Children and Families Bill

Lord Storey Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2013 Grand Committee

Although the economic arguments are, of course, important, we should not lose sight of the moral and compassionate arguments. It is unacceptable for an 18 year-old coming out of the care system to harbour that feeling of being dumped, of being discarded again by an uncaring system. Staying Put is one way of reassuring those young people that they have not been left without support. If it were up to me, it would probably be a little older than 21 ideally. I see this as a rare opportunity to make sure that the next generation of care leavers gets a much better start to their adult life than people have had in the past.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I support what the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has said. I remember him stalking in the Corridor in July; he was very excited and asked whether I would support this. I did not indicate but walked away and reflected on what he had said. I remember my professional circumstances, where foster parents at my school came to talk to me about this issue and how upset they were. It was quite traumatic for them as foster carers to lose children at 18 when they had so much more to offer in those important years. I thought about my own children. At 18 my daughter has just gone to university. It has been a very difficult time for her and she has needed the support of her parents, her family and friends.

We talk about cost but the cost is minimal: there is a saving. Never mind the savings we have heard about in terms of compassion as a society but the savings, as research has shown, in terms of those young people being more likely to be successful in their lives. If they are more successful in their lives, there will be fewer problems that we might have to pay for later on.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I, too, support the amendment. It is so obviously a good idea. I have a suspicion that if it is not part of the legislation a voluntary system will work in a few places and will be disregarded right across the country. It is for that reason that it needs to be made part of the legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I have put my name to the amendment. I think that I could sum it up by saying that it would turn accommodation into care, and it is care that is needed. It is not surprising that children in this situation go missing, because the only people whom they know are those who have trafficked them. If they are given the means of staying in touch, as so often they seem to be, they will respond to a contact or make contact themselves. It seems that very often the first thing that happens is that they are given a mobile phone and instructed: “You keep in touch with us”. Whether this is the right way of going about it I do not know, but I have heard those around me who have much more recent or, indeed, current local authority experience muttering, “But the local authority has to do this”. Well, let us find a way of making sure that the local authority does more than what fulfils cold letters on paper and actually produces the service.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I would like to explore this in a bit more detail. Perhaps the Minister, if he is not able to give the information in his reply, could write to us. My experience in local government and as a head teacher is that, of course, children are trafficked, but some are trafficked because their parents in another part of the world want a better life for them, so they pay someone to put them on a plane and the poor child then arrives in the UK. As I understand it, there are regional centres where the children are received. There is one in Dover. Liverpool was and is another regional centre. The children come to Liverpool and Liverpool tries as best it can within the resources to cater for them and to look after them. I know that for two reasons. One is that, four or five years ago, our director of social services wrote a report saying, “Look, my budget can’t cope with the number coming in. We want to help, but it seems unfair financially that Liverpool should carry this burden”. Secondly, I also know as a head teacher that some of these children have been put into foster care. I gave the example at a meeting of a Mongolian street child, whose grandparents had paid a trafficker to bring him to the UK. He landed in London but was sent to a regional centre, which happened to be Liverpool, where he was fostered with a wonderful family in Halewood. He came to my school and he was well looked after. For me, the issue is not the reluctance of local authorities to deal with this but the sheer size of the problem and the support that they get. I hope that that makes sense.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I am reminded of the report by my noble friend Lord Laming on the death of Victoria Climbié. One of the comments made by the social workers in Haringey who were interviewed was that they were overwhelmed at the time, particularly by unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and young people. This can put a heavy burden on local authorities. I have another, related experience of visiting a children’s home some years ago. I spoke to the manager, who was very experienced—in many ways, she was a remarkable manager—but when it came to working with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, she felt that these were not their children. She had enough to do looking after the children with whom she had to deal, rather than having to deal with these other children, if you like. There is a difficulty and perhaps the amendment is a helpful way of tackling it. Some people will just say, “Look, we have enough on our plate. We don’t want to think about these extra children and we’ll find ways not to do so”. I am not sure whether that is exactly the issue in hand, but my experience is that, understandably, given the strains on social services and the immense emotional burden that caring for children with complex needs brings with it, some people can find ways to rationalise not giving proper care to vulnerable children because those children come from a very different background from theirs.

Children and Families Bill

Lord Storey Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 14 to 17 in my name in relation to Clause 3, which, as we have heard, grants the Secretary of State a new power to direct local authorities to outsource their adopter recruitment services to another local authority or to a registered adoption agency by amending the relevant part of the Adoption and Children Act 2002. We understand that the driver for the Government seeking these powers is to tackle the shortage of people approved to adopt. Certainly, we share this starting point with the Government.

I listened with great interest to the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and it is clear that there is deep concern about these provisions and where they might be taking adopter recruitment services in the future. For me, that is the key issue, as I will explain. I have no disagreement in principle with the power for the Secretary of State to intervene in individual underperforming local authorities as in subsection (3)(a) of new Section 3A under Clause 3. As a Minister, I issued many such directions. Indeed, my first point is that there already are substantial powers of intervention, including the ability of the Government to outsource services when local authorities are underperforming. Perhaps the Minister will explain why these powers in subsection (3)(a) are necessary.

However, it is difficult to see how intervening in an individual local authority can solve or address the wider problem of the national shortage of potential adopters, which brings me to the powers under subsection (3)(b) and (3)(c) and where our concerns lie. Those powers would give the Secretary of State the power to remove responsibility for adopter recruitment either from entire categories of local authorities or from all local authorities at a stroke completely.

There are both practical reasons and reasons of principle why those two powers are problematic. First, on the practical reasons, local authorities currently recruit and approve about 80% of adopters. Moving many or all local authorities from this task would seriously compromise the adoption system when there is already an acknowledged shortage of adopters.

Secondly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, elegantly pointed out, the voluntary and not-for-profit sector has made it clear that it does not have the capacity to take on the recruitment of the numbers of adopters that would be needed. The third reason is very important. Given that local authorities would retain responsibility for the placement of children and for seeing them through to adoption, it seems to me to be wholly undesirable that they should have no stake in the adopter recruitment process. We actually want local authorities to be more willing to use adopters approved by other agencies. This is more likely to happen if local authorities retain some responsibility for recruitment and are still part of the adoption system so there are some strong, practical reasons that I would like the Minister to address.

In discussion with the Minister this week, he said that the problem of adopter shortage was not in any case primarily one of underperformance by individual local authorities. In his view this was system failure at the national level, particularly because of the disincentives for local authorities to recruit more adopters than they need for their own individual populations and the reluctance, as he perceived it, of agencies to work collaboratively. Again, there have been really positive moves in that direction, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, pointed out, albeit perhaps recently. That might be so: it might be system failure, as the Minister said, and if the Government wish to review adopter recruitment and propose a radically different system, they are of course entirely free to do so. But if the Government wish to come forward with a new system that would take responsibility for adopter recruitment away from local authorities and give it to some new or different kind of agency, I put it to the Minister that they should come to Parliament with those proposals now for wider scrutiny and debate.

My objections to subsections (3)(b) and (3)(c) are therefore fundamentally ones of principle. It seems quite wrong to go partway along that path to pave the way for wholesale outsourcing or privatisation of adopter recruitment through the negative resolution procedure set out here without spelling out for Members what the endgame here is. I asked the Minister whether he had a vision of where he would like these services to end up and he said no, he did not. However, I cannot see the point of the power in subsection (3)(c) unless the Government have at least some desire, if not the intention, to move towards providing the recruitment of adopter services in a very different way.

In our view, the powers in subsections (3)(b) and (3)(c) are a step too far unless the Government set out their further vision. Our Amendment 14 would delete them from the clause. Amendments 15, 16 and 17 would address the issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, raised were the Government to retain the ability simply to intervene in an individual authority by instituting: that it should be by the affirmative resolution procedure; for the Secretary of State to give reasons for direction and to allow the authority to ask for a review; and for the Secretary of State to revoke any direction should he desire so. Amendment 17 would address the point that the direction should be based on the quality or performance of the local authority in providing these services.

With those amendments, this would be a reasonable and proportionate mechanism for the Government to use when they believe a local authority could do much better at adopter recruitment. They would take away the possibility that the Government could slide through an entirely new system on the back of a negative resolution procedure in relation to subsection (3)(c).

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, it really is important that we do what is best for the potentially adopted child or young person. If we consider this carefully, we can see where some—I would use the word “some”—local authorities have been very poor in this respect. That is in the amount of time taken, the lack of care and attention to detail and the way things are organised. Quite frankly, that is not good enough but it is a very small proportion of local authorities. As we have heard, 80% of placements are carried out by local authorities, which themselves recognise the need for changes to be made in how some of them operate. Many have been hallmarks of good practice and have been highly praised by the Government and the voluntary sector. So the notion that the Secretary of State is given the power to say that all local authorities should cease placement is concerning to me, and I wonder why it is there.

I am not sure that I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, that this is some plot by the Government to privatise adoption—surely they would not—or push everything to the voluntary sector, because we know that the voluntary sector has said, “No, we don’t want to do that, and even if we did we wouldn’t be able to cope with it”. I am surprised that the noble Baroness would even consider such a daft notion. No, I think that this is about the Government. I well remember David Cameron, our Prime Minister, saying in the early days, “Look, I am concerned at the time that some potential adopters have to wait before all the paperwork and the processes are carried out”, and he was right to say that. This part of this wonderful Bill addresses that issue by saying, “Yes, we need to ensure that the amount of time taken is proportionate”.

Still, the notion that you give the Secretary of State—maybe Michael Gove’s successor in two, three or five years’ time—the power to come along with these draconian powers is quite concerning, and actually not in the best interests of children. I hope that, if we want to ensure changes, the Government will look at how we learn from best practice in local authorities and in the voluntary sector—not all the voluntary sector is perfect in this, of course; we think that because the tag is “voluntary sector”, they must be fantastic, but not all the voluntary sector is. We must learn best practice from the voluntary sector and from local authorities, and constantly lift the bar and learn and disseminate those best practices so that we do what is best for our children and young people.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said. I shall read out again one sentence from the conclusion of the adoption committee:

“We strongly encourage the Government to allow sufficient time for the sector to develop viable and achievable alternative proposals, before using the new power”.

Having said that, I have to say that I am not entirely opposed to the Government having this power. However, it should be a power of last resort, not a power that would be up front. The various amendments, if I may respectfully say so, are overly elaborate. I would have thought that it would be a good idea, if the Secretary of State had to give a direction, that such a direction gave the opportunity to the local authority to judicially review the Government if it thought that the direction was out of order under administrative law proposals. So I am not at all happy about these current amendments. I believe that the Government should have some power, but I do not like the way in which the power is framed at the moment. I hope that some sort of compromise might come on Report.

Schools: National Curriculum

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his comments, particularly about English. We are focusing heavily on ensuring that teachers have the resources to deliver this new curriculum, largely in the way that I outlined earlier. English and maths will be essential right the way through the curriculum until the age of 16, and grammar, punctuation and spelling will feature much more across the curriculum than they have done in the past. They will not be essential beyond the age of 18, although we have said that all pupils who have not achieved grade C in English or maths will go on studying English and maths until they are 18 and have reached that standard.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, first, I welcome my noble friend’s Statement on the curriculum. These Benches have argued for a long time that we should have a shorter and more focused curriculum that prioritises essentials. It is interesting to note that the national curriculum has been reduced from 468 pages to 281. I do not see it as a U-turn; I see it as a reflection of the consultation process, particularly on the issue of speaking and listening and on climate change.

I have a number of questions. One of them resonates with the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and concerns continuing professional development. How do we make sure that schools are fully equipped? In some areas, for example, there are no training schools. Are we going to see resources go directly to those schools? What is the position on equipping non-teachers? As we know, in free schools and some academies non-teachers are taking classes. We also know that in all schools teaching assistants are covering PPA time and taking lessons. Therefore, what continuing professional development will be provided for those staff?

There is one area of great concern. I am delighted that a modern foreign language will be taught, but in primary schools there is often no one on the staff with that ability. What resources will be given to primary schools?

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful for my noble friend’s comments; I know that they are well based on his 25 years experience of primary education in Liverpool.

On CPD, we believe that we now have about an 89% coverage of the country on teaching schools and the teaching school alliance, but, as I said, our belief is that teachers are best placed to develop best teaching practice through teaching in schools and school support by modelling good practice. An increasing number of products are emerging on the marketplace to help teachers, including MyMaths and Ruth Miskin’s phonics materials. Those are particularly suitable for primary schools.

Children and Families Bill

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I welcome this much needed Bill. It brings together important proposals, making a big advancement for families and, above all, our children. For the first time in a generation the Government are tackling some of the major barriers that children and families face. We on these Benches are fully committed to giving disadvantaged children the best possible start in life. Reforms to special educational needs provision will help families to secure access to the support they deserve, new virtual heads will support the educational achievements of looked-after children and the proposals for shared parental leave and flexible working are a real step forward. The Bill also makes strides in reforming the family justice system, aiming to cut delay and encourage greater mediation.

I shall be so bold as to congratulate the Government on bringing the Bill forward. In so doing, I pay tribute to the previous Minister of State for Children and Families, Sarah Teather, who dedicated a significant amount of her time to ensuring that it reaches the statute book. It will stand as a testament to her hard work and perseverance. I also thank Ministers from both Houses for being prepared to listen and for having an approach that is both open-door and open-minded.

Like many Members, I have been amazed by the number of briefings I have received concerning the Bill. This not only illustrates how important it is to a myriad of different groups but also shows how much people care. That should not come as a surprise; after all, as we have heard, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change children’s lives for the better. I am sure that as the Bill passes through your Lordships’ House in the autumn many issues will be raised and, where appropriate, amended.

I wish to concentrate on several areas that I hope the Minister will reflect upon later today. I welcome the new education, health and care plans, which replace statements and learning difficulty assessments, but, regretfully, they do not currently apply to young people in custody. We know that a third of young offenders have a SEN statement, compared to only 3% of the general population. Young offenders are among the most vulnerable members of our society and need all the support that we can offer them. Given that children in custody are particularly disadvantaged in this respect, it is illogical that they are being left out. I suggest that we extend the new plans to young offenders, otherwise we will miss a unique opportunity.

We learnt on Report in another place that, although the Government are committed to supporting young offenders in this way, the stumbling block to providing such support is conflict with the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009. The Government acknowledge that the current situation is not working and I suggest that we use this opportunity to make provision for young offenders with SEN. I hope that the Minister will examine this area so that we do not miss this important opportunity.

A child’s health condition does not stop at the school gates. Parents need to know that schools are places of learning that can cater for the needs of all young people; places where children with health conditions are both understood and cared for. Whether a child is diabetic, epileptic or severely allergic to something, schools must be able to support their needs. Take the example of a child with, say, a nut allergy. Unless appropriate care is taken, the child is at risk of a life-threatening anaphylactic reaction. Simple approaches can be taken by the school—ensuring that staff are EpiPen trained; ensuring that EpiPens are easily accessible and signposted; and displaying photographs of children with food allergies in the school kitchen and staffroom. Of course many or most schools do such things as standard, but many do not.

I have offered one example but the same may be said of children with diabetes, epilepsy, asthma, migraine, chronic fatigue and congenital heart defects. Indeed, in my own city of Liverpool, a young primary lad died of a sudden cardiac arrest. That school and family established the Oliver King Foundation and, with the support of the local media, are now putting facilities in every school in the city.

A child’s condition should have no impact on their ability to study. Though different from SEN, if medical needs are not managed properly they will surely impede a child’s education in much the same way. Too many schools fail to follow guidance in this area. Moreover, existing legislation is poorly designed for such purposes. Considering that there are no specific requirements to provide the necessary support for all children with health conditions, an amendment that places a clear duty on all schools seems to me to be eminently sensible. Indeed, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State recently indicated that practices in schools need improving. In Committee he said that guidance on managing medicines will be published this year, thus clarifying schools’ responsibilities. Does the Minister think that this is sufficient?

I turn now to the issue of young carers. Despite the good intentions in the Care Bill, there is now a yawning gap that leaves young carers in an unjust position. Young carers are children and young people who provide ongoing and regular care to family members while they themselves are in education. The 2001 census identified 175,000 young carers in the UK, 13,000 of whom care for more than 50 hours per week. The 2011 census identified a similar number, up to 178,000. However, there was an 83% increase in the number of young carers aged five to seven. These young carers often undertake inappropriate and burdensome responsibilities, and all too often they do not receive the support that they need. This of course results in poor educational outcomes. The Bill offers significant scope to improve the long-term life chances of young carers by enabling a whole-family approach, but I suggest that the rights and responsibilities need to be made clearer for young carers and practitioners alike. I know that Ministers are sympathetic to young carers’ needs, and I therefore look to amendments coming forward to provide this much needed support.

As I referred to earlier, this Bill is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to provide children and their families with real support for special educational needs. Education, health and care plans are at the centre of that support system. For the first time, SEN will be coupled with health and social care provision in a single global agreement. I am pleased that the Government have taken note in this area, and specifically that they have guaranteed that health requirements will become part of the plan. However, should I fear the same fate that has befallen our so-called “national curriculum”? The plans must do what they say on the label. They must entitle the holder to expect all the provisions that they detail: education, health and care. Will the Minister confirm this, so that we may give parents and young people greater confidence in the system?

In order to make the system truly joined-up, surely we should go that extra mile and realise the equal importance of there being one easily identifiable route of redress for families, should things go wrong. A single, accessible and understandable point of appeal is necessary. We must not create a system that forces families to navigate a vast and complex complaints system across three agencies. I look forward to hearing what the Minister intends to do in this regard.

I was delighted to receive a Written Answer from my noble friend the Minister, detailing how essential it is that teachers’ training prepares them to teach children with a broad range of special educational needs. I suggest that all teachers must be equipped with the skills to identify and support children with special educational needs, which should include specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia. It really is not good enough that we have a teaching profession that is not universally trained to understand the issues. There should be teachers in each school or each group of schools who are qualified to test for and identify dyslexia. Although I praise the work of SENCOs in schools, there is an urgent need for all initial teacher training programmes to include a mandatory module on dyslexia and other hidden disabilities. I hope that the Minister will reflect upon this point, and I know that my noble friend Lord Addington will press this important issue further.

When a young person enters higher or further education, their plan will not be “passported” with them. Although I welcome the extension of legal protections for young people with SEN up to the age of 25, as currently drafted, higher education institutions are excluded from the new framework. As I have been assured that the Government’s intention is to create a single system which supports the highest aspirations, surely this goes against the spirit of the Bill? It has the potential to cause delay, and will no doubt create unnecessary bureaucracy. I hope that the Minister will carefully consider that the plan should follow a young person, whichever setting they move to.

Finally, I followed with great interest the childcare ping-pong—or, as the Mayor of London would no doubt call it, the “whiff-whaff”—regarding reforms to childcare ratios. I now presume that it is game, set and match to the Lord President of the Council in this regard. Equally important is the need to give careful reconsideration to the introduction of a childminder agency system. The introduction of such an arrangement would mean that experienced childminders could be lost. Indeed, 71% of childminders have “outstanding” grades. They have built their own businesses and are now on a level footing with daycare centres. Currently, childminders are inspected every three years by Ofsted, but only every four years if they achieve “outstanding” status. However, as we have heard, under these proposals the agencies as organisations will be inspected while only a cross-section of their registered childminders will be inspected. There is a danger that childminders with less satisfactory standards will be afforded a higher status by virtue of their membership of a highly rated agency. When a parent chooses a registered childminder, they should be confident that the grade of the childminder reflects their talents. Can the Minister confirm that all childminders will be inspected by Ofsted, and not merely a cross-section of those who work for a particular agency?

As I said at the outset, the Bill is progressive in its aims and potentially life-changing for children and families in this country. By the way, when I was talking about the Oliver King Foundation, the word I could not bring to mind was “defibrillators”, so I was referring to defibrillators in every school. I hope that the Minister will reassure the House that the Government intend to revisit our areas of concern and, in so doing, ensure that the very promising provisions contained within the Bill will truly give families the support that they need when they need it most.

Education: Citizenship

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, first, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for giving us the opportunity to debate this hugely important issue. I was much taken with his suggestion, which is worthy of consideration. But, of course, before that we must get citizenship education taught properly and correctly in our schools. I think that citizenship education is vital for ensuring that young people are an active and valued part of our society and, moreover, that they are involved in their communities. All too often, young people are seen in a negative way.

Let us reflect for a moment on some figures that were collected by the Hansard Society. We know for a fact that in the 2010 general election, only 44% of 18 to 24 year-olds voted, although the good news was that that was an increase of 7% on the previous general election, but still well below the average turnout of 65%. Moreover, the Hansard Society research suggests that only one-third of 18 to 24 year-olds claim to know anything about politics while, rather alarmingly, 90% of young people do not know who their MP is or how to contact them.

In my view, citizenship is not about reaching for a syllabus, dusting it down, teaching it and giving students a body of facts. It is about creating an ethos in the school and ensuring that pervades everything that young people do. It has to be about the ethos of the school, whether that is schools having school councils and young people knowing about them, electing their councillors and debating issues; whether it is doing voluntary work in the community—at my school we would go to the local care centre and sing Christmas carols or work at the local Jaguar Land Rover factory; whether it is doing charity appeals; whether it is shadowing people; whether it is bringing speakers in from the local GP to the local midwife; or whether it is having a rolling programme of pupils observing school governing bodies, as we had in my school.

The good news is that citizenship as a programme of study will continue in key stages 3 and 4. We are out to consultation on that but the first draft, as good as it is, is very factually orientated with no real indication of the sort of things that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, was talking about, so no real voluntary or community engagement. I was interested to see that our Prime Minister last year asked Dame Julia Cleverdon and Amanda Jordan to review how we can increase the quality and quantity of social action and engagement by young people between the ages of 10 and 20. There were some interesting facts in their interim report. They found that although there is a wide range of social activity in the UK, much of it takes place in the voluntary sector and very little within schools and businesses. They also found a lack of knowledge and understanding about social action and opportunities and their value in the education sector was very limited. Finally, they found that young people have no facility to develop social action over time. I hope the Minister when replying might suggest it is important that we recognise that fact in the curriculum.

It is also interesting to see what young people think citizenship is about. The National Foundation for Educational Research looked at young people. What did they think being a good citizen meant? Well, 43% thought it was about people having access to their rights—education, health and housing. Interestingly, 39% thought it meant working together to make sure that all members of society are treated fairly. What a lovely result. Only 10% listed voting, politics and government. If we are going to get citizenship right, it must be about the quality of the teaching as well as the quality of the syllabus. Far too often citizenship is seen as a Cinderella subject. I can remember my wife who teaches PE and French—a strange combination—sometimes as a chore being sent in to teach citizenship, never having had any training in it or understanding of it. So we have to get that right and we also have to make sure that from time to time we actually inspect the subject as well.

I will make two further quick observations. First, there is a marvellous organisation run by and for young people called “Bite the Ballot”. Members of all parts of the House might have been involved in it. It is about encouraging young people to understand democracy in all its forms and giving young people a voice in the issues. I was invited to one meeting in the Jubilee Room, packed with young people, and I was astounded by their ability to communicate issues, to listen and to reason. If we can get that happening with this organisation, why can we not get it happening in our schools as well?

I end on a bit of a sad note, and this might seem a bit carping, but we talk about a national curriculum and we laud the fact that we are going to have citizenship in our national curriculum for key stages 3 and 4. The fact is that it is not a national curriculum because half our secondary schools can choose not to teach it. I was sad to see an announcement by Stephen Twigg, who I admire greatly, saying that the Labour Party was going to hand over those responsibilities to all our schools. So in a sense it is only this party which believes that a national curriculum should be, as it says on the label, for all children—slimmed down, yes, but all children should be taught those important things, including citizenship.

Schools: PSHE

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I am aware that the PSHE strategic partners group has written to my honourable friend the Minister for Education and Childcare calling for a more explicit link to be made in the national curriculum framework document between schools’ statutory requirements and the provision of PSHE education. I am grateful for the input of this group, which represents a wide range of PSHE stakeholders. I assure noble Lords, and the noble Baroness, that we are currently giving this full and proper consideration as part of the national curriculum review.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, considering that in a fifth of the schools inspected it was found that none of the staff had any training in PSHE and that in a fifth of the schools the teaching was not good, what steps will be taken to improve continuing professional development in PSHE in both education and subject leadership?

[Lord Nash]

To support schools, we have asked Ofsted to publish specific examples of effective practice in PSHE to provide evidence for teachers when developing and delivering their PSHE programmes. We are also providing grant funding to the PSHE Association to undertake work advising schools on their teaching, including improving staff training. The PSHE Association will expand its chartered teacher programme, which recognises effective practice and encourages high-quality PSHE training.

Education: Reform of GCSEs

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his comments; I know that he is extremely well informed on these matters. I was aware of the success of Finland. We believe that Ofqual, particularly after its performance on the English exams, is now a rigorous organisation. The various assessment techniques it is consulting on—one in particular—will be rigorous.

[Lord Storey]

My noble friend is absolutely right to say that we need to have a rigorous examination system in which employers, universities, parents and even pupils have confidence and which is as challenging as that in any other country. I am delighted that we are not going back to a two-tier system; that was important to my colleagues.

I have two questions. An exam is hugely important to the pupil sitting it. It can make or break their life chances and expectations. At the moment you go into an exam, you might have great emotional problems. Young girls or young women can be starting their period, which can be devastating for them when they sit their exam. I hope that Ofqual will look at giving support to those pupils in terms of resits.

My second question follows on from the comments made by noble Lords opposite. How do we consult with parents? We bandy around the phrase, “We must consult with parents”, but how is that consultation carried out? Have we ever thought of consulting pupils themselves? They have great experience of exams.

[Lord Nash]

I am very interested in my noble friend’s comments. I know that he has vast experience as a teacher. On his last point, I recently read a very interesting report from America, which said that lesson observation was not the best way of working out whether teachers were teaching well; the best way to do that was through exam results and pupil feedback. My noble friend makes a very good point. In relation to pupils who maybe experience particular difficulties with resits, I will take this away for consideration.

Schools: Bullying

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree with the noble Baroness’s point about the patchy nature of the provision. That is why we are encouraging more new providers to enter the system and set some standards. It is also why we have asked Ofsted to focus particularly on this area. Children who are excluded from school are often very bright and very energetic and we have a duty to make sure that they can be educated in the best way possible.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that schools are required to have an anti-bullying policy. Can he ensure that when Ofsted inspects schools, it does a quality assurance of that very important policy?

[Lord Nash]

Yes; and I believe that it already does.

Education: Personal, Social and Health Education

Lord Storey Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for instigating this very important debate. Whether it is healthy lifestyles; whether it is sex and relationship education; whether it is education about drugs, alcohol or tobacco; whether it is dealing with bullying or abuse issues; whether it is bereavement or mental health problems; whether it is developing positive relationships or parenting skills; whether it is about employability or enterprise proficiency, should we not, as a society, ensure that our young people have the opportunity at school to understand and cope with these issues? Do we not owe it to young people, and to society as a whole, to educate them to understand these matters? It is simply not good enough for the “voices off-stage” to say, “Leave it to the parents”, or, indeed, for individual schools to decide whether or not they want to teach these subjects. We need to be strong and say, “Yes, these issues do matter”. They matter in particular to the well-being of our young people.

PSHE education should not be an add-on for schools to “take off the shelf” as and when they please. It should be an integral part of each pupil’s learning and of the learning ethos of each and every school. How do we know that it is important to teach these activities? There is a huge bank of research to draw on. Take, for example, the use and effectiveness of anti-bullying strategies in schools: research shows that PSHE education was unanimously rated as having a positive effect in preventing bullying. Take drugs and alcohol: a national poll of more than 7,000 young people shows that 95% said that PSHE education had helped them think about the risks of drugs, and another 80% said that it had helped them avoid them altogether.

Obesity has become the biggest public health crisis facing the UK and, indeed, the National Health Service. It is no good saying that we should educate children about healthy food if we do not include schools in addressing the issue. The recent high-profile child abuse cases again show how important it is to keep children and young people safe by developing their knowledge, skills and confidence. PSHE education provides the opportunity to explore these issues in detail and offers the first line of defence against violence and abuse. Interestingly, the youth democracy group, Bite the Ballot, carried out a survey of 5,000 young people. Those who took part in the survey said that there was a lack of attention paid to these issues in school. The organisation has put its money where its mouth is and recommends in its published youth manifesto,

“raising awareness, encouraging responsibility and promoting the wellbeing of young people in society”

through the enhancement of PSHE in schools.

The good news is that in the most recent Ofsted inspection, which covered an albeit small sample of schools, PSHE education was judged to be “good” or “outstanding” in three-quarters of the schools visited, and at least “satisfactory” in all but one of the schools surveyed. Among the issues raised was that parents were rarely consulted about their children’s PSHE education. I think that they should be consulted about it. However, good practice included schools using peer-mentoring schemes whereby pupils were trained to use their skills to support their classmates. The most effective model seen was one in which discrete, regular PSHE lessons were supplemented with cross-curricular activities. PSHE must be part of every pupil’s schooling. It should be part of initial training programmes and of the Ofsted inspection framework. In this way we can ensure that our young people are best equipped to face the problems and challenges that no doubt will confront them in their future years.

National Curriculum

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for giving us the opportunity to discuss this important matter. I want to speak as a primary teacher on the primary school curriculum. The clue is in the title: “draft”. It is a draft, and this is the opportunity for us to give our own views. All of us, probably, have been bombarded by different organisations claiming all sorts of concerns. We only have to look back to the 1980s when the only subject that was legally required to be taught at primary level was religious education. Then there was the scandal of the William Tyndale school, and of course Mr Baker—now the noble Lord, Lord Baker—with his national curriculum of core and foundation subjects. It is to his credit that a lot of that is still in place and that many of the subject parts are there.

However, the most important thing of course about a curriculum is that it has to give teachers the opportunity to teach. You can have the best national curriculum in the world but unless you have high-quality inspiring teachers, nothing else really matters. Perhaps we will come to history in a moment, but that reminds me of a quote from Alan Bennett, the author of “The History Boys”:

“Teachers need to feel they are trusted. They must be allowed some leeway to use their imagination; otherwise teaching loses all sense of wonder and excitement”.

I welcome a slimmed-down national curriculum and also the opportunity for education to be broad and balanced. We do not want a curriculum, as currently, of 150 pages but do want the opportunity for teachers to flourish. A slimmed-down national curriculum gives teachers more freedom to adapt their lessons to children in their class and local circumstances.

I said at the beginning that no doubt there will be lots of people and organisations giving their own opinion. Perhaps surprisingly, I want to congratulate the people who put together this draft; they have done a first-rate job. There are things in this that I am very satisfied with. With regard to the core subjects, I like the focus on content and stretching, particularly for achieving pupils. I do not subscribe to this nonsense about, “Why are we insisting that children at age 11 should know their multiplication tables up to 12?”. It is part of mathematics to know your tables. I do not subscribe to this nonsense that perhaps there is too much reliance on spelling and punctuation. My goodness, English is about spelling and punctuation. It is about oracy and being able to recite a poem. It is about reading for pleasure.

Then we look at languages. I have sat on a Select Committee looking at how SMEs can be encouraged to export more, and one of the key parts of that report said that we should be teaching languages in our schools. The best way to teach languages is with young children. There was a pilot in my home town of Liverpool where we started teaching languages to four and five year-olds, and the results were spectacular. Once this curriculum has bedded in, perhaps we could visit that at some later stage. My other concern is that perhaps we are being a bit restrictive on the languages that we are teaching. We need to look at other languages, particularly those of the developing world.

I like the notion of PSHE being there. I am concerned that citizenship should be part of key stage 2 as well. I am delighted that swimming is an integral part of PE, and about music and dance. Using the local environment in science may answer the concerns of the Woodland Trust.

I am concerned about sex education. Why do we have this view that we should not teach sex education to key stage 2 pupils? I do not know. I teach it to key stage 1 pupils. It needs to be natural. Some of the girls at primary school will be starting their periods, and they need to know about sex education. It should not be left until key stage 3.

There has been a lot of fuss about climate change. Actually, I think that climate change is clearly there as part of the mandatory science curriculum, but if there are concerns then let us address them. Then there is history, but I have one minute left to speak so I will come back to that on another occasion.

Teaching cannot be prescriptive. Different teachers use different methods to develop children. If this is a national curriculum, why is it not national? Why are 60% of our schools not going to be using it? I am talking about academies and free schools. If we have a national curriculum, surely it should be national.

My party has argued for years for a shorter, more focused curriculum. We are ambitious for all our children. That is why I believe that our children should have the chance to work on content that is as stretching as those in the best-performing countries. It is our teachers who know the most effective way to teach an individual child in their class. The curriculum respects the professionalism of teachers on the front line by giving them more freedom to do what is best for the pupils in their class.