Education: Personal, Social and Health Education

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I add my sincere thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for having secured this debate, which is extremely important.

Our schools are now labouring against a much bigger problem than in the past. In the days when we went to school, figures relating to society were far better. Just to quote a few, the UK now has the highest rate of family breakdown in the western world and only just over half—55%—of 15 year-olds live with both their birth parents. That is a huge social change. Children are considerably more likely to have a television in the bedroom than a father living at home. We also know from good, sound research that 80% of variability in pupil achievement is attributable to so-called pupil factors, particularly family influence, so schools are struggling against a huge backdrop of problems that children may be bringing in with them, which are not the children’s fault.

I will touch briefly on emergency first aid, which has already been covered by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and the noble Baroness, Lady Masham. I cannot but join wholeheartedly with their comments. If there was one thing that every child should learn, it would be the two hours of CPR. The children are very likely to be on the scene when the person concerned drops dead. Even though there is only a 15% chance of success, if unsuccessful, they can in their grief be consoled that they did everything they could.

I know of a woman, now in her 60s, who in her late teens found her father dead in the chair, and she has never recovered from the fact that she did not know what to do. She did not even know how to try. She just dived for a telephone and waited, and of course her father was dead. If only she had known to give him one thump on the chest, she might have felt better about the whole of her life. But it is not just about CPR. It is about coping with bleeding, choking, fractures—the real basics. Young people are the ones at risk of those; they are the ones at risk off falling of a horse, falling down a cliff face and so on.

As regards the life skills with which we are trying to equip children, they are about relationships. We are not dealing with only the nuts and bolts, if you like, of sex; we are dealing with the whole business of relating and coping with all the emotions that go on. Sadly, we have seen a rise in the number of girls reporting non-consensual sex from 28% in 2002 to 38% in 2008. Something is wrong and we cannot ignore it.

We also have to help children to cope with all those difficult emotions. EU Kids Online looked at children’s concerns on the internet and found that 22% are concerned about pornography and 18% about violent content. We know that between 1995-96 and 2005-06 there was a 66% increase in the hospitalisation of 12 to 14 year-olds from for self-harm. We have the data from the report on child well-being in rich countries and we do not do well. The United Kingdom does appallingly on teenage fertility rates. We rank badly for alcohol being drunk twice a week and children having used cannabis in the last 10 months. But we also do badly on children being involved in a physical fight and in being bullied at school at least once in the past couple of months. All of those are negative influence on children’s emotional development.

Unless we grasp the nettle, tackle this, make it part of our statutory provision and value the need to teach children all the aspects of thinking and relationships, we will continue to fail, as we seem to be doing now. I ask the Minister: where is the Government’s teenage strategy? What is happening to that group who appear to be invisible in policy?