Education Bill

Lord Peston Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Puttnam]

Thank you, Lord Chairman. I could go into detail about why I think this is so important, but perhaps I should go straight to something I read the other day which is absolutely factual. It concerns a teaching assistant and special needs teacher called Bev Evans at Pembroke Dock Community School in Wales. Bev Evans puts lesson plans up on the web using the TES Resources website. Over the past few years she has shared 276 teaching resources on the web with other teachers. As of last month, her work has been downloaded 1,345,330 times by 237,364 educators in 169 countries. Teachers save an average of 30 minutes per resource, the equivalent of 672,665 hours of teaching time, which is worth 431 teaching years. I cite that because it is a fantastic illustration of the way that technology has the ability to transform teaching and learning. These figures and indeed the whole concept would have been unimaginable a decade ago, so the role that technology now plays in education is fundamental.

To put it kindly, I am afraid that, at present, the White Paper is technology-light. I am concerned about that because the whole purpose is to start a serious conversation both at the department and with the Minister. We need the reassurance of knowing that this subject will not be like discussing the adaptation to or mitigation of climate change with someone who does not really accept that climate change is an important reality. This is a reality. The noble Lord, Lord Willis, sensibly cited the example of electricity. It is absolutely true to say that in the early part of the last century, the difference between the attainments of some children over others depended on whether there was electricity in their homes. That would allow them to do homework in the evenings, whereas those without electricity could not. Technology is as fundamental as that. That may sound like a large claim, but it is not an irrelevant one.

I am also puzzled because two weeks ago the Secretary of State, Mr Gove, made a really remarkable speech at the Royal Society. The second half of that absolutely nailed and eulogised the use of technology. He was completely clear as to how important the adequate but intelligent use of technology was to our competitiveness. He was very clear about the way technology is being used in other countries successfully and that we had to get our act together and make a success of it. He could not have been more crystal clear on that. Yet none of that speech is contained at the moment anywhere in the White Paper as I read it. It would be good for the Government, the country and, I suggest, the Minister if it were. The purpose of these two amendments is to try and ensure that that finds its way into the Bill and the Government prove for good and all that they are absolutely committed to technology within teaching and learning.

[Lord Peston]

Before the Minister speaks, I unfortunately missed the last meeting of your Lordships’ Committee. I broadly support what is said here but would like, as someone who spends a lot of time using this sort of technology, to offer one or two caveats. First, I know of no other way of wasting more time than in getting on to the net. It is not merely ordinary time-wasting because it is addictive. I am keen for our young people to get involved in all this but we should not be naïve about it. When I come into your Lordships’ House, I am one of the early arrivals at 8.30. By 9.30 I am fed up to the teeth and immediately log-on. I start typing into my machine. Some two hours go by and I have looked at The Wasteland by TS Eliot—you can download it for free, which surprises me. I then begin to wonder if that is a better poem than The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. That is all good for young people except for the amount of time that it takes. Equally, one should not be naïve in assuming that they will do as I do and look for intellectual, aesthetic and scientific things. They will spend a lot of time mucking around. I am not saying a word against any of this being the right path to go down—quite the contrary. We really must go down this path but I wanted to add those words of caution.

The other words of caution already emerged in your Lordships’ earlier deliberations. For a lot of young people, we are talking about a great deal of money. As much as I support my noble friend’s Amendment 107C, it would cost quite a lot of money. Also, one should not forget how many homes still do not have computers. That was perfectly clear from the earlier discussion. It again troubled me a little that—I have forgotten where I read it now, but it was apropos of what is developing in California—increasingly if you do not submit your work via computer it ceases to be acceptable. Are we absolutely certain that we want to be completely committed to that path? I am quite certain that, were our successors to read my speech a generation from now, they would say, “Well, they really had some old fogies in those days, didn’t they?”. By then, it will just be the norm but we should just be a little cautious about the path to that norm. Nothing of what I have said should be interpreted as meaning anything other than support for technology in schools. As I say, the world wide web is a fantastic treasure trove of valuable things. We certainly want our young people to use it. I simply add the caveat that there is a little more to this than just saying what a wonderful thing that is.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

First, I agree very much with the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, and with the powerful speech made by my noble friend Lord Willis on Monday, when we last discussed this before being rudely interrupted. My noble friend was absolutely right that the effective use of technology clearly supports good teaching and helps raise standards.

As he argues clearly, it is not an either/or between, for example, Shakespeare and technology. I have had that conversation with the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, before. He made the case powerfully to me that technology can bring Shakespeare within reach of people for whom the traditional way of books would be much harder; it can bring it to life in a way that the Arden set might not.

My noble friend was right to suggest on Monday that there has been too much emphasis on the technology itself, the kit, and the idea that we could transform teaching simply by spending money on computers or whiteboards. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, agrees with that. By the same token, I accept that there are far more exciting ways of learning than just by Latin primer.

One point that was not raised about technology is the fact that we have an extraordinarily successful market in educational technology in the UK. We are a leader, so there are strong commercial reasons why we should support it. We want to encourage sharing of evidence of effective practice in the use of technology and improved teacher skills in using it. My noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, have given me a useful nudge—I think that that is the word—or prod about the importance of that.

We are talking to a number of interested parties—school leaders, professional bodies, educational charities, industry, academics and other experts—about how the department should take forward its thinking about technology. Given the pace of change, we think it important to allow schools and teachers themselves, working with industry, to respond to the changes. We want to give teachers the freedom to choose how to use it to create lessons that engage their pupils and enable them to achieve their full potential. The noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, gave a powerful example of how that is happening. The noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, and my noble friend talked on Monday about having a conversation with the department. I would certainly welcome such a conversation and invite both of them and any other noble Lords with an interest to help us develop our thinking.

Access to computers and the internet is an important point. Clearly, that can have benefits for the whole family. We know that many schools offer access to ICT before and after normal school hours to help pupils without access at home. Other schools are working with charities such as the e-Learning Foundation and the commercial sector to provide access. We want more of that.

On resources, the financial situation is obviously difficult. We seek to support disadvantaged pupils directly through the pupil premium. The premium enables schools to decide for themselves how best to spend additional resources to support disadvantaged pupils. On Monday, my noble friend gave the figures for the extent to which there is a disparity between rich and poor—unsurprisingly—of access to computers. The premium may well include providing computers and broadband connectivity if the schools think that that is the most effective approach for particular children in the circumstances that they face.

The Government certainly recognise the important role that technology can play in supporting education. We are considering that within government. I ask my noble friend Lord Willis—and, as I said, any other noble Lords who would be interested in such conversation—to help us with our thinking. I certainly accept the fundamental importance of the subject, as my right honourable friend the Secretary of State set out in the recent speech to which the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, referred. On that basis, I ask my noble friend to withdraw the amendment.

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[Lord Peston]

My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend Lady Hughes and to echo the words of my old friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. I suppose I reveal every time I speak in your Lordships’ Committee what a dinosaur I am, but deep down, I do not believe there should be a national curriculum. Equally, I do not believe in banging my head against a wall, when I will be on the losing side. I believe in education, and I have great difficulty in seeing any connection between education and a national curriculum.

I was prompted to think about that when my noble friend Lady Hughes mentioned that the Secretary of State is keen for all children to learn the dates of the monarchs of our country. We just debated an amendment on technology and all that. To prove that my Alzheimer's is not as bad as it is, I start with Her Majesty the Queen and work back to as many Kings and Queens as I can think of, but for the life of me, these days, I cannot remember the dates at all. I cannot think of any reason why that is a problem for me, because I go to Google, I type in William IV and Mary, and up come their dates.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

William III.

[Lord Peston]

My Alzheimer's is worse than I thought it was. The Secretary of State must be aware of that technology. Other things are in the national curriculum that, when I was at school, I found inimical to education. Geography was the most extreme example. We were made to do geography. I was not persuaded then and I am not persuaded now that geography should be part of anybody's education. If I want to know where somewhere is, again, I go to my computer. These days, I have to type in the name of countries that did not exist in my day, but I can find out where they are.

I believe that education is about finding things out and appreciating them—all that my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, said. If we all reflect on what was the best part of our education and schooling, it was things that were not merely part of the curriculum but, in my case, not something I was ever examined on. I was in the economic sixth at Hackney Downs School and the headmaster decided that economics was clearly not part of education. He told the English master to see the five of us who had taken that option in the sixth form. The English master, Mr Brierley, who was the great discoverer of Harold Pinter, introduced us to things that we had never heard of, one of which has become a total obsession of mine—philosophy.

To return to my earlier remarks, I have wasted more time reading about analytical philosophy than I care to remember, but that was part of my education. Perhaps the Minister can enlighten me, but I do not believe that those responsible for our national curriculum have ever said that rational argument and logical reasoning are what education should be about. All that tells me that the last people—having worked at the Department of Education as its first ever special adviser, I include in my admonitions officials as well as the Minister—who should be deciding these things once and for all are Ministers and their officials. We need outside comment.

I partly address my next remark to my noble friend Lady Hughes. The one thing that gives me hope is that, although I entirely support her amendment, the department should know that many of the rest of us still have our views. Therefore, if something comes up that we think is totally crackers, the department will still hear from us on this subject, whether we are officially consulted or not.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

I shall take us back to the amendment. I do not have any great love for the QCDA. It was not a perfect organisation; in fact, none of these organisations is perfect. The Government’s aim in terms of the drift of the Academies Bill is that by the end of this Parliament every secondary school will be an academy. That is the reality. One of the powers of an academy is that they are able to have control over their curriculum. Will the Minister give an assurance relating to schools that become academies and this small core of national curriculum subjects? Where will they get their guidance from regarding decisions on the appropriateness of those subjects? That is an important consideration and an important function that the QCDA had.

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Finally, I will speak briefly in support of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Low, on information, advice and guidance for special needs pupils. City College Norwich has a special unit for pupils with autism spectrum disorders which has transformed their experience. The guidance is very wide-ranging. It has to be different from the standard one size fits all that we even had under the Connexions service. I met a young man whose experience was that, as he started at 16 at the college, he and his family thought that he would never get a job because of his Asperger’s. He was offered some work experience in the college library—simple, repetitive work that absolutely fitted in with his needs. Two years on, he is working full-time there. That is a significant success story. I know that other pupils at City College Norwich have had similar success. We have to accept that we need special provision for pupils with SEN. Thank you.

[Lord Peston]

In supporting my noble friend, I start by placing this whole problem in a proper context. A five year-old going for the first time to school this autumn has a life expectancy of 85 or maybe 95 years. The thought that you can really tell them about the world in which they will pursue their working lives is rather difficult. In my younger days as an economist in the economics of education, I wrote a number of papers about relating education and what should be in education to the needs of the economy. I did not realise that they were rubbish at the time that I published them but it was obvious that they were rubbish not many years afterwards. Those days have somewhat gone, although they did not hold me back in my career.

The central point about what careers advice will have to focus on is this long period—most of which, from the point of view of the economy, is difficult or even impossible to forecast. The advice given must really concentrate on that aspect of the matter. That means that it must overwhelmingly be professional.

If I may move into anecdote mode, after I had left the LSE as a lecturer to become a professor, one of my old friends who was still a lecturer said to me, “One of the students has just been to see me. He is thinking of dropping out of his degree because he has a pop group. What advice would you have given him?”. I said, “Get your degree first and then possibly think about the pop group”. He said, “I gave him the same advice and he more or less told me to drop dead”. The student's name was Mick Jagger. That is a very good example of why giving casual, off-the-cuff careers advice to people is not the path to go down. That does not mean that the professionals can get it exactly right, but I am certain that my noble friend is right to emphasise that careers advice requires a very subtle expertise, because it is not easy to get over to people how complicated their whole lives and choice of careers will be.

Another aspect of this has always troubled me. Our young people are marvellous and lots of them are incredibly talented— particularly in the arts. We produce marvellous young actors, musicians, and so on. Our problem is that the demand for such people is—and, I guess, always will be—less than the available supply. One reason why we require not merely experts in our careers service but people with a human touch is that they must explain to people, “If you insist on going down that path—and I do not want to stop you—I ought to tell you that you will be competing against other people with enormous talent. Are you sure that that is the risky option that you want to take”. That only reinforces my noble friend's view that we cannot let amateurs take over the service. Among amateurs, we must include teachers. That includes university teachers, although we are not talking about them at the moment. Essentially, my noble friend is pressing the Minister on the point that we need a commitment to a fully professional careers advice service covering a great range of areas. We must find funds to support that service; we cannot leave it to the school itself.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

I am certainly in sympathy with everything that has been said on this subject. It takes me back quite a long way to the Sex Discrimination and Equal Pay Acts, in which education was one of the areas covered. We spent quite a lot of time encouraging teachers in girls’ schools to take a more proactive role in opening up ideas of different careers for the girls than was the tradition. I am sad to say that there is still quite a gap there. On the comment made about teachers not being adequate to do that job, it would not be a bad idea as part of their training if, periodically, they had to take a job for a while in the real world to see what are the practices here and now.

In engineering, all these years later, there is a dearth of girls prepared to take on that career. It depends to some extent on the people they see out there in the real world. If not many have made it to the top of their career, are running things and are looked up to by the rest of the engineering world, they are not as likely to go down that route. I hope that we will address that aspect.

I hope that my noble friend Lord Low will soon speak to his amendment. On the responsibility for special educational needs, I entirely agree with him that there is an enormous need to start that process early—incidentally, that is true for practically all girls. It is interesting to note that the Equality and Human Rights Commission makes the point by stating that a quarter of children in primary school want to go on to higher education. Among girls, more than 80 per cent have that aspiration. If they have it already, at least it should be kept going by giving them examples of the many areas where their skills would be needed. There is clearly a role for governors here. They have a role to play in this already, so this is not providing a new one because it is all part of what needs to be made available to pupils. I am certain that parents in the local area would take that view.

One other area I want to stress is that of the role of the universities themselves. Many of them already send their students, voluntarily of course, particularly into schools where the aspiration among pupils to go on to higher education is not high. I am sure that the Government will be pleased to know that that sort of advice does not cost very much, but it is very good practice for the students themselves and helpful to the aspirations of the pupils.