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Ms Estelle Morris (Birmingham, Yardley): It is now Labour-controlled.
Mr. Kilfoyle: Even when it was Conservative- controlled, it made clear its views about the impact of the legislation.
The Government are so confident about their ideological prejudice that pilot schemes for nursery education were transmuted into phase 1. There will be no meaningful evaluation of the lessons of that phase before the scheme goes national. Cuts in local education authorities imperil areas where provision is good--hence my reference to Solihull. Wherever there is an outstanding service for three and four-year-olds, people feel endangered, and nothing that the Government say will change that. While the Government make their case--as they did regularly Committee on the Nursery Education and Grant-Maintained Schools Bill recently--people are aware that £20 million will be spent on administration, and that the Government are failing to cater for those most in need.
The quality on offer is highly debatable. The Government are not even sure how many nursery "settings" there will be. We have had that debate before. Will there be 27,000, or 40,000, as the Audit Commission says? The Government are offering unqualified people the opportunity to become inspectors on the basis of three days' training. They have failed to ensure the provision of an adequate number of trained and qualified nursery teachers. At the same time, they have abolished the minimum classroom size and recreation space.
All that affects the quality and standards of nursery education, yet everyone recognises the increasing importance of nursery education--not just in terms of educational fulfilment, but in the longer-term context of, for instance, offending behaviour, unwanted pregnancies and stable job records. The research during the Ypsilanti project shows how successful nursery education is in assisting in that regard.
In its final report of 16 June 1995, the National Commission on Education commented on the issue of larger class sizes, which constantly exercises hon. Members. It stated:
The Government's own preferred authoritative adviser, Her Majesty's chief inspector of schools, noted in his annual report that there were serious resourcing problems in our schools, leading to fewer teachers and larger classes. That in turn led him to comment:
While primary schools have struggled generally, those in disadvantaged areas have suffered most, asMr. Woodhead pointed out. Their problems were compounded by the way in which, under the current Government, section 11 funding was subsumed into the single regeneration budget, and by the removal of Government funds for the reading recovery programme.
Furthermore, while nobody questions the code of practice for special educational needs, there has been a failure to ensure that special educational needs co-ordinators have had the training appropriate to their new-found status. Even now, more than half of special needs co-ordinators do not have appropriate qualifications; nor has the Teacher Training Agency yet ensured that initial teacher training for new teachers guarantees that all newly qualified teachers have an appropriate grounding in special needs to qualify them for their roles in implementing the code of practice. That is in spite of the fact that 20 per cent. of our children have special educational needs.
The end product of all the disjointed Government prevarication and their twisted view of maintained education--a sector that many Conservative Members do not use--is a catalogue of problems that manifest themselves in our secondary schools and beyond. We know that there is a huge disparity between the best and the worst of our schools, and an ever widening gap in pupil achievement. Even the usually pro-GovernmentMr. Woodhead has noted:
The reasons for the difference in performance are obvious. The Government are committed to advantaging the few at the expense of the many, and are oblivious to the damage being done to hopes for economic prosperity and social cohesion by their wilful neglect of so many of our schools.
The Prime Minister's answer is to have a grammar school in every town. That means, by definition, that many secondary moderns will appear in every area. Such a preoccupation with outdated structures ignores the fact that, as a nation, we need raised standards for all children if we are to be a high-tech, high-skill and high-wage economy.
The Conservative party is in thrall to league tables. The Opposition do not have a problem with giving meaningful information to parents. We have a problem with a system
of tables that does not take into account what is actually imparted by the schools to the children. The tables compare unlike phenomena in different schools. It would be nonsense to say that the best of the grammar schools, which are so favoured by the Conservative party, can be compared to inner-city comprehensives, with all the socio-economic problems they have to contend with.
As I travel the country, I am struck by the increasing problems in schools. I was amazed when the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey) said that he was unaware of the problems of truancy and exclusion, which were mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Brightside. The hon. Member must have been on a long holiday, and he was probably truanting. The number of exclusions has soared to more than 12,000, while research shows that 800,000 pupils truant regularly, some 80,000 on a quasi-permanent basis.
The Minister of State, Department for Education and Employment (Mr. Eric Forth):
What about Islington?
Mr. Kilfoyle:
The Minister mentions Islington. Is it any wonder that Sir Paul Condon, the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, credited the truanting and the excluded with most of London's street crime? The Minister should realise that his party has been in government for the past 17 years while those figures have taken off.
The Prime Minister insists that privilege for the few is preferable to excellence for all. That is the Tory way forward. I know that the Secretary of State does not agree with the Prime Minister in her heart of hearts. Her experience and common sense are being neutered by the No. 10 policy unit. She knows that education is a great co-operative exercise. As the National Commission for Education has said:
At first, that used to bother me greatly because of the social implications, but I began to focus on the children themselves, especially the young boys. My hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Mr. Pickthall) mentioned the gender gap in school performance, and I thought of the next generation who have no male role model at home and, increasingly, no male role model in primary schools. If they have a male role model, it is somebody involved in crime or drug dealing on the streets.
"It was also certain that the larger classes would mean poorer education for children: the assertion that class sizes do not matter is disingenuous and is contradicted not only by commonsense but by most of the quite extensive research evidence that exists."
But, time after time, Ministers tell us that size bears no relation to pupil attainment.
"There is a need for considerable improvement in provision of books in half of special, a quarter of our secondary, and one in seven primary schools."
11 Jun 1996 : Column 163
He went on to remark that there were serious deficiencies in equipment, and that one in five of our secondary schools and one in seven of our primary schools suffered from accommodation shortfalls.
He then drew the remarkable conclusion:
"Teachers who lack proper resources and who work in poor buildings experience problems which at best frustrate and at worst defeat their best efforts to do a decent job."
Yes, indeed. Repeated cuts in local education authority budgets, combined with capping and the Government's failure to deal with changing enrolment patterns, have caused tremendous difficulties to many of our schools. Primary schools have suffered particularly, as the introduction of the national curriculum, changing primary generalists into semi-specialist teachers, has increased the pressures on such schools--as even the chief inspector noted.
"The performance of schools serving disadvantaged areas continues to cause serious concerns."
I am sure it causes serious concerns to parents in those areas.
"Competition plays a useful part when its effect is to improve learning for pupils. There is little to be said for stimulating competition which is unfair or enables some schools to flourish only by making it more difficult for others."
Those between the ages of 16 and 25 are the product of 17 long years of Tory educational policy and adventurism. Some 800,000 people between 16 and 25 are, as Ministers know, out of work, outside training and outside education. I have travelled the country and spoken to people about the future and their hopes. I have had the experience in my surgeries, which many others have had, of helping mothers with one, two or three young children. Another woman may come along as an adviser or part of the negotiating team, but there is no man present.
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