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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, this has been an immensely useful debate. I should like to say to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, whose speech I greatly appreciated, that if every time I saw a tendentious front page of a newspaper I cancelled my subscription to it, I would be reduced now to reading House of Lords Hansard. Important as that publication is, one probably needs a slightly larger diet in order to survive from day to day. But the point that he made about the misreporting of the new science syllabus was correct: it was very poorly reported in the publication to which the noble Lord referred. I was delighted to hear the support that has come from all sides of the House for the science syllabus. We believe, as do Nuffield, Wellcome and others, that it could play a very substantial role in boosting interest in science among young people and in making it more interesting and exciting to teach. Motivation is all when seeking to engage young people in an interest for new subjects, in the way that the noble Earl described. We stand by that syllabus, which has been well received in the schools. I am able to offer a correction to the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. It is the first time in my life it has ever happened and I simply cannot resist doing so. I have received advice from the Box that although it is true that schools are obliged to ensure that students follow the programme of study, there is also a statutory duty on schools to put pupils in for public examinations for which they have been prepared. Therefore there is a duty on schools to put pupils in for at least the first of the science GCSEs. Wherever possible—which will be in the great majority of cases—we wish pupils to be put in also for the second general science GCSE. Indeed, we are about to introduce a performance indicator from next year which will publicly identify, school by school, the proportion of pupils who are entered for the two science GCSEs. This is in response to concerns that the take-up of the second science GCSE needed to be improved.