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Mrs. Shephard: Given the favourable financial settlement for Cheshire this year, it must be a question of the selection of priorities.
The achievements that I listed have come from the Government's education reforms, all of which have been opposed by Opposition Members, whose Luddite views were so perfectly encapsulated by the hon. Member for Brightside. Yet again, he made it clear that he is opposed to choice, opposed to selection and opposed to every measure that we have put in place to raise standards.
Mrs. Shephard:
I will make some progress now.
The hon. Member for Brightside wants to fudge performance tables by introducing "economic and social indices". Yet, as the chief inspector of schools has pointed out, the most successful secondary schools achieve GCSE results six times as good as the worst performers in similar circumstances. If they can do it, so can all. Opposition Members, of course, would say that if all cannot, none should have the opportunity.
Education has been bedevilled for far too long by those who make excuses for poor performance instead of encouraging the good, and the hon. Member for Brightside made it clear today that he belongs to that dishonourable band. The fact that children come from inner-city areas or poor backgrounds is not a reason for accepting poor standards. It should be an additional spur
for schools to make up for the disadvantage by providing a good education. That is the way out of cycles of deprivation, enabling all students to reach their potential.
Mr. Bernard Jenkin (Colchester, North):
Is not it somewhat ridiculous for the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) to hinge his entire education policy on a diatribe against selection that is based on one experience in one town, when there are grammar schools all over the country in towns such as Colchester that co-exist successfully with comprehensive schools and sixth-form colleges? Does not that prove comprehensively that selection and achievement go side by side?
Mrs. Shephard:
I am afraid that, yet again, the hon. Member for Brightside has demonstrated a paucity of policy and has sought to ignore the facts.
Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South):
I am grateful to the Secretary of State who, like everyone else, is concerned about breaking the cycle of deprivation. I hope that the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) is concerned about that also. However, would not his selection policy--while providing what the right hon. Lady calls opportunity for some--deny opportunity to others? Is she claiming that the policy advocated by the right hon. Gentleman and the selection policies to be included in the Bill will not deny opportunity to some, because in the past--as she must admit--they surely have?
Mrs. Shephard:
I hope that the hon. Gentleman listened to the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, North (Mr. Jenkin) and to my earlier points about the achievements of, for example, Wiltshire, Buckinghamshire and Bexley. There is no evidence to support the comfortable theory expounded from the Labour Front Bench that selection must result in reduced standards--that simply is not true.
We are concerned about standards. We have already done a great deal--all of it opposed by Opposition Members--but there is, nevertheless, more to be done. We are, therefore, introducing a national curriculum for initial teacher training, so that every new teacher learns the methods that really work for reading, writing and arithmetic, on which all other skills are founded. We are reforming in-service training for teachers and setting up literacy and numeracy centres. We have introduced training for head teachers, leading to a new professional qualification, because the quality of learning for children depends on the quality of teaching and leadership in schools.
Ms Margaret Hodge (Barking):
Will the right hon. Lady explain why it took 17 years before she started to tackle the issue of teacher training?
Mrs. Shephard:
The hon. Lady has not been in the House for long--nor have I--but even she can hardly have failed to notice that the education agenda of the Conservative Government has been full of education reform, all of which was opposed by Opposition Members. We have sought to tackle low standards, lack of
Mrs. Shephard:
I want to make progress; I shall take more interventions shortly.
The enabling and empowering of individuals that is provided by education is vital, because, as I have already said, education is the foundation stone of a civilised society. Although individuals, families, Churches and voluntary organisations--indeed, everyone--has a part to play in that work, it is clear that, to use Mrs. Lawrence's words, it is in school that much can be done to ensure that our children adopt the values on which our civilisation depends.
That is why the teaching of spiritual and moral values is already part of the national curriculum and why that work, together with adherence to the daily act of worship and the school's interaction with the broader community, is already inspected by the Ofsted. It is also why Conservative Members value the work of the 7,000 Church schools within the system, whereas Opposition Members would reduce their power and change their nature--without, I understand, even consulting them.
Teachers need clear, practical advice to help them to fulfil their responsibility to provide pupils' spiritual and moral education.
Mr. David Shaw (Dover):
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Barking (Ms Hodge) intervened in the Secretary of State's speech, yet she has not had the courtesy to stay for the answer that the Secretary of State is giving. It is appalling.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse):
That is a matter of opinion, not a point of order for me.
Mrs. Shephard:
I forgive the hon. Lady--I suppose that she will not be missed.
That is why, last January, the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority set up the National Forum for Values in Education and the Community. Its remit was to recommend to the SCAA
Schools already do much good work in that area. I must stress that they cannot on their own achieve changes in social behaviour, but they have a strong desire to take a firm stand on values and behaviour, and we can equip them with practical ways of tackling those matters.
The family, its role and how it might be bolstered, has been discussed by the forum, and at some length in the press. The forum stated:
Mrs. Shephard:
Of course I shall give thought to that matter and will be in touch with the hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Dobson:
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it not the case that if a Minister chooses to quote from an official publication in a debate, it has to be given to the House so that hon. Members can check it?
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
I did not think that it sounded like a state paper. [Hon. Members: "It was."] Order. We shall probably now find out whether it was or not.
Mrs. Shephard:
It was not a state paper, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am quoting from press coverage of the document, but there is no problem. We can ask the SCAA to make the paper available immediately to Members of the House. There is no problem.
Rightly, the SCAA wants to look at responses before it decides on the wording of an agreed statement of shared family values. As the debate starts, I can do no better, as the Archbishop of Canterbury did recently in another place, than echo the Chief Rabbi's words from his book "Faith in the Future":
"ways in which schools might be supported in making their contribution to pupils' spiritual and moral development",
and
"to what extent there is any common agreement on the values, attitudes and behaviour which schools should promote on society's behalf".
The forum involves 150 organisations and individuals--teachers, governors, parents, teacher trainers, the major religions, academics, the legal profession, the media, youth workers and employers. The SCAA will publish a document on Friday for wide-ranging consultation on a common core of values and attitudes, on how those might be dealt with in schools and on how best practice might be supported.
"we value families as sources of love and support for all their members and as the basis of a society in which people care for others".
Five members of the forum wanted to go further, emphasising that
"children should be nurtured and developed within a stable moral and loving home environment with preferably both mother and father present in a happy marriage relationship".
Mr. Blunkett:
As the Secretary of State is now quoting from a document that is to be published in three days, and an addendum to it, would it not be a courtesy to the House that it be now published?
"It is as if, in the 1950s and 1960s, without intending to, we have set a timebomb ticking which would eventually explode the moral framework into fragments. The human cost has been colossal, most visibly in terms of marriage and the family. There has been a proliferation of one-parent families, deserted wives and neglected and abused children".
That is the legacy that we have inherited from moral relativism. That has weakened and partly replaced the traditional attitudes which people of all faiths and none used to regard as a bedrock of decent behaviour. I welcome the start of a debate on how we can begin to regain some of that lost ground.
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