Education and Inspections Bill

I apologise; I have no amendment in this group but my name has been mentioned, and I have put my name to amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, particularly on science teaching. I wish to say a few words about the extremely coherent, excellent speech made by the noble Baroness and the issues that she raised. We on these Benches very much support the amendments on science teaching. I am a member of the Select Committee investigating science teaching in schools. It is an extremely interesting inquiry and we shall come up with some good proposals for the Minister. The noble Lord, Lord Dearing, asked whether we would find enough teachers. That is the main constraint at the moment. To provide separate science subjects in schools for all pupils is impossible, because there are not enough physics and chemistry teachers at present. However, we are developing more of them and there is a degree to which the issue becomes self-fulfilling. What emerges from the evidence that we have heard is that, on the whole, pupils respond well to specialist teachers and to the specialist subjects and, therefore, if we are looking to obtain more physicists and chemists down the line, we would benefit from having more specialist teachers in schools. Therefore, the more specialist teachers that we can get into schools, the more of them we shall produce, because we are more likely to get them to take A-levels in those subjects and then go on to study them at university. The noble Lord, Lord Dearing, was also correct when he talked about distance learning. A visit that we made to the National Science Learning Centre at York indicated two things: first, how important constant and high-quality retraining is for teachers; and, secondly, that a great many exciting new technologies are available to help teachers to move their subject forward and to present it as exciting. One also realises how important hands-on science is. We have moved away from it a little, partly, but not entirely, for health and safety reasons and also because it is much easier to teach if only the teacher does the experiment. One of the dangers of the new syllabus that is coming forward is that, to some extent, it offers much more science in society. It is vital that we put across the concept of scientific method, careful measuring, testing hypotheses against measurements and seeing whether the experiment meets the hypothesis. That is the essence of scientific method, and one thing that we need to get children to learn from science is scientific method. I want briefly to talk about modern foreign languages. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, was correct. During the passage of the Education Bill in 2002, we got promises about languages in primary education. The noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, the Minister at that time, persuaded us that there were many goodies down the line, but we probably all now very much regret that we allowed modern foreign languages to slip out of that foundation category of subjects. The international baccalaureate has been long supported on these Benches. We feel that we are the only country in the world that narrows down education so much for 16 and 17 year-olds. The baccalaureate maintains a much wider portfolio of subjects and gets away from totally formulaic testing. I am sorry that the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, is not in the next group, where it should be, because we will be talking about vocational education in that group. But the fact remains that Tomlinson was trying to develop something broader and closer to the baccalaureate approach of a diploma, including, for example, a long essay. Although it does not necessarily meet all that one is looking for, a great deal in it could have met the requirements. I am very sorry that the Government have not taken the challenge posed by Tomlinson for a broader diploma approach. There has been talk of an English baccalaureate. Some people have done a lot of work on that, and I think that we could have developed something appropriate and far more fit for purpose in examining young people.