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Mr. Beggs: Is there not a real danger that, when pupils are excluded and education authorities are then responsible for allocating them to different schools, we shall start to create "dump schools"? That is the last thing that we need. It would be much better for children who are creating difficulties to be supervised internally.
Mr. Davies: The hon. Gentleman makes my point for me. On the one hand, we must have firm discipline and ensure that disruptive children are not allowed to disturb the education of those who seek to gain all the benefits of a school; on the other hand, there is indeed a danger that we shall create sink schools, which will generate and feed a growing underclass. There must be a way of preventing that: we have a responsibility to deal with the problem.
Final responsibility for discipline must rest firmly on the shoulders of parents, but, although the vast majority accept that responsibility automatically, we hear too many stories of teachers who are being abused by the parents to whom they would normally look for support. We need good home-school partnerships--school contracts on a one-to-one basis. Negotiating such arrangements, however--meeting parents individually in the evenings--puts a huge burden on teachers, who are already over-pressed and, usually, working in the schools in which conditions are least favourable.
All those things cost money. Yesterday, the Chancellor announced that education would be looked after in the Budget. I fear, however, that that was a rather cynical and
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Mr. Robin Squire:
The hon. Gentleman said that the education settlement would be less than the rate of inflation. The strong implication is that he expects settlements throughout the public sector--including Government settlements--necessarily to match movements in prices year by year. The Government, however, believe that authorities, like Government, should be looking for efficiency savings. Does the hon. Gentleman not agree with that?
Mr. Davies:
I should have been happy if the Chancellor had said yesterday, "Social service budgets will be cut to the bone, so that I can stand up in the House and say that education will benefit." That would have been a more honest approach. If there is to be a real increase in education spending, local authority spending across the board--other than education spending--should be kept at inflation levels. If that happened, the increase would be real. In practice, however, it will be a matter of robbing Peter to pay Paul, and in this instance social service budgets will feel the brunt of the pressure.
I am still a member of Oldham council. I am one of those who will have to hold up their hands and make a decision when proposals to cut social services and close children's homes are made in my council. It is not an experience to which I look forward. There must be substantial investment, as my party has spelt out before. We have made it clear that investment of some £2 billion is needed--which, if necessary, should come from the general taxation system.
There are things that local education authorities can do to stimulate and support the work of schools. They should be challenging parents a little, and asking them whether they are doing as much as they could to support schools. My own local education authority, for example, should be asking parents, "Are you reading to your young children when they go to bed? Are you listening to them read when they are a bit older? Are you making sure that they are at school?" In many authorities, including my own, there is an unacceptable number of unauthorised absences.
The authority should ask, "Are you checking that homework is being done? If not enough homework is being set, are you beating a path to the head teacher to ask why?" The amount of work that is set and done, at school or out of school, is a crucial factor in students' eventual achievements. Given that not all homes can provide a place where homework can be done in peace, is the school offering "homework clubs"? Is it making facilities available to prevent pupils suffering disadvantage as a result of their social circumstances?
Mr. David Porter (Waveney):
It is always timely to discuss standards in education, and I agreed with much of what my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall) said in opening the debate. Everyone wants higher education standards, whether we speak as parents, Members of Parliament or employers. Education and the system of assessing how it is progressing in each and every child must be the cornerstone of the building of our future citizens.
Equally, each of us can argue for education as a spending priority, which is why I welcome the broad outline of extra spending in yesterday's Budget. It must be said, however, that ever higher spending, by itself, does not guarantee parallel improvements in teaching standards.
As has already been said in this debate, we can all mention high-spending but low-achieving local education authorities. Some of us remember the grim days of the old Inner London education authority, which spent the most and produced the least. Spending is not the panacea. It is an important part of it, however, and parents will certainly have no confidence if they feel or are told that their children's education is suffering because of a perceived lack of funding.
We will not know the details of how the extra spending will be distributed until this afternoon's statement. However, parents in Suffolk, for example, have been hit by a concerted scare story--a worst-case scenario--presented to them by the Labour-controlled LEA, as if a 5 per cent. cut across the board in every Suffolk school was a certainty. It has been a disgraceful campaign. Parents would have to be alerted if there were to be a per cent. cut and it were to be translated into bigger class sizes, loss of key teachers, buildings not being repaired, the compromise of health, safety or any of the other myriad parts of the school's world that comprise our children's education.
Our children spend much time in schools. Some would argue that, if a curriculum, particularly at key stages 3 and 4, is to fit in all that it should--with more civic studies, driving lessons, social skills, family education and parenting--our children should spend even longer in school. The longer school day, the four-term year and the two-semester term are part of the continuing debate about the structures of education. In some senses, that debate is peripheral to the core issue of standards. In education, however, we must take account of all strands of the debate, because assessing achievement is such a complex business.
We are now beginning to achieve a consensus on a basic core curriculum and on some testing of it. We are also building a consensus on the publication of results--I hope, in an ever more sophisticated manner, providing ever more meaningful comparative information. There is a general feeling that weaknesses are shown through inspections by the Office for Standards in Education, performance tables and exam results. If so, drastic remedial action is needed--even if, ultimately, that means closing schools.
It has taken a long time for that consensus to be achieved, even if we still disagree on the details. It is a shame that the Labour party, with some of the unions, has spent nearly a generation fighting us at every turn, especially as so many of our children are now taught in Labour-controlled authorities.
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We can make progress if we can build on what has been achieved, from curriculum in schools to reforms of teacher training, and if we can assume that parents want the best standards so that their children can achieve their potential, and that they want such standards at every stage of their children's education. Regardless of whether a child is starting school, sitting standard assessment tasks, doing GCSEs, staying on for post-16 education or going to university or into training, higher standards must be available at every stage. That benchmark will continue rising every year. In the same way in which we become healthier as a people, I believe that each generation can attain ever higher educational targets.
It is possible to build naturally on what has been achieved, unless what we have achieved is ruined. But we must go further. OFSTED should focus more on schools' weak points rather than conducting whole-school inspections. OFSTED should focus on particular subject areas or even on individual teachers, to weed out the bad and to learn from the best.
If OFSTED is not the right vehicle for the next stage of standard-raising in education and a general teaching council is, let us have one. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South that we should enhance the teaching profession, boost its professional status and tap that huge fund of good will and--in the case of so many teachers--great talent, dedication and vision to praise teachers when they deserve it and criticise them when they deserve that.
Parents, of course, want choice of schools. They would like the full range of subjects to be available and for their children and teenagers to be safe and confident, harnessing the wonders of technology and learning the traditional values in literacy and numeracy. In reality, however, most parents in rural areas, and even those in urban areas, do not exercise or do not have a choice of school. Regardless of results and standards, the majority of children go to their nearest school, whatever the standards.
In my part of Suffolk, there is a three-tier system, with primary schools taking pupils up to age nine, middle schools to 13 and high schools after that. Even in a compact urban area, it is difficult for parents with children of different ages attending different schools to be in the same place at the same time. So they always, or nearly always, opt for the local school. We must remember that. Although I remain a believer in a wide freedom of choice and personal preference, I know that we must raise standards in all schools. Competition has a limit in education because of the reality of which school most children will attend.
Conservative Members believe that schools should take ever more of their own decisions, handle all their own budgets and be as self-governing as possible. However, there is sometimes a feeling that schools do not want any more deep-seated changes, such as becoming fully self-governing, if they are doing reasonably well on present indicators, children are confidently developing in a manner that is satisfactory to the majority of parents, and they are working in partnership with the LEA, other schools, local industry and the world around them.
Schools would like to get on with the changes and targets that they have already been set. That view finds a sympathetic echo in the hearts of many parents, particularly when the parents' own world of work has
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If there is still a gap between young people's qualities and skills in basic reading, writing or more adventurous thinking and employers' recruitment needs, that gap must be dealt with. One of the great benefits of the past few years has been the ending of the idea that schools are ivory towers and isolated islands in their communities. They are now seen as part of the fabric of their communities, although, as has already been said, schools are considered a safe place for many children who live in tough home and community environments. The more links that business and the community have with education the better. The more each can respond to the needs of the other, the better for all concerned, especially for our children.
Regardless of whether I am at home with my own children or visiting schools, I never cease to be amazed at what children are capable of, given encouragement and responsibility. Like so many things in this country, however, we take education for granted. Until the Labour party modernised itself, we have taken it as read that education is a battleground. That is no longer so.
One of the keys to raising standards has been demonstrated by a pilot project in my constituency of Waveney. It is called "Caring for Education", and it is now just over a year old. It is about not taking things for granted. It is a partnership of all the schools in Lowestoft, the county council, the district council, police, retailers, the chamber of commerce and parents and seeks to tell the community that we all--children, parents, teachers, taxpayers and everyone else--value education and value the added value provided to children through their learning.
The project has been described, on one level, as a truancy watch, with the added bonus of reducing the dangers of drugs and crime. But it goes beyond that; it is an attitude. It is, for example, persuading doctors and dentists that routine appointments for children can be made outside school hours. If everyone thinks that school comes first and that what children are doing in school matters, is valued and cannot easily be replaced if missed out of the national curriculum--quite small changes in attitude--a real sense of valuing and owning our children's future can be engendered, with some very encouraging results.
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