Education and Inspections Bill

I acknowledge the immense contributions that my noble friends Lady Massey and Lady Gould have made to the cause of personal, social and health education. They are acknowledged leaders in the field. We see this as an increasingly important area in the life of schools as they play their part in society and confront the social pressures with which we are all too familiar, including those referred to by the noble Earl. The issue of whether PSHE should be made compulsory is complex, which is why we cannot straightforwardly make it statutory. Many aspects of PSHE are already statutory elements of the national curriculum, such as sex and relationship education, drug education and careers guidance. In addition, a number of requirements on schools support PSHE, such as the need for policies on bullying, promoting effective race relations and child protection. A non-statutory framework for all the key stages that encompasses the whole of PSHE was introduced in 2000, so it is still fairly recent. Over and above that, there is the National Healthy Schools programme, with which my noble friend Lady Massey is familiar and which she sees as an important part of the development of effective provision in this area. The first requirement for getting healthy school status is that an effective PSHE programme, including sex and relationship education and drug education—including alcohol, tobacco and volatile substance abuse—is properly provided in the school. The programme states that a healthy school uses, "““the PSHE framework to deliver a planned programme of PSHE, in line with DfES/Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) guidance””," has, "““a named member of staff responsible for PSHE provision with status, training and appropriate senior management support within the school””," and, "““involves professionals from appropriate external agencies to create specialist teams to support PSHE delivery and to improve skills and knowledge, such as a school nurse—" we have a target for all schools or clusters of schools to have a school nurse by 2010— "““sexual health outreach workers and drug education advisers””." We are on track to reach the target that, by the end of 2006, half of all schools should be healthy schools. More than 78 per cent of schools are engaged in the Healthy Schools programme. That is supported by increased provision of £12.3 million a year. The PSHE certificate programme, which my noble friend is aware of and which is doing good work in this area, provides free training, including the cost of staff cover in schools from which the teachers come. Since the certification programme was introduced 2,500 PSHE teachers have been trained, and another 2,000 are enrolled on the programme. The cost of funding is £3 million per year. I say all this as evidence of the seriousness with which we treat PSHE. If, however, we moved to the stage my noble friend was suggesting of making PSHE compulsory, we would immediately, as she will recognise, get into a debate about the imposition of new burdens on school and precisely how they are to be defined. We both want to achieve the same result of universal healthy school status on the back of the existing statutory requirements in place on schools, which are substantial, the training of substantially more PSHE teachers school by school and the observance of a non-statutory framework. I believe we will reach the same position by a process of consent without another major reform of the national curriculum, with all the additional burdens that that will be seen to bring in in its wake. This is not a straightforward issue. We share entirely the objectives of my noble friend. We have a large number of measures in place that we believe will achieve those objectives. In that context we would not adopt this precise amendment. I will now comment on Amendments Nos. 193A and 197, spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, which require schools to take account of and provide for any relevant cultural, religious, secular and health considerations for pupils who follow the proposed programmes of study for PSHE. These amendments are not necessary because schools are expected to provide a curriculum which promotes pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural developments. The national curriculum includes a statutory inclusion statement which outlines the principles that teachers should follow to ensure that every child, irrespective of ability, sex, social and cultural background, ethnicity or disability, has the opportunity to achieve to the best of his ability. I entirely share the objectives which the noble Baroness has set out, but we believe that they are met already.