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There is, first, a detailed report about events earlier this year when the 25th anniversary was celebrated. The school does not have a long history, but it has some excellent examination reports to which I shall refer. Clearly, the school's social life is extremely active. The report includes a long section on how the school has implemented the proposal to have its own budget. I supported the measures in the Education Act 1988 to introduce such a system.Indeed, North Yorkshire already had a pilot scheme in place before the last election. The report shows that the school has benefited greatly from controlling its budget and resources. It has made improvements by creating a new post of office manager, upgrading stock in the library, extending and reorganising the office for clerical staff, creating new areas for sixth- form students, including a BTEC facility and an additional seminar room, significantly upgrading technology and audio-visual equipment, implementing an extensive programme of internal decoration and providing additional departmental resources for text books and equipment.
The report states :
"The governors' broad policy is to use the increased funds wisely, both in the provision of the best up-to-date facilities and equipment for pupils and for enhancing the school environment with emphasis on security, safety and energy efficiency. Certainly, we are very pleased with the extra flexibility and benefits we now have over purchasing, decorating and maintenance".
That sentiment has been echoed by other head teachers. When I visited another large comprehensive school only a couple of weeks ago and addressed the sixth form, the headmaster told me that the school has now been able to carpet and curtain some of the noisiest classrooms, creating a much better environment for teaching the children.
That was one of the schools that took part in the pilot project for LMS in 1986-87. Although the LMS initiative has brought considerable benefits, problems with the funding formula for junior schools and some smaller comprehensive schools still exist. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister of State and the North Yorkshire education authority will continue to consult to ensure that the best arrangements are made and that some schools do not suffer as improvements are made in others.
The annual report also deals with the school's budget, which was £2 million in 1990-91 and has increased to more than £2.2 million in 1991 -92, the current academic year. The report says that 1,316 pupils are now on the roll and that the staff consists of 80 teachers. [ Hon. Members : -- "What has that to do with the Bill ?"] It has everything to do with the Bill, because it proves that it is possible to provide comprehensive information for the benefit of parents. That is what the parents charter is about and it goes to the heart of the Bill.
I have not yet referred to the publishing of examination results, which is the main concern about which we have heard this afternoon. A conclusion which I, as a parent, draw from the information that I have just given is that the school is spending £1,671 per pupil--a 10.3 per cent. increase on the figure for the previous year. We must bear in mind the fact that the education authority still has responsibility for some expenditure. That figure represents the best bargain that exists in public spending.
I sincerely believe that the money that we are spending on our schools provides an excellent return, and it must
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continue to be one of the key areas for growth in public expenditure. The past 12 years under this Government have seen a growth in public expenditure and it is for local education authorities and county councils to decide on the priorities for their expenditure. The Government and North Yorkshire county council have done that. No one can argue that expenditure per pupil provides anything other than value for money, provided that we look at the other side of the coin and consider what we can achieve with that money in terms of successful education.The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Flannery) referred to school numbers, and I am sorry that he is no longer in the Chamber to hear my remarks. The figure in the annual report shows that the school roll of 1,316 and 80 teachers is a pupil-teacher ratio of less than 17 : 1. I think that, in 1979, the figure was about 19 : 1. My hon. Friend the Minister is nodding, so I seem to have the statistic right.
Examination successes are a major concern. The annual report points out that last year's A-level results were the best that the school had achieved and this year's were even better. It says :
"17.6 per cent. of all passes were at A grade and 60.3 per cent. of all grades were at C or above".
That was a commendable result. As for the results of the GCSE examinations, the report says :
"Bearing in mind that our policy is that all students are generally entered for GCSE examinations in all the subjects they are studying"--
no picking and choosing those most likely to succeed--
"it reflects great credit on staff and students that only 26 of the 1,780 examination entries were ungraded. At the other end of the scale, 53.9 per cent. of students achieved five or more grade C passes compared with 49.3 per cent. in 1990."
As a proud father, I can tell the House that my son Anthony was included in that 53.9 per cent.
It is well known that schools in North Yorkshire achieve considerably above -average results. North Yorkshire does not spend above-average amounts on resources--its resourcing is about the national average. Some hon. Members wish to point out that North Yorkshire is a relatively affluent area, and I willingly accept that. However, affluence does not ensure that children will do better. Comparative figures for other schools in North Yorkshire show that the number of grade A and B passes range from 18.8 per cent. to 51 per cent. Some head teachers were grossly offended when figures in the Sunday Times survey omitted state schools in North Yorkshire, because some of those state schools have performed considerably better in their A-level results than some of the best independent schools in the United Kingdom. Therefore, even in an affluent county some state schools do better.
As for the publication of a more detailed breakdown of results, I commend to my hon. Friend the Minister of State another document that came with the annual report. It gives a breakdown of the number of students entered in each subject at GCSE and A-level in 1990-91 and 1989-90, and the number of passes obtained at each grade. I used my marker pen to mark the grades that my sons had attained in the examinations. I found nothing offensive in publishing such information.
I was pleased to hear my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State say earlier that we should persist in trying to devise ways of making value-added judgments
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about children's progress. It seems that some comprehensive schools do not have sixth forms, so the child moves on to a sixth form college to take A-levels. The child may have poor GCSE results or good ones. We should also address the issues of how he or she performs at A-level or on a business studies course at a further education college.One benefit to be derived from testing seven, 11, 14 and 16-year-old pupils is that, over time, we shall be able to monitor their progress and give parents the information that they need on their children in a way that they can understand and--the key issue--to help them to feel encouraged that they are working with teachers, head teachers and the governing body to the benefit of their children's education. That is happening increasingly in schools in my constituency. They may be performing in the best way--I perceive that to be so--and we should work towards attaining that standard in all our schools across the length and breadth of Britain. To do so we must introduce new regulations, and the Bill does that.
The first of my pleas to my hon. Friend the Minister is to take care that, in drafting the regulations to improve standards in sectors where that is needed, we do not undo good work or create unnecessary difficulty for schools that already provide the very best. We should allow the necessary flexibility. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister would agree and I shall send him the report to study. If we can ensure that all schools send such reports to parents and include the performance of each individual child, it will lead to greater parental involvement in our children's education.
Ms. Gordon : Does the hon. Gentleman realise that the publication of raw materials in league tables will mean that schools considering their position in the league will become increasingly reluctant to accept children with special needs? Consequently, those children will, to their detriment, be educated in sink schools. The hon. Gentleman approves of the testing of seven-year-olds. Does he know of the concept of reading readiness? Many children are not ready to learn to read until the last term of infant school, and if they are tested and pushed too early by teachers and parents, it can undermine their confidence, preventing them from becoming readers, not helping them. Therefore, the test could prove to be a two-edged sword.
Mr. Greenway : I listened with interest to the hon. Lady and am not out of sympathy with her concern. However, there is no evidence that children with special needs will not be accommodated in schools at all levels. In 1986, I was a governor of a junior school which was one of four schools competing for pupils under a shared catchment area policy. That was before the Education Reform Act 1988 and parents could choose which school their child would attend. My school specialised in educating children with special needs and enjoyed great success.
On the hon. Lady's second point, on the telephone today I asked the chief education officer of North Yorkshire, Mr. Fred Evans, about the parents charter. He suggested that we should consider it the other way round. He said that, based on the current performance of schools in the county, parents sending children to schools in North Yorkshire could expect that more than 95 per cent. of seven-year-olds would achieve the reading ability laid down in the test and there was an 82 per cent. chance that
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the child would be ahead of chronological development. Therefore, I do not believe that the hon. Lady's assertion is borne out by the facts.We have heard much claptrap this afternoon about the Government's proposals on the vexed question of inspections. There will certainly be controversy when the issue is discussed in Committee. Yesterday, North Yorkshire education authority discussed the issue. It resolved that the council supports the principle of independent inspections of schools. It is important that the House should accept that principle. There is great benefit to be derived from having independent inspectors who are properly trained and monitored by Her Majesty's inspectorate.
I have sympathy with the two reservations expressed by the county council. It said, first, that the education authority would wish to maintain a school advisory service to help schools to remedy faults found in inspections. Secondly--this lies at the heart of our proposals--the authority would want to be able to take action to remedy faults when governors are inactive and fail to take any action on inspections. It would be wrong and unwise of us to rely totally on the willingness of parents and governors to ensure that action considered necessary following an independent inspector's report is carried out.
I do not suggest that we should retain the inspectorate as it is now ; we are absolutely right to bring in an independent inspectorate and allow Her Majesty's inspectorate more of a monitoring role. However, I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will give careful consideration to the crunch issue.
Ultimately, if local education authorities are retained, their role must be to decide policy, provide resources and play a part in monitoring the progress of policy implementation. I am not advocating that a local education authority inspectorate should be sent in on a regular basis, but it would be wise to consider ensuring that there remains a reserve power. Perhaps we should not abolish section 77(3) of the Education Act 1944, and the education authority should reserve the power to send its own inspectors into a school which remains under local education authority control and in which there are clearly management problems.
During the last election campaign, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary came to my constituency. At a public meeting, there was a lively debate on education reforms--a key issue in that election campaign--and I said that I strongly suspected that, by the time of the next election, there would not be one school in North Yorkshire that was grant-maintained. That is the case. [Laughter.] Opposition Members laugh. I predicted that none of the schools would think it necessary to seek that status. However, schools in other parts of the country have done so, and that says rather a lot against the education authorities from which those schools have escaped. Many of those authorities are Labour-controlled.
Ms. Hilary Armstrong (Durham, North-West) : I do not like to have to confront the hon. Gentleman with facts, but I must tell him that the overwhelming majority of grant-maintained schools are in Tory areas.
Mr. Greenway : If that is the case, I stand corrected. One or two schools in the North Yorkshire education authority area have expressed interest, but none has taken the step
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of becoming grant-maintained. That speaks volumes for the education service provided by the North Yorkshire authority.I hope that in winding up the Minister will be able to answer my questions and will confirm that there is nothing in the Bill to prevent a local education authority from forming its own independent inspectorate which schools may prefer to use. Of course the authority will have to tender for the contract along with private inspectors in the normal way, but the matter should be carefully considered. When the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science, my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Fallon), came to North Yorkshire, he found a great deal which pleased him. If we want to make the best education service available everywhere, it behoves Ministers to come to North Yorkshire more regularly to see what it is doing to get education right. That will ensure that the benefits of our success can be passed to schools in other parts of Britain. 6.41 pm
Mr. Matthew Taylor (Truro) : I was pleased at the way in which the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) commented on the high quality of much of the state sector. In debates that tend to focus on faults, ‡ there is an inevitable tendency to forget about what is good in education. Teachers sometimes feel that they suffer from general and unfair criticism. The hon. Gentleman spent so much time commenting on the school which I understand his children attend that he gave the impression that he was standing as a parent governor and was making the opening speech of his campaign.
Mr. John Greenway : I have been a governor of the school.
Mr. Taylor : In that case, perhaps the hon. Gentleman is on a re- election campaign. We agree with much of what he said about the Bill's proposals, because, although I do not think that he intended it, what he said amounted to criticism. He supported much of what we have said, not least in his succinct and accurate description of what an LEA should do and the need for it to have the power, in some instances, to inspect what is going on in schools and help put matters right.
As I have said, much of what happens in the state sector is good, but there are clear problems. It is not politically divisive to say that, because that view is held on all sides. Teachers complain of difficulties in education and blame the Government, just as much as the Government tend to put the blame on teachers.
In the past few days, a series of problems have been reported in the press. Yesterday's issue of The Guardian reported on an NUT survey showing that over a quarter of primary school classes contain more than 30 pupils. Sunday's issue of The Observer reported that, in the past three years, parents have spent £75 million on basic books and equipment for schools to make up for underfunding by the Government. The Times Educational Supplement reported on Friday that instrumental music teaching provided by schools has in some areas been cut by more than a third. We read of parental concerns about the shortage of qualified science teachers, the lack of nursery places and the poor condition of many school buildings.
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The initiatives presented by the Government, after 12 years in office, in this Bill and in the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Bill do not address one of those multitudinous concerns. The so-called parents charter offers only the promise of regular school inspections and more information for parents. No one would deny the importance of regular school inspections or of information to parents, but much else is needed which the Government do not offer. Inspection must be thorough and must be followed by good advice. Parents need meaningful and helpful information and action to put right what is discovered to be wrong. The Bill offers none of those things.How will the Bill improve standards when it reduces the number of Her Majesty's inspectors from 480 to 175 and reduces the role of HMI to that of a supervisory body? It farms inspection out to private companies to be bought in by schools which will be offered choice only on the basis of who offers the most easy-going report at the cheapest cost. It does not specify how information will be provided, but grants unlimited power to the Secretary of State to require whatever he wishes, when he wishes it, without consultation. If the Bill is supposed to be about raising standards and giving full information to parents, it will fail. I shall later explain why in more detail. If it is about winning votes by taking a populist platform--which I suspect is the case--it will likewise fail, because parents will become increasingly concerned when they look at the Bill's detail. Parents are well aware that the problems created in schools by the Government are too far-reaching to be solved by the Bill's provisions.
Liberal Democrats have deep-seated concerns about the Bill and will oppose it and seek detailed and comprehensive amendments in Committee. Our main worry is about the fragmentation of the inspectorate. The Bill says that the chief inspector for England will have the duty to keep the Secretary of State informed about the quality of education and standards in schools. However, his power to do that is seriously limited by the reduction in the number of inspectors from 480 to 175. That reduction will mean a loss of many specialist skills, and the time of inspectors will be largely taken up by the new regulatory function.
The Government introduced the Education Reform Bill, now the Education Reform Act 1988, and other major education reforms, but they are now breaking the back of the one body that could effectively report on how successfully those reforms are working in the nation as a whole. If the Government really want to know how the system is performing, they should strengthen Her Majesty's inspectorate, not weaken it.
How will competition between inspection teams promote higher standards? If the basis of competition, which the Government have adopted from the private sector, is offering a good product at a low price, what choice does that leave schools except to choose inspection that is likely to offer an advantageous report at an advantageous price? Even if that were not so, financial constraints on schools could mean that they will have little choice but to opt for the cheapest teams. Small schools, of which there are many in areas such as mine, are likely to suffer most from the cost of that process.
The chief inspector is required to advise the inspection teams, but who will advise schools on who to call in, the kind of contract to draw up and the qualities to be sought
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in the inspection team? What advice will there be about the form that inspection should take? There are no details in the Bill about that, and that gives rise to justifiable fears that inspections will not even be of current quality. Frequent but poor inspections are not an improvement on infrequent but good inspections. Will there be the ability to deliver detailed departmental inspections? Will there be an examination of how effectively cross-curricular subjects such as environmental education are taught?The Government are foolish to underestimate the value that schools place on a local education authority's continuing and knowledgeable role and its knowledge of an area's background. Where in this Bill is the opportunity for follow-up advice and further inspections to be called in when that is necessary? The benefits of on-going support and advice will be lost, to the detriment of our schools, and the Government have little to say about that.
We risk more than the inspection system. Because it is so tightly worked in with the advisory system, there is a fear that, in the process of sorting out, we could lose much that is of value in the advisory system as well. The Government have not explained how they envisage that process taking place in such a way as to prevent that. If the HMI can have a role in organising private inspection teams, why not keep local inspections but have them monitored by the HMI rather than having them purely subject to LEA supervision? That would ensure the strength of a locally based system linked into advice, but with monitoring from a national body to ensure that standards of independence and rigorous inspection are upheld. If the Government were coming forward with that proposal--it would not require substantive amendment to change their present proposal into that one--there would be a broad welcome for it. Instead, because of an ideological commitment to privatisation and competition in a sector where it is inappropriate, the Government are leaving us with a Bill for which they claim many advantages but in which all those commenting on it can see only disadvantages and ultimately falling standards.
If the Government do not accept that that will be the result, are they prepared to publish the results of the consultation exercise on the inspection system that is to be embarked on? I very much doubt it. So far, the process has attracted damning criticism, and praise has been hard or impossible to find.
Who will make up the inspection teams? We have the requirement that a lay member be included, but how about the rather more important principle that, for example, there should be a member with expertise in special needs education to examine what is happening on that? Will there at least be an assurance that training given to would-be inspectors will include training in assessing the quality of special needs education?
Among my deep misgivings about the Bill is a fact that is obvious to anybody who looks at the Bill--there is no detail in it. The Government are giving themselves sweeping powers to set up a system, but they have refused to give details of how it will work in practice. The Secretary of State has said repeatedly that he understands the problems of pupils with special needs, but he has refused to make provision for the concerns that we have expressed. The Secretary of State spoke about league tables and his understanding of the value-added principle, but he has refused to do anything about incorporating it. As is so often the case with the Government, particularly when
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they frame education legislation, they are asking Parliament to grant the Secretary of State wide powers and are leaving him, unfettered by proper debate or restrictions on what he does, to prescribe the details of what will happen.The part of the Bill dealing with the publication of information by schools gives the Secretary of State many powers, but few details of how he proposes to use them, and gives parents no powers to get something done about what that information reveals. We understand that the Government's intention is that LEAs should publish league tables, including exam results, truancy rates and figures on the numbers continuing education or entering employment on leaving school.
The Secretary of State says that he wants straight, understandable information, not cooked figures. However, the limited information that he proposes to give will mean confusion rather than clarity and will lead to unfair comparisons between different schools. If the Secretary of State wants to help parents to choose the right school for their children, this is not sufficient.
Simplistic league tables will discourage schools from admitting pupils with special needs and so reduce opportunities for those pupils. They will encourage teachers not to enter pupils for exams in which they are not certain that the pupils will score highly, and so reduce opportunity for those pupils. They may tell parents, rightly or wrongly, that the school is under-performing, but they do nothing to give parents or pupils any opportunity to do anything about it. Few would disagree that information for parents is important. Those parties committed to a freedom of information Act have already committed themselves to a far broader measure than is proposed in the Bill. There must be enough information to give a fair reflection of the achievements of the school. If the Government are insistent on compelling LEAs to draw up league tables, why can they not also insist on the giving of background information?
Why are the Government pressing ahead with their plans so determinedly despite the fact that the Audit Commission has said that it is possible to measure the performance of schools by showing the progress made by pupils rather than raw results? For the first time, the Secretary of State showed some signs of beginning to understand that principle, but he refused to make any provision to ensure that such information is published in a form that is accessible to parents. On the other hand, he still has an over- abundance of enthusiasm for raw data that do not provide anything like the same information for parents.
A school with an intake of high achievers does nothing more than we expect if they leave as high achievers. A school whose intake is of low achievers has achieved something truly remarkable and worth while if at least some of them leave as high achievers. Why demolish the reputation and self- confidence of such a school with crude league tables that would relegate that excellent school to the also-rans? If the Government want an alternative, would it not make sense to give the job of establishing performance measures and the task of specifying the form in which the information is to be published to the Audit Commission, which specialises in such measures? If they are not prepared to take that step, they should at least make a commitment in the Bill, or even across the Dispatch Box
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in the way that they refused to earlier, to ensuring that value-added information is made available alongside the crude information.If the Secretary of State wants to ensure that parents can make important decisions about schools, he should give them the information that he said earlier that he believes is a helpful part of any analysis of how a school is performing. Nothing in what the Audit Commission said would require detailed intricate information at the bottom of every list to help the average parent to understand it. The Opposition parties might want more to be added about children with special needs, but that is not my point. I am asking only that the Government adopt the Audit Commission policy and show the value added by a school.
It is obvious from the Minister's unwillingness to come forward that the Government's aim is not to give useful information to parents but to create lists that will distort and deceive. I may be in a stronger position to say this than Labour Members, but, above all, lists will show schools in deprived areas--often those with the greatest numbers of pupils who do not have English as their first language--as under-performing. Uniformly, those schools are in LEAs run by the Labour party or in some cases by the Liberal Democrats. The Government are creating a political weapon that, in its present form, will do nothing to help parents to make rational choices. We are not arguing that this information should not be made available. We are saying that all the information--not just that which suits the Government-- should be made available. When there is evidence that the value-added approach to providing information is possible, and will provide for fairer assessment of a school's quality, as the Secretary of State admits, why not use all the available options ?
What do the Government envisage with these league tables ? Such choice as the Government offer, if choice it is, will be meaningless to most parents in rural areas such as mine, as they do not live within easy travelling distance of several schools from which they can make a choice. Even in urban areas it will not be long before schools that show up at the top of the league tables are full and, again, parents will have no choice but to send their children to schools which the Government are creating league tables to rubbish but for which they are providing no resources to solve the problem. For most parents in Cornwall there is no option but the local school. Parents want to know that that school is providing a good education for their children, not that there is a better school at the other side of the county to which they have no hope of sending their children. If there are weaknesses, parents want to know that resources will be provided to put right those weaknesses, but the Bill does not provide for that. Above all, no one wants a local school to be labelled a failure if it is a success in terms of value added and of improving a poor child's education.
My comments reveal what I hope will be raised in detail in Committee, and I shall certainly raise such issues. I hope that the Secretary of State will participate in the Committee. He portrays the Committee as dealing with a Bill that is a Government flagship, one that is vital for the nation, a principal aspect of the Prime Minister's citizens charter and fundamental to the parents charter. However, there is little chance that the Secretary of State will attend
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the Committee to defend the proposals in detail, and no wonder now that we have seen how weakly he performed when trying to do so in the debate.I also support the request that the Bill should be brought to a Special Standing Committee. One of the abiding features of the Government's reform process has been a lack of consultation and the infliction of rapid change on schools, followed by a rapid reversal of those changes. The lack of consultation has been raised by the Secretary of State to the status of high art in his proposals for the inspectorate. If the Bill were dealt with in a Special Standing Committee, we could call the people who will be directly affected by and who are most knowledgeable about the issues. At that late stage, we could at least have a genuine consultation and debate with everyone involved.
It is hypocritical for the Government to argue that the Bill is about freedom of information, about making available to parents and to the wider public information on which to judge schools and about making available what they regard as an improved inspection system, but then to refuse hon. Members permission to see the evidence presented to the Secretary of State about the inspectorate and to refuse to publish the consultation responses about proposals for the inspectorate.
Mr. Eggar : I know that the hon. Gentleman has not been in government and that he is not likely to be, but will he confirm for the record whether it is the Liberal party's official policy that internal advice to Ministers will always be released to the public?
Mr. Straw : The Rayner scrutiny on the HMIs.
Mr. Taylor : The hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) says that the Rayner scrutiny on Her Majesty's inspectors was published, but there is a more fundamental issue. If Ministers seek to justify their policies by referring to information and advice made available to them, not to allow that information and advice into the wider public arena so that people can judge for themselves whether Ministers are telling the truth suggests that they are not telling the full truth. In those circumstances, my party believes that the information should be made available, and that would be the aim of a freedom of information Act. The Government try to have it both ways. They say that the advice from civil servants is impartial and that it must not be seen because it is private to Ministers who make the decisions, but when they are questioned about their decisions, they refer to the private advice that they will not publish. That is a deceit. It is not democratic and it comes ill from a Government who propose the Bill in the name of freedom of information.
7.3 pm
Mr. Alan Amos (Hexham) : I begin by congratulating my right hon. and learned Friend on introducing the Bill which is a logical and sensible next step in the implementation of the citizens charter. Its two underlying aims are to raise standards and improve the quality of our educational system and also to widen choice which will be an informed choice and, with open enrolment, real and meaningful. The Assistant Masters and Mistresses Association said : "We support the broad aims which underly this Bill-- improved school inspection arrangements and increased public access to information about the quality of the
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publicly-funded education service. We believe that proper steps towards these aims would contribute to securing further improvement in the quality of children's education."The National Association of Head Teachers said--
Mr. Derek Enright (Hemsworth) : Read the rest.
Mr. Amos : The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Flannery) read from the same brief. As he is a natural pessimist and I am a natural optimist, I quoted the good and he quoted only the bad.
Mr. Fatchett : The hon. Gentleman quoted the first paragraph of AMMA's report. I know that he would not like to do any injustice to the report, but if he were to read the second paragraph, which contains its judgment on the Bill, he might come to a different conclusion. To put the record straight, I shall read the second paragraph :
"We judge that the provisions of the Bill, as printed, are confused and inadequate for their purposes. We therefore ask Members to seek very considerable revision to the Bill in Committee, in order to secure more confidently that the reforms will realise their intentions."
If the hon. Gentleman is to be consistent with his opening sentence in which he quoted AMMA's report, he must proceed to argue--rightly--that the Bill is confused and inadequate for its purposes and he must tell us what revisions he will seek. If not, I suggest that he withdraws his reference to AMMA.
Mr. Amos : I was a member of AMMA for eight years and I understand its concerns, but I have quoted the brief which shows its support for the Bill's underlying aims. Therefore, it seems logical to support Second Reading and to debate the details later.
The National Association of Head Teachers said :
"There is undoubtedly a need to improve the regularity of formal school inspections, as well as a strong case for the provision of detailed information about schools to parents."
That is an example of another highly respected teaching organisation which supports the principles behind the Bill. Therefore, I assume that the Opposition will want to give the Bill an unopposed Second Reading.
On the question of raising standards, the Bill will increase the frequency and regularity of school inspections. It will lead to about 6,000 inspections a year compared with a measly 150 last year under the present system. I was a teacher in a state comprehensive school for eight years and I never saw an inspector. Perhaps my lessons were so good that they did not need to be inspected, but I never saw an inspector. Every school will in future be inspected every four years.
The Government are rightly concerned with not only the relevance of what is taught, but the quality of how it is taught. Hitherto, inspectors' reports have been kept secret from parents and from the public, but under our proposals every parent will automatically receive a readable and understandable summary of the report with a concrete action plan from the governors telling parents how they will act on the findings.
The method and procedure of the inspection will mean that HMI will develop new powers, duties and responsibilities and that it will become more powerful and independent of central Government, as it should be. However, its role as guardian of educational standards will not change. It will regulate the standards of the new inspection teams and only those registered by HMI will be
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allowed to operate. The work of the new teams will be carried out to agreed national standards, properly and carefully monitored and enforced by HMI.The inspectorate will continue to be responsible to the Secretary of State. Even though LEA inspectors and advisory staff will probably be part of many of those teams, it is right to end the role of the local education authorities in inspection, because of the inherent conflict of interest. To have a dual role as advisor and inspector is incompatible, just as we agreed that it was in the water industry. It can never be right to be both judge and jury.
The Bill provides for a logical and sensible extension of local management of schools and the greater independence that we have given to our schools. Parents should have the right to independent information about their children's schools. They can still choose the local education authority if they want, but--importantly--they have the choice not to. If the local education authority team is better and cheaper, the school can choose it if it wishes.
It is wrong to suggest that schools will be able to choose an easy inspection team. With the enhanced and more meaningful quality control function of Her Majesty's inspectorate, it will not be possible for that to happen. It would not be in the professional or career interests of the inspectors. The leader of each inspection team, a registered inspector, will be licensed for a renewable fixed period, so his professional status would be at risk.
I agree that we must strive for as much consistency as possible in the new system. There are real problems under the current arrangements which the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Taylor) wishes to preserve for all time. He was not here a moment ago, but I see that he has now run hot foot into the Chamber. The Liberal Democrats want to retain the present system.
On the current arrangements, an Audit Commission report in 1989 entitled "Assuring Quality in Education" revealed wide variations in the size of the local education authority inspectorate services. It criticised their monitoring role as
"uneven and in some LEAs disturbingly small."
On 28 June this year, The Times Educational Supplement published a brief summary of the data available on LEA inspectors. The article said :
"Workloads varied considerably and between authorities An Audit Commission survey of 67 authorities in 1988 showed that some inspectors spent less than 10 per cent. of their week observing in classrooms, whereas others spent more than 60 per cent. of their time in the classroom. A National Foundation for Educational Research survey found that only 40 per cent. of LEAs required inspectors to write any sort of report on all or most of their school visits." Consistency is important, but equally and possibly more so are rigour and regularity.
Under the Bill, more information will be provided to parents and to the public generally. I am pleased that the proposal has widespread support among parents and within the profession.
Mr. Amos : I just quoted AMMA and the NAHT, which are two highly respected organisations. Both have accepted the broad principles that underline the Bill. The hon. Gentleman should not be so pessimistic. He looks only for bad news, but there is a lot of good news around. The National Association of Head Teachers--I did not rise to the dizzy heights of headship, but was merely a classroom teacher--says that it is
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"strongly in favour of the principle of providing information on schools to parents."It accepts the principle underlying the Bill.
I do not know what all the fuss is about. When I was the chairman of Enfield education committee in 1981, I decided to publish all the schools' public examination results, despite strong and sustained opposition from the educational establishment. I took the view, which I still hold, that parents and taxpayers had a right to that information. It was not for me to justify the release of the information, but for others to justify their demand that it should remain secret. The real reason was that they could not trust anyone to have the statistics, and that is the Labour party's view today. There may have been a genuine fear that as a result of the release of information, there would be a widespread movement of pupils between schools--from the less popular to the good schools. That did not happen. There was no dramatic sea-change and there will be no dramatic sea- change under our proposals, which involve public examination results, national curriculum test results, truancy rates and the destinations of school leavers.
The vast majority of people know their local schools, but the parents who do not or who want to make a carefully considered choice of all the schools in the area are entitled to as much information as possible. The information should be provided as of right so that they can make as informed a choice as possible. Parents should not have to extract the information from unwilling local councils, which do not have a monopoly right to the information.
I understand the concerns about the examination league table. That is why contextual information will be available in the schools' prospectuses and in the governors' annual report. Together with the annual written report on the pupils' progress and our other reforms, we are building up a profile of pupil achievement. All good schools should already give annual written reports especially at a time of regular testing and with the measurable progress and benchmarks that we have built into the national curriculum.
Other hon. Members have referred to value added information. How can that be provided practically? As the National Association of Head Teachers-- perhaps the hon. Member for Hillsborough would like to contradict this-- rightly said :
"attempts to build in weightings according to social circumstances are almost certain to be unsuccessful and are likely to be ignored." The concept of value-added information sounds fine, but in reality there are practical problems.
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