Schools: Curriculum

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with the right reverend Prelate. Faith schools are a long-established and highly valued part of our educational establishment, and church schools are, too. Church schools consistently outperform maintained schools; they are very popular and often highly oversubscribed. The applications procedures of many of them do not rely heavily on faith; they have a much wider intake.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister return to the answer that he gave to the noble Lord, Lord Quirk, who asked him an extremely apposite question about which bits of the national curriculum he would be content to see any school ignore? I did not hear him answer that question.

[Lord Nash]

As I said, they must teach English, maths, science, and religious education, and they must follow a PSHE course. We will have a best eight assessment criteria, whereby schools will have to include other subjects. Then we have destinations, because we want our pupils to be work-ready and for them not to turn out as recently evaluated by the OECD—that is, that after 13 years of the Labour Government we have the most illiterate school leavers in Europe and, according to Alan Milburn, the most socially immobile society in Europe.