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Children, Schools and Families

My Lords, I was amused by the image conjured up in the mind of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, of my standing on the beach seeking to turn the tide like Canute. I prefer to put it rather differently. A strong sense of shared purpose has animated us all in education over the last few decades. As a nation together, across parties and across different parts of society, we have made education a much stronger priority. This is not like King Canute trying to achieve the impossible on the beach but a perfectly possible set of ambitions that we have taken on as a nation. A substantially higher proportion of our young people should achieve to high levels, comparable to the proportions that we have seen in other countries. We should get as close as we possibly can to having all our young people mastering basic skills, which is possible with good-quality teaching starting from the earliest years. The failure of our education system and inadequate investment in the past prevented us from getting there. However, through a strong sense of shared national purpose over recent years, including an injection of significant new investment in the past 10 years, we have seen progress towards goals that are readily attainable provided that we have the national will to achieve them. They are not utopian or unachievable in any sense. I was glad to see in the responses of the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Morris, a strong sense of unified purpose. Usually when I write my notes on responses, it is the hostile points that I need to answer that occupy most of the space. In fact, I agree with most of the points made by the noble Baronesses. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said that we were stealing her clothes. I would say that she is stealing ours, but I am happy that we should engage in mutual cross-dressing on many of these issues, because it matters so much to our schools, young people and families that we do not see these as party-political issues. I do not believe that the questions of discipline in schools, after-school activities, setting, good-quality school leadership, educational participation to the age of 18, valuing our teachers more or any of these issues should be regarded as party political. The issue is simply one of will, purpose, investment and real determination to achieve results, which I believe we share on all sides of the Chamber. I welcome most of the comments made by both the noble Baronesses and the support that their parties have offered. On the more specific comments, I agree for example that ICT is not a substitute for good teachers. Hand in hand with the significant investment that we have had in ICT over the past 10 years has gone a significant increase in the numbers of teachers and assistants. I agree that we need assistants of all kinds, including counsellors and family outreach workers, an issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. Of course, the big increase in the numbers of assistants has included outreach workers of the kind that she described. I am glad that both noble Baronesses welcome the steps that we have taken to engage universities much more strongly in the education system, including in academies; I welcome the fact that they agree with us on the relaxation of the financial barriers to participation in the academies programme. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and I have differences, in theory, on academies; I simply note, as the Minister, the huge enthusiasm among many Lib Dem authorities for engaging in the academies programme. Indeed, the London Borough of Southwark, whose leader and I engage frequently on the issue of academies, has one of the highest densities of academies of any local authority in the country and, unless my facts are mistaken, it is run by the Liberal Democrats. So in many areas, even where we profess to disagree, the common ground between us is much greater than might be thought from some of the rhetoric. Let me respond to some of the specific other questions that were raised. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, asked whether the attractiveness of academies would be undermined by placing them under local authorities. It is very important to understand what we have said today in respect of academies. We welcome the fact that academies that are replacing existing local authority schools are, in effect, jointly commissioned by my department and local authorities. Local authorities are increasingly seeking out potential sponsors, including universities, colleges, businesses and individuals. We welcome that and want to build on it. We want the new local authority of the future to be increasingly a commissioner of services, including educational services, and not the direct provider. However, the management and operation of academies will continue to be subject to their sponsors and their boards of governors; there will be no change in the effective autonomy that they have in that respect. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, raised the issue of the maths review and said that she had doubts over our ability to deliver. However, the national literacy and numeracy programmes over the past 10 years have been extremely successful. The proportion of 11 year-olds reaching the required level 4 in the key stage 2 tests has risen dramatically since 1997. More than 100,000 children a year now reach the standard required at the age of 11 in maths than was the case 10 years ago. So there has been a significant improvement. But we need to be honest about the fact that one in five 11 year-olds is still not up to that standard. We believe that it is right to look in a fundamental way, after 10 years’ experience of the operation of the national numeracy strategy, at how we can improve that situation. Sir Peter Williams will look not only at pedagogy, which is important, and at how mathematics is taught, but also—linking into another question raised by the noble Baroness—at the qualification and training of teachers. Unless the teachers have the competence to teach mathematics effectively in primary schools, they will not be able to deliver higher standards, particularly at the more challenging end of the ability range where pupils are falling behind. We are also asking Sir Peter to advise us on the design of effective catch-up schemes in maths, which will perform a role similar to that of the Every Child a Reader programmes. As the noble Baroness and I constantly say in exchanges across the Chamber, we want the catch-up to be as limited as possible because we have got it right first time. We want to ensure that, by using effective phonics programmes for teaching reading and effective programmes for teaching numeracy, we steadily and dramatically reduce the proportion of those in the earliest primary years who fall behind. That links, of course, directly into personalised learning, an issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. I noticed that in another place her colleague David Laws, who is new to education, said about personalised learning that he now understood what the educational jargon meant; he thought that it was what teachers had been doing for 50 years, which, of course, it is—every teacher seeks to personalise their provision. However, small-group tuition, programmes for gifted and talented pupils, a much wider array of after-school activities and so on are all expensive areas of educational provision and it is important to consider what we are proposing in terms of personalisation hand in hand with the increased resources that we are making available to schools. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, it is only by providing more resources to schools that it is possible for them to become 10-hour-a-day institutions that offer a whole programme of after-school activities—including the arts, sport and so on, which were not present before—as well as childcare and other provision of that kind. We are seeking increasingly to personalise provision as we provide more resources in ways that simply were not possible before, because the resources were not there to provide smaller-group tuition, a wider curriculum and a much richer range of after-school activities. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, asked about the national council. I cannot tell her precisely how much it will cost, but I can say that it will be lean and mean. We do not intend it to be a great drain on the public purse; it will need only the resources necessary to cover its running costs. The first meeting will take place shortly, and we will soon thereafter set out the council’s goal and work plan, which is what we will judge its work against. A very distinguished group of business leaders, university leaders and others is engaging in it, which testifies to our profound shared national purpose. I agree with the noble Baroness’s points about the importance of youth justice to the new department. I will come back to her on her comments on release plans in particular. The reduced prescription that we are talking about, in the key stage 3 review whose conclusions will be published shortly, is available not just to a small number of schools that, for example, apply for the power to innovate, which the noble Baroness mentioned. It will apply to all schools, so that we give greater flexibility in the development of the curriculum, including a vocational work-related curriculum for those young people for whom it is suitable beyond the age of 14. The noble Baroness rightly said that the introduction of the new diplomas is an immense challenge. I do not minimise the challenge; it is one of the biggest things that we will be doing in education over the next period. It is important that we get it right. Personalisation is not simply about additional resources, but also about having a more fit-for-purpose curriculum. If we are honest and look at the history of education policy in this country over the past 50 years, we see that the area in which we have been weakest is vocational and work-related skills and making them properly available in schools. There are immense challenges ahead. I am delighted that we have such strong consensus across the Chamber. We intend to continue to build on the progress that we have made over the past 10 years.