Clause 1: Curriculum requirements regarding citizenship and the
natural environment Amendment 1 Moved by 1: Clause 1, page 1, line
17, after “must” insert “by regulations” Lord Blencathra (Con) My
Lords, I rise to move the little amendment in my name and, since
the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, has also signed up to it,
I can cut my speech down from one hour to no more than 45 minutes.
I hope that I will not be too patronising in delivering
it....Request free trial
Clause 1: Curriculum requirements regarding citizenship and the
natural environment
Amendment 1
Moved by
1: Clause 1, page 1, line 17, after “must” insert “by
regulations”
(Con)
My Lords, I rise to move the little amendment in my name and,
since the noble Lord, , has also signed up
to it, I can cut my speech down from one hour to no more than 45
minutes. I hope that I will not be too patronising in delivering
it. This is a simple amendment. Clause 1(4) of the Bill—which I
support—as it stands at the moment, states:
“The Secretary of State must give guidance about the provision of
education”.
After “must”, I wish to insert the words “by regulations”
—because, if one looks slightly further on, the proposed
subsection (3) in Clause 1(4) says:
“The governing body of a maintained secondary school must have
regard to guidance under this section.”
I am moving this amendment in a private capacity but—for the next
couple of weeks, in any case—I am the chair of the Delegated
Powers Committee, which looked at the Bill, as it looks at all
Private Members’ Bills. We do not change our guidance for private
Members any more than we do for the Government. When we look at
Bills, our normal rule is that, where guidance is advisory, we
suggest that it should be laid before Parliament but does not
have to be debated—it does not need the negative or the
affirmative procedure. But when it is guidance that one “must
have regard to”—as we increasingly see from government these
days—we say that, in effect, it is almost mandatory, and there
are legal consequences for the person or body if they do not have
regard to it.
In our report, we say:
“Although a duty to have regard to statutory guidance does not
imply a duty to follow it in … all respects, we have in recent
years observed that a person or body required by statute to have
regard to guidance will normally be expected to follow it and
will in practice normally do so unless there are cogent reasons
for not doing so. And yet this guidance is subject to no
parliamentary scrutiny at all.”
We are therefore suggesting that the Secretary of State makes the
guidance by way of regulations that are subject to the negative
procedure. That is not a heavy burden on the Secretary of State
or the department. As we know, most negative-procedure SIs go
through on the nod; they are very seldom debated or prayed
against. I cannot imagine any side of the House wishing to pray
against guidance in this regard, but the power exists there, if
the House wishes to exercise it in certain circumstances.
I will give noble Lords one more minute of technical stuff. How
would this actually take effect, when I am only inserting the
words “by regulations”? I am advised by our lawyers that the
guidance would in fact be covered by Section 210 of the Education
Act 2002, which provides that:
“Subject to subsections (5) and (6), a statutory instrument which
contains any order or regulations made under this Act by the
Secretary of State and is not subject to the requirement … that a
draft of the instrument be laid before and approved by a
resolution of each House … is subject to annulment in pursuance
of a resolution of either House of Parliament.”
Merely putting in the words “by regulations” would mean that any
guidance that the Secretary of State produces on this measure in
future would be caught by that provision and subject to the
negative procedure. In essence, that is it.
I am very grateful to the noble Lord, , for signing up to
the amendment. I do not think that we will have a highly
contentious debate for the rest of the afternoon.
(Lab)
My Lords, although it is my Bill, I thought that I could probably
take advantage of Committee and speak twice. But I take this
advantage to outline why I am in support of the noble Lord,
, in his very helpful
amendment. When I put together the original wording, I stole it
from the Act that he quoted, and I perhaps could have paid more
close attention to Parliament’s role. I am very grateful to the
Delegated Powers Committee for its report and consideration.
The noble Lord was kind enough to send me an email on Wednesday.
When I received it, it was with a little trepidation as to what
he might have to say about how he would proceed today. It was of
huge reassurance when he said that his amendment is not a
re-emergence of the old and David Maclean “wreck a
Private Member’s Bill on a Friday” scenario. I am grateful for
the noble Lord’s support for the Bill and for the way in which he
has gone about this.
One reason for wanting to speak early in the discussion of this
amendment is to have an opportunity to ask the Minister a couple
of things for her to consider in her response. I think the noble
Lord, , agrees that there is
sometimes a danger of it feeling as though the Department for
Education, because it makes a lot of regulations, is reluctant to
go down the road of guidance being in the regulatory form. My
question to the Minister is: is there a good reason why we should
not have this sort of guidance in regulation, as opposed to a
good reason why, because it is important?
This is also an opportunity for me to ask the Minister whether
the announcement made by the Secretary of State on 5 November, in
the context of COP 26 in Glasgow, changes the Government’s
position as we heard it at Second Reading. We had a different set
of Ministers then and a slightly different situation. The
Secretary of State made his announcement in the foreword to the
document that he has then consulted upon. He said:
“Education is critical to fighting climate change. We have both
the responsibility and privilege of educating and preparing young
people for a changing world—ensuring they are equipped with the
right knowledge, understanding and skills to meet their biggest
challenge head on.”
It was almost as if he had been listening to the Second Reading
debate. I was so encouraged to read the consultation document and
hear what he had to say, and to see that there is an emphasis on
climate education, green skills, the education estate and the
supply chain. Indeed, I loved the idea of the national education
nature park and the climate leaders awards, which are part of
what Secretary of State is proposing.
Can we push the department that little bit further on the climate
education side of things, so that we get this guidance and ensure
that there is more than just a voluntary approach from our
schools to delivering climate and sustainability education, which
is what the Bill would do? Also recently—I think it was last week
or the week before—we had introducing her own Private
Member’s Bill on this subject. The subject is not going to go
away, so I strongly encourage the new ministerial team to give it
their own encouragement. It might not be now; I would be really
delighted to meet the Minister to discuss whether we can do
anything with this Bill to get it into the national curriculum.
However, I want to hear from her whether there has been any
slight shift in her position.
(Lab)
My Lords, this is a short, precise and extremely welcome Bill,
improved by the helpful amendment presented today. I am pleased
to tell noble Lords that the National Education Union—the largest
education union in Europe, with 450,000 members —welcomes the
Bill and the amendment.
The climate emergency is of course the existential threat to the
future of all our children and young people. It is certainly the
case that educators have a role to play in helping children
address the threat by enabling them, as was said at Second
Reading, to understand the climate emergency and ecological
issues, and to think critically about how they can play their
part as we seek a more sustainable way of life.
To demonstrate enthusiasm for teaching about the climate
emergency and sustainability, the National Education Union worked
with other organisations, including Teach the Future, to promote
Climate Learning Month, which overlaps October and November,
ahead of COP 26. Despite the high-quality resources produced, not
all schools, and therefore not all children and young people,
accessed them.
The Bill, particularly with the amendment, would ensure that all
those educated in maintained schools would have access to this
important area of learning. Alas, those educated in academies and
free schools are not required to follow the national curriculum.
However, , the Schools Minister,
speaking on this in another place, said that
“I want us to do more to educate our children about the costs of
environmental degradation and what we are doing to solve that,
both now and in the future. Not only do our children deserve to
inherit a healthy world, but they also need to be educated so
that they are … prepared to live in a world affected by climate
change, so that they may live sustainably and continue to fight
the effects of climate change.”—[Official Report, Commons,
27/10/21; col. 146WH.]
I therefore hope that Her Majesty’s Government will not only
support the Bill but press upon all schools the benefit of this
aspect of learning. Of course, I hope that the Government will
will the means to ensure that educators are themselves properly
educated and trained to ensure high-quality teaching on this
important issue.
Finally, it is the case that climate and sustainability issues
are covered in the current curriculum—as has been said, they are
covered in science and geography—but the magnitude of the climate
emergency requires the holistic approach to content and skills
development outlined in my noble friend Lord Knight’s Bill. The
brevity of this speech should not be taken to imply anything less
than my wholehearted support for the Bill and this amendment.
(GP)
It seems almost superfluous to get up to support this Private
Member’s Bill because it is so self-evident that it is excellent.
I congratulate the noble Lord, , on the progress it
has made. Quite simply, you can care for something only when you
understand it. That is true about caring for ourselves, for each
other and for the natural environment. It is especially true for
what can feel like an abstract concept: caring for future
generations. The Bill will help tackle not only the environmental
and ecological crises but the humanitarian and mental health
crises.
Our Green MP, , has done great work
promoting a nature GCSE and my noble friend Lady Bennett has
called for a right to nature for children. Together with this
Bill and the future generations Bill of the noble Lord, , we begin to see a framework for
the cultural and educational shift needed to underpin an
ecologically minded society that no longer destroys our living
world.
It would be very wrong for your Lordships not to pay recognition
to the very many young people demanding action on the ecological
and climate emergencies. As well as teaching them, we must learn
from them and support them to use all that energy and enthusiasm
to make lasting change, because it is their future that we are
discussing. They will live to be the judges of our collective
action or inaction.
(Lab)
My Lords, this is one of those debates where we are all violently
agreeing with each other and with the amendment from the noble
Lord, . I wish the Government were
always as responsive to his committee’s forensic examination of
the problems of delegated legislation as my noble friend Lord
Knight has been this afternoon.
I do not think there is any concern at all on the substance of my
noble friend’s Bill and the amendment, but I looked at the Bill
because I have a Private Member’s Bill coming up on a related
matter in the new year on votes at 16 and reducing the voting
age. Alongside that, which I see as a critical element of
lowering the voting age, is significantly enhancing citizenship
education in schools. My view is that part of the reason why we
have such a massive crisis of youth engagement in politics,
including on the issues my noble friend refers to in the Bill, is
because we do not take citizenship sufficiently seriously in
schools. We do not have automatic registration of young people at
18, or polling stations in every school, educational institution
and university, as we should have.
14:00:00
I looked at the Bill to see how it would interact with enhanced
requirements in respect of citizenship education in schools. My
noble friend and I go back a long way on this, because we were
fellow Ministers in the education department under the Government
who introduced citizenship education under the leadership of my
noble friend . There is a clear anomaly in
the Bill in how it will amend education law. Because of my noble
friend’s zeal in promoting citizenship education in respect of
the natural environment, which I strongly support, the natural
environment and sustainability, if the Bill is passed, become
singled out in statute for special mention—indeed, unique
mention—in respect of citizenship education, but none of the
other aspects of citizenship education is then mentioned in
statute at all, when they are surely just as important as
citizenship education in respect of sustainability. Indeed, they
are integrally linked—unless young people learn at school to be
active citizens and to use the democratic process fully to
advance the causes in which they believe and on which their
generation depends, they will not embrace the cause of the
environment as part of that.
Because this is of some importance to how our education law
develops, I want to get a bit technical for a moment or two if my
noble friend will forgive me. I want all this on the record
because we may need to come back to it in due course. My noble
friend’s Bill essentially amends Sections 80, 84 and 85 of the
Education Act 2002. Perhaps I may go through the changes that it
makes to each of those sections in turn. To Section 80, which
covers the fundamental requirements of the national curriculum
and teaching in schools, my noble friend proposes to add a new
subsection (1)(f) —I should say, as amended by the noble Lord,
, if it goes
through—requiring
“provision for sustainable citizenship education for all
registered pupils who are provided with secondary education”.
That section, Section 80, makes no reference to citizenship
education in any respect other than sustainability and the
environment. There is no reference to any requirement to teach
citizenship in schools. This relates directly to the point made
by my noble friend Lady Blower—I am sorry, this is
educationalists speaking here—because Section 80 of the 2002 Act
is the fundamental requirement apart from the national
curriculum, which, as my noble friend said, does not apply to all
schools. Under Section 80 as amended by this Bill, it would be a
statutory requirement in all schools to teach about citizenship
relating to sustainability but not citizenship relating to any
other issue, including the voting process, the operation of your
Lordships’ House and how one becomes involved in political
parties—all of which are about to become significantly more
important because another piece of legislation going through
Parliament at the moment will require voter ID and therefore much
greater activity on the part of young people to become voters in
the first place.
Section 80 becomes very curious under this Bill. It introduces a
statutory requirement which relates to certain items, of which
the only one in respect of citizenship is sustainable citizenship
education. Sections 84 and 85 stipulate the subjects that must be
covered in the national curriculum. I add again that that applies
only to some state schools; it does not apply to all state
schools at the moment. The requirements in those sections in
respect of sustainable citizenship and the natural world, as
amended by this Bill, become very detailed. My noble friend’s
amendment to Section 84, which relates to the key stage 3
curriculum, provides that
“‘citizenship’ includes programmes of study that encourage
learning to protect and restore the natural environment for
present and future generations, including but not limited to
climate change considerations”.
I support all that. However, there are no words in that section
relating to any other aspect of citizenship. The only other
reference to citizenship is the word “citizenship”, in relation
to the third key stage, where it lists the subjects that must be
taught, one of them being citizenship. So we will have in statute
an elaborate requirement in respect of the teaching of
citizenship for the natural environment, but no requirement in
respect of the teaching of citizenship elsewhere.
Exactly the same happens in Section 85, which relates to key
stage four, the period leading up to GCSE. My noble friend’s Bill
introduces a new subsection (11), which says that citizenship in
key stage four must include
“programmes of study that encourage learning to protect and
restore the natural environment for present and future
generations, including but not limited to climate change
considerations.”
Again, there is no requirement to teach any other aspect of
citizenship.
The obvious response to this is twofold. First, we should have
similar requirements elsewhere. Indeed, I would willingly
participate in an exercise that drafted the citizenship
requirements for the wider citizenship curriculum, which I think
are every bit as important as the requirement here. Secondly, in
respect of schools that follow the national curriculum, it does
have citizenship as a subject. However, the status of citizenship
under the national curriculum is very precarious. Noble Lords who
remember the 2013 national curriculum review will know that
whether citizenship was going to be removed was a big issue. It
is all done under delegated legislation such as that proposed by
the noble Lord, . By order, the Government
can remove it. They have to have a thing called citizenship, but
they can remove almost all of the programmes of study.
Indeed, not only was there a big debate about, in effect,
removing citizenship entirely in 2013, but the Government
substantially stripped it out of the curriculum in practice. They
did three things: they stopped providing support for the
recruitment of citizenship teachers; they ended the half-GCSE in
citizenship, which had been a requirement of key stage four; and
the then Secretary of State, Mr , who claims in other respects
to be a great promoter of participatory democracy, taking back
control and so on, said that he thought it was a very secondary
subject and should not be given the importance of what he
regarded as the core subjects in the curriculum. Indeed, the
other curriculum reforms that the Government made prioritised a
set of academic subjects above all others.
The point I am making, which I think is of some significance to
education law and the future of the curriculum, is that we need
to have a holistic view of citizenship education which absolutely
embraces the environment, climate change and the natural world.
But we must also give equal treatment and importance to
citizenship education in respect of democracy and the
participation of young people in the public life of this country.
There is an epidemic of inactivity when it comes to young people
and our democratic processes. We have very low levels of voting;
the level for 18 to 24 year-olds is half that for the over-60s.
The evidence is that people’s propensity to vote in their first
election after they turn 18 determines more than anything else
whether they vote in elections thereafter. We have tiny numbers
who belong to political parties and we have very low levels of
engagement.
I welcome the Bill. It is greatly improved by the amendment moved
by the noble Lord, , but we need to set it in
the context of the wider requirement significantly to enhance
citizenship education in our schools. On that front, I am afraid
that, because of inactivity on the part of the Government, we are
moving backwards rather than forwards.
(Lab)
My Lords, I fully support the amendment in the name of the noble
Lord, , as it would strengthen my
noble friend Lord Knight’s Bill. Since this excellent and
necessary Bill had its Second Reading in July, we have had the
COP 26 summit in Glasgow, a city that I was privileged to
represent in two legislatures. If the campaign to combat climate
change and build a sustainable environment has moved forward as a
result of COP 26, it has done so only to a very limited extent.
The agreement was ultimately disappointing, with loopholes that
can be exploited and the appalling 11th-hour attempt by China and
India to sabotage the entire event.
Every time I speak in one of these debates, when my noble friend
also speaks, I am reminded
that, no matter however much I think I know about education
legislation, or certainly recent legislation, I still have much
to learn. In his speech, my noble friend recalled, perhaps with
some nostalgia, the time that he spent in government together
with my noble friend Lord Knight, when our noble friend was the Education Minister.
Noble Lords may recall that, at Second Reading, my noble friend
talked about the time when he
introduced the order to include the teaching of citizenship. He
made the point that,
“while it has been extremely successful in some schools, it has
hardly been taught in others”.—[Official Report, 16/7/2021; col.
2129.]
That is the nub of the problem that the amendment proposed by the
noble Lord, , deals with, because it
would prevent it being taught in the curriculum as an option that
schools can opt in to or out of.
The fact that COP 26 has taken place since we last considered
this Bill has heightened the arguments for including sustainable
education within the national curriculum. The role of young
people, if it was in doubt, was thrown sharply into focus at some
events around COP 26, which were inspirational to many. I
certainly found it inspirational to watch the Fridays for the
Future protest in Glasgow on 5 November, which gathered thousands
of young people, many of them schoolchildren. Many Scottish local
authorities had made it clear that, providing that parents
informed schools of their children’s absence, no action would be
taken against them for being on the protest. I have to say, it is
hard to imagine such an enlightened approach being taken by DfE
Ministers, but that in a microcosm highlights the widely
different attitude to ensuring that children are fully absorbed
in the detail of the need for action to combat climate change
between the different parts of Britain. That was highlighted at
Second Reading in reference to the situation in Wales and
Scotland.
In July, officials from the DfE gave evidence to the Environment
and Climate Change Committee of your Lordships’ House, suggesting
that the Government would be establishing England as a
trailblazer on climate education. This Government seem to enjoy
blazing trails, especially in the DfE. At the moment we have,
inter alia, trailblazers on T-levels and trailblazers on the new
local skills improvement plans. Can the Minister say what her
department has done since July to take forward that trailblazing
pledge? They have dropped the ball in terms of this Bill, which
would have been a perfect means of helping to meet their
pledge.
We know, as I have said, that the lead in enshrining
sustainability in the curriculum has been taken by the Scottish
and Welsh Governments. It is of course instructive that neither
of those legislatures is under Conservative control because, if
that were the case, children in those countries would be denied
the right to learn meaningfully about sustainable citizenship in
the way that their English counterparts currently do. However, my
noble friend’s Bill offers a way forward that will essentially
mean that there is a common approach across Britain, and it is
much to be regretted that, as I suspect, the Minister in her
reply will repeat the line taken by her predecessor in
July—although, of course, I shall be happy to be proved wrong in
that assertion.
At Second Reading, most noble Lords acknowledged that England
must do better on climate and sustainability education. COP 26
has reinforced the fact that young people, including school
students, are fully committed to bringing about a more
sustainable future for their own and their children’s
generations. So will the Minister offer them hope that teaching
in our schools will more meaningfully support that aim and will
be guaranteed in doing so by regulations through this
amendment?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Education () (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for highlighting the
importance of parliamentary scrutiny. The Government agree that
guidance should not be used as a means to circumvent scrutiny and
should be used only where it is proportionate to do so. As my
noble friend understands—probably better than anyone else in this
Committee—the purpose of guidance is to aid policy implementation
by supplementing legal rules. If a policy is to create rules that
must be followed, the Government accept that this should be
achieved using regulations subject to parliamentary scrutiny, not
guidance.
14:15:00
I will quote from my noble friend Lady Berridge’s response in
April to my noble friend on the same point, talking
about the standard legal wording of having regard to the
guidance. She said:
“The crux of this phrasing is that schools must have a good
reason if they wish to depart from this guidance and they cannot
choose to ignore it.”—[Official Report, 16/4/21; col. 1619.]
The Committee will be aware that a vast range of statutory
guidance is issued each year, including in the education sector.
It is important that this guidance can be updated rapidly to keep
pace with events and is fully accurate and responsive to feedback
from the sector. I hope that responds in part to the invitation
from the noble Lord, , to present a good
reason for using guidance.
The need for this makes it disproportionate for the majority of
statutory guidance to be subject to parliamentary procedure,
although in exceptional circumstances it might be appropriate.
There is nothing to prevent Parliament scrutinising guidance at
any time, and Members of both Houses have various avenues
available to them to apply for debates and ask questions. As I
know the noble Lord, Lord Watson, remembers, last month this
House debated the 2021 School Admissions Code following my noble
friend tabling a take-note Motion to do
so.
I turn to the substance of the Bill and the points raised in
particular by the noble Lord, . I thank him for
the warm welcome he gave to the Secretary of State’s
announcements just ahead of COP 26. As the noble Lord set out,
the Secretary of State announced a draft sustainability and
climate change strategy at COP 26. This is a whole-systems
approach that sets out our commitment to increase training and
support for schoolteachers—a point that the noble Baroness, Lady
Blower, raised—including a primary science model curriculum that
will have a focus on nature, science CPD, free access to
high-quality resources and sharing best practice.
The strategy also includes key initiatives such as the climate
leaders award and our virtual national education park. To the
point from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, I hope
this will give young people understanding, real hands-on
experiences and a chance to develop the skills that will allow
them to be active voices in this debate.
The noble Lord, Lord Knight, asked whether there was any more—I
apologise for not noting the word—nudge, enthusiasm or momentum
in this. There is a lot of momentum. The noble Lord will know
from the schools he is connected to, and I certainly see on
almost every visit I make, that children are very exercised about
these issues and are proactively raising them. I have touched on
the department’s work, but the other critical thing that we
cannot underestimate is the pull from employers for the skills
that will be required for the sustainable economy of the
future.
The noble Lord, , rightly raised important
issues of citizenship education. I will not attempt to address
all his technical points, as I am with the noble Lord, Lord
Watson, on his superior knowledge of education legislation. But
we expect schools to use their expertise and understanding of
their pupil cohort to develop the right approach towards
citizenship education for their particular school. Active
citizenship, which I know the noble Lord, , supports, is at the heart of
the programme. At key stage 4 in particular, pupils should be
taught about parliamentary democracy and key elements of the
constitution. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions
today.
(Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who took part in this
short debate. I must admit I felt a bit guilty, in that the Bill
was due to go through on the nod a week last Monday and, when I
put down the amendment, I knew it would kick it back to a Friday.
I was worried then that the Bill would fall altogether, but I am
grateful for this chance to have a discussion today. Although it
has ranged slightly wider than I had anticipated, there is no
harm in that. I thank the noble Lord, , for his support
and all noble Lords who mentioned COP 26. When I put on my face
mask today, which I acquired when I was in Glasgow a couple of
weeks ago, I had no idea that COP 26 would be so relevant to
today’s debate.
I also thank the noble Lord and the Minister for mentioning the
Department for Education’s attitude to guidance. I am grateful
for some of the things that she said, but some things the
department had been doing before her time, in the way it issued
guidance and the attitude it took to laying it before Parliament,
were contrary to what she informed of us today. I am referring to
the school uniform guidance. I moved an amendment saying that it
should be laid before the House as a negative procedure, as
regulations. The answer from the department—I paraphrase slightly
and I hope I am not exaggerating for effect too much—was, “No, we
are not going to bother you with that. We issue thousands of
pages of guidance each year, and we have always got away with not
laying it before Parliament; why would we create a precedent now
of troubling your little heads in Parliament with this guidance?”
The second excuse was “A lot of our guidance changes very
regularly and we cannot trouble Parliament with it”. The school
uniform guidance is unlikely to change regularly and it is
unlikely that this guidance will change regularly. The same
argument applies: it should be laid before Parliament in the
negative procedure. Even if it does change regularly, the
department has to write the guidance. There is no problem in
laying that guidance as a regulation through the negative
procedure. Hardly anyone would object to it 99.9% of the
time.
Going slightly off piste, like the noble Lord, , the final thing I have to say
is that my amendment to this Bill was small and I am grateful
that everyone agrees with it. Next Tuesday, the House will be
looking at the Health and Care Bill. In my three years as chair
of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee—my
committee has not looked at it officially yet—I have never seen a
Bill with such appalling delegations of power. There are about
150 delegations. It is a skeletal Bill, with no guts or detail to
it. There is disguised legislation, where regulations are called
guidance, protocols or directions—anything to avoid them coming
before Parliament. I hope noble Lords participating in that Bill,
irrespective of its other merits, look at all the delegated
powers in it and give them proper consideration. In thanking
noble Lords for their contributions, I am delighted that my
amendment finds favour with the Committee.
Amendment 1 agreed.
Clause 1, as amended, agreed.
Clause 2 agreed.
House resumed.
Bill reported with an amendment.
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