Education Bill

My Lords, I was not able to support the last group of amendments of the noble Lord, Lord True, because I tended to agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, about the danger of a two-tier system. However, I am very pleased to be able to support this group of amendments enthusiastically. My knowledge of Montessori is that my grandchildren went to a Montessori nursery. Indeed, my daughter-in-law, their mother, herself already highly qualified with a PhD in biochemistry, was so impressed by the system that she started to train as a Montessori teacher. This delighted me. We need highly intelligent and highly qualified people in the nursery sector and I thought that was excellent. If we want to offer parents a wide choice of early-years provision we ought to do everything that we can to encourage proven, high-quality systems such as Montessori and Steiner and, if necessary, make them special cases.