Education (Environment and Sustainable Citizenship) Bill [HL]

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register, specifically as a professor at the University of Buckingham.

Like so many people who have spoken, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, on the passionate and no-nonsense way in which he introduced this important topic. I particularly thank him for identifying where the cuts would come and where it would be slotted in—it would be part of the existing citizenship teaching. One of the things I have noticed in the short time that I have been in this House is that people are very bad at what we might loosely call fiscal neutrality. It is much easier to ask for things than to identify where the commensurate space is going to be freed up. That is particularly obvious when we talk about financial matters. I hear voices from all sides saying, “Will the Minister spend more on this or that?” Almost never do I hear anyone saying, “And we would have to raise this tax or cut that in order to cover it.”

That is true of curricular questions too. We all have our own ideas about what we would like to see taught in all schools. I agreed very much with what my noble friend Lady Fookes said about a love of nature starting in the local and being rooted in the specific. I see my five year-old and his friends doing nature walks and learning different birdsongs and how to recognise different leaves and wildflowers. I wish I had done that at their age and I wish every child had a chance to do it, but I do not immediately say that it has to be shoehorned into every curriculum, because there are always balancing interests.

We can all think of things that we would like all kids to learn. Maybe these days they should be doing more coding or more basic behavioural psychology, learning to identify false heuristics or those moments when their intuition leads them astray. There are lots of things that would lead them to better life outcomes. But what are we going to cut? Are we going to say, “Let’s not do modern languages because we have such good software these days that does simultaneous interpretation”? Are we going to say, “We don’t really need all the geography that we used to have because you can swipe and find everything out; we don’t need to know what an oxbow lake is these days, because you can find out”? I do not know, but the more that this debate goes on, the more I realise there is a case for humility and modesty on the part of legislators and Governments. We do not have the power, nor does any Secretary of State, to thrust a hand into every classroom and decree exactly what should be taught and learned.

I finish with a plea to the Minister, and to your Lordships more widely, that we should not be too prescriptive. The national curriculum should be kept terse, taut and spare, and we should give maximum discretion and flexibility to teachers and heads, who are in turn answerable to local parents.