Education Bill

Given the time, I shall speak very briefly about the Bill, which is bad in so many ways. The Government talk about giving power to parents and teachers, but at every turn they remove powers from parents and communities and give them to the Secretary of State. The Bill does not build, but destroys. It encourages schools to be islands rather than resources in the community that can bring agencies together for the benefit of children and young people. The Bill also misses opportunities. It is good that it provides for the anonymity of teachers, but why does it not extend that anonymity to other school staff, who are often more vulnerable than teachers to accusations? There are three other areas in which the Bill misses opportunities. First, by getting rid of the school support staff negotiating body it does a real disservice to 500,000 generally low-paid workers. That body has been working on job descriptions and job gradings for 100 strands of work within schools, from the work of classroom assistants to that of school bursars and caretakers. Its work was stopped last year when the Government pre-empted the Bill by saying that the body was going to be removed. I seriously hope that they will reconsider their decision and allow the body at least to complete its work, and support it in doing so. Secondly, my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and I tabled an amendment that would have given schools a duty to facilitate positive activities for young people. There have been some fantastic examples of youth work in schools, usually in partnership with youth services and other agencies, but cuts in youth services and central funding streams have made that work difficult. I hope that the Government will consider how they can support youth work, either through the Bill or elsewhere. Finally, the Government have missed a real opportunity to save lives. It is not often that any Government get the opportunity to do something simply, easily, cheaply and immediately that would save lives, but this Government have that opportunity. If they introduced emergency life skills into the national curriculum they could make a real difference. ELS is a set of actions that save lives, including cardiopulmonary resuscitation and dealing with choking and bleeding. Every year 150,000 people die in situations in which first aid could have made a difference. Each year in the UK 30,000 people have a cardiac arrest outside the hospital environment, of whom fewer than 10% survive. Children are often present at accidents and emergencies, and by learning emergency life skills they can be as effective as any adult in saving lives. If someone has a cardiac arrest in Seattle they have a great chance of surviving, because children there are taught ELS as part of their national curriculum. Indeed, people cannot graduate from school or pass their driving test unless they learn ELS. If any Member is going to have a cardiac arrest they should have it in Seattle, because they would rarely be more than 12 feet away from someone who could save their life. Why can we not have that situation in the UK? If we did, we could save lives. I hope that the Government will reconsider that and put ELS into the national curriculum.