08/12/2017 House of Lords

Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.

My

lords. I'm grateful to the usual

channels for making time for me to

lead a debate. It is something of a

tradition for the debates to be held

in early December. Although later

and less well-established than the

John Lewis adverts, it is a sure

sign that Christmas is around the

corner. Last year, I lead a debate

on shared national values which

featured some thoughtful speeches.

I'm sure that today's debate will be

equally as impressive and I am

grateful to many of your Lordships

for making time to attend. It will

be a pleasure to hear the first

speech from the noble Lord. I'm

delighted that Lord Sachs will be

speaking today. He has told me he

will need to leave in order to get

home in time for the sabbath but it

is good that he has come here at

all. There is a link between today's

debate on education and the previous

one on shared values. I hope to give

an outline of the sort of values

that we suggest should underpin our

education system and the structures

that might support them so that we

may create a society where mutual

and individual flourishing become

the norm. As in so many areas of our

public life, it was the churches

that pioneered the idea of a

universal system of education free

for all. In 1811, Joshua Watson

founded the National Society for

promoting the education of the poor

in England and Wales. Fortunately,

our titles are shorter nowadays. He

was described as the best layman in

England. That is a title due for

revival. What was started in 1811

lives on today as the National

Society. I declare an interest, as

the co-president. My right

honourable friend, the Bishop of

Ely, here's the Council of the

National society. He set of values

framework that was important, as was

the imperative in his idea to

improve productivity and fight

embedded squalor. By 1870 there were

too many children in schools for the

churches to cope with alone. The

first of the great education act

brought them under state control.

Still with a strong religious

participation. Today, the Church of

England alone educates over 1

million pupils each year each day.

26% of all primaries and 6% of all

secondary schools. Joshua Watson and

his friends conceived their plans at

a time of great national crisis and

upheaval. The Luddite movement was a

response to fear of redundancy

because of growing technological

advances. Two centuries later and

the advances are different but still

there. We are calling it the fourth

industrial revolution. As the World

Economic Forum describes it, the

digital revolution that has been

occurring since the middle of the

last century is today accompanied by

emerging technological breakthroughs

in fields such as artificial

intelligence, robotics, the Internet

of things, autonomous vehicles,

nanotechnology, biotechnology,

material science, energy storage and

quantum computing. How our schools

can equip us for this seismic shift

and our systems Social Security can

enable us to keep society cohesive

and healthy are among the greatest

challenges facing this generation

and the generation to come. And of

course there is also Brexit. It has

unforeseeable changes and

opportunities. We need an

educational system that can bear the

weight of the changes that are

coming. We must be sure that whilst

we might find some inspiration in

our past, we don't waste our time

rummaging their for the solutions of

tomorrow. We must challenge the

pockets of deprivation and

underachievement that exist across

our communities. We must face the

poverty of aspiration which forms

such a barrier to human flourishing.

The church of England has looked to

promote an education that allows

children, young people and adults to

live out Jesus's promise of life in

its fullest. To learn skills and

develop character, and the

spiritual, intellectual and

emotional resources needed to live a

good life, as an individual but also

in a community. In listening to a

debate recently about science and

innovation strategy, I was struck by

an observation made from the front

bench. He echoed other speakers in

that extraordinarily good debate and

said, the cultural divide that we

have had has been a disaster for

this country since 1944 and earlier.

The truth is that the myth of a

golden age or a disastrous misstep

are wide of the mark. The noble Lord

went on to describe how our

universities are some of the best in

the world for academic achievement

but where we succeed in research we

fail in development. As the noble

Lord pointed out, Germany spends 3%

and is aiming to spend 3.5%. We

cannot fall further behind in this

area but it can only happen through

the effective work of education.

We've neglected the value of further

education within our overall

educational landscape for far too

long. Since the 19 44 education act.

It is a legacy of the class system

especially in England. The children

of privilege are continuing to

inherit privilege. This is true not

only in educational institutions but

also the whole country. Unless we

embark on cultural change, and the

entirety of our education services,

IC is little prospect for remedying

this wrong. Human flourishing

requires flexible and imaginative

training based in attitude. Going

towards a more inclusive approach

with those with disabilities or

specially educational needs is an

example of the way that

comprehensive education has improved

and a welcome step for an education

that seeks the fullest and most

abundant life for each human being

regardless of their ability. One

which draws the best out of every

person. But the academic selective

approach to education which

prioritises separation as a

necessary precondition for the

nurture of excellence makes a

statement about the purpose of

education that is contrary to the

notion of the common good. At its

best, education must be a process of

shaping human beings to reach out

and enjoy abundant life. To do so in

such strong communities of widely

varying ability with distinctive

approaches to each student, so that

each around them flourish. An

approach that neglects those of

lesser ability or does not give the

fullest opportunity to those of

higher stability or enable all to

develop a sense of community and

mutuality of love in action,

fullness and abundance of life, will

ultimately fail. One of the areas

I'm most concerned about and we on

these benches seems clearly through

the parish system and which was

highlighted in the review into

opportunity and social integration

is how the handing down of poverty

and deprivation between generations

presents a barrier to achieving

social cohesion as well as

injustice.

All those receiving free school

meals, only 32% of girls and 28% of

boys in the white British category

achieved five A-C grades at GCSE. --

A*-C grades at GCSE. One might

conclude from this that white

British children brought up in

economic poverty stand a high chance

of being among the least well

equipped to integrate into a rapidly

changing world where skills in

science, technology, new Morrissey,

literacy and IT will be essential.

Not enough has been done to break

down entrenched disadvantages or to

improve integration and cohesion.

The church of England, with its wide

and widening schools network, can

and must do more to address this

problem. This is the Josh Law Watson

challenge of our generation. The aim

of the founders of the National

Society was to be Universalist,

unapologetically Christian in the

nature of their vocation and service

and committed to the relief of

disadvantage and deprivation where

ever it was to be found. Ours must

be the same. 200 years on, the role

of the church of England in

education can be to encourage and

support excellence, provide a values

-based education for all, with a

laser-like focus on the poorest and

the most deprived. That means a

renewed vision that focuses as much

an deprivation of spirit and poverty

of aspiration as did our forebears

on material poverty and inequality.

What follows from that is a clear

move towards schools that not only

deliver academic excellence, but

which have the boldness and vision

to do so outside the boundaries of a

selective system. The Church of

England's educational offer to our

children, our nation, is church

schools that are, in its own words,

deeply Christian, nurturing the

whole child, spiritually,

emotionally and mentally as well as

academically, yet welcoming the

whole community. I pay tribute to

the immense hard work of heads,

teachers, leadership teams,

governors and parents associations,

who make so many church and other

schools the successes that they are.

And with the strong Christian

commitment of heads and leadership

teams, the ethos and values of

church of England schools, which

makes them so appealing to families

of all faiths and none, will be

guarded and will continue. A major

obstacle, though, to our education

system, is a lack of clear internal

and commonly held values. We live in

a country where an overarching

story, which is the framework for

explaining life, is more or less

disappeared. We have a world of

unguided and competing narratives,

where the only common factor is the

inviolability of personal choice.

That means that for schools that are

not of a religious character,

confidence in any personal sense of

ultimate values has diminished.

Utilitarianism rules and skills move

from being talents held for the

common good, which we are entrusted

with as benefits for all, to being

personal possessions for our own

advantage. We see this already in

our universities, in the economic

sword of Damocles that dangles over

their heads of so many students who

have vast financial investments at

stake in their degree qualification.

The challenge is the week, secular

and functional narrative that

successive governments have sought

to insert in the place of our

historic, Christian-based

understanding, whether explicitly or

implicitly. Factionalism or

utilitarianism offers neither a

meaningful alternative to those who

are threatened by peddlers of

extremism, nor a confident framework

within which to educate those of

different cultures and beliefs. It

is no great surprise to those of us

familiar with church schools, and I

should say that all five of our

children went to state schools, both

church and non-church, that there is

strong, values -based approach

remained so attractive, especially

to communities of other faiths. In

many church of England schools in

areas of high immigration over the

last 60 years, although in some

cases almost all the children are of

a non-Christian faith, the narrative

of the school has remained

Christian, while respecting

religious diversity, including no

faith at all. Schools, FC and HD

institutions are important

intermediate institutions,

positioned between the individuals

and the state. Which exists to bring

fullness of life and to be nurseries

of community living. As well as

inspire, they need to develop

stories of the common good, of

community, not merely of tolerance.

This is achievable so long as our

education system remains diverse in

provision is accountable and well

funded, enabling different streams

and approaches within its overall

ecosystem. Lifelong learning and

training and developing the prestige

of technical education is vital for

giving us the flexibility and

capacity necessary for the fourth

Industrial Revolution. The church of

England has recently set up the

church of England foundation for

educational leadership, in order to

begin to tackle the need for deeper

and more effective training in

issues of values and practices, as

well as in the hard skills of

leading schools and nurturing new

leadership talent. Education must

combine the provision of skills with

the creation of values and practices

that enable those values to be

developed and to become virtues.

Where that happens, life in all its

fullness becomes accessible to all

young people. It is not a magic

wands to solve all society's

problems. But it is an essential

building block for achieving an

education system that can help to

build a more prosperous and cohesive

society. I beg to move the motion

standing in my name on the order

paper.

The question is that this

motion be agreed to.

I think we are

all greatly in the debt, once again,

of the most Reverend Archbishop. His

words last year on British values, I

think many of us reflected on

through the year, and so today, with

his words about education, are

deeply important at this moment. I

speak also as someone whose three

children and six of our

grandchildren went to exactly the

same Church primary school, and

warmly applaud the work of faith

schools, the work they do to create

the citizens of tomorrow, the work

they do for the local community. 100

years ago, my grandfather wrote a

book, Education And World

Citizenship, working closely with

the noble Lord Judd's Father and he

went on to start a series of

programmes called the Council for

education and world citizenship and

this was precisely at the heart of

the issue that education is not only

about skills, it isn't only about

qualifications, it is about

preparing the citizens we need for

tomorrow. Now I would argue that

over many decades, we deeply failed

very intelligent children from

impoverished backgrounds. My early

years were spent in Brixton,

Peckham, Bethnal Green, where

children did not even take A-levels.

Teaching reading and writing was

described as imposing middle-class

values on working-class children.

There was a wonderful document

produced by the Maudsley, 15,000

Hours, which showed that the dimmest

children, the least achieving

children at one school were doing

better than the most able children

were at a bad school. And Sir Keith

Joseph, my Lord Baker, many others

in this room, in this house, worked

really hard to improve the

curriculum, to improve the

achievements, to improve the

teaching, and we have seen a

dramatic change in the ability of

young people to fulfil their

potential. But it still isn't

enough. Of course, I applaud also

the primate's words about education

not only being functionalist but the

chief inspector of schools, a man I

greatly admire, spoke only the other

day about the importance of not

reducing education to functionalist

level. Our job is to young people to

succeed in life, broadening of mind,

enriching communities, advancing

civilisation. Now, if you come with

me to the University of Hull, and it

wasn't going to be long before we

got there, you will see on the main

staircase wonderful engraving with

the words of Winston Churchill,

"Religion has been a rock in the

life and character of the British

people upon which they have built

their hopes and cast their cares"

people upon which they have built

their hopes and cast their cares".

And in today's world of

multicultural, multi-faith, this is

more complex but nobody better than

the Church of England, the words of

the most reverend primate can lead

us forward. I speak with great pride

of the Chancellor -- as the

Chancellor of the University of

Hull, this is an anchor institution

in an impoverished region. The

University believes in transforming

the individual as well as positively

impacting society. It is placed

based, an area with low aspirations,

with low achievement in the past but

it is globally engaged. And last

year, I invited the primate to visit

Hull during the City of Culture. I

don't think he was able to fulfil

that invitation but I'm delighted to

say that two weeks ago, the Queen

came... LAUGHTER

To open the new medical school and

meet all those involved in the City

of Culture. And I say that as the

news that has come through that

Coventry is to be the next City of

Culture, and I know the primate has

very close connections with

Coventry. But the ability to give

people hope and optimism and a sense

of collaboration is quite

remarkable. The University of Hull

trains doctors and nurses in a

modern, patient -based, community

focused manner. It has

entrepreneurial activities. It has

pioneered environmental, maritime,

renewable energy projects, bringing

prosperity, skills, investment and

success. And the City of Culture has

given inspiration, encouragement and

energy to the city and to the

individuals who live there. They

have got a leading department on

modern slavery. Last year, Kofi

Anand came to speak. Their campaign,

hidden in plain sight, tackles the

current situation of modern slavery,

focused on by the Prime Minister. It

is placed based, it is globally

engaged and it is modern -- a model

to so many. The right reverend, the

primate, reminded us of the

importance of teachers, of

headteachers. The headteacher is the

closest thing to a magic wand in

education and I applaud all those

new routes into education, like

teach first, teach now, and all the

many other ways. There is no more

important obligation than preparing

the next generation. When the house

starts in another place, the prayer

is that we shall govern wisely and

avoid love of power and desire to

please. Now, research, innovation,

the fourth Industrial Revolution,

all the great achievements of our

universities are important but if we

don't have the wisdom, the judgment,

the moral basis to make decisions,

we will be lost and at a time when

democracy is fuelled by social

media, by sound bites, by the

short-term, it is all the more

important that we retain a moral

compass, a faith -based approach,

and the principles of citizenship.

It gives me great pleasure to speak

of this moment in this debate as to

thank the Archbishop of Canterbury

for creating this possibility of all

of us to look at this important

sector and aspect of our life. We

must content ourselves with a cameo

contribution and do our best here

and there but together I'm sure we

will have a multifaceted look at

this vital subject. May I express my

delight at the presence in the

chamber of our noble friend, the

second coming of the noble Lord

charters, here in this house. I look

forward to his speech. We have

collaborated together for 20 years

in London. Here we are discussing

this vital subject. It is at the

heart of all other activities that

we seek to envisage and build. I've

been a school governor for over 35

years. In Laurel, suburban, and

inner-city sects without hands to

specialise. I was a member of the

board of Roehampton University and

I'm currently the chair of trustees.

I have that vantage point from which

to speak today. We have two

remarkable schools, one for boys and

one for girls.

I have read countless articles, and

they will come to the same

conclusion.

We are worthy of the name. It

embraces the spiritual, moral and

intellectual development of young

people. I would add adults to that

since education, in my view, is a

lifelong affair. The catholic spirit

of this definition is surely

self-evident. We would wonder about

the need to have a debate of this

kind at all since we have such a

common platform to stand on. And

yet, it is more complicated. I've

received a letter from a leading

British composer, complaining about

the narrowly defined curriculum of

the English baccalaureate. It

concentrates on subjects in a way

that makes it virtually impossible

for schools to give their proper

attention to the creative arts at

the spiritual subjects, to say

nothing of personal health and other

related topics. Asking whether

pressure cannot be put on those to

make a more flexible view. We could

actually welcome as an essential

part of education, these creative

and spiritual subjects. And that is

not just him writing to me in this

way. Schools, at the same time as

having to deal with the curriculum,

are also dealing with constraints on

their budget. There are extra costs

they've got to absorb and the

schools with which I'm involved face

the need to increase productivity

and cut what is being delivered. Two

teachers a year for the next three

years. We may well agree without any

hesitation on the definition but the

practicalities on the ground work

against our being able to make that

real for our children. In the

briefing paper, there is a

frequently occurring word, the word

character. The method is just to do

a bit of Bible study. The word

character, a Greek word, appears

once in the new Testament. And they

all know where it appears. I can see

it on their faces. It is in the

Epistle to the Hebrews. It takes a

layperson to say of course, of

course. But character in the new

Testament sense is an attempt to

describe the divinity of Christ.

This is not a lesson in Christology

but an attempt to show that Christ

was imbued with everything that God

was. He is stamped with the

character of God. His personality

exudes everything that can be said

about God. I realise there are

others for whom that particular part

of my presentation will resonate but

I draw from it the need in our

educational system to stamp all

those under education with

everything that is good, the values

alluded to which so they can be not

just empty vessels receiving

knowledge, cognitive, facts and

skills in those objective censors

but be brought alive to become the

people they were made to be. To have

brought from them what is intrinsic

to them, and character in that sense

seems to be eminently worthwhile.

Here ends the lesson but the real

world in which we practice, for the

boys, knife crime, drugs, violence

on the streets, 11 over children

witnessing claims on the streets,

one boy accused, found guilty of

murder. A school that passed to

incorporate those dimensions. 85% of

our girls are Muslims. It needs to

be applied with imagination and

flair, not simply in an espionage

kind of way. I want the government

to reassure us that a lot of what

could be accommodated could be made

mandatory, that we look again at the

prevent programme and we look to

flourish alongside the core subjects

as mentioned in the original

definition which I quoted.

I join in

thanking this. Education is not only

essential in building a skilful

society but also in maintaining it.

Increasingly there is an economic

and social imperative for lifelong

learning. Education has a role that

should engender a love of learning.

Education starts in the home. We've

all seen the joy on the face of a

young child who takes its first step

and recite its first nursery rhyme.

That's the sort of satisfaction

education should continue to

generate, building confidence and

aspiration. Sadly it is not always

the productive experience but it

could and should be. The Church of

England plays a key part in

education at all levels but

particularly at primary level. Those

schools are sought after by those of

all faith and none. They have an

ethos that makes for a good start

for young people and plays its part

in fighting embedded squalor. The

government should ensure that this

love of learning continues but too

often, Curiosity and enthusiasm are

trumped by testing and assessment,

with children measured not by where

their interests lie but academic

measures. I've asked ministers

before and not got a satisfactory

answer what important is the

government gives to love and

learning of fun, and stimulating

ideas and aspiration in the young,

particularly those who prefer doing

and making to thinking and studying.

Constant assessment plays havoc with

building skills and knowledge and

generates fear of failure in the

very young. If education becomes

associated with hopelessness it

becomes increasingly challenging to

build-up self-respect and

aspiration. I built up skills in

Germany and I know only too well the

difficulty of capturing the slowest.

It can be captivating but it is hard

work. Enthusiasm for learning can be

generated in the most unlikely

people if they can see a purpose and

practical pathway so they can be

achievers. They are I ask the

Minister to impress on colleagues

this. If young people are intrigued

by cars, cooking, by care, they will

see a purpose in learning and

engagement in a practical subject

can be bent to grasping their

academic counterparts. It can

clarify the purpose of maths when

maths lessons have been impenetrable

previously. Schools encourage

learning of all sorts but are often

held back by oft changing government

ministers, the remorseless churn of

government. It is pernicious but

secretaries of state implement their

own bright ideas, regardless of the

impact on teachers. Can the minister

persuade his colleagues to hold fire

and consult and undertake constant

benefit analysis for changes which

are politically driven and have

little to do with helping young

people. What steps is the government

taking to incentivise schools over

promoting apprenticeships and other

skills by celebrating pupils who

achieve in those areas? League

tables lead to challenging

situations even when skills are

practical and work -based. We need

people with practical skills. I

recall years ago writing a

pretentious A level essay on Adam

Smith's court. This was before

political correctness, when man was

deemed to embrace woman. I think

that is how the Romans put it. But

education should be lifelong. There

is such an important part to play

for adult education. The overall

number of students from lower

participation areas has fallen by

15% and whilst figures for full-time

students have risen, there has been

a simultaneous 40% fall in students

from those same areas. There are no

fewer people from disadvantaged

backgrounds going to university.

Skills budget has been reduced. Gone

are so many of those life enhancing

evening classes which could broaden

minds and promote aspiration in a

wider variety of ways, leading to

the flourishing of the skills

society. It is well proven that it

brings greater benefits to family

and community life. Further

education colleges are essential to

this progress with valuable

contributions from great

institutions such as the open

University and Birkbeck College.

These services provide enable adults

to fulfil potential and contribute

to the economy but all of them are

concerned about funding, Wanna fight

teachers, uncertainty for the future

to plan their work to full benefit.

Part-time learners have been heavily

hit in changes to funding and

colleges have struggled to keep up

staffing numbers. I hope the

government will listen to all those

and provide more reliable funding

for the prosperity of the country. I

look forward to the other speakers

and I thank the Archbishop for the

opportunity to do this debate.

My Lords, I 2am grateful to the most

reverend primate for initiating this

debate on a subject vital to the

future flourishing of our children

and grandchildren. My Lords, allow

me to speak personally as a,

something about this debate moves me

greatly and go to the heart of this

debate, Moses assemble the

Israelites on the brink of the

Exodus, he did not talk about the

Long walk to Freedom, he did not

speak about the land flowing with

milk and honey. Instead, repeatedly,

he turned to the far horizon of the

future and spoke about the duty of

parents to educate their children.

He did it again at the end of his

life, in the famous words, "You

shall teach these things repeatedly

to your children, speaking of them

when you sit in your house, when you

walk on the way, when you lie down

and when you rise up". By this

session with education that has

stayed with us from this day to

this? -- why that obsession. Because

to defend the country, you need an

army, but to defend a civilisation,

you need schools. You need education

as the conversation between the

generations. Whatever the society,

the culture or the faith, we need to

teach our children and they bear is

what we aspire to, and the ideals we

were bequeathed by those who came

before us. We need to teach them the

story of which we and they are apart

and we need to trust them to go

further than we did when they come

to write their own chapter. We make

a grave mistake if we think of

education only in terms of knowledge

and skills, what the American writer

David Brooks calls the resume

virtues, as opposed to the eulogy

virtues. And this is not woolly

idealism. It is hard-headed

pragmatism. Never has the world

change so fast and it is getting

faster every year. We have no idea

what patterns of employment will

look like in two, let alone 20 years

from now, what skills will be valued

and which done instead by

artificially intelligent,

preternaturally polite robots. We

need to give our children and

internalised moral satellite

navigation system so that they can

find their way across the

undiscovered country called the

future. We need to give them the

strongest possible sense of

collective responsibility for the

common good because we don't know

who will be the winners and losers

in the lottery of the global economy

and we need to make sure its

blessings are shared. There's too

much I and too little we in our

culture and we need to teach our job

and to care for others, especially

for those not like us. We work for

all these things in our Jewish

schools. We give our children

confidence in who they are so they

can handle change without fear and

keep learning through a lifetime. We

teach them to be not just proud Jews

but proud to be English, British,

defenders of democratic freedom and

active citizens, helping those in

need. Schools are about more than

what we know and what we can do.

They are about who we are and what

we must do to help others become

what they might be. The world our

children will inherit tomorrow is

born in the schools we built today.

My Lords, I do thank the most

reverend primate for this important

debate on education. I remind your

Lordships of my registered interest

as chairman of the chartered

institution for further education. I

was particularly pleased to see the

Archbishop's choice of words, a

flourishing and skilled society and

it is about the provision of those

skills that I want to make just a

couple of points this morning. For

many, many years, colleges of

further education in this country

have had a strong tradition of

developing technical skills and

working alongside employers. The

outstanding Dudley College, for

instance, has its roots in the 1862

Dudley Public Mechanics Institute

and there are many, many more with

equally venerable origins, just as

the Archbishop has reminded us, the

church schools have. However,

successive governments have seen

their most important task for young

people as pushing them towards

university entrance. Consequently,

fewer young adults and their parents

have come to view further education

colleges as providing a viable and

creditable vocational and

educational paths. The prestige of

the FE sector is therefore declined,

being often considered as a

second-tier alternative to those who

did not do too well at school and

this is at complete odds with the

valuable work that, as Lady Gardner

reminded us, it does, and the

opportunities it creates for its

students, for business and the

economy of the country.

Concomitantly, the FE sector has

progressively had its remit altered

through changes in government

policy. I have mentioned to your

Lordships before the fact that the

sector's main mission, which should

be the provision of high-quality

technical skills, has been too often

distorted by its having to teach

what our kindergarten competencies

to teenagers who have been most

seriously failed by primary schools,

which have neglected to teach them

literacy and numeracy properly. Of

the 2014 students transferring from

schools to FE at 16, some 28% were

functionally numerate. That is,

their arithmetical abilities were

those normally associated with an

eight-year-old, and some 15% were

functionally illiterate by the same

criteria. For several years, it has

been the accession of government

that too few of these students at 16

have passed GCSE English and maths

at grade C level. Ministers are

right to be concerned that secondary

schools, like their primary

counterparts, are failing these

young people, but they are wrong to

insist that further education

colleges should be the places where

the pieces are picked up. This is

not a task which should skew the

vocational mission of further

education. Often, the largest

departments, my Lords, in colleges,

are now those devoted to fulfilling

the government's corrective of

getting students from D to C grades

in GCSE. The largest departments

should, my Lords, be devoted to

engineering and the technologies and

not to school resits. For these

students, passing GCSE at grade C in

English and maths when they have had

a history of bad teaching and

failure in these subjects at school,

is often inappropriate and difficult

and the success rates are very poor,

especially for those with free

school meals entitlement. In some

areas, such as wielded in East

Sussex, where a forest, Maldon and

Ashworth, fewer than 4% of students

with a C in English and maths at the

age of 16 went on to achieve this by

the end of 19. The average success

rate seems to be around 25%. Instead

of these resits, these students

should be allowed to prepare for

vocationally oriented tests of

literacy and numeracy, which will

seemed to them more relevant to

their lives and future work. The

government has talked about an

alleviation in the current

requirements and perhaps the

Minister, when he closes, will let

us know when this is to happen. My

second point is this, an article a

few weeks ago in the Times

educational supplement showed that

the average funds available per

student aged 11-16 in secondary

schools is £5,700 per annum. At

universities, it is £8,500, whereas

for providers of further education,

from ages 16-19, it is only 4500.

This disparity is very worrying and

suggests that the FE sector is

insufficiently funded to deal with

the challenges that it faces at a

time when skills development is at

the heart of the economic agenda.

Perhaps the Minister would comment

on the worrying £1200 yearly gap

between school and further education

funding. Productivity levels in the

UK remains stubbornly low and have

not improved in real terms since the

2008 economic downturn. We are

currently ranked 16 out of 35 OECD

countries in the international

productivity league tables, way

behind our major trading partners

such as the United States, France

and Germany. Productivity is of

course a factor of investment but it

is also, most importantly, a factor

of the training of young people in

technical skills. And yet, the

economic affairs select committee of

this house identifies this country's

Lower emphasis on technical and

vocational education "As a major

contributing factor towards low

productivity"

contributing factor towards low

productivity". As the Archbishop

reminded us, Brexit will bring great

opportunities and our workforce must

be well prepared to use them. To

conclude, the further education

sector in this country must be

better resourced and better used by

government policy if it is to help

this country faced the economic

challenges that the next decade will

surely bring.

My Lords, anyone with

their wits about them realise is

that we are in the grip of a social

crisis. Half or more of the country

have been left behind while the rest

of Britain went to university,

modernised and globalised and this

isn't just about individuals and

families but communities, even whole

towns and cities. The

ultra-respectable financial Times

last month carried a heart-rending

article by Sarah oh Conor, who had

immersed herself in Blackpool and

reported on what GPs there called

SLS, deep poverty, pervasive drugs,

obesity and antidepressant and

mental illness in a large, isolated

town, exhibiting alarming signs of

disintegration, including the

largest encampment in Britain of

children expelled from school. It is

euphemistically called a pupil

referral unit. Even more

euphemistically, it is run by an

organisation called educational

diversity but it is basically a

dumping ground for 330 children that

schools want nothing to do with.

That is 330, my Lords, expelled from

schools in one northern town and

sent to what is in many respects a

joint training camp for the criminal

justice system. -- a giant training

camp. In addition to hundreds

excluded from school day by day for

lower-level misbehaviour or simply

roam the streets. Now those of your

Lordships to have the misfortune to

attend party conferences know why we

stopped going to Blackpool. But for

Blackpool today, we'd also Hull,

Grimsby, large parts of the North

and the Midlands, and large towns in

the South including Hastings, Dover

and Folkestone. My Lords, poor

education is at the heart of the

social crisis. Schools and secondary

schools in particular are too often

bleak and low performing in

virtually all of the communities I

just mentioned. There are not nearly

enough good teachers. Apprenticeship

numbers, incredibly, are declining,

despite the apprenticeship levy. The

Private schools have separated

themselves ever more from mainstream

society. Only yesterday, Westminster

School, a wholly owned charitable

subsidiary of the Church of England,

which occupies fabulous charitable

premises adjoining Westminster

Abbey, announced it was setting up

six elite schools in China. Its

social average idols, should be to

the poor of Bradford, not the

super-rich of Beijing. -- social

outreach goals. We are racked by

controversy over sky-high student

fees and debts run by vice

chancellors who have become

latter-day Prince Bishops, paid up

to £500,000 per year and likening

themselves to Maradona and Richard

Branson. My Lords, I don't have time

to offer more analysis but let me

get straight to the six things which

I believe now need to happen as a

matter of urgency. First, the Prime

Minister should appoint a minister

for good schools, based in Blackpool

or Grimsby, with direct

responsibility and funding for

school improvements in areas of very

low educational standards. The

government's policy at the moment...

It has published a list of so-called

opportunity areas, which include

Blackpool but there are only 12

across the entire country. Nothing

much is happening on the ground and

even in those 12, the department's

website can't do much better than

saying that they received"

prioritise access to a support

package"

prioritise access to a support

package". When I was minister for

schools a decade ago, I was

specifically Minister for London

schools as well and with the

inspirational Tim Brickhouse, led a

team to radically improve schools in

the capital, including extensive

funding and planning powers. I

reproach myself not persuading Tony

Blair and Gordon Brown to the same

intensive place -based approach to

other parts of the country, where

school standards were and still are,

my Lords, deplorably low and this

now needs to be done. I sent in our

new minister a man of action and I

am sure he will be a highly

effective minister at mobilising the

considerable resources of Her

Majesty's government from Blackpool

or Grimsby. Secondly, my Lords, we

have got to tackle the council

school expulsions which is such an

important cause of young lives going

completely off the rails. This is a

difficult issue but after much

consideration, I've come to the

conclusion that the right course is

to forbid schools from expelling

pupils will even temporarily

excluding them unless they have

broken the law. Instead, schools

should be required to make

appropriate on-site provision for

disruptive pupils even if they can't

always be mainstream classrooms and

they should be given extra funding

to do so.

Within a short period the government

should require every civil

organisation including the NHS and

local authorities to recruit, among

new trainees, at least as many

apprentices as graduates. Across the

public and private sectors the new

apprenticeship levy should be tied

by the state. I would suggest to the

prey Minister that the government

immediately grant this power to the

highly capable mayor of the west

Midlands. They should ask him to

report within a year on the national

system for deploying the projected

£3 billion income from the

apprenticeship levy to transform

apprenticeship levy is an quality

nationwide. After decades with

government after government has

urged private schools to behave like

the charities they legally are, but

see nothing happened yawned

tinkering at the edges, I believe we

need bold action. The easiest way is

to tax private school fees. An

education opportunity tax would

raise two and a half billion pounds.

This could be used to boost teacher

pay in hard to reach areas, the

absolutely indispensable passport to

skilled work and learning and fund

free music and sport training across

state schools, which private schools

pupils and parents take granted. The

right thing to do is cancel the

trebling of tuition fees which took

place in 2010 and reduce them to

around £3000. Reduce the

extortionate interest rate the

government is charging on debt and

cancel the absurd controls on

overseas student numbers which hold

universities back from competing

internationally. On the scandal of

senior university pay,

self-regulation is clearly not

working and the one regulators of

the state are toothless, dominated

by the vice chancellors they should

be regulating. The best course is an

independent enquiry to recommend

limits to top pay in universities

and ensure better controls. I cannot

think of anyone better suited to

conduct it than the most Reverend

primate. He runs an organisation

much like a university. He lives in

a palace. Since the Almighty seems

to be the only higher power

recognised he is as well-suited to

sort that. My hero was David

Shepherd of Liverpool. Back in the

1980s, social disintegration was

advancing upon us. It is again today

and we cannot walk by on the other

side.

I am very grateful to the most

Reverend primate for introducing

this debate which signalled the

coming of Christmas and can I also

say what a pleasure it is to see

Lord charters in his debate and

speaking in this place. I declare an

interest and you will see why in a

moment. As former chief executive of

the Kings fund. I'm also currently

vice-chair of the Mental Health Act

committee. I want to address what

the most Reverend primate has

described as human flourishing and I

would describe as the emotional

well-being of children. I would like

to congratulate the government on

the report that mental health

training will be available in

schools but would like to ask why

that date cannot be brought forward

given that we know how serious the

issues are around the mental health

and well-being of young people. That

has been alluded to. We know that

over half of mental ill-health

starts before the age of and 75% of

it has developed by the age of 18.

Studies suggest that when problems

are not addressed early there is

often a lifelong trajectory of

mental ill health. Rates of

depression have increased by 70%

over the last 25 years and that

places huge costs on the economy,

let alone on individuals. We know

that supporting mental health in

schools is not just about responding

to side of emerging mental health

problems. We now know helping

children become emotionally literate

as a vital part of any focus and

needs to be part of how we think

about education. You shall teach

your children and they shall teach

there is. In a recent report on

school readiness, school leaders

noted a decline with concerns about

personal, social and emotional

development high on the list. If

children are already starting at a

disadvantage and are unable to catch

up this increases their

vulnerability in terms of their

emotional well-being and their

potential to achieve and succeed. A

lack of social awareness to regulate

emotions underpins many of the

behavioural problems we see in

schools and studies have indicated a

link between better outcomes. We now

we need to do more and emotional

literacy needs to be embedded in

approaches. Over the years there

have been a range of interventions.

There is not a statutory requirement

in state schools. I hope to persuade

the Reverend primer that we should

have multi-faith schools, but many

state schools do not do it yet we

know that it works well. It also

makes a huge difference as part of

the approach. I am indebted to the

place to be, a voluntary

organisation that provides support,

for the education they have given

me. This approach involves not only

teaching children about the nature

of emotional states in themselves

and others but also promoting social

competence and well-being. There's

been a good deal of research

evaluation on how to do this. In the

United States, Scandinavia,

Australia and New Zealand. But less

in the UK. A review several years

ago concluded the most positive

evidence was obtained for programmes

that adopted a whole school

approach, aimed at the promotion of

mental health as opposed to the

prevention of mental illness. Can

the Minister tell this house whether

this is the approach that the mental

health support announced is going to

take and can you tell us he supports

investing in a curriculum that

values emotional understanding,

communication and problem-solving

with regular and well delivered

lessons addressing emotional

awareness and understanding. Of

course, we need teachers, school

league leaders and governors to

promote a healthy school and I pay

tribute. I am the mother of a

teacher. We need them to foster warm

relationships, peach autonomy and

maintain clarity. We need them to

prevent bullying and identify those

with problems early. Government and

educational leaders need to give a

steer in this direction. I hope the

Lord and Minister will be able to

tell this post that this is the

approach both governments approach

and will foster. And that emotional

literacy and education is part of

what is needed to be provided. I

begin by declaring my interest as a

patron of marriage foundation and

former governor of 21 years of

experience.

I'm privileged to follow

my colleague, whose sentiments I

share. The marriage foundation found

that family breakdown is the biggest

factor behind the UK's mental health

crisis and more than a third of

children reported bad mental health

with only a fifth with parents who

are still together. Only half of

today's teenagers will marry but

lots more will aspire to it. The

report found children with married

parents had reduced rates of mental

health problems. The marriage

foundation's research has found a

child born today in the UK is only a

50-50 chance of being with both

their parents by the age of 15. They

are more likely to have a smartphone

than a father at home. This think

tank commented that mental health

problems during childhood cast a

long shadow over future life chances

affecting work, relationships and

well-being into adult food. Children

need two parents committed to each

other in a stable relationship. The

marriage foundation believes early

intervention means encouraging

couples to make a clear commitment

to their future together before

having children. This, they believe,

is the very best way to give their

future children the best possible

chance of a happy and healthy

upbringing which, of course, has an

enormous benefit to society. I would

go even further. I believe to be

genuinely effective, early

intervention means equipping

children, with sufficient knowledge

and understanding of two crucial

points. The first is the importance

of making a commitment to a partner

before this phrasing is decided, and

working on the relationship. I've

seen, first-hand, whilst practising

as a divorce lawyer over four

decades, the family breakdown of

children. I've worked in the Law

Centre and private practice. Marital

breakdown is classless and

faithless. The effect on many

children is just devastating. It is

all too common crime romp the many

diverse people I've represented that

the marriage breakdown was the

result of simply marrying the wrong

person, someone with whom they were

fundamentally incompatible from the

outset. Putting on my school

governors that I looked into what

schools do to educate children about

the most important decision they are

ever going to make. Choosing a life

partner and raising a family. It

plays a vital role in the national

curriculum. School teaching tend to

specialise in the dangers of drug

and alcohol abuse. Sex education and

career advancement. They are

obviously very important. There

seems to be an enormous vacuum, even

in the private sector, and a real

lost opportunity for education

tomorrow's parents about

relationships. This is important for

children. They have nothing to

emulate and no domestic print to

encourage them. The endemic pattern

of family breakdown must be broken.

A child born in the UK only has a

50-50 chance of being with both

their parents by the age of 15.

I believe early intervention is the

best. Educating our school-aged

children in an attempt to cure this

and emotional illiteracy is the best

way to equip them to help them make

a wise or at least informed life

partner choice on how to work on

staying together afterwards. The

RSPCA has been sending out its

seasonal message. For more than 35

years, a dog is for life, and not

just for Christmas. And yet there is

no such compelling message relating

to the commitment of marriage. In

this context, I have sponsored a

three-year research project at the

University of Exeter where both my

husband and I attended, to try and

discover what lessons can be learned

by children in a school context

about relationships. For example,

what makes a good marriage, and what

is likely to make a bad one. This

has been done with a view to

providing material by video or a nap

to be introduced into the national

school curriculum. I urge the

Government to seriously consider the

benefits of introducing such advice

in its structure, as a mandatory

part of a child's education, to be

rolled out nationwide. If this can

encourage some of our country's

future parents to avoid disastrous

and unhappy unions with fallout for

their children, it will be money

well spent. It is my humble view

that prevention is always better

than here, and to bring what is what

happens when is fallout is inferior

to making a truly well-informed and

educated decision in the first

place. It is my dream that through

this particular piece of education,

a contribution will be made to a

flourishing and skilled society. I

would like to conclude by thanking

the most Reverend Archbishop of

Canterbury, for bringing about this

debate, to enable a light to be

shone in this neglected and

unfashionable area of social policy.

My Lords, I have spent much of my

life in public speaking in the

context of universities, and if you

are lucky or you did a good job, the

students would look up to you like

that. Just recently, it has all

changed. You look at a lecture

audience now, half the audience are

looking down at their devices, and I

did notice the right reverend prime

it, if I can put it this way,

fiddling with his iPhone quite a bit

in the last little while. This

sounds like a trivial observation,

but this is truly fundamental. We

are right on the edge of some of the

biggest changes that have ever

transformed human society, happening

much more quickly than ever before,

and happening more globally than

ever before. With some help from the

outside world, it must be said,

driven by the digital revolution.

And I was very pleased that the

right reverend Primate placed so

much emphasis on this. If we cannot

compete in this area at all, our

levels of education will be dead in

the water internationally. SHOUTING.

With some continuing disturbance

from outside. It is important to

understand, without being too

didactic about it, what the digital

revolution is, it is not the

Internet, it is not robotics, it is

not supercomputing power, it is all

of those things bound up together in

this huge rush of change going

through our lives. It is already

transforming universities, my Lords.

One of the most notable examples of

that is the emergence of so-called

MOOCs, Mass open online courses.

They are amazing. They reach

millions of people across the world.

People can take part in seminars.

You can take part in an online

seminar with students from Africa

while you are sitting in London, for

example, and those courses for free.

So there is a huge tension here

between the emergence of free mass

courses like that, and the huge fees

that are being charged in full-time

higher education. That tension will

be very difficult to resolve, and I

think the noble Lord Adonis was

quite right to draw attention to it.

The issue for me is not vice

Chancellor's salaries, which is

marginal, it is the wholescale

marketisation of higher education,

with a time bomb of student debt,

with no thought to the future and no

thought to the transformation of

labour markets which, if I get time

in my six minutes, I want to briefly

mentioned. What is happening, my

Lords, in universities, is also

happening in schools. Schools are

going to change just as

dramatically, as for example

businesses have changed, over the

past 15 to 20 years. Let me just

very quickly mention some of those

changes already happening. First of

all, traditional style teaching, the

teacher standing in front of the

class, disciplined children sitting

at desks, that still exists, that

will go on. But alongside that, even

more importantly these days,

children huddled round computers.

They are in groups. It is no longer

a single didactic model with the

teacher. The teacher is no longer

the repository of all knowledge

because all of human knowledge is

there, in the device that you have

in your pocket, or you have sort of

hidden away under the desk. So

already, the structure of schools is

already changing. Second, you have

radically different models emerging

around the world, and even though

they are in their early days, they

are in some sense the future, which

are like collaborative models of

education. For example, in the US,

you have the home-schooling

movement. There are 2 million

children in the US who are schooled

at home, not legal here, but legal

there. This is growing apace. This

is mostly done digitally. It is

often done in collaboration with

schools, so the idea that schools

are a fixed place will tend to break

down, just as happened in the

workplace. It is already happening

actually in education across the

world, even if we are just in early

phases of it. Third, as other noble

Lords have mentioned, the digital

revolution has a very dark side, and

it has to be an fundamental part of

primary education, secondary

education, to allow children to deal

with this dark side. I don't know if

you know this, but it came up in our

AI select committee, or someone

mentioned it and someone went to

look tough on the Internet, you can

buy an infant's potty with a bracket

on it where you can put an iPad for

a newly born infant. Well, it is

supposed to get a laugh, but it is

really frightening, because a

neuroscientist described the effect

of iPhones and iPad is on children

as crack cocaine for children. It is

so addictive and it is so

compulsive. And all of human

knowledge bad and good is there. It

is a huge challenge for education, I

think. It must start early on, it

must start with parents but it must

be embedded in primary school

education as well. Finally, we have

to look again at the usual things

said about lifelong learning. It is

a bit crass and simple. Digital

schools are not really relevant,

they are relevant to people working

in the digital industries, but

mostly this will be a process of

deskilling as happened in other

areas. Un-learning is just as

important as learning and we need a

completely different model about

what the unfolding of a child and

adult's life will be in this

imminent, well, already here future.

My Lords, I'm very grateful for

opportunity of speaking about

education, which we know is the

lodestone of all of the prosperity

of our society. I would like to

describe an ecosystem, a very

interesting ecosystem, it is called

poverty. And what it takes to

prosper is it takes the failure of

education to be written so large

that of the 9 million children that

are in school at the moment, we are

going to be writing off 3 million of

them, because 37% of our

schoolchildren goes through school

and come out the other end, and you

would never know that they had been

to school. It is a very interesting

thing, because then if you go to the

A&E department across the road, and

talk to the doctors and talk to the

patients, you will find that many,

many of those people, in fact, the

vast majority of them, will be

people who have failed at school. If

you go to the cheap jobs, if you go

to the £6, £7, £8, even £10 jobs, it

will be people who have not done

very well at school. If we spend £40

billion a year on our kids, that is

about 13 billion, is it not, 13

billion that we just throw away

every year. This is a recipe for

disaster. If we want to go into our

prisons, we can go into our prisons

and find that 80% of them will be

people who have failed at school. I

know this from my own experience. I

have to declaring interests, I am a

failed child who had an enormous

amount of money spent on him when he

got nicked and put into boys prisons

and places like that, whereas I said

in the House before, where they

spent twice the amount of money on

me that they would spend on sending

you to Eton. You have this really

weird thing. After the Second World

War, a kind of inept socialism came

in, to join the inept capitalism

that we run, because our capitalism

is a poor underinvested capitalism,

and our socialism is equally inept,

so we have got these two functions

going on at the same time. We have a

society which is an ecosystem for

social failure. We don't have a

bullish capitalism. We don't invest

our money in new businesses, we

spend 87% of all money that is led

by banks goes in the buying and

selling of property. We have this

really perverse world where we don't

educate our bosses, our ruling

class, if you like to call them, our

property classes, into taking more

risks with their money will stop

they would rather put it into

property. They would rather put it

into getting thousands of people

flipping hamburgers. We are in this

really strange self-defeating world.

It's interesting that when we joined

the European Common Market in 1973,

our productivity was about 30%

behind Germany. It is now 35%. At

that time, our productivity, we were

ahead of the French, but now we are

behind the French. We were well

behind the Italians and now we are

almost about 10% behind them. All of

these kind of strange things all

come together to produce this really

weird world where we produce

underachieving children who fill up

our social security holes, who fill

up our prisons, who fill up our A&E

departments, and we are sitting on

this ecosystem, and we are talking

about it, but is there a government

brave enough to stand up and say,

that whatever amount of experiments,

whatever amount of projects, however

we rearrange the budget, there needs

to be an enormous, an enormous

investment to be made in getting us

out of this situation. I don't want

to be too dramatic, but I'm sorry I

can't help it!

LAUGHTER

But you look at what happened in

1939. Between 1939 and 1945, we

borrowed the future. And we only

stopped paying off for that future

in 2006, when the man signed the

last cheque to the American

government over the lend lease. We

borrowed the future to actually have

a future. Unfortunately, unless we

declare war on our lack of

education, on the strange way that

we think we can leave things to

market forces, you look at the most

successful economy in the last 100

years, the German economy. The

German economy was established in

the 19th century by mass investment

by governments, and actually, if you

look at the United States and all of

the new technology, it has all grown

out of stuff that was developed by

government money given to

universities. There all these sorts,

we really need to wake up to this

bell-ringing, this toxic belt. And

that is, if we don't actually grab

the opportunity, we will be having

this discussion in ten, 20 years'

time, and we will be sent, isn't it

a pity that we have so minute poor

people, that we have so many people

failing at schools. Unless we do the

one thing that I would suggest that

we do, which is to plan, have an

enormous plan on how we going to get

out of the Greece, where are the

problems that have come this far,

what are we going to do about it, we

need some really big strategising

and that is what I suggest we do.

Thank you.

My Lords, many of us will have noted

the report of the commission on

social mobility list last week with

the sobering analysis of Britain's

alienate it and marginal

communities. It documents the

widening gap in attainment with the

worst cold spots for social mobility

now being in former industrial towns

and coastal communities. It is

striking that the map of low

attainment and high levels of young

people not in employment matches so

closely with those areas which voted

heavily to leave the European Union.

These areas, the report concludes,

feel left behind because they are.

They feel the benefits of

globalisation passed them by. We've

become a more socially divided

country, not so much along ethnic

lines but cities and suburbs and the

white working class. Sections of our

media have written these citizens

off as a feckless underclass.

Furthermore, part of the dependence

on immigration has come from

employers prevalent for recruiting

motivated workers from abroad as the

harder task of training and

educating local people. Better

quality education will not be enough

on its own to bring these depressed

and divided communities back into

harmony with the rest of Britain. We

need a social mobility commission

with a more redistributive approach

to spreading housing products across

our country. We need reinvestment in

transport links outside the

south-east and we need locally

available finance to support the

growth of local enterprises. It goes

without saying of course that Brexit

will do nothing to better their

chances and is likely to make their

situation worse. But education and

training is essential to social and

economic recovery. Early years

education is the most important

priority for children from poor and

vulnerable families, without the

support of a family group. I'm proud

the Liberal Democrats introduced the

pupil premium, which teachers tell

me has made a real difference. I

regret that the Conservatives cut

back on the sure start programme. I

say to the Labour Party that

increasing public spending on the

50% who do not go to university all

the way through from nurses to

apprenticeships, should be a higher

priority than cutting fees on

university students. I dissent from

my party's tuition fee line and hold

the same view today. Any progressive

politicians should put improving the

chances of the less privileged

first. There are many other measures

which should be pressing to

encourage children from these

communities to learn and gain life

skills and employment skills. There

should be the feeling that they are

included in our national community.

Teacher turnover is high. We need

not only to grant them more respect

but also grant them more. We should

extend that by writing off student

loans at a progressive rate. School

partnerships are clearly important

in encouraging teachers to stay and

in lifting performance.

Multi-academy trusts are one way to

provide such partnerships but local

authorities should also have a wider

role in encouraging schools to work

together. The Independent school

sectors should also do more to

encourage partnerships, to justify

the public benefits to which they

are obligated. I've seen some

excellent partnerships in action and

I'm conscious best practice does not

extend across much of the

independent sector. Schools do not

operate all year round.

Disadvantaged pupils fall back every

summer. Liberal Democrat councillors

have been running a summer school

for children between primary and

secondary over the past two years.

We need both non-governmental groups

and local authorities to provide

more opportunities for disadvantaged

children out of school hours and

school tones to widen their

perspectives and raise their

aspirations. Middle-class children

benefit from a range of out of

school activities from an early age.

Working-class children miss out on

that. I was saddened to discover

that the visit to the Lake District

was for some children, the first

time in their life they had been

outside Bradford. Low aspiration and

low expectation. The transition is a

vital aspect of successful secondary

expectation. Some employers work

closely with local schools to

provide work experience and the

prospect of training. Best practice

does not extend far enough across

the country. Further education

colleges have been, as Lord

Lingfield and Baroness Garden have

said, financially squeezed and

sidelines. We need to strengthen the

idea of continuing education which

means strengthening the role of

further education colleges. I wish I

could believe that the

apprenticeship scheme will help in

this respect but much of what I've

read says it will fail to provide

the most crucial element which is

the path into skilled work for young

people. The Church of England

already please a constructive part

in limiting this but I recall the

faith in the city initiative which I

saw as an appeal to middle-class

committees. Jack and schools have a

good record in providing more than

just the national syllabus and in

providing is children in schools

with a wider sense of community. I

thank the diocese of London for the

support he gives to the musical

education charity which I cheered

for 12 years which takes singing

into schools that have lost their

music teachers. The Church of

England and many other institutions

have much to contribute to repairing

the weaknesses of our countries

education and rebuilding an

inclusive society. The prime

responsibility lies with public

institutions, the state and the

Treasury to invest and rebuild a

flourishing and inclusive national

community. I am grateful to my most

honourable friend for this

opportunity. I will address a

crucial place of education in

providing value and enabling every

member of our society to contribute

and flourish. We must continue to

develop curriculum to suit our

developing industrial and commercial

needs. This means we must work to

nurture and support children and

young people so they may be

employable author on the grounds of

their skills and there are rich and

steadfast character. Giving them the

support and foundations for good

mental health that will be necessary

throughout their lives. We are

currently experiencing a period of

great uncertainty, politically,

financially, morally. Whilst we may

not know what things might look like

in March 2019, we do know that we

must continue to prepare for the

longer term to meet the demands of

our changing landscape and we are

ready to face the competitive

markets which we will engage with.

People must be skilled, adaptable

and resilient. This will only be