| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
Lord Northbourne moved Amendment No. 116B:
- Page 53, line 41, after "citizenship" insert "including the opportunities and responsibilities of parenthood and family life"
The noble Lord said: My Lords, Amendment No. 116B concerns preparing young people for parenthood. Citizenship education is about learning to be a good citizen. There is probably no single more important role which a citizen performs in his or her life than bringing up his or her children. Those children are the nation's future.
Until the age of three, the nurture and education of the vast majority of children is the responsibility of their parents. Even when a child reaches full-time education, it will spend approximately only 28 per cent of its waking hours in school. The other 72-odd per cent depends, at least for young children, on the parents.
A large and increasing body of research shows that the social environment in which a child spends its early years is highly significant for that child's physical and emotional health and for his or her future achievement in education and employment. Why, then, is the role of being a parent—arguably the most important job that most of us will ever do in our lives—the only job for which we offer young people no preparation? A significant minority of children today come to the important job of parenting without the slightest idea of how to tackle it. Sadly, a number have had no experience of appropriate parenting or of a happy, supportive family life.
Many of us hoped that the Government would take advantage of the introduction of the new citizenship curriculum to confirm and endorse the role of schools in preparing young people for the job of parenthood in
future. I confess that schools may not be the ideal place to do that job, but if it is not done in schools, where else will it be done?In 1997 the Gulbenkian Foundation published a report of an important experiment in parenting education which took place in five schools in Manchester and was carried out by Phil Hope, who has since become a Member of Parliament in another place. A non-stigmatising, non-judgmental scheme of work was developed. It was a great success and was much appreciated by the pupils.
In 2000, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority carried out a survey of children to find out what they wanted from the curriculum. The answer came back that among other things they wanted help with financial affairs and managing money, and the opportunity to consider the implications of parenthood in future.
In 2001 Ofsted produced a report—a rather dashing red report—entitled Sex and Relationship Education in Schools, which urged that education in preparation for parenthood should be a mandatory subject in schools. The object of education for parenthood is not to lecture children about some magic way of being a perfect parent, but to give them help to do what they want to do, which is to give their future children the best start in life that they can.
The programme of parenting education is not about stigmatising teenage mothers, single parents or any other group; nor is it about any single right way of being a parent. It is, quite simply, about helping young people to have the confidence to do what they want to do—that is, to do the best that they can for their children. There is plenty of evidence that that is possible.
Under those circumstances, I am sorry to have to report that the Department for Education and Skills' scheme for the study of the citizenship curriculum at no point mentions parents or preparation for parenthood. The scheme specifically refers to responsibilities in the workplace and in the community but not to those of parenthood. I ask the Minister specifically: why are future citizens' responsibilities in the workplace more important than their responsibility for raising the next generation of the nation's children?
Even in the non-mandatory framework for the PSHE curriculum, there is no mention of preparation for parenthood. There is a mention of marriage and several of relationships. They are both important, but they are only a small part of the parenthood subject. Do the Government really believe that preparation for parenthood is so unimportant that it should be left out even of the non-mandatory PSHE framework?
There is ample good material and experience available to show how this subject can be taught effectively. The department have kindly sent me about 2.5 kilos of material on the subject. That material is prepared by voluntary organisations. It is very good, but it will not carry the same weight with schools as a
statutory curriculum or a statutory framework. In an overcrowded curriculum it will get edged out—let us be realistic—or it will get put in the "too difficult" tray.The single most effective way that the Government could overcome the current problems in schools—disruption in the classroom, violence, opting out of learning, exclusion and teacher shortages, the ways in which society fails the 20 per cent of children in school referred to the other day by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing—would be to improve the environment in which disadvantaged young children grow up in a small minority of the nation's homes. That means helping and encouraging parents.
I ask the question: why are the Government not prepared to start helping prospective parents while they are still at school? I beg to move.
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I very much support what the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne said. I have an interest to declare. I am heavily involved in a charity called Safeground, which is working with the DfES and the Prison Service to produce an extensive education pack for prisoners on parenting. It received a very good review from NFER in its evaluation. It is immensely popular with the prisoners because these young men know how much they are missing. They can see what has gone wrong but they do not know what to do to get it right. They are desperate that their own children should not suffer from the kind of deprivation which lies in so many in their backgrounds.
However, for 25 year-old men in prison it is leaving it a bit late. If those men had been given a taste of the enjoyment that can be derived from bringing up a family and had been taught how to develop and enjoy a relationship with their children, it would not only have enriched them enormously and perhaps provided them with a considerable motivation not to end up in prison, but it would have given their own children a much better start in life in the time that they were with their fathers before they went to prison. Surely that must be a crucially important thing to do. If one recognises the value of doing that with prisoners, one can surely recognise the value of providing that opportunity much earlier in schools.
I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, about the relative importance of relationships in the family and at work. If one makes a mess of relationships at work one goes and gets another job. I suspect that that has happened to many of us. But with families one gets one chance. If one gets it wrong, one leaves other people behind in a great deal of pain and distress. It is much more important to talk about families than to talk about work. I hope that the Government will make a change and align their priorities with those of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne.
6.15 p.m.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote: My Lords, I also support everything that my noble friend Lord Northbourne has said on the subject. It is crucial, not only for young
people who come from deprived areas but for everyone, that proper attention is paid at an early enough age to the important responsibilities, as well as opportunities and joys, that parenthood can bring. Frankly, that applies whether the subject of citizenship is taught as a discrete subject or absorbed into other curriculum subjects by the school concerned.I, too, thank the Minister for the several tonnes of material that have been sent. It helped to give one an idea of the range of issues that were intended to be covered by the course of citizenship which becomes compulsory from September. I am reassured that, in several of the areas where I had concerns, the course contents—depending on the age or key stage when they are taught—deal with contemporary issues, some of them in a very realistic and helpful way. For example, the media literacy content—a crucial subject in today's world, and one for which Ofcom, I note, is also to have responsibility for imparting to adult citizens—is designed, rightly, to instil a proper degree of scepticism in young people as to the motives behind the message or the image being communicated.
Tolerance—and, indeed, more than that, an interest in and respect for other people's views, cultures and religious beliefs or lack of them—is also of paramount importance for the hugely multicultural world in which we live. When one thinks that in London alone no less than 300 different languages are spoken, the value of discussing those issues is clear.
However, alas, as my noble friend Lord Northbourne has pointed out, little attention is placed on the crucial responsibilities and duties, as well as delights, of becoming a parent, which most young people are almost certain to become in their turn. I am for encouraging young people "to do what they want to do", as my noble friend said, but they also have duties and responsibilities to the community in ensuring, for example, that their children go to school and take advantage of education to fit them for the adult world.
Equally, parental duties apply to both sexes—to boys as dads at least as much as to girls as mothers. Although I am reassured to see that the whole issue of equal opportunities and the changing role of women at work is also covered in the curriculum, I am less sure that there is enough emphasis on the need to share duties at home more fairly than in the past, and especially that there is not enough emphasis on parental duties and responsibilities.
With your Lordships' indulgence, I should like to make one last point on the subject. Although it will be September before the citizenship course begins, I very much hope that there are plans in place to monitor what happens and how the course is received. Feedback will be essential in learning how pupils are reacting to the course and also in learning lessons from those schools which are particularly successful in getting these important messages across. There can be nothing more important in today's world than
ensuring the best possible way of fitting young people for the very complicated world into which they will emerge as adults.
| Next Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |