Education and Inspections Bill

I strongly support Amendment No. 48, and with it the amendment tabled from the Liberal Benches, Amendment No. 49. Personal and social development is crucially important for young people today. Personal development is about how to relate to yourself, while social development is about how to relate to other people. These are key life skills—they are particularly key in employment and wealth creation and in family formation and child rearing. The latest Ofsted report from 2005—although there is another one cooking at the moment—suggests that the majority of schools are not satisfactorily delivering personal and social education today. The report suggests that about two in five schools are giving an entirely satisfactory delivery of this subject. I accept that it is not an easy subject to develop in a classroom. What has happened is that the Government’s enthusiasm for citizenship and the general enthusiasm for sex education has led to citizenship and sex education almost taking over from the rather more general subject of PSHE.