Education Bill

My Lords, I regard teaching is a skilled profession and one that demands all sorts of skills, but I am aware that, among the general public, many people believe that anyone can teach and that there is nothing to it at all. They are just plain wrong. Teaching is not only a skilled profession, but it is an incredibly difficult one. I shall enlarge on that in a moment. Perhaps I may go into my own anecdotage, as I always do when addressing your Lordships. Many years ago, when I was a lecturer at the LSE, the professors decided that they ought to get some advice from the Institute of Education about teaching. I was told by a most senior professor, the great Lord Robbins, that I had been selected—it turned out that I was almost the only one who had agreed—as one of those to be examined by two people from the Institute of Education. None of the professors volunteered to be examined by them. They heard me lecture a couple of times and then they came to see me. They said, ““Do you think you are a good teacher?””. I said, ““I am a very good teacher, I can assure you of that””. Then they said, ““Do you think it would be advantageous if the students could actually hear what you said?””. I said, ““What?””. They said, ““Well, you constantly march round, turn your back to them and for most of the time they cannot hear what you say, but they are too well mannered to tell you””. Then they said, ““Do you think it would be useful if you wrote legibly on the blackboard so that they can see what you write?””. Again, I was taken aback. They went through it all and I realised that I had been totally deluded in my view. In those days, you just got a first-class honours degree at the LSE and you were appointed as a junior lecturer, end of story, and you were told to go and teach. In principle, I was addressing willing learners. One thing we have to bear in mind is that the lives of many teachers are difficult because quite a large number of the people whom they are teaching do not want to learn and one of their skills has to be to persuade people that it is worth learning and that education is a useful thing. We have discussed before in Grand Committee how you persuade students when their own parents, particularly parents with girls, tell them that education is a complete waste of time. Therefore, it seems to me that we must not go down the line of pretending that anyone can teach. I do not say that everyone who has a teaching certificate will turn out to be a good teacher, but that seems to be at least a sine qua non to start with. My noble friend mentioned whether we are to go down the next stage which is having unqualified doctors. I remember, some time ago, talking to a computer expert, saying, ““Do we really need expensive doctors because as far as I can see you could write a program which would involve structured questions and answers and you could give it to me and I would follow the structured questions and answers and I would diagnose a condition and the program would also tell me what to prescribe?””. I spoke to one or two medics and they said, ““Don’t you know that doctors do other things besides simply looking at a few symptoms and then prescribe?””. They were entirely right; their contribution is a human contribution and that applies to social workers and all sorts of areas where people need to be skilled and qualified. We do not need Philistines outside telling us that anyone can do this sort of thing. In following what has been said already, it overwhelmingly seems to me that we must not go down the path of diluting the educational training of those are to be our education trainers. None the less, having said that, we must place all this—the point has already been made—within the context in which people teach. As I have already said, there is no big deal when teaching willing learners. Equally, teaching becomes a good deal easier when classes are small. I do not see this Government, with their ridiculous economic policies, suddenly increasing the amount of expenditure on education so that all schools could have the same class sizes as private, independent schools. Our teachers have to cope in difficult circumstances. Above all, the job of your Lordships is to be supportive and not to undermine them in any way whatever.