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.

Education: Curriculum, Exam and Accountability Reform

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

As the Secretary of State has said on a number of occasions, the Opposition seem determined to leave the less privileged in this country with a less good education. He has consulted extremely widely. On the accusation that is constantly made of a 19th century education, he has consulted widely with cognitive scientists who will tell you that modern cognitive theory is that knowledge is necessary in order to gain skills. The thinking that you can get skills without knowledge is itself out of date.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I welcome my noble friend repeating the Statement. On these Benches, we want a system where a child can succeed whatever their background. We want fair and rigorous examinations and a broad and balanced curriculum. That is why we welcome the Statement here today. I just wish other Secretaries of State, Ministers and Governments, when they consulted, were prepared to listen to those consultations. In our political system, when Governments listen and modify or change their policies, why do we always refer to it as a U-turn and people going back on what they have said? It is refreshing that when you consult you mean what you say.

I have three questions for my noble friend. Can the Minister confirm that coursework will continue to be a feature of GCSEs where it is essential for the child’s learning? Now that the national curriculum has been slimmed down, does the Minister agree that it should be taught by all schools? The Minister will agree that it is essential that all children leave school with solid literacy and numeracy skills. How will the Minister hold schools to account for their performance in these two subjects?

[Lord Nash]

I thank my noble friend for his remarks. I can confirm that coursework will continue where it is appropriate in the relevant subjects. As the noble Lord knows, the national curriculum does not run in academies and free schools and that policy will not change. The new accountability measure has two parts to it. The one that focuses on English and maths should satisfy his requirements on literacy and numeracy.

Education: Academies and Free Schools

Lord Storey Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, for securing this important debate.

“Our vision is for a highly educated society in which opportunity is more equal for children and young people no matter what their background or family circumstances”.

So proclaims the vision statement in the foyer of the Department for Education, and who could disagree with that? The sad fact is, however, that over the years, social mobility has hardly shifted.

To address the issue of low performance and poor pupil aspiration, particularly in the most deprived communities, the previous Government set up academies. These schools were given extra resources, extra responsibilities and extra freedoms. The coalition Government have accelerated that programme and, in so doing, dramatically increased the number of academies and changed the educational landscape. As a result, we now see a radical change in the English education system: more than half of secondary schools and a growing number of primary schools have become academies, free schools, university technical colleges, studio schools and, of course, local authority schools. In May 2010, there were 203 academies, and by November 2012, there were 2,456 academies. The scale and speed of change has been rapid and raises a number of questions and issues.

First, you can have all the different types of schools in the world, with all the best resources, but in the end, it is the quality of the school leadership and the quality of the teachers and their teaching that make the difference. A child cannot repeat a year if they have had a poor teacher; the pupil or student is the one who suffers. They cannot repeat that year or the study of that subject. That is why I was so pleased to read that the Academies Commission report, published in January this year, highlighted this point. It said, in referring to academies, that there needs to be,

“a forensic focus on teaching and its impact on pupils’ learning so that the gap between the vision for academies and practice in the classrooms is reduced and the words ‘academisation’ and ‘improvement’ become inextricably and demonstrably linked”.

The English education system has undergone continual change in the post-war period, with each incoming Government and Secretary of State wanting to leave their mark. If we have learnt anything about that 30-year change, it is that improvement is likely to be accelerated and sustained if there is broad ownership at local and classroom level. We need to consider carefully the management of schools: with freedom comes responsibility. The Secretary of State cannot and should not micromanage academies from the centre. In a successful academy system, we will see schools supporting and learning from each other. They will operate as a community of schools, each independent, but working best if connected to the rest of the system.

What of local authorities and their involvement in local schooling? As we have seen academies extend and more powers given to local schools, we have seen local authorities reduced considerably in their capacity and involvement. In the Education Bill, they were given a duty of care but, working with them, we need to consider carefully their role in a very different landscape.

I have drawn extensively on the work of the commission. I was delighted to see it raise the need for the establishment of an independent royal college of teachers. The college, pump-primed by the Department for Education, but completely independent of it, could help make the link between research and the classroom more explicit.

Academies are not the panacea for raising performance and pupils’ life chances. The Academies Commission report said that the evidence considered did not suggest that improvement across all academies has been strong enough to transform the life chances of children from the poorest families. There have been some stunning successes among individual sponsored academies and academy chains that have raised expectations of what can be achieved in the most deprived communities. However, it has to be about more: it has to be about the highest quality of teaching, with teachers who are well trained, highly motivated and—dare I say it—well rewarded. It has to be about inspections carried out in a fair and rigorous manner by qualified inspectors with classroom experience. It has to be about self-improvement: schools working together to develop their understanding and expertise and supporting each other. It has to be about all schools having equality of resources and equality of freedoms.

Children: Speech and Language

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

We regard the solution to this issue as a local one. That is why we will be setting up the local offer involving children and young people with SEN and their parents and we will publish details of where parents can find all this available in one place. As young people will have an education, health and social care plan which will be reviewed every year, this will monitor the issues to which the noble Baroness refers.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, the Better Communication Research Programme report looked at speech and language therapy support in schools, and according to the report only 10% of mainstream secondary schools have such support. My noble friend the Minister will be aware that the provision of speech and language therapy throughout the country is very patchy. How can the Government ensure that anybody who needs this service can access it as quickly and efficiently as possible?

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I know that the noble Lord has vast experience in education and I am grateful for his question. We are sharing widely the good practice in the better communications research where speech and language therapists work with teachers and teaching assistants to provide support. He is absolutely right about a divergence in provision around the country and the shortage of funds, but it must be for local authorities and their partners to assess local needs and to make better use of resources so that they are directed where they are needed. Our proposal for a local offer will do this and will put parents and young people at the heart of decisions.

Schools: Pupil Premium

Lord Storey Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

The principle that we are adopting generally in introducing the pupil premium is to leave discretion on how it is spent as much as possible to individual heads because they will know the circumstances of the children for whom they are responsible. However, the noble Baroness is right that those approaches that are working well—which we will discover through the publication online of details of how schools have done, through inspections by Ofsted and through spreading good practice through the education endowment fund—should be spread as widely as possible, with lessons being learnt from them.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that, according to an Ofsted survey of, I think, 300 schools, 50% were using the money effectively and were seeing real changes. How can we ensure that the other 50% are using the money, which we have heard is going up next year, in such an effective way?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My answer makes a similar point. It is important that we learn lessons from the ones that are spending it effectively. We will do that through the work of the Education Endowment Foundation, which was set up specifically to spread good practice and help other schools learn the most effective ways of tackling disadvantage. It is early days, but as more information is published, the fact that from this September schools are having to account for how they have spent their money and what they have spent it on, and demonstrate a linkage between that money and results, will help us achieve the goal of my noble friend Lord Storey.

Education and Training: People with Hidden Disabilities

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, first, I thank everyone who has taken the trouble to put their names down for this debate. I must also declare a series of interests. I am not only dyslexic but vice-president of the British Dyslexia Association and patron of the Adult Dyslexia Organisation, and I work for Microlink, a company that provides support for those with disabilities and of which I am chairman.

When I linked autism and dyslexia and included them in hidden disabilities, the main point that I was trying to make was that anything that is not easily spotted at the start of the educational process, whenever someone chooses to take that, leads to problems if it impedes one’s learning or classroom situation. How early one gets in and identifies the problem is crucial.

I will say only a few words on autism, starting with Asperger’s, for the simple reason that there are many people in the Chamber who know far more about the subject and can talk from greater depth of knowledge than I will ever be able to. Those with Asperger’s, who are on the edge of a spectrum, are often identified later as a result of interaction with other people outside the home when it becomes less difficult to spot. This would be made much easier if someone was trained in the initial stages of education and in the classroom, and indeed if that training was not a limited introduction, to be able to spot it later on as problems start to manifest themselves, often simply because they were not dealt with earlier.

The problems of social interaction—taking things too literally; not being able to communicate properly; non-verbal communication, which is so important even when talking in this Chamber—create other problems if they are not picked up. We must have someone who can recognise these problems and get in earlier. I am really calling for people to be trained throughout the education process to pick these up. Also, education and training are supposed to be lifelong. All conditions for which there is not this embedded knowledge, and even sometimes when there is, are going to be spotted later on in life. Therefore, we must not limit ourselves to training just in the education sector.

I appreciate that the noble Lord, Lord Hill, may find himself having questions directed at him that might go to BIS, to the Department for Work and Pensions, or to the Department of Health—certainly in the case of autism. We had a little exchange earlier in the week when he asked what the best lead department would be to drive something. I suggest that when it comes to some of these conditions, the Department for Education could be of the most benefit, certainly for dyslexics. The basic few examples that I have given for autism and dyslexia are very clearly there.

A good point is dyslexia, because the problem occurs when one starts to use written language. Dyslexia, which I believe means “difficulty with words” in Greek, becomes apparent of course when one starts to learn to read and write. To access all forms of education and training in our society as we are going through, one has to have those two basic skills. If you do not deal with those, you are at an eternal disadvantage.

This situation is getting more prominent—I was about to say worse—for the simple reason that as we formalise our skill base more, measure it and try to support people, there are more and more occasions when you have to write something down or react to written information. Whether it is on paper or on the screen, that requirement is always there. There is a greater emphasis on the written paper in the modern driving test, as opposed to the one that I took. I do not have to go on much further because we can all think of examples. That is what we have if we do not deal with the situation for certain people.

It is reckoned that 10% of the population are on the dyslexia spectrum. I think it is 1% for autism. We could have mentioned many other hidden spectrums, such as ADHD, dyspraxia and dyscalculia. We are probably getting up to about 15% without trying. I do not know what that percentage is in every classroom, but it is a very high one, so we must have a degree of knowledge based in that classroom for early intervention.

Why have I brought this matter forward at this present time? It is because we are having a look at the whole special educational needs sector—we are coming down the track. The Government have made proposals. However, I do not know whether this was intentional—I hope that it was not—but the people concerned with these non-obvious disabilities have heard warning bells rung by some of the language that was used. This may be a chance for the Minister to muffle those bells a little in the process of his speech. I refer to things like, “We will concentrate on things and get a whole cross-departmental approach towards making sure that people go through. We will cut down the number of people on the special educational needs register. We will concentrate better”.

Unless we have people with expertise based in the front, identifying the problem, we cannot do these things. Even if we redefine someone with dyslexia as not having a special educational need, because the system can use it, they are still dyslexic, and dyslexic throughout their lives. It is not something that you get rid of; it is a disability and it is to do with the organisation of your brain. It is there for ever, as I know to my cost.

Aside from this, going into my personal history, I wonder how many other people in this Chamber have been congratulated on their improving handwriting on Christmas cards in their forties.

[Lord Storey]

The opposite!

[Lord Addington]

My noble friend says “the opposite”. I look forward to hearing from him later on.

It is something that stays with you, and you have a different developmental pattern. Sir Jim Rose said in his report:

“Dyslexia is a learning difficulty that primarily affects the skills involved in accurate and fluent word reading and spelling … Characteristic features of dyslexia are difficulties in phonological awareness”—

I shall not try to say that twice—

“verbal memory and verbal processing speed … Dyslexia occurs across the range of intellectual abilities”.

There is a great deal more in that vein to be found in the document from Dyslexia Action. It is always there, and you will always have a different learning process, which means that every time you go into a new phase of your educational and training process you will always have the problem. The way in which it is dealt with will change over time, as will the way in which you deal with it and your interactions with other people. That will change under the pressures on you, but it is always there. If we get teachers trained initially and then make sure that others throughout the system have the support and knowledge of what was happening, we will take a huge step forward. We must make sure that the interaction and the different learning process never become a barrier. We must allow people to explain it.

If someone has the condition explained to them, they start to be able to take the appropriate steps to mitigate the condition. If a teacher goes up to a child and says, “You’re not stupid, you’re dyslexic”, that teacher and all other teachers have an infinitely better chance of a positive relationship than they would if they did not identify the problem. You can then go and tell the parents. The dyslexia world is full of the recurring story of parents saying, “My child is dyslexic and I have discovered that I am”. How do people get through life? They will say, “I never take notes—I always ask someone to do it for me”—as a result of having never kept a pen on their person for more than about three seconds at a time. They are dependent on partners, and so on. Those are the success stories.

In our prison population, about 70% or 80% are reckoned to have problems with literacy. Every single assessment of the prison population that has looked at it has come up with the figure of about 50% being in the dyslexia spectrum. If you take on board the idea that if you cannot access education you cannot access training because you cannot go through the process with a technical ability to read and write—and thus you cannot get employment—you have a far greater likelihood of becoming an offender. Asperger’s, I am afraid, is also highly represented. Possibly not communicating as other people do might lead to conflict. It is a very complicated and worrying situation. If you do not get in there early and coherently, it will cause problems.

What do I want done? Sir Jim Rose presented, under the previous Government, a model for the better training of dyslexics within the teacher training programme. You have to make sure that that is used not only in the initial training but throughout the system. Throughout the process of training, it is equally appropriate. The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, might well be able to regale my noble friend on the Front Bench with the long series of meetings that we have had over apprenticeships. The previous Government decided that they would reassure employers about standards in training and said that everyone must pass an English key skills—now functional skills—test. When challenged on this, they said that they would make a change, but I think that it fell through the cracks in the changeover of Governments. All I know is that I have spent the better part of two years chasing around to get those people the same support and help to get an apprenticeship that you currently have to get a degree—or at least for there to be no greater barriers.

At the last meeting I had, it was agreed that assisted technology could probably be used to get through this test. Someone said, “Well, no one has complained about it—we haven’t had one letter or e-mail”. You get that degree of resistance further up. I have had meetings with the Department for Work and Pensions, usually under the last Government. There is nothing new here. They said, “Well, yes, we’ve got people with needs who are long-term unemployed. We should help them”. “How?” “Oh, it’s complicated—we’d have to get more training packages”. “Yes, please do”. The Department for Education is uniquely placed to set a precedent for good training and awareness. That department can drive this. If it cannot, it can at least build the engine and hope that someone else will put their foot on the accelerator.

We must do something here to address the problem. Some 10% of the population with dyslexia are underachieving in many cases, sometimes becoming a drag on our society. The figures for autism might be smaller, but the problem is as profound, man for man, if not more so. We have to try to address the problem, but we will not do so unless we get a greater degree of awareness throughout the system. We have to get agreement. Every time a dyslexic has to deal with a form, they are at a disadvantage. Every time you ask someone to fill in a process that has anything to do with reading and writing, a dyslexic is potentially disadvantaged. We have to make sure that at all these points there is someone there who understands and, when you say, “I am dyslexic”, will understand that slight adaptions should be made. Assistive voice to text and text to voice technology is very old beer now. I have been using it personally for over 12 years. It is now comparatively easy to use. We have a way forward. This is something that could be integrated into the classroom more easily. It need not be that big a problem—all you need is slightly different patterns of dealing with this.

I look forward to hearing from my noble friend when he replies that the Government are taking this on board and that his department is driving this through the whole machinery of government. If it does not do so and merely concentrates on the schools aspect, it will leave people with a wonderful set of skills for one part of their lives and leave them to fall off a cliff the next.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Addington not just for securing this debate but for his passion in making sure at every opportunity that these matters are at the forefront of our consideration. I am sure that his determination will succeed.

I declare an interest as a practising head teacher. I was very mindful of what my noble friend Lady Browning said about young people being labelled in the past. Because of their learning difficulties, they were often regarded by their peers, and sometimes by their professional teachers, as “thick”. From my first teaching job, I remember a teacher who was very keen on literacy and would test every child on their reading age every month. She had a chart on the classroom door with the names of all the children—there were 40 of them then—and their monthly reading age. Because some of the children had learning difficulties—sometimes specific learning difficulties, sometimes global learning difficulties and sometimes dyslexia, although we did not know that at the time—their reading age never moved. Therefore, the teacher would say, in an almost patronising way, “Poor little Michael”, or, “Poor little Dominic”, or whatever their name was. That was not the fault of the teacher but it created huge problems. These were not just learning problems; as was rightly said, it often led to bullying.

This did not just happen in schools. When I was doing my education degree, I vividly remember a very highly regarded lecturer in education almost dismissing dyslexia, saying, “There’s no such thing. It’s just made up. They don’t have dyslexia in China, do they?”. That was often the view at the time. Thank goodness we have moved on.

We then moved on to a period in which we began to understand dyslexia and other learning difficulties but did not know what to do about them. Resources were very limited. It would often be a parent who came into the school and said, “I think my child is dyslexic”. The teacher would say, “Oh yes?”, and would eventually get around to thinking about what might be done about it, but the resources were not there. We have come light years in what we are now able to do. Both the previous Government and this Government have taken enormous steps regarding special educational needs and are to be congratulated on what they have done. That is not to say that there are no further things that we should do.

I give one example of the progress that we have made, which touches my heart. A very close friend of mine has a daughter who has mild cerebral palsy. Although she required a bit of pushing from her parents—she was in the independent sector—she has been supported all the way through her education. She is now at Leeds University, which has been fantastic in supporting her. She obviously has a scribe whenever she is doing exams and so on. When she could not get the work in on time, they said, “Come on, we’ll help you and make sure that’s right”. She repeated one year. This year, she will get her degree and the following year she will do a two-year masters degree. That is something of which, as a nation, we can be duly proud.

The only reason I got involved in this debate is my own personal experience. The previous Government rightly used the phrase, “every child matters”. If we are going to make sure that every child matters, that has to be in everything. I look at my own school and at what we now do. First, we have an ethos that recognises particular special needs issues. On dyslexia, we have a qualified SpLD teacher who is, thanks to government funding, undergoing her masters. She is qualified to diagnose specific learning difficulties. The staff are also trained to identify characteristics of learning difficulties. They then use a checklist and go to the head of special educational needs. If that resource did not exist in schools, we would have to try and buy in a specialist teacher, or we would have to go and get the school psychologist, which would often mean a waiting list of six to 12 months. Having the resource in the school itself, having the staff qualified and trained, makes a huge difference.

What happens when a child is identified as dyslexic? Obviously, we involve the parents. We put together strategies in the classroom. We look at intervention strategies. We look at one-to-one teaching. We look at a multi-sensory programme of teaching. Most of us learn in an auditory or visual way. If a young person is dyslexic, we need to do lots of oral work and what we call “over-learning”—learning strategies to cope.

What do we need to do as a country? Again, I agree with my noble friend Lord Addington and other noble Lords have made the same point. We need to ensure that the training is there. In each school, there ought to be somebody who is fully qualified. That needs to be a crucial, integral part of our initial teacher-training course.

A lot of colleagues will have had information from Dyslexia Action, and the Dyslexia Foundation from my home town. The work that they have done to case study and highlight has been tremendous.

I am grateful to the Minister for always being prepared to listen and give information. I think that he is probably fed up of my Questions, but I have asked him a number of them on dyslexia. They not only show that we understand what needs to be done, but they indentify next steps. The money that has been made available by the Government is to be commended. However, looking at the uptake of funding and the number of people who have taken training places, region by region—I will not embarrass various regions—there are huge regional variations and that gives me cause for concern.

In a recent Question I asked whether the Government would consider asking teaching training providers how many compulsory courses there were and how many optional courses there were. Sadly, we do not hold that information centrally. We need to hold that information. We need to know how many teacher training establishments make this provision, so that we can plug the gaps. We need to get that information.

I agree with my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones that we have made huge progress. I am heartened at what we have heard but I am absolutely sure that progress will continue to be made. With the noble Lord, Lord Hill, a Minister who listens and I am sure is prepared to act and, in the other place, a Minister, Sarah Teather, who believes strongly in special educational needs and early intervention, I am hugely optimistic.

Schools: Dyslexia

Lord Storey Excerpts

Wednesday 7th March 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Storey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that there is adequate diagnostic testing for children with dyslexia in primary schools.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, early identification of literacy difficulties, including dyslexia, relies on the regular monitoring of children’s progress. We are investing in specialist dyslexia support for teachers, including initial teacher training, to help identify dyslexic pupils earlier. The new year one phonics screening check to be introduced this June will identify children who have not acquired phonic skills to the expected standard and help flag up those who may have additional needs, including dyslexia, and who would benefit from further support.

[Lord Storey]

I am grateful to my noble friend for that Answer. As he rightly says, early identification of children with dyslexia is hugely important. However, he will be equally aware that very few primary teachers are qualified to carry out diagnostic testing, so that when referrals take place, they take a long time to sort out. Will he consider including as part of initial primary training a unit of training that is linked to the diagnostic assessment of dyslexia?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree with my noble friend about the importance of teacher training in order to address these issues and he is quite right to say that we need to make sure that there are teachers with those skills in primary schools. The new standards we are setting for QTS include an emphasis on the ability to teach a range of special needs not specifically around dyslexia. I understand the particular point he makes, but so far we have opted to take a broader approach and then support teachers with improved materials and networks of either teaching schools or charities. However, I take his point about the importance of making sure that primary schools have the skills that they need.