Design and Technology Curriculum

Elizabeth Truss Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff) for raising this important subject. His speech was funny and well researched. I particularly liked the reference to the “white heat of technology”. I think that was the first time I have heard a Conservative quote Harold Wilson, and perhaps the first time I have heard Harold Wilson quoted in this House, which is interesting. I agree with much of what my hon. Friend said. Design and technology is an extremely important subject, which builds on this country’s long history of leading the world in design, innovation, engineering, manufacturing and architecture. The chain of British world-class achievements stretches from the giants of the industrial revolution, such as Watt and Brunel, to household names of modern high-tech design, such as Sir Jonathan Ive and Sir James Dyson.

Design and technology has a vital role to play in inspiring young people. Unlike my hon. Friend, I did design and technology at school and very much enjoyed it. It taught me a lot and has been helpful in my later life. It bridges theoretical and practical education, encourages the application of mathematics and science to engineer solutions to real practical problems, and delivers vital practical skills. My hon. Friend captured some of the tensions in the subject—its domestic, industrial and commercial application—but we need to address all those issues because it is important that our young people can do things in their own homes as well as apply them more widely. In counties such as Norfolk, the catering and horticultural industries are high-tech and require young people with specific skills in those areas.

We have retained design and technology’s place in the compulsory national curriculum. We have funded the Design and Technology Association to deliver high-quality continuing professional development to teachers with a focus on computer-aided design, manufacturing, electronics and communications technology. However, we have made changes in the new national curriculum, and there has been a broad welcome for the strengthened place of food and cooking in particular. One issue with the previous curriculum was that it tried to shoehorn food and cooking into a design process. It has its place in industry, but also has a place in teaching young people about where food comes from, nutrition and the ability to cook. We want more young people to be able to do that. The Department of Health is very interested in how we address Britain’s obesity problem. There has been a warm welcome for what we have done with food and cooking.

We have sought in our draft curriculum to broaden what schools may teach and to give them more freedom to inspire young people, which is why subjects such as horticulture are included but are optional. If schools have leading horticultural centres nearby, they may want to develop that subject. The approach in our national curriculum is to focus on what schools do rather than how they do it. We expect teachers and head teachers to develop their curriculum and professional development much more, so that they can inspire young people.

I was pleased that my hon. Friend mentioned developments in the maths, computing and physics curriculum. I agree that it is important to note the need for many more engineers and so on in this country. We need the subject to be inspiring for girls and boys. Such subjects depend on maths, physics and computing, and we have received strong support for our reform of those curricula. I welcome my hon. Friend’s help in pushing the agenda for getting more 16 to 18-year-olds doing maths, and the Secretary of State’s long-term goal is for all students to be doing that within 10 years.

Design and technology is important, but it is part of a broader range of subjects that will encourage young people to go into particular industries. There is a strong case for saying that subjects such as mathematics and physics also need to be able to point to their practical application. For example, we have included a greater financial element to mathematics so that young people understand its practical application and can apply it to their domestic circumstances as well as to any future work. It is tricky to ensure that the subject of design and technology is both aspirational and rigorous, and that students are able to apply it to their domestic, commercial and industrial lives, but that is the task we must fulfil.

It is not appropriate for a subject such as cookery to be in personal, social, health and economic education. Instead it should be part of design and technology. However, it was not a deliberate act on our part to give food and cooking a position of primacy in the curriculum. Indeed, improvements could certainly be made to the curriculum, and I take on board my hon. Friend’s suggestions. I recently had a meeting with representatives from the Design and Technology Association, who said that they will come back with further suggestions on how we might improve the language and make the subject as aspirational and as rigorous as possible while not losing the breadth and the flexibility that we are trying to give teachers.

Teachers could continue to teach the existing material under our proposed new curriculum. I agree that we need to make it clear that the subject is both rigorous and important. We want young people to study it and be inspired by it. I am very happy to take forward this discussion with my hon. Friend and other hon. Members over the coming months to ensure that the final curriculum is absolutely right and is supported by leading chefs, such as John Vincent and Henry Dimbleby from the LEON restaurant chain, who are involved in our school food programme. It must also be supported by our leading engineers, such as Sir James Dyson. I want to get to a point where we have something that is widely supported by industry and by people who want to see an improvement in the abilities of students in food and nutrition, and where it is understood by schools that the subject is very important.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the issue and bringing it to my attention. It is a matter that we have already been working on, particularly in relation to how we link it better to the other curricula that are being developed. He has kindly made some positive comments about the computing curriculum, and a few of the issues he mentioned in relation to design techniques, such as computer-aided design, cross over both subjects. It is important to understand how those subjects are linked, so that we can see, for example, which part of technology is in design and technology and which part is in the new computing curriculum. The whole point of the new computing curriculum is that it is much more related to programming and to understanding how computers work, so that more young people will be inspired to enter our important IT sector.

[Peter Luff]

Before the Minister finishes, and in order to help her save her voice for a second or two, may I say how encouraged I am by her response? Her remarks take us very much in the right direction of travel, and I look forward to engaging with her on this process, as she has so kindly suggested.

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments and for handing me a glass of water. I am afraid that I have a rather croaky throat today. We want to get the curriculum right, and we are very involved in a consultation; I have made that very clear to the Design and Technology Association.

I will not hide the fact that in this particular curriculum, we are trying to do a lot of different things; we are trying to prepare students for life so that they are capable citizens who can carry out practical work in their own homes. We also recognise the importance to industry of having people who are inspired from an early age. I hope that the flexibilities within the curriculum will enable local schools to work more closely with industry to make the subjects as relevant as possible and to give students as much practical experience as possible early in their school career, so that rather than becoming politicians, more of them will be inspired to become engineers.