Young People: Parenthood

Lord Northbourne Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to supporting good parenting, but we do not believe that it is the Government’s role to tell parents exactly how to raise their children. As such, we are funding services that offer advice and support to all parents, but we do not plan to prescribe how or what skills schools need to teach their pupils, or to test pupils’ knowledge about parenting when they leave school.

[Lord Northbourne]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for that amount of comfort, but does he not agree that responsibility for the quality of parenting in our society is basically shared between the parents of the child and the state in its various forms and through its various agencies? It is essential that parents should understand the responsibilities for which they are responsible. The obvious place for them to learn that is in secondary school as they grow up. However, as the noble Lord confirmed when I asked a Question on 17 May, the Government are determined that secondary schools should not be obliged to teach parenting skills. I hope that I can persuade the Government to think again on this subject, both on the question of whether those skills should be taught in school, and secondly on the urgent need for a cadre of teachers to be developed that is skilled in dealing with that subject.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I agree very much with the point the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, makes about the importance of parenting. He is absolutely right that schools can play an extremely important part in helping to prepare young people and helping them to understand some of the issues that he discusses. Our difference of opinion is over the degree of prescription that there should be. As he knows, rather than adding things to the national curriculum, we are trying to take things out of it, partly to provide more space for the teaching of these sorts of issues that he refers to.