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Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Except for their own children.
Mr. Arnold: Yes. It is not good enough for their children, but it is good enough for their constituents' children. The result has been that too many schools have been unable to cope with the burden, imposed on them, of providing a wonderful education across the full range of subjects for a full range of children, regardless of their aptitude. I am glad to see that the Labour party is at last waking up to the fact that that is not the way to deliver education to young people.
Last night, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) made a speech. He was wearing sackcloth and ashes for the way in which the Labour party has,for many years, tried to impose its education policies through local authorities. It is interesting to note that he said:
Who has imposed those very attributes? Labour-controlled education authorities and the Labour approach to education and teaching.
The Labour party has come out with another document, called "Excellence for Everyone". Does not that sound marvellous?
Mr. Greg Pope (Hyndburn):
What does that have to do with the report?
Mr. Arnold:
The report is essential to education precisely because of the failures brought about by Labour party education policy, pushed through local education authorities. If the hon. Gentleman cannot see the connection, he needs to go back to school.
Let us talk about people who are in school. What has been the Secondary Heads Association's response to the latest Labour party education policy report? Its response states:
So much for the Labour party in relation to that matter.
Today, we are debating the inspection of our schools, which is highlighting the problems and the way ahead.I find it very encouraging that the Government have introduced the national curriculum, because--despite the vicissitudes caused by loads of paper and problems that the enthusiasm of the education establishment has created--it has laid down what our youngsters should achieve at different ages. It has been laid down in the face
of carping, negative criticism from the Labour party all the way down the line. We have now started testing, which is highlighting the performance of pupils and schools. That policy also was introduced in the face of the votes and opposition of the Labour party.
We are receiving the results of those policies, and it is now up to parents and teachers in the schools that educate their children to improve standards. The inspectorate is vital in that process because its reports on schools give parents, teachers and, of course, governors the detail of the qualities and successes of a school--and the aspects that require considerable improvement.
Ms Estelle Morris (Birmingham, Yardley):
First,I should like to congratulate the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) on securing this debate. It is an excellent idea to have a debate on the report of the chief inspector of schools. It is, to some extent, worth considering making such a debate an annual event because there are too few occasions on which we can consider education in its broadest sense. In future years, it may be a debate that can take place in the Government's time so that we do not have to trust to an hon. Member's good luck in securing a place in the ballot.
I also congratulate the hon. Member for Aylesbury on the way in which he presented his arguments. They were measured, gave due recognition to our school system's achievements and recognised some of the areas in which improvement is needed. Unlike some of his colleagues, he introduced the debate in a manner which generally opened the discussion rather than trying to score political points.
Mr. Jacques Arnold:
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Ms Morris:
Not at the moment; I have just started.I shall be happy to give way when I have made some progress.
Other Conservative Members did not follow the good example set by the hon. Member for Aylesbury.
Mr. Arnold:
The hon. Lady said that this is an extremely important debate, and she referred to the fact that four Conservative Back Benchers spoke in the debate. If education is so important to the Labour party, can she explain why not one Labour Back Bencher has attended this debate, let alone spoken in it?
Ms Morris:
We will hear no lectures from Conservative Members on the importance of education.I am responsible for what I do in the House. I am here and I am about to answer this debate. I am not responsible for other hon. Members, on either side the House, or for how they choose to spend their parliamentary time.
The hon. Member for Waveney (Mr. Porter) made some very interesting points about the school inspection process, and I found myself agreeing with a great many of them. I should like to pick out one or two things that he said. He gave a depiction of the situation in his constituency, in which staff in schools experience almost a neurosis as the inspection starts. That is certainly one of the problems with the inspection being a one-off look--a snapshot view--of how a school is doing at a particular time. I have been to schools where the staff say that they hold up projects or develop them only to a certain extent so that they are at their best during the week of inspection. It cannot be helpful if schools and the education service regard the inspection process with that attitude.
One way round that problem would be to reach a situation in which the one-off inspection by a team of outside inspectors is just one item in the on-going process of school inspection and self-evaluation. I think that we can get rid of that neurosis if schools expect that advisers will occasionally come in--to be friends, to give support or to give criticism--and that someone from outside the local authority will give an outsider's view to check standards. Like the hon. Member for Waveney, I hope that that approach to school inspection is something that can evolve, and that we can get rid of many schools' defensive posture.
Before moving on to the report, I should like to make two or three further points about the inspection process. Inevitably, we must deal with the information as it is presented in the chief inspector's report, but the raw data on assessment tests do not give the whole picture. One of the dilemmas is that we are dealing with a set of results based on student achievement at seven and another set of results for students at 11. Under the present system,no one appears to know what is happening in between.We must move to a system of setting year-on-year targets for every child in every school. We must measure at the end of the year whether children have reached the standard that they could reasonably have been expected to reach and whether the school has helped the children to reach those standards. The one-off look and the one-off collection of raw data at seven, 11, 13 and 16 do not give sufficiently high-quality information--
Mr. Jacques Arnold:
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Ms Morris:
Not again. It was bad enough last time.
We are not getting the right information to enable us to make reasonable judgments about the progress of individuals or the progress of schools.
It is a matter of concern that primary schools will not be inspected every four years. In an answer to a recent parliamentary question, it was revealed that £12.8 million is being taken out of the Ofsted budget for 1995-96. That will mean only that fewer schools are inspected than should be. If inspection is as important as people have said today, it is important that Ofsted is given the resources it needs to carry out the inspections that it and the Government feel appropriate.
I recognise the achievement of many pupils in the school system. The inspector says that the successes this year are many and real. He also says that there are twice as many really excellent teachers as there are poor teachers; that is the case. I congratulate not only the schools mentioned in the introduction to the report,
but the schools that have also reached high standards, but which have not been inspected this year. They sometimes feel aggrieved because they have been left out of the list.
I join the hon. Member for Aylesbury in putting on record my congratulations to Brookside special school in Derbyshire and Crook primary school in County Durham. They were considered to be failing schools and faced quite inexcusable press publicity about their situation. The determination, skill and energy that the schools have put in to turn round the position is a tribute to the teachers, governors, parents, pupils and communities that they serve.
Many young people are making real progress, not only in academic terms, but in community activities, sport and cultural activities. Many of the schools listed at the beginning of the report are mentioned not necessarily for academic achievement, but for achievement in the wider area of things that we expect schools to give our children.
The big problem that comes through in the report is one that has always plagued the British education system. The report talks about unacceptably wide variations in school performance. For all the achievement and for all the youngsters who go forward with confidence, qualifications and the surety that they have something to contribute to society--doors are opening for them and opportunities beckon--there are too many students who are not getting that chance and who are not able to reach their expected level of attainment.
Some 30 per cent. of A-level students fail to complete their course; that is not a statistic mentioned in the chief inspector's report. Some 5 per cent.--one in 20--of our youngsters leave school with no GCSEs, although they are often bright children who could achieve more. There was a decline in English and mathematics results at GCSE last year. One fifth of pupils are below expected standards at the age of seven, rising to one half of pupils being below expected levels in English and mathematics at the age of 11. If that continues, we shall not reach the national targets that we as a nation have set ourselves and we shall not raise the standards of all our children.
We have a decision to make. Either we can choose to be what we have always been as a nation--giving opportunity and resources to a few and trusting the future of our country to the skills of a few--or we can set about raising standards for everybody and trying to achieve a high-skill, high-wage economy in which the future of the nation rests not in a few, but in the strengths and skills of all. We have never had an education system that has tried to do that. Historically, we gave opportunities only to the rich and to males. More recently, we gave opportunities to children who passed the 11-plus. In the past 17 years, we have seen the havoc wreaked by differential funding and by the failure to address the problems of schools that under-achieve. That is the challenge for this country and that is the challenge for all the partners in education.We must not rest on the achievements of a few. The Prime Minister was right when he said that we have always done well by 15 per cent. of our young people. The challenge is to do better by the 85 per cent. of people who have always been failed.
I now turn to a few specific areas of concern that have been raised in the report. There are many, but there is neither time nor opportunity for me to go through them all. It is of concern that children in inner-city schools are under-achieving. I taught for 18 years in an inner-city
school before I came to the House, so I am always conscious that there is just as much under-achievement in the middle-class suburbs and in the comfortable areas,and by the children of the more affluent which is masked because those children get reasonably good results.
We must have a means of measuring progress so that we can identify both achievement and under-achievement. Achievement is about making progress from where people start; it is not necessarily about how many children gain five A to C grades at 16. The chief inspector says that in areas of urban disadvantage, there is more chance of children achieving less, more chance of under-achieving and more chance of the community and teachers having lower expectations of young people. That is true. If there is one kernel that teachers have to take from the report, it is that we must have an end to low expectations. Teachers and many others understand why some children find it difficult to succeed. The task must be to address the barriers to success rather than accepting them as causes of under-achievement.
One sentence in the report is crucial. The inspector says:
That is right. Teachers are trained to teach and that is what they should be doing. Every minute that is not spent teaching a child, no matter how rich or how poor,no matter how able or how much in need of special support, is a minute taken away from raising standards.
However, what do teachers do when children turn up at school who suffer from the most horrific home situations, such as overcrowded housing, abuse, ill-health caused by poverty, a lack of confidence or a lack of any one showing an interest in them? I am not pretending for a minute that that happens in the majority of areas. However, those are the children who are coming through the gates of some of our schools. Many teachers feel that they must address those issues before they can address the teaching. I ask the Minister to recognise that standards in education will be raised only if we address the wider areas of Government policy so that children can come to school in the morning ready to learn, which will enable teachers to be ready to teach.
I now look forward. The myth about which we have heard today that, somehow, things were better in the old days when there was selection makes me wonder where some hon. Members were 20 or 30 years ago. The expansion in higher education, which is welcome,has happened on the back of the comprehensive system. The children who have gone through that system and who have not been labelled failures at 11 are now going into higher education. My parents' generation and Conservative Members' parents and grandparents' generation were just as able as hon. Members who have had a university education, were just as bright and could have made just as much contribution, but they were in a system that labelled them failures at 11 and they were never given a chance. I do not know what the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) means by social engineering. Comprehensive education gives opportunity to the many and prevents doors from being closed.
"Our commitment to comprehensive education cannot be a commitment to continued mediocrity, to sameness or to tolerance of failure."
"The document is an uncomfortable mixture of the naive and messianic and the commendable theme of a crusade loses its impact in a welter of mini-crusades and objectives, many of which, though presented as such, are far from new".
"Some schools allow their necessary and understandable preoccupation with pastoral care to distract attention from teaching focused on achievement."
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