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Mr. James Pawsey (Rugby and Kenilworth): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Hall: No, I shall not give way. The Secretary of State did not give way to me, so I am not sure why I should give way to the hon. Gentleman. He can make his own speech in his own time, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am sure that he will catch your eye if he behaves himself.
Ofsted has found that, in key stage 2 generally, there has been a slowing in pupil progress, particularly in years 3 and 4, and that that is a worryingly persistent feature of inspections in recent years.
My hon. Friend the Member for Brightside drew attention to the fact that, in the past five years, pupil-teacher ratios have worsened. That is a poor record
of government, and I must ask: who is to blame for this sad state of affairs? We heard from the hon. Member for Castle Point (Dr. Spink)--he has left the Chamber--in a debate on education last Wednesday. He blamed teachers; he blamed parents; he blamed pupils; he blamed the Labour party. He exonerated the Government--fancy that.
Sir Rhodes Boyson (Brent, North):
It is the Labour party's fault.
Mr. Hall:
The right hon. Gentleman says from a sedentary position that it is the Labour party's fault. He must have been asleep for the past 17 years. He sat on the Back Benches in government, taking no responsibility for the problems that they have created in our state education system.
We see that the Government have once again deployed the BSE strategy--blame someone else. After 17 years, it is really time that they held up their hands and said, "We have made mistakes in education. We recognise the failings and are prepared to do something about them." All we get instead are attacks on Labour-controlled local authorities.
One of the interesting things about standards in schools is that teachers, and teaching methods in particular, have been singled out for criticism. Anyone in the teaching profession who has reached the age of 65 may well have entered the profession in 1952 and given 44 years of loyal service. The Conservatives have been in power for 33 of those 44 years; they still blame the Labour party for the teaching methods employed in our schools, whereas teaching methods have been adopted and approved by successive Governments, Labour and Conservative. It is important that that is recognised. Anyone who has entered the teaching profession in the past 17 years has known nothing other than Conservative control and seven Acts of Parliament and the interference that they brought with them.
On a local note, Cheshire county council--my local authority--is controlled by the Tories and Liberal Democrats. It has a very poor record on education in terms of pupil-teacher ratios. It is 97th in a league table of 109. In spending terms, it is 96th out of 109, spending only £1,483 per pupil, which is far below the national average and much below the exemplars for education. A pupil-teacher ratio of 24:1 is far too high.
Mention has been made of the interest in the level of funding for the state education system. The difference between the amount received by Westminster city council for education and that received by Cheshire county council is iniquitous. Both are Tory-controlled, but one receives far more than the other. If my local authority received the same amount as Westminster, it would be able to employ 4,539 extra teachers.
I do not accept that employing those extra teachers would not raise standards at schools in my county, in my constituency and, indeed, at the local comprehensive school attended by my son. I do not accept for one minute the argument that class size does not matter. The idea is straightforward: a good teacher teaching 40 kids will teach 30 kids better. That is plain common sense, and we should be doing something to reduce pupil-teacher ratios.
The Government must consider why teachers leave the profession. The Public Accounts Committee recently considered the number of teachers retiring. Between
1985-86 and 1994-95, 150,000 teachers left the profession and 108,600 left prematurely. They left not because of ill health but through voluntary early retirement. If they could be encouraged to stay in the state system, we should have a huge wealth of resources to help increase standards in all our schools. We need to encourage teachers to stay in the profession.
We know why teachers become shell-shocked. There has been an initiative overload by the Government, who have demanded that teachers do more and more in less and less time. In addition, they have heaped criticism on teachers when they fail to achieve what is demanded of them. We must seriously examine ways to retain teachers in the profession.
I am encouraged by the Labour party's commitment to ensuring that, within five years of taking office, we shall be providing a nursery place for every three and four-year-old whose parents want one. We shall do so because we know that it will represent value added for the rest of those individuals' careers.
Mr. Pawsey:
How will Labour do it?
Mr. Hall:
I am not taking any sedentary interventions from the hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Pawsey:
I tried the other sort.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey) must control himself. He seems to be getting into bad habits these days.
Mr. Hall:
The crux of the matter is how to raise standards in education. If we can provide a nursery education for every three and four-year-old whose parents want it, the benefits throughout the children's careers would be there for all to see. This is an important commitment that the Labour party has made. We have also committed ourselves to reducing class sizes for five, six and seven-year-olds to below 30 in the lifetime of a Labour Government. That is essential to improving standards in the state system.
I am attracted by the idea that the Labour party is committed to a general teaching council. This will ensure professionalism, which will in turn empower teachers and make them feel valued. We can thereby hope to improve the quality of teaching. I am also attracted by my Front-Bench colleagues' ideas, which are not new, of assertive discipline in school, ensuring that we employ the best teaching methods, and instituting criteria-based assessments of how pupils are performing.
The home-school contract is probably one of the most important that we can develop. It engages parents in the education of their children to ensure that we all get the best out of the system. It also increases expectations. I am confident that the Labour party, once in office, will make education its passion and that, through partnership with everyone involved, it will improve the quality of education for all.
Our approach will be based on co-operation, partnership and opportunity, not on diktat from central Government, which ignores the people who are most important to the enterprise--teachers, pupils and parents. We shall bring them all together in a co-operative venture so that our education system will ensure that the economy is well served into the 21st century.
Sir Rhodes Boyson (Brent, North):
I welcome the opportunity to speak on the education policy of the Conservative and Labour parties.
It was in Islington--and under Labour--that I saw education break down as I had never seen it break down before. When I arrived in Islington as the head of Highbury Grove school, I was still a member of the Labour party, but what I saw there drove me out as a refugee to the Conservative party. That is perfectly true. Schools in Islington were run as if by the red guards in China. When my chairman of governors asked whether the school could be run as a workers' collective, I fled. This is all public knowledge; I have written about it.
Education in Islington is still, I believe, among the worst in the country. It is a question not of money but of the way in which education services are organised in that particular authority. It is no wonder the leader of the Labour party fled with his son to another borough. I had to say that at the outset, as I am still a schoolmaster at heart, as I know the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle) is, too.
Interestingly, Highbury Grove was saved by working- class and immigrant parents who wanted their children taught properly, as opposed to the trendies in the Labour party who wanted the school run as a collective. It was the working-class and immigrant parents who kept Highbury Grove, which was then the most over--I have forgotten the word.
Mr. Harry Greenway:
Over-subscribed.
Sir Rhodes Boyson:
Indeed. I am so excited, but I must control myself. Highbury Grove was the most over-subscribed school in London at that time, and it was the working class parents and their children who kept up standards. It certainly taught me a lesson about where I stood politically.
From time to time, we see a movement towards common sense in the Labour party, and we drink to it. If the Opposition paid for it, we would drink to it even more. However, any such movement is very slow.
The first issue that I wish to highlight is the teaching of children in ability groups. There has been a revelation in the Labour party, which has discovered setting. Its members have been to a prayer meeting and decided that setting is the answer. Setting means that each child is tested in every subject and goes into a first, second, third, fourth or fifth group for each separate subject, according to the results of the tests. It is like a progressive barn dance, with pupils meeting from time to time as they move from class to class. Under this system, the whole class has to wait until the last child has arrived, 25 per cent. of teaching time will be wasted and the gates will have to be locked to prevent children leaving between classes.
Anybody who has seen setting in a school, as I have, knows that it does not work. We tried it for one term at Highbury Grove and the staff--including the trendies--
said that they wanted no more of it and that they would sooner teach one class where they knew what they were doing.
We know that children differ in ability. We all differ in ability--academically, in sport and in everything else. We have to accept it as a fact of life. It is nonsense to pretend that all children are the same, and it would be a grey world if they were.
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