Schools: Free Schools
Lord Nash Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what early intervention measures they are putting in place to reduce the educational and financial implications of failing free schools.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, as new institutions, free schools get support from educational advisers prior to opening to develop their education offer and to appoint key staff. They are also subject to rigorous checks on their financial viability. Once open, they are monitored by education and finance advisers. Where performance issues are identified, these advisers work with schools to bring about the necessary improvements. If a school fails to improve, we will take swift and decisive action.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
I thank the Minister for that reply but this weekend we heard accusations that £400 million has been diverted away from the targeted basic need fund to prop up the free schools programme. Meanwhile, West Sussex County Council has already had to find £285,000 to fund alternative places for pupils from the failed Discovery free school. Can the Minister please reassure the House that no further money will have to be diverted towards the Secretary of State’s pet project when there continues to be such severe pressure on school places elsewhere?
Lord Nash
I think I can assure the House. As I said on Monday, far from taking money away from the basic need places, the free schools programme is enhancing the number of places available. We inherited a shortfall in places from the previous Government, who surprisingly failed to anticipate this
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend not agree that it tells us everything about the Official Opposition that they ask a Question not about failing schools but about failing free schools, when free schools have done so much to offer opportunities to people who would otherwise be deserted in failing schools? Does this not show why they are not really fit to form a Government in our country?
Lord Nash
I could give a very long answer to that question but essentially I agree with my noble friend. The free schools programme is an outstanding success, and I use that expression advisedly. Free schools are much more likely than other schools to be rated outstanding after four or five terms of opening. On Monday, I mentioned a number of free schools which I invited noble Lords to visit and which have been rated outstanding within a few months of opening. There are seven, but I am sure that noble Lords across the House will be delighted to hear that many more have recently been judged outstanding in their fifth term of opening, and these reports will be published shortly. Therefore, we should be loudly praising the heads, teachers, parents, sponsors and governors of these schools.
The Lord Bishop of Oxford
My Lords, given that prevention is better than costly cure, can the Minister let us know what is being done to make sure that free schools are established as groups of interdependent schools, rather than independent and autonomous units? Can he let us know how what we have learnt from the academies programme—that we need to get schools grouped together in multi-academy trusts—is being transferred to free schools?
Lord Nash
The right reverend Prelate makes an extremely good point. Although it is true that a number of outstanding schools have been established entirely independently, the way forward is the school-to-school support model, with schools operating in local clusters and secondaries working with their primaries. We are taking this learning, which has been very successful in the academy movement, into the free schools movement.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, we all know that some free schools have not been as successful as the noble Lord makes out. However, apart from that, can he tell the House how the impact and competence of non-qualified teachers will be assessed?
Lord Storey (LD)
The Minister may be aware of the for-profit Swedish company IES, which won a £21 million contract to run the Breckland free school. If that school continues to fail, whose responsibility will it be—the head or the principal, the governors or the trustees, or the for-profit company running that free school?
Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, in view of the hostility to free schools that we hear from both Liberal Democrats and the party opposite, does this mean that if by some extraordinary misfortune—it is very unlikely—we ended up with a Lib-Lab coalition, we would see a return to bog standard comprehensives?
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, will the Minister point out to his noble friends Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Hamilton of Epsom that there is another 12 months to go before the election and that they are getting prematurely overexcited. Does he agree that in this House at least we should try to sustain an intelligent conversation for as much as possible of the next 12 months?
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
The Minister said that if a free school fails the Government will take swift and decisive action. Can he tell the House what that would be?
Education: Free School Funding
Lord Nash Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will repeat in the form of a Statement the Answer to an Urgent Question given in another place this afternoon by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education. The Statement is as follows.
“I am delighted to be able to update the House on progress in providing new school places. Just last week, the Public Accounts Committee congratulated the department on the clear progress that has been made in delivering new school places through the free school programme, with costs significantly lower than under the previous Government’s school building programme.
Free schools cost around half what schools built under Building Schools for the Future cost. Thanks to the savings we have made, and thanks to the success of our long-term economic plan, we have been able to invest far more than the previous Government in creating new school places, especially in areas of need. We are investing £5 billion over the life of this Parliament in giving money to local authorities for new school places. That is more than twice what the previous Government spent over the equivalent preceding period, despite repeated warnings that the population was increasing. We plan to invest even more in the next Parliament, with £7 billion allocated for new school places.
As a result, we have delivered 212,000 new primary school places between 2012 and 2013 and we are on course to deliver another 357,000. Thanks to the efforts of many great local authorities, we now have fewer pupils in overcrowded primary schools than we had in 2010. As well as the expansion of existing local authority provision, we have also created, on top, 83,000 places in new free schools. The budget for these schools has been just under 10% of the department’s total capital spend.
Free schools are, so far, outperforming other schools inspected under our new and more rigorous Ofsted framework. Schools such as Dixons Trinity in Bradford and the Canary Wharf free school in Tower Hamlets have been ranked outstanding months after opening. Free schools are now oversubscribed, with three applications for every place and, indeed, the longer free schools are in place, the more popular they are. Schools such as the West London Free School and the London Academy of Excellence are becoming the most oversubscribed schools in their area.
It is important to remember that we have met the demand identified by local authorities for new school places and have also set up seven out of 10 free schools in areas of significant population growth. Indeed, as the National Audit Office has pointed out, £700 million of the £950 million spent on the free schools so far opened has actually augmented the money given to local authorities for new school places. Other free schools have been set up to provide quality provision where existing standards are too low or school improvements have been too slow.
We should never be complacent about educational standards but we should today take time to thank local authorities and all our school leaders and teachers, because no child in this country is without a school place, fewer are in overcrowded schools and Ofsted reports that more children are being taught good and outstanding lessons by more highly qualified teachers than ever before.
In short, thanks to the rigour with which we have borne down on costs, the innovation unleashed by the academy and free schools programmes, and the success of the Government’s economic strategy, we have been able both to provide all necessary school places and drive up quality across the board”.
Lord Nash
The noble Baroness is of course only doing her job in pointing out the few failings in the free schools programme. However, overall, the programme is a massive success, as witnessed by the number of MPs across the other place this afternoon who praised the free schools in their constituencies and by the massive demand from parents, witnessed by their being three times oversubscribed.
Overall, free schools are far more likely to be rated outstanding within only a few months of opening than other schools. Any failings in our school buildings programme is but nothing compared to the massive failure of the previous Government’s Building Schools for the Future programme, which ran at least £10 billion over cost. That failure was coupled with their complete failure, apparently, to anticipate the looming crisis— despite repeated warnings and their immigration policy—in school places which we are now fixing.
I thought that the Public Accounts Committee report was very balanced and very fair. In particular, it was quite muted compared to the committee’s 2009 report into the Building Schools for the Future programme, which contained phrases such as,
“poor planning and persistent over-optimism”,
and said the department had,
“wasted public money by relying on consultants”,
and was “complacent”.
Rather than the free schools building programme taking money away from basic needs, it is in fact enhancing it: £1.1 billion has been allocated for 174 free schools, 70% of which are in areas of basic need; in the free school round announced in January this year, all our new maintained schools are in areas facing a shortage of places; and it looks likely that the latter will pretty much be the case as well for the new round to be announced shortly. We have been able to meet the demand for school places which we were left with by the previous Government, who in fact reduced the number of primary places by 200,000 despite the warnings. The noble Baroness referred to the Discovery New School. We have closed half of another school. We have in fact closed schools with 200 places in them which compares with the 150,000 new places that we have created under the free schools programme.
Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)
Will my noble friend confirm that one of the most heartening aspects of the free schools programme is that every free school is opened only after extensive consultation with the local community? By the time the free school is open, it has huge community support, and the parents who have been involved in the setting up of the school have overwhelming enthusiasm and are greatly involved in the life of the school in a way that, in my experience, has been seen in very few local authority schools.
Lord Nash
I can confirm what my noble friend says. I encourage noble Lords from across the House to visit schools such as Dixons Trinity Bradford, Reach Academy Feltham, Canary Wharf College or ARK Conway Primary Academy, all of which have been rated outstanding within months of opening.
Lord Storey (LD)
The Minister is right to point to the fact that there are problems of overcrowding in maintained schools. In fact, a survey by the Local Government Association found that in 2012 one-fifth of primary schools were full, with the obvious problem of increased class sizes. Will the Minister confirm that every parent who wishes to send their child to a maintained primary school will be able to do so? Will he confirm or deny that no money has been diverted or augmented from the basic needs budget to the free schools programme? Will he confirm that it is still government policy that no free school should be run as a business? This has somehow been caught up in the issue of the meals programme for key stage 1 children. Will he confirm that the Government are fully committed to that programme?
Lord Nash
Local admissions arrangements are for the local authority in the area, although it is true that virtually all academies and free schools use the local authority admissions process. I have already answered the second point about money being directed from basic needs to free schools. We have a very strict policy: no free school or academy can be run as a business. Indeed, no one with any close relationship with a free school or academy can provide any services to that school except at cost. The Government are fully committed across party to the universal free school meals programme.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister said that no money has been diverted into the free schools programme. Will the Minister confirm that the Treasury set a limit? If, for example, the per capita payment per pupil—not the building cost, but the per capita cost per pupil—is higher for free schools, then both the local authority maintained schools and the voluntary sector schools are deprived of resources. I, for one, take offence when it is said that free schools have more highly qualified teachers when actually they are allowed to employ unqualified teachers. I consider that to be a slur. I admit that I am biased, but does the Minister accept that in Lancashire parents join in their local schools, be they church schools—of which Lancashire has the largest number—or other schools? When the Minister says that seven out of every nine free schools are justified, two out of every nine are not justified. County schools, local authority schools and the voluntary aided sector cannot use that money if it is being spent to support a whim of the Secretary of State.
Lord Nash
All academies and free schools are funded on an equal basis to maintained schools. They may get some start-up grants, but their annual revenue going forward is equal. As regards the slur to which the noble Baroness referred, the Statement says quite clearly that Ofsted has reported that all schools, not just free schools, have more highly qualified teachers than ever before.
Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)
My Lords, I understand that the very first duty of any education department is to ensure that every single parent will have the opportunity to place his or her child in a maintained school if that is what he or she wishes. I am concerned by what appears to be a fog of misunderstanding. My understanding is that there are at least 12 local authorities—I give as examples Teeside, Ruislip, Croydon and Bristol—where it is said to be impossible for a parent to find a place in a maintained primary school. That should be the first duty of Government. It would be very helpful if the Minister could say specifically that he does not know of local authorities that cannot find a primary school place for their children. If someone wants to send their child to a free school that is perfectly fair, but it should not be forced on them.
Lord Nash
I have said quite clearly that we have satisfied all the demand for free school places and we have funded local authorities to be able to satisfy that demand. Of course, we now have a system in which 60% of secondary schools and 12% of primary schools are academies. It may well be that in some areas the nearest school which the allocation process in the local authority directs parents to will be a free school rather than a local authority maintained school.
Education: Black British Students
Lord Nash Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Benjamin
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to raise the academic attainment levels of black British students, and especially those of Caribbean descent.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, the Government aim to improve education for all and our policies to achieve this are working. Attainment for black pupils is increasing strongly while performance gaps have closed and are narrowing substantially. In the past five years, we have seen a 17% increase in black Caribbean pupils attaining five GCSEs, including English and maths; it has gone up from 36% to 53%. For black African pupils the achievement rate now stands at 61.2%, which is above the national average of 60.6%.
Baroness Benjamin (LD)
My Lords, students of Caribbean heritage are at the very bottom of the attainment league table. Chinese and Indian students are at the top yet they are always lumped together as if they are one group, giving the impression that ethnic minority students are outperforming white students. Can my noble friend the Minister tell the House what is being done to ensure that Caribbean-heritage students are attaining the Government’s GCSE benchmark and going on to further and higher education? How is the Education Endowment Foundation being encouraged to use its substantial government funds to address this problem?
Lord Nash
I assure my noble friend that we publish detailed attainment data by specific ethnic category and that schools and Ofsted study their internal data on this carefully to ensure that all pupils are making good progress. Sponsored academies have substantially higher intakes of black pupils than the rest of the state sector, and those pupils are significantly outperforming pupils from similar backgrounds in maintained schools. Sponsored secondary academies have 79% more black Caribbean pupils and are increasing their performance at double that of other state schools, while sponsored primary academies have 38% more black Caribbean pupils and are increasing their performance at three times that of other state schools. Disadvantaged black Caribbean pupils are also outperforming the disadvantaged group as a whole: 45% are achieving the GCSE measure compared to the national average of 41%, while it is 33% for white disadvantaged pupils. Through the pupil premium we are providing £2.5 billion this year, which will benefit more than half of black pupils, while the EEF is funding a number of projects including an increasing pupil motivation project to help black pupils.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that teacher expectation is one of the things that has the greatest impact on pupil achievement? Apart from what is going on in schools, does he also agree that mentoring schemes such as those of the Amos Bursary or ASCL can have a huge impact on the achievement of pupils through their one-to-one programmes?
Lord Nash
I agree entirely with the noble Baroness on both points. I like to think that low teacher expectations, particularly for black pupils, are a thing of the past; that is certainly proven in sponsored academies. I agree entirely with her about mentoring schemes. My own school participates in the mayor’s mentoring programme, which provides mentoring relationships for 1,000 black boys across the capital. Chance UK is an excellent charity providing mentoring, while Think Forward, which was founded by the Private Equity Foundation and funded by the EEF, provides highly trained coaches to work with disadvantaged 14 year-olds in schools in east London.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, what assessment have Her Majesty’s Government made of the impact on educational attainment of the absorption of the Ethnic Minority Achievement Awards into the dedicated schools grant, which was done some months ago?
Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon
My Lords, what happens after school and university is equally important. The latest figures show that 45% of young black people in the UK are unemployed. What steps are the Government taking to stop the overrepresentation of young black African and Caribbean people among the unemployed?
Lord Nash
Our apprenticeships programme is very much aimed at this. We have also reformed vocational qualifications. In the past, too many of these qualifications had no real job value but were overpromoted in equivalence tables. Alison Wolf did a study on this, and we have dramatically reduced the number of equivalent vocational qualifications that count, which will be of much more value to all pupils and I think will particularly help black pupils.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that a recent study by the Institute of Education found that one of the major concerns of black parents was that teachers generally predetermined the kind of pupils—
Baroness Hussein-Ece
—who were capable of academic success, that some teachers had lower expectations of black and minority ethnic students and that black pupils were more likely to be entered for lower-tier exams, meaning that these students were able to achieve only a C or D grade as a maximum?
Lord Nash
One could say that was a fair cop, but I think I am entitled to. The Teach First programme, which we have quadrupled, the Teaching Leaders scheme and the Future Leaders scheme, along with the Talented Leaders programme that we are shortly to introduce, should all ensure that we raise the standard of teaching and that any prejudice in this regard is a thing of the past.
Schools: Bad Behaviour
Lord Nash Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Massey of Darwen
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what policies they promote to prevent bad behaviour in schools, apart from punishment.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, we recently updated our Behaviour and Discipline in Schools advice. This stresses the need for schools to have a behaviour policy that both rewards and reinforces good behaviour and sanctions poor behaviour. We have also published a series of case studies which highlight the range of ways in which schools can foster good behaviour.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response. Does he agree that many schools in challenging areas with challenging pupils nevertheless have good behaviour and good discipline? Why does he think that is? Does he also agree that positive strategies in schools, rather than punitive ones such as picking up litter or writing lines, are more effective in combating bad behaviour?
Lord Nash
I agree entirely with the noble Baroness. Schools have good discipline where they have high standards and expectations across the board and a whole- school behaviour policy that is clearly communicated and consistently applied. For instance, when we took over at Pimlico Academy, behaviour was pretty awful. We used an approach that we had seen in the States, where they start with the pupils’ breaking the rules and getting into trouble and then move them slowly to a position where they behave because they want an orderly society and realise that that is the only way in which they can learn. I believe that behaviour policy should be at the core of all good schools. The noble Baroness is certainly right that rewards and incentives for attendance, behaviour, improvement and effort are all very important in promoting good behaviour.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, the Minister may be aware that in Wales every secondary pupil has access to counselling services, and that independent empirical research has shown that there has been an 80% reduction in behavioural issues. He will also be aware that in Northern Ireland we fund independent counselling for young people, for obvious reasons. Does he think that there is a case for counselling in English schools? Should we look at a programme to develop such a provision?
Lord Nash
I know that my noble friend is very experienced in this area from his role as a primary school head in Liverpool for 20 years. Counselling is very important and there are some excellent counselling organisations, such as Place2Be. Our advice is clear that schools should be aware that when counselling is needed or mental health services need to be involved, they should involve other agencies. Counselling of course links with mentoring, for instance, when pupils at risk of being involved in gangs are mentored and counselled by particular types of people.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, can the Minister tell the House what role school governors and councils should play in promoting high standards of behaviour in schools? Equally, do the Government believe that pupils themselves should have a role? In one group of schools, as I understand it, a slightly older pupil is given responsibility for settling in a new student and afterwards given “brownie” points on how effective the result has been. Can the Minister expand on other ideas for pupil involvement that the Government might be advocating?
Lord Nash
I agree entirely with the noble Baroness. A governor’s main role is to set the ethos and vision of the school. We would expect all governing bodies to accept such an ethos that had very high expectations for behaviour and to be very interested in the school’s behaviour-management policy. School councils and pupil feedback are essential. I recently visited Wickersley Academy in Rotherham, where every year-group elects two pupils to a school council. I said to one of the boys that that seemed to generate a certain amount of change every year. He said, “Not a bit of it. I make sure that I’m elected every year”. I look forward to seeing him in the other place shortly. Older pupils mentoring younger pupils, or acting as guardians in their early days, is very important both for the younger pupils and often for the older pupils for taking responsibility.
Baroness Whitaker (Lab)
The noble Lord’s department has very creditably funded four organisations to reduce bullying in schools. Can he say what success they have had in the case of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children for whom bullying is so substantial a cause of their dropping out at secondary school level?
Lord Nash
The noble Baroness is quite right: we have indeed funded BeatBullying, the Diana Award, Kidscape and the National Children’s Bureau to deliver training for schools to prevent and tackle all types of bullying based on prejudice and intolerance. Tackling all types of bullying is one of our top priorities. Each of the projects will be evaluated to measure the impact of the training on reducing bullying overall. Due to the relatively small numbers involved, it is unlikely that these evaluations will measure the impact on specific groups of children but we believe that the programme should, for instance, have a significant impact on reducing any bullying of Gypsy, Roma or Traveller children.
The Lord Bishop of Leicester
My Lords, in view of the Minister’s clear endorsement of the policy of positive reinforcement of good behaviour, does he agree that we should be doing much more to promote a culture of mutual respect more widely in society so that the benefit of the positive work of many schools is not lost when our children step out of the school gate?
Lord Deben (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that much of the behaviour in schools would improve if all teachers felt that when they were eating in the school they should eat with the children at the tables and take a real part in the conversation, rather than sitting on one side and leaving less suitable people to supervise meals?
Lord Nash
I agree entirely with my noble friend: eating is an extremely civilised way for pupils to learn. I recently visited Dixons Trinity free school in Bradford, which was rated as outstanding shortly after it opened and which I strongly recommend any noble Lord to visit. It has a scheme of family dining whereby pupils eat in eights, teachers join them and one pupil collects the food and serves it to the other pupils. I talked to the pupils about this and they felt that it was extremely valuable.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that a strong PSHE programme is essential to inculcating good behaviour both in and out of school? Is it not another good reason why the Government should put a much stronger emphasis now on PSHE and require all schools to prioritise and improve their PSHE teaching?
Lord Nash
As the noble Baroness knows, we feel that strong PSHE teaching is at the core of all schools—we just do not think that we should legislate specifically for it, as we have discussed on many occasions in this House. We feel we should leave head teachers to adapt the particular pastoral care that they have in their schools. However, we have commissioned the PSHE Association to produce a series of case studies, and Ofsted also has produced a range of key characteristics. We are also establishing a PSHE expert group chaired by Joe Hayman, chief executive of the PSHE Association, to ensure that teachers have the support and resources to deliver high-quality PSHE teaching.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, what progress is being made in the historic overrepresentation of boys from African-Caribbean communities who are excluded?
Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)
My Lords, a lot of research has shown that exposure to music and drama in young children tempers behaviour. I wonder whether the Government would like to commit to supporting music and drama in schools and, indeed, increasing it?
Lord Nash
We fully support music and drama in all schools; it can be a very calming influence. When we took over in my own school they had a bell which sounded like a submarine, which I thought was very uncalming. We now have a piece of piano music, the noble Lord may be delighted to hear. An active music/drama programme should be central to every school’s curriculum.
Education: Social Mobility
Lord Nash Excerpts(12 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for the opportunity to debate the role of primary and secondary schools in improving social mobility. We believe in higher standards for all, no matter what a child’s background, and we are committed to getting every child’s education right. From early years education and curriculum reforms through to more freedom for teachers and better vocational education, improving social mobility underpins absolutely everything that we are doing. Our reforms can be summarised in a few words: raising the bar and closing the gap.
It is possible to look at the education sector in this country with the benefit of hindsight and conclude that successive Governments have managed it for appearance’s sake. Over the past third of a century the number of pupils getting a C grade in GCSE maths has risen from 22% to 73% with no apparent increase in performance, and between 2006 and 2009 alone the number of pupils getting a C grade in GCSE maths and English rose by 8% when, at the same time, PISA showed a slight fall in the proportion of English pupils who achieved highly.
Then we had the greatest confidence trick ever perpetrated on the English public: the absolute scandal of GCSE equivalents, whereby subjects that were often not valued by employers and did the pupils taking them no favours were hugely overrated in terms of their GCSE-equivalent status.
You might think that a young person who has five A* to C grade GCSEs, including English and maths, would indeed have five GCSEs, but not a bit of it. In many cases they merely had English and maths and the rest were entirely made up of equivalents, often in merely one subject. For instance, a BTEC higher-level diploma in fish husbandry, in which there were no examinations, equated to four GCSEs. Other favourite equivalent subjects of mine are cake decorating, health and safety and hazard control. The fact that many pupils took these subjects is not the fault of teachers, as they can only respond to the incentives put on them by Governments, but as a result of these incentives, under the Labour Government, the number of pupils taking a core academic suite of subjects fell from 50% to 22%.
Something similar happened to content. For instance, more than 90% of questions answered on novels in English literature are on three books: Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies. In the country that gave us Chaucer, Hardy, Dickens, Trollope, Austen and the Brontës—I could go on and on—how can this be, excellent though these books are? It is an example of how the curriculum has been hijacked by political correctness, victim culture, guilt trips and the concept of relevance. For instance, in history, children are doing Nazism over and over again with no concept of the broad sweep of history.
Additionally, about a third of a century ago there grew up a myth that the human brain was like a computer or a calculator and that it just needed to acquire skills and did not need knowledge. More recent cognitive science shows that in order for the brain to learn skills, it needs knowledge to apply what Michael Young of the Institute of Education has called “powerful knowledge”.
Throw in a couple of other things, such as the false perception that there was such a thing as the perfect Ofsted lesson, minimum teaching from the front, group work, lots of activities, peer review, a plenary at the end, the abolition of competitive sports in many schools and the fact that many teachers were unaware of the boundaries to the behaviour strategies they could employ, and it is hardly surprising that during the first decade of this century we plummeted down the international league tables as other countries in the Far East and eastern Europe overtook us. Nor is it surprising that our school leavers are among the most illiterate and innumerate in the developed world, coming joint bottom in a recent OECD survey of 24 countries for literacy and 21st out of 24 for numeracy; or that, as Alan Milburn tells us, we are the most socially immobile country in Europe, so that we, the sixth-largest economy in the world, rank in the mid-twenties for the quality of our education.
This cannot go on. It is not fair on our children. We cannot compete internationally with education of this standard, and the only way we can break that dreadful cycle of worklessness and generational unemployment that we see in so many of our inner cities, coastal towns, former mining villages and other areas is through education. That is why this Government have such an extensive programme of educational reforms in place.
We know that the barriers to social mobility start right from a child’s early years. By the time children reach the age of five there is already a 12% achievement gap between those from lower-income households and the rest. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds can, therefore, benefit most from attending a high-quality pre-school setting. We are the first Government to fund 15 hours of free childcare for all disadvantaged two year-olds, we have extended the benefits of funded early learning for three and four year-olds from 12.5 to 15 hours per week, and we are raising the status and quality of the early years workforce.
My right honourable friend the Minister of State for Schools is currently making a Statement in the other place about action we are taking to deliver fairer funding in English schools. For too long, the system has been out of date, and schools with many disadvantaged pupils can end up being funded at a level well below nearby schools in affluent areas. Today we are announcing a substantial, £350 million, boost to schools in the least fairly funded local authorities in this country. This represents a huge step forwards towards fair funding in English schools and will make a real difference on the ground. The details of our proposals are set out in a consultation document being published today, and a copy will be placed in the House Library.
It is also important that children are well fed. Nutrition is the foundation of effective learning and development, which is why we are funding free school meals for all infant school pupils from September this year, and why we are also providing funding to help set up breakfast clubs and providing every primary school pupil with a free piece of fruit each day.
We have provided additional funding for disadvantaged children through the pupil premium. Pupil premium funding will rise from £1.9 billion to £2.5 billion in 2014-15. The primary school rate will increase from £900 to £1,300 and, for the first time, all pupils who are looked after or leave care through adoption, special guardianship or residence orders will attract £1,900 from April 2014. We are starting to see the positive impact of the pupil premium. In July 2013’s key stage 2 tests, the gap in attainment between these pupils and other pupils in key stage 2 has narrowed by 3.7% since 2010, moving from 17% to 13.2% in 2013. The gap is also starting to narrow in secondary schools.
While closing the gap, we must also raise the bar across the system and we are committed to reforming the school curriculum and exams. We are reforming the national curriculum to equip all young people with the essential knowledge and skills they need to succeed in life by working with academic experts from around the world. In particular, we know that a confident grasp of maths and English is vital, with maths providing the strongest links to future earnings and employment. That is why we have made it a priority to ensure that no student leaves school without reaching a good standard in both disciplines.
In primary schools, we have introduced phonics at every stage of English teaching so that teachers can intervene early to help children catch up and we are increasing the emphasis on spelling, punctuation and grammar. We are strengthening the primary maths curriculum with a greater emphasis on arithmetic. We are introducing a new requirement to teach a foreign language at key stage 2. At secondary school level, we are providing a literacy and numeracy catch-up premium of £500.
We are introducing a new computing curriculum which encourages students to see how they could create technology as well as simply use it and is unique among major economies. Our new design and technology curriculum places a greater emphasis on the links with maths, science and computing and will prepare pupils for the cutting-edge technology industries of the future. All students, whether on academic or vocational courses, will be expected to continue to study English and maths if they did not achieve a GCSE grade C in these subjects by the age of 16.
In further education, we are introducing new core maths qualifications which build on GCSE study for students who achieve a B or C in GCSE maths, and will also be valuable for those with A* and A who are not taking A or AS-level maths. In addition, we are supporting increased take-up of A-level maths and further maths. Maths and English will also play a more important role in vocational education. From 2014-15, all intermediate apprentices will be required to work towards a level 2 in English and maths, and all people undertaking a traineeship will also be required to study English and maths, unless they have achieved a GCSE A* to C in those subjects.
Aside from the importance of developing strong literacy and numeracy skills, we know that disadvantaged children, in particular, benefit from the core cultural capital that comes with access to a breadth of basic knowledge and a core suite of academic subjects, as is found in all successful education jurisdictions. This was recently confirmed in a study by Edinburgh University. To quote the right honourable Diane Abbott MP:
“It is precisely if you don’t have parents to put in a word for you in a tough jobs market that you need the assurance of rigorous qualifications”.
Our EBacc measure is achieving exactly this. Since the EBacc’s introduction, the proportion of students taking the academic subjects in state-funded schools has risen from 22% to 35%, and we are expecting that to grow further this year. The proportion of FSM pupils taking the EBacc has more than doubled since 2011. In the past year alone, history entries went up 19% and geography by 21%. Language study is also increasing rapidly, with Spanish up 31% since 2012.
In addition, we are making GCSEs and A-levels more stretching. Following a public consultation in 2013, the new GCSEs have been drafted by experts to ensure that the reformed qualifications match those in line with the highest-performing jurisdictions. We are working with Russell group universities to restore rigour to A-levels so that students from all backgrounds can apply to university with highly valued qualifications. We are already seeing success. In March last year, UCAS reported that the proportion of 18 year-olds from the most disadvantaged backgrounds applying to university increased to the highest level ever recorded.
Another way to ensure that disadvantaged children have access to cultural capital is through a rounded curriculum that includes character-building activities. We are strongly encouraging as many schools as possible to set a longer school day, including rich, raising-aspirations programmes for their pupils. We also want pupils to be able to access the cadet experience as part of school life. We are making progress towards this, having already established 28 cadet units. Our target for 2015 is 100 units. We are ramping up the National Citizen Service, and investing £150 million in primary school sport.
It is vital that we make schools more accountable for the achievement of our most disadvantaged children. As the Shadow Secretary of State for Education said recently:
“The great crime was an awful lot of effort being put on kids getting a C at GCSE, then not going further. There should be no limits—the system should be saying how far can this child go?”.
I could not agree more. Hence our move towards the new Progress 8 measure from 2016. That will track the progress of all pupils of whatever ability throughout their school careers, rather than encouraging schools to focus excessively on their pupils who are near the GCSE C/D borderline. We will value the progress of every child—low attainers and high performers alike. In addition, schools will not normally be judged outstanding by Ofsted if disadvantaged pupils are not making at least good progress. We are also publishing details of the attainment of disadvantaged pupils and the in-school gap between them and their peers.
None of what I have outlined above would be possible without our brilliant teachers. I have often said that teaching is the most noble profession. Teachers do a wonderful job, and those many thousands of dedicated, hard-working individuals working in our schools are transforming the lives of thousands of children. We now have the best generation of teachers ever working in our classrooms. Education is now the most popular career destination for Oxford graduates. Some 14% of its graduates enter teaching—a remarkable figure—and 74% of graduates entering teaching have a First or Upper Second degree, the highest percentage since records began. We have quadrupled the size of Teach First, now the largest recruiter of graduates in our country, and extended it into primary schools as well as to every region of the country.
We are also changing the way we recruit teachers. The School Direct programme, launched by Charlie Taylor, an outstanding headmaster, enables our best schools to hand-pick the most exceptional candidates and our prospective teachers to start their careers in our best schools. That has proved extremely popular with both schools and trainees, attracting more applicants per place than any other training route, with three applicants for every place compared with 1.8 for training provision delivered by a university.
We are also offering new bursaries worth up to £25,000 to attract top graduates into teaching maths, physics and chemistry. Last year we recruited a record number of physics trainees. For those already in the profession, we are giving heads more freedom and scope to make decisions in line with pupils’ needs. Our new Teachers’ Standards remove unnecessary bureaucracy, and we have freed up teachers to teach as they wish so long as pupils are making progress.
We have strengthened the ability of teachers to discipline pupils and, through reform that links pay and performance, we have made it easier for schools to reward good performance and attract the top graduates and professionals. We have set up almost 350 teaching schools which support other schools to improve teacher training. In addition, of course, there is the academies programme.
The genesis of the academies programme itself was of course the city technology programme introduced by my noble friend Lord Baker, whereby 15 failing schools were essentially taken over by entrepreneurs. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, took that programme and beefed it up substantially, and by 2010, 15 CTCs had become 203 academies with about 70 in the pipeline. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and my noble friend Lord Baker—both of whom I am delighted to see in their places today—for the sheer brilliance of the academy concept. We have taken the number of sponsored academies now to more than 1,000 up and down the country. Schools that were left to languish in failure by their local authorities for years, with perhaps occasional and soft intervention, are now being turned around permanently by strong academy sponsors.
Those are schools such as ARK’s Charter Academy in Portsmouth, where results have more than trebled since the school became an academy in 2009 against a backdrop of high local deprivation, with 68% of pupils gaining five A* to C grades, including in English and maths, in 2013. Then there are Outwood Grange’s Portland Academy, where results rose from 57% of pupils achieving five A* to C grades, including English and maths in 2012, to 75% in 2013, and Greenwood Dale’s Stanground Academy in Peterbrough, where results have improved from 39% achieving five A* to C grades, including English and maths, in 2012, to 62% in 2013.
The academies programme is working across the piece. The performance of sponsored academies is far outstripping that of other schools; for instance, sponsored academies that have been open for three years improved their GCSE results last summer by 12% versus 6% for other schools. The latest Ofsted Annual Report on schools found that:
“Sponsor-led academies are delivering a step change in performance for chronically underperforming schools”.
We have also allowed all good schools to become academies in their own right, and a further approximately 2,500 schools have done this. These convertor academies do better than local authority maintained schools against the new tougher Ofsted framework.
Some 60% of secondary schools are now academies or on the way to becoming academies. We have now focused our attention on primary schools; indeed, we are the first Government to really focus our attention on the underperformance of primary schools. Some 11% of primary schools are now academies, and we have taken more than 500 underperforming primary schools and turned them into sponsored academies. We are focusing the academy programme on school-to-school support by groups of schools in local geographic areas. Half of academies have engaged with a vulnerable school or schools to raise standards.
We have also taken the academies programme and expanded it into the free schools programme under which any group can apply to the Government to open a new school. Our free schools programme is benefiting disadvantaged children in particular, with 70% of open secondary free schools in areas of basic need, and every primary free school in an area of basic need. We have created 150,000 new places through this programme. At the end of 2013, 73% of free schools inspected were rated good or outstanding, compared to 64% of all schools inspected in the same timeframe.
I think we have all been a little confused about the Labour Party’s policy on free schools, but I am pleased to see that the shadow Education Secretary has now made it clear. He originally said that it would be parent-led academies, but I was delighted to see that on the “Sunday Politics” show recently he amended this to say that they will be academies led by social entrepreneurs and parents—in other words, free schools with another name.
Alongside academies and free schools, both our UTCs and studio schools provide high-quality technical education to 14 to 19 year-olds alongside academic GSCEs and A-levels. There are currently 17 open UTCs which have been designed and delivered in partnership with more than 200 employers and more than 40 different universities, with a further 33 approved. Twenty-eight studio schools are now open and over 400 employers are involved, with a further 18 approved.
The last piece of our holistic reform of education is ensuring that success at school is transferred into gainful employment. To equip our young people to compete in a global market, we need to end what my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education has called the,
“apartheid between academic and practical learning”,
and see practical, technical and vocational training integrated and as rigorous as academic learning. Professor Alison Wolf carried out an independent review of vocational education; she found that vocational education was immensely valuable as part of a broad curriculum, but made it clear that changes were needed to prevent schools enrolling pupils on low-quality qualifications that do not promote progression to further education or employment. We have slashed the number of qualifications approved for reporting from 3,175 to 180 for 14 to 16 year-olds and from 3,721 to 318 for 16 to 18 year-olds. Along with our TechBacc, these reforms will identify existing high-value vocational qualifications, spur the development of new vocational qualifications and provide students in England with a respected, high-status vocational training route to help them compete in the world and give them the skills that employers need.
Ofsted reports that schools have improved faster in the past year than at any time in its history. Our reforms are working. They are extensive, but they are necessary and I commend them to the House.
Lord Nash
My Lords, it has been a privilege to participate in today’s debate, and I am grateful to all noble Lords for their valuable and insightful contributions. This has been a fascinating and instructive discussion, which has demonstrated once again the range of experience, knowledge and passion that this Chamber offers. I would like to join the ranks of noble Lords who said that they are of the first generation in their family to go to university. However, my grandfather was the professor of oil engineering at Birmingham University, although he got there via night school while working for years on an oil rig. How likely is that to happen today?
I will attempt to deal with noble Lords’ points in order, but so that I can perhaps end on a rather happier note, I will start by addressing some of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. I disagree with the noble Baroness that the attainment gap is widening; it has narrowed for pupil premium pupils in primary schools from 17% to 13% under this Government, and is narrowing in secondary schools. I do not wish to say that the Labour Party did not try with its educational reforms, some of which noble Lords will know I am a great fan of. However, between 2000 and 2009 on the OECD tables we fell from eighth to 28th in maths, fourth to 16th in science, and seventh to 27th in literacy, while other countries in eastern Europe and the Far East overtook us. Under this Government we have come off the bottom by a few points in maths and literacy, but we still have a very long way to go. Among our school leavers we now have the lowest level of NEETs for many years.
As far as free schools are concerned, we have closed one and a half of them. The total number of pupils in those one and a half free schools was 200. The closure of those schools is very significant to those pupils and their parents, and we are working closely with the relevant local authorities to ensure that they find alternative places. In the case of Discovery virtually all of them have. However, those children’s places represent 0.1% of the total 150,000 free school places we have created to deal with the shortage of places we inherited.
So far as unqualified teachers are concerned, I am delighted that we are having this discussion. It is such a red herring, and if that is the best criticism we are going to get, I am delighted. That shows that we are truly reaching a consensus on the future of our education system. The number of unqualified teachers has fallen under this Government from over 18,000 to just under 15,000. It is not true to say that there are more unqualified teachers in academies and free schools; it is only a couple of per cent, and many of those are drama teachers working part-time, support teachers or teachers on their way to qualifications.
I agree entirely with my noble friend Lord Storey, the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and other noble Lords that a person’s background should not decide their life chances. My noble friend Lord Storey made a brilliant analysis of early years and primary education based on his extensive experience for many years as a primary head in Liverpool. He identified the importance of early identification and the lack of words that pupils from more disadvantaged backgrounds experience. That is why we are putting such an emphasis on early years and primary education. There has been far too much focus on GCSEs, and we all, particularly parents, need to appreciate that it is in primary years that things can go so badly wrong or so right.
I agree entirely with the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, about languages, particularly about the wider benefits of studying a language. That is why we are making such teaching mandatory at key stage 2. I am grateful for her comments about the increased take-up of languages, particularly for less privileged pupils. I will commit to study in detail the Language Trends survey to which she refers, particularly as regards the point she made about take-up, and to consider further what we can do to improve language take-up. We continue to highlight the importance of recruiting high-quality linguists in teaching through our extensive bursary programme, and of course academies now have the freedom to recruit from a much wider field and can bring in native speakers of a language to enthuse and inspire children’s learning, even where they do not hold qualified teacher status. Through the free schools programme we have opened the Bilingual Primary School in Brighton, which delivers the curriculum in both English and Spanish, and the Judith Kerr Primary School in Southwark, where the curriculum is delivered in both English and German.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle spoke eloquently and movingly about the success of the Northumberland Church of England Academy. I agree entirely with him about the importance of links with business, professions, the forces and the wider world. All schools should provide their pupils with a direct line of sight to the workplace. That was also mentioned by my noble friends Lady Garden and Lord Shipley, and other noble Lords.
All good schools should involve their local businesses and professional communities to give young people a broad experience of the careers open to them, opening doors, as the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, said. I have been incredibly heartened to see many examples of that developing across the country; for example, Business Class, a programme organised through Business in the Community, brings schools and businesses together. There are now just under 300 partnerships in 59 clusters across the UK, under which pupils gain access to work experience, work placements and careers-focused activities, while businesses have the opportunity to influence the curriculum and skills being taught in schools.
There is also Inspiring the Future, Speakers for Schools, Barclays Life Skills and, in my own school, a huge Raising Aspirations programme involving businesses and charities. I have seen with my own eyes the dramatic effect it can have on pupils who come from incredibly narrow backgrounds to see and mix with people from work. We have two people full-time employed on this programme; I believe that all schools should have at least one person full-time on the programme. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, took me to the Morpeth School in Tower Hamlets recently, where there is a highly successful “speed dating” career service. Tomorrow, I shall be in Leeds, visiting Make the Grade, another organisation that provides schools with a bespoke programme for employability and skills. The remit of the National Careers Service will be expanded to encourage links with businesses.
The noble Lord, Lord Baker, spoke passionately about the UTC programme, and I pay tribute to his relentless determination in this regard. He mentioned NEETs. Our destination measures will, I hope, result in the NEET percentage for schools becoming an increasingly big driver of parents’ choice and school behaviour.
The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, talked about entrenched elitism and the concentration of power in a few hands. It seems odd to some that a party that is sometimes—although it may be rather exaggerated—criticised for being run by a bunch of toffs is so concerned about the future of the most disadvantaged, but we are. Indeed, compared to the home circumstances of many of these young people, we are all toffs, and I know that we all share a concern to make sure that the playing field is levelled. Private school students are 55 times more likely to win a place at Oxbridge and 22 times more likely to go to a top-rank university than students at state schools on free school meals. The life chances of a child are still far too determined by their background, and that is unacceptable.
The noble Baroness mentioned mentoring programmes, of which there are many good examples such as Chance UK, Mosaic and the mayor’s mentoring programme in my own school. We have a large mentoring programme and a separate one to mentor those boys and girls in gangs. The noble Baroness asked whether the Government will survey mentoring and support schemes, and I undertake to look at that.
We have discussed PSHE at great length, and I am greatly looking forward to speaking at the PSHE Association’s annual conference on 26 June.
My noble friend Lady Garden, and the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, spoke about the impact that poor parenting can have on a child’s life chances. The parenting classes trial known as CANparent is running until spring this year and is delivering high-quality parenting classes benefiting parents from all backgrounds. It aims to test how a market in parenting classes can be established and to remove the stigma from attending such classes, which often puts off young parents in particular. We want all families to be able to access and benefit from parenting classes if they choose, creating a culture of seeking help and strength from parenting classes to be the norm. Parents who attend good parenting classes find that they can be life-changing. I was intrigued by the suggestion from the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, that books should be put in the baby bags that new parents receive. That is certainly something that I shall look at.
My noble friend Lady Garden talked about schools advertising the number of pupils that go on to apprenticeships, and I certainly hope that our new destination measures will encourage this.
The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, talked about hope and the very early years of children. He mentioned a number of initiatives. Of course, we are also doing a huge amount of work in our programme on families with multiple problems. The noble Lord also mentioned soft skills in secondary schools; I have sent a message at every opportunity about the importance of this and that all schools should have this right at the forefront of what they do. As my noble friend Lady Perry said, good teachers and academy sponsors get this big time—the importance of confidence and inspiration. I do not know a single successful person who does not have that essential confidence and a positive attitude.
My noble friend Lady Tyler reminded us that character and resilience are other important features of a rounded education that are too often overlooked, and that they can be learnt. I am a great believer in characteristics such as learnt optimism. Schools play an important role in providing character-building activities for their pupils, and we encourage all schools to have those programmes. I shall consider the point that she made about taking more cognisance of these. I am also delighted to hear about her recommendations about teachers being involved in extracurricular activities and that character-building skills should be incorporated in ITT and sharing facilities with private providers.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester made some observations about School Direct. In 2013-14, School Direct attracted more applications per place than any other training route, with three applications for every place compared with 1.8 for provider-led provision. It is a struggle to recruit for some of the shortage subjects but this has also been the case for other types of places. All School Direct places are delivered in partnership with an accredited ITT partner and 71% of places have been allocated to schools working with a university provider. The expansion of School Direct has provided opportunities for universities to maintain, or even increase, their ITT market share.
The quality of ITT training is, however, very patchy. We believe that we need to create other training options, and that competition will improve the situation. Those institutions which do provide good-quality ITT should have nothing to fear from competition. Those that do not—and they exist—need to raise their game, but we believe in a mixed economy in teacher training and greater research into the effects of education measures, which is why, for instance, we have funded, with some £100 million, the education endowment fund.
My noble friend Lady Perry made some very kind remarks about the success of the academies programme and paid tribute to the chain of my noble friend Lord Harris. She mentioned that there are now many other successful chains, including Ark, Greenwood Dale, Outwood Grange, REAch2 and Aldridge.
I was delighted to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, mention that we are moving towards more of a consensus on education. She talked about an overemphasis on structures. I agree that we can talk too much about structures; the key is what happens in the classroom. However, I believe it was Tony Blair who said that you have to free up the structure to get the autonomy for schools to deliver. The noble Baroness mentioned failure. Of course, there are failures in the academy system. We have, in fact, issued 41 pre-warning notices to academies that are failing in their achievement, but 25 of those concern academies approved by the previous Government. I see no point in highlighting that because it is still a very small percentage. Overall, the performance of academies and academy chains far outstrips that of other schools.
The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, mentioned the 16 to 19 free school we have approved led by Bolton Wanderers Football Club, which will be a continuation of the excellent work it is doing with young people in its community. I was interested to hear first hand about its work when I met the club with the noble Baroness last year.
My noble friend Lord Lingfield spoke about the institute for further education, which he described so eloquently. It is a fantastic way of helping FE institutions celebrate their success, build their reputation and status and gain recognition for what they have achieved in their communities. I look forward to its formal launch later in the year.
My noble friend Lord Addington spoke with his customary eloquence about the problems encountered by children with hidden disabilities such as dyslexia. The Children and Families Bill—which is, as of today, an Act, I am delighted to say—makes it clear that schools and colleges must use their best endeavours to secure support for pupils with special educational needs. We have taken steps to improve teachers’ skills in recognising and supporting young people with dyslexia and other types of SEN. We support systemic synthetic phonics, which has been shown to be effective for teaching dyslexic pupils to read and write. We have supported 3,200 teachers to obtain specialist qualifications in dyslexia and, since 2009, the Government, and the previous Government, have funded the training of more than 10,000 new SENCOs. We are also developing specialist resources for initial teacher training and new advanced-level online modules on areas including dyslexia, autism and speech and language skills. Reasonable adjustments must also be made for examinations and assessments. As a result of my noble friend’s powerful intervention during the passage of the Children and Families Bill, we now have this incorporated in the Act. I hope that this will now happen.
The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, talked powerfully about autism. Transition to adulthood is something that many young people with autism find particularly difficult. They will benefit in particular from the change to a zero to 25 system and the opportunity to keep their education, health and care plan in place as they transfer from school to college. I will look carefully at the other points the noble Baroness made.
My noble friend Lord True made an impressive point about the danger of adults involved in education putting their interests, dogma and prejudices ahead of those of children—something which we are eradicating but which, sadly, still exists in increasingly isolated pockets of failure. I reiterate my support for clusters of secondaries and primary schools coming together in local multiacademy trusts. So far as the role of local authorities is concerned, we are of course involving them extensively in our targeted, basic-needs programme.
The noble Lords, Lord Graham and Lord Sutherland, spoke powerfully about their experiences, and I will look for the statistics that the noble Lord, Lord Graham, is after.
My noble friend Lord Lexden spoke with great knowledge based on his experience of the independent sector, which has a long history of increasing social mobility through bursaries, scholarships and collaboration with the state sector. Indeed, in 2013 Independent Schools Council schools provided more than £300 million in fee discounts for pupils, which benefited almost 40,000 children. This is something that I absolutely applaud and welcome. I know that the independent/state schools partnerships programme has been particularly successful—notably at King’s Wimbledon and in Southwark, which have had remarkable improvement in the achievement of the state schools involved. I know from my experience as a trustee of the Eastside Young Leaders Academy in Newham, where we have sent more than 15 children—15 black boys who were right on the edge of exclusion—under full bursaries to schools such as Rugby, Wellington and Eton—how powerful this can be. However, we are not currently looking to initiate an open-access scheme. Our priority is to invest our resources in making sure that all state schools provide an excellent education for their pupils, which, in the end, will be the greatest means of achieving much higher levels of social mobility and ensuring that every child fulfils their potential. However, we wish to encourage ever greater co-operation between the independent and state sectors.
I know that the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, was particularly concerned about discount codes for the arts subjects. I should like to reassure him that we take this very seriously. A recent review of discount codes for dance and drama has led to our decision to separate them, meaning that they will be counted separately in performance tables, as he knows. We are also taking evidence on the decision to discount art and design GCSE with art and design and photography GCSE. We will review this decision in the light of that evidence, and I would be delighted to meet the noble Earl to discuss that further.
My noble friend Lady Berridge is right about inspiring children to aspire to university and work experience, and make sure that this is not a province of only Daddy and Mummy’s friends. I look forward to introducing her to David Johnston, who runs the Social Mobility Foundation, which organises work experience and other connections between state school pupils, business and other outlets.
I am delighted to say that that I sense an emerging consensus across the House and all parties as to the future of our education system, which is so important, bearing in mind that the future of our children and of our country depends on this.
I conclude on the subject of teachers. As the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, said, there is no substitute for good teachers. There has never been a more important time in the recent history of our country to be involved in education. We must continue to raise the status of teaching because of the importance of education to our children and our country’s future. Teachers are performing the most important job in our country at this time. I thank them most warmly, as I thank all noble Lords who have participated in this excellent debate.
Schools: Academies
Lord Nash Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Baroness Hughes of Stretford
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, following the decision to remove 10 academies from the E-ACT Academy chain, what action they are taking to ensure that other chains are managing schools satisfactorily.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, within the Department for Education we have a very tough process of performance management for academy chains. The vast majority are sponsored academies—that is, schools which have in most cases previously been allowed to languish in failure for years. Sponsored academies are now improving at double the rate of local authority-maintained schools. In the small number of cases where an academy is not performing well, we hold the trust to account and challenge it to take decisive action. We have a zero-tolerance approach to failure. Since 2011, we have issued 41 pre-warning notices to underperforming academies and these have proved highly effective.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)
My Lords, the question here is not individual academies but chains that have been allowed to take over very large numbers of schools. In fact, it is reported that E-ACT, the subject of my Question, has now lost control of 10 of its 34 schools—a third—after damning Ofsted inspections of those schools. Over the weekend, we heard that another big chain has claimed £1 million for so-called ghost pupils. Has not the Secretary of State been reckless in allowing big business to take over such large numbers of our schools without any continuing oversight of its ability to do so? Will he now agree with us, with Ofsted and apparently also with his Schools Minister, David Laws, that to protect the interests of children, parents and teachers, Ofsted should be allowed to inspect not just the schools but these very big sponsoring chains?
Lord Nash
E-ACT was undoubtedly overambitious. It took on a lot of schools which were failing and in very challenging situations. Personally, I think that big business being involved in the academy programme is an excellent idea, and it was of course the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, who introduced this. As I said, this programme, which we are extending, is working extremely well, and we have extremely rigorous oversight of academy chains. We welcome Ofsted’s batch inspection of schools in academy chains and the support that it gets from those chains. However, Ofsted has a lot to do and, given the very tight grip that we have on the central management of these chains, we do not think that it is necessary for it to go any further than that.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, my noble friend will be aware that academy chains are always catching up with some of the smallest local authorities in terms of the number of schools for which they are responsible. Local authorities’ children’s services and school improvements are inspected. Why does the Minister think that academy chains should not be inspected as chains?
Lord Nash
I think I have just said that I believe that the department has a very tight grip on the central management of academy chains, which, as I said, are performing extremely well by and large. That is not the case with local authorities, among which there are many unfortunate failures. Nearly 400 local authority schools are in special measures and 30 have been in special measures for 18 months. As my noble friend knows, a number of local authorities have, according to Ofsted, been performing particularly poorly.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that it is a benefit that schools can work in partnership, whether through chains or other means? Can we look back at the London Challenge and the Greater Manchester Challenge to see what more can be done to help schools to work together in partnership, particularly with outstanding heads mentoring other heads?
Lord Nash
I entirely agree with the noble Earl. The school-to-school support model, which you could say was pioneered by the London Challenge, started by the previous Government, is one that we favour over other models. That is why we focus all academy groupings on a local and regional cluster basis, whether or not they are part of chains. We think that school-to-school support is the way forward.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, given the enormous success that the academies have achieved in turning round schools and offering opportunities to youngsters, why does the Minister think that we have so many Questions from the party opposite sniping at these very considerable successes?
Lord Nash
I think that I have in the past alluded to the fact—without wishing to rise to the challenge too much—that for many years many schools in this country have undoubtedly been allowed years to languish in failure. We now have many successful chains, such as ARK, Harris, Outwood Grange, REAch2, Greenwood Dale, Aldridge and Perry Beeches, which are turning round inner-city schools that were previously just written off. Some of their performance statistics are really quite miraculous.
The Lord Bishop of Chester
My Lords, I should like to return to the issue of inspection. In as much as the multichain bodies are involved in the governance of all the academies in their chain, and Ofsted inspects governance, why does Ofsted not also inspect the chains themselves?
Lord Nash
Ofsted looks at the support that chains are giving to their schools, and we have a very tight grip on the governance of all the chains. We have been in discussions with 50 chains to strengthen their governance arrangements and have a network of non-executive directors whom we have been introducing to chains to support them.
Lord Dykes (LD)
To restore public confidence, should not these institutions be genuine, single, self-standing schools without these rather dodgy business connections where chains are using taxpayers’ money which may not be properly audited?
Lord Nash
It is absolutely clear that anyone in any sort of governance arrangement with an academy or an academy chain cannot profit from their engagement. Any services provided from the connected party must be provided at no more than cost, and many of those philanthropists provide those services at considerably less than cost.
Education: Vocational Education
Lord Nash Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Baroness Neville-Rolfe
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the approach taken by Germany and Austria in promoting vocational education; and what lessons they have drawn for the United Kingdom and UK competitiveness.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, in Germany and Austria, vocational education is of high quality and closely involves all local employers, which in Germany is sometimes on a compulsory basis. Of course there are differences between our countries, but there is much we can learn from them. This has informed our reforms of vocational education and Professor Alison Wolf’s review. By introducing the tech bacc and tech levels, reforming apprenticeships and through our UTCs and studio schools, we are expanding high-quality technical education while at the same time ensuring that industry is involved at every step of the way.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that welcome news. We all valued the visit of Chancellor Merkel to Parliament last Thursday, during which she spoke of competitiveness. The German education system does a better job for the nation’s economy and for the less academic partly by ability streaming in schools with the possibility of switching between streams. This provides better educational outcomes and a larger, better pool of talent that can be apprenticed to German business, which is very actively involved. Can we improve our PISA scores and our business performance by doing the same in our schools?
Lord Nash
My noble friend is quite right that the PISA results were a stark wake-up call for all of us about the need to improve our education system across the board in order to compete internationally. In comparison with Germany, we do particularly badly on maths and science. To achieve improvements, we are continuing to introduce a whole suite of reforms, as noble Lords know. As for streaming, we believe that all pupils need a core body of knowledge and indeed I understand that Germany is now extending the period during which their pupils have this. However, there is much that we can learn from Germany. Our UTCs and studio schools, of which we have now approved almost 100, are modelled closely on the success of German technical schools, as are our higher apprenticeships.
Lord Bilimoria (CB)
My Lords, the Minister mentioned studio schools in both his responses. I have recently been appointed a patron of studio schools. Since they were first started in 2010, how many schools have opened and what progress has there been on this excellent initiative that encourages employability skills and a more hands on approach? The CBI says that employers want employability skills. Will the Government be funding more studio schools?
Lord Nash
I am delighted to hear of the noble Lord’s involvement in studio schools. It is fantastic for someone with his experience to be giving back in this way. There are 46 studio schools, 28 of which are open with a further 18 in pre-opening phase. More than 400 employers are involved in studio schools. We welcome all high-quality applications for studio schools.
Baroness Wall of New Barnet (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on the points that she made, with which I agree totally. Could we not emulate Germany in another way by recognising vocational qualifications such as apprenticeships? Apprenticeships are celebrated in Germany very much like graduate degrees are celebrated in this country. For instance, engineers who have come up through an apprenticeship route are held in much esteem, much more than they are in this country. What can we do to make sure that we emulate that?
Lord Nash
The noble Baroness is quite right. The first thing we can do is to reform the standard of our previously existing vocational qualifications, which were nowhere near good enough, with far too many that were not doing our pupils any favours. However, for the first time we now have a high and equal status pathway for pupils through the tech bacc.
Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that in Germany 60% of school children enjoy some form of technical education? The figure in Britain is 15%, and that is one of the reasons why at the moment Angela is the rooster in the walk. Will he ensure that the expansion of UTCs continues? We have 50. There should really be 100 as these colleges are the only colleges that produce employable engineers and technicians and so far none of their students has joined the ranks of the unemployed.
Baroness Morgan of Ely (Lab)
My Lords, many further education colleges encourage young people who have already attained five GCSEs at school effectively to resit vocational courses at the same level as GCSEs—level 2—rather than pushing these students to a level 3 —A-level standard—qualification. What steps are the Government taking to give incentives to colleges to push students to progress and to deliver quicker and better the vocational skills that our economy desperately needs?
Baroness Sharp of Guildford (LD)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that high-quality careers education and properly trained careers advisers are necessary so that young people in schools know the full range of opportunities available to them from vocational education?
Lord Nash
I agree that they are extremely helpful, but my noble friend will have heard me say before that the technology has moved on from the careers adviser being the gold standard. The gold standard must be the active involvement of all schools with business so that all their pupils have a clear, direct line of sight to the workplace.
Lord Flight (Con)
My Lords, have the Government looked at the Swiss model of higher education? Of the order of only 20% of young people attend universities, which are essentially academic, but virtually everybody else gets seven years of sandwich training. Moreover, Switzerland is assessed to have the highest general level of education for its citizens in the world.
Lord Nash
I am aware that the Swiss have a very successful education model. We have studied models around the world and happen to have taken note of this, although Switzerland is a specific country. I shall look at this in more detail and would welcome a discussion with my noble friend about it.
School Pupils: English Speakers
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Baroness Sharples
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their estimate of the number of children starting school for whom English is a second language.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, the latest school census in England in January of last year showed that 19% of pupils in year one, 113,000, and 14% of pupils in year seven, 75,000, have English as an additional language. More than 1 million pupils in schools, 13% of the total, have English as an additional language.
Baroness Sharples (Con)
Is my noble friend aware that certain schools are involved in considerable expense because they have to employ interpreters? What is being done to help parents learn English, so that it can be spoken at home?
Lord Nash
My Lords, it is for schools to determine how to respond to the needs of pupils with EAL, including how they support pupils’ families. We do not hold centrally a figure for the number of interpreters employed in schools. Local authorities have the freedom to allocate EAL funding to schools as they see fit. Schools may well choose to spend this on interpreters or on employing bilingual staff. For example, we know that in 75 local authorities, primary school pupils with EAL attract between £250 and £750 each. The Government are investing £210 million per annum in community learning language programmes to support families with EAL. We are also funding English courses for 24,000 adults with the lowest levels of English through the £6 million English language competition. There is no specific duty for schools to teach English to parents; however, schools have a key role to play in this. Parents of new pupils at, for instance, Millbank Academy—one of the primaries up the road, which is in my wife’s group—where 85% of pupils have EAL, are introduced both to other parents and a member of staff who speaks their home language, and are invited to the school every week to be updated on their pupil’s progress.
Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, a recent British Academy report highlighted the importance of the diverse languages of the UK’s minority communities for our diplomacy, national security and defence needs. Will the Minister therefore acknowledge the data, which suggest that the presence in schools of children who are bilingual or have English as an additional language tends, in fact, to raise overall school performance at GCSE, not damage it? What action will the Government take to recognise and improve these language skills for the benefit of the whole country?
Lord Nash
The noble Baroness is quite right. In fact, pupils with EAL progress very well and have higher EBacc scores. Indeed, sadly, it is many white, working-class British boys with English as a first language who do particularly badly. We recognise the importance of language skills, which is why we have introduced them as a compulsory measure into primary schools. Under this Government, the number of pupils doing languages at secondary school has risen substantially.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, my noble friend will be aware that many children who begin school with little or no English go on to become successful students and have a very positive work ethic that they contribute to the school. But is he aware that there are successful schemes in some authorities whereby bilingual students are trained to provide additional support to young people and their parents who do not have English as a first language to adapt quickly to school life and to the English way of life?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, will the Minister join me in celebrating the role that teaching assistants can play in helping these particular children integrate quickly, particularly if the teaching assistants are drawn from the local community and share the child’s first language as well? Will he reassure all those hard-working teaching assistants around the country that the Government do not have any plans to phase them out?
Lord Nash
The noble Baroness is quite right that teaching assistants can play a vital role, particularly in this area. As we have discussed, the use of teaching assistants can sometimes not be done well—but, properly used, they are vital. We believe that it is for the head teachers to decide how they employ teaching assistants. It is entirely a matter for them.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
The House will be grateful to the noble Lord the Minister for the statistics that he has given us. More importantly, what is the estimate of the number of children who are now going to school who cannot eat properly, have not been toilet trained properly and cannot cope with healthy foods by comparison with what they are accustomed to eating? What are the Government doing to help parents to train those children to make sure that they have a better standard and to stop the closure of the Sure Start centres, which were aimed at trying to prevent that difficulty?
Lord Nash
The noble Lord is quite right that we unfortunately see an increasing number of pupils entering primary school with very challenging social skills. Primary teachers and assistants have to spend several terms socialising them. Meals are very important, which is why we have introduced compulsory meals. On early years training, in fact we have invested substantially in early years and continue to support childminding.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
Does the Question not highlight the additional challenges that certain teachers and schools have? Will the Minister assure the House that in the inspection and evaluation of schools, full appreciation of the job that teachers do and the distance that each child travels, as well as their achievement in academic league tables, are taken into account to stop demoralising teachers who work in particularly challenging areas and do a wonderful job taking children forward through their education?
Lord Nash
The noble Earl is quite right; teaching is the most noble profession and we should at all times recognise that and constantly try to raise the status of teaching in all our lives. Teachers do a wonderful job. Our new Best 8 progress measures will track the progress of all pupils of whatever ability throughout their school careers. We think that that is very important.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton (Lab)
Can I share with the Minister an experience that I had? A London taxi driver was talking to me about his daughter’s education? His daughter had a first class degree and had gained a job in India in IT. He said, “You see, my daughter was very fortunate. She went to a school where she was able to learn Urdu and Gujarati”. The availability of such languages in our schools should always be seen as an asset and an opportunity for English first-language pupils.
Schools: Careers Guidance
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Baroness Humphreys
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress has been made in implementing the recommendations of the Ofsted report of September 2013 Going in the Right Direction? Careers Guidance in Schools from September 2012.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, we want all schools to follow the example of the best and provide inspiring careers advice for young people, based on more real- life contact with the world of work. In response to Ofsted’s report, we are strengthening statutory guidance, particularly with respect to contact with the workplace, and in improving information on apprenticeships and vocational options. We are developing the role of the National Careers Service. Ofsted is ensuring that careers guidance and pupil destinations will be given greater priority in inspections.
Baroness Humphreys (LD)
I thank my noble friend for his reply. Ofsted reported that in more than three-quarters of the schools visited,
“the new arrangements for careers guidance were not working well”.
What specific guidance have the Government given to schools on what constitutes a comprehensive careers guidance strategy, which was recommendation 1 in Ofsted’s report? How will that ensure that all pupils receive appropriate and impartial guidance to enable them to make educated choices concerning their educational pathway post-16?
Lord Nash
My Lords, the revised guidance will make it clear that schools should have a strategy for the advice and guidance they provide to young people. The strategy should be embedded within a clear framework linked to outcomes for pupils rather than an ad hoc set of activities. It should reflect the school’s ethos and meet the needs of all pupils. We will share case studies so that schools can learn from the very best practice. The revised guidance will also set out clearly what schools can do to ensure that pupils have information about all the types of education and training they can pursue, and hear directly from different types of providers, including further education and sixth-form colleges, and employers delivering apprenticeships.
Baroness Bakewell (Lab)
My Lords, there is an ongoing problem of informing young people about apprenticeships. This is a long-running story, found to be inadequate by the Ofsted report, which said that the careers advice being given in schools is not addressing that. The dilemma is that when a teacher on the staff of a school is also the careers officer, their loyalty to the school inclines them to advise children to stay on in the sixth form. What can the Government do to generate a new national careers service energy, so that this particular problem is more swiftly answered?
Lord Nash
I take the noble Baroness’s point, although I think that more people staying on in school is hardly our biggest problem in education. Ofsted is very focused on making sure that guidance is given well. In relation to apprenticeships, we fund the National Apprenticeship Service that funds the Education and Employers Taskforce to deliver a programme of apprenticeship knowledge and employability skills to 16 to 18 year-olds. More than 70 advisers from the National Careers Service, the National Apprenticeship Service and Jobcentre Plus were stationed in the Skills Show in November last year, and the National Careers Service and the National Apprenticeship Service ran a jobs bus road show. A wide range of marketing materials and resources about apprenticeships are available on the National Apprenticeship Service website and it has also developed a free mobile app. So this is something we are very focused on.
Baroness O'Cathain (Con)
My Lords, can my noble friend tell the careers advice people that we must make sure that we get the right jobs for the right people? The mismatch at the moment is horrendous, particularly with ICT jobs. It is estimated that by the end of next year there will be something like 400,000 to 700,000 mismatched jobs. The competition in the BRIC and MINT countries is making hay when it comes to these jobs. What are we doing to try to rise to that challenge?
Lord Nash
My noble friend is quite right. The UK’s long-term economic future depends on high-level technology skills, and the Government are committed to strengthening the teaching of computing and in particular computer science in schools. That is why the new computing curriculum, which is to be taught from September this year, will be mandatory at all key stages. It has a greater focus on how computers work and on the basics of programming, as well as covering digital literacy and the application of information technology. It encourages pupils to design computer programmes to address real-world problems. The inclusion of computer science in the EBacc will help ensure that more pupils obtain a high-quality GCSE qualification.
Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho (CB)
My Lords, is the Minister aware of a report that came out of the EU two weeks ago valuing the internet app economy at several billion and stating that it will need one million jobs by 2020? Does he agree that the changing nature of the ICT world and of jobs needed within it is complex and should be reflected in careers guidance?
Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)
My Lords, despite the Minister’s claims, Ofsted, the Education Committee, the British Chambers of Commerce and the CBI have criticised the Government’s hands-off approach to careers guidance. The CBI said recently that careers advice is on life support now in many schools in England. Does the Minister accept that it was wrong to give schools sole responsibility for careers advice but no money to deliver it? Will the Government now act to eradicate the postcode lottery in careers guidance and insist, as my noble friend said, on independent, face-to-face advice for all young people?
Lord Nash
I know that the noble Baroness and I share aspirations for what we expect for young people, but the answer to her question is a firm no. As noble Lords know, the fact that the country is short of money is not this party’s fault. However, I also think that the assumption that a face-to-face interview with a careers adviser is the gold standard is a very outmoded model. As noble Lords will see when we publish our guidance, I hope shortly, we have a very strong emphasis on employer engagement, which we believe is the secret to good careers advice. I give an example: Westminster Academy, which has built up partnerships with more than 200 employers, has 73% FSM and 75% A* to C, including English and maths. I can think of no better example or argument for employer engagement on the ground, giving pupils a direct line of sight to real-life workplaces rather than just career advisers.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, my noble friend will know that one of the hardest things in career education is building up those networks, contacts and opportunities for work experience. It is particularly difficult for children from disadvantaged backgrounds—one has only to look at interns in Parliament itself. How do we ensure that children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds have those opportunities?
Lord Nash
My noble friend is quite right. We have to ensure that work experience and internships are not just available from daddy’s or mummy’s friends. The Social Mobility Foundation has done a great deal of work in this regard, and I know that it is developing a focus on providing work experience and internships for pupils from backgrounds who would not normally be able to access them. Even it struggles sometimes to engage with schools, but that is something that we are very focused on.
Schools: Arts Subjects
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The Earl of Clancarty
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what encouragement they will give to the take-up of arts subjects in secondary schools; and whether that will include a review of the current school performance discount codes.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, the Government believe strongly that every child should experience a high-quality arts education. Music and art and design are statutory subjects for key stages 1 to 3 in the new national curriculum. The arts remain an entitlement area at key stage 4. From 2016, our new Progress 8 accountability measure provides schools with more incentive to enter pupils for arts subjects. Up to three can be included. Discount codes for drama and dance are being reviewed.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply and welcome the review of the discount codes. In the light of the figures recently released by DCMS on the value of the arts and creative industries to the economy, will the DfE seek to reverse the continuing trend towards fewer arts GCSEs being studied within schools? Will the Government review the discount codes which group together many disparate GCSE art and design subjects so that they count as one subject only towards performance tables, biasing the tables and, indeed, schools against the arts?
Lord Nash
I share the noble Earl’s passion for the arts and know that it is an area in which he has great experience. I am happy to report that key stage 4 entries for arts subjects have not significantly changed since 2007 and currently account for 9% of all key stage 4 entries. I assure the noble Earl that we take discounting very seriously. We are looking specifically at how it works as it is so important that schools are not incentivised to offer pupils a narrow curriculum, although it is equally important that pupils take subjects that are distinct from each other. We are reviewing how the discount codes for dance and drama work, and we are also considering whether to allow appeals against the discounting decisions that have been made in other areas if there is evidence to support reconsidering our initial consideration.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend accept that not only does studying the arts enrich the lives of those who study them but that there are marvellous careers in the arts and crafts and we ought to do more to encourage young people to consider such careers?
Lord Nash
I entirely agree with my noble friend. It is important that we give all our students that core cultural capital that Diane Abbott has acknowledged in the other place as being essential, particularly for underprivileged children, to enable them to get on in life and that we encourage more careers. We now have a number of university technical colleges focused on the creative industries.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, the Minister will be aware that many young people develop their passion and talent for the arts by attending Saturday clubs, such as the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts 4:19 Part-Time Academy. Parents pay for this privilege. How can we ensure that children, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds, can also access those Saturday club resources?
Lord Nash
I know of the contribution in this area of the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, which the noble Lord knows well and whose lead patron is Sir Paul McCartney. Indeed, we have approved it to open a primary free school, which will use the creative and performing arts to encourage a lasting enthusiasm for learning. Pupil premium funding is allocated to schools to decide how to improve the outcome for disadvantaged pupils. Ofsted now inspects against this and it will be very difficult for schools to get an outstanding rating if they are not making good progress for their pupil premium pupils. All schools have to publish online how they are spending their pupil premium money and its impact.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)
My Lords, may I recommend to the noble Lord that he looks at a report from Professor Ken Robinson that was co-commissioned by his department, as it then was, and the DCMS more than a decade ago? In the report Professor Robinson explained in great detail the value of creative education, broadly, both educationally and socially. Can the noble Lord tell the House how relations between his department and the DCMS currently are, because I am afraid that Professor Robinson’s report fell slightly foul of a lack of co-ordination between them at the time? Can he say whether his department is well acquainted with the wide range of educational opportunities provided by arts organisations to enhance the curriculum in the way that he seeks?
Lord Nash
The noble Baroness raises a good point. I am not aware of the report, but she is of course vastly experienced in this area as a former chief executive of the Royal Opera House and principal of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Cross-departmental working is never a smooth affair. We had some success with my noble friend in the Children and Families Bill, and I would be very interested to look into this in more detail. The noble Baroness is absolutely right that all schools should engage with wider organisations. My own school engages with a wide range of charities and organisations to enhance our arts and drama offer.
Baroness Deech (CB)
Is the Minister satisfied with early education in classical music at schools, the availability of instruments and whether we begin to compare with Venezuela’s El Sistema?
Lord Nash
Music is very important for young people at primary school and there are some very good charities operating in this area, such as London Music Masters. I was inspired to see a KIPP school in Harlem in New York, where every pupil is in the orchestra. That is certainly something that all primary schools should focus on.
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)
My Lords, is the Minister aware of the Sistema project in the Raploch, in Stirling, Scotland, established by Richard Holloway following the success in Venezuela? Would he or one of the other Ministers be willing to visit that project and see the incredible impact that it has had on children in one of the most deprived community schemes in Britain, who are all now training to learn an instrument and playing in the most incredible concerts—entertaining not just locals but nationally through television as well?
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
Can the Minister confirm that arts subjects will be on the syllabus of the fortified secondary schools that the Ministry of Justice is establishing for the custody of young offenders?
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville (Con)
My Lords, pursuant to the ante-penultimate question, my noble friend’s department published an excellent analysis of 14 schools’ arts departments about 30 years ago—the 14 presumably being chosen to include an independent school. Has such an analysis been mounted during the past 30 years and, if not, would my noble friend consider one?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, is the Minister aware of just how disillusioned the arts community is with the Government’s education reforms? Certainly, in all the meetings that I have with the arts community, it consistently sends out a message about how it feels that arts education in schools is marginalised and devalued. I think that the Secretary of State bears some responsibility for this. Going back to the noble Earl’s original Question, when is the Secretary of State going to champion the arts, speak up for them and recognise the massive contribution that they make to our economy and society?
Lord Nash
I am extremely glad that the noble Baroness asked me that question. Under Labour, the number of pupils entering key academic subjects fell from 49.9% to 22%, as a number of extremely dotty subjects such as the level 2 diploma in fish husbandry—which accounted for four GCSE equivalents—were perpetrated into the system to give the appearance of success. Noble Lords will be delighted to hear that under this Government we are back to pre-Labour levels for arts subjects. We are determined to ensure that all pupils get the core cultural capital they need and study a broad sweep of poetry and writing. It is not possible to accuse my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for not being absolutely passionate about arts subjects.