Baroness Walmsley
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(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Layard
My Lords, I strongly support the two amendments in this group. In the past 40 years, there have been four surveys of the mental health of 15 year-olds in Britain. These show that the number of young people suffering from emotional and behavioural problems is twice as high now as it was 40 years ago. That is a shocking fact. It is terrible for young people and for the rest of us. We are talking about the health not only of young people, but also of the society that is affected by their behaviour. If we take into account the extraordinary costs for young people and for adults of the problems of young people not knowing how to live, we cannot turn our backs on the emotional and behavioural aspects of their education. We have been moving towards a disastrous situation in which our schools have increasingly become exam factories—factories for helping people to earn a living, not to learn how to live.
It is possible to teach people how to live. This can be done not only through the school’s ethos, which is extremely important—as has rightly been stressed, this could be the most important thing—but also through structured teaching of life skills. We already know a lot about how to do this, and we are learning more. For example, the Penn Resilience Programme, now used in 30 schools in this country, has been shown to reduce teenage depression markedly, and to increase school attendance, with emotional and behavioural consequences. Many other equally effective programmes cover areas such as developing altruism, learning about healthy living and avoiding risky behaviour, learning about mental health and learning about parenting—there are programmes that teach young people how to be parents, and others that cover nearly all the topics in the QCA’s excellent programme of study for personal and social well-being.
There is also plenty of evidence of the effectiveness of sex education. For example, one striking case is the comparison between our country and the Netherlands, where sex and relationship education, including parenting, begins in primary schools. There, the teenage pregnancy rate is one-fifth of the rate in this county. Therefore, we have plenty of evidence on which to proceed.
These are difficult subjects to teach and that is why I am enormously worried about the coalition Government’s approach of leaving them to individual schools. If they are difficult to teach, the most obvious thing to do is to have a concerted programme of teacher training. That can be done only at the national level but, as many speakers have already said, it will not happen unless there is a clear statement that education in life skills is a key element in the complete education of every child.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I speak on this matter in a personal capacity and I absolutely support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. I also support much of the spirit behind the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, although I think that it is a bit too late to provide sex and relationships education to 14 year-olds, given the hundreds of girls under the age of 14 who get pregnant every year. Good PSHE includes all the information that young people need to lead an ordinary but successful life, or even an extraordinary life. It is not academic but what are schools doing if not preparing young people for the lives that they will lead when they leave and, indeed, the lives that they lead while they are still at school?
Much has been said this afternoon about the importance of teaching about parenting, and I absolutely agree. Noble Lords may have heard about the programme in which school nurses give out baby dolls to young women. These dolls scream in the middle of the night, they need burping, they need their nappy changing and they need feeding regularly. I recently heard about one school nurse who gave out a batch of these dolls and when they came back at the end of the week most of the young girls said, “Oh my goodness. I couldn’t possibly”, apart from one who said, “It was wonderful. I can’t wait to get pregnant”, so it does not always work.
Over the years, I have said a good deal on this subject in your Lordships’ House, so, in an effort not to repeat myself, I did some new front-line research last week with two teenagers who are doing work experience in Parliament. One told me about a girl in her sister’s class at school who at the age of 13 had a one year-old baby. Both of them said that they have to go to PSHE lessons but to quote one of them, “We don’t do anything”, and to quote the other, “We watch a lot of videos”. One said, “We had a lesson on drugs recently and they just said, ‘Don’t do drugs. Drugs are bad’. It was useless”. She also told me that she did not have any sex education until she was 17 and that they do not teach about contraception or abortion in their Catholic school except in RE, where they say, “Don’t do it; it’s a sin”.
That is just not good enough. I realise that this is a very small sample of hearsay evidence but it lines up with what I have heard from many other teenagers over the years. It tell me that, first, teachers are not properly trained to deliver PSHE; secondly, teachers are not confident to teach PSHE, and that is why they rely so much on videos; thirdly, the quality of PSHE varies immensely and is very poor in some places; and, fourthly, some children are not receiving the information to which they are entitled and which protects their well-being.
The only way to deal with all those things is to make the subject part of the national curriculum in maintained schools and mandatory in academies and all other schools that do not have to follow the rest of the national curriculum. All establishments which educate children and young people have a duty to have regard to their well-being. However, they cannot do that successfully if they do not give them the information that they need to live a happy life. Young girls’ life chances are being severely affected because they may not have the information or the self-confidence to avoid unwanted pregnancies, and often the state has to pick up the bill in the interests of the young girl and, in particular, her baby. Unless children have information about the dangers of tobacco, alcohol and drugs, they may unwittingly become addicted at great cost to themselves and the country before they can turn round.
Much has been said about teacher training and, as usual, my noble friend Lady Williams has put her finger on it. Fully trained teachers cannot be produced in an instant, but her suggestion that the Government should show their intention to make the subject mandatory, given sufficient time to undertake the training of new teachers in initial teacher training or CPD for existing teachers, would be a solution to that problem. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said that often the subject is given to Joe Bloggs the geography teacher. In my experience, it was given to Jill Bloggs the biology teacher or, in my case, Joan Walmsley the biology teacher. I taught it but I was not properly trained and I did not have the necessary confidence. I did my best but it was a very long time ago and the problem is that that is still happening.
I know that the Government are to have a curriculum review, which will be an opportunity to look very carefully at what we teach our children in schools. We need to give them the tools for life and not just academic qualifications for work. We must redress the damage that was done before the election when this measure very nearly got into legislation, but was prevented by the vagaries of our parliamentary procedures. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me that this subject will be considered during the curriculum review.
Lord Howarth of Newport
It could be argued that there is no more important element of the curriculum than PSHE. The previous Government were certainly right to propose that it should be a statutory foundation subject. There is a public, societal interest in children being educated in these areas. Moreover, I believe that it is the inescapable responsibility of Government to ensure that that happens because only the Government can ensure that all children receive education in these areas; only the Government can establish a norm; and only the Government can promote best practice across every school.
Education about relationships and sex is, of course, a very important private and parental responsibility and should be respected as such, but it cannot be the responsibility of parents alone. By definition relationships involve two people and, indeed, two families. Ignorance in sexual matters is dangerous to others. Children need support and education. They grow up in an erotically charged environment, where advertising and entertainment sexualise almost every kind of transaction; and the internet opens the window to a host of sexual possibilities regardless of who receives the messages. I am afraid that it is commonplace in our culture for human beings to be objectified, exploited and even brutalised sexually. Inescapably, children and young people witness that. If there is an age of innocence, it is all too short. For that reason and because of earlier puberty, it is essential that sex and relationship education is introduced at primary level although, of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said, it should be age-appropriate.
There are powerful peer pressures to experiment and to take risks, and those are stronger than the social codes that seek to protect young people from precocious sexual experiences. Children and young people are vulnerable and, therefore, they need help from an early age to understand this environment and to start to establish their own secure and confident individuality. They need education about relationships—not preachy education but education that may well be imparted through the study of literature and drama, for example. They need to learn that good relationships are characterised by respect for the other person, by sensitivity and by love. They also need to learn about the physiological facts of reproduction, the practicalities of birth control and how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases. They need to be taught those matters with no euphemisms and no evasion: sexually transmitted diseases may kill. Some families are not willing to teach that to their children and some families do not know how. Therefore, it is unacceptable to leave sex education to families as a private responsibility. I believe that religious objections, for example to teaching about contraception, have to be overruled.
Baroness Walmsley
“( ) if the school provides nursery or primary education, its curriculum for children under five years old is the Early Years Foundation Stage;”
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 53 and 54 in the same group. Amendment 52 probes the Government’s intentions with regard to the education and care of young children in nursery and reception classes in primary and all-through academy schools. It also seeks commitment from my noble friend the Minister that academies will be expected to provide the balance, age-appropriateness and play base of the early years foundation stage to very young children.
Many children under five are now in primary schools' nursery and reception classes and it is essential that their teachers are qualified and experienced in the early years. The early years foundation stage—which I shall call the EYFS, although that is not that much shorter—provides much needed unity of principle and purpose across the range of settings. It offers a single framework to ensure quality, equality of opportunity and safeguarding. There is a real commitment among early-years professionals to this agenda.
The EYFS was introduced in the Childcare Act 2006 and has been a statutory requirement for all providers of education and care to zero to five year-olds since September 2008. It provides a clear statutory framework and standards, and although it is relatively new, its ideas, standards and approach are not. It has grown out of a long tradition of providing education and care for babies and young children under five years old and attempts for the first time to ensure that, wherever children are educated and cared for, they and their families can expect the same standard of education and care. I give credit to the previous Government for its introduction. Although I feel that it is time to renew it in the light of experience, as it is too prescriptive, it is generally a good thing and should be adhered to by all providing education to this age group.
Academies do not have to follow the national curriculum for primary and secondary schools, but it is not clear what the intention is in relation to under-five year-olds in nursery and reception classes. Perhaps I may ask my noble friend the Minister the following questions. How many of the current all-through academies provide education for under-fives and, of those, how many follow the early years foundation stage? Is it the Government’s expectation that primary academies should follow the early years foundation stage for under-fives? How will the Government ensure that under-fives receive age-appropriate, play-based education in primary academies?
Amendment 53 probes the Government’s intentions for inspection of new academies in relation to education for young children under the early years foundation stage. The Secretary of State has indicated his intention to grant academy status automatically to schools deemed to be outstanding by Ofsted, alongside an intention generally to exempt those outstanding schools-turned-academies from further inspections. However, in relation to the EYFS and provision for under-fives, I am particularly concerned about removing academies from the inspection framework, given that inspection under the EYFS is relatively new and that the main driver behind the EYFS is to improve quality and standards in early childhood education and care. I am also concerned that the emphasis on engagement with parents in the current inspection framework may be lost, with detrimental effects on some schools’ commitment to engage with all parents, which is so important at nursery age.
Under the law, all providers of education and care to under-fives must be registered on the early years register of providers and must meet the legal welfare, learning and development requirements as set out in Section 40 of the Childcare Act 2006 and associated regulations in order to remain registered.
However, schools providing for children aged three to five are exempt from the register, and EYFS provision is inspected within the main schools inspection framework. Maintained, independent and non-maintained special schools are required to be registered only in respect of any provision they offer for children below the age of three, in recognition of the need for extra safeguards for the youngest and most vulnerable children. Can my noble friend explain how young children’s welfare, safeguarding, learning and development will be quality-assured in academy schools?
Perhaps I may draw one related matter to the Minister’s attention. If there is a problem in the early years setting, there is currently a practice of the proprietors deregistering it and opening it up again as a different business, thereby expunging the history of the problematic incident and making it impossible for Ofsted to inspect whether the failings that led to it have been corrected. Indeed, some places have been reregistered several times. I give as an example the case of a nursery in Chigwell, where the two year-old daughter of Mrs Shatl Malin was accidentally hanged in the playhouse where she had been unattended for 20 minutes. The proprietors have reregistered the setting, and the parents have therefore no closure or explanation and no assurances that no such thing can ever happen again. While we have the opportunity in this Bill, I should like to ensure that no academy offering early years education can walk through this loophole by deregistering.
On Amendment 54, one of the best aspects of recent workforce development is the importance of an integrated approach to working with children and families. This is exemplified in the children’s centre model. Again, I give credit to the previous Government for introducing this way of working. In children’s centres, children under five years old and their families can receive seamless integrated services and information. These services vary according to centre, but may be very wide and serve the real needs of families. Indeed, the coalition Government intend to locate a lot more health visitors in them, which I support. I would not want the independence of academies to pull children out of the integrated structures developed under the Every Child Matters agenda, which all parties supported. This is particularly relevant in relation to safeguarding issues. Will my noble friend the Minister clarify what support will be available to academies in developing safeguarding policies and in their implementation? What connections will academies have to children’s trusts and local safeguarding children boards and what impact will there be on children’s centres and extended services where they are co-located with primary schools wanting to apply for academy status? I beg to move.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I support the thrust of the noble Baroness’s amendments. Having visited several nurseries in the course of the Childcare Bill and followed the debates about the early years foundation stage, I believe that it is vital to have good-quality early years care. There is a real challenge in achieving that in this country; we start so far behind the Scandinavians. We have not had a strategy until recently in this area. Many of those working in it are poorly educated and poorly paid young women, and there is often a very high turnover of staff. The settings in schools may be different to that general picture, but I ask noble Lords to put themselves into the shoes of a three year-old being cared for by a woman who then goes—then another one comes and goes, and another one comes. That is a very black picture. I am sure that it is not generally the case, but there is that danger.
The early years foundation stage really helps in setting out clearly what the expectation should be and what these children should receive. In particular, every child in the nursery should have a key person. That should be the person who makes the relationship with the parent of the child and follows that child, changes the nappies and looks after that child. Others will have to take their place from time to time but, rather than the child being passed around from person to person, there is someone there with a particular special relationship with that child. That is an easy thing to lose if there are lots of poorly trained and poorly supported people and there is a high turnover of staff. Given the vulnerability of the children and the challenges to the sector, I would appreciate the reassurance of the Minister that this clear framework for practice in this area will be applied to those children in future.
Baroness Walmsley
I thank the Minister for his reply and other Members of the Committee for their contributions. I am gratified that he is able to tell me that Amendment 52 is unnecessary, because the early years foundation stage will be taught. I will have to go away and look again at the detail of that. On Amendment 53, I am not quite clear what the Minister was saying. He said that some settings will be required to register and are already, and that some will not. I wonder whether he would be kind enough to write to me and clarify that, because I did not quite understand the reasons—perhaps he did not really go into them—why some do not need to register and will not. If they are to provide the education for that age group, I would have thought that they all had to be treated the same, because it really is important that the standard is kept up. That is what particularly concerns me.
Concerning the Sure Start centres, my noble friend suggested that they should be looked at on a case-by-case basis. I would have thought that those current centres are so proud of their reputation—and jealous to guard it—that if they felt that in applying to become an academy they would lose that multi-agency, multi-professional ethos, they simply would not apply. I certainly hope that they would not, anyway. I will have to look rather carefully at my noble friend’s reply to see whether I need to probe him any further, but I would be grateful if he could write a more detailed response on my Amendment 53 and put a copy in the Library, because I really did not quite understand it. However, in the mean time I beg to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment 52 withdrawn.
Amendments 53 to 60 not moved.
Amendment 60A
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, I shall briefly give the coalition Government another opportunity to think again about the events that took place during the wash-up. The Committee will be well aware of the Labour Government’s commitment to deliver for parents and pupils a guarantee around the quality and style of education delivered to them through our schools around the country, so we now turn to the amendments in relation to the pupil-parent guarantee for academies.
Amendments 60A and 170A would restore the guarantees that we on this side of the Committee aimed to provide for pupils and parents. Those guarantees were, sadly, blocked by the Conservative Party during the negotiations between our two parties on the legislation outstanding before Parliament in the run-up to the last election. Those guarantees would have given pupils and parents assurances of a decent education whatever school they attended, so that every local school would be a good school, delivering minimum standards for all.
We set it out in statute that the guarantees should include: catch-up support in the three Rs for primary school pupils or for those starting secondary school who fall behind, which would have included one-to-one tuition and small group work; online information for parents on their child’s behaviour, progress and attainment; a named personal tutor for every secondary school pupil; guarantees on school behaviour through home-school agreements; the right to learn triple sciences at GCSE; a guarantee of regular sport and exercise; and the opportunity for every primary school pupil to learn a musical instrument—on which, if the Minister wants to see that as my contribution toward Amendment 68, then in the interests of time I am happy if he wants to come back to me on musical tuition in his response here.
This is about giving parents and pupils the information and the awareness of what they can expect from their school system, so that no child should miss out and so that every school should be a good school. Now, we have heard a great deal from the coalition Government about the desire to empower parents and to give more power to communities. Of course, we very much want that, so I will be very interested to hear how the noble Lord can build on the work that we did in government to make sure that the best really is on offer for all our children in our schools.
Baroness Walmsley
The noble Baroness invites my noble friend to return to the days of an old new Labour Government; I do not agree with her. Actually, we did not agree with her at the time. We spoke against these pupil-parent guarantees as being motherhood and apple pie without any legal levers at all, so she will not be surprised to learn that we do not support her amendment.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, of course I listened with great interest to the noble Lord’s contribution. The pupil and parent guarantees were actually about empowering parents and pupils so that they can ensure that, in partnership with their schools and their local authority or academy trust, they can get the things that they need for their children. It is about looking at the education service that this country provides from a bottom-up perspective—looking at it from the point of view of the parent and child and of what goes on in the classroom. If we think back to Second Reading, how chastened might the coalition Government perhaps have felt when my noble friend Lady Morris criticised them for focusing so much on structure? Here we have a chance for them, just for a moment, to think about one-to-one tuition, for example. What has happened to one-to-one tuition? We have gone from a situation where the Government were committed to guaranteeing it in statute, with a process through local government—
Baroness Walmsley
Will the noble Baroness be patient until the pupil premium comes along?
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
I cannot wait for the opportunity to discuss the pupil premium. There we have a real chance to see how the grand words will unfold into real benefits for pupils in schools. That is what I am interested in and what the pupil guarantee was all about. That is what this focus on structure and structural tinkering leaves wanting, which is what I am concerned about. I am very interested to debate how the pupil premium will work. An awful lot rests on what the pupil premium delivers—not just for disadvantaged pupils in this country, but for the coalition Government. I am happy at this stage to withdraw my amendment and I look forward to the debate continuing.