Schools: Well-being and Personal and Social Needs

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, for introducing this very important debate and for her interesting speech. This Government’s objectives for children are very similar to those of her Government, but there is more than one way to skin a cat and we are skinning it in a slightly different way. I also point out that “Mary Had a Little Lamb” is a poem that most three and four year-olds I know can recite perfectly well.

It is a well documented fact that a child who is stressed, ill, emotionally disturbed, hungry or who does not have good general well-being will not be a good learner and is very unlikely to fulfil his or her educational potential. It is also accepted that those who do not fulfil that potential are less likely to lead happy and fulfilled adult lives, and certainly will not contribute as much to the general economy as they might have done. Therefore, I am sure that no one will disagree that we need to focus carefully on how well-being can be achieved.

Parents, of course, are the prime players in ensuring their child’s health and happiness, but schools play a pivotal role, especially where parents do not carry out their role as well as possible, for whatever reason. However, we must not expect too much of schools; I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on that. No school, however caring and professional, can take the place of a loving, caring parent. I congratulate the Government on the measures they are taking to offer support to parents and to extend and improve the quality and flexibility of free nursery education offered to very young children. I welcome the fact that they have brought forward to this September the offer of free nursery education to disadvantaged two year-olds in some areas.

As we all know, children are born with their brains incompletely developed. Some experts have called babies “the external foetus” because of the great amount of development that happens outside the mother’s body in the first three years of life. Good-quality nursery education contributes enormously to a child’s emotional, social, physical and intellectual development. Therefore, when talking about the contribution of schools, we must not forget what has gone before.

The primary purpose of schools is the education of their pupils, but we should educate our children for a life, not just for a job. Schools help to develop citizens, husbands, wives, friends and parents—not just employees, employers or academics. Indeed, employees, employers and academics are all those other things, too. Therefore, I look to schools to get the balance right between fostering the health and well-being of children and developing their intellects. In the search for high academic standards, there is a danger of focusing too much on the child’s intellectual and skills development at the expense of their well-being and emotional maturity. That is a self-defeating strategy.

I heard an interesting interview on Radio 4 the other day with a spokeswoman from the CBI. She criticised schools for not turning out young people who were prepared for today’s workplace. She did not complain about the number of GCSEs or vocational qualifications they had. She asked for life skills. She said that business and industry need young people who have self-confidence, emotional maturity, the ability to work in a team, to negotiate and to compromise, and who are punctual and conscientious, have creativity and flexibility of thought, et cetera. That was not the first time I had heard such a plea from business leaders—it is fairly common. So where are we going wrong?

Noble Lords will know how keen I am on statutory personal, social, health and economic education. My enthusiasm for it is undiminished. I have talked to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, about why I could not support her amendment, and I think that she understands. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that such barbs are self-defeating. We have a duty to deliver this information, and the opportunity to develop skills in these areas, to every child. This should be done by high-quality specialists who are trained to do the job. Only then will we avoid the current postcode lottery in the quality of provision, and raise the standard overall. I have never felt that we should prescribe how schools should do this, preferring to leave it to their professional judgment. Every child should be entitled to have it delivered to a high standard.

There is much good practice. Some schools have PSHE elements as fundamental parts of their ethos and of everything that happens in them. Some have specialised teachers, and work with qualified people from outside the school to deliver elements of their programme. Others use some of the plethora of good-quality materials available to general class teachers. Many ensure that every lesson, throughout the curriculum, fosters these qualities and abilities in their pupils, not just special PSHE lessons. Some schools have adopted UNICEF’s wonderful Rights Respecting Schools programme, which fosters democracy and mutual respect in schools, both of which contribute to well-being. Children who have a meaningful input into decisions that affect them are usually happy.

It is important that the Government should make it clear that they expect schools to do this and that they will measure success not just on the number of A to C grades at GCSE but on the way in which schools foster well-being. Therefore, Ofsted plays a pivotal role. Schools and teachers are only human and will deliver the things on which they are measured. Parents expect schools to be happy places for their children to be, especially in the primary years. However, somehow the expectation often disappears in later years unless parents understand the link between well-being and academic success. Many of them do, of course.

I ask my noble friend the Minister whether schools will be allowed to use their pupil premium to provide the rich experiences that all children need to develop into self-confident young adults, as long as they can demonstrate a link between the use of this money and better performance by the most deprived children. Sometimes it is extra-curricular activities that have the most effect on these qualities. Outdoor pursuits, sport, music and the other arts, and heritage experiences and activities can all contribute. It would be a pity if, when a school is monitored on its use of the pupil premium, the range of activities for which extra money could be paid were too narrow. We rightly leave the decisions to the head and teachers, but they need guidance on the scope of the activities that would be acceptable to achieve the outcomes that we want.

Finally, I will say a word about the Government’s announcement today of a consultation on how we measure and address child poverty, because it is relevant to the debate. There is a clear link between deprivation and poor attainment at school, which must be addressed effectively. Ironically, as general incomes fall, the number of children in relative poverty will decrease, even though not one child’s life will have been improved. The Government do not want to be judged on such an anomaly. We want to do better and we will, despite the financial problems that we face. I hope that all parties will engage constructively with the consultation in the interests of the children we want to help, and I hope that my noble friend the Minister will confirm that the Government will welcome such engagement from all who have something useful to say.