House of Commons Hansard Debates for 26 Apr 1996 (pt 22)

2.50 pm

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. Robin Squire): As is conventional, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall). However, I am entitled to say that his speech was one of the best researched and best argued speeches that the House has heard for a considerable time and I am certain that it will read as well as it sounded when it was delivered. My hon. Friend has established an enviable reputation for his concerns about educational matters.

It is a coincidence that my hon. Friend and I have both visited schools in our constituencies this morning. The small difference is that while my hon. Friend was visiting those at the upper age range I, as Minister with responsibility for the under-fives, among other things, was visiting the nursery school range and I now sport the evidence--namely the paint stain on my jacket, for which I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker; I assure you that the damage is not nearly so serious as that suffered by my right hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Dr. Mawhinney) in a well publicised incident recently.

In the time available, I want to address a number of issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South raised and to confirm to him and to the House that raising standards, which was the core of my hon. Friend's argument, has been at the core of the Government's education policies. The reason for that is simple, and my hon. Friend alluded to it. Our economic prosperity depends on well-educated and skilled people. That has always been the case, but the challenge is growing as more and more countries raise their levels of achievement.

We have raised standards--I can assure my hon. Friend of that--and we have done it through the hard work of pupils and students, through the dedication of teachers and not least through a series of education reforms, many of which were bitterly opposed by the Opposition.

Since the first GCSE examinations--I strongly defend the quality of those examinations--the number of 15-year-old pupils achieving five or more passes at grades A-star to C has risen significantly from 33 per cent. to more than 43 per cent. We have also seen the proportion of 17-year-olds achieving two or more A-level passes

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more than double since the Government took office in 1979. As my hon. Friend is well aware, almost one in three young people now enters full-time higher education compared with fewer than one in eight in 1979.

What are our reforms? The introduction of the national curriculum and its assessment arrangements were and remain crucial to raising standards in our schools. We have acted to remove overload and we have placed greater emphasis on the essential basic skills of literacy and numeracy. I join my hon. Friend in agreeing utterly that those are the key areas, especially in primary schools.

We have been committed to setting schools free--free to develop their particular strengths and to give parents and pupils greater choice. We now have more than 1,100 self-governing grant-maintained schools, educating one fifth of our secondary pupils. Those schools are popular with parents because they achieve results. GM school pupils achieved higher levels in last year's national curriculum assessments than local education authority school pupils at each key stage and in every subject. At GCSE, nearly half those in GM schools achieved five good passes, compared with 39 per cent. in LEA schools.

Our emphasis on increasing diversity among schools has given parents a real and better choice in deciding the type of education that they want for their children. By allowing schools to specialise in particular subjects we have extended diversity and contributed to raising standards. City technology colleges, for instance, teach pupils of all abilities, with particular emphasis on subjects such as mathematics, science and technology. Last year's GCSE results show that they are starting to succeed in tackling underachievement in the inner cities. So it is scarcely surprising that those colleges are popular with parents, and the original 15 CTCs typically receive at least three applications for every pupil place.

The introduction of performance tables to provide clear and accurate information has supported parental choice and stimulated schools to raise standards. Research shows that tables are increasingly being consulted and valued by parents and students.

I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to the sterling efforts of Her Majesty's chief inspector, Chris Woodhead, in seeking to raise standards. The creation of Ofsted and the introduction of a universal independent inspection system have been fundamental to our efforts to improve education. Since Ofsted was established in 1992, more than 7,000 schools have been independently inspected, and in his recent annual report the chief inspector said that there were clear indications that the processes of inspection and action planning were helping schools to improve teaching methods. As my hon. Friend will be aware, from this month, inspection will include the identification to the heads and teachers concerned of both excellent and poor teaching.

The inspection arrangements also now identify schools that are failing to provide an acceptable standard of education. I shall spend a little time talking about that, because for far too long schools have been able to continue failing their pupils. Legislation that we have introduced is now ensuring that those schools are finally being turned round, or where that is not possible, closed. To date, some 150 schools have been deemed to be failing. Inspectors who revisited 59 of those schools over the past two terms found that almost all had improved, four fifths of them substantially. It is vital that the House