Education Bill

I know that the noble Baroness is keen that the review should be as short as possible and that she thinks that much of what it covers has already been covered—we have had that discussion before. I hope that it will start soon, and then aim to conclude by the end of the year. On the points made about sex and relationships education, as part of our review we will determine how we can support schools to improve the quality of their teaching in this area. As I mentioned, Ofsted’s report on the matter says that sex education is one of the weaker aspects of PSHE. This is perhaps a sign that legislation of itself is not a necessarily a guarantee of good quality teaching, since that is the part that is statutory. On as emergency life support skills are concerned, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, that equipping young people to be able to step in where lives are at stake is extremely important. I know that many schools, and organisations such as the British Heart Foundation and St John Ambulance, do absolutely brilliant work. My own wife is a trained first-aider, something which she needs for the work she does for Riding for the Disabled; so I know how important it is. That is one reason why we are so keen to review the national curriculum: so that the statutory content will take up less of the timetable, which in turn will enable many more schools to get involved in things such as the British Heart Foundation’s Heartstart programme. We know that there are many things—and my noble friend Lady Walmsley spoke about them with great experience and passion—that pupils need to learn about and can benefit from. We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Layard, who sadly is not in his place, about the link between well-being and the ability to learn. Of course that is true, but attempting to define those things from the centre, and be prescriptive about what schools must teach, removes teachers’ and school leaders’ ability to use their professional judgment. We had an interesting exchange about inspections. Of course the new school inspection framework will cover the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, was making a point echoed by my noble friend Lord Lucas about the frequency of inspection—we will come on to talk about that under later groups. We will also come back to discuss thematic reviews and the risk assessment process, issues mentioned by my noble friend Lady Perry of Southwark. We know that the majority of schools already deliver good PSHE education, which is not currently a statutory part of the curriculum. I agree that we need to look at how the quality of PSHE teaching can be improved and what its content should be; that is what our review will look into. I know that I will disappoint my noble friend Lady Walmsley who has clear and strong views on this, but with these comments I ask her to withdraw her amendments.