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Children, Schools and Families Bill

My Lords, statutory does not necessarily equal excellent when it comes to teaching. Many areas of the curriculum are statutory, and we have many failing schools. It is important to say that, because we will not necessarily make PSHE better by making it statutory. The reality is that the contexts in which PSHE is delivered and its effectiveness will depend on a range of factors that are totally outside children, such as the funding that is given to the school, the staffing and the catchment of the school, and the context in which education is delivered. All those factors will affect the teaching of all subjects in any school, and making something statutory does not necessarily help. By making something statutory, you also impose a further level of bureaucracy on schools that are already struggling under a mighty weight of bureaucracy. The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, is right to say that we have heard hugely emotive language here tonight. No noble Lord among us would want children not to know about such things as child abuse, domestic violence, teenage pregnancy and so on. Those are all very significant and serious issues, which are provided for in most of the schools in this country. It is right that, if we are to legislate and to place this on a statutory footing, we should get it right.