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Deregulation
7. Mr. Steen: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what measures she is taking to promote deregulation in respect of education and employment. [29098]
Mr. Forth: We will continue to resist the imposition of unnecessary burdens on employers, such as the social chapter and a national minimum wage, which have contributed to unemployment averaging 11 per cent. throughout the European Union.
Mr. Steen: Although the Secretary of State gets high marks in her end-of-term report for effort and achievement, I hope that she agrees that her performance on deregulation requires a little more attention. Only six paragraphs in a 250-page report on education and employment covered deregulation. Will my right hon. Friend have a word with all her Ministers and find new initiatives to help to support the Prime Minister's excellent initiative to deregulate faster, quicker and better?
Mr. Forth: I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend's unremitting efforts to ensure that the Government's stated objective of deregulation is adhered to and thoroughly prosecuted in every Department. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State watches tirelessly over her team of Ministers to ensure that they share in that objective. I hope that my hon. Friend accepts that we have done rather well over the years in creating a deregulated labour market--which is reflected in our performance in employment and unemployment compared with our European partners in particular.
As to education, I suspect that we are bound in many ways to be a regulating Department--precisely because we are responsible for the well-being of so many young people in achieving a successful education. I could read out examples of some of the regulations that have been produced by my Department over the past year, but I shall not--I shall share them with my hon. Friend later. We make every reasonable effort to reduce regulation in education, but that must be balanced against our duty to protect standards and the well-being of pupils.
Mr. Corbett:
I presume that the Minister and the Secretary of State are seeking to expand selective and divisive grammar school education under the dogmatic banner of deregulation. Is not it the case that if every town is to have a grammar school, there will be many more secondary modern schools? Is not it also the case that picking winners
Mr. Forth:
Only the hon. Gentleman's twisted logic would have led him in the direction that he seeks to take the House. I suspect that he raised the matter in that way because he has hit upon one of the few areas--education--in which the Labour party seems to have any policy, and that is to do away with selection and choice. That is one of the few things of which we can be certain in respect of Labour's education policy--no selection and no choice. Everything else is either a pale shadow of Government policies or under review.
Mr. Sykes:
When the Minister next goes to the Council of Ministers--if he does--will he try to have a Europewide ban imposed on the 48-hour week, which has been scientifically proven to destroy jobs in Europe?
Mr. Forth:
My hon. Friend has hit on a truth that has been obvious to us for some time but which we have as yet been unable to persuade our EU partners to see. It is that if we arbitrarily interfere in the working of the labour
Mr. Meacher:
If the Minister thinks that deregulation has been so successful why, since 1980, for every job created in Britain 17 have been created in France and 52 in Germany, yet neither France nor Germany has a deregulated labour market and both have a national minimum wage? If deregulation has been such a success, why were more jobs created in Britain in the regulated 1970s than have been in the deregulated 1990s? Why are there now 1 million fewer jobs in Britain than there were the day the Prime Minister took office? Is it not obvious that deregulation is simply a passport to short-term, hire-and-fire job insecurity, whereas what is really needed is long-term investment and commitment?
Mr. Forth:
Something that has puzzled me for the past few days has suddenly become clear. This is the same hon. Gentleman who was recently quoted as demanding the restoration of the old trade union powers of the 1970s--a period to which he now looks back with such nostalgia. He, one of the Labour party's prominent speakers on the subject, wants us to go back to the 1970s and all that they meant. Whereas I used to think that the Labour party had very few policies, I can now see that this is one area on which its policies are developing under the hon. Gentleman's influence.
8. Sir Fergus Montgomery:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what measures she proposes to improve teaching standards in schools. [29099]
Mrs. Gillian Shephard:
We have introduced a wide range of measures, from professional qualifications for head teachers to in-depth reform of initial and in-service teacher training.
Sir Fergus Montgomery:
Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the recent Ofsted report on reading showed that it is not funding or class size that determines educational success, but the quality of teaching in our schools? Does she welcome the new teacher training rules, which will concentrate far more on classroom experience?
Mrs. Shephard:
Yes, the recent Ofsted report on standards of reading in Islington, Tower Hamlets and Southwark raised serious doubts about the quality of the teaching methods used, about in-service training and about the role of head teachers. It is sad that the initial reaction of those responsible was to accuse the report of political bias, instead of expressing concern for the education of the children in their care. Obviously, in-service training of teachers is important; but just as
Mr. Don Foster:
Does the Secretary of State accept that there is little point in raising teaching standards if children are encouraged to miss school? If so, does she share my concern about the material sent out by the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority for this year's key stage 2 standard assessment tasks reading test? In it, children are encouraged to follow the wrong example in a passage in which Uncle Jim persuades mum to allow the children to miss school so as to go for a ride in his shiny new motor car.
Mrs. Shephard:
That sounds like a description of Liberal education policy.
Mr. Key:
Does my right hon. Friend agree that we could make a good start to raising teaching standards by saying thank you to the tens of thousands of teachers who, with professionalism and dedication, do so well in our schools? While we are at it, why not say thank you to them for teaching the hundreds of thousands of children who are about to sit their public examinations--including my daughter Sophie?
Mrs. Shephard:
I am delighted to hear that news from my hon. Friend. Of course we owe a debt--as does society--to successful, committed teachers. It is indeed a shame that occasionally they are let down by local education authorities that seek to make excuses for them instead of helping them to achieve more.
Mr. Blunkett:
Perhaps the Secretary of State will agree that one advantage of Uncle Jim's car is that, by taking a child out of the classroom, it improves the pupil:teacher ratio? Is it not a scandal that yesterday's figures revealed a further worsening of the pupil:teacher ratio and that, in an enlightened moment, the chief inspector of schools said in his annual report that small class sizes are of benefit in the early years of primary education? Will she therefore apologise to teachers and parents throughout the country for what has just been revealed--that, for the first time, more than 40 per cent. of our primary schools have classes of over 30, that classes of over 40 have risen by almost 50 per cent. since the Government took office and that we now have 1.6 million children in those excessively large classes, making it difficult to teach the basics that are the essential tools of raising standards?
Mrs. Shephard:
Provisional figures on teacher numbers show that the position is largely unchanged. I remind the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends that there is no clear connection between class size and achievement in the classroom, as has been confirmed repeatedly by the chief inspector of schools. I further remind the hon. Gentleman that in Labour-controlled Hackney there was one teacher for every eight pupils, yet the education provided was so deplorable that the school had to be closed. We heard not a word of condemnation from Opposition Members of that disgraceful state of affairs.
Mr. Hawkins:
Does my right hon. Friend agree that parents recognise that the Government have ensured that teaching standards in schools have improved? Would she
Mrs. Shephard:
That is indeed interesting news from Blackpool. Of course parents are well aware that Opposition Members have spent much of the past decade or so automatically opposing every measure that the Government have introduced to improve standards and, sadly, for many parents that legacy lives on in Labour town halls up and down the country. Examples include Islington, where GCSE results are the worst in the country, Tower Hamlets, which has the worst truancy, and Labour-controlled Nottinghamshire, where 11-year-olds were the only ones in the country who were not allowed to take national tests last year.
"means plenty of losers as well"?
Will the Minister confirm that those words came from Mr. Demitri Coryton, who chaired the Conservative Education Association?
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