Birmingham Schools
Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Sutherland of Houndwood(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Nash
To answer my noble friend’s two questions, we have so far felt that, given that Ofsted is capable of conducting batch inspections on a number of schools in a chain, as it did in Birmingham and has done on many occasions, that gives it plenty of opportunity to examine the support that those schools get from the centre. Visiting the head office—when Ofsted probably would not see very much except the office—would not tell it any more. However, we keep that constantly under review.
On the compromise agreements, when I came to work in education I was pretty shocked by the lack of due diligence that was often taken over referencing people in teaching. Of course, what can happen as a result of compromise agreements is that bad teachers just pop up elsewhere, which is described in America as the dance of the lemons. That is something that we need to look at.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood (CB)
My Lords, there is much to welcome and to ponder in today’s report. There is an underlying issue of knowing what is going on in schools to which I will draw attention by asking two related questions. I suggest that one of the key sources will always be responsible teachers and head teachers. Is there any way of devising a route that they can follow to raise questions about serious difficulties within the school, knowing that they will be taken seriously?
Secondly, there is an issue of governance and governors. I welcome what is recommended in the report, but it is a much broader issue than that. Could a broader look be taken? I could take the Minister to schools within a mile or two of here that struggle to find enough good governors. We have to find ways of improving that situation, and that will not happen reactively in situations like this.
Lord Nash
I pay tribute to the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, in the area of HMCI. We have whistleblowing procedures in place in the department and in the EFA. We have been discussing with Ofsted how we can improve them, and we will look at doing so.
On page 90 of Peter Clarke’s report, he says that he does not see that there is an issue with governance generally, merely an issue with governance in these particular schools. In the last 18 months, as Minister with responsibility for governors, we have dramatically beefed up our focus on governance to focus governors on three core skills, to focus governance on skills rather than representation and to view governing bodies more as non-executive director bodies. I was delighted to hear in the other place earlier this afternoon the shadow Secretary of State support the non-executive director approach. Ofsted is far more focused on governance than it was and we are increasingly working with it to make it more so.
The noble Lord is quite right about recruiting more governors. We have recently launched the Inspiring Governors Alliance to work with the CBI and other business groups to recruit more governors.
Schools: Pupil Premium
Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Sutherland of Houndwood(11 years ago)
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Lord Sutherland of Houndwood (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that Ofsted must be judged on the basis of the quality of its evidence and of the surveys that it carries out in schools and the implications for a policy such as this, rather than on political matters?
Lord Nash
The noble Lord is absolutely right. Of course, given his background, he is vastly experienced in this. I could not agree more. Ofsted is doing an outstanding job. It is our sharpest tool. The first thing that the chief inspector did was to abolish the appalling and mediocre term “satisfactory” that had been allowed to exist for years. That shows where he is coming from, and he is having a great effect. Indeed, Ofsted reports that last year our schools improved at a faster rate than any other time in history.
Ofsted: Annual Report 2012-13
Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Sutherland of Houndwood(11 years ago)
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Lord Nash
Assessment, as opposed to testing, is obviously crucial to ensure effective accountability and to work out whether pupils are making progress, which is an issue that I know Ofsted is very focused on. We have held a public consultation on proposals for key stage 1 assessment, whose results have not been published. As far as key stage 3 tests are concerned, we have no plans to reintroduce key stage 3 tests but we expect all schools to be able to demonstrate to Ofsted, through whatever assessment mechanism they use, that their pupils are making progress.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood (CB)
My Lords, would the Minister agree that, while the use of the word “lucky” is good shock tactics—and, possibly, good politics—the primary responsibility of Government, and all of us who are involved in education, is to improve the quality of schools and teaching and to take luck completely out of the picture?
National Curriculum: Violence against Women
Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Sutherland of Houndwood(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Sutherland of Houndwood (CB)
My Lords, the two topics mentioned in the Question clearly refer to abhorrent sides of our society; we all agree on that. However, does the Minister agree that dealing with all those problems by inserting them on a statutory basis into the national curriculum is almost a confession of failure and that there have been many other interesting suggestions made from around the House today?
Lord Nash
I am grateful for the noble Lord’s question and I agree entirely. Pupils will often respond better to dialogues with mentors from outside agencies that are skilled in their work. It is right to help pupils in this way: issues around drug-running in gangs, for instance, are completely different from those relating to forced marriages. Schools should be free to engage with outside agencies as appropriate.
Education: Reform of GCSEs
Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Sutherland of Houndwood(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, I welcome the Statement from the Minister, and the fact that it has come now. Generations of students should benefit as soon as possible from the potential progress that we have marked here.
On a specific point, I welcome the attention to assessment, reflecting the whole range of ability and achievement in our school population. We have been failing to do this, which has been a disincentive to some of our most able pupils. The Minister will be aware of the success of Finland in the PISA international comparisons. Is he equally aware that one of the elements contributing to that success has been an attempt to ensure that the curriculum is more rigorous and detailed? I assume that these are the principles underlying what we have heard today.
Finally, can the Minister reassure us that the policy issues raised here will in fact be assessed, and that evidence as to whether or not they work will be presented to the House in due course?
Lord Nash
I am grateful to the noble Lord for his comments; I know that he is extremely well informed on these matters. I was aware of the success of Finland. We believe that Ofqual, particularly after its performance on the English exams, is now a rigorous organisation. The various assessment techniques it is consulting on—one in particular—will be rigorous.
National Curriculum
Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Sutherland of Houndwood(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Nash
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for her detailed comments on design. I very much hope that she will feed them into the consultation. We recognise the concerns raised about design and technology study programmes. We are listening, and working with the subject community and the Design and Technology Association to improve the draft.
I thank my noble friend Lord Storey for his comments, in particular about the primary curriculum, an area in which he is extremely expert. It is a delight to hear someone who has spent so much time teaching children rather than thinking about theories of education talking about what it is appropriate to teach children. I am particularly grateful to him for laying off history today, and for supporting our move to give teachers more freedom.
The noble Lord asked about teaching sex education at key stage 3. Aspects of the biology of reproduction and the human life cycle are included in science in key stage 2. It is up to primary schools to decide whether to provide additional sex and relationship education, taking into account the views of parents. Many schools choose to provide sex and relationship education in year 6.
I am grateful for the comments on soft skills made by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. As he knows, I share his views about their vital importance. As noble Lords are aware, the outcome of the PSHE review was announced last week. PSHE remains an important and necessary part of all pupils’ education, but teachers need flexibility to deliver high-quality PSHE and are best placed to understand the needs of their pupils. This will not come from additional central prescription. Therefore, PSHE will remain a non-statutory subject, without new standardised frameworks or programmes of study. My honourable friend Elizabeth Truss wrote to Sir Michael Wilshaw last week, asking Ofsted to draw up a guide to effective PSHE practice.
Aspects of PSHE will continue to be taught throughout the statutory curriculum. In science, pupils will learn about the structure and function of the male and female reproductive systems, and the menstrual cycle. In both science and PE, children will learn about the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, including the impact on the body of diet, exercise and drugs. In maths and citizenship, children will receive financial education, including learning about wages, taxes, credit and debt. In designing appropriate PSHE content for school curricula, teachers will be expected to build on content in the national curriculum on drugs, finance and health education, and on the statutory guidance on sex and relationship education.
All schools today have to focus more on PSHE. With the collapse in many areas of family life as a result of the high incidence of absent fathers, the absence of religion in many children’s lives and the prevalence of gang culture, the only constant in many children’s lives—the only brick—is their school. All children in the modern world face a variety of issues and schools have to do much more on what was called the pastoral front than they used to. This is meat and drink to good schools and we expect all schools to emulate what the good ones do. We trust teachers and head teachers to adapt what they do to their own particular circumstances. We are not arguing about the necessity for PSHE, and no one feels more strongly about the need for it than I do, having seen the effect at first hand of what really good pastoral, inclusion, behaviour and raising aspirations programmes, which of course include PSHE as a part, can have on disaffected children. However, we do not feel that it is appropriate to legislate for it. We should leave teachers free to teach what is appropriate to their circumstances. However, we have asked a specific question in the consultation about our proposed aims for the national curriculum and we will take all views into account before finalising them.
My noble friend Lord Black of Brentwood commented on animal welfare. It is not the role of the national curriculum to prescribe everything that might valuably be taught to children. We are slimming down the national curriculum to focus on essential knowledge in core subjects. The draft primary science curriculum requires pupils to be taught about the needs of animals, including food, water and so on, and the care of animals is something that we would expect all good schools to cover in their wider curriculum as part of the soft skills. However, we will look further into this matter.
The noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, talked about languages. The evidence shows that we have a strong basis on which to build the new expectation that foreign languages will be taught in primary schools. A recent survey conducted by the CfBT Education Trust, the Association for Language Learning and the Independent Schools’ Modern Languages Association found that 97% of primary schools are already teaching a language, and that more than 80% are reasonably confident about meeting the statutory requirement for 2014. Evidence, including some from other countries, shows that children benefit from being taught languages at an early stage. They can inspire children with a love of language that will stay with them throughout their secondary education and beyond. For this reason, we are opening up the choice of languages beyond European modern languages by including Mandarin, Latin and Ancient Greek. It is right that we give our pupils this opportunity and provide a better foundation for the teaching of languages in secondary schools.
We will not be making languages compulsory at key stage 4 because we are conscious of the need to slim down the curriculum and allow schools the freedom to meet their pupils’ needs. However, to support the introduction of the new key stage 3 second language education, the Teaching Agency is facilitating an expert group chaired by a leading primary head teacher for languages and bilingual education. The group is meeting at the moment to develop the signposting of resources and the identification of high-quality teaching materials that are freely available and is looking at ways in which initial teacher training in schools can best prepare for the introduction in 2014. On schools becoming academies to avoid language teaching, we welcome schools becoming academies, but we are not encouraging them to do so for this reason. The national curriculum should be a benchmark for all schools. Academies would have to justify to their communities if they chose not to teach what all other maintained primary schools do at key stage 3.
My noble friend Lady Walmsley made a point about language experience courses in schools, which of course they are free to run. I am also grateful for her comments about cooking and IT. On IT careers advice, we expect all schools to engage with their local business communities for careers advice in IT and other industries.
I turn now to the subject of climate change. It is not true to say that climate change has been cut out of the curriculum. It is specifically mentioned in the science curriculum and both climate and weather feature throughout the geography curriculum. Nowhere is this clearer than in the science curriculum for 11 to 14 year- olds, which states that pupils should learn about,
“the production of carbon dioxide by human activity and the impact on climate”.
This is explicit coverage of the science of climate change. It is at least as extensive and certainly more precise than the current science national curriculum for this age group, which states only that:
“Human activity and natural processes can lead to changes in the environment”.
In addition, the Royal Geographical Society has said that the draft geography programme of study will provide,
“a sound underpinning of factual knowledge to prepare, at GCSE and A level, for pupils to study the topics that confront us all, globally, as citizens and which are inherently geographical, such as climate change, pollution, ‘food, water and energy’ security and globalisation”.
On academies not teaching the national curriculum, it is true that they have the freedom to vary any part of the national curriculum that they consider appropriate. However, even in a school system where more and more schools are moving towards greater autonomy, there is still a need for a national benchmark to provide parents with an understanding of what progress they should expect and to inform the content of core qualifications. Of course, academies and free schools must prepare their pupils for national exams and will be judged in part by destinations.
I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Lucas for his comments, particularly on the importance of the broad sweep of history and the opportunity now facing us with design and technology in schools.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, for his Mr Micawber-like comments on the need not to crowd the national curriculum. On his point about Ofsted, I have already talked about the PSHE review. Ofsted inspects for a broad and balanced curriculum and for progression. Without good PSHE, progression can be difficult for some pupils. However, Ofsted is the sharpest tool in our box and I undertake to discuss this further with Sir Michael Wilshaw.
The noble Lord, Lord Empey, commented on the lack of incentives for computer science graduates to enter the teaching profession. We are providing a £9,000 bursary for computer science graduates. The British Computer Society-Chartered Institute for IT is offering scholarships of £20,000 to exceptional candidates. The UTCs and studio schools programme is about encouraging more young people into the technical industries.
I thank my noble friend Lady Brinton for her comments about the inadequacies of the current system. On maths and English post-16, students who have not achieved at least a GCSE grade C in English or maths at the age of 16 will be required to continue to study mathematics post-16 from September 2013. We also want to encourage schools and colleges to provide opportunities for students who have already achieved a GCSE grade A to C to continue with the study of mathematics at level 3 as part of their post-16 programme. We are developing new courses for this cohort, and work is under way with Ofqual, mathematics sector bodies and awarding organisations to determine the most appropriate format for these new core mathematics qualifications.
I thank the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for his comments about primary schools. He is quite right that education often goes wrong in primary schools. That is why we are focusing on the most underperforming primary schools. On trips to cultural places, that is something we expect all schools to do.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Quirk, for his comments about teachers. He raises a very good point. All schools will have to focus on training their teachers for the delivery of the new curriculum. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for her opening comments about how one can never get a draft of a curriculum that pleases everyone. On the authorship of parts of the history curriculum, as the noble Baroness knows, the history curriculum was drafted with the input of a great many experts in the field. We were very pleased to see 15 eminent historians, including David Starkey, Niall Ferguson and Antony Beevor, endorse our approach in a letter to the Times on 27 February.
On academy freedoms and the national curriculum, academies were allowed under the previous Government not to teach the national curriculum. If the Labour Party wants to change that, I would be interested to hear about it. On plans for an office for educational improvement, of course we agree with the principle of evidence-based policy. That is what we have been doing, and plenty of evidence is available. However, we are not convinced that the noble Baroness’s approach of setting up a new quango—no doubt at great cost—is necessary.
Turning to the content of the history programme, I reiterate the importance of giving our pupils a clear chronological narrative of British and world history rather than a disconnected set of themes and topics, often repeated, as is the case currently with for instance Nazism, over the course of their school careers. It is right, too, that the teaching of history should cover significant individuals who have helped shape the history of Britain and the world. Those names listed in the programme of study are just some of the individuals we expect schools might cover. It is not a definitive list, and teachers are free to teach about any other individuals or aspects of the history of other countries and cultures as they see fit to meet the needs of their pupils. It is clear that the history curriculum generates a wide range of views about what pupils should be taught, and it is right to have that debate. I also acknowledge that others might have made different choices, but that is why we are consulting on the programme at present and welcome responses from all parties.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, made a comment about vocational education. One of the Secretary of State’s first acts was to commission the Wolf review, which we have implemented in full. We also commissioned Doug Richard to look at apprenticeships and are taking his proposals forward.
I must comment on the rather sensational latter which was recently written by 100 academics. They are of course right that we want our students to learn higher-order thinking skills, but those academics, I am sure, would acknowledge that to progress to that level, students need a basic grounding in lower-level skills and in knowledge. Sir Michael Wilshaw has—
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
I just wonder whether the Minister has noted that my noble friend Lord Quirk and I have both chaired meetings with more than 100 professors in them. They were called senates and they did not always fill us with confidence that the judgment coming out was the right one.
Lord Nash
I am obliged to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, for that comment and have to say that I rather sympathise with Sir Michael Wilshaw, who has encouraged people like that to get out there and see what is happening in many of our classrooms. Once you have done that, only then can you appreciate how vacuous the content is that is being taught in many of our schools and how we need to improve the national curriculum in order for pupils to progress to a higher cognitive level.
As I outlined in my opening speech, the draft national curriculum on which we are consulting is based on careful analysis of the world’s most successful school systems. That showed that our curricula, in particular for the core subjects, focuses insufficiently on key knowledge and is less demanding than in other jurisdictions. The new national curriculum will change this and will also give schools more freedom over the curriculum and teaching, not less. The new national curriculum acknowledges the vital role of knowledge in education and is based on up-to-date, cutting-edge research about how the brain learns. It lists the important knowledge pupils need to know within clear subject taxonomies. To quote the leading US cognitive scientist, Dan Willingham:
“Data from the last 30 years lead to a conclusion that is not scientifically challengeable: thinking well requires knowing facts, and that’s true not simply because you need something to think about. The very processes that teachers care about most—critical thinking processes like reasoning and problem solving—are intimately intertwined with factual knowledge that is in long-term memory (not just in the environment)”.
Indeed, how interesting would debates in your Lordships’ House be if noble Lords did not have huge reservoirs of factual knowledge stored in their long-term memories which they use to display high-order skills such as argument, reasoning, analysis, comparison et cetera? The curriculum does contain lists of facts but these facts are not opposed to higher-order thinking and the skills of analysis and creativity; rather, these facts enable such skills and provide a framework of understanding.
In every field of human endeavour it is accepted that you must know the rules of that field before you can produce anything of worth within it. Great artists and writers know their rules before they break them. Great scientists and mathematicians know the work that has gone before them. This curriculum provides the foundational knowledge that will stand our future artists, writers, scientists and mathematicians in good stead, while also allowing all pupils to appreciate the great achievements of the past.
I thank noble Lords for their valuable contributions to this important debate. As I mentioned earlier, the consultation on the draft curriculum will close on 16 April and we welcome responses from anyone with an interest. Subject to the outcome of the consultation, we then plan to publish the final curriculum in Autumn 2013, to allow time for schools to prepare for the first teaching in September 2014.
Education: Curriculum, Exam and Accountability Reform
Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Sutherland of Houndwood(12 years ago)
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Lord Nash
I thank my noble friend for his remarks. I can confirm that coursework will continue where it is appropriate in the relevant subjects. As the noble Lord knows, the national curriculum does not run in academies and free schools and that policy will not change. The new accountability measure has two parts to it. The one that focuses on English and maths should satisfy his requirements on literacy and numeracy.