Education Bill

My Lords, this is a most important amendment because when surveys are done asking parents what they want most from a school, the majority say it is that their children should be happy. If this is so, it should surely be a major objective for our schools—it is as simple as that. Yet the existing pressures on our schools are in a very different direction and we are in danger of turning our schools into nothing much more than exam factories. We must surely do something drastic to reassert the importance of the development of character and of the personal well-being of children within the school. This is a matter not of either/or but of both/and: exams and academic achievement are extremely important, but so too is well-being. On top of that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, pointed out earlier, there is very strong evidence that happier children do better in terms of academic achievement. How can we get the rebalancing? I would be surprised if there were anybody in this House who did not believe that some rebalancing was needed in the objectives of our schools. I assume that we all feel that. The only way we can do that is by incentives, and the reality is that schools do what they think Ofsted wants them to do—it is as simple as that. Surely, Ofsted should be reporting on the ways in which schools are promoting the well-being of the pupils as well as the other objectives on which they already report. Should they not be reporting on what parents want for their children? If this is one of the things that parents most want for their children, if should surely be a major feature of Ofsted’s reports. Parents want their children to develop as rounded people who are learning not just how to earn a living but how to live. In this year of youth riots, I find it extraordinary that the Government cannot add pupil well-being to the priorities for Ofsted in Clause 40. We have been told of a reassuring letter from the Secretary of State, but he is just one Secretary of State. We are debating legislation, and it is not enough to have that reassuring letter; it has to be in the Bill. If it cannot be within Clause 40, which apparently it cannot, I urge the Government to find some way of having this ancillary sanction that strengthens the rebalancing in the direction in which I think all your Lordships would like to see movement.