---

Address in Reply to Her Majesty’s Most Gracious Speech

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. We welcome him to your Lordships’ House and to taking up the challenge presented to him by the Prime Minister to lead on the Government’s priority in this parliamentary Session—education. We have heard much about the Minister in the past week or so. However, I was more interested to read what he thought about the House of Lords before he had an inkling that he was coming here. I will tread carefully as, yes, we are polite in this House and I heartily agree with him that we do not do enough to ensure that much of what we say here is noticed. But the noble Lord should be assured and encouraged that we are an effective revising Chamber, and outward appearances tend to mask an amazing and experienced force for good. I would therefore urge the Minister to use that force for the benefit of our children’s education. To that end, I can assure him that we on these Benches will support him whenever we believe that he is working towards that goal. With regard to the content of this debate, I will say now that it is my intention to focus upon education and skills, including social affairs to the extent that our children’s education is intrinsically linked to the well-being of us all, the social fabric of our communities and Britain’s future. My noble friend Lord Howe will set out our response to the gracious Speech concerning health. While I am also new to this brief, I too made my maiden speech on the subject of education, speaking about the failings of the comprehensive system, the need for parental freedom of choice, excellence, aspiration, encouraging our children to want to learn and—through my own experience at school and that gained in the constituency of Slough, where I had fought a parliamentary seat the year before and which has many children from diverse cultures and backgrounds in grammar school—the overwhelming merits of selection and streaming. I well recall being ticked off for being controversial. Now, seven years later, it would not be considered a controversial speech at all—rather, stating the obvious, and I am proud of that. Let me say straight away that in response to the gracious Speech we welcome the words used: ““parental choice””, ““freedom for schools”” and ““discipline””. If real action follows those words, we shall support that action. Schools need greater freedom from central control, and that freedom must be coupled with less bureaucracy. Let all head teachers be in charge of their budgets and their admissions. We support the extension of the Government’s programme for setting up more city academies. We want to see more real choice given to parents. Choice drives up standards, and raising standards is an imperative. That said, facilities are not a prerequisite for inspirational teaching, but motivated, valued and respected teachers are. Here, I agree with the Minister that we need genuinely to elevate our teachers. We on these Benches are greatly concerned that, although it is clear in the gracious Speech that ““education remains a priority””, we have heard that sentiment expressed since the publication of the 1997 Labour manifesto, which stated:"““Our task is to raise standards in every school””." Eight years on, one in three 11 year-olds leaves primary school unable to write properly and 44,000 pupils leave secondary school without a single GCSE. There has been a 30 per cent rise in the number of failing schools in one year. In addition, the United Kingdom has fallen from fourth to 11th place internationally in science results, from seventh to 11th   place in reading and from eighth to 18th place in maths. The recent research by David Jesson of York University, which tracked the progress of 28,000 children who scored the highest marks in national curriculum tests at 11, makes very depressing reading. More than half of those pupils went on to 2,407 comprehensives and, by the time they reached the GCSE stage, many of them had been effectively lost because schools had failed to help them achieve their potential. Further, no government can pretend to me that we have rising standards in schools when examiners marking an English test taken by 600,000 14 year-olds have been told by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority not to deduct marks for incorrect spelling on the main paper, worth nearly one-third of the overall marks. Has no one worked out that no employer will want to employ them if they cannot get the basics right? The Government must stop focusing on targets and start working towards achieving rigorous, clear and credible exam standards that will genuinely help our young people into the ever more competitive world of work. There has been much talk of respect and school discipline. Talk is one thing. We seriously need to see some action. Is the Minister disturbed to hear that only last week a teacher was reported on television as saying, ““I do not expect my pupils to respect me””? Will the Minister agree with me that if a teacher does not demand, never mind expect, respect from his or her pupils, we are lost? This is a serious challenge. Only last week, I spoke to a teacher who is giving up after many years of dedication because the children are too volatile. He is fed up with walking into a classroom feeling uncertain of what to expect and what he will have to cope with, let alone the teaching. He knows that there is an assault on a teacher every seven minutes, and he is weary and disheartened by pupils just not turning up. More than 1 million children play truant every year. We cannot expect to keep our teachers and head teachers unless we change that—and fast. Recently, a group of Swedish schoolchildren were asked for their reactions to the Jamie Oliver programmes on Channel 4, promoting more nutritional school meals—a no-brainer in my book, but never mind. The children’s response was quick and clear. Having seen the inside of some of our schools in action, they were heard to say, regardless of the school meals issue, ““We would never want to attend a British school””. Given that one in five appeals panel decisions results in the head being overruled and forced to readmit disruptive pupils who have been expelled, it is also time for the Government to act to support our teachers. We must give heads the final say over exclusions. We know that such unruly and intimidating behaviour extends into our neighbourhoods, villages and towns. It is unacceptable and does our children no service as they look towards employment. We do not need yet another politically correct quango or taskforce to think about behaviour in our schools and respect in our society. It is common sense; give me—a parent of three teenagers—a room, a couple of parents and half an hour of straightforward discourse to set out the simple reasons why. In essence, it is about giving children boundaries; it is about instilling respect and a sense of self worth; and it is about committed parenting and giving children real time, no matter how tired or burdened parents may be in coping with their daily lives, keeping open those delicate, difficult channels of communication, even when it is painful, difficult and incredibly frustrating to do so. There needs to be a much stronger emphasis on the work/life balance in our pressurised world. Where necessary, it is about investing in and extending support to parents. We must stop blaming the children for their behaviour and labelling all teenagers as bad; it is just not true. With regard to higher education, why do the Government insist on the arbitrary target of 50 per cent of pupils attending university? Will the Minister accept that that target simply achieves the negative effect of making those who do not attend university feel that they have somehow failed? Why have a cap at all? Should we not be encouraging young people to consider a breadth of options that feel right for them? Yes, we need more vocational education and training. There needs to be consistency of funding principles. For example, given that we understand that the Minister is in favour of involving the private sector in developing city academies, does he feel comfortable with a system that in effect forces universities to seek to   rely on foreign income to underpin university finances—a situation that is set to continue notwithstanding top-up fees? Does he think it right that universities should have quotas for fee-paying foreign students that are not based on merit—a fact clear from some university websites—at the expense of our own students, thus putting foreign students at a clear advantage over our own? Is not the British parent right to expect that his or her children should have priority of opportunity? How does that square with the Secretary of State’s statement yesterday in another place that she wanted to extend opportunities for all children to succeed on the basis of their hard work and merit, not on the basis of their privilege? In the past eight years, we have had three manifestos, nine Acts of Parliament, five Green Papers, three White Papers, two strategy documents and four Education Secretaries. For what, with truancy up by a third, one in three pupils leaving primary school unable to read and write properly and a teacher attacked every seven minutes? In this Session, we have 18 months in which seriously to consider these issues. For example, when we talk about choice, how does that work in our rural communities? When we talk about freedom, how can we effectively reduce the appalling level of bureaucracy to liberate our teachers so that they can get on with what they do best—teaching? Financial investment in our education is right, but it is not the end game. Good intentions, eye-catching initiatives and talk of new laws that resonate well at election time do not make a difference. Today, we have heard from the Minister much about progress and investment in our education system, but sadly, and with great respect, the statistics just do not support the rhetoric. I am sure that the Minister, together with all noble Lords, will agree that playing clever politics must never take priority over our children’s future. They are too important.