Queen’s Speech

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I for one was in the main delighted with the education part of the Queen’s Speech. Its opening statement,

“To ensure every child has access to a high-quality education”,


and the statement that

“A great education is fundamental to the success of children, their families and our communities, as well as the success of our country”


set the right tone. The severe funding issues that schools and colleges have faced is now being addressed, and we must never allow schools to face such a financial crisis again. The focus on further education and technical education was welcome. At long last, the Cinderella of our education service is finally going to the ball.

I have said many times that the most important resource in our education system is the quality of our teachers. Good teachers inspire, motivate and drive ambition and learning forward. Good school and college leaders create places of learning where teachers and their pupils thrive. Yet we have a very serious teacher recruitment crisis. The Department for Education forecasts that, over the next six years, pupil numbers are set to increase by almost 20%. The number of children in classes of 36 or more is increasing at an alarming rate. Many schools across England regularly have classes of over 40, and only 80% of the number of secondary trainees were recruited last year. We are in the middle of a significant teacher shortage. We must prevent a crisis from becoming a catastrophe.

The days when a teaching career was seen as the most aspirational in society appear to be over. However, in other European countries, teachers are highly valued. We need the best minds teaching young people, from the nursery to the sixth form, so why are we experiencing a recruitment crisis? Is the answer better salaries? That must go some way to attracting those who want to teach, but it is not clear that more money will attract more teachers, considering the impact that bursaries have had thus far.

Teachers working today feel undervalued. When I speak to teachers, the main issue they cite is not the money but the workload. Stressful teachers do not make for productive or happy teachers. If we are to achieve the Queen’s Speech peroration, we need well-trained, well-paid, highly motivated and highly regarded teachers. Without them, class sizes will continue to increase, subject specialist shortages will continue to grow, and the drop-out rate of teachers will accelerate.

We hear a lot about inspections and testing. Of course schools need to be inspected and children tested so that we can find out how to support and help children, but it is about how we do this so that schools and teachers are less stressed, more valued and more productive. It is my hope that in this new Parliament the Government will be less dogmatic in their approach to education. Let us recognise that we have a varied system in the types of school that provide for our children, and that maintained community schools should not be seen as educational pariahs waiting to be picked off and converted into academies as soon as they put an academic foot wrong.

By the way, it is interesting that maintained community schools in England outperformed academies and free schools in the national exams taken at the end of year 6. Department for Education figures show that last summer, among pupils taking stage 2 standardised tests in maths and English, known as SATS, those in maintained community schools on average performed better than those in academies. Interestingly, free schools—the Government’s flagship means of opening a new school—also compared poorly with maintained community schools. It is worth noting, however, that the gap relating to pupils whose first language is not English has almost disappeared, which is well worth celebrating.

I want to touch briefly on a couple of other issues that are not covered in the Queen’s Speech but are of huge importance: alternative education and academic integrity. The Minister will be aware that there has been a 50% surge in permanent exclusions from schools in England. These children are placed in alternative provision, but many of those alternative providers are unregistered and therefore uninspected. There are often appalling practices in child safeguarding and pupil registration that go completely unchecked. Two hours a day on an iPad is not education. It is unacceptable in the 21st century that public money should be used to pay these unregistered providers. Shame on central government and local authorities for allowing that to happen. It is not surprising that the children who are being recruited into gangs and county-lines crime may be a significant factor in the increasing levels of knife crime.

We are proud of our universities; we boast some of the finest in the world. It is vital that we do all in our power to safeguard their academic integrity. So why are we allowing companies to help students to cheat? The growing presence of essay mills and contract cheating is alarming. We should make sure that these activities are closed down. The damage that they are doing to higher education is extremely dangerous. No wonder 45 vice-chancellors and heads of organisations in UK higher education wrote to Damian Hinds urging that action be taken against the essay mill companies.

I welcome the rhetoric in the Queen’s Speech, and I hope it is matched by the reality. Our children are our future. We must make sure that every child really does matter.