Life Skills and Citizenship

Lord Hampton Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, as a state secondary school teacher myself, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, and thank her for this opportunity. The teaching of these subjects is part of a more fundamental discussion—as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, just said—about our whole curriculum.

The Skills Builder Partnership and Edge Foundation recently published a report that estimated that the lack of vital skills, such as problem-solving, teamwork and leadership, cost the UK economy £22 billion pounds last year. These skills, like the creative skills that contribute to the UK’s vital creative industry, are not passed on genetically or by osmosis; for most children, they are mainly learned at school. If we can enrich children with these skills, we can improve not only their life chances but the chances of those around them.

We should be teaching life skills and citizenship all day every day to our students as an embedded part of every subject, not as a separate subject. Problem-solving, both mental and practical, should have a much larger share of the curriculum. Teamwork, critical thinking and analysis, physical activity, manual dexterity and personal health and well-being would be far more useful than the rote learning that still clings to much of our national curriculum.

We should not be educating children so that they can go on to university; we should be educating children so that they can go into life. University should be a choice, not an inevitability and, whether they choose to go or not, our school leavers should be robust, practical, critical thinkers who are better prepared for a life as healthy, compassionate, ambitious, self-aware, resilient and employable citizens.