National Curriculum

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for giving us the opportunity to discuss this important matter. I want to speak as a primary teacher on the primary school curriculum. The clue is in the title: “draft”. It is a draft, and this is the opportunity for us to give our own views. All of us, probably, have been bombarded by different organisations claiming all sorts of concerns. We only have to look back to the 1980s when the only subject that was legally required to be taught at primary level was religious education. Then there was the scandal of the William Tyndale school, and of course Mr Baker—now the noble Lord, Lord Baker—with his national curriculum of core and foundation subjects. It is to his credit that a lot of that is still in place and that many of the subject parts are there.

However, the most important thing of course about a curriculum is that it has to give teachers the opportunity to teach. You can have the best national curriculum in the world but unless you have high-quality inspiring teachers, nothing else really matters. Perhaps we will come to history in a moment, but that reminds me of a quote from Alan Bennett, the author of “The History Boys”:

“Teachers need to feel they are trusted. They must be allowed some leeway to use their imagination; otherwise teaching loses all sense of wonder and excitement”.

I welcome a slimmed-down national curriculum and also the opportunity for education to be broad and balanced. We do not want a curriculum, as currently, of 150 pages but do want the opportunity for teachers to flourish. A slimmed-down national curriculum gives teachers more freedom to adapt their lessons to children in their class and local circumstances.

I said at the beginning that no doubt there will be lots of people and organisations giving their own opinion. Perhaps surprisingly, I want to congratulate the people who put together this draft; they have done a first-rate job. There are things in this that I am very satisfied with. With regard to the core subjects, I like the focus on content and stretching, particularly for achieving pupils. I do not subscribe to this nonsense about, “Why are we insisting that children at age 11 should know their multiplication tables up to 12?”. It is part of mathematics to know your tables. I do not subscribe to this nonsense that perhaps there is too much reliance on spelling and punctuation. My goodness, English is about spelling and punctuation. It is about oracy and being able to recite a poem. It is about reading for pleasure.

Then we look at languages. I have sat on a Select Committee looking at how SMEs can be encouraged to export more, and one of the key parts of that report said that we should be teaching languages in our schools. The best way to teach languages is with young children. There was a pilot in my home town of Liverpool where we started teaching languages to four and five year-olds, and the results were spectacular. Once this curriculum has bedded in, perhaps we could visit that at some later stage. My other concern is that perhaps we are being a bit restrictive on the languages that we are teaching. We need to look at other languages, particularly those of the developing world.

I like the notion of PSHE being there. I am concerned that citizenship should be part of key stage 2 as well. I am delighted that swimming is an integral part of PE, and about music and dance. Using the local environment in science may answer the concerns of the Woodland Trust.

I am concerned about sex education. Why do we have this view that we should not teach sex education to key stage 2 pupils? I do not know. I teach it to key stage 1 pupils. It needs to be natural. Some of the girls at primary school will be starting their periods, and they need to know about sex education. It should not be left until key stage 3.

There has been a lot of fuss about climate change. Actually, I think that climate change is clearly there as part of the mandatory science curriculum, but if there are concerns then let us address them. Then there is history, but I have one minute left to speak so I will come back to that on another occasion.

Teaching cannot be prescriptive. Different teachers use different methods to develop children. If this is a national curriculum, why is it not national? Why are 60% of our schools not going to be using it? I am talking about academies and free schools. If we have a national curriculum, surely it should be national.

My party has argued for years for a shorter, more focused curriculum. We are ambitious for all our children. That is why I believe that our children should have the chance to work on content that is as stretching as those in the best-performing countries. It is our teachers who know the most effective way to teach an individual child in their class. The curriculum respects the professionalism of teachers on the front line by giving them more freedom to do what is best for the pupils in their class.