Schools: Faith Schools and Free Schools

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Tebbit

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with the noble Lord. I have visited a number of Sikh schools and have been extremely impressed with the education that they provide, which is not surprising given the ethics and ethos of community and service in Sikhism.

[Lord Tebbit (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, spoke of the dangers of reacting to an educational whim. Will my noble friend assure me that he will not react to the educational whims of that extraordinary group of people who my right honourable friend Michael Gove rightly described as “the Blob”? They are an obstruction to education.

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree that in our approach to the education of our children we should not act on whims from any source.

Schools: Class Sizes

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Tebbit

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I cannot agree that an absolute priority should be reducing class sizes because I have already said that all the evidence is that that was a very poor return on investment. In fact, Andreas Schleicher tells us that there is no relation between class sizes and performance. I entirely agree that we should not be putting up schools in areas where there is no need and I can assure the noble Baroness that since I became a Minister, just over two years ago, virtually all the free schools we have approved have been in places of need.

[Lord Tebbit (Con)]

My Lords, can my noble friend tell me why it is that when I was at primary school a teacher could teach a class of 48 or 50 pupils to read adequately and in fact rather better than is done in classes of 30 these days? What has changed—the teachers or the children?

[Lord Nash]

I suspect, sadly, the children. Certainly in primary schools in the early days I know that teachers have to spend a great deal of time getting pupils as they come into primary schools ready to learn.

Literacy

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Tebbit

Thursday 10th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. There are different schools of thought about the accuracy of the statistics. A study on this was published recently by the Sutton Trust. However, the overwhelming conclusion from these statistics is that other countries have overtaken us and that we have a lot of work to do quickly to improve our schooling and our literacy and numeracy.

As far as home support is concerned, we all know, of course, that the number of words that a child experiences in early age is terribly important, and can be too little. We do all that we can to support parents; however, it comes down basically to improving schools, which have to do so much more because of poor parenting.

[Lord Tebbit (Con)]

My Lords, without detracting in any way from the rightful concern of our noble friend Lord Addington for those children with special needs, is it not clear that there are special educational needs among the teaching profession, which no longer seems capable of teaching basic literacy or numeracy to children in the way that always was done in the past?

[Lord Nash]

We now have the highest quality of teachers entering the profession that we have had for many years. I am afraid that I have to disagree with my noble friend. We are doing a lot to support the teaching profession; it is the most noble profession, in my view, and the issues are much more complicated and deeper than that.