Education Bill

Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 88 and to speak to Amendments 89 and 90 in my name. They are copied, with some small changes, from three clauses in the Children Schools and Families Bill 2010, which were dropped from the Bill before it became an Act. As I said when the deletion was debated on the 7 April 2010, these clauses would have,

“given children the high quality PSHE for which they have long asked, which they deserve and to which they have a right under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child”.—[Official Report, 7/4/10; col. 1578.]

Noble Lords may recall the great distress of many of us when these provisions were dropped. They had been well thought out, had been consulted upon widely and had broad support. After they had been deleted from the Bill, a number of organisations, including the Youth Parliament, signed a statement making it clear that they would not give up the fight. Many of your Lordships, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Gould and Lady Massey, vowed to do the same on behalf of young people. This is not a party matter. It is a matter of strong principle and belief and I approach it in that spirit.

These amendments make PSHE part of the foundation curriculum in all schools receiving funding from the state, including the rapidly increasing number of academies, for children throughout the age range. The courses must adhere to certain important principles; that is, the information must be accurate and balanced, appropriate to the age, religion and cultural background of the children, promote equality, accept diversity and emphasise the importance of rights and responsibilities. Who could argue with that? These matters can be taught in a way that reflects the school's religious character. Guidance will secure that children learn about the nature of various adult relationships and their role in the bringing up of children, where we know that stable relationships are important.

In these amendments I have made two changes from the original, which I hope will have the effect of attracting wider support for the measure in this revised form. I have removed the clause that would have removed the parent's right to withdraw their child. Frankly, not many parents use it and I do not see why that should get in the way of the majority of children getting better PSHE education. The other thing I have done is to take four elements of the curriculum and make them voluntary for children at Key Stage 1. They are drugs, alcohol and tobacco education, sex and relationship education, personal finance education and careers and business education. Many schools will feel they want to include these elements, in an age-appropriate way, for younger children, and they are free to do that. However, I feel we can leave that to their judgment.

The reason I wish to make PSHE compulsory in all schools is to ensure that all children receive it and to give parents more confidence in it by improving the quality of delivery. This would be done by improving teacher training, assessment and inspection if the subject was taken more seriously by schools and by Ofsted. Many children tell us that the quality of the PSHE they receive is poor and that it does not equip them for their future lives. A survey of 800 young people carried out by the National Children's Bureau found that nearly half felt they had not learnt all they needed to know about HIV. This can be life-saving knowledge and must be taught in a social context, not just teaching the bare scientific facts in a biology lesson. I understand that the report on this matter by the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, to be published shortly, will strongly support my position on this.

I strongly believe that the job of schools is to help young people become life-ready, not just job-ready or higher education-ready. Children may not go on to get first-class degrees but they will all have families, relationships, friends, personal finances, responsibility for their own health and safety, personal money and jobs. Good PSHE supports all these things. Just as importantly, PSHE also supports academic learning and develops the capabilities that young people need to flourish in life and in work. Once they leave school, no one else will do this, so it is vital.

There are other reasons. Children, young people and their parents want PSHE; many surveys have shown that. It promotes their health, well-being and personal safety. Goodness knows, they live in a world where safety is often threatened and there are many threats to good health. PSHE also helps the school to promote the social, moral, cultural and spiritual development of its pupils and links up well with RE, as well as with arts and cultural education.

I see that the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, tries to achieve much the same thing, and I congratulate her on her tenacity in this regard. The amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, also has merit but the matters about which she is concerned could easily be taught in the health part of PSHE.

The White Paper that preceded the Bill recognised that children can benefit enormously from high-quality PSHE. That was a most welcome statement. Since then, the Government have announced an independent review of the curriculum where PSHE is not included in the remit of the expert panel. I would like to ask the Minister how the Secretary of State would respond if the expert panel reported that it felt that PSHE should be part of the national curriculum. Would he accept its recommendation? It is a widely held view among teachers that all children should receive this education, and many members of the expert panel are teachers.

At the same time, the Government have announced an internal review of PSHE—or at least I believe they will soon. Why have these two reviews been separated? Have decisions already been made about the fate of PSHE? In the light of the enormous body of opinion that PSHE is a vital element of the education of every child, why have the Government not seen fit to include it in the remit of their independent advisers? When the internal review concludes, as it most certainly will, that the quality of PSHE is terribly patchy and many children are being let down, what do the Government plan to do about it? Will they grasp the nettle and put this subject where it belongs, in the core compulsory part of the curriculum, and fulfil the right of every child? I beg to move.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, on her rowing exploits today—even though I understand that we lost—and on her speech, as well as on providing more or less a whole PSHE syllabus in her amendment. I agree that this is not a single-party, but an all-party, issue and always has been. All parties have spoken on this, including from the Bishops’ Bench, with some support for her amendment. My Amendment 98, as the noble Baroness says, is fairly similar, but I want to tweak it a bit. I will say why in a minute.

Like the noble Baroness, I ask the Minister yet again about the details of the internal review. With the delay of the review we are sending the message to teachers, parents and pupils that this is not important. The review was announced eight months ago yet we still do not know what is happening with it. We ought to know.

We know enough about the subject area of PSHE to be able to do a quick review of it. We should not be denying young people access to the information and skills that they need to be human beings and to have knowledge about their own bodies. Supported by information and skills, they will learn about this.

We know that young people want PSHE on the curriculum and that parents support it. Only something like 0.2 per cent of parents ever withdraw their children from anything related to it. We know from surveys that many young people learn about, for example—

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

I am sorry, my Lords, there is a Division in the Chamber.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

Do I have to start again then?

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

I leave that up to the noble Baroness.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

Before we continue, we have been given notice that some noble Lords are having difficulty in hearing the proceedings. It seems that a mobile phone is interfering not only with the loop in here but also with other equipment. I would ask noble Lords not just to put their mobile phones on silent, but to turn them off. Thank you.

We shall resume with the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, on Amendment 88.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

I will refrain from testing noble Lords on what I said before the Division. I was merely agreeing with my noble friend—she is my friend, but not in that sense—the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, in her amendments. I will say simply that parents and pupils support PSHE and that it is for the benefit of young people.

Sometimes schools provide the only source of information for young people on these issues. Parents may feel that they cannot provide it and, indeed, welcome the fact that someone else is giving their children this information. There will be more on that in a minute. Times change and the world has become increasingly complex. Years ago, who could have predicted a pandemic on the scale of HIV infection? I salute the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, on his courage and determination in raising awareness of the issue—in the face of much opposition at the time—and on his continued support through his committee. I see that awareness of HIV has now dropped and that young people between the ages of 16 and 24 make up 12 per cent of all new diagnoses. That is worrying.

We should also be concerned about other health issues such as teenage pregnancy, obesity, drugs, smoking, alcohol use and so on. I have read that we are in danger of facing an obesity pandemic, largely due to inappropriate diet. But these health issues are only part of the story. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, PSHE aims to foster good relationships with friends, parents and others. It aims to increase self-awareness and self-respect through an exploration of values and aspirations. It is known that young people who have good relationships along with a strong set of values and aspirations tend to be those who do not get pregnant or take drugs, and have a more confident body image.

Teaching has come a long way. I will not regale the Minister again with the full story of my own sex education when we—the girls, that is—had to knit a uterus. I would say only that it put me off knitting. I remember—

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I hope the noble Baroness will forgive me. I just wanted to say that the noble Baroness did tell me the story about the knitted uterus when we completed the Academies Bill. The Bill team then kindly presented me with a knitted uterus in honour of the noble Baroness.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

It was not as good as mine. I remember a story told by a very humorous Roman Catholic nun. She was on a health education course with me some years ago. She said that she had been told to say that a girl should, when she danced with a boy, have the width of a telephone directory between them and that, if she got into difficulty, she should yell, “Stop it! I am a young Ursuline”. Incidentally, some excellent PSHE education takes place in Catholic schools, to which I shall come in a minute.

So I say yes to the amendments, but I want some modification. The notion of what I call the spiral curriculum gets lost in the amendments. By spiral curriculum, I mean teaching an issue very simply when a child is young and going into more detail as the child matures. Young children are able to grasp what foods are good for them and which are not without going into detail of nutritional bases and chemical formulae. Young children can explore the notion of friendships and good, respectful relationships without details of sex—they would not grasp them anyway, and that would be inappropriate teaching.

I remember the story of a little boy asking his mother where he came from. She thought, “Right, this is the teaching moment”, and went into stories about daddy's seeds and mummy’s seeds meeting. After a while, the little boy said, “Yes, but did I come from Birmingham or Luton?”. When I was teaching my two year-old grandson to play cricket, I did not toss a Michael Holding fast ball at him first thing: they were gentle lobs. Then they got faster. My point is that I would not exclude any stage of education from certain teaching; I would make the teaching suitable to the child and then build on what had been learnt. That is why a curriculum of PSHE is necessary—just like in maths or English—which builds on knowledge and skills that children learn gradually.

The other area where I have some difficulty with the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, is in paragraphs (7) to (11) concerning faith schools and SRE. Although faith schools will still be required to teach SRE, they are exempted from teaching it in a balanced way which promotes equity and diversity. The amendment would give faith schools the right to allow the tenets of religion to override the principles that must guide the teaching of SRE in other maintained schools. That could lead to narrower teaching. The amendment tabled by me and my noble friends Lord Knight and Lady Gould would not prevent faith schools teaching SRE in ways that reflect their religious character, but it would guarantee pupils a right to teaching about all aspects of PSHE.

To return to Roman Catholic nuns, I have talked to many of them on courses. They say, “We can be very clear about our boundaries in what we teach in personal, social and health education. It does not mean that we cannot talk about contraception, abortion, homosexuality and what they mean. It means that we must give the perspective of our faith on those issues”. How sensible. That is all I am looking for.

We all have a particular perspective on all sorts of issues. We can make that perspective clear to young people. However, they should be given full and comprehensive education. I am a humanist, but I believe that young people should be taught about different faiths and cultures. Otherwise, we are in the dangerous territory of indoctrination—a word disliked by my noble friend Lord McAvoy. Indoctrination is not education. Education seeks to bring out the best in young people.

I say to the Minister: please say yes to the principle of having PSHE as a statutory right for all pupils of whatever age or faith. Let us get the appropriate curriculum and teaching sorted out.

[Lord McAvoy]

Can my noble friend give us a definition of what she considers to be education and what she considers to be indoctrination?

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

I certainly can. If the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, were here, she would give the example of a particular school where they learned the Koran for about 80 per cent of the curriculum, and very little else. I think that is indoctrination. Education should consider all aspects of a particular faith, of other faiths, of personal, social and health education, without restriction. Trying to persuade young people to adhere to a particular thing, which they may not be ready to adhere to anyway, may influence them in unfortunate ways.

[Lord McAvoy]

I am grateful to my noble friend for that clarification. I am sure she is fed up with me, but perhaps I could test her patience further. She considers indoctrination to be a set percentage of the curriculum by a Catholic school, for instance. Does she not accept that parents choose to send their children to Catholic schools or a particular faith school? I cannot grasp why people making legislation should restrict people’s choices. People are not dragged into these faith schools. People choose to send their children to these faith schools.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, with all due respect, I think my noble friend is misunderstanding me. I am not saying that parents should not send their children to the school of their choice. All I am saying is that, as a parent, I would not wish my child to have his or her education limited to a particular doctrine or creed or particular way of teaching or particular aspects of teaching. I would want my child to have a very broad education. Earlier I gave the example of a Roman Catholic school where the nuns say they will teach in a broad sense but within the ethos of their own faith. That is fine by me.

[Baroness Turner of Camden]

My Lords, I support wholeheartedly what my noble friend Lady Massey has just said, particularly in relation to children learning about different faiths and so on and that being part of general education. Amendment 85B is very good and extremely well intentioned. The only problem I have is with its wording. Subsection (7) outlines the principles of PSHE, which of course are absolutely admirable, that it “endeavours to promote equality”, of course; “encourages acceptance of diversity”, of course; and,

“emphasises the importance of both rights and responsibilities”.

Of course we all agree with that; it is absolutely right. However, subsection (8) says:

“Subsections (4) to (7) are not to be read as preventing the governing body or head teacher of a school within subsection (9)”—

that is, schools with a religious character,

“from causing or allowing PSHE to be taught in a way that reflects the school’s religious character”.

That gives me a problem because subsection (7) could lead us into difficulty when it says, “endeavours to promote equality”. We are all aware that there are religions that, if you look at their precepts, are in dispute with the equality law that we have, and we want all citizens of this country to accept the rights that the equality law gives them. That sort of wording might lead us into some difficulty.

I do not have the same problem with Amendment 98, which has just been spoken to by my noble friend Lady Massey. Frankly, I would prefer that wording and that amendment to the wording in the amendment that is presently before us. However, I support the feeling behind both amendments, I think that it is right, and I congratulate both noble Baronesses on their commitment to these ideas, which I wholeheartedly support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness O'Cathain]

I support the Education Bill and particularly the determination to have a slimmed-down national curriculum. In the fascinating debate on Monday, the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, was right to advocate,

“a balanced education with a minimum core”,—[Official Report, 11/7/11; col. GC 224.]

which allows room for the professionalism of teachers. I strongly approach that approach.

In the same debate on Amendment 83, the noble Lord, Lord Knight, who unfortunately is not in his place and we know why, expressed the wish that children would get up in the morning wanting to go to school. The aim should be good teaching on core subjects that encourages all pupils to feel involved and indeed excited by a love of learning and increasing their knowledge. Maths would even bring alive the dreary subject of economics—I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Peston, is no longer with us. History could be expanded to show how social structures evolve, informing pupils on how to react to differing situations. What better way to develop good communication skills than to learn lessons from the best communicators of the past by studying works of the great poets, authors and orators?

However, Amendments 88, 89, 90 and 98 would take us in a completely different direction. As we have heard, their effect would be to expand the curriculum to introduce statutory personal, social, health and economic education for all maintained schools. As we have already heard this evening from the noble Lord, Lord Layard, PSHE is extremely difficult to teach. Now we have a situation: how can we have a slimmed-down curriculum and yet put in it more and more issues that are extremely difficult to teach?

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

PSHE is a subject which, given the ethos and support for it in school, can run across all subjects in the curriculum. That is the focus for it. The noble Baroness is of course perfectly right about communication. However, it needs a core, even if it is a small one, of personal social and health education so that that core can expand into other subjects and be beneficial for the child. There is no denying that if we want good academic results in our schools we have to give a focus to relationships education and young people feeling comfortable with themselves and their own learning abilities.

[Baroness O'Cathain]

I am grateful for that intervention and the noble Baroness is absolutely right that all of that can be taught through the other ways. However, why are we going to duplicate and have a special core subject called personal, social and health education as well as insisting that it is part of the maths curriculum, the English curriculum, the history curriculum and whatever?

My greatest objection is to Amendment 98. If agreed, Amendment 98 would extend sex education to all children from five years of age upwards. I find this deeply concerning and even abhorrent. Many of us were very thankful that the previous Government ran out of time for similar plans before last year’s election. Among other measures, detailed sex education lessons for children as young as five were proposed.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Baroness again. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, is saying they were not and I will leave her to deal with that. What I would like to say—and I did say earlier—is that the curriculum should be appropriate to the age and stage of the child. I gave the example of not lobbing cricket balls fast at my two year-old grandson, but to start slowly. I should not mention the press but this popular newspaper thing about sex education at five is quite inaccurate. Teachers do not do this. Teachers talk about relationships and friendships at five, they do not talk about HIV/AIDS and all the rest of that. It is simply not true.

[Baroness O'Cathain]

That is a marvellous statement that is simply not true, because it is actually said that you want to repeal the statutory requirement that sex education is not taught between the ages of five and seven. This amendment would repeal that statutory requirement. In other words, if you are saying that you want sex education for five to seven year-olds to stay exactly as it is, I have no problem.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McAvoy]

I am delighted to hear the noble Baroness say that she supports the rights of parents. If parents send their children to a particular school, she will obviously support them in that, and she will also support them in ensuring that the ethos of that school is maintained, especially one of a religious nature.

When it comes to the new section in Amendment 90, the difficulty is that I maintain—I will no doubt encourage further contributions with this—that the common threads of the amendments are designed to minimise, damage and gradually remove the religious element of faith schools.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

I am so sorry to interrupt the noble Lord again but I think that he has misunderstood a great deal of what I was saying. I am not trying to damage the ethos of faith schools. I am saying that the ethos of faith schools may well exist but children have the right to know about other faiths. I was talking today to a friend from Northern Ireland who said, “Look at what damage has been done in Northern Ireland by people not learning about other faiths”. I say no more.

[Lord McAvoy]

That is the second time that my noble friend has accused me of misunderstanding her. I fully confess that I have a very limited formal education but I do not have limited intelligence, and it is my responsibility to make a judgment that I see a thread in maybe one or two contributions from my noble friend, seeing as how she has introduced this subject. It is my opinion that there is a common thread to the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and my noble friend that are designed to—I withdraw the word “damage”—minimise or devalue the existence and practice of faith schools.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I will not be quite as brief as the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, but I shall do my best. As she said, it has in many ways been an extremely interesting and engaging debate. At its heart, apart from a few outliers, it boils down to a judgment that one has to reach as to whether the best way forward on addressing these important issues around PSHE, which we all agree need to be addressed, is through the statutory prescriptive route or through a different approach by trying to slim down the statutory provisions and the national curriculum, and leaving more space and opportunity for more skill—words used by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth—for teachers to give children and young people the support that they need. Almost my first debates in this House just over a year ago were about PSHE and faith. Whoever said how tenacious my noble friend Lady Walmsley and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey—with whom I have had many discussions—have been on this subject was absolutely right.

We know that in a recent report on the subject, Ofsted found that PSHE education was good or outstanding in three-quarters of the schools visited and that pupils’ personal development was good in most schools visited and was outstanding in about one-third of the schools. However, that same report also found that there were weaknesses, particularly around sex and relationships education, and in some other areas that we need to find ways of addressing. At heart, therefore, is a generally broad agreement on the ends to which we are working but disagreement about the means.

The Government’s aim is to shrink the curriculum and to leave schools and teachers more time to decide for themselves what to teach—a point of view that received a fair amount of support from a number of noble Lords. Teachers have said that they feel that their professionalism is undermined by the overall degree of prescription to which they have been subjected. By stripping the curriculum back we want to give schools the space they need to offer a rounded education, including of course PSHE.

We know that PSHE covers a range of important areas and schools teach it in a variety of ways. It seems to me right that schools should have the discretion to teach it. They know their children. Different schools have different circumstances, and different kinds of children will need different support from their school. Ofsted has said that the most effective curriculum model seen was one in which discrete, regularly taught PSHE lessons were supplemented with cross-curricular activities. That point has also been raised. We are keen to see good practice being shared with the minority of schools that are not teaching the subject as well. Our priority should be to support schools in their efforts to do better by their pupils. That is why we are carrying out the internal review which we have heard about, which has two main objectives: to consider what should be taught; and to look at how schools can be supported to improve the quality of all PSHE teaching. That may be a new element, different from the work previously carried out by the noble Lord, Lord Knight.

I completely understand the impatience of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and my noble friend to hear from the Government when this fabled review will heave into view. I have been saying for some time to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, that it will be soon or shortly; I think it is very soon or very shortly, and as soon as we are there, I will of course circulate that to all Members of the Committee.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

Does the noble Lord mean that it will be finished soon, or that it will be started start soon?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I know that the noble Baroness is keen that the review should be as short as possible and that she thinks that much of what it covers has already been covered—we have had that discussion before. I hope that it will start soon, and then aim to conclude by the end of the year.

On the points made about sex and relationships education, as part of our review we will determine how we can support schools to improve the quality of their teaching in this area. As I mentioned, Ofsted’s report on the matter says that sex education is one of the weaker aspects of PSHE. This is perhaps a sign that legislation of itself is not a necessarily a guarantee of good quality teaching, since that is the part that is statutory.

On as emergency life support skills are concerned, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, that equipping young people to be able to step in where lives are at stake is extremely important. I know that many schools, and organisations such as the British Heart Foundation and St John Ambulance, do absolutely brilliant work. My own wife is a trained first-aider, something which she needs for the work she does for Riding for the Disabled; so I know how important it is. That is one reason why we are so keen to review the national curriculum: so that the statutory content will take up less of the timetable, which in turn will enable many more schools to get involved in things such as the British Heart Foundation’s Heartstart programme.

We know that there are many things—and my noble friend Lady Walmsley spoke about them with great experience and passion—that pupils need to learn about and can benefit from. We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Layard, who sadly is not in his place, about the link between well-being and the ability to learn. Of course that is true, but attempting to define those things from the centre, and be prescriptive about what schools must teach, removes teachers’ and school leaders’ ability to use their professional judgment.

We had an interesting exchange about inspections. Of course the new school inspection framework will cover the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, was making a point echoed by my noble friend Lord Lucas about the frequency of inspection—we will come on to talk about that under later groups. We will also come back to discuss thematic reviews and the risk assessment process, issues mentioned by my noble friend Lady Perry of Southwark. We know that the majority of schools already deliver good PSHE education, which is not currently a statutory part of the curriculum. I agree that we need to look at how the quality of PSHE teaching can be improved and what its content should be; that is what our review will look into. I know that I will disappoint my noble friend Lady Walmsley who has clear and strong views on this, but with these comments I ask her to withdraw her amendments.