Education: Pupils and Young People

Baroness Sharp of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, I, too, pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Perry for initiating the debate and for her very thoughtful and incisive introduction of it. I have spoken frequently in this House of my experience as a governor of a primary school in Guildford that serves a disadvantaged community there and of my experience as a member of the board of the corporation of Guildford College, but I do not think that I have ever spoken in this House of my experience over the past 10 years as a member of the local council —that is roughly equivalent to being a governor—of Guildford High School for Girls, one of the highest achieving independent girls’ day schools in this country. If one looks for an example of excellence in education, such a school provides it. It not only achieves extremely good results in academic terms but provides an all rounded education in music, the arts and extra-curricular activities ranging from working with Crisis at Christmas in London to canoeing in the French Alps. All told, it seems to me to prepare these young women not only to achieve good academic results but to be good citizens and to be able to enjoy life to the full.

When I read the title of this debate—excellence in education—I reflected on what contributes to that and how far that can be translated into the public sector. First, there is the whole question of parental background and parental advantage. The girls who attend Guildford High School come from extremely advantaged homes. Their parents talk to them when they are little and read to them. We know all this and we also know that, by the age of 18 months, the learning of children from very advantaged homes is three months more advanced than that of children from disadvantaged homes. Therefore, all the comments that various noble Lords, including my noble friend Lady Walmsley, have made about getting the foundations right are so true. We have to concentrate on the early years and put money into them because they are absolutely crucial. I do not want to say any more about that other than to reiterate the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, on the importance of these children being able to read and write by the age of 11, and, therefore, the importance of one-to-one tuition and the Every Child a Reader programme in ensuring that they are helped if they are lagging behind.

My second point concerns money. The fees for most of the top-achieving private schools equate each term with roughly what we spend per pupil in secondary schools—£4,500. I do not think there is any way in which the public sector can ever emulate that. The pupil premium of £2,500 per child—it will vary a little—goes nowhere towards compensating for this. What does it buy? It buys smaller classes and individual tuition, all of which is important. However, we need to think about three things here. The first is the quality of the teachers. Finland provides a good example in that regard as the aim there is to recruit top-quality people into teaching. I am absolutely delighted that teaching has now become a profession of choice for some of our top graduates and I pay tribute to Teach First, which has helped to achieve that. The second thing we need to think about is the training of teachers and continuous professional development, both of which are vital if the quality of our teachers is to be maintained. Today’s generation of teachers are excellent, but it is vital that their quality is maintained.

The third thing we need to think about is extra-curricular activities. It is important that state schools try to provide the range of activities that one sees at some private schools. The best of them do and I pay tribute to what they achieve. There is pressure on teachers and, given the hours that they have to teach, devoting time after school to extra-curricular activities is often difficult. However, these activities provide young people with all the attributes which the CBI is looking for, such as the ability to communicate and to work as part of a team with all kinds of different people. Therefore, sufficient money should be allocated to enable extra-curricular activities to be provided.

In conclusion, I do not think that we can ever compensate for home background but I am not sure that we ought to try the kibbutz experience of taking very young children away from home. Such attempts have not succeeded and the young children involved became very aggressive, difficult and mixed-up young people. It seems to me that we need to think about four things: first, the quality of teachers; secondly, giving those teachers the room to practise their professionalism, as the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said; thirdly, the importance of the early years experience; and, fourthly, the importance of extra-curricular activities.