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Ms Morris: The Minister will excuse me if I do not give way, as the opening speech went on for 48 minutes, which limits any interventions.
There has been no systematic attempt at research into teaching strategies that will work. We have moved from shock report to shock report. At every stage, the Government have announced, in the words of Lord Henley last month, a number of additional measures. It is more than that. It is about sustained research and planned work into building on good practice, seeing what goes right, spreading that information to other schools and ensuring that they have an opportunity to do that as well.
I can see the problem arising again with Conservative Members who have talked about the "Panorama" programme, which I saw, too. It was absolutely fascinating, and there is much that we can learn, but if Conservative Members think that what we saw in the programme, in Dagenham or abroad, is a return to something that existed pre-Plowden, they are badly wrong.
In class teaching pre-Plowden, children were not engaged in conversation and answering questions. Teachers did not interact with children in that manner. They did not involve. They told children what to do and the children sat quietly. What we saw on "Panorama" was a very exciting strategy. It took the best of the whole-class approach, in which it is easier to monitor children, but involved children in the learning at every single stage. That is the excitement of it.
If Conservative Members think that it was moving backwards, they will make a mess of it, as they have of so much in the past 17 years. It was new and it was exciting. The next Labour Government will build on that by making the research that exists in bucketloads in education institutions and local authorities available to all teachers, so they can develop improved teaching and learning systematically--not in a dogmatic way or to fight their own political corners.
My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Eastham) was right to stress the need for good school buildings. I was a pupil in a Manchester school when my hon. Friend was a member of Manchester city's education committee. The physical surroundings in which I was educated did credit to that Labour administration, working in conjunction with a Labour Government. I did not experience the surroundings that my hon. Friend described as existing in Manchester today.
I think sometimes that Conservative Governments seek power as a platform to criticise others. Labour seeks power as a platform to work with others, to raise educational standards for all our children. We will reduce class sizes for five, six and seven-year-olds to no more than 30 pupils. We will build on things that the Government got right--reading recovery and section 11 funding for ethnic minorities--but have chosen to withdraw. We will make good research evidence available, and we will ensure for the first time in 17 years that all the essential partners in the education service--central Government, local government, schools, teachers, parents and governors--are united on a common agenda and speak a common language, to make certain that children in primary education get the best possible start by learning the basics, mastering information technology and having a well ordered learning environment.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. Robin Squire):
Having given a little time to others, I hope that the House will understand if, unusually, I do not give way to interventions--as I normally do. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Dr. Spink) on securing this important debate, and I am grateful to him for providing the opportunity to discuss primary education.
I am sure that it was a slip of the tongue on the part of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Ms Morris) when she said that above 40 per cent. of classes number more than 30 pupils. I dare say that she meant to say that the figure is 29 per cent. I believe that the hon. Lady was including classes of 30 pupils, which account for a significant proportion of all classes. The figure of 29 per cent. is less than that for 1979, and the number of classes of more than 35 pupils has halved by comparison with 1979.
I completely challenge the assertion of the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Eastham) that resources are at the heart of standards. The hon. Gentleman will have read, as I have, many independent reports on schools. Few of them highlight resources, but emphasise instead that good teaching delivers good education, while highlighting how resources are applied. I urge the hon. Gentleman not to be confused by resources. Overwhelmingly, attitudes and teaching style are at the heart of quality teaching.
As to buildings, the figures show that the capital resources made available to schools this year of£700 million are 7 per cent. more than last year. The hon. Gentleman would struggle, as I would, to find another budget area that has increased by that amount year on year. Councils should regard schools as being as important as council offices, town halls and all the other public buildings in their ownership. It is no use councils saying that the condition of their schools is all the fault of Government--they have a responsibility in law and common sense to maintain in good order all the buildings in their ownership.
Primary schools have increasingly come under the spotlight in recent years, and rightly so. There has been speculation about standards, how teachers are teaching
and how much children are learning. I welcome that attention. The effects of a child's first few years in school can stay with him or her their whole education and beyond. The child who leaves primary school reading with confidence, and with basic self-discipline and powers of concentration, is equipped to tackle the academic challenges of secondary school and the wider challenges of adolescence. The child who has only a hazy appreciation of numeracy and who cannot work without close supervision will find secondary school and life beyond the classroom that much harder.
We have done much to ensure that primary education meets pupil needs. We introduced the national curriculum and associated assessment, so that for the first time--thanks to a Conservative Government--parents have a guarantee that their children will be taught the most important subjects and tested on what they have been taught. We have taken steps to find out exactly what is going on in schools. By the end of this term, Ofsted will have inspected nearly 7,000 of our 19,000 primary schools, which is no mean achievement. Primary inspections only started in September 1994. Before then, the average primary school could expect to wait 200 years for the inspectors to come calling.
Ofsted inspections and national curriculum assessment are providing the first ever comprehensive audit of teaching and learning in primary schools, so the debate about standards can move from assertion and speculation to proper consideration of the facts. Inspection and assessment reveal a wide range of achievements. At one end of the spectrum are outstanding primary schools, including those identified in the annual report of Her Majesty's chief inspector. Those schools, some in extremely deprived areas, achieve high standards and provide their pupils with the best possible start to school life. At the other end of the spectrum, some 90 primary schools have been judged to be failing their pupils. The majority of schools fall between those extremes--they have some good features but also room for improvement.
Last year's national curriculum assessment results for 11-year-olds were disappointing. The Government are taking action to tackle particular problems and to raise overall standards. Where schools fail, the special measures regime comes into play. Primary schools respond well. They generally improve more quickly and need less time on special measures than secondary schools. We will publish primary school performance tables reporting this year's assessment results for
11-year-olds. Parents want and are entitled to that information. The chief inspector has pointed out before that tests and the publication of performance tables are helping to raise standards.
We are funding 23 local education authorities to run projects in primary school improvement. Performance measurement and target setting have been used to great effect in secondary schools, and we want to help primary schools the same way. We will extend the assisted places scheme so that gifted children of primary school age can benefit from the scheme's advantages.
Each of those initiatives and more will help to raise standards, but what matters most is the quality of teaching that children receive each day. Good teachers--and there are many of them--use effective methods to get results. That is as true in the most deprived inner-city area as it is in the leafiest shire school. The Government are determined that all teachers should know what works in the classroom and what does not. We know that children need to be taught--that they do not learn simply by exploration and investigation. The same applies to student teachers, who deserve to be properly prepared to take charge of the classroom.
We have tightened the requirements for teacher training to make courses more practical and relevant. From September, all primary teacher training courses will include at least 150 hours each of English, mathematics and science. At least 50 hours will concentrate on the teaching of reading and 50 on the teaching of arithmetic.
We have given Her Majesty's inspectorate the right to inspect training courses. Those inspections will reveal whether the 68 colleges that train primary teachers are using their time well or whether they are using discredited teaching methods. Reports on colleges are being published so that schools and students will know whether a course is up to scratch.
We are not neglecting teachers already in schools. We have started where it matters most--with the teaching of literacy and numeracy in primary schools. As the House knows, we have initiated 25 literacy and numeracy centres. We have, however, some way to go. I noted from The Daily Telegraph of Monday the comments--I know not whether they are accurate--of Mr. Colin Richards, formerly of the Office for Standards in Education. In criticising the chief inspector, he regretted that the chief inspector
"sees primary education as essentially concerned with teaching children to read, to write, to calculate, to distinguish between right and wrong and behave in a sort of disciplined, responsible way".
I should be delighted if all our schools were doing that.
Architects (Insurance)
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