Queen's Speech

Baroness Sharp of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, I shall concentrate my remarks on education. The opening words of the gracious Speech state:

“My Government will seek to build a strong and fair society”.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hill, reminded us in his opening speech, that fair society depends a great deal on education. I was rather surprised at how well the coalition of the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives managed to put their two education policies together. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, referred to the pupil premium. Some years ago, I travelled with Nick Clegg to Holland to look at the way in which the Dutch funded education. We found that disadvantaged children were given special extra funding which they carried with them as they moved from school to school. The pupil premium was based very much on the research work that we carried out on that expedition and I was delighted to see that it plays a substantial part in the policies which the coalition is putting forward.

I am also pleased at the emphasis that we are giving to rolling back bureaucracy. Both parties agree that schools and colleges—and universities, for that matter—are overwhelmed by bureaucracy. Last year a seminal report was produced by the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee, which found that each year the average head received well over 700 pieces of paper comprising directives and guidance. That is roughly three for each working school day and is an impossible amount to manage. When I inquired of a local comprehensive school head how much time he allocated to interpreting the bureaucracy that he received from the centre to his staff and parents and governors who needed to know about it, he said that on average he thought it took him roughly half the week, which is an astonishing amount of time. The more that we can roll back that bureaucracy and allow our school leaders and teachers to give time to front-line services, the better it will be. It is important that we, as a Government, practise what we preach. It is too easy to talk with one breath of freeing up teachers from bureaucracy and then to declare with the next that they must use synthetic phonics to teach reading.

I confess that I am also somewhat worried at the thought of Ministers laying down the law on what the history curriculum should be, even if they call in eminent historians to advise them. We were very worried by what Stalin and Hitler did to the history curriculums of their countries. I am not suggesting that democratic Ministers would behave like that, but it is important to beware of too much political influence over the curriculum.

The flagship measure of this Government that we shall see within the next week is the Academies Bill. It will not surprise noble Lords on all sides of the House to hear that I have reservations about the Bill as it stands. However, I shall leave my thoughts on the proposals in that Bill until its Second Reading on Monday. I echo the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley. If we are looking to create a fair society, it is very important that we concentrate not on structures but on process. Taking the issue of process somewhat further, one aspect of lessening bureaucracy that is agreed is to change the role of Ofsted. The schools that consistently perform well will be inspected less often and, as the Minister mentioned, the Government are proposing to reduce the number of performance indicators. But in that case it is vital that we use the right measures of performance and it is difficult to know what they are, because any school's performance is also closely linked to its socio-economic profile. Our high-performing schools are predominantly in middle-class areas with middle-class intakes. Poorly performing schools serve disadvantaged populations. It is this gap in performance that both the coalition and the previous Government have sought to close, and will seek to close, so that there is genuine equality of opportunity.

It is no good just whipping the schools to produce better SATs and GCSE results. First we must find a way of compensating those coming from disadvantaged homes for the disadvantages that they suffer; hence the importance of programmes such as Sure Start, and the children's centres frequently associated with Sure Start, which combine education and parenting. Programmes such as Every Child a Reader are crucial because they provide one-to-one tutoring for six and seven year-olds who are having difficulty in mastering reading. At secondary school level, it is very important to find and provide a curriculum that excites and motivates those who at present are often turned off by the overacademic approach of GCSEs. Diplomas were supposed to be the answer to this problem, but I worry that, as currently developed, they are too much of a hybrid, satisfying neither the vocational nor the academic side of education. This is why I am very excited by the prospect of university technical high schools that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, spoke about. They would combine first-class vocational training with dedicated equipment and teachers, but keep open the door both to jobs and to higher education. That seems to be a much better way forward than shunting pupils around from school to college for the odd half day here and there.

Education remains the key to unlocking our potential. The UK must raise its game, both to maintain international competitiveness and to help to build a society that is fair and more at ease with itself. This is recognised within the coalition agreement by the priority given to education, and the ring-fencing of the schools budget. There are real savings to be gained from reducing bureaucracy and concentrating managerial resources on the central tasks of teaching and learning; but let us not waste these gains on fruitless restructuring. Rather, let us give our teachers and school leaders space and time to innovate and excel.