Education: Design Subjects

Lord Storey Excerpts

Wednesday 26th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, the figures for pupil number decline in D&T GCSE have fallen less in the past six academic years than in the four previous academic years up until 2010, so we have arrested the decline. We have introduced computer science for the first time. The number interested in that subject last year along with a substantial increase in IT entries considerably more than make up for the decline in D&T. Of course, as the noble Earl has mentioned, I do not think that anyone can doubt our commitment to technical education given the passing in your Lordships’ House yesterday of the Technical and Further Education Bill. New courses will be based on groups of occupations within the 15 framework routes, which will include creative and design.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, a look at the Government’s website shows the importance of design to our economy, yet since it became a subject that is no longer compulsory in secondary schools we have seen a 50% reduction in the number of young people taking it. Added to that, there will be some 2,000 fewer teachers for the subject by this coming September and half the number of new trainee teachers that are needed for it. This is a real crisis. I agree with the Minister about the importance of this subject, but we need to fix these problems and make design part of a celebration in our education service.

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely on the importance of design, and of course we have a number of free schools that are particularly focused on this area. We offer a £12,000 bursary for new teachers coming into the sector to teach design and technology, and as I have said, we are making our D&T courses much more contemporary. Previously, they were very material focused, but now they are more context driven. We are particularly keen to reform them so that we can address the gender imbalance in D&T and attract more girls to study the appropriate STEM subjects. For instance, under the existing D&T syllabus, 96% of the participants in textiles are girls whereas only 7% are studying electronic products. We are keen to address this.