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Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Does not it seem especially unfortunate that a local authority team should inspect a grammar school that the authority had consistently tried to close?
Mr. Porter: That is certainly one of the unfortunate consequences of so many home-grown teams. Unfortunately, I have had no such experience in my area as it has no grammar schools.
Will the Department reconsider the system for the four-yearly visits? The whole school inspection was vital at the beginning and I accept that, in a primary school,a generation of children and perhaps several staff will have moved on within four years, but once the original whole school inspection has been carried out, the next inspection--four years later--could be devoted to particular weaknesses that were highlighted in the previous inspection. In addition, or instead, it could concentrate on particular issues that reflect current concern, such as numeracy, reading, science or whatever.
It has been suggested--in the jargon--that Ofsted inspections are hit-and-run affairs. It has been made quite clear that, after an inspection, a school must respond with an action plan designed to improve standards. The chief inspector says that there are clear signs that the processes of inspection and action planning are helping schools to improve teaching methods. However, they need further development. They should be followed up in a much more structured way to take account of feedback on the initial report from teachers and parents, who often read the reports with concern. There needs to be more direct input from teachers at the time of the inspection. The whole process needs to be seen as a professional development tool, in the same way as teacher appraisal. It also needs to be seen as a tool for developing the professional expertise of heads and deputy heads.
The Government intend to promote various ways in which the inspections can be better targeted--which I welcome--and which need emphasising at this stage. Inspectors will report examples of excellent or very poor teaching to the head. That is welcome, but it needs to be followed up to ensure that action has been taken to correct the teaching or to spread the examples of good practice around the school.
I expect that the Government will say that inspectors will pay special attention to weak schools and make return visits. Often, however, a particular department or area,not the whole school, is weak. That could slip through the net under the present system.
We take a great deal of notice of what parents and governors say, but we sometimes forget that many of our secondary school pupils are quite able to articulate what is happening in the classroom. Their views should be taken into account. I refer not only to sixth formers but to younger children, who also have a view. The children are the experts in the education system, yet the present inspection system does not take account of their views.
Mr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham):
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) for initiating the debate, which is further evidence that education rides high in the political debate and that,at long last, that debate is very much on Conservative terms. For too long, despair has prevailed about our failure as a nation to provide excellent education for all. The best in British education is among the best education in the world--there can be no doubt about that. Grammar schools have survived in Kent and Buckinghamshire and they figure among the very best in the recently published league tables. It is significant that, time and again, grammar schools are at the top of the range.
Mr. Lidington:
I draw my hon. Friend's attention to the fact that among the outstanding schools listed by the chief inspector is Holmer Green upper school in Buckinghamshire--a secondary modern, in the old parlance. That shows how, in a well-managed system,not only grammar schools but non-selective schools can achieve high standards through good teaching and sound leadership.
Mr. Arnold:
Indeed. There are similar examples in Kent. Well over half of our education is of a high quality, which shows that both grammar and many other schools are succeeding, but we should be concerned about the fact that some 30 per cent. of our youngsters leave education inadequately trained for the modern world. We must ask why that happens--and the answer is social engineering.
Mr. Matthew Banks:
My hon. Friend is touching on a point mentioned by our hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Mr. Porter). I want to highlight another point about grammar schools, which our hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Dame E. Kellett-Bowman) touched on. More than a decade ago, I was the chairman of the Wirral schools committee. Although I now have nothing to do with that authority, in the run-up to the 1979 general election, the overwhelming majority of parents--irrespective of their political persuasion--were keen to keep the remaining grammar schools. I am sure it was the same in other areas.It was only because a Conservative Government were elected in 1979 that parents were given the option of sending their children to grammar schools.
Mr. Arnold:
That is right; indeed, the same was true in Kent. It has kept its grammar schools and success has ensued.
As I was saying, 30 per cent. of our youngsters are being let down, to the detriment of the country, because of social engineering in schools--in the structure of schools and in the teaching methods employed in them. Unfortunately, the teaching establishment has made unfashionable the teaching approach taken in the past--for example, the basic principles that pupils should face the front and that there should be whole-class teaching. There needs to be a properly structured and diagnostic education system in the classroom.
We seem to have turned our backs on the very basics such as the three Rs. Surely we should be educating our youngsters through the proper teaching of phonetics and through whole-class reading. Those practices have been highly successful in the past and we should return to them. Reading and writing are important.
With arithmetic, we should revert to teaching through the use of exercises. I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made an announcement on the use of calculators. Although they are marvellous--we all use them--too many young people fail to understand magnitudes in maths. If they press the wrong button, they still think that the answer is correct--whereas if they had a concept of magnitude, they would realise that the answer could not possibly be correct. It is rather like the old computer adage: garbage in, garbage out.If they put the wrong data into the calculator, they will get the wrong result. We are not giving our youngsters the necessary sense of magnitude to ensure that they recognise when the answer is wrong.
There is a weird insistence on small groups in the classroom. When we go into primary schools, we see children grouped around tables, which inevitably means that a proportion of them have their backs to the teacher. We all know that the little darlings will follow their own interests and misbehave if given half a chance. Insisting on small groups is expecting teachers to be like jugglers, keeping many plates rotating in the air. They are so busy doing that that they are unable to carry out their teaching effectively.
We all know that thousands of excellent teachers cope with those conditions and operate small groups in classrooms--I have seen many of them in my own constituency--but the fact is that that practice loads the dice against many teachers, who cannot cope with it.Too many of our youngsters idle their way through school, which is the cause of the 30 per cent. or so of youngsters who come out of schools ill educated.
The current situation has come about not least through teacher training and the impositions on teachers of local education authority inspectors. Over the years, I have heard of far too many teachers who very effectively applied old-fashioned methods of teaching being told by local education authority inspectors to desist from using them. Ultimately, teachers are human, and they will put their career high on their scale of priorities and change to a system that they do not believe in but accept because they are required to do so by the education authorities.
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