---

Address in Reply to Her Majesty’s Most Gracious Speech

My Lords, it is my privilege to congratulate the noble Lord on his maiden speech. I congratulate him on the subject, as there is no more important one facing us. I congratulate him on the positive way he approached it, suggesting that we have some use in life after a certain age. I am sure that the   noble Lord will engage our attention on many future occasions with his knowledge of banking in this   country and overseas, accountancy, computer networking and, perhaps especially, of the Territorial Army, where I understanding he has the rank of a commanding officer. Sir, congratulations. I now turn to the other maiden speaker, who had the   awesome task of making his speech from the Government Bench. I warmly welcome the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, to his office and wish him well in it. When I got hold of a copy of the Labour Party’s election manifesto, I noticed with pleasure that education remained the top priority. I suspect that the noble Lord may have lent a hand in the drafting of that manifesto. If so, I thank him very much. I also noticed that within education, the emphasis was on schools, and I welcome that. An issue that has engaged the attention of the House many times is the social imbalance in access to our universities. The only way that we can address the issue successfully is through the schools. By the time someone is of university age, it is too late. That is a powerful and difficult problem, and we must work on it. For me, perhaps the most difficult and testing issue in education is the low performance of too many of our young people, and its correlation with social class. The Government’s five-year strategy compared a child with high cognitive ability—I think those are the correct words—born to parents of low social class to a child with relatively low cognitive ability born to parents of high social class and showed that, by the age of eight, the less gifted child born in the well-heeled home will have overtaken the other child and will begin to exceed him in performance at school. In one of its surveys, the OECD stated that the gap in this country between the highest performers and the lowest performers was greater and more closely correlated with social class than elsewhere. That is something that we must address. Those who come out of school with little to show for it face diminished lives and opportunities; fewer prospects for earning salaries; more risk of unemployment; and, according to the evidence, inferior health and shorter lives. What disadvantage. It is possibly right to say that, because they did not succeed in school as they grew up into parenthood, their children will be disadvantaged. In short, we are creating a self-perpetuating social structure that is an abomination. That is dangerous, it is waste, and it is immoral. It will also challenge the orderliness of our society, because the ability to get and hold a job, as we face the growing challenge from the East, will increasingly depend on having something to offer in the market-place. People who cannot offer or do not see an opportunity to do so will be dysfunctional members of society. The well-being of our society—from a social point of view, never mind an economic one—demands passionate attention to that issue. I am conscious that the Government have relevant policies. Sure Start; the extended school day; catch-up; junior apprenticeships; a broader curriculum post-14; and again and again a concern with every child—those are good policies. I see further evidence of commitment in the Government’s target of increasing the proportion who leave primary school at 11 with decent reading standards from 75 to 85 per cent. Good. However, what about the other 15 per cent? When we set targets for our schools, is there not a worry that school teachers, heads or governors who want to meet them will naturally concentrate on the borderline cases who can help them reach the target of 85 per cent? We must motivate schools to serve every child. Value-added, a measure of performance of the whole class to go alongside the other statistics, is something that I was urging on the government 13 years ago and is now being introduced. It is a question not just of measures, however, but of what we do. I am conscious that one-to-one coaching, which some will need, is expensive, but the dividend for that young person’s life and for society may be much greater than the cost. I have spoken before in the House about the crux point in a child’s life, when he or she moves from primary to secondary school. They go from a small school, where he or she is a big guy and is well known by the class teacher, to a secondary school probably three times as big, where they are little guys; where, instead of the good shepherd teacher, they have a different teacher and a different room for each subject. If, in going into that big world, they cannot read or their arithmetic—I will not call it mathematics—is appalling, they will regress and will be increasingly dysfunctional members of that school by the time they get to year 9. Behavioural problems in schools are partly associated with that. The Minister has spoken or written about catch-up assistance for such kids when they get to secondary schools. Good. I would like to add a couple of other ideas, neither of them particularly original. If parents are willing, a child who is way behind and is relatively young in his year group should have the opportunity to stay an extra year in primary school to catch up before making that major migration. Alternatively, instead of such low performers having x number of teachers for different subjects, they could have a form teacher who knows them as individuals and teaches them as such, either for all the curriculum or, perhaps more sensibly, for subjects that do not require specialist equipment. That is nothing new. A school in the south of England is about to introduce it. I am suggesting not that those ideas should suddenly become policies but that the Government should be ready to encourage well worked-out initiatives from schools or local authorities that specifically address that issue. Where special help is being given to a child, it is reasonable to reach out to the parents and seek a compact with them in which they engage to take a proactive interest in the education of their child and to be kept informed about lessons and homework and where their child stands. They could even be encouraged to come into the school from time to time and learn with the child. Learning together develops a community of learning between them. I have noticed in the manifesto that the Government have it in mind to encourage small schools to help the   most disadvantaged children. I understand the case for large comprehensive schools, given the range of curriculum that they can offer and the economies of scale. However, children who have had a bad start in life and are trailing might be lost in the vast numbers of such a school. Going to a smaller school, say of 600, is more than offset by the commitment of and the identification of the child with the teachers and the school. The department has not been well disposed towards that in the past, but they should do some new thinking. I will draw a quick personal analogy. When I was chairman of the Post Office, the post offices of the world suddenly found a great advantage in having vast sorting offices full of machinery. No one looked at the human loss, the loss of comradeship. We had huge industrial relations problems. The human side in learning and work matters immensely. We have referred again and again to behaviour. I have one thought. Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, said 12 years ago that,"““Frontiers are defended by soldiers; civilisations are made in schools””." We need to work a bit harder at making those civilisations. The subject of citizenship is a natural place for class members to engage the teacher in open discussion of the conditions precedent to, and the structure of, a school community that works, is effective and helps them all—a society in which the emphasis on ““me”” that has developed in our culture is instead on the Group and on my role as a neighbour to others. I know from the Minister’s opening speech that he cares about those who come from a disadvantaged background. Those words he quoted from Lord Callaghan’s speech about the state providing what a wise parent would want for his or her child—I cannot remember them exactly—are very apt. I hope that he will tackle the issue of the disadvantaged with passion.