Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)

My Lords, first, I want to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that the World Health Organization has a clear definition of well-being: “Well-being is a positive state experienced by individuals in society … Well-being encompasses quality of life and the ability of people and societies to contribute to the world with a sense of meaning and purpose.” So this is not about self-focus; it is clear that it is about people being in a position to contribute. The WHO goes on to say that a society’s well-being can be “determined by the extent to which it is resilient, builds capacity for action, and is prepared to transcend challenges”. Perhaps most of us can agree that that is something society needs to do much better. I am afraid that I disagree entirely with the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman. The noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, said that the Dutch score particularly highly, along with Denmark, in the recent PISA figures on children’s well-being, and we score astonishingly badly. I was looking at a publication from a few years ago, The Dutch Way in Education. The publisher of that notes how the Dutch system measures not only academic achievement but also the well-being and involvement of students. I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, that I have raised the study he referred to a number of times. I would like to raise it tonight, but in the interests of the Committee making progress, I will not. Every time we are told how much progress our schools have made, saying, “Look at the exam results”, I say, look at the state of well-being of our pupils. I say particularly to the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, that if we measure only the exam results, that is what we are going to judge our schools on. That is what we have been doing, and it is what has got us into this position.