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Children and Families

My Lords, I shall have to try to make sure that I stop at a full stop. I thank my noble friend Lady Massey and I assure the House that her domestic science skills have improved since she was at school. Her report card showed that, despite difficulties, this is a topic on which the Government have a good story to tell, and it would be a terrible catastrophe for families, and in particular for children, if all the good work that has been achieved in the past decade were to be compromised in the next few years, blighting the life chances of a generation, as happened a generation ago. I will concentrate my remarks on the role of arts and culture on the well-being of children, and I will refer to two organisations with which I am connected: the Roundhouse in north London, and Artis, which is a small but perfectly formed business that recruits and trains performing artists to deliver specially developed programmes linked to the national curriculum and to the Every Child Matters agenda in primary schools and, more recently, in secondary schools. I am afraid that what I say will overlap significantly with the eloquent words of the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. I hope the House will forgive me. The noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, referred to the review of the primary curriculum by Sir Jim Rose, in which he referred to the necessity of emphasising the importance of speaking and listening. The review talks about the possibility of needing formal lessons in spoken English. Command of language is one of the most powerful tools we have. It can be used for good or, of course, for ill, but without it we are denied access to our imaginations, and to the expression of our most complex emotions. A child impoverished in this way will remain at a disadvantage throughout life. There are few more effective ways of developing language skills than through engagement with the arts, and I refer to a report that was published last month by the Culture and Learning Consortium, which is made up of a number of arts and cultural bodies. The report, Get It: The Power of Cultural Learning, is a compilation of feedback and recommendations from a wide public consultation among practitioners working in the cultural and learning sectors in England, directed toward a new approach to cultural learning. The report has an excellent set of recommendations focused on improving outcomes for children and young people. I was going to share with noble Lords some of the marvellous quotations that are peppered throughout it, but as I am a bit afraid of the Whips, I will not do so. However, two jumped out at me. The first is from Sir Alan Ayckbourn, a great playwright, who said: ""When you are young, the arts afford you a glimpse of the world through the senses of others, while helping you to make sense of yourself"." The second is almost my favourite. It is from Doreen, aged nine, and is a tribute to my noble friend Lady Massey. After a school visit to the Unicorn Theatre for Children she said: ""I am telling you, theatre is better than TV"." Amen to that, say I, though of course I am biased, but I believe nothing beats participating in a live experience. The Government, to their enormous credit, are piloting the Find Your Talent initiative, which aims to ensure that all children and young people, no matter where they live or what their background, have the chance to participate in at least five hours per week of high quality culture, in and out of school. The key phrases are "participate" and "high quality". To be candid, this is a very ambitious plan, but it is really important that the current economic situation does not result in such ambition being stifled. I hope that my noble friend, when she comes to reply, will be able to reinforce the Government’s commitment to maintaining this initiative. The two organisations that I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks, Roundhouse and Artis, are both contributing significantly in different ways to using arts and culture to develop skills and confidence in children and young people. Again, I would give examples of this but I am not going to because I want to raise one other point. I will say only that the quiet work that Artis does, which reaches 25,000 children a week in primary schools, and the rather noisier and more ebullient work that Roundhouse does in engaging with the young people who have come thorough its pioneering studio programmes, which resulted in it creating, producing, managing and delivering an entire weekend’s worth of work at the Roundhouse last weekend, are important indicators of what can be achieved. There are many more, too, but we have some way to go before the benefits of learning through cultural experience are fully embraced in our educational and social policies. I hope that we shall not lose ground on this issue in the years ahead. I want to talk about radio. I am a lifelong radio addict. I started with the pirates and Radio 1, but now I am in the arms of Radios 3 and 4. That may conform to a very comfortable middle-class stereotype that suggests that this is not really what children and young people today are interested in, but I do not think that is true. What the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, said about the potential power of radio is important, and we should take it seriously. Speech radio for children is a medium that engages imagination and reinforces the power of language, and it encourages listening skills, which are essential to the development of complex language skills. I ask the Government, when they publish their Digital Britain report, to recognise the contribution of high-quality speech radio for young people and make sure that they encourage the BBC to reinvest in it.