Education Bill

My Lords, I very much hope that my noble friend will pay attention to the speeches he has heard on Amendment 78. I well remember the debates that led up to and followed the inspired amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, which got us out of some emotional difficulties. It expressed all our intentions well. This Government realise that measuring schools and setting them objectives has an effect on schools, which is why they introduced the EBacc, which is having an effect. Ofsted looks at community cohesion not because we expect Ofsted to go galumphing all over this territory but so that schools know that attention is being paid to whether they do it or not, and that, therefore, it will come within the list of things that they have to do. The noble Lord, Lord Quirk, made some pretty good fun of the provisions in the Bill about social, moral and cultural development, as if there was a way of measuring these things or a tape measure that could be run over them. But having that in the Bill means schools know that this is something they have to do and that, therefore, they have to give time to it and spend money on it. If schools are not given any mind in these sorts of areas, they will start not doing it in the way that they have been not doing foreign languages. Hence, the need to row back on that with some vigour, which I am delighted my right honourable friend is doing. These things matter and these particular words matter. The noble Baroness, Lady Flather, has my total support. I very much hope that in the Minister’s consideration of what might be done to improve this Bill, she will focus on those two words. On the other amendments in the group, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, is aiming at. It seems to me that we are moving children between two regimes—that of the social services and that of the school, or the family and the school, whichever may apply. In terms of understanding what is going right and what is going wrong, it is important to make a measurement at the point when a child moves from one to the other so that we know whether the problems of literacy are being generated in the community or though a lack of attention in the school. I am not saying that this is the right place to put it but if we are doing value-added in a school, we should take an initial measure at the beginning and not two years in. A lot of value-added goes on in those two years in a good school. We should be doing that. I very much support the spirit of the amendment. I also support my noble friend Lady Walmsley in her wish to see well-being included. The Prime Minister has been right to support that as a concept of wide application and it really should find its way into something as central as education. I look forward to the speech of my noble friend the Minister.