Schools: Foreign Languages

Debate between Lord Reid of Cardowan and Lord Nash

Monday 26th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness makes an extremely good point. We have given the British Council, for instance, £500,000 to recruit foreign language assistants to work in the UK. Currently, some 1,250 foreign language assistants have been recruited for English schools, and the British Council is working with Hanban to introduce a number of Chinese language assistants into the country.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

Given the multicultural identity and diversity of ethnic backgrounds of people in the United Kingdom at present, there must be hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions—of people, including, I suspect, hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren, who are bilingual. What thought have the Government given to, or what action have they taken on, mobilising this resource by focusing either on recruitment or on some form of potentially creative, if informal, educational process to make sure that we use the resources that our multicultural society has given us?

[Lord Nash]

The noble Lord makes a very good point. I have talked about what we are doing in terms of teaching assessments, but I will look at the point he has made in more detail.

Birmingham Schools

Debate between Lord Reid of Cardowan and Lord Nash

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I can assure the noble Baroness that we are extremely focused on that. We make sure that all schools, particularly when we are approving them as free schools, are thoroughly inclusive. We visit the schools, and if we see any practices that we think are inappropriate, we are very quick to draw them to the attention of the schools and make sure they are rectified. We are extremely focused on that. The noble Baroness makes a very good point.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement, and I thank the authors of the two reports. I do not know the author of one of them, but I know Peter Clarke, and I have long appreciated his judgment and analysis, which come through in this report. It is obvious that there were problems in the schools, the local communities and the local authorities, and we have concentrated on that. However, without in any way laying particular personal blame or being party political, it is equally obvious that there were failings at the centre of government, and in more than one department. To put it at the minimum, someone somewhere, or a number of people, took their eye off the ball. The Minister said that procedures had been “tightened up”—I think that that was his phrase. Could he elaborate a little more on that? Can he say—if we are reviewing everything that is happening in Birmingham, in the local authorities, the schools, regarding the teachers and so on—what is the nature of the review being carried out in the Home Office and/or the Department for Education, and whether any conclusions have already been reached?

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his comments, particularly given his vast experience in this area, and particularly his comments about Peter Clarke. We have dramatically beefed up our due diligence and counterextremism division in the department, and will further strengthen it. We were the first department outside the Home Office to set up such a unit. I cannot comment on the Home Office, but we will look carefully at all the issues arising out of this. I can assure the noble Lord that, in terms of analysing the individuals involved in any schools in which the department is involved in any approvals, we will use our due diligence unit very rigorously.

Birmingham Schools

Debate between Lord Reid of Cardowan and Lord Nash

Monday 9th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I welcome my noble friend’s extremely mature comments, with which I largely agree. So far as a moratorium on faith schools is concerned, there is a great place in our society for faith and church schools, which have been extremely successful. Church schools in fact promote community cohesion, it is acknowledged, better than other schools. We must make sure that all schools promote community cohesion and inclusiveness.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

My Lords, I make no apology for responding by returning to the dog that did not bark in the Minister’s speech, which is the chronic dysfunctionality of the relationships across departments in tackling extremism. I do not accept the Minister’s implication—his explicit reference—that this is party-political. From, if I may say so, a little more experience of dealing with these issues than the noble Lord, perhaps I may say that it is an essential prerequisite for tackling extremism that there is the best and smoothest cross-departmental approach—across prisons, community services, local government and education itself. It astonishes me that there was no reference to that in the Statement.

The Minister and I agree about the action plans, but the action plans are only as good as those who are leading the strategic position. It astonishes me that there was no reference to what is obviously the dysfunctionality between those two departments. The whole idea of forming the Office of Security and Counterterrorism in the Home Office—I declare an interest because I was behind the formation of that organisation, to which the Minister referred—was to enhance co-ordination across departments. If that is lacking and there are no plans to try to improve on that despite personalities, the actions that he has mentioned today will not be as effective as we all want.

[Lord Nash]

Of course, the noble Lord is extremely experienced in these matters and I bow to his much greater experience of them than mine, but there is no dysfunctionality between the departments. We are working extremely well across departments and across all agencies on this matter.