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9.59 am

Mr. Chris Davies (Littleborough and Saddleworth): I congratulate the hon. Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall) on securing the debate. I agree with his preference for the abandonment of calculators. I am conscious of the fact that mental ability and the ability to calculate figures diminishes without practice. My generation was one of the last to use slide rules. I am sorry that I disposed of my slide rule, because it would probably now be worth a bit of money as a potential museum piece.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. Robin Squire): I happened to find out the other day that slide rules are still in use in A-level mathematics. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be reassured by that.

Mr. Davies: I am grateful to the Minister for that information.

I was the beneficiary of an excellent academic education. Twenty years ago, I believed that, in practice, the spirit of learning and the development of well-rounded human beings were more important for schools than examination success. On reflection, I believe these days that we can have both. My strong conviction is that the acquisition of skills is essential if human beings are to develop to their full potential and if their minds are to flourish. They require a basic grounding for their intellect to thrive.

Last year's world competitiveness report made it clear that educational adequacy in Britain had slipped, and that we were now 35th out of 48 nations.

Ms Estelle Morris: We have now gone down further.

Mr. Davies: I note the hon. Lady's remark.

One in seven 21-year-olds in this country are said to have problems with basic literacy. Time and again, reports have shown that Japanese and German children are twice as likely to reach the equivalent of A-level examination success as their counterparts in this country. Why do some children achieve more than others? Could it be that German children are more intelligent than British children? At a local level, are children in one part of my borough more intelligent than those in another part? I am sure that the answer to those questions is firmly no.

I believe that there is no substantial difference across the world in the innate intelligence of human beings. The difference lies in social factors--the attitude of parents, funding of schools, organisation of education methods and the culture in which children develop, which varies from

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one country to another and even from one school to another within a local education authority area. We may not be able to change everything, but we can change much for the better. As legislators, we can affect the system in a way that benefits our constituents.

The introduction of league tables has helped to focus minds on academic performance and examination success. Some people moan and whinge about the tables. Indeed, I have reservations about the way in which the information is assembled, and I am concerned that head teachers may be tempted not to submit some children for examination, so as to avoid a poor performance being recorded at a later date. On the whole, however, I welcome league tables, because they have concentrated the minds of teachers and encouraged schools to ensure that every possible step is taken to improve their performance and that of individual pupils.

Earlier this year, the head teacher of Saddleworth school told me that its performance was just above average, and that perhaps it could do better. I am pleased to see from the figures for A to C grades at GCSE in five or more subjects that its performance has improved: it is up to 46 per cent. this year. I am sure that more progress will be made. Oldham schools generally, and schools across the country, have improved, and I suspect that league tables have played a part in that improvement.

I urge the Minister to ensure that, in the years to come, the goal posts will not be moved. Schools should be able to trust those results. There should be no weakening of the criteria for marking examinations and judging pupils. People should not have to suffer abuse in the tabloid newspapers, which say that standards have weakened and that teachers are not doing as well, and that improvements are due simply to the fact that examinations are being judged more leniently than before.

It is important that an element of competition is introduced. It was often said that only a certain percentage of pupils could attain an A grade at A-level. The league tables and the judging of GCSEs should be objective, so that schools currently below average can work hard to become above average, without feeling that the higher they climb and the harder they work the more difficult it will be to attain their goal. Consistency is crucial.

As hon. Members on both sides of the House have stressed in the past, it is imperative to introduce a value-added element in league tables. Entry level should perhaps be compared with performance at a later date.

Breeze Hill school serves many of my constituents, although it is just outside my constituency border. English is not the first language of many of its pupils, and it has had many problems in recent years. For some time, it was bottom of the league table. Last year it came well off the bottom: it moved up from a poor, some would say pathetic, 9 per cent. to 21 per cent. of GCSE passes at grades A to C, which is a significant improvement in one year.

I hope that that heralds great things to come. I am sure that it has been a great boost to the morale of teachers and to pupils and parents in the area. Such figures should be reflected in league tables by putting one criterion against the other, so that parents can compare the two.

It is particularly interesting that some schools perform better that others with exactly the same catchment area. The chief inspector's report for 1996 pointed out that some outstanding secondary schools are doing twice as

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well at GCSE as other schools in similar circumstances, and six times better than schools with less advantageous social and environmental conditions.

The ideal must be to encourage schools to break away from the vicious circle in which teachers have low expectations of their pupils and there is downward peer pressure from pupils who drag down good performing colleagues, which results in poor achievement. We should establish instead a virtuous circle in which improvement is achieved because teachers and pupils work together in an upward movement and aspire to higher things.

On Monday, I visited Wardle high school in my constituency. It now achieves 64 per cent. A to C grade passes at GCSE: the figure for English is 80 per cent. That is a tremendous performance, and it is the highest in the Rochdale borough. We have come to expect such achievements at that school. There has been a tremendous input and it has a fabulous atmosphere. The whole school works together as one entity with a common purpose.

The personality of the head teacher can be crucial to such achievement. It is important to recognise how easy it is to expect too much. We hold up as an example the glorious head teacher who has transformed a school, but we often fail to recognise that the head who arrives at a school that is already performing well has a vastly easier job to maintain that performance than one who take on a school with low standards, where the obstacles seem insuperable. It is an exceptional person who can turn the situation around in such areas. We must find means of helping the head teacher who is no more than average to turn situations around. We need to help head teachers not to reinvent the wheel, but merely to learn from best practice and to employ methods that have been applied successfully in the schools that have achieved the most.

Discipline is also crucial. A well-ordered learning environment and control in the classroom are the essential prerequisites of good teaching. On that score, my borough of Oldham is no better and no worse than other areas throughout the country--which means that the vast majority of lessons are taught well and in ordered conditions. By and large, schools--including those in my borough--are well-disciplined places, but the national picture tells a disturbing story. The number of exclusions is growing nationally, and the number of head teachers taking retirement early, often because of stress-related illness, has grown by 50 per cent. since 1991.

In the past few weeks, I have heard from teachers in areas as diverse as Hackney and North Walsham in Norfolk--I believe that the Secretary of State for Education and Employment has some experience of that area--and, indeed, my own borough. Those teachers feel that conditions in their classrooms are deteriorating, and have decided to take early retirement rather than being forced to abandon their traditional desire to teach, and having to substitute crowd control.

We know that there are problems of indiscipline, although they tend to be the exception to the rule. The problem is growing across the country, and is reflected in Oldham as elsewhere. Recently, one teacher wrote to my local newspaper:

"there are children who's classroom behaviour falls far below any acceptable level . . . who swing from desks, rip pages from books, swear at teachers with no intention of . . . paying attention."

How can a teacher teach in such circumstances?

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I have been criticised by my local chairman of education for pointing out that there are problems in a minority of schools. When I am rebutted, as I have been, I feel that, in pretending that there are no such problems and sweeping them under the carpet, the education chairman only earns contempt from teachers who must face the problems daily, and who do not feel that they are receiving the support they need.

Teachers need to be able to work within closely defined guidelines. They need to be able to rely on good disciplinary procedures, and they need effective back-up from head teachers; who, in turn, need effective back-up from local education authorities; which themselves need good back-up from the Government. We must never allow the education of the majority of children in any one classroom to be sacrificed because we tolerate to any degree the misbehaviour of the one or two who are disruptive. That should be uppermost in our minds.

Exclusions, although growing and although one means of allowing a school to retain discipline and control in the classroom, must be regarded as inherently bad. Apart from anything else, statistics now suggest that the child who is excluded today becomes the prisoner of tomorrow. There is a real danger that, by writing off children in this way, we will force people down and create great problems for the future.

Internal methods of discipline--internal exclusion, if you like--is, by and large, a better approach; but teaching on a one-to-one basis, or the teaching of three or four disruptive pupils by one teacher, is an expensive process, as parents have been pointing out lately. They have found that education resources are being diverted from their own children to the teaching of a single disruptive pupil by a single teacher. Obviously, schools need resources if they are to deal with problems of that kind.

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