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Children, Schools and Families

My Lords, I join the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, in thanking the Minister for repeating the Statement. I assure him that all sides of the House agree with him that every child matters. The Minster talked about turning the tide, and I imagined a rather amusing picture of him standing on the beach trying to hold the tide back. The Government have of course done a great deal to raise standards, which we willingly acknowledge. The Minister gave a long list of the wonderful things that the Government have done, but forgot to mention one or two things. For instance, although 58 per cent of 15 year-olds achieve five or more good GCSEs, the numbers where that includes English and maths are still disgracefully low. About a quarter of young people leave school with no better than a level D GCSE. Teenage pregnancy rates are at a 20-year low, but we still have one of the highest rates in Europe. Although 600,000 children have been lifted out of poverty, the Government’s target was 1 million. However, I do not wish to sound a sour note. The Government have done a great deal, but there is such a lot more to do. The Minister said that parents want a greater focus on standards. However, parents really want every school to be a good school. They should not be forced to use what choice they have to choose a school on the other side of town, taking their child all the way there with the consequent effects on traffic congestion and global warming. I was happy to hear the Minister say that the Government’s priority must be standards and not structures. That is a U-turn, because the Government’s agenda has been structures rather than standards, producing a dizzying variety of schools about which parents need a great deal of information to make whatever choice they have. The Minster raised a large number of issues. First, he talked about the importance of ensuring that all schools and nurseries teach phonics properly. I have some reservations about that idea. There are many good reading programmes and it should be up to the professionalism of the teacher to decide what is appropriate for each child and at what stage. For example, it is simply not appropriate to teach phonics to a child until they have reached the appropriate level in listening and speaking. Here I mention the need for more speech therapists in schools—and, indeed, in nursery schools, because early intervention is so important. The Minister talked about personalised learning and the importance of adding extra people to help children who are struggling with their literacy. We mentioned last week that diagnostic reading software can be a very useful tool in the armoury of a teacher in helping children who are struggling with reading—not just at the beginning, but at the end of primary—to get their reading up to an appropriate level so that they can benefit from the materials put before them at secondary school. Very often, they stop after their second SATs and do not go any further. That is why we have this transition problem. I shall not repeat the questions asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, about maths teachers, but we are equally anxious about the answers. The Minister talked about a greater focus on personalised learning with appropriate support. Does that mean that he will be looking at the process of statementing? We on these Benches feel that it is important that statementing is done by an appropriate group of professionals and that it is separated from the providers of the services. We welcome the extra resources, but do they also mean additional counsellors and family outreach workers in schools outside the classroom as well as teachers? I also welcome the fact that the Government are thinking of allowing teachers to make more of their own judgments about when children should be tested. However, the problem is not so much the assessment as what is done with it, and so I come to league tables. These Benches feel that there is a need to broaden the criteria for them to include more value-added information to help parents to make their judgment about what the school is doing. We accept that the social and emotional aspects of learning programme has been very successful. The Government seem to put great emphasis on it, but I am still puzzled about why they will not make PSHE mandatory. Will there be any development on that? We also welcome the additional money for extended schools, but two hours a week is not very much and could be gobbled up in using the breakfast club so that there would be nothing left for leisure and other broadening activities. Is there any ambition to make that more in future? I also point out that, when schools have extended hours, there are child protection issues and issues about children travelling home a little later at night. That needs to be thought about. We look forward to the legislation coming before us to increase the age for leaving education to 18. I am pleased that the Minister said ““education leaving age”” not ““school leaving age”” because it is crucial that the curriculum offered is appropriate. The provision must be of high quality if young people are being forced to stay until 18. These Benches are still worried about the level of preparedness for the 14 to 19 diplomas. Some local authorities and schools seem to think that it is way off down the track and are not prepared at all. The Minister mentioned that schools will have reduced prescription about what they teach beyond the core curriculum. However, that is not new. The Education Act 2002 gave schools the power to innovate, and not many of them have used it. The Minister mentioned the new statutory powers to tackle disruptive behaviour and restrain violent pupils. I repeat my plea for all teachers to have training in this, otherwise we could have disasters. Can the Minister clarify whether the story in the Financial Times that no LEA will be forced to have an academy if it does not want it is correct? Even if that story is true, it would only be cosmetic if having a brand-new school building where it is much needed is linked to that school being an academy. Having said that, we welcome the £2 million barrier being taken away from those who know about education and who want to open an academy or sponsor one. Universities do, and they are the people who should be sponsoring academies, if we are to have them. The noble Lord again mentioned the duty to collaborate with all other schools in the area. No school is an island; every brand-new, shiny school has an effect on the applications to all other schools in the area. Only the local authorities can plan this sort of provision across the board. I encourage the Government to do what they said that they would and make sure that they take into account the local authorities’ views on this. Now that we will have 400 academies, can we stop this pretence that all academies are replacing failing schools? They are not. We also welcome the council that the Minister announced, but how much is it going to cost and how will value for money be assessed? How will its work be reported to Parliament? We certainly agree that we need excellent universal services for all children and families. Only when these services are universal will there be no stigma to any family taking them up. Universal services to children and families promote social mobility and social cohesion from the earliest days, when children all grow up together. Youth justice is one of the new responsibilities coming into the Minister’s department. When I visited a young offender institution recently, I was most concerned to discover that many of the release plans break down so quickly and frequently. Part of this is because there is nobody there to make sure that it all happens as planned. We all know that when young people go into these institutions, the release plan is worked on from day one. They go out with all flags flying, but often, sadly, it all breaks down and their education plan or whatever just does not happen. With that new responsibility, will the Minister look into that? If the plans were implemented, we could reduce reoffending.