Education: English Baccalaureate Certificate

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I also thank the noble Earl for giving us the opportunity to debate this subject. I hope it is a harbinger of a much wider set of debates; this is not enough. That being said, in three minutes I cannot give my outline of what constitutes a rounded education. Instead, I will start at the end of my argument and give the answer, which is—and this will shock noble Lords—Ofsted, in which I declare an interest, having had some part in setting it up. If that is the answer, what is the question?

I agree with virtually all the sentiments expressed in this debate, so much so that I often wish there was a good philistine in the House to put an alternative point of view, not to disturb the company. However, we are arguing about what motivates schools. I do not know any teacher who would not agree that arts and music are important. I know a few philistine head teachers who practise bad faith by responding only to public stimuli in their account of what a rounded education is. They do that because they respond to what the public want, which is league tables, and they only give credit to what league tables will produce. Behind that, the notion of a national curriculum was a very good one in principle and attached to it were national exams. Performance in the exams became the other benchmark of what a rounded education is. The trouble with this discussion is that we are saying, “We will accept all that in principle reluctantly”, and we will push our pet subject into the same group with the same type of treatment that we have for the national curriculum.

I agree with noble Lords. I live by the arts, enjoy them, learn a great deal from them and get great pleasure from listening to music and going to the theatre. That is not at issue. What is at issue is what are listed as EBacc subjects. As has been rightly said, this pushes head teachers into bad faith and giving up a true understanding of what education is. That is the wrong way to go. There is space in the curriculum, and Ministers will use the language of “opportunity”. Unless they are absolute charlatans, that has to be true, and we have to help to make it true.

My proposal is that we should put a specific responsibility and requirement on Ofsted to report annually on what is happening nationally, on how many jobs have been lost in these areas, because it is serious, and, specifically for head teachers, on what an individual school does to create a rounded education. This might well be much more imaginative than trying to stick another subject into the national curriculum on which to be examined nationally. It puts a lot on Ofsted but—blow me—that is what it is paid for. It ought to make judgments and, to give it its due, it has, as a start, produced a good national report on religious education. Ofsted will have to do the same for art, music, design, computer science, and so on down the list.

My worry is that the national curriculum and what counts as a good subject will expand to the mess that we have now. Every lobby and his partner will turn up and tell us what we must include, and the national curriculum will burst at the seams. I would rather have space in schools with a specific injunction and a specific judgment on whether they are providing a rounded education.