House of Commons Hansard Debates for 19 Nov 1991

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Orders of the Day

Education (Schools) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. Speaker : I should inform the House that I have not selected the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Moray (Mrs. Ewing).

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett (Denton and Reddish) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I drew your attention to a series of questions which I tabled for written answer but which the Ministry of Defence refused to answer. You will have seen in earlier exchanges today, in answer to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn), that the Minister again refused to answer. As I understand it, there was a convention in the Ministry of Defence that certain questions tabled by hon. Members were not answered. However, in recent months the Ministry appears to have started the practice of authorising information to be supplied to the press which covers exactly the same ground as the questions tabled. Surely you have always deprecated the possibility that Ministers agree to brief the press but not to give the same information to the House. Will you consider the series of questions and take action to ensure that, if information is provided to newspapers or to television, it should also be provided to the House?

Mr. Speaker : It is not my function--the House knows this--to monitor answers given to questions. I heard what the hon. Gentleman had to say when I called him to ask a supplementary question today. I can say only that if--if--information is given to the press, it should equally be given to the House.

Mr. Allan Rogers (Rhondda) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker : No point of order arises. It is not a matter for me.

Mr. Rogers : It is when it is impossible for hon. Members and for members of the Opposition Front Bench to obtain answers from the Ministry of Defence. When we table questions, we often receive a monosyllabic "no" or a refusal to answer, but information is given to the press which is not available to hon. Members.

Several Hon. Members rose --

Mr. Speaker : I have heard this said ever since I have been in the House of Commons.

Mr. Geoffrey Dickens (Littleborough and Saddleworth) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker : Well, it does take up a lot of time.

Mr. Dickens : Did you notice this afternoon, Mr. Speaker, that the Leader of the Opposition asked one sensible question? Did you also notice how many Back Benchers managed to put a question to the Prime Minister as a result? Would not that be a wonderful practice for the House?

Mr. Speaker : That is not a matter of order, but it enables more hon. Members to ask questions.

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Mr. Ron Brown (Edinburgh, Leith) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Although we all welcome the release of Terry Waite and Tom Sutherland, will the Government make a statement on why they reached a deal with terrorist groups? I understood that the Government would not enter into any deals, so will the Prime Minister or the appropriate Minister make a statement, because it is important that we hear their views?

Mr. Speaker : That is not a matter for me ; it is a matter for the Government.

Mr. Anthony Beaumont-Dark (Birmingham, Selly Oak) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, which is directly to do with you. All of us in the House are great admirers of Sir Winston Churchill. However, before the names of rooms in the House are changed--such as the Harcourt Room being renamed the Churchill Room--is it not right that, as when Ernest Bevin's bust was put in a place to which the whole House agreed, before names are changed willy-nilly to suit some people, the House is asked its opinion? Otherwise any self-appointed or unrepresentative person can change what they like. The House belongs to its Members, and its Members should be consulted.

Mr. Speaker : As I understand it, it was done on the advice of the Services Committee which no longer exists. The hon. Gentleman should raise the matter with the new Finance and Services Committee. I do not know whether the change has taken place, so no doubt it will listen to his views.

I think that we should get on with the debate. I have already said that I have not been able to select the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Moray (Mrs. Ewing).

3.35 pm

The Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Kenneth Clarke) : I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time The Bill gives effect to the main provisions of the parents charter, which we launched a month or two ago. It represents a further massive step in the direction of giving parents more power and influence over the education of their own children. It will also enable parents to exercise a more effective and a more real choice of school for their children.

Two key points of policy are encompassed by the Bill. The first is to provide for performance tables to be published for every school ; the second is to make provision for the regular inspection of every state school, with clear and straightforward reporting of the results of the inspections being made available to the parents of the children who attend each school.

The overall effect of the Bill will be to give the general public and especially parents far more information than we have been able to contemplate before about the performance of our education system. We are opening up a world that has been closed to the general public for far too long. Once the Bill has come into effect, people will begin to ask why they were never previously able to receive the kind of information about their children's schools which we will now put into people's hands.

The provisions are a direct response to the general public's concern about the standards of education. The Government share that concern to the full, and that is what all our education reforms are about. We want to

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improve the standards of education and training for our young people to the levels that the country will require of future generations. The parents charter provisions in the Bill are a key part of that whole effort.

Mr. John McAllion (Dundee, East) : If the Secretary of State is serious in saying that the proposals are a key part of the Government's educational effort in relation to the United Kingdom, why have primary schools in Scotland been excluded from the legislation?

Mr. Clarke : The Scottish education system has always varied to some extent from the English system, and matters in Scotland are the concern of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland. The Scottish Office selects the aspects of our policy which seem suitable for Scotland.

Mr. Alex Salmond (Banff and Buchan) rose --

Mr. Clarke : I will press on. What I am about to say gives an idea of the differences of Scottish attitude and of Scottish provisions. We are just getting the first provisional results of the tests for seven-year- olds, which were carried out in a more widespread way in England than they were in Scotland.

The first of the provisional results, referred to in the various documents whose contents have been discussed in the public press, are now appearing, and more information will be forthcoming. As we discover from those tests the standards of mathematical and reading ability demonstrated by our seven -year-olds, we can have some cause for satisfaction, because a good proportion of children are shown to have been making very good progress.

However, there have already been some expressions of concern about the disappointingly high proportion of children, both in England and Wales, who at that stage were making very little progress with reading in particular. That information is only the tip of the iceberg--more and more will emerge as the Government's reforms come into effect--but it reveals the purpose of our reforms.

The information itself reveals legitimate cause for public concern, and an aspect of children's performance in school that parents are most anxious we should address. That is why we are acquiring the information, and the information reveals exactly why we are embarking on a vigorous process of school reform. The information and evidence of public concern justify, among other things, the considerable effort that I know we are demanding of schools and teachers. Looking at those provisional results, I cannot help but remember that, only a few months ago, some people, including some hon. Members, were totally against the whole idea of testing seven-year-old children in schools. A campaign run by the teachers union in Scotland achieved considerable success, and fewer seven-year-olds were tested in Scotland than in England. I assume, therefore, that the Scottish public remain shrouded in ignorance to a much greater degree than the English public when it comes to the exact performance of their schools.

There were people in England, too, who claimed that the tests would not tell us anything that we did not already know. The early reaction to the information that is emerging shows that the public did not know exactly what the situation was. Although, personally, I think that the general public felt a certain disquiet and felt a need to know more about the standards being achieved by

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seven-year-olds in our schools, there were those in the educational world who were more anxious not to test, or to remain silent about the results.

Mr. Salmond : The Secretary of State cannot have it both ways. He cannot refuse to answer a perfectly legitimate question about Scottish education on the grounds that it is a matter for his Scottish colleagues, while at the same time introducing a Bill, which quite disgracefully shoehorns Scottish education into what is basically English and Welsh legislation. Will he reflect, even at this late stage, on the wisdom of referring the single clause relevant to Scotland to a Special Standing Committee of Scottish Members so that it can be properly discussed?

Mr. Clarke : The Bill follows the perfectly ordinary practice of containing United Kingdom legislation, which, for the most part, will apply to all parts of the United Kingdom and also containing a clause that makes express provision for the information that is given in Scotland. That can be addressed as a Scottish issue in Committee in the ordinary way, and I see nothing in the Bill that is remotely out of the ordinary. The generality of the Bill applies to Scotland. The Government are pursuing the same policy north and south of the border but, quite properly, we are taking account of some differences in provision in Scotland, with the result that one clause applies exclusively to Scotland.

Mr. McAllion : The Secretary of State does not seem to understand the terms of his own Bill, which for the most part does not apply to Scotland. The only part of the Bill that applies to Scotland is clause 17. Why cannot the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way to the reasonable request of the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) that the clause be dealt with separately by Scottish Members, because it affects only Scottish Members, and because no other part of the Bill affects Scottish Members?

Mr. Clarke : The policy of giving information about schools applies in its various ways to different parts of the United Kingdom. There is a clause that gives expression to that in Scotland in a way that matches the provisions of Scottish law and Scottish requirements. It is absurd for Scottish Members to say that they want a separate Committee to discuss one clause of the Bill. I am sure that most Scottish people wish their interests to be represented in debates on the education policy embodied in the Bill, and I am sure that their interests can be represented adequately in that way.

Mr. Richard Tracey (Surbiton) : May I move my right hon. and learned Friend off the local and nationalist difficulty referred to by Scottish Opposition Members? Will my right hon. and learned Friend comment on the broader point of the premature judgment of the teachers' unions and the Labour party about the tests for seven-year-olds? Surely that proves that we must beware of premature judgments. The Labour party has also jumped to premature conclusions about grant-maintained schools, city technology colleges and assisted places and it has condemned them. The Conservative party lends itself to more mature conclusions, to the benefit of the youngsters of this country.

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Mr. Clarke : My hon. Friend's intervention is relevant. The consistent theme of Labour's approach to education is that it is opposed to innovation. It is essentially a conservative party with regard to public services. If we had had a Labour Government for the past 10 years, nothing would have changed in our education system. It would have remained entirely a matter for local authorities, acting heavily under the influence of the professional trade unions. Labour would not have introduced any of the innovations that we have been and are considering, including seven-year-old tests.

I have conceded that the first year's seven-year-old tests were imperfect in their details, and I have invited the School Examinations and Assessment Council to come back--as it has--with a much improved version of the tests for next year, which will be more manageable in the classroom and give us more detailed results about the precise level of attainment, particularly in reading, that pupils have reached.

The seven-year-old tests already carried out in England have produced most effective reporting to parents about how well their children are proceeding and have provided much more information for the teachers about how their pupils are proceeding vis-a-vis the national norm. We are beginning to get widespread national information about how our schools are performing, and we will get it county by county.

I have described what have been produced so far as provisional figures. I have made it clear that this year I intend to publish the results of the first year of seven-year-old tests local authority by local authority. I will not in the first instance publish them school by school, because we gave an undertaking that we would not do that in the trial year of the first nationwide seven-year-old tests. However, I see no reason why we should not now give proper figures on a local authority basis.

I was surprised and startled to discover, when I first intended to produce that information, that only 22 local education authorities could give me full information about the seven-year-old test results. That speaks volumes about local authority control of education in this country, particularly many Labour local authorities, which simply are not used to measuring the performance of their schools, let alone producing the results. We wait to discover how many of them will be able to produce the results, how many are bothered to collate the information for their own purposes and how many are capable of transmitting it to me.

I believe that the public are entitled to know the breakdown of the results local authority by local authority. As I have said, this first year's information, which has aroused a lot of legitimate public interest, is only the beginning of what we will produce by way of full information for the general public and parents about how well each part of the system is performing.

Mr. Elliot Morley (Glanford and Scunthorpe) : My county council has collated information, and it has surveyed all the teachers involved in the seven-year-old tests. This is not a political matter. The county council discovered that the vast majority of the teachers disputed the value of the tests because of the impact of the rising sixes and the wide range and disparity of ages, and also because the tests distracted them for so long from classroom teaching, at the expense of the majority of the children they were supposed to be teaching. The

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conclusion only confirmed what was known about the children. The value of the exercise was completely undermined by the disruption that the tests brought about.

Mr. Clarke : I concede that the hon. Gentleman's second point has some validity, but it is exaggerated. I accept that the first-year tests undoubtedly took far too much time in many classrooms, and that they sometimes held back the proper teaching of classes. It is for that reason that I asked the chairman of SEAC to review the nature of the tests and to make some changes at SEAC. Practising teachers have been appointed to SEAC. For next year, we have devised a more straightforward system of testing, which will take up less time in the classroom and be more manageable but still produce worthwhile results. There will be better results, because more information will be given by more straightforward testing of such matters as reading ability.

I dispute what the hon. Member for Glanford and Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) said about the test not telling teachers anything that they did not already know. Many teachers assert that, but the evidence of Her Majesty's inspectorate and others clearly contradicts it. The teachers' assessment and the result of the test differed in about a third of cases. As I have said, the public information that is being revealed is new, is of value, is something which the public should have had before, and will help teachers to address the standards that they are achieving in their schools.

Several Hon. Members rose--

Mr. Clarke : I shall give way in a moment. I must make progress. The hon. Member for Glanford and Scunthorpe takes me back to the point that I was making. I am astonished to find that, a few months later, there are still people such as himself plainly arguing, "Let us find reasons for not testing the children and for not producing the results ; it is not something that the general public should know"--opposing the general principles in the Bill.

Mr. Toby Jessel (Twickenham) : On information, is my right hon. and learned Friend willing to comment on reports that the Richmond upon Thames borough council has advised the governing bodies of local schools that they may not legally distribute copies of the parents charter to parents ? Is that not absolute nonsense ? Is it not monstrous to seek to deprive parents of their right to information on the education of their children ?

Mr. Andy Stewart (Sherwood) indicated assent.

Mr. Clarke : My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr. Stewart) is nodding his head. In our county of Nottinghamshire, the same practice as that in Richmond has been followed. Advice has been given that schools should not distribute the parents charter. I stress that it is only advice. The county councils and borough councils concerned are not entitled to forbid the distribution of that material, which is being distributed only in the way in which successive Governments have distributed material to parents.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Jessel) : the behaviour of Richmond upon Thames borough council and that of Nottinghamshire county council shows what Liberal and Labour councils all too frequently believe about exposing

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their activities and their performance to the general public. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) plainly agrees that councils should be encouraged to take the view that parents should not be allowed to know the results achieved at their schools, and that they should not be allowed more information about how their children are performing. The parents charter is a threat to the closed bureaucratic world in which the Liberal and Labour parties all too often like to cloak the education authorities that they control.

Several Hon. Members rose --

Mr. Clarke : The hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy) has been trying to intervene for a long time. I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman and then proceed, if I may, for some time before giving way again.

Dame Peggy Fenner (Medway) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker : I will take the point of order after we have dealt with this matter.

Mr. Peter Hardy (Wentworth) : My point is important. A substantial number of senior figures in Conservative education authorities are not enthusiastic about Government policy. However, does the Secretary of State accept that, although he may be concerned about reading standards in our primary schools, reading standards in primary schools in England today are higher than they were 40 or 50 years ago? Will he therefore make it clear that, if he is to make comments before he has given the matter serious consideration, he will not disregard that important point? The Under- Secretary of State appeared to disagree with me, but I did considerable research on the subject in the 1960s.

Mr. Speaker : I will take the point of order now.

Dame Peggy Fenner : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it either proper or in the traditions of the House for a so-called Opposition Front Bench spokesman to make this gesture with his hand while the Secretary of State is speaking?

Mr. Speaker : I did not see that particular piece of body language, but body language is not unknown in this Chamber.

Mr. Clarke : I was touching on the part of the Bill which deals with the production of performance tables which will include, among other things, the results of national curriculum tests, as we steadily develop the national curriculum and the testing system. It is obvious that the production of such information arouses a great deal of controversy and body language among a large part of the Opposition. The hon. Member for Wentworth is right to say that a few senior Conservative councillors are unhappy about it, too. I regret that. On the whole, the attitude of Conservative councillors is more restrained in places such as Richmond, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire and many other councils that are controlled by our political opponents.

I make no apology for the fact that performance tables will produce for the general public information about the performance of schools which local authorities were previously deeply reluctant to let out. I invite the House to

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give a Second Reading to a Bill that will make it legally obligatory to produce information that is useful to the public and parents.

The hon. Member for Wentworth made a second point, about standards of reading. I accept that he has expertise in the matter. He is a former teacher and has always followed education matters. He claims that reading standards are no worse now than 40 years ago. I often follow such debates. As there was a tradition 40 years ago of not providing generally available or comparable national information, it is difficult to come to firm conclusions.

I notice that, every time Her Majesty's inspectorate produces a report about reading standards today, and every time that there is an inquiry into a school, there is widespread public anxiety about reading standards, and a widespread desire to improve them. That is the key point.

We cannot tolerate people leaving our schools illiterate or innumerate in any significant numbers. I do not understand how we are supposed to tackle that if no one will allow us to test children's progress at key stages or if, when we do, there is resistance from local authority bureaucracy or the National Union of Teachers to allowing anyone to know the results of that testing. We are engaged on a key part of the task that faces us all now. That task is to bring levels of literacy and numeracy and, among older children, academic attainment and vocational training up to the level which today's society requires.

Mrs. Rosie Barnes (Greenwich) : Will the Secretary of State give way?

Mr. Malcolm Thornton (Crosby) : Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

Mr. Clarke : I apologise but, having given way at least half a dozen times in five minutes, I said that I would make a little more progress before I gave way again.

Mr. Thornton : On that point, Sir.

Mr. Clarke : I am sure that I shall not be allowed to get off the point entirely for some time.

I cited the seven-year-old tests as the tip of the iceberg. Of course, we shall have the results of national curriculum tests at the ages of seven, 11 and 14. GCSE results are already available to those who get hold of a school's prospectus. Other public examination results, including A-level results, are usually available if one takes the trouble to obtain the prospectus of the school. Equally key information includes truancy figures, staying-on rates for secondary schools and the destination of pupils when they leave schools. Each part of that set of information is essential if we are to know how our system is performing and to give people any effective influence on schools.

Mr. Thornton : Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

Mr. Clarke : By popular request, I give way to the Chairman of the Select Committee.

Mr. Thornton : Few Members of Parliament, certainly on this side of the House, would dispute the need to give the maximum amount of information to parents by publishing results. However, there are some elements of disquiet, particularly in respect of pupils with special educational needs. This is a point for Committee, but I would like my right hon. Friend to consider it. There can

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be huge variations in the numbers, even using the Warnock figures. I should like that point to be given some consideration in Committee, to ensure that it is reflected somewhere in a coherent form in the publication of any results from individual schools.

Mr. Clarke : We can certainly tackle that in Committee ; my hon. Friend has mentioned the first of many important points. One has to make sensible use of the results and to ask sensible questions about what lies behind them. As I understand it, that is the Opposition's argument. However, if one publishes in tabular form each and every qualification that someone might believe is a necessary addition to the outline results, one is in danger of making all the information completely unmanageable and shrouding it in secrecy simply by making it excessive. I shall return to that subject and to the question of special educational needs.

A few months ago, in the parents charter, we announced that we were going to publish all that information. For years it had been kept secret, and the idea of league tables had been rejected countless times. Almost overnight, we appear to have achieved a widespread public conversion from the Opposition. Although Opposition Back Benchers from Scunthorpe and elsewhere may still be opposed to the whole idea, by and large those on the Opposition Front Bench already lack the nerve to oppose the production of performance tables for schools. The Opposition are criticising them on the basis that all we are proposing is the publication of so called raw data. They have said that there is not enough supporting information to make our proposed tables suitably useful.

We are proposing to publish straightforward, factual, easily obtainable data about each school. I do not accept the view that it will be misused or misunderstood by the public. I do not accept the patronising view that the public and parents do not realise that each school may use perfectly sensible arguments to give the background to its results.

Most members of the public can use straightforward information intelligently. Every time I listen to the comment that the tables will not sufficiently take into account the number of pupils with special educational needs or the different background and circumstances of the population served by a school, I think that the people who make such comments are demonstrating that they are not capable of making intelligent use of that sort of information. Every member of the public knows that schools' circumstances vary. Once the essential information is published, it is open to everybody concerned to make use of it and to publish it in a local newspaper if they so wish, coupled with sensible comments about the number of pupils, the differences between schools with or without academic selection and the social and economic circumstances of each school. All those matters might properly be regarded as relevant. Those qualifications are not arguments for not producing the information in the first place. It would be a terrible mistake to allow the inclusion of so many special points of that sort that the league tables would be covered in footnotes or would be a sustained academic thesis, so that very few members of the general public would have the time to read them and digest the information.

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Let us trust parents and the public. Most of them can make intelligent use of the straightforward information that they are entitled to.

Mr. Jack Straw (Blackburn) : Does the Secretary of State understand that the crude view that he is adopting is wholly inconsistent with that of his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Mole Valley (Mr. Baker)? When we discussed the matter in Standing Committee in January 1988, he said that schools' results should be

"published in the context of a report about the work of the school as a whole, including a description of its circumstances and catchment area, and a general statement about the broad effect of socio-economic factors on performance."

Far from patronising parents, that Secretary of State went on to say :

"That will allow for an informed interpretation of assessment results."-- [ Official Report, Standing Committee J, 12 January 1988 ; c. 425.]

Why is the Secretary of State denying that informed interpretation?

Mr. Clarke : A few months ago, the hon. Gentleman was taking the crude view that no information about a school's performance should be vouchsafed to the general public. It is certainly true that a school can set its own examination results in whatever context seems most sensible when a prospectus is issued, including a general description of circumstances.

We are talking about comparative tables. They are an important innovation proposed by the parents charter. I do not understand how one sets out comparative tables when all the figures are surrounded by full descriptions of the circumstances of each school. Every hon. Member knows the schools and colleges in his or her constituency. They know, just as their constituents will when the information is published, the circumstances of each school. They will make allowances for those matters for which they should properly make allowance. In almost every case, they will be considerably surprised by the comparisons that for the first time will be made in performance in key respects between schools of remarkably similar objectives and background.

Other comments can properly be made, and will be made by sensible local journalists and experts of all kinds. For example, the Audit Commission recently made the valid point that added value--that is Audit Commission language--was a relevant judgment of schools. I accept that.

Mr. Straw : But does the right hon. and learned Gentleman understand it?

Mr. Clarke : I understand it entirely.

Mr. Derek Fatchett (Leeds, Central) : If the Secretary of State can understand it, we can.

Mr. Clarke : There is an interesting conversation going on between new-found enthusiasts on the Opposition Front Bench for giving information to the public.

Let us take this through step by step. With the full information that I have described, one can make valid comparisons between schools. One can see how far children have advanced from where they were when they arrived at where they were when they left. That can be used to compare different schools. One might still have to qualify those judgments with judgments about the social circumstances of the school, whether that school was taking a particularly high proportion of children with

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