is no need to spend 100 per cent of the time on what some have said to be core subjects. This allows room for the professionalism of teachers and all that that implies, which we have re-emphasised time and again this afternoon. Time and again we have said that we respect teachers, so they must be given room to develop the teaching of their subject. If it were my national curriculum, I would have the writings of David Hume and Fyodor Dostoevsky required for everyone over the age of 16, but I think some noble Lords would want to draw the line. If you taught those well, you could do most of this.

I suggest that we go for a balanced education with a minimum core. The worry is that they do not produce a balanced education. Judgment is increasingly a matter for the department and for Ofsted. They should make assessments on the quality of the education in terms of balance, expertise and how stimulating it is. I fear that I cannot support this amendment.

[Lord Moynihan]

My Lords, having sat through the previous three sessions of this Committee waiting for this amendment to be called, I will try to be as swift as I can and address my comments to the aspect of it that relates to sport.

A leader in the Times a few months ago stated that it was time to make the case that sport is a vital part of education. Only 7 per cent of the population are privately educated but the highly successful British team which the British Olympic Association, which I chair, took to Beijing comprised more privately educated sports men and women than state educated ones. The question is unavoidable and distressing as to why there are fewer state educated sports men and women playing for Team GB. The Times further questioned how social mobility could decline in a sphere that naturally lent itself to meritocratic achievement. It is an indictment of the state of sport in the curriculum. While the level of investment for the Treasury and the Lottery has been targeted at school sport, the result has been one which, by any international standard of evaluation, would be deemed a failure.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

The noble Lord obviously speaks with great passion and expertise on these matters. However, to some extent, is it not the case that things have been skewed in terms of medals being won by the product of independent schools by the fact that we are really good, as the noble Lord, Lord Coe, has described it, at sitting-down sports? We are good at rowing, sailing and horse riding, which are expensive sports and out of the reach of many of our state schools.

[Lord Moynihan]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. If you assess the success of Beijing, regrettably, we were heavily dependent on three sports, which were all sitting-down sports. One of my passionate objectives in terms of success in London 2012 is to make sure that we see more medals come from a much wider base of the 26 summer Olympics sports. That same principle should apply to the Paralympics’ sports as well. I believe that that can be delivered.

It is interesting that when it comes to football in this country, there is a perfect symmetry between the number of professional footballers playing in this country who come from the independent sector, which is 7 per cent, and the 93 per cent who come from the state sector. There is a huge lesson to be learnt about the relationship between schools and local clubs, and parents and volunteers to achieve that. My call is that that should be the basis for all sports in this country and my wish is that we move through the curriculum inclusion of sport to achieve that objective.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I find myself in the position of agreeing with a little of what everyone so far has said, even when they have been speaking in opposition to each other. I join the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, in paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who set up the national curriculum all those years ago. In the 1980s, I was a teacher in an inner-city secondary school when the national curriculum was first set up. I know how it transformed how we dealt with not just children throughout the school but particularly those on whom we had given up to some extent. We were made to address the issue of teaching difficult, underperforming children what seemed to them to be tough subjects.

When the national curriculum came in and teachers, not just in the school where I taught, but throughout the country, took on that task, they were incredibly successful. A generation of children have had a better standard of education since then. That is my starting point. Having taught before the national curriculum and having seen what happened when a national curriculum secured, by legal means, an entitlement for children from all backgrounds to have access to certain subjects, I am instinctively very apprehensive about taking that structure away. It was one of the most successful ways I have ever seen of putting high expectations into a framework. It is how the teacher relates to the student that really embeds high expectations, but the framework of the national curriculum instigated it and gave it a push. As I have on previous occasions, I will always pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Baker, for introducing it. I think it is probably the best thing that happened. That is my first concern.

Secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, must see history repeating itself with everybody now trying to get their subject into the English baccalaureate. I was in a meeting this afternoon where somebody said with confidence that their subject will be the sixth pillar of the English baccalaureate. I will not say where I was this afternoon or what that subject was, but that person is not the only one who thinks that they have secured the sixth pillar of the English baccalaureate. We have a genuine problem. On the one hand, we want to make sure that all our children have access to a wide range of subjects, but on the other hand, we know the consequences of an overcrowded curriculum. Ever since the noble Lord, Lord Baker, introduced the national curriculum, we have been playing a game of wanting both things. What happens? We allow other good things to be put into the national curriculum, it gets overcrowded, then another Government come in and want to slim it down. We cannot keep going on like this. We have to look at what is happening and what messages we are giving to schools.

I agree with my noble friend Lady Massey about the need for a broad and balanced curriculum. Nobody can deny it. I agree that children and young people should be entitled to all the subjects she listed, and I could not agree more with my noble friend Lord Knight about the importance of creativity. I have always said that I wish I had done my ministerial jobs the other way round. When I was Secretary of State and Minister for Education, I thought that I understood the place of creativity in the curriculum. It was not until I went to DCMS that I really understood that I did not understand. In the Government, with the greatest of respect, the present Ministers may understand this, because I think I understood it better than some of my colleagues. In a department such as the Department for Education it is very difficult to understand what creativity is unless you have spent a fair amount of time with people who are creative by nature. Successive Governments have failed to embed that creativity at the core of the curriculum. It is not about finding an hour a week for art; it is about understanding in your soul that there is something in people that is creative that can lead learning right across the whole of the curriculum.

The problem the Minister has is how to bring all those things together. I suspect that so far he does not disagree with a great deal of what I have said. The problem the Government have is that we want to guarantee entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum for all our children, to protect all children against schools that do not deliver that and to have a message that raises expectations in the average school, because a lot of legislation is putting into the average school what naturally occurs in the best school, and at the same time we have the problem mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, of the overcrowded core curriculum. We have to get out of that difficulty. One of the problems that the Government have made, about which I have been most critical, is to some extent about message giving. If they were intent on trying to get a broad and balanced curriculum without overcrowding it, the English baccalaureate was the worst way that that could have been done.

What we have also learnt from 20 or 25 years of educational reform is that schools follow the assessment measures. They have always done it and always will. Somehow, what we needed from the Government was a message through the assessment framework saying, “All right; we trust you. We want a small core—that is what the Government think—but we value that broad and balanced education”. My problem now, with the Government moving away from a broad and balanced curriculum, is with what that is doing not so much in the curriculum but in the assessment framework.