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7.47 pm
Ms Margaret Hodge (Barking): I suppose that it is fitting, despite the invitations to be elsewhere, that our final debate before the Christmas recess should be on our first priority as a new Government. This allows us to end the calendar year where we started the new term--putting education at the heart of our agenda.
When I was preparing for the debate I looked back at the debate on Second Reading of the previous Government's last, dismal attempts to improve schools. Two issues dominated that debate, and both were irrelevant to the central problems facing us in British schools. First, there was the proposal, led by the then Prime Minister, to have a grammar school in every town, which meant that yet again we focused our energies on structures and not standards, on policies for the privileged few, not those for the nation's many, and on ideology-driven dogma instead of what works.
Secondly, there was the proposition that caning our children would improve discipline. It may be hard to believe that today, but we were having what purported to be a serious debate on education standards and Conservative Members believed that the answer was to legalise the whacking of children in schools. That was not said in a pre-Christmas haze of excess alcohol, nor was it proposed in a debate on April fool's day; although it seemed to be a poor rewrite of an Ealing studio comedy, it simply reflected the Conservative Government in their final hours--utterly bereft of any serious and sensible ideas.
The same attitude was evident when the present Bill was published and given its First Reading. There was obviously a great deal of public interest in the far-reaching proposals that it contained, but where were the Opposition? The shadow Secretary of State, who is not his place, had apparently retreated from Westminster to the country and his deputy refused to appear on several programmes because, apparently, she had not been briefed. Indeed, in one studio the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) and I were left with an empty chair for the Conservatives because they were unable to find anyone at all to comment on any of the proposals in the Bill. That says it all.
For my part, I believe that the Bill sets out the most radical yet practical agenda for education for a generation. In their first eight months, the Labour Government have produced a raft of measures that will help to create an age of achievement in Britain's schools. It is wonderful to see in the Bill proposals which really focus on education standards and recognise that education is central to our ability to deliver welfare reform and social cohesion--the Government's other two priorities. From nursery education to class sizes, from setting literacy and numeracy targets to introducing home-school contracts, from bringing in assessments for five-year-olds to value-added data on children and schools, from fast-track proposals for bright children to fresh-start proposals for failing schools, from homework and literacy clubs to repairing 10,000 schools by 2002, it is an ambitious programme designed to ensure that every child in every school gets the best opportunity to learn.
I want to comment on two specific proposals. First, the Bill will demand a complete rethink for local education authorities. I strongly support that. In the past, LEAs have intervened, often on a daily basis, in the detailed running of schools. The Bill demands that they change and recognise that the days of the all-powerful interfering LEA are over. LEAs have a new and different task which is vital to our purpose. They must become an integral part of the crusade to raise standards. [Interruption.] Obviously, Opposition Members do not understand the Bill.
By preparing an education development plan, LEAs will lead the local drive to promote school improvement. By monitoring schools, they will ensure that targets are met. Where schools are succeeding, LEAs must learn to take a back seat; where schools are failing, they must intervene swiftly and decisively.
All too often, the Opposition have criticised LEAs--and they are doing so again today--but in 18 years they did nothing to tackle their under-performance. The Bill contains clauses which show that the new Labour Government will not tolerate failing LEAs. However, I hope that LEAs will grasp their new role with enthusiasm and view it as an opportunity, not a threat. Indeed, some LEAs, such as Birmingham and Barking and Dagenham, have already begun to show the way. Steering schools to improve their performance rather than running services which schools themselves can run is an enormous challenge. It is a different role, not a diminished role--a crucial role, not a minor role.
There are those in right-wing think tanks who urge that we should abolish LEAs and run education from Whitehall. They are wrong. We cannot effectively run 24,000 schools from Sanctuary buildings, and if we ever abolished LEAs we would have to reinvent them in
another guise. The centre will never have the capacity to monitor sufficiently or intervene appropriately at local level. I say that as a parent and politician whose children were educated mostly under the Inner London Education Authority. Even ILEA was too large and remote to step in early enough to prevent a problem from developing into a crisis in such schools as William Tyndale, Highbury Quadrant or Highbury Grove.
We need the democratic accountability of elected LEAs to provide the partnership, parental involvement and community and business commitment that will help to translate our policies into practice. So the task for Government is to encourage, cajole and insist that LEAs adapt to their new role. Local democracy is about empowering people, not politicians and for the LEA that means acting as the voice for parents and children--for the consumers and not the producers in the education system.
The second proposition on which I wish to comment is the education action zones. The proposals could revolutionise education in deprived and underperforming areas. Disadvantage cannot excuse failure in our schools or low attainment levels for some children, but equally we need to offer schools in deprived areas the means to tackle that disadvantage.
Unlike the Tories, we in the Labour party recognise the problems that social deprivation brings to education and we are committed to addressing them. I hope that the education action zones, with the freedoms that they gain and the resources that they attract, will become hotbeds of innovation and best practice.
Creating a formal structure around a family of schools is good in itself because it encourages sharing of good practice and helps provide the pressure and support to develop the good and deal with the poor. Creating formal partnerships between schools, parents, businesses and other local interests is also good in itself, because schools perform best with the support of their local communities, not detached from them. Releasing schools from some of the constraints in the national curriculum will ensure that literacy and numeracy become the fulcrum on which a broad and balanced curriculum must rest. Providing extra money will enable us to target resources where they are most needed.
Finally, I am delighted that the zones will be able to apply for exemption from teachers' statutory pay and conditions. The recent Select Committee report on teacher supply suggested a range of proposals to raise the quality and increase the number of teachers. Some involve rewarding teachers on performance mobility, not just length of service. We need to test those ideas.
Further, I have long argued that allowing a precious capital resource--our schools--to remain unused for a quarter of the year while teachers are exhausted by cramming too much into the teaching term and, during the long summer holidays, children who need to catch up and keep up with their peers forget what they have learnt, is nonsense. It is a relic of the days when children were expected to help with the harvest and mothers worked only in the home. I hope that experiments will take place in education action zones to challenge those outdated traditions.
Mr. Robert Key (Salisbury):
It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Barking (Ms Hodge), and I congratulate her on a very fine speech. Having crossed swords with the hon. Lady many times when I was local government finance Minister and she was leading delegations to squeeze more money out of me, I must say that her raft of measures is drifting swiftly to the right. It is Christmas week, but her remarks sounded like an early leaked draft of the Queen's Speech. However, I am delighted that the hon. Lady feels that way. There is always room for her on the Opposition side if the Government do not give her a job.
I start by declaring an interest and making a confession. My interest is that I am an associate member of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers--an excellent organisation which I joined in 1967 when I was a professional teacher and continue to support. However, I should like to make it clear to the House that I pay it--it does not pay me.
My confession is that I have read the Bill from cover to cover. Last Thursday, I had occasion to travel on one of Mr. Richard Branson's excellent express trains to Preston and that provided me with a good opportunity to challenge the Bill. It took me the whole journey there to read it and most of the journey back to read the schedules. It was not a great read; nor is it a great Bill. It leaves out quite a lot. For example, it leaves out the whole vexed issue of school transport, which for most schools yields more grief than most educational topics with which schools have to cope. I regret that omission. As a former teacher of 16 years, I should like to be the first Member on either side of the House just to say thank you and a very happy Christmas to our teaching profession.
When I was on the Government Benches, I took years and years of stick from the Labour party because we Conservatives did not send our children to state schools and did not know what we were talking about. We heard that again tonight. It was a delight to hear the outburst of the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours), which we know really represented what is in the hearts and minds of most Labour Members. We heard the same from the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mr. Jones). I thought that when he said that Ministers had at last got schools by the throat, he was articulating something that is deeply felt by the Labour party.
Fifteen years ago, there was conflict between selective and non-selective schools in my constituency. My right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) showed clearly that that period of unhappy dissention has come to an end--certainly in my constituency, where there is huge strength in the diversity of schools. We have comprehensives with and without sixth forms, secondary moderns, special schools, hospital schools, grammar schools, independent schools and a further education college--and that is just for a population of about 100,000. I am proud to say that there are no bad schools in my constituency. I have no difficulty--indeed, I have great pride--in supporting them all.
The Government's blueprint for change is a bit of a curate's egg. The Bill could bring new vision and hope to children, parents and teachers, or it could bring with it an orgy of destruction and grief. The legislation will see the end of local independence for grant-maintained schools, such as Westwood St. Thomas in my constituency, which will be forced back under the county council from which it so recently escaped. I deplore the way in which Church schools will be treated. There will be no role in the hiring and firing of teachers for the diocesan director of education, and a reduction in the number of Church-appointed governors. On other issues, the Church schools are happier.
Through the Bill, new Labour is taking massive powers from local people and handing them to Ministers. The present Ministers are such very nice people. I worry very much about who will follow them. I have enjoyed much debate with the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Ms Morris), and her colleagues, and formerly with the Secretary of State on very important and fundamental local government issues, such as local government finance, the poll tax and the council tax. I worry about giving so much power to such very nice people, only to see in a year or two completely different people in their posts.
The Bill represents no new, open government. The future of our grammar schools, such as Bishop Wordsworth's school and South Wilts grammar school in my constituency, hang on the ballots of parents. The regulations on which parents may vote are still secret. Ministers must realise how easy it would be to rig the ballot in favour of abolition. I noticed that the Secretary of State mentioned that issue in his speech, and I noted carefully what he said. He referred to appropriate feeder and primary schools where 20 per cent. of relevant parents trigger a ballot.
What is an appropriate feeder school? Who are relevant parents? Those secrets will not do. We must know the exact detail before we can possibly support the measures, or we shall realise that they are just a cover-up for old Labour's antipathy towards grammar and grant-maintained schools. I challenge Ministers not just to try to put the clock back 18 years but to encourage exciting developments.
The variety of good schools in my constituency is remarkable. I hope that any new Act will build on it. Pride in the town of Amesbury is under stress, since all our sixth formers are having to leave their town for others for post-16 education. That is not of practical benefit to the community. When the pattern of local education was settled 15 or so years ago, the population of the town was never envisaged to be as great as it is now. It is not helpful to Amesbury and it is a disincentive to young people that post-16 education means trekking miles each day--and back again--up to Durrington, down to Salisbury or, indeed, out of the county.
Fashion in education changes, too. Fifteen years ago, the experts thought that 16-year-olds would grow up more quickly and better in colleges of further education. Today, parents usually prefer a school sixth form to provide a more appropriate atmosphere for learning and personal development. Parents in my constituency in Downton, Amesbury and much of Salisbury understand that very well. That is why I welcome and support moves by Wyvern boys technology college and St. Edmund's secondary modern for girls on the Laverstock site to
explore the opportunity of a new joint sixth form. I look forward to the arrival of the Wyvern baccalaureate--approved by the university of Bath.
Such a joint sixth form would pose no threat to existing schools. It would mean changes for Salisbury college, but it is doing extremely well at expanding further education and its franchised degree courses. It has opted to change its own character and realises that other educational establishments will change theirs. Will Ministers tell me whether the sort of changes that I have described will be encouraged by the Bill?
Schedule 17 deals with the staffing of voluntary-aided schools. It is a very long schedule of 24 paragraphs--although not as long as schedule 28, which has 146 paragraphs. There are 30 schedules, 130 pages of small print and a fistfuls of blank cheques.
I know that the Church of England is disappointed that the measure introduced in 1991 concerning the diocesan board of education is not reinforced by or incorporated in the Bill. That measure requires that, in a Church of England voluntary-aided school, the chief education officer of the local education authority and the diocesan director of education should have the same rights. Personally, I should have preferred those rights to apply to voluntary-controlled schools as well.
Paragraph 2 of schedule 17 provides that the governing body may agree with the LEA to accord advisory rights to the chief education officer in the engagement or dismissal of teachers--but if the governors do not agree, the Secretary of State can overrule them anyway under the joyous situation that we are about to see unfold. Paragraph 2(7) explains that the chief education officer includes
"any officer of the authority nominated by the chief education officer."
The poor old diocesan director is still left out. The Bill recognises neither the rights nor the responsibilities of diocesan directors of education. That is not acceptable, and I ask Ministers to amend schedule 17 in Committee to put that right in the interests of building a partnership with Church schools.
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