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Mrs. Shephard: The LEA could do a number of things in addition to the action that I suggested. It could make its central teaching and advisory staff available to the school by short-term secondment. The LEA could arrange alternative tuition for all Manton's pupils, notwithstanding the strike. The authority could offer suitable alternative tuition to the parent of the pupil concerned because not all the alternatives have been
explored. The LEA could bring itself to back publicly the governing body. I saw the chairman of the governors on television, who said:
- "The LEA said they are behind us. It would be more helpful if they were in front."
I am convinced that not only Mrs. Bennett but the right hon. Lady and the Tory party would like teacher strikes this winter. They think that any strike--whether on the railways, in the Post Office or in schools--will produce votes for the Tory party. There is a hidden agenda. This is not just a small issue for Manton school that is attracting big headlines. The problem is affecting 11,000 children and hundreds of schools, where teachers are fed up to the back teeth. Perhaps the teachers were fed up with having to achieve league tables, increased class sizes and being pressurised. Teachers are taking early retirement in ever-increasing numbers. Many teachers, who have already had enough, see disruptive children as the last straw. If a strike starts in Manton this week and it spreads, that would suit the Government and it might suit the union. However, the kids and the parents in the middle would be the ones to suffer.
Dame Angela Rumbold (Mitcham and Morden):
I do not believe that single cases make particularly good arguments, but I sympathise with the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) in one respect. A disruptive child makes it difficult for the teachers and the parents to maintain their efforts to provide a good education for the other children. There is obviously a problem with that child. I hope very much that the local education authority, which is the proper authority, will manage to resolve it. It is time that people sat down around a table and worked out a resolution of that problem.
I welcome the Bill promised by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. During its passage, we shall discuss discipline in schools, among other things.
Schools deliver the most effective education. They do the job of opening the minds of children best when those schools are orderly. We have asked a great deal of teachers in the past few years. They have had the
demanding job of rediscovering the things that they must teach and of ensuring that they meet the standards to enhance the children's basic education. Those requirements are right.
We make things very difficult if we, as a society, say that the only people in the country who can now instil moral rectitude in, and order among, children are teachers. Teachers have had to become social workers; they have had to become all things to all men. That is patently absurd. It is absurd to expect teachers, who frequently are confronted with not only abusive or violent pupils but abusive or violent parents, to answer for all the ills of our society simply because, in western Europe and the Americas, we have allowed ourselves to become obsessed with political correctness. We have become so obsessed that we refuse to allow the people who teach, members of a good and honourable profession, to react publicly and openly about how they feel with parents who are abusive and with children who are totally out of order.
It is important for us to support teachers who ask for some authority to be restored to them--who ask, not to be given the right to bring up children from scratch, but to be given back the authority to enable them to establish order in places of education. They are there to educate children.
The newspapers and other media, among others, indulge in another mistake a great deal. They imagine that, if children have an education, they will automatically go on to obtain a job. Teachers can only do their best to open the mind and intellect of children. They cannot guarantee those children a job; they can guarantee to enable those children to obtain the skills that will enable those children to find the training that will enable those children ultimately to obtain jobs. Teaching children to read and do maths and teaching them basic science and technology are the first steps to enabling children to get a job. Teachers cannot and should not be expected to teach children moral behaviour and how to conduct themselves in an orderly way. They can contribute to that, but they are not the first teachers.
Children's first teachers are their parents. If the mother and father are out of control, it is hardly surprising that the children are out of control. No doubt other hon. Members will have been told by teachers from their constituency of terrible experiences. A teacher in my constituency was put in hospital by a parent--I suppose it was a parent; it was certainly someone associated with the child--who decided that they did not like the fact that the teacher had reprimanded the child in class. We cannot, as a society, expect teachers to give their best in opening the minds of children if we expect them to fend off violent and irresponsible people who have no self-control.
I prefer not to indulge in a great moral debate. We need to tell teachers, "We shall give you the authority"--my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State plans to do just that--"and we shall give you the means whereby you can exercise control in your schools." In that way, we can at least restore the balance for the teaching profession, which, as my right hon. Friend said, has done a magnificent job. It has helped with all the different measures that have been introduced during the past 17 years. It has made possible significant achievements.
Examination results have improved, and children go to university in far greater numbers than we ever contemplated.
At one point during my time in the Government, one in 10 children went to university. The figure is now one in three. That is a tribute to the extension of university places and to the people who teach in our schools. We, as a society, should support those people to the hilt to enable them to do the job that they have chosen to do, by giving them the backing of the Government measures that will be introduced and of the local education authorities, which have a major responsibility to ensure discipline in schools.
In mentioning the Bill that is to be introduced, I should declare an interest. I have an interest in grant-maintained schools because I am vice-president of Grant-Maintained Schools Ltd. I also have an interest in the assisted places scheme in so far as I am a part of the Girls' Public Day School Trust and I am chairman of the governors of an independent school in north London.
I am very pleased that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is considering extending the assisted places scheme to preparatory schools, because I strongly support the idea of allowing talented children, from families who do not have the means to send them to the schools of their choice, to go to those schools.
As a former pupil of a school in the Girls' Public Day School Trust, I believe that we offered to girls throughout the country, without exception, one of the very best educations that anyone can receive in this country. It is single-sex education, and 25 per cent. of the girls who attend Girls' Public Day School Trust schools are supported by assisted places. That means that those girls get an opportunity that would otherwise have been denied them.
I was furious and outraged when, in 1975, the Labour Government decided to get rid of the direct grant system, so preventing children from poorer areas and from financially disadvantaged families from going to schools that would give them an excellent opportunity in life. The majority of girls who go to the 26 schools run by the Girls' Public Day School Trust manage to go to university. Those girls hold top jobs in every walk of life. They do well and are a credit to their families.
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