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Mr. Riddick: Surely telling a school that it cannot insist on school uniforms totally undermines discipline in the school.
Ms Morris: The hon. Gentleman should realise that exclusion is not the only means of enforcing rules. If we reach such a situation, there will be real problems.
The hon. Member for Waveney made a thoughtful speech. I have listened to several thoughtful speeches from him on education in recent months. In particular, he mentioned partnerships, with people from all sectors of the community working together to raise standards. That is welcome and should be encouraged.
We have heard the normal attacks on local authorities. I do not excuse under-performing local authorities, but the notion that some are not achieving at a high standard and are not supporting their schools is far from the truth. Baseline assessment and targets were introduced by Birmingham education authority. Business partnerships were pioneered by Labour local authorities and others up and down the country. Community support has been promoted, bringing parents and communities together to raise standards. Out-of-school learning was also pioneered by Birmingham, Tower Hamlets and other authorities in London and elsewhere.
All those initiatives are important, and have been designed to raise standards. They all require people to work together, and they have had local authorities at their core in bringing those people together and facilitating joint work to raise standards. The Government have now recognised that local authorities have a role to play as one of many partners. A school will be better with the support of a good local authority.
Some Conservative Members will be sadly let down when they study the details of yesterday's Budget. No extra money will be going into schools. No extra money went to schools last year, either, when the Government increased the standard spending assessment. That does not put a penny in anyone's pocket. It is a judgment of what the Government think a local authority should spend on schools.
Even with the increase in the SSA announced by the Chancellor yesterday, local authorities spent £73 million more last year than next year's projected expenditure. The Chancellor's great announcement on education yesterday amounts to telling local authorities that the Government believe that next year they should spend £73 million less on education than they are spending this year. That is what the new SSA will mean.
It is all very well talking about increases in grant, but last year's sleight of hand involved announcing a so-called increase in grant for education, but at the same time adding not one penny to the total amount that could be spent by local authorities. We do not need a mathematician or a master of mental arithmetic--if I may
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Mr. John Marshall:
Does the hon. Lady accept that there is scope for local authorities to improve efficiency? My local authority in Barnet chose to award a refuse collection contract in-house despite the fact that it costs significantly more than the cheapest outside tender.
Ms Morris:
I am amazed that the Government have not taken action if that is the case, because it is illegal. Of course some efficiency savings can be made, but we were told yesterday that there would be an increase in education spending. No one should believe for a minute that that will happen next year, because the Tories did not tell the truth on education expenditure last year. People will not believe it, because they know what happened in their schools last year.
I should like to raise an important statistic from yesterday's Budget settlement. Together with the Minister, I spent most of last year dealing with a Bill on nursery vouchers. It was the first time in 17 years that the Government had done anything to increase and expand nursery education provision. It was not much, with nothing for three-year-olds or the under-threes and an awful lot of bureaucracy, but some new money was made available for four-year-olds in those--mainly Tory--local authorities that were not providing any nursery education.
Yesterday, we heard that there was to be a £56 million cut in the money available for nursery vouchers. There will be no expansion in nursery education. That is a terrible indictment of the Tories' nursery voucher system and an admission that it will fail. If the Government make less money available for nursery vouchers, they must assume that fewer vouchers will be redeemed. Otherwise, they will not have the money to pay out.
Less than 12 months ago, the Government gave a commitment that £185 million would be spent on nursery education. We were promised new money. The Chancellor did not make specific reference to it yesterday, but that money has diminished, and part of it has vanished. The total will be £56 million lower.
The best way to raise standards--the best thing we can do for children--is to provide good-quality nursery education. That is the best start in life. Children and their parents are being badly let down again by the Government--a Government who had done nothing on nursery education for 17 years, and then spent £20 million on bureaucracy. They have now chosen to make a £56 million cut in a scheme that has not even started. That is a great deal of money. Many four-year-olds will be denied the nursery places that they were promised.
Finally, let me make some general comments about standards. We have good schools, excellence and some awfully bright kids, but the British education system has always had the same problem: the gap between those who achieve and those who do not is wider than elsewhere, and growing. Although the number of children achieving
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I agree with the hon. Member for Hendon, South about the importance of the early years and the gateway skills of literacy and numeracy. If children go to secondary school without having mastered those skills, become part of the culture of learning and understood the importance of striving, there is not much that secondary schools can do for them.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. Robin Squire):
It was rather unfortunate that, in a debate on school standards, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Ms Morris) should do exactly what she condemned us for doing--raising party political points, particularly as hers were misleading.
First, on her specific point about nursery vouchers, if she has not yet understood the system, let me explain that, each year, the estimates are revised to take account of revised estimates of pupil numbers, among other factors. I give her an assurance today that the parents of every four-year-old for whom a voucher is presented will be able to spend the money with the provider of their choice. It is misleading and harmful for the hon. Lady to suggest otherwise from the Opposition Front Bench.
Ms Estelle Morris:
Is the Minister saying that his Department had to revise the figure relating to the expected number of four-year-olds entering nursery education within a 12-month period?
Mr. Squire:
It may come as a surprise to the hon. Lady, but population estimates constantly change, as do estimates of take-up. Although we are eating into a debate on standards, let me repeat the key point for the benefit of the hon. Lady: all nursery vouchers will be redeemed and met in full where they are presented.
Secondly, although the hon. Lady made three positive references to Birmingham LEA in the first minute of her speech, she did not refer to its record on truancy. Ten of worst 100 schools in the country happen to be in Birmingham LEA--an excellent example of standards to set for the country. Time does not allow me to reply to her comments criticising yesterday's Budget, beyond observing that, as in the past, increases in SSAs will provide extra money to local authorities. How local authorities choose to spend that money is a matter for them. As always, they determine their own priorities.
Let me move away from those unnecessarily contentious matters to join the hon. Lady in welcoming the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon,
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My hon. Friend was right to mention the importance of education as a ladder of opportunity for those from less fortunate households. As he said in passing, all too often that opportunity has been dashed by the policies proposed, and in some cases implemented, by the Labour party.
My hon. Friend rightly stressed the importance of basic skills, particularly in primary schools. When children move on to secondary school, we expect them to have reached or surpassed certain standards. My hon. Friend will recognise that, both in the revised national curriculum and in the greater emphasis on initial training for primary school teachers, we are stressing the importance of reading and arithmetic, and improving their teaching in primary schools. As my hon. Friend said, it is asking a lot to expect a child who cannot yet read properly to embrace the full curriculum post-seven, never mind post-11.
My hon. Friend praised teachers. He will have heard me do the same many times in virtually every speech from the Dispatch Box. Sadly, The Guardian or The Times Educational Supplement next week will probably suggest that there is a campaign against teachers in general. That is not the case. We unstintingly praise the enormous efforts of teachers up and down the country, year in, year out, to educate our children. When we say that some of them are not performing sufficiently well, that criticism should be taken in context.
My hon. Friend mentioned mathematics. He will know that much has been done to attempt to raise standards in that subject, including the establishment of numeracy centres and the emphasis on numeracy in teacher training reforms, baseline assessment, and various changes to the national curriculum. Not least is the introduction of calculator-free tests and mental arithmetic tests. Hopefully, in a few years, when my hon. Friend goes shopping, he will not calculate his bill significantly ahead of the person working behind the counter.
My hon. Friend rightly gloried in the diversity of schools, including grant-maintained schools. He did not say that the only good schools were grant-maintained schools or technology colleges, but rightly recognised that, for the umpteenth year, GM schools are outperforming comprehensive schools and those run by LEAs. That is a valid and interesting point.
The hon. Member for Littleborough and Saddleworth (Mr. Davies) spoke for the first time in an education debate, and I welcome much of what he said. However, I
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Those statistics show that we spend a higher proportion of our gross domestic product on funding primary and secondary schools than any of our European Union partners, that our university graduation rates are second only to Denmark, and that in science we continue to achieve internationally at the highest levels.
The hon. Gentleman was absolutely right to welcome performance tables and to highlight the fact that they enable parents not to compare remarkably different schools with different intakes, but to look at schools with similar intakes and wonder why some schools perform worse than others in similar circumstances.
He was also right to stress the importance of discipline, and I trust that his party will welcome the measures in the Education Bill that give further powers to schools in that respect. Schools must have the right to exclude severely disruptive pupils, but, as I have said many times and am happy to reiterate today, permanent exclusions should be the last resort. We also spend significant sums of money assisting local education authorities in the whole area of dealing with disaffected pupils.
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