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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Countess, Lady Mar. When we debated this matter in Committee, the Minister assured us that all secondary schools must provide sex and relationship education as part of the basic science curriculum—it is therefore a statutory requirement. He repeated that statement in the letter that he sent to the noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton, on 11 October. In that letter, he also raised concerns that, if PSHE were to be made a statutory part of the curriculum, it would raise intense debate and controversy among other subject champions who want their subjects to be made statutory and compulsory up to 16. Danger of an intense debate is not a good reason not to do the right thing. However, the Minister was right that there is an intense debate, not least in yesterday’s newspapers, and there was an intense debate in your Lordships’ House, in which this argument were supported by Peers from all sides of the Chamber. Today’s amendments, which were so ably moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton, on that occasion, are supported by the Advisory Centre for Education, Barnardo’s, the British Medical Association, the Family Planning Association, Brook, the Drug Education Forum, the National AIDS Trust, the National Union of Students, the NSPCC, UNICEF UK, Parentline Plus, Tacade, the Terence Higgins Trust, Womankind and the YWCA, to mention just a few in the long list of supporters. Only yesterday, the IPPR published a new report based on detailed research, the conclusion of which was that PSHE, including sex and relationship education, should become a statutory subject in all primary and secondary schools in England and Wales. It also called for more information on parenting and childcare to be offered at all extended schools, and I agree with it on that. The evidence for concluding that the status quo, in which the subject is non-statutory, is failing comes from a number of facts. First, Britain has the highest rate of births to teenagers in Europe; the rate here is nearly one-fifth higher than that in Latvia, which is the second country in the list. The Government’s claim that the rate is falling refers to only a very tiny fall. Secondly, one in three 15 year-olds did not use a condom during their last sexual intercourse. Thirdly, levels of genital diseases—chlamydia, genital herpes and syphilis—among British teenagers have increased greatly in the past 10 years. Fourthly, over the past50 years, the average age of first sexual intercourse fell from 20 for men and 21 for women in the 1950s to16 by the mid-1990s. The proportion of young people who are sexually active before the age of consent rose from less than 1 per cent to 25 per cent in the same period. Fifthly, in 2001-02, 38 per cent of the UK’s15 year-olds had sexual intercourse—that is the highest incidence in Europe, as far as we can tell. Julia Margo, who is a senior research fellow at the IPPR concluded that: "““our education system must respond and start teaching children about the risks involved in sex before they even consider taking those risks””." PSHE is not just about sex education; it is about a great deal more than that. The QCA describe it as, "““giving children and young people the knowledge, skills and understanding they need to lead confident, healthy and independent lives. It aims to help them understand how they are developing personally and socially and how to develop the skills and positive attitudes needed to tackle many of the moral, social and cultural issues that are part of growing up””." So I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, that it is about a great deal more than sex—it is about life skills. In a nutshell, that is what he is concerned about. But no doubt we will hear more in a moment. Research and surveys have shown that children and their parents want PSHE taught in schools. The Government have made it clear that they believe that emotional and social skills are fundamental to school improvement, improving behaviour and attendance at school. So why will they not show that commitment by making PSHE compulsory? PSHE provides the right vehicle for delivering the Government’s agenda—the Every Child Matters outcomes for children. Typically, it has been seen to be driven by problems such as teenage pregnancy, substance misuse, smoking or obesity, which need to be solved. At best PSHE is well co-ordinated in the school, but at worst it can be a number of topics that jostle with one another for time in the curriculum. That is not surprising, because the aspects of learning and development in PSHE are not joined up at national level. Currently, we have SEAL, or social and emotional aspects of learning, for primary schools, with SEBS, or social, emotional and behavioural skills, being piloted in secondary schools. The DfES delivers those. Some elements of drug education come from the Home Office and the healthy schools initiative comes from the Department of Health. If PSHE were used as a framework through which these different initiatives were delivered, it would provide coherence for schools. Currently, the Government acknowledge that PSHE needs improvements but do not accept that making it statutory would make schools and teacher/trainers take it more seriously. Instead, they have chosen various levers that they hope will drive up standards. I have a number of questions for the Minister about these. Through the new inspection arrangements, the Government believe that PSHE will be better inspected and that that will drive up standards. But the new inspection regime is very short and, unless the Government are explicit that PSHE is the main vehicle for achieving the Every Child Matters outcomes, it is unlikely that inspection will have much impact. In addition, few Ofsted inspectors are PSHE specialists. Those schools that are good academically will get a good Ofsted report anyway, even if their PSHE is diabolical. Will the Minister commit to commissioning Ofsted to deliver a special thematic report on PSHE? Secondly, PSHE is now in the initial teacher training curriculum. However, the curriculum is so packed that I understand that in some cases only an hour is dedicated to the subject. Therefore, training has to come through continued professional development. The continuous professional development programme aims to train only 2,000 teachers and nurses a year in PSHE. As there are over 20,000 schools, it will take many years before every school has at least one trained teacher. Will the DfES work with the Training and Development Agency for Schools and others to improve the training of newly qualified teachers in PSHE? The QCA produced good end of key stage statements in 2005. It is currently reviewing the whole curriculum, including PSHE. Will the Minister consider asking the QCA to develop PSHE within the framework of the five outcomes for children so that it is the main vehicle for their delivery by schools? All schools should be healthy schools by 2008—I believe that that is the target. However, there are still many thousands of schools which are still to convert to that status. Making PSHE statutory would help to ensure that all schools become healthy schools sooner. What sanctions will apply or, preferably, support be given to schools with poor PSHE provision, regardless of the academic attainment of the pupils, so that they can all become healthy schools sooner? Finally, I challenge the Government's basic premise that aspects of PSHE, such as sex and drug education, are already statutory because they are covered in biology or science lessons. As a former biology teacher and form tutor delivering PSHE, I tell the Minister that the ethos of a biology lesson, where there is a curriculum to be examined in a public examination, and the ethos of a PSHE lesson, where young people are encouraged to discuss and explore difficult issues, are totally different. It is not possible to work on the important relationship aspects of the subject in science lessons. PSHE is vital alongside the more factual work. We need both and we need every child to receive both. PSHE covers the emotional and social aspects, enabling children to move beyond the facts to develop lifelong skills and positive attitudes. That being so important, if the Government still resist the call of so many in this Chamber and beyond to ensure that all children receive good-quality PSHE as of right, how will the department evaluate the use of the levers, which I have just described, that they propose to use and over what period will that be done? Will we still be in the terrible position described by the list of statistics that I gave earlier, which were published by the IPPR only this weekend? I beg to move.