Sharia-compliant Student Finance
Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I cannot give the noble Lord a firm assurance on that, but I can say that we continue to work through the complex range of policy, legal and system issues that will need to be resolved in order to develop and eventually launch an ASF product. We should not underestimate the scale of complexity here. We are trying to replicate a system of student finance that delivers the same results as now, whereby students do not receive any advantage nor suffer any disadvantage through applying for ASF.
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (Con)
Will the Minister assure your Lordships that this new Government will do everything possible to open the gates as widely as possible to students from all over the world? As noble Lords know, I am particularly keen that that should happen for students from Iraq, the Middle East and silk route countries. I would really welcome that endorsement. We need the students and they really love being here.
Schools: British Sign Language
Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne
While welcoming the Minister’s answer, I wonder whether he would be willing to have a wider consultation, in which I personally could be involved. He may be aware that only 27,000 of Britain’s 11.5 million deaf people use sign language, and that the remainder need a whole lot more speech therapy, which includes both sorts of communication. The difficulty of sign language is that it does not create sentences, let alone paragraphs and pages, so children using it cannot enter the national curriculum. Investment in speech therapy is surely the way forward, because it enables children and young people to speak and communicate, visually and orally.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I appreciate the detail that my noble friend has given. I would like to add to it, because there are complexities here. For example, GCSEs in other languages require students to demonstrate the four skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening; in BSL there are only two skills: production and reception. We also need to address the question of whether the GCSE would be aimed at students for whom BSL is their first language or at those learning it from scratch. This will have a significant impact on the level of difficulty at which it is pitched.