Education: Development of Excellence

Lord Rees of Ludlow Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rees of Ludlow]

My Lords, my comments will be slanted towards science but I do not downplay equally well-grounded concerns about other subjects. Sadly, some citizens cannot tell a proton from a protein, but it is equally sad if they do not know their nation’s history, cannot write clearly, cannot speak a second language and cannot find North Korea or Syria on a map. But there is no gainsaying that an ever-growing fraction of jobs needs specific skills, at levels ranging from basic technical competence through to the level expected of professional scientists, medics and engineers.

The very young have a natural interest in science—whether focused on space, dinosaurs or tadpoles—and an affinity for computers that far surpasses that of their elders. The challenge is to sustain these interests through and beyond the primary school stage. I am impressed by the dedication and initiative of the best science teachers but the sad thing is that there are not enough to go round. More than two-thirds of primary schools do not have a single teacher with a science qualification. Many pupils are not exposed to a maths or physics graduate even in secondary school. Therefore, it is of little surprise that the natural enthusiasm of the young all too often gets stifled rather than stimulated.

We should aspire towards the situation in Finland, but that is a long-term goal. More immediately, it is important to reduce the fraction of young teachers who drop out; to expand and facilitate mid-career transfers into the profession from, for instance, industry, universities or the Armed Forces; and to enable experienced teachers of other subjects to mug up enough maths and physics to compensate for the special shortage of graduates in those key subjects. There is a huge educational upside from the well-guided use of computers and the web. That can amplify the reach of the best teachers.

Good teachers not only cover the curriculum but need to organise practicals and field trips, and offer bright pupils the kind of enrichment offered by participation in maths and physics olympiads. But realistically it will take years before all young people of high potential receive the academic nourishment and support that gives them a fair chance of access to high-quality university courses. During those years, a huge amount of potential talent will remain unfulfilled.

So how can we enhance opportunities with the present teaching force? I think that universities can do more. They can offer summer courses, encourage graduate students and post-doctoral researchers to spend time in schools and make their barriers to entry less rigid. We could have a flexible credit system, allowing transfers between institutions. Universities could reserve some fraction of their places for people who have not come directly from school but have intermitted, done a foundation degree, got further educational qualifications or suchlike.

There is a lot we can learn from US universities, quite apart from the educational breadth that the noble Lord, Lord Broers, mentioned. There is a trend to extol the Ivy League, but a more relevant model for Britain is the Californian state system. Its three-level structure of colleges embodies an enviable combination of excellence, outreach and flexibility—or did, at least, until the Californian budget crisis. A substantial fraction of those who attend the elite universities in the system, such as Berkeley, have come not directly from high school but via a lower-tier institution. To give a fair chance to those unlucky in their secondary-school years—the issue that Alan Milburn addressed—our tertiary education should evolve towards a more diverse and flexible ecology, with a blurring between higher and further education, and more involvement with schools.