Education: Pupils and Young People

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

I know that I have a very short period in which to speak in the gap and I am very grateful for that opportunity. At the end of this impressive debate, I should like to make two points that I hope the Minister will be able to take into account. My first point concerns buildings in relation to the delivery of excellent education, which I thought would be mentioned more, but was referred to only in passing by my noble friend Lord Knight. In the past couple of weeks, as part of the Lord Speaker’s Peers in Schools programme, I have visited two schools which either are about to be, or have recently been, substantially rebuilt under the Building Schools for the Future programme. It is absolutely clear that a new, properly configured, light, bright and welcoming environment makes a huge difference to the way in which children learn, and the enthusiasm with which they go to and remain at school. I hope that the noble Lord will bear that in mind when thinking about how the school buildings programmes are taken forward from now on.

Secondly, I am sure that noble Lords who have heard me before will expect me to say that I hope that the Minister will not forget the value of the arts and culture in delivering education. I want quickly to mention two organisations with which I am involved to illustrate two different ways in which the arts are important in education, and two different ways in which cutting funding will be very deleterious. The first is an organisation called Artis Education, a small business which receives no public funding whatever; it is a commercial business. The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, knows it well because he was instrumental in setting it up. It trains performers to go into schools and deliver a highly structured and extremely successful programme which complements the national curriculum. All the heads who have bought into this programme—I use the word “bought” advisedly because they have to pay for it—have discovered that it adds greatly to the quality not only of their children’s learning but of their enjoyment of education. However, head teachers have to pay for it out of their discretionary spend, and if that is reduced it is less likely that they will be able to buy that kind of enhancement to their curriculum.

The second organisation with which I am involved is the Roundhouse in Camden. It is funded publicly, although only to a limited extent, and raises a huge amount of money from the private sector and from the box office. It uses that money to contribute to a programme of creative learning for large numbers of young people, including those to whom the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, referred—the unattractively named NEETS—who want to engage creatively with the arts. They take what they learn at the Roundhouse back into their education if they are still in education, and forward into their working lives if they are not.

If organisations such as the Roundhouse are not able to sustain those programmes, it will be a tremendous loss to those young people. I hope the noble Lord, who I know is convinced about the value of the arts in education, will make sure that they stay high on the agenda of his department as we go through the next difficult period.