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10.50 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Raymond S. Robertson): I am happy to have the opportunity to respond to the debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Angus, East (Mr. Welsh) on securing it. I have listened with great interest to all the speeches, but I am disappointed that so many concentrated on resources in such a negative and misleading way.
Let me put the record straight. Resources allocated to school education have increased from less than £1 billion in 1979, when that crowd in the Labour party left office, to £2.5 billion now, a real terms increase of 15 per cent. So I will take no lectures from the hon. Member for Monklands, East (Mrs. Liddell) and her party about funding of Scottish schools. Local authority spending per
pupil is 50 per cent. higher in real terms than it was in 1979, and 25 per cent. higher in Scotland than in England. However, as the House knows, we have taken careful note of the real concerns that have been expressed by many councils, parents and those in the service about the impact on education.
We are glad to note that councils share the priority that we consider needs to be given to education. Councils should have the maximum flexibility to do that. Hon. Members heard earlier this week the positive response of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to those concerns.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made it clear to the Scottish Grand Committee in Kilmarnock that our wish is to give councils as much flexibility as possible in using their substantial resources to support front-line services, such as education.
The new arrangements that my right hon. Friend announced will give councils the scope to spend an extra £58 million on services, including education, and for the authority in the constituency of the hon. Member for Angus, East that will involve an increase of £1.25 million. My right hon. Friend announced a package worth£38 million to protect council tax payers. That package means that the overall increase in Government support for local government is £186 million, £64.5 million more than the formula consequences of the English settlement.
Mr. Welsh:
Will the Under-Secretary give way?
Mr. Robertson:
I have only eight minutes left, and the hon. Gentleman had half an hour at the beginning of the debate.
I am therefore proud to make it clear to hon. Members that, despite a tough public expenditure round, we have treated local government very fairly and have given especial priority to education. We look to local government to reflect that priority, and we are confident that it will. However, we remain firm in our view that efficiency savings can be found across the entirety of local government services. There is scope in education for that as well.
For example, the Accounts Commission reported that there are 300,000 surplus places in Scottish schools,and that rationalisation might yield annual savings of£25 million. The Accounts Commission helpfully set out suggestions on how rationalisation might be approached. It is a sensitive and difficult issue, but it is important that education authorities develop strategies to deal with falling and changing school rolls. Twenty-five million pounds is a prize worth grasping. It can and will make a difference.
But I do not want to go over that ground again. Let us look forward to what can be achieved. The Government have taken a positive lead to encourage the delivery of an effective and relevant education for everyone who wants to benefit. I ask hon. Members to look again at the improvement in exam results. There has been a clear increase in the proportion of standard grade presentations resulting in credit awards. More of our young people are qualifying for higher education than ever before. There is more choice and more opportunity.
Improving standards are welcome and impressive, but we should not be complacent. There is room for improvement, and I wish to draw the House's attention to two especial concerns. The first is testing.
Mr. Brian H. Donohoe (Cunninghame, South)
rose--
Mr. Robertson:
I am not giving way. I have five minutes to respond to a debate that lasted for an hour and a half. The hon. Member for Angus, East took up half an hour, and I am trying to respond to some of the points in the debate. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker:
Order. I am tired of seated interventions, from wherever they come.
Mr. Robertson:
National testing, as hon. Members have said, is an integral part of the five-to-14 development programme. Rates for testing in primary schools are encouraging, but the position in secondary schools is completely unacceptable.
I am surprised that the hon. Member for Angus, East, in talking about education, did not look at his education authority, which, in the last six months of last year, tested only 1 per cent. in maths in S1 and S2, 0 per cent. in reading and 0 per cent. in writing. I am therefore currently considering options for giving further impetus to testing in secondary schools, and I will report to the House later. The generally poor performance of secondary schools on testing must be--and will be--addressed if the wider benefits of the curriculum reforms are to be secured.
The new authorities will have an important role. They can grasp the opportunity to make real progress towards full implementation of five-to-14 and national testing in secondary schools, and to secure the benefits for the children involved. I have made it clear that we have a background of positive achievement, and the time is now right to move forward and to build.
I am certain that the vast majority of our schools do an excellent job, and children and parents are well served by them. But some schools are not achieving their full potential. That is the second area of concern that I wish to share with the House.
I do not just mean inner-city schools. Schools in other areas may not be getting the best out of their pupils, and are therefore letting them down. We should not brand those schools as failing, as some Opposition Members do, or think that teachers should be dismissed, as some Opposition Members do. We owe it to those schools, teachers, children and parents associated with them to help to find ways of raising performance.
I am therefore announcing today that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I will set up a task force to address the issue of under-achievement. Its chairman and members will be announced in due course. The task force will identify strategies to achieve better teacher and pupil morale and the more effective use of resources in the education sector. It will build on the solid groundwork of achievement and rising standards that we have already laid. The specific remit of the task force is
The task force is a direct product of the work that we have already done in identifying performance measures for schools.
I am sure that it is necessary to look at under-achievement in its widest form. I do not want hon. Members to go away with the simple notion that under-achievement is about failure, either of pupils or of schools. Under-achievement implies that we are not meeting our full potential, and that can take many forms and there can be many reasons for it. There may be examples at all levels in the school system.
Among the fundamental issues that the task force will identify is the need to create positive attitudes to success, and eliminate the demoralising fear of failure from our approach to so many tasks. I am sure that there will be a role for everyone associated with the education system to help to take forward the products of the task force.
Many of the Government's initiatives in education and elsewhere have been directed towards giving people control--giving them a say. In education, we have led the way in recognising the rights and interests of parents--their rights to choose, their rights to better information, and their rights to participate. But not everybody sees it that way, least of all Opposition Members. From the cradle to the grave, they believe that big brother--in the form of central Government, the local authority or the education committee--always knows better than parents what is best for their children.
Sometimes, the Opposition's knee-jerk opposition degenerates into farce. Labour-controlled local authorities, which have been screaming blue murder over their budgets, have cavalierly turned down the extra money that was available for nursery vouchers. The hon. Member for Monklands, East, with no apparent sense of irony or of the absurdity of her remarks, asked me last November:
"To advise the Secretary of State on strategies to improve performance in primary and secondary schools which are under-achieving with a view to improving pupil achievement generally and also to securing greater value for money for the resources committed to school education."
6 Mar 1996 : Column 281
"Have you no concern for the education and emotional development of the four-year-olds you intend using as political footballs?"
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