Children: Missed Education

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, we believe that part of the reason for the awareness of more children being home educated is as a result of the duties we placed on schools in the 2016 guidance, which I mentioned in my first Answer. The next stage is to ensure that local authorities are using all their existing powers to investigate cases of where home education might be occurring or where children are missing. Yesterday, in our integration strategy, we announced further measures on that.

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (Con)]

My Lords, will the Minister confirm that these children will form a high priority for the teaching of English, reading and writing, given that they are most likely to be among the three-quarters of a million people in the United Kingdom who do not speak our native language?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

Obviously, children who are missing from education are one of the highest priority categories that we have to worry about. In the integration strategy document announced yesterday, we launched a consultation on the guidance and enforcement of independent school standards—a lot of children can end up in such small schools—and guidance on unregistered schools, which will deal with similar issues.

Education and Society

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Friday 8th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (Con)]

My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Chartres, who is now a highly eminent personality on the Cross Benches. I note that the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury is also surrounded by a huge number of right reverend Prelates, so we are surrounded by virtue—alas, not on this Back Bench at this moment, where I am almost by myself. My remarks will be perhaps a little less elegiac and more practical. I seek to discuss the use of education as a tool to help alter human behaviour in a way which will make an enormous difference to those who are influenced by it, because their state at the moment is so utterly desperate.

I recently had the pleasure of leading a second conference with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby in St George’s House, Windsor. Our first conference was on religious persecution and its impact on forced migration. Our second conference, which took place just the other day, led on from that, discussing religious persecution and forced migration to return and integration—a very difficult topic indeed. We were fortunate to have Canon Edmund Newell from Cumberland Lodge, who provided us with a wonderful background paper; LDS charities, with Elder Jeffrey Holland and Sister Sharon Eubank; Brigham Young University; Oxford University, with Dr Theodore Zeldin; and we were fortunate to have a number of eminent officials from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the US State Department.

This work sprang from your Lordships’ Select Committee on Sexual Violence in Conflict, of which both the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby and I had been members. Our focus was therefore very much on the plight of the Yazidis and others—now, sadly, the Rohingyas—who have been appallingly abused in monstrous ways that I cannot even bring myself to articulate today because they are so utterly repugnant. For our first conference we had the Prince of Yazidis himself, whose health is extremely fragile, and this time we had his grandson, Prince Diar.

We focused on three important points, and education came out as the hub of recovery potential. First, we talked about recovery post sexual violence and other violence; secondly, we talked about survival in an IDP camp and that sort of situation. We were distressed to discover that in both refugee camps and IDP settings—there are now 62 million-plus people in those situations, in remarkably few places in the world—there is no education provision by any aspect of the United Nations at all. Finally, we talked about the return, with perhaps the most poignant matter of return at the moment being the reconstruction of the library of Mosul.

We talked about recovery and about physical, mental and spiritual help. We pointed out in our report, which comes out next week, that there is no capability to worship in any form of IDP or refugee camp situation. There is no space, and there are no priests or leaders. In the secular United Nations world, there is no space for worship, yet people’s religion forms a critical part of their identity. I urge the most reverend Primate to think about that.

We also talked about the need for psychiatry and psychosocial support. We found that music and dance were particularly important and that the creative industries were absolutely vital to restoring a person. We noticed that in the IDP camps—particularly among the Yazidis—there were no families, as many of them had been destroyed. The parents had been killed in front of these poor survivors—these girls, boys and young people. Some had been burnt alive and some had been buried alive, so there was no family to look after the children. However, there was the possibility of music, dance, worship and healing through learning. Some of these dear survivors, the girls themselves, told us that what really made them feel better was an educational setting. If we could put them in an informal classroom with a teacher and a subject—it did not matter what it was; it could be chess, learning, music or anything—they suddenly began to feel that they were human again. We found that education offered huge possibilities for their recovery.

The charity that I chair, the AMAR International Charitable Foundation, will be 25 years old next week. We have looked after 10.5 million patients over those 25 years and, more importantly for this debate, we have had 5 million pupils, all of them in refugee or IDP camps, or hiding behind walls, in waste bins or at the back ends of streets. They are completely and utterly without hope. However, apart from physical health, food and shelter, education is their biggest deprivation.

I have a question for the most reverend Primate. He heads up the Anglican communion. Would he be willing to put his weight behind ensuring that the world knows that education in camps and in these awful settings—particularly religious education, incorporating, as it does, music, dancing, writing, singing and talking—should be an absolute and not merely an also-ran that gets no space at all in our secular society? Perhaps I may also ask him to put our strength, our support and our clear vision of who they are behind the Yazidis, who, as the UN has declared, are suffering genocide and will disappear if their religion—they are said to worship the Devil but they do not—is not recognised in the same way that almost every other faith globally is. Perhaps the Anglican Communion, of which I am a Back-Bencher, would be kind enough to help with that as well.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (LD)]

It is an honour to join your Lordships’ debate on the humble Address. My remarks will focus on culture, education and health, with special reference to children in UK schools.

Like many of your Lordships, I was alarmed recently to see the latest NICE press release on standards in care, which focused on statistics published by YoungMinds recently on the mental health of children and young people in our schools. I notice that one in 10 of children in class have diagnosable mental health disorders. In over a decade, there has been a 68% increase in young people’s hospital admissions due to self-harm, while 80% of those under 16 and 8,000 children aged under 10 suffer from severe depression. Of course, as we know, depression is commonly treated with anti-depressants and with psychotherapy—as Hale 1997 tells us. Both tricyclic anti-depressants and the more recent selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors—the SSRIs—have been found to be effective in treating depression, according to studies by Paykel and Edwards respectively in 1992.

The Minister may be aware of the recent Cochrane review by Moncrieff in 2003, which found small differences only between anti-depressants and active placebos, with the lowest effects being shown in in-patient trials. In consequence, the advice is to prescribe SSRIs to moderately and severely depressed adolescents only quite rarely. But I wonder whether the Minister has spotted a parallel finding, which is reliant only on small sampling so far and which I believe is well worth further research. It gives remarkably good outcomes—considerably better than those I have just quoted—on depression for passive and participative music therapy and for active music in classes. Of course, music therapy for depression is a well-known support system. The National Health Service has published reports on it over the last decade or so. As recently as a couple of weeks ago, some later findings showed that singing in a choir for 60 minutes scientifically proved to be good for mental and physical health in a very large proportion indeed.

I doubt whether it is any surprise to the Minister to recall that the overall education of children and young people—and, indeed, adults—is vastly enhanced by music, mathematics and speech. The very recent findings on the Broca’s area of the brain—which has been known for quite some years to be the area where we develop speech—have shown something hugely exciting: as that area is activated for speech, it is activated at exactly the same time and in the same way for music and, alongside that, for mathematics. That is the very recent finding by the Max Planck Society, which is enormously important. The new findings teach us that when you are learning to communicate through language, it is majestically enhanced through the learning and practice of music and mathematics, which, in the modern world, lead one immediately into being an IT expert.

It is therefore a credible argument that there is immense value to many classes of our society—many children and many adults—to be learning and practising music. It helps the physically disabled immensely, as I see, for example, when working with physically disabled children in Romania. The difference of a year working with children in music and dancing—however handicapped you may be; whether you are a quadriplegic and in a wheelchair—is astounding in terms of physical health. But we can now tell why—because of the recent findings on the Broca’s area—it is of such enormous importance for mental health as well.

I recall that, in the case of so many prisoners in the UK—socially disadvantaged, yes, but also innumerate and illiterate to a very high degree—if they begin on music, it triggers, as we now know, the linguistic competence that is inherent in the brain. Music is enormously effective in developing emotional IQ. As we now know from the recent findings, 90% of high performances in the workplace have very high levels of emotional intelligence; 58% of success in all jobs can be explained, according to the latest statistics, in terms of high emotional intelligence. That, again, is vastly enhanced by music. It helps the deaf as well; and the academic elite, of course, will need great challenges in order to forge ahead. Music provides social cohesion of a huge capacity. We can look at the Trojan horse schools, particularly Saltley Academy and others in Birmingham, which are now twinning up with Tower Hamlets children in a huge set of musical performances for the Water City Festival in the Tower of London this year. It is enormously helpful.

Nevertheless, the national plan that the Government put in place in 2011, following the Henley review on music in schools, has by all accounts not been delivered. The music hubs that it proposed—composed of local music services, voluntary groups and private firms—simply do not work. The money invested in them—£171 million —has been ineffective. As the Ofsted report said, there was “little discernible difference” to three-quarters of the schools it inspected after the Henley review was put in place and the national plan. It is hard not to conclude that somehow the Government have washed their hands of the provision of music because of the cuts in musical budgets of up to 25%, yet the national music plan was to ensure that every child was offered an opportunity to learn an instrument. The First Access programme was to offer instruments in groups for a short time. What has emerged is that, between the ages of 5 and 18, a child might—if they are fortunate, through the First Access programme—have only five hours of shared instruments.

That is simply not enough to tackle the enormously high level of depression in children and the other socially excluded groups that I have mentioned—and there are many more—and it does not take account of the tremendous findings put forward to us all by the National Health Service, which tells us a different story. I wonder if, somehow, the famous joined-up government thinking should be brought into play, because, as we know, the theory and practice of music, the performance and the active participation with instruments and with others give the most extraordinarily good results. We have the findings. I ask the Minister to give me a meeting, perhaps, to discuss all of this. It is not good enough that, when our children were polled—the eight, nine and 10 year-olds—on their own happiness, as happened recently, we should be so low down the scale. Romanian children were at the top—three-quarters or two-thirds of them offering happiness—while British children were very near the bottom. I have the evidence, and I seek a meeting with the Ministers. I think that this is a topic of true importance.

Music Education for Children with Physical Disabilities

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Wednesday 30th July 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister very much for the opportunity for us to discuss such an important topic as music and children with physical disabilities. I see music and differently abled children as going together like the proverbial horse and carriage. As a Music Therapy trustee, I recall a boy with an immovable body and just one flailing arm. A music therapist sat beside him—an elderly lady—and went tap, tap, tap with a tiny drum and she watched his arm. She came back several times a week to sit beside him. She tried to follow his flailing arm with the tapping of the drum and after weeks of external pursuit by the musician of drum-arm co-ordination, with the drum determinedly chasing the formless jerking of the wandering arm, the boy’s mind had taken in the principle and the arm began to lead the drummer. Many months on, his arm was steady, controlled and he began to be able to take food to his face and his face regained control. After a while he found himself and he could eat, masticate and swallow. His life was transformed by music therapy.

I recall another boy who was completely unable to control any of his limbs and was confined to a wheelchair at the age of 11. He became a pupil. Little by little the clear rhythm of music, played live beside him, focused his mind and body. Time passed and all his limbs and his trunk as well became responsive to the music. That boy learnt to walk and his wheelchair was permanently discarded. Music has powers that other taught subjects cannot replicate. All babies are born with perfect pitch and unknowing of any of their specific personal disabilities. Each one is thus innately musical. All disabilities can be helped by carefully tailored musical training.

One in 1,000 children in England and Wales under three years of age are profoundly or severely deaf. The figure rises to two children in 1,000 between the years of eight and nine. Music can help them too: to speak, lip read, listen more effectively, increase their vocabulary, write better, enhance their sport and physical performance, and socialise. The Mary Hare School for deaf children puts music at the heart of its curriculum. The Mary Hare Foundation’s purpose-built Arlington arts centre houses, among other specialties, the Nordoff Robbins Mary Hare music therapy unit, which teaches pupils individually, from primary to sixth form.

A lively school orchestra with all instruments learns and performs across the music spectrum—an early favourite was something called “Dirty Custard”—and new instruments are sought and found. The recent and beautiful samba instruments were given by the EMI foundation. Volunteers from Vodafone locally often fundraise. Choral singing and individual instrumental performance are regular occurrences for outside audiences. These are profoundly and severely deaf children in the category that I have defined.

I should add that Mary Hare is a non-maintained school, so pupils are funded by the local authorities where they live. Fundraising is therefore essential to help families to send children to that school from around Britain and abroad. Early this year, the then principal, Tony Shaw, learnt that a no-notice inspection by Ofsted was about to begin. It did, in an hour and a quarter. The resultant report declared:

“Exceptional personal and academic opportunities ensure that the school makes an enormous difference to the lives of its Pupils”.

It also said:

“Behaviour is impeccable … Attendance is excellent … Pupils value their school and quickly make friends”.

As the departing principal commented:

“Mary Hare is more like a family, and I know that is a key factor in the success we achieve”.

I spoke to him and I am confident that this success will continue to be delivered under the new principal, Peter Gale, with whom I anticipate working to develop a strong partnership and a transfer of knowledge for the benefit of deaf children in Romania, especially through musical education and performance.

There is one special difficulty that deaf children face, not just in Romania, but in Moldova, Armenia, Ukraine and other countries in the region. Deafness is thought to equal physical dumbness: not just through acquired dumbness, but through some unknown physical deformity or acute illness that has happened to the larynx at birth. In other words, if you are deaf, you are born dumb also. That is physically understood and is taught by teachers to be so. There is therefore no speech at all and no lip reading. Communication is only through sign language.

Sign language is undoubtedly useful. I recall that at the Mary Hare grammar school for the deaf, our patron visited. She was sitting in assembly on the school stage looking rather unhappy. The Duke turned to her and said something silent. The hall rocked; the children could lip-read, and he had said, “Cheer up, cabbage”. So yes, sign language is useful, but lip-reading is a great deal more so. Sign language has massive defects for learning and for the acquisition of speech.

So, after life in special schools in Romania, who understands? Who will communicate? I serve as High Representative for Romanian Children. I chair the Asociatia Children’s High Level Group. I work with the Minister for Education, Remus Pricopie. We tackle all disabilities, physical and other, with musical instruments, sharing, training, singing and dancing, and the results are amazing. At the moment we have 105,000 volunteers from mainstream schools and high schools, with 59,000 beneficiaries from special schools, day centres and small family-type homes—all pupils and all handicaps. They meet three times a week in school time, with two hours of integrated teaching each time, mainly child-to-child and teacher-to-teacher. We do dance and music competitions nationally, singing, dancing and doing drama countrywide. You can see the children—their stiffness goes, their circulation improves and they begin to be able to move, speak, listen, talk and socialise. There is new family life. The teachers, the parents, the church and state are all involved. I recall so well the wheelchair girl triumphantly lifted and circled in the air above the heads of her steady-handed, sure-footed boy volunteers, dancing with her as one world and all getting golds.

The link most generously offered by the Mary Hare School will enable us all to create a bridge of learning, with music central to it, to enable speech, singing, lip-reading and total communication, to start in two pilot schools in Craiova and Bucharest. Thousand upon thousand of hitherto silent children will benefit from the careful expertise developed here in Britain by the Mary Hare School, aided by my old college, the Royal Academy of Music.

I would welcome the Minister’s support for this initiative. I would appreciate a word or two with him at some suitable moment to introduce him to the Romanian Minister for Education when he is here. This may be a way in which Britain’s expertise can be developed and spread more widely still.