Lord Addington (LD)

My Lords, I have listened to the first two speeches. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, hit on something towards the end of her speech that I do not think anybody who knows anything about the subject will disagree with. It is the work of a decade to correct the problems here. You have to get into a system and change it, you have to change the cultures and the training, and you have to make people think in a slightly new way. The NEET problem, according to everything that anyone who has been here has listened to, and according to the Library briefing, has been growing for over a decade. It is a fact that a group of children, who are now young and established adults, have gone through a system of education that does not seem to have touched them or brought them in in any way or form. Many of them left the education process way before they reached the end of compulsory education, and people have been happy about it. I say that because the first report I have seen into off-rolling in the schools system came out of the House of Commons in 2020. Something about our current structure of education means that anybody who is not a benefit to their school in terms of examination grades is a real problem not only to the school but to the professional and personal development of those running it. If we can do something here that starts to address that, we will do something very positive. The noble Baroness said quite a lot and referred to basic skills, such as English and maths—and the Minister will probably have written that into her response to me. I am dyslexic. I am president of the British Dyslexia Association. I still would not pass a written exam in English. You struggle with maths because it is simply a different language, and the language-processing bits in the brain do not pick it up as fast. The papering over of the cracks of short-term memory is still there, so you will always have these problems—and that is just one group. Anybody who struggles with special educational needs, or who comes from a home that simply does not take them seriously, is always going to struggle with these skills. We have to find better ways forward. I congratulate the Government, and indeed the previous Government, on emphasising the level 2 lower entrance requirements to go on and train. If we are to do this, we must stop people being isolated and branded failures so early. The new SEN paper may well start to address this but, once again, it is the work of a decade. I see that the Clock is against me. Openers used to get a wee bit longer, but there we are. When the Minister comes to respond, I hope she will emphasise how we are stopping people being branded failures and making sure that schools and the education sector are given a reward for keeping these people in school and not punished when it comes to league tables.