School Curriculum: PSHE

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

As with other areas of the curriculum, PSHE and citizenship are not explicitly covered in the school curriculum inspection framework. However, in reporting, inspectors must consider how the school is meeting the needs of the range of pupils and pupils’ SMSC and cultural development to help to prepare them for life in modern Britain. Inspectors will also look at how effectively schools engage with parents in the development of their SMSC policy.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, the Education Select Committee, as the noble Lord will know, recently reported that PSHE requires improvement in 40% of schools, that the situation appears to have got worse over time, and that young people are consistently reporting that the sex and relationship education that they receive is inadequate. Surely the Minister is showing a large degree of complacency about this. Perhaps making PSHE statutory is, indeed, a simple answer.

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness feels very strongly about it, but the Labour Party had 13 years to make it statutory and did not do so. We are currently considering the findings of the Education Select Committee report. We have launched a communications campaign to promote the selection of high-quality resources via our social media sites. They include PSHE Association programmes of study, “Sex and Relationships Education for the 21st Century” and various other products.