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Ms Morris: I would say exactly what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said: passport the money. We have secured money from the Treasury, and it should be passported to education. The record of Labour local authorities stands in stark contrast to that of Conservative authorities.
Mr. Don Foster (Bath): Will the Minister give way on that point?
Ms Morris: I cannot resist giving way to the hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Foster: As everybody is asking how the Minister would respond to particular things, may I ask how she would respond to the simple fact that Liberal Democrat-run authorities provide more money per capita than Labour-run authorities?
Ms Morris: It is not that I distrust the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster), but I would look at the figures. As my hon. Friend the Whip says, it is not so in Devon. If the hon. Gentleman wants a longer debate on the point, I would be happy to return to it in an Adjournment debate.
The Conservative motion says that we are placing burdens on schools that represent
If we had taken notice of Conservative Members' comments about the literacy hour, everything that this Government have done on literacy in the past 18 months would not have happened. There would have been no literacy hour, no retraining of primary school teachers in
best practice and no new emphasis on phonics and teaching grammar. There would have been no pressure on schools to teach best practice, no research into different strategies and no spreading of what we know works. It goes without saying that, had matters been left to the Tories, there would also have been no £44 million--which has bought 10 million extra books for our schools--and probably no national year of reading.
The Tories would have carried on doing exactly what they did in power. As a result, in five years' time, four out of 10 11-year-old children still would not be able to read, write or use numbers effectively. It is no good the hon. Member for Havant quoting last year's national curriculum test results, because they were the last such tests before the introduction of the literacy hour. They are therefore a sad indictment of his Government. We will reach our targets, and a generation of children will rejoice as a result.
I agree with the comments of the hon. Member for Havant not in his speech but in The Sun earlier this month, when he said:
Mr. Willetts:
Will the Minister commit herself to the Secretary of State's pledge to resign if the Government do not reach their literacy and numeracy targets by 2002?
Ms Morris:
Of course I will; I have already done so. Indeed, I generously commit the Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), too. We speak with one voice. The hon. Gentleman's question is a reflection of what life was like under teams of Conservative Ministers, when a Secretary of State would promise to resign but the rest of the team would not go too. I will tell the hon. Gentleman another thing: there will be a team celebration when we achieve those targets--because achieve those targets we certainly will.
It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman's understanding of the literacy hour is shallower than that of any teacher and of most parents whom I have met. As Mr. Woodhead said when he presented his annual report earlier in the month, the literacy hour is a
The hon. Member for Havant did not once mention whether the literacy hour works. It is no good his scowling. He would sooner count the bits of paper that
are sent to schools to support the literacy hour than he would consider evidence of whether it works. He is entitled to count bits of paper and ignore evidence. I admit that we could have avoided sending 40 bits of paper to schools by not introducing the literacy hour. But a generation of children would have been betrayed--to use the hon. Gentleman's words--had we not done so.
The same can be said for a range of other initiatives on those bits of paper that the hon. Member for Havant has been busy counting and weighing. Let us take home-school agreements, which get parents involved in schools. Is he against or for such agreements? What about target setting? By not introducing that, we could have avoided sending nine letters to schools. Is he against or for it? What of homework policy? I think we could have avoided sending two or three more letters by not encouraging schools to set homework, but that would have meant that half the children still were not set homework, and we know that homework makes a difference to standards.
We could have saved bits of paper by not launching the national year of reading or education action zones, and we could have saved two letters by not letting schools know that they were getting £1,000 to spend on books. Unlike the letters, missives and directives sent to schools when the Conservatives were in office, our paperwork did not say, "We have changed our mind, or got it wrong last time, so here is another letter"; instead, it was part of a coherent package and a standards agenda.
Mr. Owen Paterson (North Shropshire):
On the subject of target setting, today I received a letter from Grahame Arnold, head teacher of the Adams school in Wem--one of the most successful Shropshire schools--and chairman of the Shropshire secondary heads. He said:
Mr. Paterson:
So Mr. Arnold is wrong, is he?
Ms Morris:
I disagree with him; I do not know how many times the hon. Gentleman wants me to say that. Target setting is important to the agenda of raising standards.
The Opposition motion mentions diversity. It is becoming increasingly clear--it emerged again from the speech of the hon. Member for Havant--what the Tories now mean by diversity. The Daily Telegraph tells us that the Leader of the Opposition is poised to ditch the national curriculum that the Conservatives introduced 10 years ago. I read in the New Statesman that the regular Willetts lunches at the Centre for Policy Studies speculate about trusting groups such as teachers to get on with their job as they think best. Most interesting, however, was the
Daily Mail report that told us that the hon. Member for Havant wanted schools to be run by workers' co-operatives.
That sounds to me like turning the clock back. I do not mind that, but let us be clear that that is now the Opposition's idea of diversity--a return to "teach what you want, how you want." That would be diversity at the expense of standards, and we want no part of it.
There is a growing difference between the Opposition's definition of diversity and ours. The form of diversity that we have introduced supports standards and does not detract from them. We have expanded the specialist schools programme by 50 per cent. We have given those schools money to develop links with local schools--each will be different and reflect the flavour of the partnership within schools.
We have freed up key stages 1 and 2 so that teachers can concentrate on the basics but still teach a broad range of subjects. We have offered flexibility at key stage 4. We have allowed schools to forge links with further education colleges. We have introduced advanced skills teachers so that schools can develop ways of using the skills of their best teachers. We have introduced and financed education action zones, giving them the freedom on the curriculum and on teachers' contracts that was denied by the previous Government.
We have introduced a new lighter-touch inspection framework for our most successful schools. We have delegated up to £1 billion so that schools now have the freedom to spend money in the way that they want. The key difference here is that delegation under the Tories always meant freedom as to which cuts to make, whereas delegation under the Government means freedom to decide how to spend a growing amount of money in the education budget, year after year.
I do agree with the only serious point in the speech of the hon. Member for Havant--that there is a constant need to ensure that our dealings with schools are as efficient as possible. That is why we have introduced stringent new measures to keep the paper in check. Since September 1998, a typical primary school has received just eight mailings, containing a total of 42 items. Only 13 required action from heads; the rest were for information. We have introduced a new system of clearly identifying, on every mailing, whether it is for action or for information.
Let me give the House an example of a typical mailing--our most recent, which was sent to schools on 11 February. It contained, for primary schools, two items about teaching literacy to those students in greatest need of help. It contained the pay review body's recommended teachers pay scales and a list of new DfEE information available on request. A typical secondary school would not have received the information about the literacy items, but would have received information to be distributed to its students about financial support in higher education. Five hundred secondary schools would also have received a consultation paper about the practical implications of data protection in schools. Under the Conservative Government, that consultation paper would have been sent to all 24,000 schools. We have introduced a system of sending the consultation papers to a cross-section of schools, so that they are not a burden on schools.
"a significant obstacle to raising educational standards."
We know from the speech of the hon. Member for Havant his exact definition of a burden. He thinks that the literacy hour is a burden. He told us that he thinks that it is over-prescriptive and too rigid. His hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) thinks, strangely enough, that 60 minutes is too long for the literacy hour. When the numeracy hour comes along next year, she will probably be able to correct that comment.
"Children who are not taught to read or do basic arithmetic are being betrayed".
By his admission, four out of 10 children were betrayed by his Government, which is exactly why we have introduced the literacy hour.
"serious attempt to draw together, from inspection and research evidence, approaches which are known to work. There is always, moreover, room for professional manoeuvre: the idea that teachers must minute by minute adhere to each prescribed step in the programme is a myth promulgated by those who reject any attempt to provide practical assistance to teachers as an onslaught on professional autonomy."
We have learned in this debate that the hon. Gentleman is on the side of the myth promulgators. This Government are on the side of those who want to provide practical assistance to teachers doing a difficult task. We have provided in the literacy hour--this is what the hon. Gentleman has missed--training in best practice and materials to do the job. We have asked teachers to exercise their professional judgment within a framework of best practice which we know works. That is what the literacy hour is; that is what teachers are doing; and that is what the numeracy hour will be, too.
"The government's new target-setting agenda for schools, teachers and governors often produces huge amounts of information for the government that is irrelevant to individual pupil performance."
Ms Morris:
I will just have to disagree with the hon. Gentleman and the head whom he quotes. I would sooner cite the Ofsted evidence and the research evidence, which show that clear target setting in schools raises standards. It seems to be an absolute matter of fact that teachers set targets and support their children's learning in order to achieve those targets. Target setting is a good thing.
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