Personal, Social, Health and Financial Education

Dan Rogerson Excerpts

Wednesday 16th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I congratulate the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) on securing this debate and on the work that she has done on the subject for some time. I am pleased to see so many hon. Members in Westminster Hall today to discuss this subject. In fact, I am surprised that there are so many Members here. Sometimes, I come to Westminster Hall and limited numbers of Members are present for a debate, so it is very encouraging that so many Members are here at this point in the morning to discuss this subject.

I should perhaps explain my initial connection with this topic: both my parents are teachers. In fact, my mother was responsible for PSHE in the secondary school that I attended, so if there are any failings in my skills in dealing with life, I suppose that I will probably have to take them up with her on two levels, and take the pain of that. However, it gave me a commitment to explain how important PSHE is. My mother dealt with Cornwall county council in those days, talking about the importance of the PSHE element in the curriculum. In fact, when she started dealing with the subject it was actually called “personal, social and moral education”, which perhaps gives an idea of what the subject was like in the early part of the ’80s; there was a slightly different twist to it.

The hon. Lady has focused on relationship education as something that is crucial, and it is very important to me, too. I remember that when I first stood for Parliament I was at the hustings—it was one of that type of “churches together” hustings—and a question came up about sex on television and whether it was a bad thing. Being a politician, I turned the question into something important to me, which is talking about relationships. I said that what I found far more insidious is that all that young people hear all the time, from soap operas and so on, is about relationships failing. Let us be honest—it is done that way because it is a story and that is what soap operas are about. There are very few examples of relationships that actually make it and that work and are successful. That is perhaps a sadder issue. The mechanics of sex being on television are such that the cues that young people pick up—they also pick them up from wider society, celebrity magazines and so on—are all about how relationships are exciting things to start and exciting things to end, and sometimes it is the work of keeping them going that is far more difficult to deal with.

As the hon. Lady said, there are many campaigns for elements or aspects of the curriculum that could come under PSHE; hon. Members have argued strongly for their inclusion in PSHE. However, it is also important that we do not take those elements and put them in some sort of silo and say that this is something that we tuck into a corner of the curriculum and forget about. Those elements must also inform what goes on in education as a whole.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Is not the point about the situation now that PSHE is precisely tucked into a silo of science? The only part that pupils are required to learn about in school is sexually transmitted infections and how to have sex, and that is a kind of advertising manual rather than a proper sex and relationship education that might enable, for instance, girls to have so much self-worth that they want to delay their first sexual experience and that might bring boys into the equation, so that they understand that sex is not only a recreation but might also be part of a strong and fulfilling relationship.

[Dan Rogerson]

Absolutely. I agree with the hon. Gentleman, although boys, too, might well want to delay their first sexual experience, rather than just girls. I think that we sometimes get caught up in a “boys are from Mars, girls are from Venus” view, and there is a difference in the way that we deal with the two. In fact, I think that a lot of the issues, concerns and disquiet that young people might have about some of these issues will be shared by both boys and girls.

Of course, as the hon. Lady said they are also issues about drug and alcohol abuse, as well as strategies for managing and dealing with exposure to drugs and alcohol. The hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) made a point about how campaigns, such as those on drink-driving, have been successful in the past. General issues of mental health and well-being are incredibly important, too. As the hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) said, sometimes some of these things are incredibly important to young people in their development but difficult for them to express and engage with. They carry those feelings around with them day to day, but they find it difficult to confront them. In extreme cases, that can lead to self-harm or suicide. In other cases, it can undermine academic performance, social interaction and all sorts of other things, so it is crucial that the issue is explored.

We need to look at strategies for bringing relationship education out of its silo, and the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) agreed. Save the Children’s Families and Schools Together programme takes relationship education out of the classroom and deals with building relationships in families as well. We talk about early intervention, and the earliest intervention would be to get to people and give them the skills in parenting and dealing with their own emotional growth before they become parents. However, some people have already been through education, and it failed to provide such things. We need to look at schools as a way to engage with such people to give them skills as parents, to reinforce all the good things that they do and to share that experience. Save the Children’s programme is a successful way to do that.

Relationship education must be taught effectively, and the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South was right to mention the questions that have been raised about that. As the coalition Government consider the information that they have received through consultation and how they might advance relationship education, I hope that they will focus on that. They have set out their determination to increase the quality of the teaching available, and this important issue must not be dealt with simply as something that teachers pick up to fill their timetable; it must be something people have the skills to deliver effectively.

Teaching should be reinforced through interaction across the curriculum. The hon. Member for Rhondda talked about the science connection, and other hon. Members have talked about their determination to see more done on financial literacy and financial education, so there are tie-ups with maths, business and so on. By reinforcing such messages across the curriculum, we can make them much more powerful, and we can use the skills of teachers in other disciplines to ensure that those messages are worked on and delivered effectively. As I say, we can also use schools as a way to reach out into families and reinforce what goes on in them.

The coalition Government have not tackled this issue by moving on a prescriptive curriculum or by micro-managing what goes on in the classroom. However, it is important to Members on both sides that the issue is pursued and that the Government have a grasp on it to make sure that we deliver it effectively. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to the debate in that spirit.

--- Later in debate ---

[Elizabeth Truss]

No. We want schools to offer a rounded education, but we believe the best way to do that is to allow more decision making by head teachers, rather than by Whitehall.

I want to respond to some of the points made on financial education and to explain how it works with our national curriculum review. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) mentioned, we are incorporating more financial education into the mathematics curriculum, such as understanding money, compound interest rates, loan repayments and applying percentages or ratios. That is a practical reason why the PSHE review has to interface properly with the national curriculum one. We are opening up the new published national curriculum for review, so I hope that Members will be able to comment on how it relates to what they have asked for in the PSHE curriculum.

Drugs education was also mentioned by hon. Members. Our focus is to ensure that schools and local commissioners understand which programmes have a genuinely positive effect. To support that, we have asked the Centre for Analysis of Youth Transitions to develop an open-access database of evaluations of programmes and interventions that have robust evidence of impact outcomes for young people, including on substance misuse. I can provide a link to the information in place.

I have outlined how I think that more teachers should be empowered to decide the content of the wider school curriculum. International evidence shows that giving schools more autonomy results in them being able to make better decisions on the ground. The same applies to teacher training, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South. We are clear that teachers should be free to access high-quality resources and training, such as that provided by the British Heart Foundation on life-saving skills. It is a two-way process, with professionals in schools in regular dialogue with outside bodies, as well as the Government, rather than one with edicts issued from Whitehall about how exactly subjects should be taught.

[Dan Rogerson]

I accept what the Minister says about empowering schools to adapt things to local circumstances; but clearly, head teachers and governing bodies act within a framework of accountability, including league tables and so on. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) pointed out, those academic scores are a focus for schools—in particular, for schools in challenging areas—whereas dealing with some of the issues that young people face could unlock their potential and help them in their academic lives. As well as looking at the curriculum, can the Government do something to incentivise good teaching, by rewarding it in how schools are judged?

[Elizabeth Truss]

We are currently reviewing the accountability system and will shortly have some proposals, as well as having the PSHE review, so such things are under consideration. I am meeting organisations and hon. Members from all parts of the House about those various elements.