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Lord Dearing: My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, on his maiden speech. I welcome in particular his remarks about education; about those who have lost out on education and who need to return to succeed; his emphasis on vocational education; and his redefinition of the purpose of the three Es. I fully understand that, coming as he does from Merthyr.

I am tempted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, on the effects of the commission on care homes. However, I must defer that to another day and encourage her to return to it when she will have my support.

I want to concentrate on education, to return to the first hours the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, spent in his job in education and to touch on school inspections. I recall being immensely impressed by the facility with which he mastered his brief and the promise that gave for the future. However, I stand by the remarks I then made on school inspections and was pleased to see in the White Paper on public health that it is the Government's intention to include in the statutory remit of inspectors the physical well-being of pupils. That is so important and we all know of the problem of obesity—a consequence of a society that is given to convenience and the fear of parents to allow their children to play in the streets, in the parks and so forth.

Diet is another element which I hope will be picked up. I mention that because during that first debate on school inspections, there was no time to comment on behaviour in schools. The Prime Minister, in his speech on the humble Address, spoke of the need to get respect back into the streets and communities of this country. As I reflect on my experience in education, I realise the importance of restoring the respect that teachers once had from pupils and to restore the respect for the right of a child to learn free from disruption in our schools.

My noble friend Lady Howe, who is not in her seat today, pointed out in a debate earlier this year that Professor Elliott of the University of Sunderland has said that pupils in our schools are probably the worst behaved in the world. I do not know whether that is precisely true, but I know that in comparison with other countries I have visited there is a real problem and that our teachers do not have the respect that comes automatically to teachers in many parts of the world.

In another White Paper on their strategy for education in the next five years, the Government commented that good behaviour was essential for good learning. I agree with that. That same White Paper referred to a point addressed by the noble Lord,
 
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Lord Rowlands; truancy and the damage it causes, leading often to delinquency, criminality and ruined lives.

There is a national problem therefore and inspectors in all their work should examine it. The White Paper pointed out that low level disruption is part of the experience, to various degrees, throughout our schools. We must deal with it for the sake of our kids.

Normally the concern is with a small number of highly disruptive children and the action that is needed to remedy the disturbance they cause. That is right. An exclusion is not a solution to the problem; it defers finding a solution. However, as the Government said in yet another White Paper, every child matters. These children matter for the sake of their own lives and for the sake of us all. Unless they can be engaged successfully in education, their lives will be impaired. They will not be able to contribute and participate effectively in education.

Where are the solutions to be found? We must learn without prejudice from best practice and good ideas from wherever they come. One idea that the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, may have in mind is the value of counsellors for such children. They can give them time and look at the nature and depth of the problem and see whether a solution can be found. Referral centres have a role and firms such as National Grid Transco have initiated schemes using vocational education in a working environment. They try to bring these kids into a meaningful relationship with education. Indeed, it is our duty to make education of whatever form catch alight in their minds.

Then there is the issue of low-level disruption. When I said that it should be part of an inspector's role to look at behaviour, I had in mind low-level disruption, which is so disturbing to the learning of the majority. There are good practices, such as assertive discipline, where a code of discipline is owned and practised by the teachers every hour of every day and is fully known by the students. When that becomes part of the culture of a school by assiduous application of the principles, one has a chance. That is what I want inspectors to look out for. I hope that, having identified that there is a problem and declared that good behaviour is essential for good learning, the Government will pick up the ball and run with it.

I turn to a different point—that of trying to free teachers of fear when they engage in voluntary activities on behalf of their pupils. I have in mind school trips—a subject that has cropped up before—but I also refer to facilitating school sport at weekends. There is a real fear that, if something goes wrong, a teacher will be sued. We live in a society where increasingly people resort to the law and may gain substantial sums from so doing. Sometimes they may be motivated by a dislike of what they see. Whatever the motivation, if throughout the voluntary sector people are discouraged from giving of their time, for no personal benefit, in order to serve others, then we shall all lose. Will the Government consider whether there is a place in this Education Bill for picking up Mr Julian Brazier's Private Member's Bill in the other place, which got as far as the Report stage
 
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before it was talked out? We need to find a way to ease the anxiety so that the Government can say to that major teachers' union which advised its members not to take part in or supervise school trips any more that the problem has been eased. I think that there are precedents in legislation in American states which will show a possible way ahead. It is an issue worth picking up.

I make my final point with a touch of anxiety because I am presuming to speak to the three political parties which may form the next government and certainly aspire to do so. For about 30 years, my background was as a civil servant in the Trade and Industry Department. Unfortunately, during those years, at the centre of the political divide was the attitude towards public ownership of industry, and it did not do industry much good. It is appropriate to remember that during the debate on the Address 51 years ago Winston Churchill said—I shall try to repeat his words exactly—"We abhor the fallacy of nationalisation for nationalisation's sake". But then he went on to say, "But we will mar the symmetry of party recrimination by trying to make a good fist of it". He used a far more elegant term than "make a good fist of it". But unfortunately it remained at the centre of the political divide, and I am concerned that we are now seeing education as central to the well-being of the nation. This is happening at a time when all three parties are so concerned to get it right that it will be an arena for disagreement between the parties.

From what I see in schools, I say that the greatest gift that Parliament can give to our schools is stability and continuity of policies. We should not march teachers up to the top of the hill and then march them down again. I am sure that any teacher will say, "For goodness' sake, let us get on with it. Don't keep having new nostrums and new directions which we have to engage with and then disengage from".

So when we come to look at the Government's forthcoming White Paper on the Tomlinson proposals on 14 to 19 education—they are quite radical and there will be differences of view—I urge that we seek a consensus. If there is not a full consensus, we should concentrate on the areas where we can reach agreement and go forward. Perhaps it is in that area of seeking stability in policies and the way forward that we, as legislators, can render our greatest services to education.

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port: My Lords, I am delighted that I rise to speak in a debate where education has been brought to the centre of our attention and takes its rightful place alongside the consideration of health, the environment and other matters that have their own place. But education is the subject to which I want to speak this afternoon.

A week ago—was it really only a week ago?—I sat in what, for me, were surreal circumstances in this Chamber for the State Opening of Parliament and listened to Her Majesty the Queen give her gracious Address. Today, I stand—one of many—responding
 
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to that Address and I still cannot really believe that I am in a world where such things happen and that I am a part of that world.

But it is on education that I wish to speak. There was not much about it in the gracious Speech—just two of more than three dozen items, to be precise. Those two items promised a more streamlined regime of school inspections and extended financial support for 16 to 19 year-olds engaged in training and education. I was grateful to hear further details supplied by the Minister when he made his opening remarks earlier in the debate.

I welcome the proposals before us and look forward very much to supporting them in due course. But—and here there is a curious resonance with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth; Anglicans and Methodists are increasingly look-alike, I am afraid—it was the more general statement within the gracious Speech that captured my eye. It was the one that referred to education as raising individuals to their full potential—a statement that could easily be skipped over as if it were empty rhetoric or even a dull cliché but which, none the less, captured my eye. I believe that it was also at the heart of the marvellous speech that we heard from my noble friend Lord Rowlands a moment ago.

All my adult life, I have been involved in some way in education. In my salad days, I found myself as deputy head of a prestigious high school in Port-au-Prince in the Caribbean republic of Haiti. It was in the days of Papa Doc Duvalier. I met him twice. He died shortly after. I have wondered ever since whether there was a causal link. I remember very well the classrooms in which I taught at that time. There were the mulatto children of Haiti's wealthy business élite, the offspring of the infamous secret police of Duvalier, the Tonton Macoute, and children who had slept on a mat on an earth floor and came from homes where there was no electricity or running water. I can assure all Members of this House that at that time those classrooms were the only space in the land where such a cross-section of Haitian society met and mixed.

It was my task to devise and apply an RE curriculum throughout the school. The older children who were subjected to that curriculum found themselves discussing justice, human rights, human dignity, the need to build a fair world, and the meaning of mercy, pity, peace and love. Nowhere else in the whole of Haiti was it possible to have such discussions; the population was not even allowed freedom of association at that time.

Education brings people together across boundaries. It opens up opportunities for people to meet others from different sectors and backgrounds. I am delighted to have been asked to join the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Integrated Education in Northern Ireland, where, of course, there will be factors similar to the ones that I have been describing. What a key time to be involved in the affairs of Northern Ireland.

Perhaps just mentioning that will allow me to pay a fulsome tribute to the Methodist College in Belfast. Although it has a starkly denominational title, it has pioneered good practice in the whole area of integration
 
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for years during the Troubles. A quarter of its pupils are Roman Catholic, properly cared for by their own chaplaincy and with a worship life that brings all people together.

I may be thought churlish to have launched into this little speech without pausing to express my gratitude for the help and friendliness that I have received as I have settled in. Let me make amends for that now. Members and staff have shown endless patience and unfailing courtesy to me, to visitors whom I have brought in, and none more than to the 18 teenagers whom I have been bringing in, in groups of six, over the past few weeks.

I am a trustee and governor of the Central Foundation Boys' School in Islington, a school that has been much reviled in public discussion in recent times—quite unfairly. It is the most improved school in Islington; it survived its unstreamlined Ofsted report con brio; and has had the best GCSE results for some years, fitting in with the picture put forward by the Minister in his introductory remarks.

Those 18 teenagers are sixth-formers from a dozen different national, cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds from Angola, Bangladesh, Croatia—let me not go further than A, B and C. As students in law, they came in here full of curiosity, brimming with intelligent questions and offered me brilliant company as I trod the route. I confess I may have entered this Chamber convinced that I was God's answer to British parliamentary life, but the winks and the waves that I exchanged with my young visitors as they sat in the Gallery—probably contravening every convention known to the House—reminded me just whose Parliament this is.

Those young people, often the children of much-maligned immigrants and asylum seekers, all bright-eyed pupils, studying law, visiting the place where law is made, from a school struggling heroically to accomplish its objectives in the inner city, will adorn our national life and contribute hugely in their turn to the common good. I have been so proud of them and quite overwhelmed by the gracious and generous way in which Members of the House and members of staff have encouraged and welcomed them as I have shown them around.

Education—I am going down a line that my noble friend Lord Rowlands has already trodden but, when one has written a speech, noblesse oblige—indeed helps people to realise their full potential. Education must undergird any project that aims at social inclusion and education forms responsible citizens. Education, education, education: I do not see why voices from another place should have all the best slogans. I look forward with great enthusiasm to playing my small part in the life and work of this House.

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