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6.6 pm
Mr. Colin Pickthall (West Lancashire): In the search for higher standards in education, it seems to me that we would do well to be fully aware of what, apart from the Government, we are up against. We live in a culture where to call someone clever is an insult, where to describe someone as an intellectual is to heap on him or her at least suspicion and probably a great deal of scorn. Those are the attitudes that have fed down over decades to our school children. Secondary school teachers fight an unending struggle against classroom cultures in which anyone who works hard is stigmatised as a swot. Even in higher education, many students actively disguise the fact that they are working hard and seeking to achieve, for fear of losing kudos with their peers.
I am continually dismayed by the number of students I meet who do not like what they are studying, even though they are perfectly intellectually competent to get through. Part of our task, therefore, is to assert that cleverness, skill and achievement in formal education are as much to be celebrated and emulated as the same qualities in a footballer, runner or singer. That is no small task.
We also have to face up to the huge psychological and cultural influence exercised over our children by the electronic media, which have wildly accelerated over the past 25 years the availability--perhaps the necessity--of electronic devices which offer instant problem solving, not just in mathematics, or which dominate via the screen large chunks of our working and leisure time. As a force acting on the consciousness and the sub-consciousness of our children, this phenomenon weighs heavily against much of what those who set out to tackle academic standards are seeking to achieve.
Our traditional education methods, whether progressive or reactionary, are fundamentally linear. They are based on systematic logical thought, or on the endless reiterative process of pursuing information from left to right and from top to bottom. The pencil and paper tests thrown at the education world in recent years are part of that process. At the same time, there is a hugely predominant influence on children's perception of instant visual--sometimes aural, often automatic--processes involving little interaction, analysis or self-criticism. So the methods by which we monitor standards and desperately hope to improve them--until recently, little but testing has been used in this context--may for the first time be fundamentally out of synch with the dominating cultural forces in society.
I am by no means saying that we should be trying to turn back the clocks, but I recall, for example, worrying about teaching English in higher education where students were producing their written work on computers or word processors with spell checks while we were testing them in examinations that were in manuscript.
The problem of raising standards across the education field is a massively complex cultural problem, while the proposed means of achieving it are simple--and often simple-minded. We have thrust on schools a predetermined curriculum that is controlled from the centre, assessed by crude systems outside the control of the teachers, monitored by a dubious inspection system, and progressively used to fuel crude league-table systems that are badly distorting the functioning of schools and standards.
At the same time, we--I do not just mean the Government--are insisting day after day that schools and teachers are malfunctioning. We expect them to jump from initiative to initiative, we pile on them an intolerable burden of Whitehall-inspired bureaucracy, we tell them that everything they have done for the past 20 years has been at best useless and at worst perverse, and we remove from them much of the responsibility for assessing the pupils they meet every working day.
There is nothing wrong with asserting the value of whole-class teaching; there is nothing wrong with asserting the value of setting up comprehensive schools; there is nothing wrong in asserting the value of phonics in the teaching of reading. What is wrong is the Gadarene lurch towards the centralised determination of such teaching styles and the lack of quantification of when and where different styles are used well, badly or in fruitful combinations with one another. There is the assumption that schools, groups of schools and partnerships--by which I mean partnerships that deliver teacher education--should not be encouraged to seek the matrix of solutions that are best for them. There is the assumption that schools can bear incessant burdens of bureaucracy without consequence for classroom teaching.
We look to other countries for comparison and for example. As the hon. Member for Crosby (SirM. Thornton) said, we should not be in the business of reinventing the wheel. Successful practice elsewhere must be attended to. However, just as we should beware of over-simple blanket solutions in teaching methods across all schools in England and Wales, we should beware of adopting wholesale the solutions that may be highly effective in different cultures. The same over-simplification exists in the Conservatives' relentless pursuit of the elixir of selection. It is derived from a hazy nostalgia for the good old days and from the simple certainty that selection will benefit the brightest children and improve their standards.
At least two of my hon. Friends have referred to the Prime Minister's lament about the top 15 per cent. and the other 85 per cent. We have to remember the simple truth: it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Selection at 11 will no doubt create excellent grammar schools, but it will also create many more secondary moderns that will have enormous difficulties in achieving the sort of excellence that is required.
Mr. Edward O'Hara (Knowsley, South):
Does my hon. Friend recognise that the Newtonian law that operates in this market of education drives up standards for the few, but drives down standards for the many?
Mr. Pickthall:
That is bound to be the case in terms of simple comparison, yes.
I wish to deal briefly with the problems that we need to address in the raising of standards. I maintain that we have a serious educational and cultural problem in the fact that we have particularly failed thousands and thousands of teenage males. The gender gap is widening. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South (Mr. Hall) referred to failure at the GCSE level. The figures show a huge disparity in achievement between teenage boys and teenage girls, with the girls doing a great deal better.
Alistair Smith, a consultant in accelerated learning, has done some research which shows that 16-year-old boys have an average vocabulary of 8,500 words and that 16-year-old girls have an average vocabulary of 11,500 words. To put that into context, The Sun caters for people with a vocabulary of 2,000 words, the Daily Mirror caters for people with a vocabulary of 10,000 words and the quality papers cater for people with a vocabulary of 20,000-plus words. If those figures are accurate, they show that the average 16-year-old boy could not cope with the Daily Mirror--if, indeed, he tried to read at all.
Vast numbers of young men, particularly young white males--this has all sorts of political and social dangers that I do not have time to go into--are grossly under-achieving. I believe that this is partly because of the cultural barbarism to which I referred earlier. Their disaffection is making the raising of standards in secondary schools immensely difficult. Many girls will openly tell us that they resent the systematic disruption of their classroom experience by boys--sometimes over many years. The social consequences of this are horrendous. We need to analyse the roots of it, and a whole variety of measures to challenge it are needed.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) was right to emphasise the crucial problem of the gender gap in teenage education. He was also right
to stress the problem of growing class sizes, particularly in primary schools. The Government reiterate that class sizes make no essential difference--an argument that conveniently fits their financial priorities--but anyone who has taught classes of 34-plus knows exactly how much more difficult it is to monitor and to improve standards.
I shall briefly touch on the argument about poor teachers. Mr. Woodhead has done us a service in headlining the number of teachers he assesses as poor. The percentage of the work force in teaching thus castigated is reassuringly small. It would make an interesting comparison if Mr. Woodhead were to assess Members of Parliament--I should be astonished if only4 per cent. of them were classified as poor at their jobs. Nevertheless, an uncommitted, worn-out or incompetent teacher can do immense damage. There would be few laments in schools if the obviously unsuited teachers were eased out as quickly as possible--better still would be systems to prevent their entering the profession in the first place.
One enormous worry has been touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South: the sheer volume of experienced teachers leaving our schools and colleges early who still have a potential 10 years or more to contribute. A similar problem arises with stress-related absences, which the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) mentioned. This is an aspect to which we need to pay particular attention. If we lose large numbers of experienced teachers through burn-out, we lose their knowledge and the schools lose the stability that such teachers bring. I believe that there is a strong case for carefully targeted sabbaticals to allow experienced teachers a breather and to keep many of them in the profession.
Teacher education has a key role. If we allow even a small number of new teachers who are not good enough into classrooms, we create a situation that is even worse than allowing problems to arise for perfectly good and experienced teachers. Most obviously, we must change the funding mechanisms for higher education institutions so that they are not heavily penalised if a student leaves the course. It is absurd to squeeze individuals through courses when they do not want to teach but merely want paid employment.
To attract the right people into the teaching profession, we have to raise the morale of the existing work force and to make teaching satisfying and attractive. To an extent, of course, this depends on pay and conditions, but that is not the main factor. It is understandable that many of the best potential teachers will look elsewhere for a career when confronted by a situation in which teachers--and those who educate teachers--are regarded by the Government as being of low esteem and responsible for the whole spectrum of social problems faced by our community, and when the impression is given that there is a drive to trawl the profession for inadequate teachers to sack. Who would go into the profession in those circumstances?
Correcting that drop in morale and potential deterioration in the profession of teaching is largely a matter of consistent support, of meaningful in-service
education and self-education, of professional development and of personal problem-solving. We have to ensure that that goes into the process of future training.
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