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6.45 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. Robin Squire): Once again, the debate has illustrated the gulf between the Government and the Opposition on education matters. We have taken actions to improve standards: they have resisted those actions. We have recognised the need to build up this country's competitiveness: they have, for far too long, been concerned with levelling down, if indeed they have been concerned at all.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my hon. Friends who have spoken have set out what has been achieved. As my right hon. Friend made clear, there is always further to go, but the programme of action that we have carried through has been the most radical and far-reaching on record. It has covered the content of education and the measurement of pupils' performance, the quality of teaching, greater diversity and greater choice for parents, and more effective inspection and accountability.
As has also been made clear during this short debate, those significant improvements have been achieved despite consistent and persistent opposition from the Labour party in the House, many Labour local authorities and the left-wing establishment of the teaching unions.
The hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside(Mr. Blunkett) had a bit of fun at the start of debate, and what is sauce for the goose has to be sauce for the gander. One might have thought that there had been no comment in the media in the past few days about the latest emanations on education policy from the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair).
For instance, where has the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) been this evening? We welcome the hon. Member for Falkirk, West (Mr. Canavan) to the debate, albeit in a silent capacity. I do not know who was the mysterious, well-placed left winger who said:
The hon. Member for Brightside said that selection had failed, and he made that statement as if it needed no explanation. It is an interesting statement, because most other countries seem to believe in selection, and seem to believe that it works. Never mind--the hon. Member suggests that it has failed.
I do not know what he bases that assertion on. He certainly does not base it on the views of the parents and pupils at the 161 selective schools we currently have. If the hon. Gentleman has been talking only to right hon.
and hon. Members in the shadow Cabinet, he might have received a biased version, because 16 of the 20 members of the shadow Cabinet went to a grammar school or to a fee-paying school. In typical socialist style, they have enjoyed the education, but then they want to pull up the ladder to stop anybody else sharing it.
Mr. Squire:
Of course I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Kilfoyle:
Would the Minister seriously have expected people at the age of 11, back in the 1950s and 1960s, to walk out on the only education provided for them? Is he seriously holding them guilty of a choice made, perhaps 30 or 40 years ago, by their parents?
Mr. Squire:
I do not blame the hon. Gentleman for attending at age 11 the school that his parents selected, any more than I blame him for keeping his child at a school that has gone fully selective. It is extraordinary that, out of the hundreds of thousands of people who have benefited from a grammar school education, there is a massive concentration of individuals who did not and do not like grammar schools--and they are all in Labour's shadow Cabinet.
Mr. David Jamieson (Plymouth, Devonport):
If grammar schools are so good, perhaps the Minister will explain why, despite, proposals from local authorities of all political persuasions, the Government and previous Conservative Governments have signed order after order to close nearly all the grammar schools in Britain.
Mr. Squire:
Local education authorities retain significant responsibility for planning the education they deliver. I am delighted that some far-seeing LEAs have retained their grammar schools.
The hon. Member for Brightside, responding to an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Sir D. Thompson), inadvertently implied that money was going from Calderdale--or any other authority that has had top-slice money in nursery provision--to other parts of the country. The hon. Gentleman, who is extremely knowledgeable in these matters, knows that that is not so. The vouchers that go to Calderdale, as to any other LEA, whether funded by the top slice or the additional millions of pounds that the Government are putting in, are spent within the LEA. Any suggestion that the money is climbing into a train and going down to Lambeth is untrue.
Mr. Blunkett:
As the Minister has targeted the issue, perhaps he will confirm that, on the basis of a snapshot decision on four-year-olds already in nursery provision, the standard spending assessment will be adjusted to take
Mr. Squire:
The hon. Gentleman confirms what I just said. He implied in an earlier response that the money travelled around the country.
Mr. Blunkett
indicated dissent.
Mr. Squire:
The hon. Gentleman does not understand, which is even more worrying. I am reaffirming that the money will be spent by parents within the LEA as they see fit.
It is astonishing that the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle), who is a likeable cove in many respects, can sit through two months of nursery education debate yet still repeat the tired and wrong statement that £20 million will be spent on administration. The hon. Gentleman knows that that is not true because it has been pointed out to him many times. Not even half that amount will be spent. But I must not confuse the hon. Gentleman with the facts.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Brent, North(Sir R. Boyson) gave another of his brilliant performances, taking us back to the dreaded days of long ago, which may still be with us in Islington. Drawing on his experience as a former head teacher but echoing the comments of Her Majesty's chief inspector, my right hon. Friend made the powerful point that we are essentially talking not about money but about the way a school is organised and that money is spent. Countless independent reports show that that is so. If I can do nothing more than persuade Opposition Members on that point, I will have enjoyed a major success.
My right hon. Friend rightly highlighted the excellence of grant-maintained schools in his constituency--all but one of which are self-governing. We know the quality of education they are delivering and the popularity they enjoy with parents. Such schools are directly threatened by the election of a Labour Government and by the official Opposition's Liberal allies. Those schools would lose 10 per cent. of their budgets and would, unasked, have imposed on them two councillors. As those schools have shown that they know how to operate, why should they be interrupted and interfered with that way?
I am pleased that the hon. Member for Bath(Mr. Foster) talks to parents at one or more of the schools in his constituency. When they mention funding, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman immediately points out the significant increase under this Government since 1979--anxious as he would be, as a fair man, to ensure that parents have full information. The hon. Gentleman said that any Government enjoying his support would have to return city technology colleges to LEA control. I believe that was a slip, because CTCs have never been under such control but are independent charities.
The hon. Member for Bath rightly emphasised the importance of good morale in teaching. There is no divide on the importance of retaining good teachers and ensuring that their morale is high. The turnover rate quoted by the hon. Member for Warrington, South (Mr. Hall) was broadly correct, but 8 per cent. a year is not unreasonable. I do not want one teacher who is still delivering excellent education to leave the profession early, but we must keep
the matter in perspective. Teachers who in good, improving schools usually have higher morale. There is an exact link between the two, so the better schools become, the more teacher morale will improve.
I welcomed, as ever, the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Sir M. Thornton), who speaks with additional authority as the Chairman of the Select Committee on Education. I liked the tenor and content of my hon. Friend's speech. Governments have responsibility for establishing a proper framework, but much that happens in our schools lies with the head teacher and governors. They can, however, be galvanised by external and informed assistance from LEAs or the Government--and should be.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey) gave his customary robust reminder of educational realities. I welcomed a number of his home truths. He and others of my hon. Friends reminded the House how impossible is Labour's position when it claims to speak for standards in education.
Everything in which the hon. Member for Brightside claims to believe now is alien to the views that he preached before he took his current job, when he opposed testing. At the conclusion of an education debate in 1987, he said that, as a parent of three primary-aged children, he demanded the right to be able to choose whether they should have to go through the performing hoop of a national test based on a national curriculum imposed by a national Secretary of State. Philip Stephens writes in today's Financial Times that Labour has
There is an historical precedent. In 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail. He was not sure where he was going, and nor did he find what he was looking for--but we know that he found something he was not looking for, and called it something else.
Five hundred years later, Labour's leadership set sail, looking for an education policy under Commander Sedgefield, Captain Brightside, first mate Walton and a motley crew of LEAs. They were not sure where they were going. Their intended destination was the land of ancient Labour civilisations--child-centred education, monolithic comprehensives, all-ability teaching and tolerance by Labour-controlled LEAs of mediocre school performance. Whenever Labour's leadership have found one of them, they have been largely deserted by everyone else.
Labour's captain set a new course using stolen charts, and the leadership discovered some truly wondrous Tory education civilisations--regular testing and inspection, the publication of results, greater parental choice, grammar and other specialist schools, and self-governing GM schools. Labour's LEA crew were not looking for any of those. Those were not the destinations for which they had signed up. On the voyage of the Bounty, the officers were dumped overboard by the crew. On this voyage, the entire crew were being dumped overboard by the captain.
Even as the ship headed for home, the crew were silent but mutinous. They did not believe a word of Captain Brightside, and most of them were determined to carry on as they had always done for years--putting LEA control and educational dogma ahead of quality and greater parental choice.
They were not alone. The former ship's purser and deputy commander, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) announced that he wanted egalitarian schools, another of those favourite old civilisations. The able seaman, the hon. Member for Falkirk, West (Mr. Canavan), said of Commander Sedgefield that it ill became the product of an elitist school who had rejected the LEA system for his own offspring to pontificate on teaching methods in comprehensives.
The only diversion on the voyage was the discovery of a stowaway from Bath, the hon. Member for Bath(Mr. Foster), who had crept on board years ago and was now desperately trying to find a way to escape the impending shipwreck.
Was it really a great voyage of discovery to benefit future mankind? Hardly. It was just a paddle around Walworth road pond in a broken-masted old tub with only a lick of paint to suggest that things had really changed. The Labour party is incapable of significant change on education. Only the Conservative Government have consistently stressed the need to improve education standards and have put in place the necessary framework to drive them up still further. I ask the House to reject the Opposition motion.
Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:--
"We are under some sort of loyalty test to see at what point we break and complain".
But let us not hear too much from the Opposition about alleged or invisible divisions in the Government. We are united, and the Opposition are visibly starting to fall apart. I might also point out that Conservative Members have sat throughout this debate waiting to speak and unable to get in, whereas, on an Opposition day, there have been no more than three Labour Members on the Back Benches for most of the debate.
"rewritten every line of the schools policy on which Labour fought the 1992 election."
It gets worse. After the 1992 election, for some time we enjoyed the benefit of the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor) as Labour's education spokesperson. She repeatedly made clear her opposition to the curriculum and regular testing.
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