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Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: I am sorry to be so greedy as to want two interventions, but again I am incredibly lucky in Lancaster, because University College of St. Martins, which used to be a teacher training college and is now a fully fledged college, has always kept to the old standards and turns out students whom I see practising in schools and who are welcome in any school in the country.
Mr. Lidington: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Again, what she says of Lancaster is true of Buckinghamshire. Her constituents will note how she again champions their achievements.
I applaud the doughty battle waged by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment to gain a greater share of the Government's cake for education in the forthcoming financial year. The teaching profession and all people concerned about education should know that they have a fine champion in my right hon. Friend. Paragraph 230 of the inspector's report makes some interesting comments. It states:
Whatever the arguments in any year about the total sum available for education, I hope that we can agree that we need to find ways in which to encourage a rigorous approach to value for money in individual schools,to ensure that available resources--however big the sum,it will always be finite--are used to the greatest effect.
I ask the Government to think forward and perhaps to reconsider their stand up to now on the disparity between the funding of the primary and secondary sectors. In his report, the chief inspector calls many times for primary schools in particular to do much more in terms of better planning of lessons and of in-service training, to equip primary school teachers--who tend to be generalists--with a firm grasp of subject knowledge, which the national curriculum requires them to have and which they did not require during initial teacher training. One of the problems with that historic disparity is that it inevitably means that primary schools have a less flexible timetable and less staff time available to meet those demands by the chief inspector to tackle the deficiencies in in-service training and in lesson planning.
In local education authorities of all political colours, less money is given per pupil to primary schools than to secondary schools. I understand why Ministers, not just in this Government, but in previous Governments, have always believed that it is up to the local education authority to decide how much should go to primary and secondary schools respectively and that, if the LEA changes the balance, the standard spending assessment provision will follow that choice. The strength of the chief inspector's critique and the importance of the issue are such that I ask the Government to revisit that question.
Mr. David Porter (Waveney):
Before my hon. Friend leaves the question of the disparity of funding between primary and secondary schools, will he consider the problem raised by middle schools, which exist in his constituency and in mine? A middle school may be deemed secondary, but it may have many primary pupils. The disparity of funding problem is often compounded by the wide range of age groupings in a school. That has not been dealt with by either the Government or local education authorities.
Mr. Lidington:
My hon. Friend makes a telling point. Although the systems in his constituency and mine are not the same, I have encountered comparable problems in considering budget allocations for schools in Buckinghamshire.
As more schools become grant-maintained, the Government will have to revisit the issue in any case and take a view, at least in relation to the grant-maintained sector, about the proper sum per pupil to be spent on primary as against secondary schools. That issue may be
dealt with through tilting grants for education support and training or other specific grants from the Department more towards primary than secondary education.
I have not time to dwell at length on two other problems, but they are important. One is pupil referral units. Both the chief inspector in his report and a separate study on pupil referral units by Ofsted concludes that they are failing badly in their task. Obviously, that causes concern and I hope that the Government and the education agencies will act to deal with that.
The second problem is the under-achievement of boys at all levels of our education system, from the early key stages to GCSE. In the past couple of decades, much thought and energy has rightly gone into finding ways in which to provide equal opportunities for girls. I am becoming increasingly concerned that boys seem to be lagging behind girls at all levels of compulsory education. That is especially worrying in a world where unskilled men are most likely to end up as long-term unemployed.
Mr. Graham Riddick (Colne Valley):
We all owe my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) a great debt, because he has raised an extremely important issue. I find it surprising that so few Opposition Members are present. Of course, an Opposition Front-Bench spokesman is here, along with the Labour Whip, but the normal pattern of Wednesday morning debates is that hon. Members on both sides of House speak. Obviously, Conservative Members are pleased to have more opportunities to speak, but it is interesting that no other Back-Bench Labour Member is prepared to speak on this important issue. It may just be that Labour Members are totally confused by their party's education policies and would not know what to say.
The good news, as stated by the chief inspector in the Office for Standards in Education report, is that
The bad news, however, is that
My hon. Friend mentioned teaching methods, which are an important aspect of the debate, and to a certain extent the report concentrates on them. It states:
That is significant because, over the past two or three decades, there has been concentration on what people often refer to as "trendy" teaching methods that have been introduced as part of the comprehensive ideal. I was astonished to read in my newspapers this morning that the Labour party now says that comprehensive schools are a disaster. That is how the newspapers portray the speech that was made by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett).
Ms Estelle Morris (Birmingham, Yardley):
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Riddick:
I shall be happy to give way to the hon. Lady if she wishes to tell us that the hon. Member for Brightside did not say that.
Ms Morris:
My hon. Friend did not say that, and I suggest that the hon. Gentleman reads the speech that was made last night by my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State for Education and Employment. In that speech, he praised comprehensive schools, but made it clear that a change of name on the school gate was not enough to raise standards. He said that although comprehensive schools achieved a great deal, we must strive more and aim even higher to bring high standards of education to all our children. The words used by the hon. Gentleman do a terrible injustice to last night's speech by my hon. Friend.
Mr. Riddick:
It is plain that the hon. Member for Brightside needs to express himself more clearly, because just about every newspaper has interpreted his speech as an attack on comprehensive schools and mixed-ability classes.
The comprehensive system has been imposed throughout the country by the Labour party over the past two or three decades. It did that, first, when it was in government in the 1960s and 1970s and, secondly, while it was in control of local education authorities. That system has betrayed hundreds of thousands of young people in the past two or three decades, and many of those who have been betrayed are in the most unfortunate circumstances--living in poor, rundown inner-city areas. The policies were imposed throughout the 1980s and 1990s by Labour LEAs, including the one in Sheffield, in the hon. Member for Brightside's area. Someone once told me that, when the hon. Gentleman was the leader of Sheffield council, he was one of those arguing against school uniforms in Sheffield schools. If the hon. Gentleman has changed his views, that is all to the good. However, the solutions that Labour proposes do not amount to much.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Ms Morris)has just confirmed that Labour wants to tinker with comprehensive schools. We hear much sweet, reassuring rhetoric, but in practice Labour's policies are fairly meaningless. It is interesting that the Secondary Heads Association refers to Labour's education policies as "naive, vague and unconvincing". It also referred to them as
That is a fairly damning criticism of Labour's education policies by the people who count, that is, head teachers.
"Few schools spend more than they should, but nearly two-fifths should be making better use of their resources . . . In about four schools in ten value for money is reduced because significant aspects of their work are not sufficiently cost-effective".
"Standards of pupil achievement and teaching are satisfactory or better in the majority of schools".
"it is evident that overall standards of pupil achievement need to be raised in about half of primary and two-fifths of secondary schools. The most successful secondary schools achieve GCSE results twice as good as others in similar socio-economic circumstances and six times better than those achieved by the least successful in less favoured areas . . . there are still too many schools which are failing to give their pupils a satisfactory education."
"Teaching methodology needs to be improved in nearly half of primary schools and in a little more than one-third of secondary schools . . . About seven-tenths of good lessons involve, for example, a balance of whole class teaching and group work."
28 Feb 1996 : Column 803
"simplistic, bland statements with little research or policy ideas. There is no sign of how the policies will be paid for."
28 Feb 1996 : Column 804
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