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Baroness Hooper: My Lords, the importance of education for the future of every country, whatever its state of development, cannot be in doubt, and I look forward to the Minister's response. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Thomson of Monifieth, for introducing this important debate, and I fully agree with the points he has made. To add to his remarks and to those of the noble Lord, Lord Judd—with which I also agree—I want to refer to the importance of tertiary education, which should complement primary and secondary education. Given that government policy should aim to be both comprehensive and joined-up, can the
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Minister explain in her reply a particular point: why is the budget for the Foreign Office's Chevening Fellowship scheme being squeezed and the numbers reduced?
I ask that because, sadly, British universities are no longer the first choice for overseas students. As the noble Lord, Lord Thomson, made clear, overseas fees and visa requirements, for which successive governments bear responsibility, are proving to be barriers. Moreover, since the British Council no longer seems to play its former role in education and educational exchanges, the Chevening Fellowship scheme has filled a very important gap. The noble Lord, Lord Thomson, referred to the Commonwealth. I would add to that and underline the needs of students in the British Overseas Territories for tertiary education. Further to illustrate the point, recently I made an IPU visit to Bolivia. Not only is the president of Bolivia a former Chevening Fellow, but also six out of the 12 leading politicians, industrialists and representatives of the media gathered together by the British ambassador for a meeting. If anything were needed to emphasise the importance of the scheme, that example should serve.
My second point addresses the terrible aftermath of the series of recent earthquakes, culminating in the present situation in Pakistan. Furthermore, we should not forget the disastrous floods and mudslides caused by Hurricane Stan, which has affected El Salvador, Guatemala, parts of Honduras and Nicaragua. Given that these natural disasters have destroyed many schools, a large number still with children in them—some have said that it means the loss of a whole generation—can the Minister say whether the Government have any plans to provide funding for the reconstruction of schools? Will they also ensure that proper risk assessments are made and strict building conditions imposed and monitored so that new buildings reach the recognised standards required to withstand the worst effects of earthquakes and natural disasters? I learnt recently that in a serious earthquake in California—in Los Angeles or San Francisco—60 people died. Of course, we all know that in the recent earthquake we are talking about thousands of people.
Finally, I should be very interested to know how much of the United Kingdom's contribution to the European Union's development aid programme goes towards educational purposes. What kind of direction over such projects does the United Kingdom have?
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The Lord Bishop of Coventry: My Lords, if someone were to discover an existing education infrastructure consisting of thousands of schools and teachers in some of the poorest and most rural parts of Africa, I would expect educationalists to beat a path to his door. When the providers of such education are those also running the most effective civil society organisations across Africa, and given the rhetoric of community-led participatory development, I would expect development agencies to beat a path to their door. Moreover, given that the capacity of these schools
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could be doubled, or even tripled, within a few years with minimal sums of money, and given that universal basic education is our second millennium development goal, I would expect aid experts to beat a path to their door. Yet, so far, they have not—at least they have not done so in great numbers. I am grateful—as are others—to the noble Lord, Lord Thomson, who has given us the opportunity to consider where the gaps and opportunities lie in aid and education matters.
As your Lordships will know, in this country the Church of England boards of education are statutory bodies providing the education of 25 per cent of primary school pupils and 5 per cent of secondary school students. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, who, by his reference to the links that exist and potentially exist between Church of England schools and those in the developing world, has saved me at least a paragraph of my speech.
Historically, the Anglican Church has been a pioneer in education for all, not only in this country but also in Africa and other parts of the developing world. Our overseas education networks through the Anglican Communion's 80 million members mean that we have much to teach as well as to learn. But the Church needs to be drawn out of its silo—I apologise for the cliché; it is one to which I have recently become addicted—as, indeed, does government aid. We need to be drawn out of our respective silos in order to create a synergy with the most significant bilateral community-based education network literally in our midst.
The quality work and the early encouraging results of the development community's engagement with Muslim schools in parts of Africa should serve to strengthen the desire to work with Church schools in other parts of Africa. Indeed, the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury has already initiated a project in this respect in Burundi, where, as I understand it, schools which were founded by the Church and taken over by the government are being returned to the Church. I also understand that a similar project is in mind in Nigeria.
The Commission for Africa, which the House has debated, encourages working in partnership—not least in post-conflict reconstruction efforts in countries such as Burundi and southern Sudan. I quote from its section on improving the quality of aid to Africa, which states:
Chapter 6 of the commission's report, which focuses on education and aid, speaks of the priority action needed in the international community to develop partnerships with non-state actors as well as governments. Precisely because of whom Church leaders and educationalists are, with their weaknesses as well as their strengths, they are essential community-based partners in any aid and education strategy.
In addition, I believe there is an untapped potential for better collaboration between UK-based NGOs and traditional mission agencies such as the Church
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Mission Society. Quite rightly, secular, non-religious NGOs must remain distinctive in their approach to aid and development matters. There is, of course, already good collaboration between faith-based aid and development agencies such as Christian Aid and TEAR Fund with other relief agencies, not least in the current crisis in Kashmir. Nevertheless, the accumulated experience and wisdom of many mission agencies whose personnel have spent many years working on local educational projects should not be set aside as irrelevant.
I hope that the Minister and the Government will take seriously their own vision of working with the Church in Africa and in the UK on gender equality, teacher training and community involvement in developing relevant curricula. I look forward, with others, to the delivery of that policy soon.
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Lord Hunt of Chesterton: My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak in this debate, introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Thomson of Monifieth, who was, as he proudly said, one of the last Commonwealth education officers. My father was a High Commissioner who was much inspired by his leadership.
The Government's aim in its aid programme is to reduce poverty but, like other policies, this is complex and must be considered in relation to many other aspects of policy. Poverty reduction is sustainable only when the poorest communities are empowered to take responsibility for their future through knowledge, strength of society, security from national disasters and war, and material support. In many cases, spiritual strength also plays a vital role, as we saw this week in Pakistan.
Education brings information and socialisation, as well as skills and knowledge. It was remarkable to see in Pakistan this week how poor villagers have devoted so much of their resources to education. It was tragic and inspiring to see on television a father extracting maths books from the rubble along with his crushed child. If these remote communities take education so seriously, surely aid programmes should do so as well. We hope that the Government will be helping these schools, and schools everywhere, with relevant programmes. That is also important in avoiding corruption; in some countries the money for education is not getting through.
The building of schools is very important. It is also important that children in schools should know about safety aspects. In Pakistan the children in the schools who survived were the ones who hid under their desks. In America, this is standard practice. People in schools are told that if there is an earthquake, they should get under their desk, as my daughter found when she was at school there.
I should like to reflect on what my noble friend Lord Judd has said. DfID is an efficient department and it is highly stretched. If we are really to co-ordinate all the various contributions of British organisations in government and in the non-governmental world, we need a co-ordinating effort. I was very pleased to hear
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that such efforts are being made and that DfID is supporting them outside government. That is progress.
I declare an interest as a professor at University College, where we have colleagues from developing countries on educational programmes, and president of an NGO. I am a former head of the Met Office, where there was a substantial programme of training people in developing countries. My point, which the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, may take up, is that government agencies and laboratories in many parts of the UK can contribute and are contributing to education programmes to relieve poverty but the co-ordination and appreciation could be improved. We need effective partnership programmes. Many parts of the United Nations, such as the World Meteorological Organization, have very effective programmes. But sometimes in Africa these are suffering greatly. A DfID report last year commented that it is almost impossible to monitor climate change because of the lack of trained people available to undertake training.
We will be trying to help with this situation in a conference which we will be holding in Accra in November in conjunction with UK NGOs, the government of Ghana and other African organisations. It is absolutely essential that education, the arts and science come together to help inspire people to be involved in these scientific and technical areas. We would like to have more support from DfID for those programmes.
My final point in a way reinforces the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper. One of the important aspects of educational exchange is to encourage specialists when they come to the UK. They should have not only some experience in specialist education, but also some knowledge and some understanding of the political and administrative arrangements in the UK. Sadly, the British Council provides zero funding for all technical people who come to UK. It does not give them even a cup of a tea and a train ticket to London to hear the House of Lords—which might be revealing. I have raised this issue time and again and I find that officials in the field say that it is a tragedy that these technical people come to the UK and the UK simply tells them to go to a laboratory, study there and go home again. It is crazy. I hope that the Minister will agree that it is crazy and will do something about it.
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