Academies Bill [HL]

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I speak on this matter in a personal capacity and I absolutely support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. I also support much of the spirit behind the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, although I think that it is a bit too late to provide sex and relationships education to 14 year-olds, given the hundreds of girls under the age of 14 who get pregnant every year. Good PSHE includes all the information that young people need to lead an ordinary but successful life, or even an extraordinary life. It is not academic but what are schools doing if not preparing young people for the lives that they will lead when they leave and, indeed, the lives that they lead while they are still at school?

Much has been said this afternoon about the importance of teaching about parenting, and I absolutely agree. Noble Lords may have heard about the programme in which school nurses give out baby dolls to young women. These dolls scream in the middle of the night, they need burping, they need their nappy changing and they need feeding regularly. I recently heard about one school nurse who gave out a batch of these dolls and when they came back at the end of the week most of the young girls said, “Oh my goodness. I couldn’t possibly”, apart from one who said, “It was wonderful. I can’t wait to get pregnant”, so it does not always work.

Over the years, I have said a good deal on this subject in your Lordships’ House, so, in an effort not to repeat myself, I did some new front-line research last week with two teenagers who are doing work experience in Parliament. One told me about a girl in her sister’s class at school who at the age of 13 had a one year-old baby. Both of them said that they have to go to PSHE lessons but to quote one of them, “We don’t do anything”, and to quote the other, “We watch a lot of videos”. One said, “We had a lesson on drugs recently and they just said, ‘Don’t do drugs. Drugs are bad’. It was useless”. She also told me that she did not have any sex education until she was 17 and that they do not teach about contraception or abortion in their Catholic school except in RE, where they say, “Don’t do it; it’s a sin”.

That is just not good enough. I realise that this is a very small sample of hearsay evidence but it lines up with what I have heard from many other teenagers over the years. It tell me that, first, teachers are not properly trained to deliver PSHE; secondly, teachers are not confident to teach PSHE, and that is why they rely so much on videos; thirdly, the quality of PSHE varies immensely and is very poor in some places; and, fourthly, some children are not receiving the information to which they are entitled and which protects their well-being.

The only way to deal with all those things is to make the subject part of the national curriculum in maintained schools and mandatory in academies and all other schools that do not have to follow the rest of the national curriculum. All establishments which educate children and young people have a duty to have regard to their well-being. However, they cannot do that successfully if they do not give them the information that they need to live a happy life. Young girls’ life chances are being severely affected because they may not have the information or the self-confidence to avoid unwanted pregnancies, and often the state has to pick up the bill in the interests of the young girl and, in particular, her baby. Unless children have information about the dangers of tobacco, alcohol and drugs, they may unwittingly become addicted at great cost to themselves and the country before they can turn round.

Much has been said about teacher training and, as usual, my noble friend Lady Williams has put her finger on it. Fully trained teachers cannot be produced in an instant, but her suggestion that the Government should show their intention to make the subject mandatory, given sufficient time to undertake the training of new teachers in initial teacher training or CPD for existing teachers, would be a solution to that problem. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said that often the subject is given to Joe Bloggs the geography teacher. In my experience, it was given to Jill Bloggs the biology teacher or, in my case, Joan Walmsley the biology teacher. I taught it but I was not properly trained and I did not have the necessary confidence. I did my best but it was a very long time ago and the problem is that that is still happening.

I know that the Government are to have a curriculum review, which will be an opportunity to look very carefully at what we teach our children in schools. We need to give them the tools for life and not just academic qualifications for work. We must redress the damage that was done before the election when this measure very nearly got into legislation, but was prevented by the vagaries of our parliamentary procedures. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me that this subject will be considered during the curriculum review.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

It could be argued that there is no more important element of the curriculum than PSHE. The previous Government were certainly right to propose that it should be a statutory foundation subject. There is a public, societal interest in children being educated in these areas. Moreover, I believe that it is the inescapable responsibility of Government to ensure that that happens because only the Government can ensure that all children receive education in these areas; only the Government can establish a norm; and only the Government can promote best practice across every school.

Education about relationships and sex is, of course, a very important private and parental responsibility and should be respected as such, but it cannot be the responsibility of parents alone. By definition relationships involve two people and, indeed, two families. Ignorance in sexual matters is dangerous to others. Children need support and education. They grow up in an erotically charged environment, where advertising and entertainment sexualise almost every kind of transaction; and the internet opens the window to a host of sexual possibilities regardless of who receives the messages. I am afraid that it is commonplace in our culture for human beings to be objectified, exploited and even brutalised sexually. Inescapably, children and young people witness that. If there is an age of innocence, it is all too short. For that reason and because of earlier puberty, it is essential that sex and relationship education is introduced at primary level although, of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said, it should be age-appropriate.

There are powerful peer pressures to experiment and to take risks, and those are stronger than the social codes that seek to protect young people from precocious sexual experiences. Children and young people are vulnerable and, therefore, they need help from an early age to understand this environment and to start to establish their own secure and confident individuality. They need education about relationships—not preachy education but education that may well be imparted through the study of literature and drama, for example. They need to learn that good relationships are characterised by respect for the other person, by sensitivity and by love. They also need to learn about the physiological facts of reproduction, the practicalities of birth control and how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases. They need to be taught those matters with no euphemisms and no evasion: sexually transmitted diseases may kill. Some families are not willing to teach that to their children and some families do not know how. Therefore, it is unacceptable to leave sex education to families as a private responsibility. I believe that religious objections, for example to teaching about contraception, have to be overruled.