Schools: Careers Advice

Debate between Lord Winston and Lord Nash

Monday 20th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the founder and champion of the Reach Out Lab at Imperial College, London. Each year we connect with around 7,000 schoolchildren from the state sector drawn from all over London, plus another 30,000 through collaboration with the Mayor of London. It is very clear, as the Minister accepts, that there is grossly inadequate careers advice. Does he not also accept that it would be much more sensible if universities were better integrated with schools, and is it not about time that we consider that all education should be under one government department?

[Lord Nash]

I am aware of the excellent programme to which the noble Lord refers. I am sure he is delighted with the increase in STEM subjects which has taken place under this Government. Schools should have a thoroughly close relationship with their local business professional communities and universities and, as far as his last point is concerned, it is one that I am sure all future Governments will consider carefully.

Al-Madinah Free School

Debate between Lord Winston and Lord Nash

Thursday 17th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to my noble friend for his question. I agree with him entirely on both points.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Blackstone makes an important point. Is the Minister aware that only recently I gave a class to 17 primary school teachers teaching science for professional career development? Only one had done science at university and most of them did not have even an A-level in science? That is a very real problem when you are dealing with children under the age of 10.

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. I was not aware of the lesson he referred to, although I have heard him speak on a number of occasions. I entirely agree. The state of our primary schools in many cases is not satisfactory and we have an active programme in place to improve this. I would be happy to talk to him in more detail about it privately.

Literacy

Debate between Lord Winston and Lord Nash

Thursday 10th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

This Government’s approach is to focus on that core issue, to ensure that all our students leave school adequately qualified in literacy and numeracy. That is why we have a focus on much more rigorous exams. Our new national curriculum will promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of spoken and written language. Our phonics programme is an integral part of that; it is showing good results, with the number of pupils reaching the expected standard in year 1 rising from 58% to 69%.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, while these figures are, indeed, appalling, will the noble Lord consider whether perhaps one of the reasons for these very poor scores is because of the accuracy of the way we keep our figures in the United Kingdom generally? That is one issue. Also, does the noble Lord agree with me that one of the key problems in our educational system is the lack of support for children in the home with literacy, reading and mathematics, and that we need to concentrate on getting more parents involved with the school education?

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. There are different schools of thought about the accuracy of the statistics. A study on this was published recently by the Sutton Trust. However, the overwhelming conclusion from these statistics is that other countries have overtaken us and that we have a lot of work to do quickly to improve our schooling and our literacy and numeracy.

As far as home support is concerned, we all know, of course, that the number of words that a child experiences in early age is terribly important, and can be too little. We do all that we can to support parents; however, it comes down basically to improving schools, which have to do so much more because of poor parenting.