Education and Skills Bill

As an historian myself, I believe that you can turn the study of history to any eventuality and any other aspect of life. The noble Lord simply reinforces the point. As the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, said in introducing her amendment, we debated PSHE at length during the passage of the Education and Inspections Act, at the instigation in part of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. The Government’s policy on making PSHE statutory has not changed, but it is far from complacent. In the first place, much of PSHE is already statutory in schools. All schools must have a sex education policy, which is supported by statutory guidance issued by my department on the content and teaching of sex and relationships education. This education is required in law to include education about HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. In addition, statutory content in the science curriculum supports teaching about sex and drugs, healthy eating and the importance of exercise. As we discussed earlier today, schools are also required to provide careers education at key stages 3 and 4, and work-related learning must be provided at key stage 4. Secondly, the department’s priority has been to improve PSHE teaching and learning by providing clear guidance, supporting teachers in continuing their professional development, and identifying and spreading good practice. The national PSHE continuing professional development programme is now accredited and attracts nearly 2,000 participants each year, with substantial government funding to make this possible. The status of PSHE has also been raised through measures such as including it as a requirement for achieving healthy schools status, and we are on track to reach our target of 75 per cent of schools achieving that status by 2009. Guidance on healthy school status is made available to all schools, and all its opening sections relate to PSHE. It states that a healthy school: "““Uses the PSHE framework to deliver a planned programme of PSHE … Monitors and evaluates PSHE provision to ensure the quality of teaching and learning … Assesses children/young people’s progress and achievement in line with QCA guidance””," and: "““Has a named member of staff responsible for PSHE provision with status, training and appropriate Senior Management support within the school””." A healthy school: "““Involves professionals from appropriate external agencies to create specialist teams to support PSHE delivery and to improve skills and knowledge, such as a school nurse, sexual health outreach workers and drug education advisers””." We have been providing a good deal of support for PSHE. Indeed, I launched the new PSHE Subject Association two years ago to help to promote PSHE in schools, and I am glad to say that it now has more than 900 members and is doing excellent work. The position is improving, and this progress has been reflected in recent Ofsted reports. Ofsted reported in March 2007 that in primary schools, teaching and learning was judged to be at least adequate in nearly all PSHE lessons and good in three-quarters of them. In secondary schools, the quality of teaching and learning has shown a steady improvement, with 66 per cent of lessons in key stage 3 and 75 per cent of lessons in key stage 4 judged as good. However, we continue to keep the position of PSHE under review. The review of the primary curriculum, which is currently being led by Sir Jim Rose, has a specific remit to consider how to develop an integrated framework for the personal skills that all pupils should develop through their schooling. Good PSHE is essential to this process. There are also ongoing reviews of drugs education and sex and relationships education. We will consider all three reviews when they report and the future position of PSHE in the curriculum in the light of them. Although I fear that I cannot go further than the Government’s existing policy on PSHE, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, will be reassured by that and by the fact that we are taking forward many of the component parts of PSHE that she highlighted.