English Baccalaureate: Creative and Technical Subjects

Lord Bird Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bird (CB)]

I congratulate the noble Baroness on this really interesting discussion. It is one of those discussions that you think will go in one direction, but before you can turn around, it is going in all directions and covering virtually everything that we need to think about that is coming in the world in the next 10 or 20 years. Mark Carney said at the Roscoe lecture a few months ago that over the next 10 or 20 years 50% of all jobs that are now considered white-collar or middle-class jobs will disappear. But what will they be replaced with? That is why this debate is one of the most significant. I was in a debate last week about overcrowded prisons. I know the answer to the problem of overcrowded prisons: it is to do something about the education system. As Justine Greening admitted to me, given that 37% of our children fail at school and then become 80% of our prison population et cetera, we can see the importance of education. We can see that education is important not just because it will give you a good job but because it will give you a good chunk of humanity.

I have to declare that, in spite of appearances, I am a young father. I have a 10 year-old and a 12 year-old. When I realised that my children suffered some of the dyslexia that I suffer from—it was picked up a bit earlier—I took them out of the state system and put them into a Steiner school. Now, Steiner schools are very strange schools, often described as the kind of school you put your children in if you want them to grow up as hippies. I am quite happy that my children will grow up as hippies, as long as they do not harm anybody in the process. In Germany, for instance, a lot of state schools are Steiner schools, and there are many other examples. On their first day of school, my children picked corn—or wheat, or whatever—broke it down and separated it. Then what did they do? They made flour and bread—on their first day at school. On their second day at school, they were in the woods, finding out about the difference between the trees—a bit like in South America where, if you happen to be a young child up the Amazon, you will know, by the age of four, 300 or 400 different trees. We have to find a way. This is where the Government will find it very difficult because Governments are rather cumbersome thinkers and have to go on results and things that add up. But we are moving into an intellectual revolution that has to be reflected in the way we educate our children.

Maybe I should not say this because it is on the record, but my children are two of the most refined creatures I have met. They are 10 and 12 years old, and if you meet them—I hope some of your Lordships will—you will find that they know how to relate to human beings, including adults. People are astonished by this. It is because they are very good at languages, very good at chess and very good at working in teams. When they discuss history, they go to places such as Hadrian’s Wall. They take up theatre: my children are obsessed with theatre, because they use theatre to learn history, to learn medicine and to learn geography. It is absolutely incredible, and I wish we would all dump the present system that we have and adopt another.

Looking at my own education, I went to what is now quite a desirable Catholic school in Chelsea, but then it was a bit rough and I did not learn anything. When I left school, I was largely unable to read and write. I could pretend that I read books, and carried them around, but I was not very good at it. I was rescued by Her Majesty’s prisons department. It was the greatest moment of my life when, after a boy’s prison, I was put into a reformatory and given an education that cost twice the amount of Eton—where I believe my noble friend Lord Aberdare went. It cost twice that amount to educate me for a period of two years, and they had me climbing trees and learning all sorts of things. They mixed it all up—for example, the technical with the creative. We went to the Old Vic and saw Laurence Olivier or somebody—we did not know who it was—and went to see the Guildford orchestra. We read books—Thomas Hardy and all sorts of things. This was a school for naughty boys. It was a wonderful invention, and I learned all sorts of things there. For part of the day I had to go into the glasshouse and learn the difference between the abutilon megapotamicum, the squarrosa “louisae”, the aphelandra squarrosa “louisae” and the zonal pelargonium.

This is what they did to our working-class children who had erred and fallen. Unfortunately I got into a bit more trouble for the next maybe 10 or 15 years, but I got out in the end. The thing was that the redemption rate—whatever the rate is that they judge people on—was enormous: 70% or 80% of people went in bad and came out better. If we can do it for the most disfranchised, why can we not do it for those 37% of children? That is going to take a revolution in thinking from central government, making sure that when we talk about education, we talk about broadening and emphasising all sorts of things.

I am a great believer in systems. The first thing I would teach a child when they go in at the age of four or five is about their body. I am a 71 year-old man and I do not know where my pancreas is—I do not know anything. This beautiful system can be taught as a work of art, a work of technology, as a work of all sorts of things. If we start to teach our children about systems, we can move on to the weather, to the environment and to other things. Why is it that most people who hate capitalism do not know how capitalism works? It is because they do not know how money or art works. They do not know the relationship between theatre or music, and they put them into these silos and do it that way. In my opinion, this is one of the most interesting discussions and I am really glad I participated in it. Thank you very much.