Oral evidence: Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education and Sex and Relationships Education in Schools, HC 145Tuesday 4 November 2014

Oral evidence, 4 November 2014.

Witnesses

Crispin Drummond, Explore—Students Exploring Marriage, Michael Mercieca, Chief Executive, Young Enterprise, Dr Ann Hoskins, Deputy Director Health and Wellbeing, Public Health England, and Michael O’Toole, Chief Executive, Mentor, gave evidence.

Chair

Good morning and welcome. Last week, a Home Office report noted that new psychoactive substances, or “legal highs” as they are called, present a new challenge to our ability to prevent drug use through education. Many of these products are presented as legal, but may be more harmful than the substances that are currently deemed illegal. How will Government guidance ever keep pace with changes in things like that? Will it always be out of date as soon as it is published? How does guidance keep up with the changing world of drugs and in other areas?

Michael O’Toole

It must attempt to. The resources that are available to support the teaching of drug and alcohol prevention and resilience within PSHE can support teachers, especially teachers founded upon better initial teacher training and ongoing personal development training, and they can attempt to keep up, but I recognise that is a challenge. My organisation is the leading UK expert in drug education around prevention, and we see the challenge that sits within your question and we put plenty of effort into keeping on top of those developments and that changing environment. We also particularly support the evidence base around understanding what works in terms of education and prevention in that changing environment. We would say that creating resources that can help teachers, in real time, to cope with that challenge is one part of the solution.

Dr Hoskins

For me, there are two areas. There is the actual understanding of what is happening, i.e. the surveys asking young people what substances they are taking or not taking are really important to help ensure that we keep up to date with what is happening. Then there is that flight of foot of ensuring we are giving teachers the opportunity to know what the new issues that are happening are. Often, in many ways, the teachers will be ahead of us, because they will be meeting and working with young people as well. We need that feedback, but some of the national surveys are really important for keeping us up to date with what is happening with our children and young people and what their views are.

Chair

Do you have any thoughts on space within the curriculum? I will give you two questions. One, does primary do a better job on preparation for later life than secondary? Let’s start with that as a question. Does anyone have any thoughts on that? Do you have any thoughts on whether primary schools typically do a more holistic job, if that is the right word?

Michael O’Toole

I am afraid both are the answer. Lots of research, particularly into early intervention as a preventative approach, demonstrates that reaching young people at the earliest possible age begins a life‑course approach that can build skills and resilience within young people through, definitely, primary and into secondary. We are in the process of launching a programme aimed at six to eight‑year‑olds called the Good Behaviour Game, which comes from North America and is demonstrating incredible outcomes for young adults when they experience that programme between the ages of six and eight. There are elements within there on drugs and alcohol, but obviously it is not specifically talking about the nature of drugs and alcohol with young people at that age; it is creating the types of life skills that will enable them to navigate those risks as and when they approach them in their life.

Chair

My question was specifically whether primary in general does a better job than secondary. Do you find that? You talked about a programme you are launching in primary. Is it easier to find space in the curriculum and support in primary for initiatives like this than it is in secondary?

Michael O’Toole

It is, yes. In our experience it is.

Crispin Drummond

The answer must be yes. Primary schools tend to be smaller and cosier and the children are more dutiful, perhaps, as well, so it is possible for teachers to create an ethos, to know the child and really to help them along—and in all those points secondary schools are a bit different.

Chair

In all of the submissions, I have not seen a great deal about making space. People said, “Make PSHE statutory, because that will force schools to create demand for training.” We were discussing earlier as a Committee whether the nature of secondary schools, the number of GCSEs that people sit, is just not leaving enough room in the curriculum and whether one way of delivering PSHE is simply to create the space within the secondary curriculum. Do you have any sympathy with that?

Crispin Drummond

Another point is that secondary schools can be big and impersonal and they do not have the opportunity to create what is known as an ethos, a sense of camaraderie and so forth. Too many teachers seem not to know the names of pupils who are not exactly in their classes and so on and so forth. The sense of belonging and community spirit is much more difficult to engender there.

Chair

Does anyone have anything specifically on creating space?

Dr Hoskins

It is quite important to look at the evidence base about how you do deliver PSHE. It is obviously what goes on in the classroom, but it is also taking whole‑school approaches. If you are looking at, say, emotional health and well-being, what are the policies on bullying? How are they adhered to within the class? What happens in the playground? To really develop personal, health and social education, it also needs a whole‑school approach, as well as what happens in the classroom.

Chair

So far, both of you are illustrating my point, which is that nobody seems to address this issue of the fact that secondary schools are so driven by current habits with accountability tables and curriculum. There is very little room for PSHE and no one seems to be commenting on that. Maybe that is because it is not important. Does anyone have anything to add on that—any sense that we should be trying to somehow or other create an incentive for fewer GCSEs to be taken, for instance? What on earth is the point of someone taking 10 or 11 when they could take eight perfectly well, have a broad curriculum and we could have more time to develop character, grit, resilience, financial understanding and the rest?

Michael Mercieca

Yes, space is an issue, and it is also an issue for teachers. Teachers are pretty overloaded at this point in time. In Young Enterprise, I now run a charity where financial education—through the pfeg merger—has just come on to the curriculum. Enterprise education was taken off the curriculum following the Wolf Report. However, with PSHE, it is already in schools. It is not going to be completely new, so maybe the space issue, although it is there, will not be that large. However, making it statutory would just give it more focus on teacher training, as previous people have been saying, and Ofsted would also be measuring it, so at the beginning and the end it would get more focus. There is a problem spacewise, but, since it is already there, it is maybe not such a problem.

Chair

You mentioned workload. In the last couple of weeks, Nicky Morgan has announced a workload challenge and has invited people to submit ways of reducing the workload of teachers, who, certainly during term time, work pretty long hours. It just seems odd, if you want more PSHE and better PSHE and more training of teachers and all the rest of it, that no one’s looking to reduce something else in order to make that possible without further burdening teachers with solving it. Some of them feel already that they are asked to solve all our social ills, and it is just added on and no one ever takes anything away from them.

Crispin Drummond

We have a number of schools that have very good-quality PSHE and they do not seem to need any further resources or further training for them to deliver that. There is some benchmarking to be done against the best practice.

Michael O’Toole

Good PSHE is part of the answer to the resource challenge as well, in that there is evidence to demonstrate that schools with a good PSHE environment have better behaviour standards, and better overall academic performance and outcome standards as well. In the previous session, there were several references to the pretty high level of support from the teaching profession for PSHE, and part of that is they see that good‑quality teaching can underpin a broader environment within the school that is conducive to better performance, better behaviour and better outcomes.

Bill Esterson

In the examples you have just quoted, are the schools you are talking about in areas of deprivation or not, or is it a mix? What is the background?

Michael O’Toole

Do you mean in terms of improved performance?

Bill Esterson

Yes.

Michael O’Toole

It was a pretty big study. I do not know enough about the breakdown, but it was a large‑scale study that covered a large number of schools.

Bill Esterson

The reason for asking that is that there is a tendency, perhaps, for more affluent parents to say, “We are taking care of those subjects,” and it is perhaps children from more deprived backgrounds who are in greater need of this sort of support. Have you got evidence to say whether that is true or not?

Dr Hoskins

The generic evidence is around that better personal health and well-being supports better educational attainment and vice versa. I would need to go back to the actual research, but I am sure it looked at all different types of schools. However, I am happy to go back and feed that back in to the Committee. It does go across all different levels of schools.

Bill Esterson

Coming back to Graham’s question, when accountability is so important and when league tables are everything, is it possible to do something like PSHE properly unless you include it as something that counts towards those league tables?

Michael O’Toole

If it is a statutory requirement and it has a focus within Ofsted inspection—although I agree with the points made earlier that it absolutely will not be a silver bullet that changes everything overnight—it will create momentum to improve and focus within schools more generally.

Michael Mercieca

On Young Enterprise’s evidence, when enterprise education was on the curriculum five years ago, we used to support 450,000 students in the UK. Now, five years later, we are supporting 250,000. It is a harder sell to go into schools when they say, “It is not on the curriculum. I have to deliver the results—the league tables.” Our evidence is if it is not on the curriculum, it makes it much harder to get it taught in schools.

Bill Esterson

Does the fact that there are so many different subjects make it difficult to do justice to PSHE? Is there a link between personal, social, health and economic education?

Michael Mercieca

We think there is, and the key is the method of teaching. It does come back to how the teacher is supported, because they are overloaded. If it is learning by doing, where you are empowering the student to do something themselves or discover something for themselves or do a project for themselves within a safe environment, which is a school, they will learn. They then develop traits—these are things that sound really grand, but they are not—like risk assessment, which is basically saying, “That is not a good idea. That did not work. I should not do that again.” If you are doing stuff in our area—i.e. enterprise, business, running a company or making something out of a tenner—then they just seem to develop as individuals. If you go around our schools, you will find—87% of our schools are state schools—that teachers will tell you, “Lucy was very shy and retiring and then grew into more of a rounded individual, a more confident individual.” We believe—and we do not have evidence to prove this, although we are starting to evaluate our programmes—that then when it comes to things like the sexual side they will become more aware of things. We think there is a link just by developing individuals. We call it “learning by doing”.

Dr Hoskins

For me, that is how some of the learning could be integrated into the curriculum. I am sure that by learning about maths you could certainly pick up some of the skills you would need in what the previous speaker was talking about. That is the importance of integrating into the curriculum as well as having it especially taught in individual lessons.

Bill Esterson

As PSHE, it works best as a collection of subjects that might appear not to be related, because of the way it is taught and because of the development aspects in learning. Do you all agree with that?

Crispin Drummond

There is one subject, which is to promote good, responsible behaviour in later life; that is the common point. It is absolutely based on relationships, which are first and foremost. These other matters of sex, drugs and money are subordinate to that. Relationships are the fundament of your self‑esteem; they dominate the way you handle your life and take your big decisions later. It is relationships first, foremost and for ever. Coming out of a good primary school, a child may have a good start because they have got past the elements of how to get on in the playground. Relationships are for the young people to decide upon. PSHE puts the young people in the driving seat here. They can set the agenda; they can indicate how issues should be progressed; and they can form their own conclusions. There are no right answers, exactly, and they are able, as they go through secondary school, to handle these issues. They have this awareness we are scared of; they have this background knowledge we are afraid of; and they can bring it forward, because they want to assume a kind of responsibility to cope with the challenges of life. They are nearly grown‑ups, for heaven’s sake, and we must treat them as partners in this enterprise, rather than objects or victims and so forth. Relationships cannot be taught, and that is why we have so many difficulties coming out about the difficulty of teachers handling issues of common humanity. Why is that difficult? Why is talking to young people difficult? However, they do have that problem, possibly because they are taught to be teachers, which is with an agenda, top‑down, trickle‑down and simplify, when this is about values and joined‑up thinking. If it cannot be taught, it can definitely be learnt by way of personal experience, which can sometimes be quite torrid, reflection—schools are very good nowadays at helping young people to reflect—and then other people’s experiences. That is what my group can do: engage with young people and give them not theoretical case studies but real life case studies for them to chew.

Bill Esterson

Can you just explain how you do that?

Crispin Drummond

In a snapshot, with good advice and preparation, we will have a volunteer married couple facing a class of 15‑year‑olds—four walls, door shut—and they are invited to ask any and every question that comes to mind about that couple’s experience in their own relationship, their family life, whatever—no holds barred. You are quite right: they are thinking of one thing to start with, which is sex. But you can get beyond that. I have done this with my wife many times. Typically, the first few questions of these young people are based on themselves. They say to her, “How did you know he was the one for you?” or they move on to say, “Did you have to sleep with him before you became an item?” or then, more troubling for all of us, “Is it not boring to be married after the age of 25?” You have to handle those questions. They move on, though, because they are moving. They say to her, in response to some knowledge, “How did you stand it when he had done you wrong? What was your response?” or they say to me, “Since you made such a Horlicks of your first marriage, why were you brave enough to go in for it again?” which is a good question. However, later on—it honestly does not matter what the demographic is, or whether they are challenged neighbourhoods or something, because all of them are up for this kind of thing—they will have a question like, “Didn’t your friends tell you to ditch him once he lost his job?” which is three sets of relationships in one question, or, “How did her mother take it when she found out you could not have children?” This is heavy stuff, and these kids are up to it. Any prescriptive top‑down sort of lesson about PSHE does not come near to this kind of issue, but they are up for it. As a consequence of this, the answers, of course, are sort of personal but, oddly enough, out come words like compassion, tolerance, forgiveness, love. In a real‑time setting that is impressive, and they are all writing down their little notes afterwards for their feedback, and they come back saying things like, “I never knew that. Maybe, you know, that could be for me,” or they say, “It takes a lot of work,” and they say, “But it might be worth it.” That is news for them, and the biggest thing they say is “hope”.

Bill Esterson

Moving on to a different question, do you foresee other subjects being added to what is covered by PSHE—it might even change the acronym—for example, in relation to equalities or violence against women and girls?

Dr Hoskins

PSHE should be informed by what the data tell us the problems are, both at a national level and within local areas as well and, indeed, within the school. If there is an issue in the school—in Rotherham, obviously, there have been some challenges—then you need to respond to what the issues are that young people are bringing up. If young people are bringing up an issue they want to work on and think about, it needs to be set within that context. For me, it is driven by what the data are telling us, looking at what is happening in the local area, and informed by the young people as to the issues that they are trying to tackle.

Bill Esterson

The Youth Select Committee concluded that schools play a critical role in supporting young people to develop the skills and knowledge that will help them in later life, and then they listed a whole set of possible subjects. It is quite a new subject for a lot of parents, though, who will not have experienced it at school. Is school the right place rather than it being parents? Should it predominantly be at school, or elsewhere, or a combination? What is the right mix?

Michael Mercieca

We think it predominantly has to be school, when you have that captive market of about 20,000 schools and about 15 million people in the whole education system, from primary right through to colleges and universities. What we find on, say, the financial education piece is that when the pupils or the students go home with some work they have done or something they have learned, and maybe the parents, as some teachers are, are not that commercially aware, the parents then get engaged. However, it has to be in the school system, because school is there to prepare young people for life and, certainly for our part, along with sex and health, it is all part of life, so it has to be, in our view, in the education system. The parents then catch on and support it.

Michael O’Toole

I agree with that, in part. Founding this in school does one really important thing for me, which is about universal access, which is really important. However, there are other really important pieces to a holistic approach, which definitely includes parents as well. Coming back to the fundamental question that you are posing in this Committee, making PSHE statutory will create extra motivation and, in fact, a requirement for schools to engage with parents around this subject, as they will have to across all statutory subjects. Again, they can be accountable for how they do that through Ofsted. It is principally driven through schools, and that gives that access.

Dr Hoskins

I totally agree that it is universal. The role of parents is really important, but we also must remember that there are some vulnerable groups as well and you need to ensure that they have access to this education as well. Part of that will be working with social workers or youth offending teams, just to make sure that it is universal, and recognising some kids are not in education.

Mr Ward

Unsurprisingly, almost every group or organisation that has submitted evidence believes that the issue that they are interested in should be included as a topic area, whether it is lifesaving or legal highs or LBGT issues, parenthood—whatever it may be—so you end up with a very long list. Caroline Lucas’ Private Member’s Bill has nine areas that should be included, but argues that schools should choose between the many possible topics, so it is the schools, the governing body and the head teachers within the school that should make a decision. How do we get down from this long list, what do we exclude and who makes the decision on that?

Michael O’Toole

I would say that when you end up with a very long list—and we could add to that list—thinking that then creates a modular approach to teaching PSHE that is to tick off each of those subjects in all cases is not the right approach. The first, fundamental step to good teaching is about understanding the specific needs of young people within the classroom and then within particular communities, and customising PSHE education to meet those needs, based upon a really solid understanding of those needs, then enables good teachers to be able to pick and choose, in some ways. Therefore, yes, the teachers make the choice, but based on that better understanding.

Mr Ward

It may not be a free choice, though, because you cannot expect each school to have the skill set to pick and choose from a long list, even if they believe it is necessary to teach that particular topic area within that school.

Michael O’Toole

Much of what is involved in achieving success here is not necessarily about subject expertise, such as expertise in so‑called legal highs. Sometimes that is necessary and there is the opportunity to draw in external expertise where that is helpful, but it is more about life skills and building general resilience and, as Crispin was saying, a better approach to relationships and better self‑awareness through reflective learning. That builds the young person’s resilience, particularly in our case, where we are trying to reduce harm, to a range of intertwined risks, and there is a definite correlation between the risks of harm from alcohol and drugs, risky sexual behaviours, gangs, and violence against women and girls. There is evidence to demonstrate that these things are very much interlinked.

Dr Hoskins

I suppose I agree with the whole relationship, but there are certain things, if you look at the data, where we have challenges in this country. For instance, there is a doubling of the level of obesity from starting reception to leaving primary school in year six. One in five of our children are obese. There has been a threefold increase in the number of teenagers who self‑harm in the last decade.

Chair

Sorry, I do not mean to interrupt. It is important stuff, but the question is how do you choose? The truth is this is a long list and they all make a pretty strong case. Who does not think relationships are thoroughly important? Who does not think LGBT and homophobic bullying is important? Who does not think all these health elements are important? They all are, but David’s question is how on earth you choose. You cannot teach all of them and you are not going to do it in a modular fashion, and the people for the specific areas would say to a generalised view about giving kids a bit more resilience and skill, “That is not going to let them know all about the detail of how it feels to be a bullied gay person,” or whatever.

Dr Hoskins

I suppose what I am saying is that there are some key issues that would be across the country, but then within different schools, when you talk, they will have their own specific issues and, also, talking to the young people, what are the issues that they are talking about? That is to try to help develop at a local level what the big issues are that they want to pick up, but there are some wide areas.

Mr Ward

I am worried that the final decision is made on the basis of “I know somebody who could come in and talk on that, so that would be a really good session”. “We do not know anybody who could talk on teenage pregnancy. I cannot really think of anyone.” “Oh, I know somebody who could come in. Let us do that.”

Dr Hoskins

That is why good teacher training is important. It is important that it is incorporated in the general curriculum and that there is a whole‑school approach. The teachers being trained on how to deliver this and how to incorporate it into the curriculum are really important to help in that process of what happens.

Mr Ward

There is a danger in moralising, but very often the very best way for young people to learn is from someone who has made that mistake and been through that. You might have a couple come in who say, “We have never been involved in drugs at all,” or, “No, we did not have a teenage pregnancy. However, let us talk about the general principles,” and so on. It is much better if you have a young person in there saying, “Look, I went through it, made mistakes at the age of 14; I am living with it now, I have three kids,” but those people may not be around, so what do you do? Do you not do that subject?

Dr Hoskins

That is why there is a curriculum of what you need to cover, and people coming into schools can be really helpful, but it is not the only thing. They will add on to what is also happening in the curriculum, and somebody coming in to do one‑off lectures and then leaving is not the most effective way of doing it. It has to be built into the curriculum, built into the training process and, yes, with adjunctive people coming in. Of course, that peer learning is really important as well.

Michael Mercieca

The solution is obviously in the curriculum. There are mandatory parts, so you are right. Things like obesity are an issue, so the healthy eating piece; financial education is on the curriculum; and then there is guidance on areas that local areas, again based on data that should cover those areas, can choose from. Then it is back to the teacher training at the front, Ofsted monitoring at the end. They obviously do the mandatory piece, so it covers the big piece, and schools should then be able to prove that they are tackling a local issue, which is why they have chosen something.

Crispin Drummond

Schools are never going to supply everything that is required, particularly since they seem to have given up on sport and music and so forth when compared with the good old days. However, they are the best places in society for people to come and discuss what can be just leisure pursuits and interests, which can be socially important topics. The school could well be given the responsibility for facilitating all that, but not necessarily providing very much of it at all. It really is an opportunity for parents to get involved and, until now, parent involvement in parent-teacher meetings is pretty poor, but if they are given something to do and some way of getting involved, there is hope for more collaboration.

Chair

Okay. Ann, what structures need to exist to get schools to take a more long‑term view of the child’s future, so that they see their physical and mental health, for instance, as a priority? Does something not need to happen to change their incentives?

Dr Hoskins

There is a good link between emotional health and well‑being and educational attainment.

Chair

In that case, it is fine. As long as their accountability is on academic attainment, and as long as they know that good health will contribute, then everything is okay.

Dr Hoskins

No, I am not sure that I said that.

Chair

I was just trying to be provocative.

Dr Hoskins

I got that one. For me, it is about the schools recognising this. You get what you inspect, and if Ofsted includes emotional health and well‑being in its inspection regime, that is really important. In the previous session, you talked about whether you should measure health outcomes by school. That would be quite difficult. Say you were looking at teenage pregnancy. You may have one pregnancy one year and none the next year. Therefore, to measure schools on those types of outcomes is really difficult, but it is about inspecting whether the school is taking that whole‑school ethos. It is looking at how everything that goes on in the school is supporting the child’s emotional health and well‑being, for example. “What is your policy on bullying?” “What are the teachers doing? What is the role model? What is being sold in the canteen to promote healthy eating?” Those sorts of things are important as well, and I think Ofsted has a role in looking at the ethos of the school. It is not just about educational attainment; it is about rounded individuals.

Crispin Drummond

You can ask the young people, when they are at school and also in the two or three years afterwards, how well they felt prepared in terms of knowing themselves, coping with challenges and so on. They rapidly meet people from other schools, and their opinion just a couple of years later would be very interesting feedback.

Chair

Okay. Are there any other thoughts on that?

Michael Mercieca

Schools have to be tracked on destination data, and this is a 20‑year project. You have to start measuring schools by area, by outcomes, and then you can see if it is reducing youth unemployment and if it is affecting health or crime issues in the area. The whole education structure could do with a change in terms of involving other people. We all know about the skills gap. There is a huge skills gap, so that can be addressed, and then it is cross‑party, cross‑parliamentary. But unless you measure the effectiveness of schools by how young people succeed in life, through a number of measures, we are not really going to make much progress.

Chair

No, it is trying to tease that out, isn’t it? The trouble with destination data is that it is early days. It is only several years on. If you are a head teacher in a struggling school and you are going to lose your job if you do not get the percentage of GCSEs that you require, guess what you are focused on. It is not the fact that in four years’ time people are going to tell you that you have a, sadly, higher than expected level of NEETs.

Michael Mercieca

To clarify, it is widening it from just being measured on the academic results, so there has to be this transitional period. Yes, in the short term you have to focus on the academic results, but in the longer term, five years plus, you start being measured on other outcomes. That was mentioned in Lord Young’s Enterprise for All report, which is very important.

Chair

Michael, do you have any thoughts on that?

Michael O’Toole

From our experience, I would not give up on having ambitions about being able to track outcomes as a result of better PSHE, but I do agree that it is long‑term stuff.

Chair

For the record, the Committee is very keen on that. It is just trying to get an accountability structure that is not too onerous but, equally, is sufficiently topical and recent to affect decision‑making and deploying of teachers, et cetera, now. If it becomes part of historic analysis of education outcomes, that does not impact on someone who is scared stiff of losing their job in the coming set of results.

Crispin Drummond

You could ask the parents.

Chair

They suggest doing it with the pupils, which gives you something a bit more possible.

Dr Hoskins

The pupils idea is quite interesting. There is a survey that is going to come out in the autumn about the health behaviour of school‑aged children. This is 5,500 pupils in England, 74% of whom thought that PSHE helped them and 42% felt that the PSHE was not as challenging as it should be. Interestingly, when I talked to some young people they said they thought it should be a GCSE, because then their teachers would take it as seriously as they would. I am not saying I agree with that, but it is interesting that that is what the young people said to us. Also, 47% did not think that relationships and sex education was covered well. This is topical feedback from young people at the time.

Craig Whittaker

And 38% of young people cannot ever remember having any form of education around financial stuff, for example. Is that because it is boring?

Michael Mercieca

Yes. It comes back to the learning-by-doing point. Learning by doing is now well tested. Young Enterprise has been around over 50 years; it came out of the States as part of a worldwide group in 120 countries, so the programmes are constantly refreshed, but the whole ethos is about getting young people to do something—to take responsibility. For example, on one programme they set up a company, choose the staff and get rid of the staff if they are not performing.

Craig Whittaker

Is that not best done in maths, though?

Michael Mercieca

The challenge for us with financial education on the curriculum is making things like compound interest interesting, and we believe, again, you will do that by linking it to, say, in the primary programme, our Fiver programme, where we dish out a fiver for a month and they make some money out of that. You have to get them to do something.

Craig Whittaker

Is it worth doing that, though? Quite a lot of these young people do not leave home until they are in their late 20s or 30s now, and getting a mortgage is a long way off when you are at high school, for example.

Michael Mercieca

The mortgage piece would come at the end, but things like buying games online is happening, looking after pocket money, getting a weekend job, how to manage that money, what to do with that money. The mortgage and the pension are further down the line. However, it is memorable. If they do it, they will remember it. All our students remember. If they remember one thing from school, it is that.

Craig Whittaker

Therefore, the 38% figure will drastically improve as time progresses with the new curriculum. Is that what you are saying?

Michael Mercieca

Yes, because we will make it interesting, but Young Enterprise is a small part. We have 250,000 students out of 15 million, so it is small.

Craig Whittaker

Ofsted says that its requirement to report on spiritual, moral, social and cultural development will lead inspectors to look at PSHE. Are you confident that the inspection of financial education will be included in that process?

Michael Mercieca

In a word, no. We have to work on that. We need to work with Ofsted to get it measured, but currently it is not going to be very well measured, no.

Craig Whittaker

It is not enough, so that needs to change.

Michael Mercieca

Yes.

Alex Cunningham

Michael O’Toole, the proportion of 11‑ to 15‑year‑olds drinking alcohol at least once a week has fallen from 26% to 10% between 2003 and 2012. Illegal drug use amongst the same group is at its lowest level since 2001. That is without any changes—no statutory requirement for PSHE—so is school education already an effective tool in tackling alcohol and drug abuse issues?

Michael O’Toole

It may be part of it. There are complicated reasons behind some of the trends that you describe, but I suppose I would come back to the point I was making, which is that I do not believe that necessarily drugs, alcohol or, indeed, any of the other subjects that we have talked about always has to be a separate module within this approach. It very much needs to be driven by understanding local needs, by talking to the young people and understanding what the issues are for them. There are some more concerning patterns, particularly around new psychoactive drugs and a real lack of understanding about the harms of those drugs, mistakenly called legal highs.

Alex Cunningham

So what is the role of the school as opposed to other agencies in highlighting some of the issues of the new, modern-drug-type activity?

Michael O’Toole

I would say that the role of good PSHE within schools is to enable young people to be more self‑aware, to be able to be resilient to peer pressure, to be able to make informed decisions and to be able to reflect on what they understand about those environments in a more supported and attached environment, which the school presents.

Alex Cunningham

Schools can be very different, though, in terms of cultural and religious attitudes to alcohol. Doesn’t that have to be addressed as well as part of the child’s need?

Michael O’Toole

Absolutely, yes and we completely recognise that. Funded by the Department for Education, we provide a platform of resources for teachers, called ADEPIS, to help them navigate some of these very issues. One of the things we have just been focused on is creating briefings for teachers around understanding cultural issues and ensuring that that is built into that holistic approach. I absolutely recognise that issue.

Alex Cunningham

Does your pack advocate parents being able to withdraw their children from drugs and alcohol education as well as sex and relationship education?

Michael O’Toole

No, we do not have a statement on that.

Alex Cunningham

What is your position on that?

Michael O’Toole

I was here for the earlier session and I noted the discomfort among the panel trying to answer that question. As a charity, we do not have a position on that. My personal drivers here are very much accessibility and universal opportunity for young people, so my personal reaction is that there should not be that opportunity for parents to withdraw.

Alex Cunningham

Is that to do with alcohol or is it to do with sex and relationship education?

Michael O’Toole

It is to do with this whole approach.

Alex Cunningham

Okay. Can we have a comment from the others on that?

Crispin Drummond

One of the biggest drivers of young people’s behaviour is peer discussions, which used to be limited to the playground or the bicycle shed, but nowadays are much more concerned with internet communications. The friendship groups that people have will inform them and advise them about their attitude towards eating meat, which is against, and alcohol and drugs, which is increasingly against, and we are very grateful when the internet works in, as it were, our favour.

Alex Cunningham

Are there any other comments?

Michael Mercieca

Just a point on how to teach the drug‑type abuse problems in schools. For eight and a half years, I was director of finance and operations for the programmes at the Prince’s Trust that focused on NEETs. We came up with the ambassadors, and the most powerful thing, we found, was that if you send someone into the classroom who has suffered from drug problems and has been living on the street, it is much better than sending the police in there. On the point about whether parents can withdraw their children from these classes, I would say, on drugs and alcohol, no. On the sexual one, it has to be age appropriate and that is the difficulty: what age? I certainly would not want my 13‑year‑old, who is now 23 years old, taught. It has to be age appropriate, but once you find that age, then no: you are taught in school and that is that.

Alex Cunningham

Ann, do you have a view?

Dr Hoskins

Universal requirement.

Alex Cunningham

Universal requirement, okay. Finally, from me, sex and relationship education—or now we should be calling it relationship and sex education—can sometimes be portrayed as working on the pragmatic assumption that some young people engage in sexual activity below the age of consent. Is a similar assumption made on alcohol and drugs education?

Michael O’Toole

It is, in some cases, yes. This comes back to Michael’s point. It is very much about age-appropriate approaches and about understanding the individual child’s perspective and needs, but absolutely, and there is evidence of harm from underage abuse of, particularly, alcohol, and there is evidence of the damage that that does in terms of attainment, not least educationally.

Alex Cunningham

Therefore, should the emphasis be on harm reduction rather than just prevention?

Michael O’Toole

Yes, it should be.

Chair

Does anyone disagree with that? No.

Mr Ward

As to the earlier comments you made, Crispin, on the importance of the “R” in the SRE and the workshop that you described, would you ever use two men or two women in that situation to talk about their longstanding relationship?

Crispin Drummond

We could do. The methodology would work very well there and, as it happens, despite one remark I made, most of the discussion is about relationships between, as it were, any two people. For our part, we are determined not to have an agenda in particular, not to have any judgments in particular and not to steer towards any outcomes in particular. That is how, if you like, transparent we are. As it happens, I think it is the case that none or nearly none of the young people have ever raised questions about same-sex marriage. I know it has been big in other places, but all the young people I know think it is not an issue and it certainly does not have any principles attached to it, so we just respond to that. As somebody said a moment ago, most of them are supposing that hetero marriage is at least an example that we all kind of know and can look at in its way, but there are no, if I can put it like this, principles to say yes or no on that one.

Mr Ward

I remember my youngest son had a friend whose parents were a gay couple in a longstanding relationship and he had a pretty awful time, I have to say, at school as a result of that, unfortunately. He could have done with some of this relationship training maybe for the other people in the school at the time. The reason I ask is that the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 encompasses same-sex couples, but the 2000 Government guidance on SRE states that pupils should be taught about the nature and importance of marriage for family life and bringing up children.

Crispin Drummond

Yes, and then there is that guidance note, if it was a guidance note, that was talked about in the earlier session, which we have read carefully, and we think that what we offer is plumb central in that and does not have any issues for us and does not have any issues for anybody else. In a sense, it is incumbent on a school, with its governors and its pupils, to devise a policy that may well include same-sex marriage being represented, which is what Stonewall is, quite correctly, asking for, and we do not have a problem with that. The understanding, though, is that it should be what is called proportional or representative or something, which does tend to mean—I do not know what the figure is, 5%, 7%, 10%—not too much airtime when compared with other possibilities.

Mr Ward

Okay. I will just go straight on to the next question and, using your own words, how should schools take a role in helping young people understand and discuss the ideals and practice of love, tenderness, care and concern?

Crispin Drummond

We are happy with the example that we have of giving real-life examples where these words turn out to be more than ideals; they are tough love in action, and the dilemmas that life throws up have to be reconciled.

Alex Cunningham

I have finished all my questions, Chair. I beg your pardon. My name is against question number 35. I do beg your pardon. Some elements of PSHE education are already delivered through other subjects.

Mr Ward

32.

Alex Cunningham

Sorry?

Mr Ward

32, isn’t it?

Alex Cunningham

33. I will do 33 first and then I will gather my thoughts. I will start again. Some elements of PSHE education are delivered through other subjects. Financial education is now part of the national curriculum for maths. Healthy eating and the effects of recreational drugs are referred to in the national curriculum for biology. Would just a purely cross‑curriculum approach to this not do the job?

Chair

Fully embedded, no need for anything discrete.

Mr Ward

So, we do not need an hour every day to have PSHE, or half‑hour.

Michael Mercieca

If I leap in on financial education, we think that having it as part of PSHE will work better, because in the other subjects in which it sits, citizenship and maths, it is going to be non‑personal, so you talk about hypothetical-type mathematical problems rather than personal ones about how to manage or avoid debt.

Chair

Isn’t part of the trouble with the teaching of maths in this country that it is so theoretical, and if it was made a lot more practical and personal, you would engage more people and they would not think they were bad at it? Discuss.

Michael Mercieca

It is very true, and that is back to my point about how we want to make compound interest interesting. Teachers do find that it is too theoretical, and their students are saying, “Why am I going to have to learn about Pythagoras? What use is that going to be?”

Chair

So, if maths was done properly, you would not need to have a discrete bit, so David is right: in the ideal world it would just be personalised and embedded in maths.

Michael Mercieca

If it was done in a different way, it could work, yes.

Chair

I am slightly putting words in your mouth; I apologise.

Michael O’Toole

I would say no. As you describe, elements are rightly covered across other subjects and the nature, obviously, of PSHE is that it is very over‑arching. However, coming back to some of the earlier questions on the focus within schools, resources being provided and accountability, it requires its own separate time on the timetable too.

Chair

Ann, the embedded ideal, yes or no?

Dr Hoskins

No. Embedded, yes, but you also need that holistic approach; you are looking at the young person, the resilience—the overall working with young people on that. If you pick it up quite systematically in all the different subjects, you will not get that holistic, rounded, approach.

Alex Cunningham

We have a long way to go to convince anybody that PSHE should have that really heavy, dedicated time that some people may like it to have. But is it realistic, given the fact that the schools are under tremendous pressure to get all those academic subjects into the curriculum, with more after-school events in order to support the core curriculum? Is it realistically possible to make time in the school curriculum?

Crispin Drummond

Yes, as it happens.

Alex Cunningham

How? Is it realistic to say to a head teacher, “You will have X number of minutes or X number of hours a month on PSHE”? Is that really possible in the pressured world that head teachers have at the moment? I see lots of nods.

Michael O’Toole

It can be. I do not underestimate how difficult it is, but it needs to be, for some of the reasons we have described, and also not least the economic argument, which is very clear, that good early-intervention and prevention approaches save the state massive amounts of money.

Alex Cunningham

Is extending the school day the answer?

Michael Mercieca

I would make the point I made earlier: it is already being taught in schools. Yes, there is always a space problem, but it is already in there, so it is not a huge problem and, yes, other things can be looked at and reduced in time. In terms of PSHE, it is hugely important and it is back to managing and assessing risk. It goes across the whole piece. It is a problem, but it is not insurmountable; maybe other things will have to have less time.

Dr Hoskins

For me, I suppose it is about what our education system is there to do. Is it to deliver rounded individuals who have high educational achievement, or is it there just for high educational achievement? Surely if we are looking at the issues that we are dealing with in society, it is rounded individuals.

Alex Cunningham

You are back to the Chair’s point: why have more than eight GCSEs in your curriculum? If you do them well and are taught well, but also have all this much more rounded education, you would be more content.

Chair

Ann, I am not sure that really answers Alex’s question, because no-one is saying it should only be the academic. It is saying that maths done properly should be engaging, personalised and a problem‑solving tool that is relevant to real life, and Macbeth will tell you about the toxic nature of some relationships and how they lead you into dreadful places, and Romeo and Juliet will show even when it is gorgeous and beautiful you can still end up dead. There is all sorts of stuff you can learn if it is done properly, and you can inspire the kids, they get A*s and they also come out thinking, having genuinely reflected on relationships, finance and compound interest and the like. Is that not true? I am just wondering whether the utopian ideal would not have PSHE; it would have it all embedded right across, because everything would be made relevant, interesting and have deep philosophical lessons taught.

Crispin Drummond

The answer to your question is yes. Good drama and good literature can be helpful, but also good subjects that are completely outside school, which include sport and music and things—people can get good PSHE advantages from that.

Craig Whittaker

Crispin, your group obviously acts as an external charity/company going into schools on a commissioning basis. Why should schools not just adopt their own processes for teaching these things rather than getting in expensive consultants?

Crispin Drummond

There is know-how involved, and we are proud of it, but we would gladly, as it were, sell it or share it, so there is no obstacle to that. It does tend to be the case that, with the intimacy that is involved, it is an emotionally difficult thing to choreograph. It is quite instructive that some schools are more welcoming than others, in the sense that the young people are capable of handling these issues more articulately than others because they have had good PSHE beforehand, in some sense. One of our features is the authenticity of the people we put forward.

Craig Whittaker

Why can the schools not do that? Why do they have to commission you?

Crispin Drummond

They could, and they have a lovely group of parents out there who keep on saying, “If only there was more we could do for our young people.” There is an easy answer. A little bit of anonymity might help, so that you put parents from one school into another and vice versa, but that is easy to plan, so, yes, it is a good thing. We do put some effort into training our facilitators. We have a person who goes in to prepare the class and help them what they are about to think about and get them to identify their hopes and fears for what they might get out of the session. That helps jolly things along very well, so that the exact session, the dialogue, generally is very satisfying to all parties. However, it could be done.

Craig Whittaker

Do you often go in and teach teachers to deliver as well? Just going back to the parent thing, I still recall the horror on my own children’s faces when I used to go into the school to do something.

Crispin Drummond

Yes, so you should have gone into a different school.

Craig Whittaker

Absolutely, but do you teach the teachers?

Crispin Drummond

We could do. We hold up a palette of requests saying, “We are really looking for schools that would like to join us in this endeavour. We are looking for volunteers amongst parents, and we are looking amongst people who could be these facilitators,” which takes a little bit of training, we think two days—not a lot—to get the issues right and get the rules of engagement right, because you do not want to go overboard. Yes, is the answer.

Craig Whittaker

Okay. Do we know to what extent PSHE topics are covered by charities or youth groups—all those types of things that are external to schools? Does anybody have any idea?

Michael O’Toole

I have quite a bit of experience in the drug and alcohol area.

Craig Whittaker

So have I—on a different plane from where you are.

Michael O’Toole

I think so. There is quite an established track record of external organisations, principally charities, going into schools. I would add a note of caution to that approach, and this follows on from Alex’s earlier question about the effectiveness of some of those interventions. Given the non‑statutory basis for PSHE, there is some risk that some of those programmes are not really fitting within a quality assured framework, and they need to be.

Craig Whittaker

We had the discussion with the last panel about putting things on a statutory footing. We know from religious education, for example, that it is on a statutory footing, but its delivery is a postcode lottery. Just a statutory footing is not going to deliver the quality.

Michael O’Toole

No.

Craig Whittaker

So, what is this big thing around putting things on a statutory footing?

Michael O’Toole

Teacher training is the critical element.

Craig Whittaker

But we train teachers to deliver religious education in a big way. In fact, they are specialists, but it still does not ensure that quality is going to be delivered. You started off with the comment about having to have a look at the quality being delivered from charities and youth groups, for example. How do we sustain that in school? If they are not the ones to do it, how do we make sure that happens consistently on an even footing? I am not convinced that a statutory footing is the answer to that.

Michael Mercieca

As we have all said, the statutory footing means that teachers get trained, and on your point that that does not guarantee it, that is what Ofsted is there for, and it is meant to pick up bad teaching. In terms of the charity piece, a charity is not going to continue to be funded by its funders, whether those are private or public, if it delivers bad services. Certainly, in Young Enterprise, if we go into a school and the teachers do not see a benefit to the students, they will not take the programme again. So, it is self‑regulating and, in a way, although we are a charity, it is commercial. If the service is not good, they will not take it. As a charity, we go into schools; we take volunteers—people from the local community, business people—who mentor the students. They are telling them their real life experiences, so we are getting businesses into schools, so it does work and, in a way, it is self‑regulating, because if we do not do it well we will not be funded.

Crispin Drummond

My answer is that it takes a statutory footing to get Ofsted to do something and it could already have the oomph to promote best practice and to wave the flag and to encourage, advise and warn, in the way that it flatly does not, in this area. If you look at its website for identified best practice, there is close to nothing there, and it could, of course, be having lesson plans for whole terms from the good schools that are already doing this thing as a benchmark. Just communication would be a good thing, and if it takes statutory to get them to do it, I wish they would.

Chair

Super. Thank you very much indeed. As I said to the last panel, if you have any further thoughts, particularly about recommendations, however small, whether that is for change or, indeed, certain elements of the status quo that need to be retained, please reinforce any points you have already made to us and be in touch, if you so desire. Thank you very much indeed. Oral evidence: PSHE Education and SRE in schools, HC 145 21