Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 20th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 91 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. Helping children to understand the different opportunities and career paths that might be open to them, what sort of work they involve and how to pursue them is one of the most important tasks for schools to undertake—in partnership with parents and employers.

It is therefore disappointing that the Bill says so little about careers education, information, advice and guidance. The schools White Paper in March included commitments about careers education that do not appear in the Bill, such as the one covered by Amendment 91 on launching a new careers programme for primary schools in areas of disadvantage and the one on improving professional development for teachers and leaders on careers education, including strengthening understanding of apprenticeships and technical routes.

The importance of starting careers education in primary schools was recognised in the 2017 Careers Strategy. Its aim has been well described by the Careers & Enterprise Company, CEC, which has done so much valuable work in promoting and supporting careers education. It states:

“Career-related learning in primary schools is about broadening pupils’ horizons, challenging stereotypes and helping them develop the skills and sense of self that will enable them to reach their full potential.”


The CEC has conducted a number of research studies and pilot programmes both to demonstrate the effectiveness of primary careers education in achieving these aims and to establish what approaches work best in practice. From these studies it is clear that there is not only a clear appetite for careers education in primary schools but growing evidence that such education has a positive impact on overall school engagement and attainment, raises pupils’ aspirations, enhances their motivation and helps to clarify their life goals and break down biases about the world of work. There is plenty of good experience, best practice and resources to draw on, such as the CEC’s report What Works? Career-related Learning in Primary Schools, the Career Development Institute’s Career Development Framework: Handbook for Primary Schools, and the Teach First report that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, referred to.

I strongly support this amendment but ideally I would like it to be extended, with a requirement that the delivery of a careers programme within the framework required by proposed new subsection (1) to be inserted by the amendment should be mandatory for all primary schools. There are three questions I ask the Minister in responding to this amendment. First, what are the Government’s plans to ensure that all primary schools have a careers programme in line with the Gatsby benchmarks? Secondly, how will they ensure that adequate resources and facilities are available to deliver these plans, including not just financial assistance for disadvantages schools but an adequate pipeline of fully trained and qualified career guidance professionals, as well as careers leaders in schools? Thirdly, what action will they take to ensure that all teachers learn about careers education as part of their training?

I also support Amendment 158, which sets out a number of subjects which should be a mandatory feature of every school’s curriculum, including digital skills, financial literacy and life skills. In my view, one of these life skills should be first aid training, which I shall say more about, noble Lords will probably be relieved to hear, when we get to Amendment 167. It always astonishes me that skills such as these, which are so vital to everyone, and which schools are ideally placed to teach, are not taught as a matter of course. Digital literacy in particular is rapidly becoming a category of functional skills complementary to, if not on a par with, literacy and numeracy. This was suggested by the House of Lords Select Committee on Digital Skills in 2015, which pointed out that

“Digital literacy is an essential tool that underpins other subjects and almost all jobs.”


I support the other amendments in this group, including the amendment on British values introduced by my noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries, and Amendment 171I tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Chapman and Lady Wilcox, to make work experience mandatory—to which I add only that it needs to be high-quality work experience.

If we are looking for the Schools Bill to help create an education system that is designed to meet the growing needs of the future, it should ensure that all young people are taught the subjects listed in Amendment 158, are made aware of the values set out in Amendment 168, undertake high-quality work experience as required by Amendment 171I and are helped to start thinking about their own career aspirations and potential from primary age onwards, in line with Amendment 91. I hope all these requirements and amendments will find their way into the Bill.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Shipley and the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, on Amendment 91, to which I added my name, to ensure that careers education is supported in primary schools. It is really important that young people are introduced to a range of careers before they become convinced that some jobs are boys’ jobs and some are for girls. We need women engineers, firefighters, police and military officers, just as we need men to become nurses, teachers, hairdressers and carers. If very young children are encouraged to see where their interests lie, it will serve them well later on.

There was a wonderful programme—I do not know if it is still going—called Drawing the Future, where primary children drew their ambitions. One eight year-old girl had drawn a very accurate picture of an RAF Hawk aircraft and written “When I grow up, I want to be an RAF Red Arrows pilot”—no matter that the Red Arrows have hardly ever had women; that did not daunt her. What a wonderful aspiration. She and the other prize-winners were then greeted by an appropriate adult in their chosen field, and an elegant woman pilot appeared to give her a prize and talk to her about her aspirations.

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[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, in supporting all these amendments I add my support for Amendment 171R, which my noble friend Lady Wilcox will speak to from the Labour Front Bench at the end of the debate.

This is a very good means to rescue the missing third of children. This is the large number of children who are capable of further education but never get to the starting point for a variety of reasons. Prejudice and discrimination play a part, for instance in the case of Gypsies, Travellers, Roma, boat workers and the children of showmen. It is really important that schools get ahead with this kind of arrangement.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, given the way in which she champions the Roma community.

I support all the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Shipley and those from the Labour Front Bench. They indicate the important role of further education colleges in our education system. They link to the demand for young people in schools to be aware of all the possible programmes of learning available in colleges at an early enough stage to be able to make informed choices about future work and study opportunities. It is really important that colleges be funded at the same level as schools and that college teachers and tutors should be paid at the same level. It is quite wrong that college pay should be lower than school pay.

Amendments 171A and 171B would ensure better continuity of education. Too often, FE has been the forgotten element in our education system, but it is a vital part of the options available to young people, as it spans school, vocational options and university provision. I hope the Minister will be able to reassure us of the value the Government place on the FE sector, and perhaps indicate the parts of the Augar review—whatever has happened to that?—which concern FE that the Government intend to implement.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, we support the principle of Amendment 171B. There are currently many barriers to further education institutions working effectively with academies and MATs, and it is apposite that this is being raised. Funding further education appropriately continues to be a prime issue, as noted by several noble Lords. Schools are more often part of the solution, not the problem, so we need a concerted, cross-government commitment to improving the life chances of young people in our most marginalised and deprived communities and addressing the root causes of underperformance, as noted by my noble friend Lady Whitaker.

Our Amendment 171R obliges the Secretary of State to consult on and establish access to further education for all schoolchildren aged 14 to 16 within one year of the Bill’s enactment. We understand that the Minister has discussed the matter of academies working effectively with FE organisations, and I wondered whether she could update the House on any progress made on identifying and unblocking the barriers to working together.