Schools: National Curriculum

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I know that the noble Baroness shares my concern about PSHE being an essential part of any school, particularly interpersonal skills and self-confidence. I do not think that we are apart at all on the necessity for all schools to teach that. Indeed, that is what good schools do; it is all part of a good education. The difference between us is that we do not feel that we should legislate for every ingredient of such education to be statutory.

For instance, on career education, I was in Norfolk today, where we were whipping up support for schools in Norfolk, which have consistently been below national standards. One of our meetings was with business leaders. There is no shortage of enthusiasm from the business community to engage with schools to help them with careers advice, work placements and so on. I then visited Wymondham College, one of our top state boarding schools, where we got into a conversation about careers. I said that I was constantly being asked whether careers advice should be more consultancy-based in schools and whether that was sensible for schools. It was absolutely clear. Everybody in the room—the top eight teachers in the school—said that a careers session of 50 minutes at the end of your school life was a very poor substitute for a good education and that they engaged widely with businesses for careers advice. They already practise the suggestion from my noble friend Lord Cormack of career panels.

That is the best practice, which we should encourage all schools to do, so that all schools fulfil the ambitions of the noble Baroness. As I said, however, what is between us is that we think that to legislate for it in a box-ticking way would lower expectations rather than encourage all schools to aim for the highest.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I should declare an interest as the founder and president of the Citizenship Foundation. I, too, would like to congratulate the Government on the outcome of their consultation and a lot of hard work all round. To have 17,000 people respond to a consultation must be a high response compared to some that we have had recently and it reflects the intense concern of people across the social spectrum—of course, including teachers and parents. I also recognise the dilemmas that the Government have in arriving at a curriculum, because so many subjects today call for inclusion, and there has to be some point at which you say, “Sorry, no more space”.

I particularly congratulate Michael Gove on resisting the advice from his expert panel and keeping citizenship education in the core curriculum at key stages 3 and 4. It has always seemed to me—and, probably, everybody in the Chamber—that the democratic world of today is unbearably complex. The work of this House is often beyond the ability of its Members to grapple with. It is irresponsible of us to the point of being hypocritical not to give our school leavers the chance, through a minimum level of competence, to take their part in this hyper-complex society—in particular, their democratic part. I fully endorse the conclusions reached that citizenship is part of the essential knowledge that we have to give our citizens, no less than teaching them the Highway Code before they get into a motor car.

I should like to ask my noble friend four questions. The framework document issued this week starts by saying, of citizenship, that the purpose of study is a high-quality citizenship education. I would be grateful if my noble friend would consider the extent to which we need rather badly to have a much greater quantity and quality of teacher education for that difficult subject. Secondly, I agree with my noble friend Lord Storey that this is a subject where you could bring in people from outside the world of formal teacher qualification. Very quickly, I think—

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, perhaps I may remind my noble friend that this debate is for brief questions to the Minister.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I would be grateful if my noble friend would consider extending the Ofsted inspection to cover citizenship education. If it is not within the compulsory Ofsted inspection, that lowers its status. That is certainly not needed. Finally, I do not see why this subject should not be as necessary, compulsory and essential for non-maintained schools as for maintained schools.

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Phillips for his comments. I believe that we have greatly improved the citizenship curriculum, not least with the helpful advice from noble Lords such as him that it should be a much less issues-based curriculum, with greater focus on the political systems in this country. So far as Ofsted is concerned, I will look at that point in the context of what Ofsted already inspects for in terms of a rounded conversation and whether we can do anything further on that. As far as the core subject is concerned, I rather refer back to my earlier point that some independent schools teach citizenship very effectively in a much wider way. As far as teaching quality is concerned, we are doing all that we can to improve the quality of teachers. I may want to discuss with my noble friend further his specific points about citizenship teachers to see whether we cannot do more in this regard.