Schools: Gardening

Debate between Baroness Fookes and Lord Nash

Monday 24th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness is quite right about the therapeutic benefits of gardening for children. I know that the RHS—I pay tribute to the noble Baroness for her ambassadorship—has a great campaign in schools for this. That campaign now has more than 32,000 schools and organisations engaged, including 68% of primaries and 78% of secondaries, reaching 6 million children. As far as Ofsted is concerned, we do not want to load it up with too many specific, narrow requirements, but school inspectors consider the breadth and depth of the school curriculum and its impact on children. Inspectors will note where a school’s use of outdoor space has a positive impact. They also expect schools to provide rich and varied extra-curricular activities, which may well include gardening.

[Baroness Fookes (Con)]

My Lords, while warmly endorsing the RHS campaign, I would make another point to my noble friend. Could he encourage teachers, particularly career teachers, to look favourably upon the many interesting educational developments that come from studying horticulture at a much greater level? There are many of these amazing careers open, but very often we find that teachers downgrade them. That annoys me enormously.

[Lord Nash]

My noble friend is right that there are many good careers in horticulture, landscape gardening, gardening et cetera. We invested heavily in enhancing the careers provision in schools through our Careers & Enterprise Company. I know that this is something it has looked at, and that many schools take this quite seriously. Indeed, at Cambridge special school in Hammersmith pupils do a BTEC in land-based studies using city farm space attached to the school. This has been very beneficial to many graduates’ careers.

Independent Schools: Teacher Training

Debate between Baroness Fookes and Lord Nash

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree with the noble Baroness, and that is why we have focused teacher training on school-led training. After all, even for the PGCE, 65% of the nine months of training takes place in school. It is acknowledged that in school is the place to learn to teach. As I say, people acknowledge that it takes many years practising in school to become a fully expert teacher.

[Baroness Fookes (Con)]

My Lords, I am all for excellent, first-class training, but what are the Government doing to encourage first-class recruits into the training profession who can fully take advantage of the training offered?

[Lord Nash]

We have bursary schemes of up to £30,000 for recruits in maths and science and up to £25,000 in modern foreign languages. Since 2010, the number of teachers with a 2:1 or better has gone up from 63% to 75%. This year, we have the highest number of teachers entering ITT with a first than ever before, at 18%.

Childcare Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Fookes and Lord Nash

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fookes (Con)]

My Lords, I hope that the House and the Minister will forgive me if I intervene briefly as the chairman of the regulatory powers committee. I accept that it was a hard-hitting report; none the less, I think that it was a fair one. On the other hand, I welcome my noble friend the Minister’s offer to postpone Report stage, and the various ways in which he is trying to put right what I think must be accepted as a mistake. However, I think that all this could have been avoided if one of two ways had been followed by the Government in this matter—either by introducing a draft Bill, where all the details could have been fleshed out, or by the time-honoured method of introducing a Green Paper for consultation, followed by a White Paper setting out broadly the regulations and Bill that they wanted to see. In those cases, we would have had no worries at all.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords across the House for expressing their support for this extended provision. I have already commented on the Delegated Powers Committee’s report and our gratitude to that committee, and the fact that we will reflect very carefully on its findings and bring forward any appropriate amendments on Report. Regulations will not be available until after Report but we will report by then on the findings of the funding review. We will have evidence from the pilots in 2016, before the provision starts in earnest in 2017. We certainly take the report of the Select Committee on Affordable Childcare extremely seriously. We are studying it in great detail and look forward to discussing the details of the Bill with its members on and off the Floor of the House.

The Bill is very clear on what it sets out to achieve. It places a duty on the Secretary of State to make available 30 hours of free childcare for working parents. That pledge was in the Conservative Party manifesto at the general election and is similar to what was in the Labour Party’s manifesto. I make no apology for the fact that we are getting on with delivering that pledge. The parents want it, the sector wants to know where it is and is, indeed, pregnant with anticipation for this provision. We have already had 500 responses to the funding review call for evidence. Of course we want to work with the House and our stakeholders to make sure we get the delivery right. I know that there is a lot of good will around the House to help us achieve this and I look forward to working together to do that. Taking all those points into account, I hope that we can now proceed to Committee.