Education and Adoption Bill

Lord Northbourne Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the correspondence which he so generously sent to all noble Lords participating in discussion on the Bill. I have sympathy with all the amendments in this group. Certainly, coasting—whatever that may mean—should apply to all schools. I look forward to the Minister’s response to Amendment 24. There is a danger of general confusion over the concepts of a failing school, a school causing concern and coasting schools. Any school can, of course, be in one or all of these categories. But that aside, I agree that regulations defining coasting must be approved by both Houses of Parliament.

We have not yet teased out a definition of coasting. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, suggested additions to this definition and we talked about it in Committee. I realise that a consultation on the term “coasting” is taking place. I am not looking for a list of things that should be included in coasting, but issues such as those raised by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, should be taken account of, and I hope that they will be.

Perhaps I may again ask the Minister about the consultation. Who is being consulted? Does it include parents and pupils? When will the final definition of “coasting” appear in regulations? I hope it will be in the near future. Supposing one or both Houses of Parliament rejects the definition? Under what powers will we debate this?

[Lord Northbourne (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 15 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington. The Government’s definition of “coasting”, which I have studied very carefully, seems to focus almost entirely on academic achievement, or failure to achieve academically. Is academic achievement the only thing we are looking for from our schools? I think not. Some schools have a very large number of children who do not have much potential for academic achievement. Having been a governor of two such schools, I am very conscious of the important work that those schools can do in supporting those children and preparing them for the challenges of adult life—not least the challenge of being a parent, which so often is their lot.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to these amendments. Like everyone else, I welcome government Amendments 15B and 24. However, I have some questions for the Minister, particularly about consultation. Many noble Lords have asked who is likely to be consulted about coasting or closure. I know that the Minister has in the past said that this will be done through the governors’ bodies and that it is the responsibility of the schools to ensure that this happens. I have discussed this at some length with my local school, which is very grateful for that flexibility as it wishes to take control of the consultation and do it in its own way with its own parents. So I hope that any regulations are not so tight that they are not flexible enough to allow for local interpretation.

If we have consultations, as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, mentioned—she referred to pupils—I would like reassurance from the Minister that children are paramount and will be at the centre of any discussions. Most parents have the best interests of their children at heart and will want to discuss their children’s education and the way their school is to be organised with those concerned in a positive way. But there are situations, which we have all come across, where parents put their own interests first and, somehow, we have to make sure that pupils have some sort of say in the consultation and that they are put first in whatever decisions are made.

I thank the Minister for hearing many of the representations we have made. I am interested in particular in the regulations because, as I said in Committee, it is crucial that we develop young people who are rounded and who are going to develop into leaders. That means that they should think not only about academic subjects such as maths and literature but also about the arts, sport and learning in general.

Education and Adoption Bill

Lord Northbourne Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Northbourne (CB)]

My Lords, I shall not detain your Lordships for long. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Addington, on many of the things he said, with which I agree. In so far as the Bill is going to provide for better education for many children, of course I must—and do—support it, but I have one concern: what is the definition of “coasting”? It raises the problem of what education is for—what are we trying to achieve?

For clever children, academic success is fairly easy, but what about the non-clever children and the disadvantaged children? It is those children whose education I happen to have had the luck and the honour to be concerned with during my life. I was a governor of Weavers Field School for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties; there was also the other school down at Eastbourne, Caldecott College, Toynbee Hall and a whole range of things. We were doing things for and with young people who really had very little academic potential.

I fear that the decision about what is and what is not a coasting school will be based entirely on academic performance. Many of the schools that are taking terrific care of and doing wonderful work with disadvantaged children do not produce academic results because those children do not have the potential to achieve academic results. I hope that in his summing up the Minister will be able to tell me what the criterion for a coasting school is.

Childcare Bill [HL]

Lord Northbourne Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 23 and 24. They would place in the Bill the current permitted staff to child ratios for childminders and nurseries. One of the central themes running through the Second Reading debate was concern about the capacity of the early years sector to provide the extra free hours. For example, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham spoke of the strains on providers not in purpose-built facilities who cannot extend their opening hours. My noble friend Lord Sawyer and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, talked of low pay and staff shortages. Many noble Lords spoke of the underfunding crisis in the sector and the limitations of cross-subsidy options. As we know, this point will be part of the Government’s review of the finances of the extension.

The Minister and this side have a difference of view about the health of the sector and its capacity to expand and take on new duties. I sincerely hope that we are proved wrong, but in the mean time, there is concern that the Government will look again at increasing the staff to child ratio as a quick fix to deal with the capacity issues. We believe that these amendments are necessary because of this Government’s public statements and attempts in the past to increase the ratios.

This would be all too easy in the future as the current ratios are in regulations which can be changed by the Secretary of State. We are therefore keen to provide the necessary reassurance and guarantees to parents and professionals alike that the current ratios are safeguarded. Noble Lords will recall that there was a massive outcry across the sector when it was proposed to change the ratios. It was felt that this move would compromise quality and put children’s lives at risk and, as a result, the Government had second thoughts and backed down.

However, there is real concern that with the drive to increase the supply of early years places the Government might revisit the original plan. We believe that the current ratios have stood the test of time in balancing the quality of provision with the cost to providers and therefore parents. Professor Nutbrown, who has advised the Government on early years provision, has made it clear that she would oppose any change in the ratio. She quite rightly makes it clear that good-quality provision is directly related to the qualifications and training of the staff involved, as well as their capacity to relate to the children on an individual basis. This is crucial to the well-being and development of young children.

Our proposals would ensure that a single childminder can care for up to six children under the age of eight, including a maximum of one baby under 12 months and another two children under five. By anyone’s imagination it would be quite a workload and a challenge to provide appropriate care across the age group. I looked after one of my granddaughters, aged 22 months, for part of the weekend and can certainly testify that it was challenging indeed.

There must be one member of staff at a nursery for every four children aged two and three and one for every eight children over the age of three. We would also set out the minimum qualifications for these staff members in regulations. Again, the ratios as they stand sound fairly challenging. But they are necessary not just to support the crucial period of early years development but to provide safeguarding and protection for vulnerable children. Nursery staff already work under considerable pressure and we should not be tempted to add to it. So we believe that it is necessary to protect the current ratios and putting them in the Bill would guarantee that if any changes are proposed in the future they would have to come to Parliament and be subject to extensive parliamentary scrutiny and debate. We believe that that would be the right way forward.

[Lord Northbourne (CB)]

My Lords, might I ask in the context of this debate what the Government mean and we mean by quality in childcare? Is it the quality of childcare only or the quality of childcare and the relationship between the adult and the child? I respectfully submit that one of the most important factors in childcare is the relationship that develops between the child and the carer.

The Government have adopted the early years formula and put a lot of money into it. I think that they are absolutely right to do so, but I suggest that to some extent this Bill in mechanising, as it were, the management of the care of children runs the risk of losing the relationship by which a very young child learns to love, care and interrelate with other human beings. I wonder if the fact that so often we are losing that relationship in the early years is not the cause of some of our troubles in family life later on as the young people get older.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I have a good deal of sympathy for some of things said by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, although I would not follow him the entire way. However, while I understand why noble Lords have tried to provoke a debate on regulations—we do need one at some point—at this stage of policy development it is quite difficult because we still have not resolved the underlying issue of the nature of what we are about.

I understand the logic of it, but I am concerned by the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. We already have before us a proposal for the state to provide universal childcare for 1,140 hours a year—although the state will not provide it: the poor old providers in the schools and all the other people will have do that. As we found at Second Reading, that is more than we ask for sixth-formers studying for A-level courses or for pupils studying for their GCSEs. However, we are saying to those three and four year-olds, “Come here and stay for 1,140 hours”. That cannot in any sense all be about education—it certainly is not entirely about the effective relationships that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, was talking about. Now, on top of that, to say in Amendment 21 that the settings must provide even more than 1,140 hours a year is, if you will forgive the classical allusion, to pile Pelion on Ossa. It is simply not conceivable that under regulation, which applies to everybody who works in this sector—you cannot have some people obeying the regulation, while others do not—these extra hours should be piled on also.

We hear a lot of talk about flexibility, and of course I support that, but again I urge the Committee to recognise that a lot of the women who provide this care and education—and they are mostly women; I keep saying that, but it is true—want their flexibility too. A lot of them are young mothers or grandmothers, and they cannot sit around in these settings at the behest of the state for hour after hour. That is simply not the way things work in the real world. Therefore if we are to have a debate about flexibility, can we please bear in mind the flexibility of the good people who have to provide that service and who have the vocational wish to provide education? I would be very wary about adding to the burden, as this amendment would, and I think my noble friend will be cautious about it.

On the regulation amendments, this may be premature, and I fully understand where the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, is coming from, but there are inherent disparities in the existing regulations. Maintained schools have to provide a lower ratio than private and voluntary providers. I do not quite understand the overall logic for that, but that is what it is. When plans to change the ratios were put forward recently, which I thought deserved a hearing, there was a bit of—what was the word used?—an outcry. However, the reality is that we cannot at once argue that a ratio of 1:13 is fine if you are in a maintained sector, but if you are in a non-maintained sector it has to be 1:8 or less. Clearly, there is room for some discussion about where to fit the right level.

Again, I will be nervous until we see the colour of the Government’s money—or, rather, the way in which this system will work. It is premature in the debate to say that the existing regulations and hours are necessarily the right ones, as they may well not be affordable. There is a trade-off. You cannot have an immensely expensive policy of employment subsidy by providing places for children to be placed while their parents go off and do other things and necessarily do everything at the level you want to. Therefore we have to think about that. Again, however, I underline what I have tried to make my main theme in this Committee; if we are talking about quality, there is a lot out there that is to do with education, such as good learning and advancement of children’s development. In trying to create a single universal policy by regulation, we must not lose sight of the diversity and richness of the educational element of early years care, which certainly cannot take place over a longer period than sixth-formers and GCSE students are asked to support. That is simply not on. I would be nervous about settling on particular regulations just at this moment, but I hope that we will have a chance to have this debate. My noble friend has offered the road to that in later proceedings on the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Pinnock]

I want to comment on two aspects of what the noble Lord, Lord True, has proposed. He raised the issue of capacity, which we raised on the first day in Committee. We received assurances from the Minister that capacity would be much less of an issue than some of us feared. I trust that the Minister believes that to be the case. If so, perhaps the noble Lord, Lord True, is overstating the issues that he has raised today.

The second matter is more important and concerns the continuity of care provided if we go for this 30 hours a week. Almost inevitably, as we said on the first day in Committee, many children will take part in different settings, so 15 hours may be in a school nursery setting and the other 15 in a private nursery, with a childminder or a combination of all three—childminder, private sector day nursery and state nursery. We should think very carefully about that. I hope that the Minister will be able to come back with some thoughts about this. Very young children may be moving between those three different settings during the course of a day. How does that benefit them? How can we overcome some of those changes that the noble Lord, Lord True, has raised in the discussion around his amendment this afternoon?

[Lord Northbourne]

My Lords, I make a very brief intervention and I have to declare an interest. Is there not some scope for grandparents in this pattern? Will it be possible, for example, for some of those hours to be taken up formally by grandparents or other relations of the child?

Childcare Bill [HL]

Lord Northbourne Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I believe we are in a much better place now than we were during Second Reading and I thank the Minister for the part he has played in that. I also thank the usual channels, who I am sure were not silent when critical issues came up.

That being said, there are still some major issues and some of these amendments deal with them very well. Pro tem, until we see how much information we will have before Report, I would be inclined to give my support to Amendments 1 and 27—particularly Amendment 27, because we need to be clear that the regulations that do not come before this House deal only with practical constitutional matters. In principle, I give my support to both these amendments and we will see how things develop between now and Report. Effectively, the Government are under detailed scrutiny here and I encourage the Minister to do all he can to work with the good will around this place to bring about a successful conclusion.

That being said, I will refer briefly to my own Amendment 38A, which is quite different from the others. It recognises the fact that excellent work of a longitudinal nature has been done—for example, in the EPPE and EPPSE reports—with the encouragement and sponsorship of the Department for Education under two different Governments. That is something we welcome. We should look at the value of that work, which was evident to the Select Committee, with a view to continuing with a similar evaluation of what government policies bring about. The EPPE study takes children from the age of three. This legislation might alter that age and, if so, is an additional reason to look for the ways in which early education impacts on later educational opportunity.

I am looking for an indication from the Minister that the department still attaches great importance to building up this long-term database of how well or ill any particular policy might be working.

[Lord Northbourne (CB)]

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Listowel for mentioning that we were going to speak together and I apologise to the Minister for being a minute or two late—I did not realise that there had been a slight rehash of the timings. My Amendments 4 and 7 dare to ask, in this company, whether childcare is always the right answer for all children and all parents. I shall, of course, come back with those questions when this matter returns. I understand that we are not discussing these things in any detail today, so I shall not press my amendments.

[Baroness Andrews]

My Lords, I have a few comments. First, Amendment 1 raises a lot of the issues that we began to talk about in our previous discussion on the way the Bill is managed. Again I tell the Minister that we are very grateful for the flexibility he has shown under the circumstances.

Amendment 1, in the name of my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch, creates an opportunity for the Minister to give us a bit more information on the timetable in general. He has said clearly that we will have the results of the funding review before Report. It would be really useful if he would spell out, as far as he is able at this point, some sort of road map for the process as it will run over the next three to six months. There are so many reviews and all manner of different things happening. There are the pilots—I, for one, do not know much at all about those. Is it possible to set out the department’s working timetable, and perhaps put a copy in the Library, so that we can reflect upon it as we come back at various stages of the Bill? That would be very helpful.

Secondly, there is a contrast between the amendments in this group. Some are probing into the workability of the process itself and then there are two, in the names of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, which raise much more fundamental questions about impact and longitudinal issues. We need a proper debate on what we actually know about the impact of childcare, in terms both of learning and social skills. At the moment we have a rather random collection of evidence about impact, much of which is from the agencies themselves. It would be extremely useful, given the investment that is going into this and given the expectations raised by doubling childcare, if we could have some thorough, systematic research on impact, as the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, suggests in his amendment.

I do not want to labour the point, but I am reminded that there is a contrast between the way the Bill has been introduced and the way previous childcare legislation was introduced. If we go back to 1999 and look at “Meeting the Childcare Challenge”, that was a very detailed road map for increasing the supply of childcare, which went along with tax credits, with start-up capital, with revenue funds and with the extension of after-school care. There was a very clear prospectus as to what was going to happen and how it was going to be funded. We should bear in mind that past massive changes in provision have been planned carefully. Some studies on not just the value for money of what we are getting but the impact on educational achievement in particular are long overdue. For example, a recent report from the National Literacy Trust on reading shows an increasing, not decreasing, gap between the achievement of boys and of girls from disadvantaged backgrounds, after all the effort that has gone into investing in boys’ education. We really need to know what we do not know, as well as what we do know.

School Curriculum: PSHE

Lord Northbourne Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness is quite right in her observations. High-quality professional development for teachers is an essential part of raising standards in schools. The PSHE Association has some excellent resources, which we signpost for schools. They include an online CPD course, which explores assessment policy writing, creating schemes of work and SRE education. Teachers can of course benefit from the national PSHE CPD programme.

[Lord Northbourne (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that every child, as they pass through adolescence towards the world of work and raising a family, needs to acquire what are often called the soft skills: self-confidence, an ability to communicate, character and caring about other people? Can he make it clear whether these things are to be taught, are supposed to be taught or are being taught through the PSHE syllabus or somewhere else in schools, and whether the Government are concerned to ensure that every school provides a learning environment in respect of soft skills?

[Lord Nash]

The noble Lord makes a very good point. These skills are particularly important for underprivileged children. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, made a very good point recently: that in order to have social mobility, you need social immobility. We need to give particularly children from disadvantaged backgrounds these soft skills, which is why we have such a big focus on character education. We would expect this to be inspected by Ofsted as part of SMSC and as part of a broad and balanced curriculum.

Early Years Intervention

Lord Northbourne Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Northbourne (CB)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for getting this debate and for the wonderful work that she does for children in all sorts of other contexts. I also congratulate the Government on recognising the crucial importance of each child’s early years and on introducing the early years programme, which I fully support.

My contribution this afternoon is on one issue that your Lordships might think tangential—but it is fundamental. I do not believe that the early years programme alone as it is designed today will be enough to make a confident, committed and supportive parent out of a young person who has never known life in a secure and supportive family. We have a cycle of disadvantage to break.

All secondary schools, especially those serving disadvantaged communities, should work towards a policy that helps as many teenagers as possible to develop not only their academic skills but also their self-confidence and personal, interpersonal and emotional skills—sometimes called the soft skills—to give them the character and resilience that they need in both the workplace and raising a family as they grow up. Such a policy, alongside appropriate academic education, could be a powerful agent to increase social mobility and justice in our society—concerns about which have been so clearly expressed by noble Lords already. We know that secondary schools can do this because the best ones are doing it today. Alas, too many are not. On the same issue of supporting young people as they grow up to become parents, weekly boarding for children from severely disadvantaged families can be immensely effective.

These issues are touched on in two recent government reports published in November which I happened to find. The first is Social Justice: Transforming Lives—Progress Report. It says:

“The family is the most important influence in a child’s life”,

and that families are,

“the bedrock of our society”.

It goes on to discuss support for families but makes little or no reference to preparing young people in school for the responsibilities of adult life and parenting.

The second report is the Government’s response to the second annual report of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission. It says:

“Children’s development in their early years provides the crucial building blocks for later life”.

The recommendation was that the Government should give,

“more focus to preparing children for the world beyond schools”.

The Government said in their response:

“We absolutely agree that preparing children for the world beyond education should be a key focus for all schools”.

However, they gave no indication of how they will do that.

I suggest a wider remit for secondary schools so that they provide opportunities for pupils. This is done in the best schools through team games, a cadet force, athletics, challenges, adventure and opportunities in drama, art, music and dancing, as well as debates and appropriate involvement in the running and discipline of the school—everywhere and always there are opportunities for belonging and to succeed. Not only secondary schools but youth movements and cadets should also participate in developing and helping tomorrow’s parents.

I expect noble Lords will think that this will be very expensive and difficult to do. It will of course cost more, and it will need more teachers and teacher training, as well as money for facilities. But if noble Lords are worried about cost, I ask them to think about the cost of dysfunctional families today, recently estimated at more than £40 billion a year. We live today in a society where disadvantage is passed down from generation to generation. Our policy should be that that must stop.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise for intervening, but the timing of this debate is beginning to drift. I remind noble Lords that when the clock reads “5” your time is up.

Social Justice Strategy

Lord Northbourne Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Northbourne (CB)]

My Lords, I want to take a few moments to talk about prevention. In this country today there are far too many families in which disadvantage is being handed down from generation to generation, and the number continues to grow. There is a consciousness across government that families are important. In a recent speech, the Prime Minister stressed that point. Much research shows the importance of families in the rearing of children, if I may use that phrase. The Government have accepted that there is a problem and have introduced an early years programme, which I believe is doing excellent work as far as it goes. However, it cannot address the serious underlying problem in our disadvantaged families today of disadvantage being passed down from generation to generation.

How do we break into that chain of disadvantage? I believe that we have an opportunity to do this in schools because, manifestly, the parents of families with this problem are unlikely to be the people who are able to do much about it. The issue has to be tackled by an outside influence, but I do not believe that there is an enormous amount of slack in local authority services. It has come to my consciousness that teenagers in school may be being taught arithmetic, Latin, Greek and grammar—I do not know what they are being taught these days—but are we bringing them up to be the kind of human beings who will be able to get on in a community, be useful in the workplace and, above all, be able to rear a secure, happy family?

The skills that disadvantaged young people need to learn today involve learning how to become the sort of person who is most sought after in the workplace, who is confident and who believes in themselves. For a number of years, I have worked for a few weeks each year with very disadvantaged children from Tower Hamlets. The lack of self-confidence, the lack of belief that one can succeed, is one of the tragedies of young people growing up in disadvantaged families. Young people need to learn to relate to and communicate with others using soft skills. They need to play as a team, sometimes take leadership, form positive and supportive relationships, understand and respect the needs of other people, and become the sort of people who have the grit to stick to a job when they have started it.

These and many other interpersonal skills can be learnt and are being learnt in the best schools in both the private and maintained sectors. Some of your Lordships may have seen a report that Ofsted published three or four years ago. It highlighted 16 primary schools and 11 secondary schools that were graded “outstanding”, although their catchment areas were among the most disadvantaged. Ofsted looked for common factors in the delivery of those schools, and one of the first three factors was every child believing that they could succeed. We must accept that that message highlights a real problem. The best schools are doing it but such things are not being learnt in the classroom. They involve team games, being given the opportunity to accept responsibility, the possibility of being given a modest degree of leadership, consideration of others, self-confidence and communication skills. Those soft skills that we talk about so much are immensely important, particularly in our society in which scientific invention is producing machines to do all the things that less-able workers used to do. There is going to be huge unemployment. However, there is a great deal of demand for interpersonal skills in all sorts of areas.

We should consider the role of boarding education for very disadvantaged children. Again in the context of Tower Hamlets, we were involved with two schools for disadvantaged children. One was Weavers Fields School in Tower Hamlets, of which I was a governor, and the other was a weekly boarding school down in Eastbourne. We used to observe the young people coming to our summer camps and what was striking was the extent to which those who went to the boarding school improved their interpersonal, human and relationship skills. We should consider the possibility of boarding school being very important, particularly when the young people come from families in which life at home is absolute hell, with disadvantaged or chaotic family life—involving, in many cases mental illness, and alcohol and drug addiction.

I see that the Department for Education—the Minister will be pleased to hear that I am up to date on this—has written to all schools, suggesting that they should do the sort of things that I am talking about. However, that will not be much good because the sort of schools that can do it and have the money are doing it already. The schools that need help are those that do not have the money, skills or best teachers. There is a need for leadership from the Government. On that note I shall conclude because I have probably made the point that I wanted to make.

Education: Social Mobility

Lord Northbourne Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Northbourne (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing forward this debate today on this hugely important subject. I was, however, very disappointed that his introductory speech made it perfectly clear that the Government believe that schooling is only about cognitive learning and cognitive achievements. I am going to follow the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Massey and Lady Garden, in taking a rather different view. In my view, the key to social mobility is hope.

The glass ceiling of social mobility is a lack of self-confidence and self-belief. Self-belief, or the lack of it, starts in the family on the day the child is born with the experience of being, or not being, loved, the experience that to someone you matter and the experience of feeling safe and belonging. That is why to me social mobility depends so much on the first few years—indeed, on the first few months—of a child’s life, which is usually spent in the family. That is why I believe that families are important and that we should be including them in our debate today.

This Government and, indeed, previous Governments have for some time realised the importance of what are called the early years. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, referred to seven years. Some would perhaps say that the first three years are the most formative in a child’s emotional development. Governments have introduced many excellent interventions, not least children’s centres, the positive attitude towards supporting childcare and so forth, but what they have so far significantly failed to do is to encourage and require schools, particularly secondary schools, to develop in their pupils the personal and interpersonal skills—the soft skills we were talking about—which they will need to create a secure, nurturing environment for their child in the home.

Why are we not doing more through schools to promote those so-called soft skills which are so central in creating a secure and supportive family environment for the young child? Why are we not doing more in secondary schools—indeed, in all schools—to help pupils grow up to be positive, confident, hope-giving, love-giving parents and to ensure by doing so that a child grows up full of hope?

I remember being privileged to give the prizes at a school in Eastbourne for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. It was a weekly boarding school. I was talking to the headmaster, a very wise and experienced man, and as I had some time to fill in, I asked, “How do you make contact with new pupils when they arrive in the school?”. He said, “I sit the child down in my study, I make him comfortable and say, ‘Tell me about yourself’. Half an hour later, sometimes three-quarters of an hour later, the child has told me about all the awful things that have happened in his life, how hopeless he is, the mistakes he has made, all the disasters and how everything is hopeless. When he dries up, I say, ‘Right. Now you’ve told me about the things you can’t do. Let’s talk about the things you can do’”. I suspect the Government’s education system is not really addressing that problem.

The importance of hope and self-belief was strongly emphasised four or five years ago when Ofsted did a special report on 16 primary schools and 12 secondary schools, I think, which had outstanding records but were taking young people from very disadvantaged areas. Ofsted was trying to find the common factors which made those schools so successful. Among the first three common factors was every child believing that they can succeed. There is a message here for those who think that only academic learning is important.

The ability to rear a child who can succeed is highly relevant to the issue of social mobility. We need to do more in schools to develop confident, competent adult parents. Some of your Lordships will know that I have been boring on about parenting in your Lordships’ House for the past 25 years. What surprises me is that so little is being done by the Government or local authorities to try to improve the quality of parenting children are receiving by doing more to prepare teenagers when they are still in school for the challenges they will encounter as they grow up and become parents. What is needed is not prescriptive advice to pupils about the details of parenting, but, as noble Lords have already suggested, to develop, as they grow up in school, the self-confidence, understanding and personal and interpersonal skills which they will need if they are to be able to give their children the confident love, support and guidance they need in the home in the early years. I call upon the Government to recognise the importance of these relationship skills and soft skills and to do more to encourage secondary schools to recognise that their job is not only to produce academic success for young people but to prepare them for the challenges of adult life.

I shall mention one more thing: teachers. Teachers are a great problem. There is a terrible lack of teachers who have any training or skills in developing social skills and helping children to develop their social skills. Will the Government please do more to ensure that secondary schools take this responsibility seriously? Our secondary schools should be encouraged to accept that their role is to educate the whole child and to prepare their pupils for the challenges they are likely to meet as they move into the adult world.

Children and Families Bill

Lord Northbourne Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

My Lords, that was indeed a powerful speech to follow and I thank my noble friend for making it. I have a later amendment on personal, social and health education generally so I shall not say much now, but I want to pick up on something which the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said about leaving it to the teachers. If SRE or PSHE, or whatever you call it, is a subject then surely it is like any other subject. It is age-appropriate, structured and has good resources. I remember a parent once saying to me, “I find it difficult enough to talk to my Johnny about his maths homework, let alone about sexual relationships”. That is the position of many parents. Schools are put in the position of having to do that work as appropriately as they can.

I support the amendment put forward so powerfully by my noble friend Lady Jones and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. They talked mainly about relationships, as did my noble friend Lady Kennedy and other noble Lords. Relationships are the most powerful component of personal, social and health education. There is no reason why sexual relationship education should not have a separate amendment to make it compulsory. I shall also speak powerfully about the need for PSHE but I do not see a contradiction in having two amendments. SRE is absolutely essential in our schools. We are trying to protect and support children as they deserve.

[Lord Northbourne (CB)]

My Lords, I can identify with many of the anxieties that have been expressed today. I want to make just one point about the heading in the amendment: “Sex and relationship education”. Not all relationships are about sex and, in the first place, the extent to which sex and relationship education should address non-sexual relationships is not entirely clear. However, it is certainly an important issue. Whether you turn on to see “Call the Midwife” or David Attenborough and his penguins, or whatever you look at, the ongoing and nurturing relationships between, I hope, both parents and the child are crucially important and a great happiness. As I listen to your Lordships, it sounds as if we are all trying to tell them what not to do. There is a case for trying to take a more positive approach, if that is possible.

[Baroness Knight of Collingtree (Con)]

My Lords, there is just a small question that worries me very much. I was unable to listen to as much of this debate as I wanted, but what concerns me is that there seems to be no understanding that there is a time in a child’s life when it is not a very good idea to talk about sex. I was appalled on finding out, when I was dealing with other matters in the other place, that children as young as four were being told in sex education how to perform the sex act—in fact, how to perform all kinds of sex acts. That shocked me very much, because I believe that it is very important indeed to guard a child’s innocence. While I have no objection to older children being taught about this, the only reference to that that I could find in the amendment is the requirement that,

“SRE is taught in a way that is appropriate to the ages of the pupils concerned”.

We do not know, in the minds of those who put forward this amendment, what that is. What is appropriate to one person is often not appropriate to others.

It worries me very much that we do not have any protection for very young children. Is that an intentional omission, or do people think it is a good idea if very young children, long before they are at a stage where they understand what it is like to be grown up or are even a little bit grown up, are taught such matters? I want to be clear in my mind as to what is in the minds of those who seek to make these changes before I am at all happy about this.

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[Baroness Sharp of Guildford (LD)]

My Lords, I will just say a word about the “E” in PSHE. I pay tribute to the Minister and the degree to which he has listened to a lot of the comments and discussion that have taken place about PSHE. The “E” does not stand for education but for economics. As the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, mentioned, schools already have a duty to contribute to pupils’ spiritual, moral and cultural development. How do they prepare young people for adult life? That preparation includes financial and economic education—it is a very important part of it. We have talked about the internet, but it is extremely important to know when people are phishing and trying to con you on the internet in financial terms. One hears too frequently these days about people who have been conned. It is a very good thing to give young people a broad understanding of how to manage their own finances and how to cope with the very complex world we face these days.

[Lord Northbourne]

My Lords, I apologise to the House because I have a problem with my inner ear and I may have failed to hear some of the things that some noble Lords have said, although I am doing my best. First, I want to say how much I support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. I intended to put down my name to it, but alas, I was too slow, as an appropriate number of names had already been put down. I can say only that I support it. If I speak to my amendment, which is grouped with it, it will probably cover some of the same ground.

In a society like ours today, with an increasing number of broken and dysfunctional families, the role of schools in personal and social education becomes increasingly important. As your Lordships will remember, 3 million children are growing up in lone-parent families in this country today. My amendment is about giving young people, as they grow up in school, a better opportunity to acquire and to develop the soft skills, those social, emotional and communication skills which they will need in life, and to develop what Demos, in its important 2009 report, called “character capabilities”. All these are essential skills which they will need as they grow up and move into adult life. The so-called soft skills, including resilience, self-confidence, empathy, emotional intelligence, concern for others, communication and relationship skills, are all important. Soft skills are important in every walk of life, and without them it is difficult to succeed in adult life.

In an important article in the Sunday Times on 5 January, Camilla Cavendish made a strong case for the importance of “grit” in the labour market today. She asked:

“Why is it that this country has 640,000 young people not in employment, education or training?”.

Could it be, she asks, that too many do not have the grit to stick to a project and see it through? Grit may not sound like a very soft skill, but it is certainly one that all people will need in life. Other soft skills are also important for employment, and particularly in the family. I will quote from the same article, on the subject of teenagers:

“We tend to forget the desperate fragility of the teenage years: beset by hope and fear in equal measure, uncertain of who you are, let alone what the world can offer, awkward, proud, and easily put off. It is a time when things can go very wrong”.

Why, oh why, can the Government not see that this is an important moment in each child’s life, when they should get more help from their secondary schools? Today many of them are not getting the help they need.

I emphasise, once again, the importance of parenting, which is rather my subject. It is incredibly important for a child to have in their life a strong, loving and supportive relationship with at least one and preferably two parents and, whenever possible, the opportunity to belong to a supportive family. I return to David Attenborough, the penguins and all the other animals you see, and the wonderful relationships they have. In a curious way the reward is partly sexual excitement, but an even greater reward is seeing the child grow up. I speak as a grandfather of 11, so I know a bit about that.

Developing the soft skills is also very important if we want more social mobility in our society. The ability to communicate and to empathise is crucial for promoting social mobility. We all know that the best schools understand the importance of preparing tomorrow’s parents and workers with what they need. The best schools already give their pupils the opportunity to acquire these important skills as they grow up through the school, not just in the classroom but through a whole range of other extra-curricular opportunities, through literature, talks, challenges, working in groups and guided discussion, always exploring their objectives and what kind of adults they hope to be, learning the skills they will need to succeed.

All schools are different, which is why the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and I, both decided that it was much better, rather than trying to spell out in detail what schools should do, to say to them, “You get on with it and think about it; decide what your programme will be and take advice where you want to. Having made up your mind, you must publish a clear statement of your objectives and of how you hope to achieve them so that the public, parents, Ofsted and anyone else who needs to know can see what you are trying to do”. This will enable the schools that are doing well to acquire credit, and the schools that are doing less well will see where they are falling short and will probably be led to do better.

My Amendment 53ZAA is designed to make it absolutely clear that schools are expected to give guidance to pupils and to explore with them the challenges they are likely to encounter as they move into adult life. It also requires schools to consider how they can help pupils to develop personal, social and communication skills. It emphasises that the best way to achieve these objectives may often be through guided discussion in school and through extra-curricular activities such as, for example, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme, team games, and so on.

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Moved by

[Lord Northbourne]

53ZAA: After Clause 73, insert the following new Clause—
“School policies to prepare children and young people for the opportunities, challenges and responsibilities of adult life
After section 78 of the Education Act 2002 insert—“78A Duty of schools to promote the personal and social development of pupils, and to prepare them for the responsibilities of adult life and parenthood
(1) All schools shall make explicit to parents, school governors and pupils how they deliver—
(a) guidance to young people as they explore the opportunities and challenges of the adult life which lies ahead of them;(b) help for children and young people who are pupils at the school to develop the personal, social and communication skills that they are likely to need in their adult life;(c) help for children and young people who are pupils at the school to discuss and understand the responsibilities, duties and challenges of parenthood; (d) provision of activities and other opportunities for pupils at the school to develop interpersonal, leadership and teamwork skills as a preparation for their adult life.(2) The above shall be delivered as appropriate to the age, readiness and needs of pupils in the school.””

[Lord Northbourne]

I am impressed by what the noble Lord has told us about what the Government are doing. Unfortunately, I still have one serious anxiety. Although regulations require schools to have a proper and well considered PSHE syllabus, on the sample that I was able to take the vast majority of schools ignore that obligation. It is a regulation and therefore, presumably, it is the duty of the local authority to enforce it. I brought forward my amendment to get this issue on the statute book so that schools would have to do all these things that we are talking about. I am sure that the noble Lord may be able to convince me that this will happen, but I reserve the possibility of bringing the matter back.

[Lord Nash]

I assure the noble Lord that I take this matter very seriously, as I said in reply to the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth. We expect all schools to do this and will do all that we can to ensure that they do. However, I must say to the noble Lord that I do not think that we can bring this matter back at Third Reading. I have already reflected on it in some detail. I must say to him that if he wishes to test the temperature of the House, he should do so now.

[Lord Northbourne]

Subject to that reservation, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 53ZAA withdrawn.

Children and Families Bill

Lord Northbourne Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2013 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Northbourne]

15: After Clause 11, insert the following new Clause—
“Children’s welfare: duties of parents
For the purposes of section 3(1) of the Children Act 1989, the duties of the parent to their child are—(a) to safeguard and promote the child’s health, development and welfare;(b) to provide in a manner appropriate to the age and development of the child—(i) direction; and(ii) guidance,to the child;(c) if the child is not living with the parent, to maintain personal relations and contact with the child on a regular basis,but only in so far as compliance with this section is practicable and in the best interest of the child.”

[Lord Northbourne (CB)]

My Lords, in Grand Committee my Amendment 56 attracted a good deal of support; there was a strong response from nine Members. That is why I am bringing it back on Report as Amendment 15.

On 9 December the Daily Mail carried an important article by Sir Paul Coleridge, a senior High Court judge with 42 years’ experience in the family and criminal courts. He drew attention to what he called the “social revolution” that has taken place in our society. Marriage, he says,

“has come to be seen as unfashionable, serial fatherhood is widespread and an ever-growing number of children are no longer brought up in stable households”.

The statistics about families that we have heard today seem to confirm that. For example, the Centre for Social Justice has recently calculated that family breakdown is now costing this country £46 billion a year—more than the defence budget. According to the Office for National Statistics, the proportion of children born to unmarried mothers last year hit a record 47.5%: that is, very nearly half. Almost half of all marriages, as well as a huge number of informal parenting partnerships, now end in divorce or separation. According to the Marriage Foundation, only 50% of children born today will be living with both their parents on their 16th birthday. What are known as “four-by-four families” are increasingly becoming a problem for schools in some disadvantaged areas. In case any noble Lords do not know what a “four-by-four family” is, it is a mother with four children by four different fathers.

Every society needs to be concerned about the way in which its children are brought up and about how they are being prepared for adult life, for citizenship and for their probable role as parents. In our society today, unwanted children, family breakdown and failure to provide a stable and supportive family for too many of the nation’s children as they grow up are seriously damaging the life chances of future generations.

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As I said, I think it is well apposite that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne has raised these matters. I hope that, both in our one-to-one meeting and in what I have said today, he can see that the issue that he is raising is very much on the Government’s radar. I think there is cross-party support and support around the House for his objectives; the only doubt is whether his amendment meets the needs of such a broad-based response to this issue. I hope that, in the light of this response, he will agree to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Northbourne]

I am of course most grateful to the noble Lord for a very full response. I hate to say this, but I think that the statistics which I disclosed in my earlier remarks show that those well intentioned things which the Government are doing are, alas, not achieving the objective we hope. I wonder if we could not perhaps rethink how we approach this issue. Instead of telling young people what they should not do, why do we not make them feel good about doing what they should do—proud to be a father, proud to be a good parent? I do not know, but it is just an idea.

Anyway, I think I have to accept that primary legislation is not the answer now. I believe one day we will find it will improve the law in the 1989 Act because it is currently too vague for words to be of the slightest use, but that is another matter. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 15 withdrawn.