Committee (3rd Day)

Part of Academies Bill [HL] – in the House of Lords at 5:15 pm on 28 June 2010.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Lord Howarth of Newport Lord Howarth of Newport Labour 5:15, 28 June 2010

It could be argued that there is no more important element of the curriculum than PSHE. The previous Government were certainly right to propose that it should be a statutory foundation subject. There is a public, societal interest in children being educated in these areas. Moreover, I believe that it is the inescapable responsibility of Government to ensure that that happens because only the Government can ensure that all children receive education in these areas; only the Government can establish a norm; and only the Government can promote best practice across every school.

Education about relationships and sex is, of course, a very important private and parental responsibility and should be respected as such, but it cannot be the responsibility of parents alone. By definition relationships involve two people and, indeed, two families. Ignorance in sexual matters is dangerous to others. Children need support and education. They grow up in an erotically charged environment, where advertising and entertainment sexualise almost every kind of transaction; and the internet opens the window to a host of sexual possibilities regardless of who receives the messages. I am afraid that it is commonplace in our culture for human beings to be objectified, exploited and even brutalised sexually. Inescapably, children and young people witness that. If there is an age of innocence, it is all too short. For that reason and because of earlier puberty, it is essential that sex and relationship education is introduced at primary level although, of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said, it should be age-appropriate.

There are powerful peer pressures to experiment and to take risks, and those are stronger than the social codes that seek to protect young people from precocious sexual experiences. Children and young people are vulnerable and, therefore, they need help from an early age to understand this environment and to start to establish their own secure and confident individuality. They need education about relationships-not preachy education but education that may well be imparted through the study of literature and drama, for example. They need to learn that good relationships are characterised by respect for the other person, by sensitivity and by love. They also need to learn about the physiological facts of reproduction, the practicalities of birth control and how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases. They need to be taught those matters with no euphemisms and no evasion: sexually transmitted diseases may kill. Some families are not willing to teach that to their children and some families do not know how. Therefore, it is unacceptable to leave sex education to families as a private responsibility. I believe that religious objections, for example to teaching about contraception, have to be overruled.

It must be the duty of all schools to teach relationship and sex education. Just as there should be no right for parents to opt their children out, so there should be no right for schools to opt out of this responsibility or to skimp on it. The duty must be explicit because parents may object, teachers may be embarrassed, and there may be pressures on the curriculum which cause sex and relationship education and other aspects of PSHE to be squeezed out.

The Government rightly wish to avoid being unduly prescriptive in the requirements that they make of academies, but does the Minister accept that here there would be an appropriate prescriptiveness? Is it their intention to require academies to provide PSHE? Will they start to ensure that there is appropriate training for teachers and that there are enough competent teachers? If they answer that there will be an expectation that schools will provide PSHE and that there will be a pressure through inspection, that will not be sufficient. There really needs to be an obligation, so will they place that obligation on academies?

I want to say a word or two about substance abuse-the use of tobacco and other drugs. Illegal drugs are widely and easily available to our young people and aggressively sold to them. Our children are extremely vulnerable in this area. Again, there is strong peer pressure to experiment, reinforcing the natural tendency of adolescents to defy adult prohibitions and to take risks. The situation is made worse by our persistence in criminalising the drugs trade rather than regulating it, with the result that many young people are permanently in the hinterland of this criminality.

I have been following recent press reports about the apprehension in Jamaica of Christopher "Dudus" Coke, allegedly an important drugs baron there. I am interested in that because when I was a Member of Parliament for Newport, Jamaican Yardie gangs targeted young people-my constituents-in Newport. They had saturated the market in Bristol, so they moved further down the M4 to Newport, with some very nasty results. In the perverse economy that our public policy has created, dealers are incentivised to do all they can to encourage young people to graduate from cannabis to class A drugs.

Young people are further confused by the vacillations of successive Home Secretaries about how to categorise particular drugs and the confused signals that have been sent by the Home Office about enforcement. Public policy in this field has been benighted. I remember reading reports about David Cameron when he was offering his candidature to become leader of the Conservative Party: it was said that as a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee he had been inclined to the view that we really did need to take a whole new look at this area of policy. Be that as it may, it is crucial that children and young people are helped by schools to cope amid this anarchy.

As a society, we do not know how to handle alcohol. There is an epidemic of alcoholism, which is incubated from an early age in all too many people. Alcoholic drinks are too cheap, too strong and aggressively and brilliantly advertised. The social constraints against alcohol abuse are failing. On Friday and Saturday nights in all too many of our cities there is an alcohol-induced chaos, an intense unpleasantness and indeed fear on the part of many people. Our policies are not working.

Children have to be helped to cope with this environment through their education. They have to be supported to become responsible young people in relation to substance abuse and sexual relationships-to become confident to say no; to be capable of thoughtful and mature states of mind. If we help them to that in their education, we will serve them and society in all aspects: they will become good parents, good friends, good members of society and good citizens in our democracy.

I am confident that many academies will take all this seriously and will be willing and able to teach PSHE well. But my fear is that some academies will duck their responsibility. They will be eager to validate themselves and attract more pupils by concentrating on measurable results, academic success and getting a high proportion of their pupils to university. There will be pressure to squeeze PSHE out of the curriculum. So how will the Government ensure that academies fulfil their wider responsibility to students and society in respect of this crucial PSHE?