Education: Personal, Social and Health Education

Lord Eden of Winton Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Eden of Winton]

My Lords, effective personal, social and health education can be achieved only through an active partnership between teachers, parents and government. It is primarily for that reason, given that PSHE embraces all people who might have any interest in or concern with education, that it cannot be defined in statutory terms. It is part of the life of a school, and any headmaster or headmistress worth their salt is going to ensure that PSHE is part of the education of those children. They cannot operate the school effectively without it. It has to be there.

None the less, a substantial framework has been set out by the Department for Education, which elaborates in enormous detail the sort of teaching that could be provided under this heading for children aged between five and seven. It is very comprehensive but we have to be careful about how much we try to push into a child at an early age. We must guard against force-feeding children with adult knowledge and information. They can acquire it best in their own time and in their own development. Of course it needs stimulus and encouragement but it should not be thrust down their throats.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, said, it is in the earliest years that the habit of learning can best be acquired. It is then, when the mind is at its freshest and its capacity to absorb knowledge is at its greatest, that attitudes for future conduct can best be shaped. This was well underlined in a report sent out by the Children’s Society. Its leaflet states:

“Childhood is the time of our most rapid learning, of absorbing extraordinary amounts of new information and acquiring new skills and interests. The pleasure, sense of self and personal growth that children find in learning and discovery is something that is essential for each and every child’s emotional well-being”.

However, we need to be alert to the fact that children are these days subject to the most enormous pressures and hideous influences. Noble Lords may well have seen an interesting article in the New Statesman recently—an essay by Rafael Behr, headed “Generation X-rated”, and with the sub-heading:

“Never has it been so easy for young children to watch violent pornography”.

Claire Perry, the honourable Member for Devizes, who advises the Prime Minister on childhood and internet safety, told Rafael Behr:

“Some parents are in digital oblivion. They have no idea what their children are doing with computers and phones”.

I read another article recently by Barbara McMahon in the Times on 26 March, in which she said:

“Research suggests that children of preschool age are spending increasing time with their faces a few inches away from screens instead of entertaining themselves with traditional toys or reading books”.

Lisa Guernsey, author of Screen Time, was quoted as saying:

“The greatest touch screen in the world of a child is an adult face”.

This is not alarmist talk. It is happening in the real world and children have what has been referred to as an electronic bedsit that parents are often not allowed to enter. We have to guard ourselves against these things and be alert to what is going on in the real world. That requires participation in all elements of children’s education.