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Lord Holme of Cheltenham: My Lords, may I also thank my noble friend Lord Russell for introducing this debate so eloquently this afternoon. Your Lordships may not know that he came here fresh from his award at lunch time today, as Peer of the Year by the Spectator. It is a curious title, but there we are: Lord Russell is now Peer of the Year, and he follows, of course, in the footsteps of our noble friend Lady Seear, who is so sadly absent from her place today. I understand that Lord Russell, in accepting his award, said that he learnt his craft from Lady Seear, and I can well imagine that.
It is clear that this is an important topic. My colleague, Don Foster MP, the Liberal Democrat education and employment spokesman said three weeks ago, when addressing the National Conference of Youth Clubs, that Britain is currently failing to develop to the full the talents and abilities of its young people.
I cannot believe that statement in this House is in any way controversial, even if, between the various Benches, we may disagree on what should be done about it. That failure, to which Mr. Foster referred, is reflected on the margin by a serious breakdown in law and order. Two out of five known offenders are under 21. One out of four is under 18. For those who see the remedy to this in taking ever more draconian punitive measures, it is worth noting that the Audit Commission in its excellent report Misspent Youth, to which the right reverend Prelate referred, points out that three-quarters of the young people who were convicted of the most serious crimes, and were being held in secure custody, had themselves been the victims of physical, sexual or emotional abuse. Seven hundred and fifty thousand 16 to 25 year-olds are today outside work, outside education, outside training and outside benefits. Barely 50 per cent. of young people remain in post-16 education and training. Your Lordships will know that comparable figures in France are 87 per cent. in post-16 education and training and 93 per cent. in Germany.
It is quite clear that we need a new approach in Britain to youth support and youth training. We need to encourage the participation of young people in arts and sport. Could I ask the noble Lord, Lord Henley, when he replies, to tell us whether it is now at last Her Majesty's Government's policy to discourage the selling of school playing fields of which there has been so much, so damagingly over the past 20 years?
We need local strategies to change anti-social attitudes amongst young people in society. Above all, we need to invest in education. This is the challenge to us all, not just to solve the problems that the right reverend Prelate so rightly referred to of alienation, exclusion and, on the margins, lawlessness, but to seize our future in a competitive world. Young people are indeed our future and the challenge to us now is that low skill levels, and even lower aptitude and learning, have become the greatest threat to our future both as a society and as an industrial economy.
The schools of Singapore and Taiwan with their high morale and excellent results already put us to shame. In a business world in which we had a formidable skills lead 100 years ago and in which we still have the inestimable advantage of the English language, the world language of commerce and business, we have now become laggards. At every level from nursery education, the proper foundation for a learning society, to reducing class sizes, improving facilities and raising standards in secondary schools, to universities, to life-long learning, we are starving our future.
I was frankly amazed in the Budget debate of recent days that a government, and for that matter an official opposition, facing the last election before the new millennium, should see the primary question for the electorate as one of tax cuts, rather than one of real investment in this most fundamental pipeline to the future.
The other aspect of education, which I would like to address briefly, is the question of citizenship education. The Audit Commission in the report which I and the right reverend Prelate have mentioned, said that we need
a strategy based on citizenship in schools and in the community. My own party proposes that there should be citizen service to give young people one or two years community service for environmental projects. I mention in that context the admirable work done by Groundwork around the country, bringing young people into environmental projects in rundown urban areas, in housing, in renovation, in crime prevention and social services. That would be wise indeed.We are also committed to making citizenship education a mandatory part of the school curriculum. I think we are the only party to say this, although I shall be interested to hear from the Labour Front Bench. I should like to say a few concluding words on that.
I think it is too early to have a fully objective view of the Thatcher years and of that extraordinary experiment, about which we are all still shell-shocked and trying to assess what it meant for this country and our society. I am quite clear that the remark that there is no such thing as society can now be seen as wholly disastrous. It implies a one-dimensional view of human nature in which people are producers and consumers, where they are economic units, not a society where we are part one of another, not social beings, not citizens, but taking the market which is, of course, an efficient way of securing economic progress, but it is not a metaphor for life as a whole. It will not do to say that there is no such thing as society.
I have had an interesting experience myself in the past three years in establishing in Prague a secondary school, known as the English College in Prague, which aims to give the best of British education to young Czech people. The most interesting thing is, following the end of the Communist regime in the Czech Republic, how many of the Czech schools, how many of the gymnasiums and other secondary schools, are now looking round to try to find some social ethic on which to base their teaching. This was not a problem in the old days; they had Marxism and Leninism. Now, all they are offered from Britain and from the West is the market. The market may be necessary, but it is not sufficient. People need to have an idea of how to live in society one with another.
I am also involved as a trustee with a body called the Citizenship Foundation. After the horrors of recent months and years the whole subject of citizenship education is much on people's minds, including issues of legal education, political education and moral education. The Citizenship Foundation is doing useful work. Some of your Lordships may know of the Motorola sponsored youth parliament, of the mock trials of the young person's passport, of good role playing exercises in schools where people can play out some of the decisions that are made by local councils, and of teaching, through moral dilemmas, children even in primary schools. As we know, most moral development is formed--the Jesuits were right--by the age of six or seven. The early teaching through moral dilemmas and role playing cannot come too early to give children some kind of insight into life with their fellows.
There is also the work of the Hansard Society in political education, not on a partisan basis. We need that very much. Those who look to the next election expect not more than two out of five first-time voters to go to the polls to vote. That is tragic because it is their future for which they will be voting.
I refer also to the work of the Bridge Project, with which some noble Lords may be familiar. It brings together university students--from Oxford, Cambridge, Nottingham and now Leicester--to work with excluded, disadvantaged and isolated young people in a practical way, to try to deal with the problem of exclusion mentioned by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham.
Inclusion is one key. But the other key is the question of trust. In the end, that is the object of citizenship, education and community involvement. People should learn to be trustful of each other. Mr. Fukuyama in his recent book spoke about trust as the fundamental glue of both civil society and competitive success. That is what I believe we have to create in our schools, communities and society as a whole.
4.51 p.m.
Lord Pilkington of Oxenford: My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Enniskillen, on a splendid and imaginative maiden speech. I spent three of the most formative years of my life in what was then Tanganyika. I hope that his idea of encouraging young people to take an interest in the problems of Africa can be followed.
I welcome the practical tone of the Motion. I also endorse the emphasis put on the importance of education by the noble Lord, Lord Holme. I believe that the most crucial element in enabling young people to make a full contribution to society is that they should be able to acquire the right--I underline the word "right"--qualifications and skills which are so essential in today's complex and competitive world.
The general tone of the debate has been rather gloomy, offering a series of problems and even disasters. I accept that there are many problems. But, although I have often in the past bemoaned the problems, I feel that the situation at present is more hopeful than I have known it for many decades. It was unfortunate that in the 1960s raising the school-leaving age to 16 and the introduction of comprehensive education were paralleled--not caused--by a decline in apprenticeship and the demise of the technical colleges. The result was that weakened vocational and technical qualifications with unsatisfactory structures failed to attract many of the young. The apprenticeship system had collapsed and there was nothing to take its place.
What happened--here lie the roots of today's problems--was that many, indeed the majority, who were not drawn to the academic courses which were present in large numbers at the expanding universities, left school, without any qualifications at all, to take unskilled jobs. Those are the people who often resort to crime and are the first casualties of any unemployment problem. I am hopeful, because attempts have been made over the past three to five years to remedy the
situation. For the first time we are beginning to concentrate on getting adequate vocational and technical qualifications. NVQs and GNVQs are being developed to provide such a qualification, which, it is to be hoped--I say this optimistically--will in time bear comparison with A-level. Much remains to be done. The Minister knows--I have told him on many occasions and bored him to tears with it--that the GNVQ and NVQ qualifications have to be made demanding. Only in that way will they be held in as high regard as those vocational courses that exist in France and Germany. That must happen. A start has been made and things are better than in the past.I believe, although many in the House will not share my view, that breaking the rigidity of the educational structure has made it possible for schools to give more value to courses other than academic ones. That can occur because of the greater independence of grant-maintained schools and of course the creation of city technology colleges. I believe that in time that will enable some of the grant-maintained schools or city technology colleges to create centres of excellence for vocational and technical studies, again producing a situation exactly parallel with the one that exists over the whole of western Europe. Such centres of vocational excellence exist in large numbers in France and Germany and provide an alternative to the Abitur and Baccalaureat, the equivalents of A-level. That cannot but help school leavers obtain adequate qualifications suitable to their interests and abilities. It will enable them to get jobs and prevent them drifting into destitution and crime.
I speak as governor of two independent schools and one maintained comprehensive school. The much maligned league tables have caused schools--certainly those that I know, both independent and maintained--to pay more attention to creating higher academic standards, particularly in the crucial areas of numeracy and reading. I agree that the system could be refined. We would want to know the standard of the pupils when they entered the schools. But again progress has been made and things are better than they were--and I have governed schools for a long period.
I conclude anecdotally. I think it shows something of the tenor of what I am trying to say. I was brought up in the north as a member of a poor family. The tradition in which I was brought up was one in which parents made enormous sacrifices so that children could obtain qualifications. My grandmother, a widow from the 1914-18 war, worked as a shop assistant in the Co-operative. Yet with an inadequate grant--there were hardly any grants and when there were they were inadequate--she paid for my uncle to go to a teacher training college. Others accepted the inevitable low wages of their children while they were in an apprenticeship. We must encourage that. My noble friend Lady Macleod emphasised the importance of the tradition of a family helping and supporting its children to obtain qualifications to enable them to avoid unemployment. We must all support that. I spent five years at Cambridge. My family were poor but they bought my clothes, fed me and gave everything. That tradition, which existed at a time when there was very
little state support, should be encouraged. I say again that there is a lot to do. But a start has been made. The situation is not gloomy; we might even imitate our Continental neighbours.Before I sit down perhaps I may say a word in favour of the great St. Augustine. He was accused of moral relativism but he also said,
- "Would that the world was celibate and this sorry business could come to an end".
This is the opposite of moral relativism.
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