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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I support the amendments. There have already been many excellent speeches so I shall not take long. I can see no good reason why citizenship should be statutory and PSHE should not be when there is so much overlap in relation to personal and social skills. I have seen the impact of PSHE in schools. I was a senior teacher in charge of health education, as it was then, in a school in south London, and I am now a governor of a school with a strong programme of PSHE. In both cases, the programmes have undoubtedly affected the ethos and behaviour in the schools. My noble friend Lady Gould referred to bullying; I have seen bullying tackled and strong personal and social skills developed in schools where there is a programme. Every school should be enabled to have a strong and consistent programme of PSHE at every stage of the curriculum. The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, correctly pointed out that people forget, and we need to repeat messages if young people are to retain those which are important for their health and well-being. In my experience, five things are needed for such a programme and they may happen in all schools only if a subject is statutory. The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, talked about the patchiness of the provision. This is a difficult issue because although some schools put the subject high on the agenda, others do not. The first thing that is needed is strong support from the head teacher and senior staff. Secondly, there should be a designated teacher in charge of co-ordinating PSHE. Thirdly, teacher training must be high on the agenda: teachers cannot just go into a PSHE lesson using formal methods and hope that they will succeed in instructing people how to behave. You cannot teach people how to make decisions; they have to learn how to do it themselves. Fourthly, schools need good resources to teach PSHE—again, some schools have them and make their own, some do not. Finally, there needs to be information to parents about the programme. Some schools do these things brilliantly, including the school where I am a governor. But many do not and will not until PSHE is statutory and there is a policy for it in every school. I, too, support the formation of a teachers’ association for PSHE—it is an excellent idea. I have always strongly supported the national healthy schools standard programme. It, too, has achieved a great deal. However, it is mainly about health and not about relationships, which are part of decision-making for good health and valuable in helping young people to learn how to make decisions for their own benefit. A comprehensive approach to PSHE is required, and I strongly support it being a statutory programme in schools.