My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall repeat a Statement on the Children’s Plan made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary for State for Children, Schools and Families. The Statement is as follows:

“The first ever Children’s Plan, which we are publishing today, follows months of consultation with parents, teachers, professionals, and children and young people themselves, up and down the country.

“Over the last 10 years, the lives of children have improved. School standards are up and child poverty is down, while we have many more outstanding schools and many fewer failing schools. However, following our detailed consultations, the results of which I have laid before the House, I have concluded that we need further reforms to deliver a world-class education for every child; that we must do more to prevent children falling behind or failing to fulfil their potential because of learning difficulties, poverty or disadvantage; and that, while there are more opportunities for young people today than ever before, families want more help to manage the new pressures that they face in balancing work and family life, in dealing with the internet and modern commercialism and in letting children play while staying safe.

“The Children’s Plan is our response. First, Mr Speaker, there are new measures to support the learning of every child. The early years are critical. So as we raise the entitlement to free nursery care for all three and four year-olds from 12 to 15 hours, we will now allocate over £200 million over the next three years to ensure that young children get the highest-quality care in their early years, with at least two graduates in nurseries in the most disadvantaged areas, and we will extend the offer of free nursery places to 20,000 two year-olds in the most disadvantaged communities.

“School standards are rising, but I want to accelerate the improvement. I have therefore asked Sir Jim Rose to undertake a root-and-branch review of the primary curriculum to create more space for teaching the basics—English and maths, with a foreign language in all primary schools—and to ensure that all children start secondary school with the personal skills to succeed. If our Making Good Progress trials are successful, we will implement ‘stage not age’ testing nationally—the biggest reform to national curriculum assessment since its creation.

“To back our teachers, I am today allocating £44 million over the next three years so that all new teachers will be able to study for a masters-level qualification, and to establish a new Future Leaders programme to bring even more talented people into teaching.

“Supporting parents is central to this Children’s Plan. In future, every parent will have a record of their child’s development and education through the early years and into primary school, and the Minister for Schools will consult parents and schools over the next few months, and legislate if necessary, to ensure that every child has a personal tutor who stays with them as they progress through secondary school; every parent receives up-to-date information about their child’s progress, attendance and behaviour, using ‘real time’ reporting and new technologies such as mobile phones or the internet; and, so that parents know what they can expect, how they will be consulted and how they can express concerns and complaints, every secondary school will have a parents’ council.

“Parents also want earlier intervention if their child falls behind. Alongside one-to-one support for reading and maths at primary school and our new Every Child a Writer programme, I am allocating £18 million over the next three years to improve initial teacher training about special educational needs and to find new ways of identifying dyslexia earlier. Following the Bercow review, Ofsted will lead a full review into our special education needs provision in 2009.

“In our consultation, head teachers told us that schools need more support from other services to tackle all barriers to learning. Today, one in 10 children has a diagnosed mental health problem, but schools repeatedly say how hard it is to get the CAMHS children’s mental health service to engage with them early enough. So I have agreed with my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health that we will launch a review of CAMHS to investigate how it can work better with schools and to identify where early support is most needed. Our two departments will also produce the first ever child health strategy in the spring.

“We will also enhance inspection across schools and children’s services and examine whether children’s trusts arrangements need to be strengthened, including through further legislation if necessary. To further improve services for parents and to enable better early intervention, we will publish new guidance for Building Schools for the Future to ensure that, where possible, schools are designed with other services—health, police, social care, advice and welfare services—collocated with them. Because schools must be sustainable for our children and their children, we will now set a new ambition that all new schools will be zero-carbon by 2016.

“With the reforms that I have announced to the House to tackle failing and coasting schools, to expand the academies and trusts programme, to raise the education leaving age to 18 and to introduce new diplomas, this Children’s Plan sets us on course to deliver ambitious, long-term goals for a world-class education for every child.

“Discipline in schools is essential for raising standards. We have given teachers new powers to tackle bad behaviour and 97 per cent of schools are now in behaviour partnerships, co-ordinating behaviour and exclusions policy, which Sir Alan Steer’s report recommended should include all schools by 2008. I am minded to implement that recommendation and I am now asking Sir Alan to assess progress on all his proposals and to make recommendations in the spring. We will also strengthen the regulation of pupil referral units, improve the quality of provision and pilot a range of alternatives, including this being one role for studio schools.

“To break cycles of reoffending among young people, the Home Secretary and I are together allocating £66 million over the next three years to target support at young people most at risk of getting into crime. As we prepare our youth crime action plan, we will reform the education and resettlement of young offenders and pilot the use of restorative justice from April 2008.

“Our consultation reports that, although parents are clear that it is their job to bring up their families, they want more information and support to help them to keep their children safe and healthy. Our Children’s Plan includes provision of £167 million over the next three years to fund two new expert parenting advisers in every local authority area, expand family learning, support young carers and deliver new support for families with disabled children.

“Dr Tanya Byron is investigating the potential risks to children from harmful or inappropriate material on the internet and in video games and will report next March. In the spring, we will make proposals on young people and alcohol and investigate how the huge increase in commercial activity, advertising and marketing aimed specifically at children and young people is affecting their well-being.

“I have two further announcements. In our consultation, children and young people told us that they want more places in which to play and interesting things to do outside school and that they want to be recognised for their achievements.

“Earlier this year, the Minister for Children set out our 10-year strategy for young people, with an ambition of new youth facilities and places for young people to go in every constituency of the country, funded by proceeds from unclaimed assets and new investment from my department. However, I want us to start transforming youth services now. So, prior to the unclaimed assets legislation taking effect, we will invest an additional £160 million over the next two years to develop high-quality youth facilities for young people, shaped by young people themselves. This could mean 50 new state-of-the-art youth centres, 500 refurbished youth centres or more than 2,000 smaller-scale centres, including mobile units. The funding will be available for every part of the country starting in April and I urge all honourable Members to start working with young people, the voluntary sector and their local community to draw up local plans.

“Finally, to help parents to keep their children safe while they are playing outside, I can also announce that we will launch a new national play strategy early next year. To make this a reality, and starting next April, we will build 30 safe and supervised adventure play parks in disadvantaged areas. With a total investment of £225 million over the next three years, we will also be able to build or upgrade more than 3,500 play areas across the country—an average of 23 per local authority and seven per constituency, the largest government investment in children’s play in our history.

“With schools, children’s services, the voluntary sector and the Government all playing their full part and meeting their responsibilities, and with the £1 billion over the next three years that we are allocating to meet our Children’s Plan commitments, we can unlock the talents and promote the health and happiness of all children, and not just some; back parents as they meet their responsibilities to bring up their children; and intervene early so that no child or young person is left to fall behind. Making our country the best place in the world for children to grow up is the mission of this Government and of this Children’s Plan”.

My Lords, I commend the Statement to the House.

My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for repeating the Statement on the 10-year Children’s Plan. We have been strong advocates over the years of much of what this wide-reaching programme seeks to deliver. We have studied many of the issues in our own childhood review, which we completed earlier this year. As my honourable friend Michael Gove said, improving children’s lives and closing the gap between rich and poor are vital. Therefore, there are elements of the plan that we welcome. However, if we really want to engage with parents and if we want higher standards so that our children can reach their full potential, we have to recognise that some of the plan’s recommendations are gimmicky and demonstrate poverty of aspiration.

We discussed many of the issues in our excellent debate on education on Thursday. Some of the themes in the plan—advertising to children, the sexualisation of young girls, risk and adventure for young people and safe play—are massive subjects in their own right. It would be impossible to cover them all today, but I see many rich veins for future debates.

I would like to say how pleased I am that the Secretary of State, Mr Balls, has recognised what we have always known: that my noble friend Lady Thatcher is a role model that we should all be proud of. On the basis that spice means interest, excitement, zing, zest and pizzazz, Margaret Thatcher was the original spice girl.

We have always believed in affordable, good-quality childcare. It is quite right that it should be as accessible to those in our most deprived areas as it is to those in our most affluent. That is why we supported the Government over the Childcare Bill last year and why we appreciate the extension of free entitlement to the most underprivileged two year-olds. However, we have some concerns and some questions.

I am sure that the Minister would agree that Sure Start has disappointed in many areas and has failed to reach the very children whom it was designed to help. How will this improve for two year-olds? Has there been an impact assessment on how it will affect the private and voluntary sector providers? The establishment of free provision for three year-olds and four year-olds was a destabilising factor. If the Government are genuine about wishing to work with the private and voluntary sectors, this is a vital issue.

Another concern is that what is right for a child of two years and, say, eight months may not be right for a child who has just turned two, especially in areas such as attachment. Once again, I want to raise our worries over the early years foundation stage, about which experts and parents alike now question whether the Government know what is best for children. Where is the room for different approaches?

I welcome the commitment to a review of CAMHS and how it can work with schools but, with one in 10 of our children suffering from a diagnosed mental health problem and the poor access that so many have to CAMHS, this review is long overdue. We also welcome the extra help for disabled children.

Our main concerns with this plan concern education. The 10-year plan comes only three and a half years after the Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners, which heralded reform and ambitious targets to be reached by 2008. We were told by the Government that they would have,

“reached and sustained our literacy and numeracy targets of 85 percent of children reaching the expected level at the age of 11”.

The reality is that this target was missed and has now been dropped in favour of a target of 78 per cent of pupils reaching the required level by 2011. This is set against a background of the recent PIRLS study, which showed that since 2001 England had plummeted from third to 19th in the international reading literacy table with only Morocco and Romania seeing sharper declines. Is the Minister happy that by setting a target of 78 per cent of pupils reaching the expected level, the Government are effectively saying to two out of every 10 parents that they are prepared to see their children fail?

The Government have said that they wish to include parents more in the education of their children. Who could disagree with that? One of the ways in which they envisage doing that is through regular e-mail contact, which is fine as far as it goes, but it is not the answer to failing standards. The single most important way to get parents involved is to give them real power; that is, the power to take their child out of a failing school and into a school of their choice, so that schools are properly accountable to parents. In 2005-06, 79,000 appeals were made against school place allocations; 58,000 failed and those children ended up in schools to which their parents did not want them to go. What makes it worse is that this failure to meet demand for good school places is concentrated in deprived areas: of the 58,000 children refused a place in their preferred school at appeal, more than 50 per cent—nearly 32,000—were in the 25 per cent of local authorities with the highest levels of deprivation in England.

Schools play an important part in the community and it is important that parents feel part of that community. That is already happening in our best schools. But first and foremost our schools should be a place where our children learn and where we prepare them to take their place in society as well rounded individuals.

We all want the best for our children and yet the Children’s Society found in its excellent work on childhood that the most important area for children was a happy home life where they spent time together as part of a family, an area not mentioned today. I worry that the Government have sent so many confusing messages to parents that either parents are scared of doing things in case they do the wrong thing or they feel that they need not bother because the state is doing it all. We should be empowering parents to help to unlock their children’s talents and we should be very careful not to stand in their shoes.

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I regret the fact that we do not have the original Spice Girl on our Benches but I bet you we have a Scary, a Posh and—what are the other ones? We certainly have a Sporty. In this House we do less political grandstanding and more scrutiny and I intend to focus very carefully on the Statement and ask quite a lot of questions. If I ask for further clarification that does not mean that we do not welcome every single extra pound, or particularly every million pounds that the Government are going to spend on children, and the additional focus and outside expertise that the Government are bringing in to inform their policy-making. That we all welcome. In general, though, top-down policies will not work and so some of my questions will be to find out how much is being decided locally and how much is being determined by the Government from Whitehall.

I agree with the Minister that the early years are critical. We welcome that the Government are providing enough money for at least two graduates in nurseries in the most disadvantaged areas but will the Minister confirm that the Government will not specify how many graduates will have to be provided? That should be for local decision-making. I also welcome the extra nursery places for another 20,000 two year-olds but, as my honourable friend David Laws in another place said, one must put that in the context of there being 650,000 children in that age group. How is this going to be done? A two year-old is very close to its parent, and should be. The Government run the risk of being called a nanny state if nursery provision says, “We are going to take your children away from you at the age of two. We know better how to do it”. Perhaps the Minister could say a little more about how the parents of two year-olds will be involved in helping children to develop with expert advice.

I, too, question the need for another root and branch review of the primary curriculum and wonder what the Minister envisages being taken out to allow more space for teaching the basics. Children already spend over 50 per cent of their time on English and maths. I welcome the concentration on personal and social education but I have some concerns about the evaluation of the SEAL programme and whether the teachers doing that evaluation are actually best equipped to do it. Does the Minister agree that before reading, the child must develop adequate listening and speaking skills? Parents play a crucial role in language development so can we not include that as a priority for all health visitors and in all government-sponsored parenting programmes? I agree with the Minister that partnership and multidisciplinary working are crucial to early identification and intervention, but the training stage of all professionals is the most appropriate time for the Government to intervene. Ministers should ensure that professionals who work with children are trained to understand other professionals’ areas and how and when to bring them into play to work with them, and not take over the decisions that those professionals should be taking themselves.

What are the Government doing about this? Speech and language fall between health and education, and although it is great to hear that the Minister is working with his counterpart in health, what in the plan will support the estimated 1.2 million children who have a communication disability, particularly the 50 per cent of children in some parts of the UK who are arriving at primary school without the speech and language skills required to learn? This involves people working together. That is why I welcome what the Minister said about the Building Schools for the Future programme, as it is quite certain from my visits to certain special schools that the collocation of professionals really helps them in multidisciplinary working. I certainly welcome the £18 million that the Minister has announced for initial teacher training in special educational needs, but what about continuous professional development for existing staff? Most members of the teaching workface are already in work. Will the Minister say what will be done about them? The review into special educational needs provision, which the Minister mentioned, will undoubtedly discover that there are major unmet needs. Will he commit to funding for the needs that are discovered?

I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, about the problem with CAMHS. The Minister said that the Government will investigate how they can work better with schools to identify where early support is most needed, but does he not recognise that quantity and quality also need to be considered to fulfil the need for CAMHS treatment? Can he give us a little more detail about the Children’s Trust arrangements that he envisaged, which may need to be strengthened through legislation? On the powers to tackle bad behaviour, will the Minister confirm that the Government will concentrate on the positive activities in Sir Alan Steer’s report and not concentrate simply on the punitive in relation to children’s behaviour?

Lastly, the Minister mentioned £167 million for new parenting advisers in every local authority area. Will these advisers be health visitors? The Minister will know very well that I am a great fan of health visitors, particularly because they are a universal service and carry no stigma. Can he tell the House how they will be involved in this programme?

My Lords, I am very grateful to both noble Baronesses for their broadly supportive welcome for the Children’s Plan. I sense that they are both trying to set themselves up as the Spice Baronesses. I shall not volunteer them for particular roles in that regard, but I am sure that Members of the House will be glad to take offers. We could even set up an adjudication panel for later, as I sense that the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, in particular is keen to steal my right honourable friend’s limelight, and perhaps even the limelight of the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, whom we are sad not to see in her place this afternoon.

As I said, I was particularly glad that the two noble Baronesses supported the broad thrust of the Children’s Plan: the importance of improving children’s lives; the importance of supporting parents—although we recognise that the prime responsibility for bringing up children must of course reside with the parents, who need help, information and support, and parents in more deprived circumstances need a great deal more support than others; and the importance of narrowing the gap between the affluent and the poor. The latter has been a consistent strand of government policy in the past 10 years, and we need to take that further forward.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, was in acute danger of becoming party political in a less productive sense when she said that the proposals were gimmicky or lacking in ambition in many places. I was not quite sure which proposals she thought were gimmicky or lacking in ambition. Did she think that the 3,000 new or upgraded play centres are gimmicky or lacking in ambition, or the £160 million spent on new facilities, the expert parent advisers in every local authority area, the 20,000 new nursery places for two year-olds in disadvantaged areas, the expansion of short breaks for the parents of disabled children, the new masters qualification for all new teachers or the ITT training for teachers in special educational needs? I could go on. There is nothing gimmicky or lacking in ambition in the Children's Plan. It is a whole set of interlocking measures that will substantially improve the support available to parents and schools in the raising of children. I look forward to her support on the specific measures as we roll them out.

The noble Baroness asked a whole series of questions about schools and I will address myself particularly to those because, as Minister for Schools, they are causes that are within my own direct area of responsibility. She asked me straight out whether we were happy that, among 11 year-olds, two out of 10 of them are not up to the standard expected of their age in literacy and numeracy. I tell her absolutely straightforwardly that we are not happy with that situation. The number and proportion of 11 year-olds reaching the standard expected of their age has risen very substantially in the past 10 years. There are now 100,000 more 11 year-olds reaching level 4 in English than was the case 10 years ago, which is a 17 percentage point improvement.

We have seen significant improvements, but we are not satisfied with the status quo and we wish to see it improve further. That is why, for example, two years ago we appointed the Rose review. Sir Jim Rose recommended to us that best practice in the teaching of reading included much more systematic use of synthetic phonics. We are in the process of implementing that recommendation at the moment. The new letters and sounds materials, which exemplify Sir Jim’s recommendations, have gone out to every primary school in the country. We have changed the national curriculum to give primacy to synthetic phonics, and Sir Jim Rose himself, who is an acknowledged expert in the whole area of the primary curriculum, is leading the primary curriculum review that we announced today.

Sir Peter Williams, an eminent mathematician, is leading the review into mathematics teaching, which will also report in the spring, to see how we can improve the quality of teaching in that area. Therefore, I do not believe that we have been slow in taking forward the measures that are necessary to reach those two in 10 who have not been achieving the level expected of their age in literacy and numeracy.

In respect of failing and successful schools, where the noble Baroness raised the issue of too many schools underperforming, here again there has been a substantial improvement over the past 10 years. The number of seriously underperforming schools below the 25 per cent baseline figure of five or more good GCSEs has fallen from more than 600 in 1997 to less than 30 this year. We actually raised the baseline targets that we set to 30 per cent including English and maths, so we are much more ambitious for our schools as a whole. The number of successful schools is therefore improving.

We have been very robust in the setting up of new schools in areas where the schools are not good enough at the moment. We debated that at length last week when I set out the progress that we are making in the improvement of underperforming schools and in the establishment of new academies, of which I know that the noble Baroness has been supportive. I do not believe that we are lacking ambition at all in this area. Our ambition is that every community in the country should have outstanding primary and secondary schools and that every parent should have the opportunity to choose a good school for their child. That led us to take some radical and controversial decisions about school organisation, which we have debated in the past two years, to make that possible. It is also backed up by a capital programme for schools now running at £6 billion a year up from a capital programme of barely £600 million a year 10 years ago. Therefore, the investment necessary to create these new schools is also there and that is making possible the reforms that are described.

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, asked me about the importance that we were giving to collocation, which she rightly recognised as crucial in improving the relationship between special educational needs provision and mainstream provision. Collocation and promoting proposals for collocation are at the heart of the Building Schools for the Future programme. Area by area, as BSF is being rolled out, proposals are coming forward for the enhancement of special educational needs provision in mainstream schools with, for example, the building of dedicated units in particular areas of special educational need but also for the collocation of special schools with mainstream schools so that the expertise can be shared between the two institutions. This is a central theme of BSF.

The noble Baroness asked about the 20,000 places we are providing for two year-olds and how these would be selected. Let me make it absolutely clear that this will be done only with the consent of parents; it will be parent-led. We will not be seeking to oblige children to spend time in nursery classes at the age of two without their parents’ consent. Of course, as an increasing proportion of parents now develop strong links with their children’s centres from the birth of their children, we expect there to be demand to increase that number over time, and to have no difficulty in filling the places.

The noble Baroness asked about the two parenting advisers planned for each area. We see health visitors as having a role in the provision of these parenting advisers, but do not believe that they will all be health visitors. We will seek a balanced recruitment of professionals who offer expertise in this area. On the review of special educational needs, we will seek to meet unmet needs. I should flag up that, for example, we have announced £330 million of extra provision for disabled young children, including a big national scheme for short breaks, so we are investing significantly in this area. Communications weaknesses and difficulties among children need addressing. We have the Bercow review; we will look at whether additional investment is needed in this area.

The behaviour partnerships referred to in the Statement are not punitive at all. Their main focus is to see that there is proper provision in each area, through co-operative activity between schools, for children who are excluded from school, so that they are not out of the system. The schools themselves may perfectly appropriately have had to exclude pupils in certain instances, but should then make collective provision for them. This is much better than the existing provision, and will both enhance the quality of their education and make it easier to reintegrate the children afterwards. I hope that that answers most of the questions, but I will respond in writing to the others.

My Lords, we all welcome the opening words of this Children’s Plan:

“The Children’s Plan aims to make England”—

extending that to the whole of the United Kingdom—

“the best place in the world for children and young people to grow up”.

That is a great objective, but it is a long-term objective—a 10-year objective for progress. Our most valuable service to education will be to reach a consensus on the way forward. An election is not far off. Schools will value us more if we can reach a consensus on these issues. As for the general thrust, I have not had time to study the plan in detail, but I very much welcome the emphasis placed on helping those who need the most help in education. Without that help, we are heading for the most serious social problems, which are bad enough already. We will reap the whirlwind unless we implement the kind of measures that we see here.

I want to make three points in detail; I will be brief about it. First, I notice with pleasure, echoing the Prime Minister’s words in his speech to the merchants and bankers of the City of London in the summer, that a foreign language is placed alongside English and maths as a basic. That is a major statement. I look forward to seeing the work that Jim Rose will do on how to implement this. I hope very much that the Government can implement it in September 2010, as recommended in the report to which I was party.

Secondly, taking the test when one is ready would mean that some key stage 2 children would take it after progression to secondary school. That will make sense only if they get real help to advance well and real support to reach the standard that is expected of them. The whole point is to identify and to give help. I hope that the Government will commit to that.

Thirdly, in paragraph 3.129, which deals with helping summer-born children, one sentence puzzles me:

“Research evidence suggests that allowing all children in the year group to begin at the same time (the September of the year they turn 5) has the most positive impact as it allows summer-born children to receive the same amount of full-time schooling as their peers”.

I cannot see why, if these children defer a year, they should nevertheless not get the same schooling as other children. They do not have to leave school early; they can have their full ration. I am not trying to argue with the policy. I particularly welcome the proposal that Sir Jim Rose should look into this, but that one sentence puzzles me.

Generally speaking, I wish this well. I hope that we will get into the detail at a later stage and make it something that will command respect and support across the House.

My Lords, this is one of the few statements of forward policy that I have made to the House that does not involve the setting-up of a review or a committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. His excitement at the prospect of not having to conduct another review is palpable. However, the plan takes forward the recommendations of his last important review on the teaching of modern foreign languages. As he rightly says, how the teaching of modern foreign languages is provided for in primary schools will be a key feature of Sir Jim Rose’s review. We will look to see how we can implement the commitment that we gave in the primary review that we would seek to make the teaching of modern foreign languages mandatory in primary schools.

In respect of summer-born children, which is becoming a constant theme of the noble Lord’s interventions, he is right that paragraph 3.129 of the plan mentions the positive impact of allowing summer-born children to receive the same amount of full-time schooling as their peers, but I am glad to say that it is followed by paragraph 3.130, which states that Sir Jim Rose will consider this issue and, in particular,

“whether it would be appropriate to allow greater flexibility in start dates”.

I encourage the noble Lord to speak to Sir Jim Rose directly about this, because there are not many people in the country who know more about it than he does. He and a group of researchers at the Institute for Fiscal Studies are serious experts on this issue, but there are not many others. I am sure that he and the noble Lord would have a productive conversation.

As regards pupils sitting tests when they are ready rather than on the set dates regardless of readiness, the noble Lord is right that such a step would require substantial and proper support. Big issues are raised about how it would be implemented in practice. That is why we are piloting single-level tests sat at two points in the year, with teachers entering pupils for them when they believe that the children are ready. This pilot is taking place in more than 400 schools and we intend to evaluate the results before we make firm commitments on how we proceed.

My Lords, these Benches reflect the views given by our two spice Baronesses. This is a case very much of a yes but one or two buts. I wish to make three points. First, the curriculum needs to be looked at. However, as the parent of two teachers, I can hear them groaning in the distance, “More change. Where is the stability?”. What about the Cambridge-led review of testing on which the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, asked an Oral Question two weeks ago? I should register what we all know to be the case: that it will be mighty difficult to win over many teachers to a complete overhaul of the curriculum, even though parts of it need to be looked at.

My second point concerns that big word “resources”. I suppose that in broad terms we on these Benches represent the voluntary sector, or part of the voluntary sector. We all know that to put right what is amiss in childhood will be a long haul, not a quick fix. In some other areas, although not necessarily in education, the Government have a habit of throwing money at the community. I refer to the National Health Service as, I hope, an ex-patient. In the National Heath Service you will come across areas where lots of money is spent, and overspent, but other areas where it is underspent. That leads me to emphasise that the voluntary sector is increasingly under pressure as things are devolved to it that the statutory bodies can no longer afford to carry out. What about these drop-in centres that we hear about? Research has been carried out on parents whose experience of education has not been favourable. How will they take to these drop-in centres?

My final point brings us back to one made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, about family life. This is a minefield, but it is important. Right next to our house in Fareham, there is a lollipop lady, to whom I am married. She functions twice a day and I sometimes look at her clientele. We need to redefine family in terms of the extended family. It is very often grandparents who are doing the ferrying because parents are working. We all know that there are other more radical ways in which the family can be redefined, in terms of gender and so on. However, I want the importance of the family to be underlined. Perhaps, in the past, the church has overemphasised the family. I know that family life is not for everyone and that families can destroy people, but it is important that we underline and recognise the centrality of the family in society.

My Lords, I greatly welcome and agree entirely with the right reverend Prelate’s remarks about the importance of both the family and the voluntary sector and about seeing that the latter is able to access new resources on a level playing field, which we are anxious it should do. I also agree with his remarks about the curriculum. He is quite right that one needs to combine the necessary stability with a review of areas that need to change. I assure him that that will be the case, because the person whom we have appointed to conduct the review is Sir Jim Rose, who led the review on the teaching of reading two years ago and who is an expert adviser to Sir Peter Williams’s review on the teaching of mathematics in primary school; he is a long-standing expert on primary education, as the right reverend Prelate knows. With his wisdom being brought to bear on the review, there is no danger of our introducing policies that do not have a necessary degree of continuity with other recent changes to the primary curriculum.

My Lords, I welcome the Statement today and congratulate my noble friend and his colleagues on it. The plan is ambitious. There is a welcome shift of focus from the policy that we have had in the past five years. Never have I read a Green Paper where implementation is going to be more challenging but where, if we get it right, there are real opportunities to transform life chances for the many children whom we have not succeeded with so far. A couple of things are particularly welcome. First, I very much welcome the masters degrees for those new to teaching. I would welcome further correspondence and engagement with the Minister on that. On modern foreign languages, does he envisage that this will be compulsory rather than available in the primary school curriculum? Has he made up his mind on that?

I have three genuine questions to probe a little behind the Minister’s thinking. First, on testing, I am not one who thinks that primary school is overtested. One externally set test between the ages of five and 11 is not overburdensome. There is not a lot to be lost in that respect if the required grade at age 11 is not obtained. How will the proposals affect the reporting of results for parents and the wider public, so that we will be able to continue to compare school with school and to identify those schools that need extra support to raise standards? Secondly, in saying that we want to find more time for English and maths in the curriculum, we must ensure that we do not give a message that the arts, creativity, sports, the humanities and the sciences are not valued between the ages of five and 11. Finally, will my noble friend give a clear message to teachers that their role remains teaching and learning in the classroom? Almost the biggest danger of this Green Paper is that teachers might choose to take on some of the wider responsibilities that ought to fall to other professionals. If we ensure that their focus continues to be on teaching and learning, with other professionals coming in behind them, that might give us the best chance of success.

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend, who speaks with great authority in this area. She is right that there is a big implementation challenge with the various measures set out in the plan. We will be saying more about that over the coming months.

Let me deal with the points that my noble friend raised. She is absolutely right to highlight the significance of introducing masters degrees into education in a systematic way. This is a serious process of learning from international best practice. Over recent years, I and many of my colleagues have visited Finland and other Scandinavian countries, where masters courses are widely available; indeed, in Finland, they are now generally undertaken by teachers. It is hard not to make a connection between the degree of professionalism that is brought to the training and to the updating of skills in Finland and the success that Finnish schools achieve. Although we have said that this will be in the first instance an opportunity for newly qualifying teachers, I hope that we will be in a position to extend that in due course. I am very attracted to the idea that continuing professional development, which we rightly expect of our teachers, should, where they wish it, take the form of study and project work that leads to a higher-level degree. That would also help to raise the esteem and attractiveness of the teaching profession, if we can carry it through.

My noble friend is right to highlight the importance of comparable statistics on the performance of schools. I entirely agree with her comments on testing in schools; it is not overburdensome to have one externally assessed national test between the ages of five and 11. It is our intention with the new single-level tests, if they are introduced, that we will still have reporting on a comparable basis, school by school, of the proportion achieving at each of the levels. Although the pupils may sit the tests at different times and will sit the tests at single levels, rising up the levels as their capability advances, we expect to see the results reported level by level, school by school.

On the curriculum, I entirely agree with her that arts, creativity, sport and humanities are all vital. In my experience, those schools that are best at teaching children the basics also tend to do best in developing the arts and creativity. Like my noble friend, I entirely reject the notion that having a solid grounding in the basics, school by school, including proper catch-up support if necessary and one-to-one support for those children who are falling behind, as we also highlight in the Children’s Plan, is in any way antipathetic to the development of the arts, creativity, sports and the humanities, which we also want to see as a central part of the work of our primary schools.

My Lords, I am sure that we all recognise that the noble Lord has a most encouraging understanding of what goes on in schools, which must be a great encouragement to teachers. Does he realise the effect on staff of change and of sheaves of paper arriving on desks and hours spent deciding how to implement change? Can he assure us, with his understanding of these things, that the absolute maximum amount may be left to the school to decide how to implement these changes? This is a very important point. If a school decides how to implement change, it is far more enthusiastic and it will work better. I am sure that the former Secretary of State for Education, who has just spoken, would agree with that. That seems very important. As a small illustration of that point, there is the business of doing the right thing about carbon efficiency. If a school thinks about this, it might well decide that people will not always teach in shirt sleeves and that the temperature of the school can be reduced. If it is told to do that, it will not do it, but if it decides for itself to do it, that is a great help. That is a simple point. If the school decides how to involve parents, it would do it so much better.

On youth work, it is marvellous news that the Government are at last seeing that what happened in the 1960s was helpful and that a bit more concentration on thinking about where young people go and what they do in the evenings is very important. My experience on education committees goes back a long way. I remember those great and helpful days, and a lot can be done in that direction. I hope that the Government will not feel that they have got to do this through the public sector. The right reverend Prelate reminded us—and the Minister gave an encouraging reply—that voluntary organisations will come into this. There is still huge expertise in the private sector in informal youth work and that expertise can be built on. Some money going in will help enormously. Relaxing how people become youth workers would also help. There is so much suspicion about what youth workers might be like that lots of people are put off. I am sure that the Minister knows that, as it is an important area.

Lastly, how is this going to be paid for? Will the Minister’s department have to move money out of one area and into another? Given the prognostications about the economy for the next few years, funding is going to be tight.

My Lords, the investments that I announced in the Statement are additional to published plans. They are all based on firm allocations from the Treasury. We have the cheque and it has been cashed. I assure the noble Baroness that there is no danger of the investments being clawed back.

I entirely endorse what the noble Baroness said about the importance of the private and voluntary sectors in youth work. I did not have time to respond to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. The private and voluntary sectors also play a crucial role in the provision of under-fives services. There has been some dispute about how local authorities manage that role but, local authority by local authority, the private and voluntary sectors are a key provider. We wish to see their role in under-fives provision flourish, including in the extension of provision to two year-olds that I announced in the Statement.

In my experience as a Minister, the attitude of schools to change and the degree of enthusiasm with which they implement it depends on whether they like the changes. Schools are not against change per se, but they want to be fully consulted and engaged in the process of change. A key point about change in the education system in recent years has been that, as in so many other areas of life, power tends to follow money. The overwhelming bulk of funding in the education system is now devolved directly to schools, thanks to changes brought about by this Government and the previous Government. Comparatively little is now held by education authorities. That means that schools, head teachers, staff and governors are in a central and powerful position in determining policy on the ground, because they control the purse strings.