House of Commons Hansard Debates for 3 Jul 1990

Mr. Straw : I agree with my hon. Friend. The Secretary of State for Education and Science has shown abject complacency : he has washed his hands of responsibility for what is happening, not only in inner London but in many other parts of Britain where he is seeking to ensure that authorities spend less than they do now. He is more concerned about the level of poll tax bills than about ensuring that children receive a decent education.

Mr. Spencer Batiste (Elmet) : The hon. Gentleman is making a case for massive extra expenditure. How much would he spend if he were Secretary of State for Education and Science, and why is the Leader of the Opposition doing so much to suggest that a Labour Government would not spend those vast sums?

Mr. Straw : I was hoping to quote the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Walden) later in my speech. In a fine speech at Chatham House, he said that there must be an increase of one third in spending on state education. He caustically asked any of his hon. Friends who might challenge that policy whether any of them, or their children, had ever been inside a state school.

My answer to the hon. Member for Elmet (Mr. Batiste) is that, just as the Leader of the House cannot say what tax rates will be--even on the day before the Budget--I cannot say exactly how much we shall spend when we are in government, in two years' time. With the backing of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, I can say for sure that a Labour Government will spend more on education and training, because it is essential for the economy of this country and its survival that we start investing in the nation's future, instead of undermining it.

Mr. George Walden (Buckingham) : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reading my speech--let alone quoting from it--but I fear that he may have inadvertently failed to give the House the full flavour of what I said. I said that I was in favour of increased spending on education, but emphatically not in favour of putting any money at all into the failed education philosophy represented by the Labour party.

Mr. Straw : I know what the hon. Gentleman said, but I was going to send the hon. Gentleman a few tracts so that he would realise that we are thinking along the same lines.

So tight is the financial squeeze on primary schools that, on average, they are given less than the cost of four Mars bars a week to spend on books and educational equipment for their children--a point eloquently made by the president of the National Association of Head Teachers.

Some reports of school responses to the squeeze have a grotesque, pathetic flavour. The Daily Telegraph reported on 23 June that the Chilvers Coton first school in

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Nuneaton saved money by cutting paper towels in half but had stopped the practice after two pupils had contracted hepatitis. These accounts of life in the English schools system in 1990 are confirmed by a succession of official reports. The

Government-appointed teachers' pay committee in its report in February said that teacher morale was lower even than in 1989-90. That was also recognised by the Select Committee. There was also a stark message from the teachers' pay committee that the pay award forced through the House three weeks ago would lead to a real pay cut for almost every teacher.

Some 50 per cent. of newly trained teachers leave the profession within five years. The proportion of graduates entering teacher training has halved in eight years and at Cambridge university it halved in a year last year. The Secretary of State denies that there is a problem. He held a press conference on Friday to announce the success of recruitment advertising by Saatchi and Saatchi. He is so complacent about teachers and teaching that in the litany of self-congratulation in his amendment there is not a single mention of teachers.

If it is all so good out there, will the Secretary of State now guarantee to every parent that no child will be without a properly qualified, permanent teacher in front of the class in September? I invite the Secretary of State to answer that question. He does not respond, so I shall repeat the question. I am asking for a simple reply. He says that there is no problem and proclaims the success of Saatchi and Saatchi's advertising. Will he guarantee to every parent that no child will be without a properly qualified, permanent teacher in front of the class in September?

Mr. Harry Greenway (Ealing, North) : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Straw : No, I shall not give way to the hon. Gentleman. I am waiting for the Secretary of State to answer my question. The Secretary of State has been given two opportunities to reply and has failed to do so.

The most damning part of the Government's record is the report from Her Majesty's senior chief inspector of schools which stated that, in terms of educational standards, 30 per cent. of pupils--over 2 million--were getting a raw deal. What an indictment of the Government after 11 years in power. The Secretary of State's amendment refers to the local management of schools and the national curriculum. Mr. Greenway rose --

Mr. Straw : I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman, but, before doing so, I remind Conservative Members that, thanks to the Government, this is a short debate.

Mr. Greenway : The hon. Gentleman's dismissal of the efforts of teachers and his slighting of their efforts will be bitterly resented in common rooms throughout Britain. [Interruption.] I hope that the hon. Gentleman will have the courtesy to listen. I know that basically he is a courteous man. When he and I first met we were attacking wicked cuts in education by the Labour Government of the day. At that time he had the courage to stand up to his party, but he seems to have lost that courage. The hon. Gentleman will remember that in 1976 there was such a

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shortage of teachers that those of us who were running schools had to scour the streets in an effort to find people. [Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker) : Order. The hon. Gentleman must respect the Chair and I hope that he will do that in future. Interventions must be brief.

Mr. Straw : I made a mistake in giving way to the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Doug Hoyle (Warrington, North) : On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I distinctly heard the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway), whom you have just rebuked, say that you deserved it.

Mr. Deputy Speaker : I did not hear the remark, but I saw the hon. Gentleman making gestures that were clearly discourteous to the Chair. I hope that I shall not have to endure a repetition of that.

Mr. Straw : The Secretary of State's amendment refers to the local management of schools and the national curriculum. In both cases the Government have taken a good idea and nearly murdered it. Centrally dictated formulae for funding which take no proper account of a school's circumstances are barmy. A national core curriculum could and should be a guarantee of education entitlement for all children. There is a role for testing and assessment, and it is to diagnose children's strengths and weaknesses, and to provide information to parents and teachers on children's progress and on the performance of schools. However, Ministers have allowed this national curriculum and the formal testing associated with it to get completely out of hand. On Friday the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science, the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth), spoke about "wieldy and intimidating tests" which the Government have imposed by way of a pilot scheme on about 400 schools. He said that those tests for seven-year-olds would have to be reduced. Apparently even the Prime Minister has had second thoughts. In April she told The Sunday Telegraph that she wondered whether the Government were "doing it right" on the national curriculum. The answer to the Prime Minister's question is that her Government are doing it wrong and, despite the Secretary of State's blandishments, they continue to do it wrong. In a thinly disguised attack on his predecessor, now the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the Secretary of State announced in February

"measures to cut the burden of paperwork on schools caused by the Education Reform Act."

He claimed that that measure would save 150,000 sheets of printed paper. That sounds impressive, but it works out at just six sheets per school. It pales into insignificance compared with the 1,438 sheets of paper which almost every teacher has received and has to absorb under the national curriculum. That compares with more than half a billion sheets of paper which the system as a whole now has to digest.

The day after his damning report of the state of English education the senior chief inspector of schools gave an interview to The Daily Telegraph. He described the national curriculum and the local management of schools as a gamble. He said that in the short term it would exacerbate

"teacher shortages and resourcing difficulties."

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He was right. Ministers have been gambling with our children's education. Their behaviour is made all the more culpable by the fact that the spin of the wheel, the gamble, is always with other people's children and never with their own.

When the Opposition say that most Ministers have educated their children in the private sector the discomfort of Conservative Members is patently obvious. In February The Sunday Times said that, of 21 Cabinet members with children, 20 had sent their children to private schools at an average cost of a place today of £4,200 a year. That is twice the average of £1,900 in the state system. All three of the Secretary of State's children went to private school, as did both children of the previous Secretary of State.

Mr. James Paice (Cambridgeshire, South-East) rose

Mr. Straw : No, I will not give way.

If those Ministers who sent their children to private schools were to apply the same policies and financial constraints to private schools as they apply to the schools which educate 95 per cent. of the country's children, they would be beyond reproach. In truth, they apply a double standard of breathtaking proportions which so mocks those in the maintained sector as to be immoral.

The national curriculum applies by law to state education but not to private schools. Rigid formula funding is imposed on state schools, but, under the assisted places scheme, no formula applies to state funding of private schools. The actual costs of up to £7,000 per day place are paid wherever they are incurred. Local authorities are poll charge capped for spending £1,900 per pupil while the state funds fees in private schools at two or three times that level per pupil. The standard spending assessments for education are set so low by the Secretary of State that local education authorities would have to cut millions from their budgets and sack thousands of teachers to get anywhere near those levels. However, private schools are able to raise fees well above the level of inflation.

Mr. Paice : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Straw : No.

Pay increases for teachers in state schools are held below the level of inflation, while private schools and city technology colleges are able to pay more to get the best. Private schools can use their influence to raise millions of pounds for laboratories and equipment while state schools are starved of cash. The conclusion to be drawn from such double dealing is that, like other people, Ministers want the best for their children but they believe that they can have that only if they pay for the best : for small classes ; well-equipped laboratories ; well-maintained buildings ; and well-paid teachers. But it is different for other people's children. Ministers claim that they can get the best in larger classes and crumbling buildings, with too little equipment, too few books, and a demotivated and underpaid teaching force.

Another consequence is that by boycotting the maintained system Ministers send out a clear message that they lack serious personal commitment to state education

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and that they are as profoundly ignorant of its achievements as they are of what needs to be done to sustain and improve it.

Mr. Paice : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Straw : I have already explained to the hon. Gentleman, although I realise that he does not like it, that I am not going to give way any more because of lack of time. He should make his own speech. Perhaps he might complain to the Government Whips about their attempts to sabotage this debate earlier.

The Sunday Times recorded in February that the Secretary of State sent his son, who is now grown up, to Highgate school, which is on the border of the London boroughs of Camden and Haringey. Fees at that school amount to more than £4,000 per pupil per year, and many of its pupils are subsidised by the state through the assisted places scheme.

How can the Secretary of State justify poll tax capping Camden and Haringey local education authorities, which are spending £1,200 less per child in their charge than he thought it right to spend on his child? Would he be happy to have his child educated with the level of resources that the Government have dictated is sufficient for poll tax capped authorities to spend in the north, the north-west, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Greater London and Avon?

I hope that the Secretary of State will now respond to a second question, because his amendment claims that there have been "lasting improvements in standards in schools"

in the past 11 years. If, as the Secretary of State claims, 11 years of Tory Government have led to lasting improvements in the state system, is that system now good enough for him to have his child educated by it? I invite the Secretary of State to reply to this critical question about whether the Government apply one standard or two to the education of our children. [Hon. Members :-- "Answer."] For the second time today, we have seen the Secretary of State refuse to answer questions--first about whether he could guarantee that every child in a state school will have a teacher in September ; and secondly about whether, after 11 years of Tory Government, the state system is sufficiently good to educate his children or those of his Cabinet colleagues. What a lack of confidence that displays in the system over which he and his colleagues have presided for 11 years.

Mr. Dave Nellist (Coventry, South-East) : My hon. Friend may not have heard several Tory Members accusing him, from a sedentary position, of personalising the debate and of attacking only the Secretary of State. Does my hon. Friend realise that 250 Tory Members have been to public school and received private education? As a section of society, they are not prepared to give our children the same facilities, the same pupil-teacher ratios and the same start in life that 250 of them received.

Mr. Straw : I entirely accept what my hon. Friend says.

Mr. Paice : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Straw : No. I have given way more to Conservative Members than to my hon. Friends.

By any serious international standards, the state to which the Government have reduced the education system is a disgrace. "National scandal" was the phrase used by Derek Jewell, the chairman of the Headmasters'

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conference of private schools, to describe state funding of the system which, as a proportion of national wealth, has declined in the past 11 years. We need a Government with a clear ambition for the nation's young people, ready to set targets for raising academic performance and the percentage of young people staying on at school, with clear mechanisms for delivering those targets. We need a Government committed to investing more in young people's education, and equally committed--by example, leadership and systematic appraisal of performance-- to ensuring that we get more out of that investment and end the enormous and unacceptable variations in performance between otherwise similar schools. We would get all that from a Labour Government, but the Secretary of State has no ambition and no leadership : he is a Treasury placement so uninterested in the effect on children's lives of the policy to which he is a party that he could not even bring himself to meet education representatives from poll tax capped authorities.

Incredibly, instead of using demographic decline to secure a once-in-a- lifetime boost to the staying-on rate after 16, without substantial extra cost, the Secretary of State in his public expenditure White Paper plans to cut 80,000 places in full-time education for 16 to 19-year-olds, and he stands supinely by while the Secretary of State for Employment cuts nearly £300 million from the budget for training young people.

As ever, as the Government flounder, Ministers start to blame each other.

"Senior Conservatives are alarmed by Labour's growing lead in the polls over the government's education policies,"

reported The Independent on Sunday on 18 June.

"The shift of opinion in Labour's favour has been greater than on any other issue The Prime Minister and Kenneth Baker blame John MacGregor the Secretary of State for Education for failing to promote Government changes".

A month ago we learned from a report which has the fingerprints of the Conservative party chairman all over it that the Secretary of State was to be given a new public relations minder--a man called Robin Light--as Central Office was so worried about the Secretary of State's performance.

To add insult to injury, we read in yesterday's diary in The Times of an attempt to bail out the Secretary of State :

"Conceding that education is their weakest area, a number of Tory MPs say Mrs. Currie should join John MacGregor's team and add flair and excitement to a lacklustre department."

I do not wish to intrude on private grief, but the piece continued :

"MacGregor, who as agriculture minister had to take much of the flak over her salmonella-in-eggs gaffe, might suggest another description."

It also raised questions not only about the future of the Secretary of State but about that of the Minister of State and the Under-Secretary of State. Although Conservative Members may want them to go, we want them to stay, because every time they open their mouths they raise our lead in the polls.

In a catalogue of failure, few policies have failed so monumentally as opting-out. In 1987, the Prime Minister predicted that by the next election --which will be next year or the year after--most eligible schools would have opted out of local authority control. That would amount to thousands. The dice have been heavily loaded in favour of opted-out schools. The advice that the Department of Education and Science has issued to schools has been so biased that even the Tory-controlled Association of

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County Councils has protested. Despite that, not thousands, not hundreds but only 44 schools have opted out, with more in Tory-controlled than in Labour-controlled areas.

So the Prime Minister, who is pathologically obsessed about local education authorities, announced off the cuff to a conference 10 days ago that opting out is to be made easier, and that the local government finance system will be rigged so that poll tax can be reduced where schools opt out. When that emerged, the Secretary of State was reduced to getting his press officer to telephone journalists to tell them that there is no difference of opinion between him and the Prime Minister.

If there is no difference of opinion, will the Secretary of State tell us now, or in his speech, how the scheme for cutting the poll tax is to work, how the new arrangements for opting out are to work and how such further upheaval squares with a categorical undertaking that he gave in an interview on 9 March, that

"No new school reforms would be introduced by a Conservative government until 1994 at the earliest"?

That the centrepiece of the Government's answer to the educational challenges of the 1990s should be fiddled ballots for opting out is a mark of the mediocrity to which their education thinking has now been reduced.

It first dawned on this country towards the end of the last century that the rise of Germany as an industrial power had been built upon superior investment in education and training. Then other countries such as Japan, the United States, France and Italy overtook us. Our £20 billion trade deficit is paralleled by an even bigger deficit in the education and skills of our young people. If we are to compete as well as to give our young people their birthright, we must invest in their education and training. We need an end to the Government and an end to their wilful damage of our education service. We need a Government who are committed to a state education system, who use the system and who have real ambition for the nation's young. The only way to achieve that is to have a Labour Government.

4.59 pm

The Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. John MacGregor) : I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof :

"congratulates the Government on its programme for securing further lasting improvements in standards in schools through its policies for the national curriculum ; assessment and testing, increased parental choice, and greater autonomy for schools ; notes increased recurrent and capital expenditure since 1979 in real terms per pupil of 40 per cent. and 13 per cent., respectively ; notes widespread public support for the Government's reforms and welcomes the significant increase in staying on rates among 16 and 17- year-olds in the last two years and in the numbers going on to higher education which show the success of the Government's policies ; and contrasts this inspiring programme with the failure of the Opposition to produce alternative proposals offering similar leadership for the nation's young.".

The hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) made a profound speech. However, having listened to his speeches since I became Secretary of State, I am bound to say that they have three characteristics. First, the hon. Gentleman always uses the same material and it is getting pretty tired and trivial now. Secondly, his sole preoccupation seems to be to string together every negative quotation and every negative statistic that he can find--and they can be found

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in every country and in every education system--and by lumping them all together he seems to think that he is making some sort of contribution to the education debate. Let me tell him quite clearly that he is not. The picture that he gave today is unbalanced, incoherent and a travesty of what is happening in our schools.

Ms. Harman : Will the Secretary of State give way?

Mr. MacGregor : We have heard that this is a short debate, but I shall give way just this once.

Ms. Harman : Is the Secretary of State aware that in my constituency alone six primary schools regularly send children home and that six and seven-year-olds go to school only to be told again that there is no teacher for them? What will the Secretary of State do to guarantee a decent education for Southwark children?

Mr. MacGregor : I shall come to that point in due course, because we have been doing a great deal. But it is a travesty to suggest that what happens in some schools in Southwark is typical of what is happening throughout the country.

The hon. Member for Blackburn completely failed to acknowledge the substantial progress that is being made. He has given no credit, please note, to the teachers for their many recent achievements. His sole intent is on black headlines and never mind the real story. He is the classical perpetual Opposition spokesman.

Thirdly, once again the hon. Gentleman has failed to answer the key question that has been put to him so often from the Conservative Benches-- what would Labour actually spend? It is not enough for him to claim that resources are insufficient when his own policy document is long on platitudes, short on costs and takes refuge in those all pervasive words "as resources allow".

Mr. Win Griffiths (Bridgend) : The Secretary of State uses those words.

Mr. MacGregor : I do not use those words. The Labour document is riddled with that phrase, and I know perfectly well why.

Mr. Griffiths : I remind the Secretary of State that when he appeared before the Select Committee on Education, Science and Arts he referred to expanding education as soon as resources allowed on more than one occasion when he was challenged by Conservative Members. He can check the record. He used those words.

Mr. MacGregor : Of course, I believe in spending as resources allow, but the big difference is that, by its hints that it will spend more, the Labour party somehow pretends that that does not matter. But the record shows that this Government have been spending more on education than the previous Labour Government did because we have been improving the resources. That is the key difference. The question that the hon. Member for Blackburn never answers is what a Labour Government would spend. The answer is clear from his silence in every debate that we have had--not a penny more. That simple fact destroys the whole of his speech.

On an earlier occasion I described a decade of action under this Government : to improve education standards,

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to extend opportunity and choice and to improve the management of steadily increasing resources. I deal now with the ground that we have covered in the past year.

First, the programme for the national curriculum is well on target. There is absolutely no retreat. The House has approved programmes of study for English, maths, science and technology. We are completing work on geography, history and modern languages. The proposals are rigorous and have widespead support. We are taking practical decisions on arrangements for assessment, ensuring that they achieve their objectives in a workable way.

On assessment at seven, it is right to try different types of schemes. They are being piloted in 2 per cent. of schools. They are not in full application and they are not being reported. We shall be assessing the pilot schemes and I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I am determined that that assessment will be carried out in a workable way. But it must be real assessment, which improves standards and--I think the hon. Gentleman agrees with this--which achieves the results that we seek. We must strike the right balance and we shall do so.

In the classroom, Her Majesty's inspectors report excellent progress in the range and quality of work in the core subjects. There was not a word from the hon. Gentleman about that. There is a marked improvement in curriculum planning. I meet many teachers who are making good use of that national framework for exercising their professional skills. That has been a major programme of work and reform and it will continue to be so for some years ahead. In April, all but a handful of local education authorities introduced schemes for local management of schools. That gives schools fairer shares of the education budget and much greater autonomy in the management of their affairs. In itself, it does not alter the total resources available, but it distributes them in a more open way, based on better and clearer criteria. One in eight schools already have delegated budgets. Next year, it will be one in four. That will reduce local bureaucracy. It has made schools and local education authorities more accountable and it has enhanced the position of head teachers and staff in line with changes in the pay structure that reward leadership and responsibility.

Ms. Harman : The Secretary of State does not know what he is talking about.

Mr. MacGregor : If the hon. Lady talks to teachers in schools that have piloted local management of schools during the past few years, they will tell her of the benefits.

Mr. Derek Fatchett (Leeds, Central) : Will the Secretary of State give way?

Mr. MacGregor : No, I shall not give way. I have already said that I would not give way again.

During the past school year we have lifted artificial limits on the places available in popular secondary schools. By this September the number of grant-maintained schools will have increased from 18 to 44. The number of applicants to those schools has risen sharply--by 40 per cent. on average this coming September. There has been a remarkable change in atmosphere and morale and proposals are already coming from another 16 schools.

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The same goes for city technology colleges. Four more will open next term to join the four already in operation. Again, the demand from parents for places for their children in those city technology colleges is high.

I am not surprised that the hon. Member for Blackburn is so implacably opposed to that policy. He cannot bear the thought that those schools are proving so popular. The Labour party prefers the monopoly supply of a uniform product. It likes to think that it knows what is best for children and is determined to deprive parents of that choice.

We have set in hand a major programme of work towards further improving the standard and relevance of post-16 education and the proportion of young people who benefit from it. Those improvements start in schools. We have introduced the general certificate of secondary education and the technical and vocational education initiative. That has markedly increased standards of attainment. In 1989, the proportion of candidates achieving grades A to C increased from the previous year by 3.5 percentage points to 46 per cent. It is encouraging that many more young people are staying on in full-time education. To listen to the hon. Gentleman, one would not think that such things had happened. He does not like hearing about them. He prefers to talk his way through them.

The first year after the introduction of the GCSE saw the participation of 16-year-olds rise to 52 per cent. In the second year, 1989-90, provisional figures suggest that as many as 56 per cent. of 16-year-olds are now engaged in full-time education. Provisional figures from the largest examining body, the Associated Examining Board, suggest that the number taking A and AS examinations is likely to be the highest ever even though there are fewer pupils in the relevant age group. All of that is working through to substantially higher numbers going into higher education--more than 1 million students now compared with 750,000 in 1979. The number is increasing markedly year by year, with an increase of about 10 per cent. in the past year in the number going to universities and polytechnics. There is a clear sign that that will continue next year.

We have now implemented this year's pay settlement, based on the interim advisory committee's admirable report, enabling us to introduce further improvements to the career structure, local flexibility and rewards for responsibility and classroom skills. All of that, to use the report's own words, can surely be described as far reaching.

Mr. Straw : Will the Secretary of State now answer the question that I put to him twice during my speech? If things are so good for the teaching profession, can he guarantee that no child will be without a permanent properly qualified teacher in front of his or her class this September?

Mr. MacGregor : Did the Labour Government ever give that guarantee, and would one ever do so in future? I shall deal with the position of teachers later, but I will tell the hon. Gentleman now why that is a false question. There are problems in some geographical areas and in some skills. Some issues of considerable standing reflect not simply on the education system but on the geographical area in which they arise. We have been taking a number of actions to deal with those problems, at a time when recruitment for all sorts of occupations is becoming more

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