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Children’s Plan

My Lords, this is one of the few statements of forward policy that I have made to the House that does not involve the setting-up of a review or a committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. His excitement at the prospect of not having to conduct another review is palpable. However, the plan takes forward the recommendations of his last important review on the teaching of modern foreign languages. As he rightly says, how the teaching of modern foreign languages is provided for in primary schools will be a key feature of Sir Jim Rose’s review. We will look to see how we can implement the commitment that we gave in the primary review that we would seek to make the teaching of modern foreign languages mandatory in primary schools. In respect of summer-born children, which is becoming a constant theme of the noble Lord’s interventions, he is right that paragraph 3.129 of the plan mentions the positive impact of allowing summer-born children to receive the same amount of full-time schooling as their peers, but I am glad to say that it is followed by paragraph 3.130, which states that Sir Jim Rose will consider this issue and, in particular, "““whether it would be appropriate to allow greater flexibility in start dates””." I encourage the noble Lord to speak to Sir Jim Rose directly about this, because there are not many people in the country who know more about it than he does. He and a group of researchers at the Institute for Fiscal Studies are serious experts on this issue, but there are not many others. I am sure that he and the noble Lord would have a productive conversation. As regards pupils sitting tests when they are ready rather than on the set dates regardless of readiness, the noble Lord is right that such a step would require substantial and proper support. Big issues are raised about how it would be implemented in practice. That is why we are piloting single-level tests sat at two points in the year, with teachers entering pupils for them when they believe that the children are ready. This pilot is taking place in more than 400 schools and we intend to evaluate the results before we make firm commitments on how we proceed.