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6.1 pm
Dr. Ashok Kumar (Middlesbrough, South and Cleveland, East): It is a great pleasure for me to return to the House to represent the people of Middlesbrough, South and Cleveland, East.
As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted by certain events in 1992, I profoundly believe that the real test of a Government is the educational system and ethos that they leave as their legacy to future generations. I shall expand on that theme, on the core of Labour's policy as it affects my own constituency, and on how the Bill, which I greatly welcome, will benefit my constituents and their children.
Past Education Ministers--Rab Butler and Ellen Wilkinson, as well as Tony Crosland and Shirley Williams--were keen to see that what was good for the child or the school was also good for the nation and for the future of our nation as a whole. That consensus was shattered in 1979, and nowhere was the callous wrecking of this nation's social fabric that took place during the long, dark nights of the past 18 years more ferocious than in the classrooms, schools and colleges throughout the land.
Education became a plaything of ideology and the prime reason for the introduction of the assisted places scheme. We saw the supposed freeing of choice, which did nothing more or less than allow class prejudices to determine school structures and values. We saw bureaucracy burgeon, setting local education authority against local education authority, school against school, and teacher against teacher. We saw the teaching profession vilified as the enemy within, and we saw the fatal result of that process in the educational attainment of our children. Nearly half of all 11-year-olds in our schools failed to reach expected standards in English and maths, while we still had fewer 17 and 18-year-olds in continuing full-time education than any other comparable industrialised nation in the world.
In my own area of Teesside, the story is the same. I represent a constituency in an area which, during the last 18 years, became a test bed for Thatcherite social policies: the decimation of our core industries, a high and rising level of unemployment, with the social exclusion and poverty that accompanied it, and the setting up of a quango Government. There were initiatives to keep, somehow, a state finger in this dyke of human despair: a city technology college, a Cleveland action team, an urban development corporation and the effective privatisation of further education and the careers service.
What was the result? In 1992, the percentage of local children gaining five or more GCSEs between grades A and C was 29.8 per cent., against a national average of
38.1 per cent. In 1995, attainment levels had risen; locally to 33.9 per cent., but the national figures had risen to 44.5 per cent. Our children had to compete on an escalator that was running faster and faster. As the local TEC put it:
The answer is simple, short and stark. Class differences still haunt our classrooms. The social experiment of the Thatcher and Major years have not brought about social liberation and greater inter-class mobility, but have merely served to increase existing divisions and magnify them to such a degree that, like the walking wounded of the Somme, the human casualties will be with us for many years to come.
The Bill marks the start in bringing about a healing process and, for that reason alone, I believe that it should have the support of the whole House. The fact that it is being opposed by the Tories demonstrates to me starkly and clearly that they are opposed to fairness and equality. They have shown their true nature: they are the party of the few, arguing for the few.
In contrast, our Bill shows that we are the party of the many, arguing for the people of this country as a whole and not merely for the privileged few. The phasing out of the assisted places scheme, which was all but invisible on Teesside, and which was nothing more or less than a financial blood transfusion for many already wealthy independent schools, will provide us with the cash to bring down our infant class sizes to below 30, certainly for schools in my constituency, such as St. Thomas More and Marton Manor primary. During the election campaign, the Prime Minister visited Marton Manor primary school. He received a very warm welcome from all the pupils and staff, and is welcome to come again.
Reducing class sizes is an essential first step to structuring early years education so that children can see education as an enjoyable process, which binds them more closely and personally to their teachers. Primary schools and those children entering primary and infant schools at key stage one are the foundations of an effective lifelong learning experience. At that stage, children are introduced to the elements of learning that will remain with them throughout their life: the structures of mathematics, a knowledge of language and the ability to express their feelings, emotions, wants and desires, the knowledge of how to acquire, master and pass on information, the beauty of the written word and the aesthetics of logic, shape and structure.
Above all, primary schools help children to discover themselves, to identify their strengths, which will be reflected later in life in the shape of self-esteem, capability and confidence--strengths which will shape our future
destiny. If those abilities are lost or badly imparted, or if the penny-pinching of the past 18 years has led to a shortage of human or capital resources, the damage will be immediate, and will impair both the individual and the society of which that individual is part, possibly for the next 60 or 70 years. The Bill is the first step towards ensuring that such impairment will not be a feature of the Britain that Labour intends to build.
As I said, many schools in my constituency will benefit from the move. A number of them, with class sizes of more than 30, are in rapidly growing areas. They are schools that were planned in the 1970s, but have been fighting to keep abreast of rising numbers of children. Other schools are in poorer areas, where larger class sizes are accompanied by an inherited lack of capital investment in buildings and equipment.
There are particular problems in one part of the borough of Redcar and Cleveland, which is covered by my constituency. Although class sizes in the borough as a whole conform to the national average, it contains eight primary schools with an average roll of 30 per class and seven with an average above that. In 1998, thanks to a Labour Government, that dismal picture will be eradicated. The future will produce effective schools, which will play a key part in the life of our community and ensure that everyone has a stake in a school, in the neighbourhood and in the success and confidence of its children.
In particular, parents will be seen not as passive onlookers, but as key partners in the process of ensuring that schools deliver a motivated curriculum and the level of attainment that parents see as proper and fit for their children.
It is now time for our local education authorities, heads and other teachers, governors and parents to take the initiative--to respond to this fresh new approach, and to build locally on the new foundations. The ball is in their court and I know that they will seize the opportunity with both hands. At the same time, however, the Government must recognise--as I believe they do--that there is a far broader perspective in the need to build a fair society. Such a society will acknowledge ability, regardless of class or background.
That must be central to the ethos of our schools. It will acknowledge that extra efforts and resources must be deployed to allow areas that are scarred by poverty and unemployment to fight back and succeed. That must be reflected in the distribution of education resources. Such a society will also recognise that, although the process will take time, the healing of social wounds must be our overriding obligation in our contract with the British people, and that that healing will take root in the classroom first.
Many of the measures on which we shall vote later will not be as effective as we want them to be. In 1942, Beveridge identified the giants that had to be conquered if we were to build a new, confident society. Fifty-five years on, there are still giants out there in the dark woods. The greatest is still inequality--and inequality in education is still the biggest scar that our society must bear.
"Teesside remains behind the national average in attainment of GCSE's . . . and . . . falling behind on its 1994 figures".
Why? Our schools are no worse or no better in terms of teacher excellence than anywhere else in the UK. As a former member of Middlesbrough council's education committee, I know and admire the dedication of our teaching staff. They enjoy professional back-up from local education authorities and are dedicated to excellence. They work in an educational tradition that has always valued lifelong learning. They come from an educational tradition that valued the ability to thrive at an early age. The former Cleveland county council and its education department were the first in the UK to provide 100 per cent. nursery provision.
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