Educational Attainment: Boys

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Lingfield]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to improve the educational attainment of boys of all ages at state schools.

[Lord Lingfield (Con)]

My Lords, I remind noble Lords of my education interests in the register, and thank them for taking part in this debate this afternoon.

A retired general known to me was inspecting a school cadet corps, and as he went round, he noticed that, whereas the girls had large numbers of badges on their arms for military pursuits such as shooting, first aid and field-craft, the boys had virtually none. When he addressed the parade he said, “Boys, you must really pull your socks up. You’ve got hardly any badges on your arms”. While he was speaking, a lad in the front row kept putting up his hand, military discipline vying with indignation, and said, “Sir! We’ve got just as many badges as the girls, but the girls won’t sew them on for us!”.

That is a somewhat frivolous introduction to what is actually a very serious subject: boys in our state schools are doing badly compared with girls. I want to pay tribute to the excellent debate on this issue in Westminster Hall last September, secured by my honourable friend Karl MᶜCartney, MP for Lincoln. Many excellent points were made by members across the political spectrum and I shall refer to them from time to time.

There are enough statistics to last the whole afternoon, but here are just a few of them. Last year’s figures show that in state schools girls are 30% more likely to enter university than boys. In Scotland, the figure is 43%. Indeed, the head of UCAS has recently predicted that, if current trends continue, girls born today will be 75% more likely to enter higher education. At the other end of the spectrum, there is a gap of nearly 16% between girls and boys judged to be achieving a good level of development at the end of the early years foundation stage—74.3% for girls and 58.6% for boys. These trends persist: when finishing primary school, some 57% of girls reach the required standards in literacy and numeracy; only 49% of boys do.

When we move to public examinations, last year girls opened up their biggest gap over boys in A to C grades for 14 years—71.3% of female entries were awarded at least a C grade compared with just 62.4% of their male counterparts. Especially in arts subjects, a quarter of girls earn As or A*s, but under 17% of boys do. It is only in mathematics that boys squeak ahead. At university, women are more likely to graduate than their male peers, and typically they get better grades.

Whichever way the data are read, they show that girls outperform boys at all educational stages in most areas of the curriculum. So boys are doing badly compared with girls, with all that that means for society, when surely their attainment ought to be closer to equal. Why is this? No one knows the answer as too little research has been carried out into this important question. Many theories abound and I shall consider some of them.

First, about 15% of teachers in English primary schools are full-time male teachers, and the figure for secondary schools is only 38%. Overall, therefore, three-quarters of all state school teachers are female. This means that the majority of boys, many of whom have no man in the house, never encounter a male role model at home or at school. Please do not get me wrong: I am not knocking our many wonderful women teachers—we obviously could not do without them—but common sense suggests that schools need nearer a 50:50 split, which, by the way, independent schools come closer to.

Does this worrying situation make a difference to boys’ performance? There have been a few studies, based on small samples, which suggest that boys’ attainment is not necessary better when they are taught by male teachers, but in reality no one knows. The decline of boys’ performance has, however, coincided with the drop in the number of male teachers since the 1980s. Could it be that many schools are now not focused enough on supporting boys, understanding what makes them tick and providing a clear disciplinary framework and an environment that does not fail to encourage masculinity? Boys develop more slowly in their teenage years, and many observably have less positive attitudes to schooling. It is very possible that male role models are vital in instilling in them the importance of education.

Whatever the answer, the Government need to address the imbalance of male teachers to female teachers in our schools. Why are men not joining the teaching profession as they used to? Again, there is only anecdotal evidence. Not long ago I talked to a number of newly graduated men at one of our universities. Would they think of teaching as a career? All were emphatic that they would not. Was it the salary? No, they thought that it was fine for someone in their 20s. They unanimously suggested that they could not put up with the disciplinary problems and the chance that there might be unwarranted accusations against them. When I questioned this, they told me that they had been at school only three years before and knew exactly what they were talking about.

It is also perceived wisdom that methods of teaching and examinations have been feminised in the past decades, particularly with the replacement of written examinations with continuous assessment and coursework in many subjects. This is thought to favour girls, who are better capable of the steady, organised work required, whereas boys, it is suggested, do better at putting a towel around their head and revising for all-or-nothing written papers. There has been a trend of late for schools and examining bodies to rely less on coursework and more on end-of-course examinations, but it is too soon to see if this will narrow the gap in performance again, as is suggested.

There is no doubt that the difference in attainment between boys and girls is a complex subject. It is visible across all ethnic groups. The Government have in the past rightly pointed out that most other OECD countries have similar gaps. One would have thought, therefore, that there would be plenty of research in other countries to address this problem, but there is very little of real relevance. Girls are often said to do even better at single-sex schools than at co-educational schools. Do boys do better at boys’ schools than at mixed schools? There seems to be no research available to enable us to take a view. There are some 150 grammar schools in this country, some single sex, some co-educational. Do boys do better in selective education? We cannot tell as there are no useful immediate statistics to help us.

I do not ask the Minister to come up with any answers today to these complicated and vexing questions, but I am sure that we need to hear that the Government will consider a wide-ranging review of the issue. We badly need some high-quality investigative work, and I know that Members on all sides of the House will agree that that research should be free of political correctness and ideology. We need to find out what is putting men off seeking teaching careers so that we can encourage more of them into the profession. We need to know whether the teaching of boys by men really does make a difference to the performance gap. We need to know whether single-sex education is helpful to boys’ attainment or whether there is little difference. We need to know whether boys in selective schools do as well as girls similarly selected. We need to look at comparative studies from other countries—some work has been done in Sweden, the USA and Australia —to see whether there is anything we can learn. Above all, we need to know what can be done for boys without affecting the performance of girls.

Too many boys at present are discouraged by their results and tend to leave education unskilled and poorly qualified for future vocational courses. More young men than young women are not in proper employment or training. Their next steps are too often to be benefits claimants and then, too regularly, they encounter the youth justice system. We need to address these issues, and to do so we badly need far more objective research into them; otherwise, we shall let down further generations of boys with the most serious consequences for our society.

Education: Maintained and Independent Schools

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Lingfield (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Lexden for instigating this debate. I remind noble Lords of my education interests in the register.

I entirely support independent schools giving assistance and advice to schools in the state sector. My noble friend and other noble Lords have given examples of good practice in this area. However, I have several concerns. I would want to be sure that independent schools did not feel under pressure to join in. My noble friend’s speech today has caused me some anxiety, because charitable status could be in danger if schools do not co-operate with the Government’s wishes. Some are fearful that the reporting procedures could lead to the construction of a league table of achievement in the help they are able to give to the state sector.

At the moment, in principle, the removal of charitable status means that a school’s assets could be sequestered and given to another charity. That is unlikely to happen, as we know, but such a threat is still felt by independent schools to be in the air.

Charitable status brings with it certain fiscal advantages—usually cut-price local taxes, exemption from corporation taxes and the ability to obtain gift aid on donations towards certain charitable ends, although not of course on fee income. However, that is not the huge subsidy that some newspapers seem to imagine; independent school governors estimate that those tax advantages account for about 3% of income. There can be few schools which do not spend this on pupils from homes that cannot afford fees. Nationally, charitable status brings independent schools an annual notional tax saving of some £100 million; however, research suggests that they spend more than £260 million on bursaries—bringing it to the sum that my noble friend mentioned.

Independent schools have to tread carefully when assisting state schools. First, they have to reassure fee-paying parents that such a charitable effort is worth while and the cost of it unlikely to diminish their own children’s education; secondly, they have to be extremely careful not to give the appearance of patronage. However, if handled carefully, all this can be extremely beneficial. I have seen wonderful projects involving the teaching of reading by independent school sixth-formers at local primaries, from which the older students gained as much as the younger ones. A good number of cadet units in independent schools have been instrumental in setting up CCF companies in local secondaries. In several cases these now meet as joint forces.

We have heard a great deal in the past, although little today, about charitable independent schools being able to prove public benefit. A landmark judicial review quite properly defined such benefit rather more liberally than the then chairman of the Charity Commission had promulgated. It is true, however, that the modern conception of charity somehow sits uncomfortably with independent schools, which are often seen, usually unfairly, as the preserve of the wealthy. This was guyed really rather well by Ian Hislop in a spoof charity appeal in which he said, “A gift of only £50 will buy a boater for Henrietta”.

On 12 September last year, I asked the Minister whether independent schools that wish to do so will be able to opt out of charitable status and thereby demit the 3% or 4% of their income. His reply was that they will. This is good news, and I suggest that the law could assist those who so wished to opt out by allowing them to keep their current assets and be given the status of what I believe in Scotland are public trusts with no tax advantages. I asked because the governing bodies of independent schools—I was for some years the chairman of one—tend to take a very long-term view. Many of them have survived for hundreds of years by so doing. Threatened in the not-too-distant past by the Charity Commission, some have told me that they fear that threat will someday come again and that they would value being able to opt out, even if it meant the loss of fiscal advantages. Most charitable schools in the independent sector will doubtless wish to remain as charities, with the advantages and possible disadvantages brought by this, but those that do not should, in my view, have the option.

There is one great gift that schools in the private sector can give to the state sector, a gift that costs them nothing. It is the example they set, especially in the use of their independence. Each is a separate, autonomous corporate body; even those schools in groups such as the Woodard Foundation retain their clear individuality. Decisions about financial priorities, staffing, curriculum, buildings and plant are made by the governors and professionals on the spot, without reference to any local or national bureaucracies. This was the freedom that first the grant-maintained schools movement of the 1990s and then its successor, the academies programme, promised state schools and there is no better way of raising standards in them. There is every possible good reason for state and independent schools to work closely together, but it must be made very clear that such arrangements are purely voluntary on both sides.

Schools: Volunteer Reading Helpers

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

Sadly, I cannot predict the future, but I can say that we have more than 3,000 public libraries and I understand that approximately 110 static libraries have closed in the past six years—some have merged. Local authorities are legally required to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service. Some do that via mobile libraries, but we leave it to them to decide how to do it.

[Lord Lingfield (Con)]

My Lords, those of your Lordships who have visited further education colleges will know as I do that, too often, their mission is distorted by having to teach, instead of vocational skills, reading to 16 year-olds. Will my noble friend ensure that primary school children can read fluently and well, and that the task is not left to further education colleges to carry out?

[Lord Nash]

My noble friend makes a very good point; I know that he is very experienced in this area. Since the introduction of our phonics check, the proportion of pupils reaching the accepted standard has risen from 58% to 81%. The proportion of good and outstanding primary schools has risen in the past five years from 69% to 90%. Ofsted reports that the focus on reading and synthetic phonics has been a particular strength. However, my noble friend is right about the importance of primary, because those pupils who do not achieve level 4 when they leave primary school have only a 6% chance of getting five good GCSEs.

Technical Education and Apprenticeships

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

One of the initiatives—there are several—is that we will be setting up, by April 2017, an institute for apprenticeships. The aim will be to have an employer-led approach to ensure that there are more apprenticeships. I think the House will know that we aim to set up 3 million over this Parliament. Also, through the Technical and Further Education Bill, we are extending the remit of the apprenticeship institute to cover college-based, technical education from April 2018.

[Lord Lingfield (Con)]

My Lords, in the course of my work as chairman of the Chartered Institution for Further Education, I have become aware that there are large numbers of would-be mature students, all well-motivated, who would like to start technical courses. What options will the Government make available so that people of all ages can start such a course?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

We had quite a discussion yesterday on the Higher Education and Research Bill about the importance of mature students and part-time students coming back on to the training ladder. This is one of the many initiatives we have to help not just young people.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lingfield (Con)]

I remind your Lordships of my education interests in the register.

I welcome the general thrust of the Bill. It is only to access that I shall direct my comments today, concerning an area already mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, which I fear may receive less attention than other aspects of the Bill. It is an issue that none the less remains extremely important to the students and families to whom it relates: ensuring that higher education students with special educational needs are in the first instance supported in a way that makes the transition from secondary or further education to higher education as smooth as possible, and that subsequently they receive appropriate support so that they are in no way disadvantaged by their special educational needs as they undertake their studies.

I have raised this subject before in your Lordships’ House during the Committee stage of the Children and Families Bill in October 2013. At that point I tabled a number of probing amendments to establish the position of young people who wish to study in higher education and have an education health and care plan. I took some reassurance at the time from the responses to my amendments of the then Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, who stated:

“We share his ambition … that there should indeed be a seamless transition of support between school and higher education … that young people with SEN and disabilities should reach their full potential, including securing a place at university”.—[Official Report, 30/10/13; col. GC 599.]

However, I remained concerned at the time that the exclusion of higher education from the scope of that primary legislation and its accompanying regulation and guidance would lead to some young people being at an avoidable disadvantage when compared to their peers who do not have a special educational need. These concerns remain, and I hope the Minister will be able to provide some reassurance that this legislation and its regulation and guidance will be very clear on the responsibilities that higher education institutions will have in relation to supporting students with special educational needs.

In doing that, I hope that the Minister will note the needs of that discrete group of young people who have special educational needs but may not have a disability, for these needs may be very different from those of students with disabilities. In this context, it is particularly important to ensure that the scope of the appropriate clauses takes that into account.

In the course of my research, I noted the Equality Challenge Unit report of 2015 makes extensive reference to students with disabilities. However, as far as I can see, there is little, if any, reference within it to education, health and care plans, and limited reference to special educational needs. Similarly, I could not see in the Universities UK report Working in Partnership any clear references to education, health and care plans, and I found limited reference to specific conditions such as autism or dyslexia. So I seek reassurance from the Minister that universities have the right specialist knowledge of the needs of young people with special educational needs, rather than of students with disabilities more generally, and of how those needs can best be met.

In closing, the latter question brings me to an apparent and extremely unfortunate anomaly. Now that further education providers can have taught degree-awarding powers—I welcome this, of course—it appears that a young person studying, say, a BA (Hons) in English in a further education institution will continue to receive the protection of an education, health and care plan, while a young person studying exactly the same degree in a higher education institution is no longer entitled to such a plan. For such a degree course, it is difficult to see why and how the support needs for the same student would differ to any great extent between an FE and an HE institution.

If this anomaly really is the case, I hope I am not alone in finding such a situation very difficult to justify. Any attempt to rectify it ought to level up and not take away the protections that those students in FE currently enjoy, and I look forward in due time to hearing the Government’s response.

Schools

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness makes a good point about what has happened in the past. But, as I said, we believe that although this happened in the past, if we have the strong requirements on the opening or extension of selection that we set out in our consultation document, which is to have wider access to more disadvantaged pupils and to support the wider school system, we can devise proposals that will benefit the wider system.

[Lord Lingfield (Con)]

My Lords, noble Lords will know that independent schools that are charities receive certain fiscal advantages for so doing. Will those schools that would like to do so, and certain have indicated to me that they would, be able to opt out of charitable status and therefore demit the 3% or 4% of their income that they would lose by doing that?

[Lord Nash]

They will, of course, but we would hope that everybody involved in the schools system across the country feels an obligation to improve social mobility.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lingfield (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure that the aspiration in the Queen’s Speech to improve schools is one which we all share. It is a sad fact, however, that our schools system has to rely too heavily on the further education sector to remediate poor literacy and numeracy skills in 16 to 18 year-olds. This type of FE work has to be done extensively at present, but we look forward to a time when it ceases to distort the central and foremost aim of FE institutions, which is to provide young people with high-quality technical skills, to give them lifelong chances of employment.

In 2012, I was privileged to chair a government review of professionalism in further education, which produced the so-called Lingfield report. During our work, we visited many providers of further education, in both the public and private sectors. I was struck by the huge variation among them in their provision, one of the sector’s strengths, and the huge variation among them in their quality, one of the sector’s weaknesses. I saw teaching and learning of the highest standards, but was aware of rather too much that was mediocre—and there are, of course, a few colleges that are simply not up to the task of providing what is required of them.

I started my investigation into further education by speaking to young people in schools, and to parents. It became obvious that, virtually all 16 to18 year-olds know that a university will, if they can pass the entry requirements, provide them with either a BA or a BSc degree course in a large choice of subjects. Employers know too what a graduate is and what a degree, for instance, from an institution in membership of the Russell group of universities is likely to be worth. On the other hand, confusion reigns about qualifications in vocational education, what their standards are and how much an employer can rely on each one. In 2014, there were an incredible 21,000 FE qualifications available from 161 awarding bodies, and thus bewilderment is caused to students, parents, lecturers and, especially, employers. The time has come for a simple set of pre-eminent benchmark qualifications, recognisable by all, and proof to employers of high-quality vocational skills.

It is an important part of the Government’s strategy that, as with schools, further education providers should become as autonomous as possible, with their priorities set by the professionals on the spot to suit local employment needs, and not by government. This is the only way that we shall drive up standards in the sector. To that end, I was requested last year to start the process of founding a new royal chartered body, the Institution for Further Education. I pay tribute to officials from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, who have been extraordinarily helpful to me in this quest. I am delighted to say that we now have a council drawn from among the best practitioners in the sector, an office in London and a chief executive appointed. This month, I am told, the Privy Council will consider our petition for a charter; it would be wrong for me to attempt to pre-empt its decision, but we are very hopeful that we shall be able to go ahead shortly.

The new body will admit new member institutions, using a series of criteria concerned with governance, financial probity, high quality of teaching and learning and success rates in current qualifications. Above all, those would-be members will have to submit the highest references from local and other companies on the employability of their students. FE providers will be judged for admission by a committee of their most distinguished peers and colleagues. There are various privileges of membership, which above all will confer a special new status and a high-quality assurance mark on those colleges and other institutions, public or private, which earn them. Membership will be a guarantee to students, parents and employers alike of the high standards of the courses on offer. It is our hope that, in time, all FE providers will aspire to qualify for membership. As with other chartered bodies, those who let standards slip will risk exclusion. One of its early aims will be to further the development, with the various awarding bodies, of the limited set of benchmark qualifications that I mentioned earlier and which will ameliorate the present confusion. We want these to be as well known and valued as if they were university qualifications.

In 2005, Sir Andrew Foster in his review of further education called it “the neglected middle child” of education. That is still, alas, the case, and the situation ought not to be allowed to continue any longer. It is our hope that this new sector-led chartered body, at arm’s length from government, will drive up standards throughout further education and, as an innovative and dynamic entity, assist it to provide for the nation the highly qualified, technically able workforce on which our country’s economy in future decades will depend, as the noble Lord, Lord Quirk, has just reminded us.