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Mr. Byers: It is important as we set up the new career grade of the advanced skills teacher that we get it right. As I said in my speech, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will shortly be writing to the School Teachers Review Body and we shall expect it to do some of the detailed work on the practicalities of establishing such a grade, which will address a number of the issues about whether the advanced skills teacher is a post or an individual. It would be premature today to close down any options. We will ask the review body to give detailed consideration, to consult interested parties and then to bring forward proposals for the Secretary of State to consider.
Mr. Foster: I am sure that the House is grateful for that explanation and we look forward to hearing further details.
There are two sections of the White Paper that my party finds particularly disappointing. The first relates to school admissions, which is the black hole in the White Paper. I understand that there is to be a further consultation paper on the issue and I hope that that will be published soon because in many ways, the question of admissions is central to many of the other parts of the White Paper. Without knowing the Government's intentions in relation to admissions procedures, it is difficult to address some of the other questions. How will admissions procedures interrelate with specialist schools and education action zones? What do the Government intend to do about the difficulties that result from the Greenwich judgment?
The White Paper is, however, slightly clearer than the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton gave it credit for. She spent a good deal of her speech going on about the admissions policy in relation to specialist schools. I do not want to take up the House's time in reading out the relevant section to her, so I recommend that she reads paragraph 33 on page 71 of the White Paper. I am surprised that the Minister did not draw her attention to that section, so I am doing it for him. Paragraph 33 answers all the hon. Lady's questions in a single sentence, so she could have left out that part of her speech relatively easily.
The worst part of the White Paper is the section on the status of schools. The Minister will be well aware of my party's clear view that the introduction of grant-maintained schools created a divisive, two-tier education system. We wanted grant-maintained schools to be brought back into the light-touch local education authorities. The Minister has not been prepared to accept that and has now established a bolthole for former GM schools--the foundation schools. Those boltholes for former GM schools will mean that they are outside the local education authorities. They will still be involved in many of the activities of the LEA, as the White Paper makes clear. If some schools are holding on to all their assets and employing their teachers directly, they will be very different from schools where the assets are held by the LEA and the staff are employed by the LEA. Strategic planning involving both types of schools as well as the aided schools will be very difficult.
Our big concern is that it is proposed in the White Paper that existing local education authority schools will be able, even under a Labour Government, to opt out of the LEA and into foundation school status. We fear that many schools will do that just to avoid what they fear may be damaging local education authority reorganisation schemes. How is that to be handled? The White Paper is silent about how the issue of strategic planning is to be resolved. Focus groups may be suggested as a way forward, but we would be unhappy with that. The Secretary of State may come forward with proposals for a planning application procedure, but that strikes us as legalistic, time consuming and undemocratic. The best people to make decisions on strategic planning are the LEAs and that is what we would much prefer to see.
Mr. Tony McNulty (Harrow, East):
I congratulate the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) on a constructive and responsible contribution to the debate, which contrasted with that made by the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning). When preparing for the debate, I was reminded of a conference I was at recently where Tim Brighouse gave a speech in which he talked about energy creators and energy consumers. We have seen from the Conservatives, in terms of their response to the White Paper, a lot of energy consumption.
Mr. Brighouse described the energy consumers as nasty little men and women who sat in the corner of the staff room saying, any time something was announced, "No, can't do that. Haven't got the resources. There must be another way. There is nothing wrong with the way we are doing it already." Such people generally dampen down any initiative in schools. The energy creators said, "Great! How can we do it? If we haven't got the resources, what can we prioritise? How can we do what we already do better to make room to go down this road?" Such people are really enthused by the new initiatives, rather than dampening them down.
We have seen from newspapers, teachers and local government associations--in fact, from everybody bar the Conservatives--a response to the White Paper that has shown real energy creation. As the hon. Member for Bath has just said, although people may not agree with all of the White Paper, they are asking how we can move on, how we can raise standards, how we can excel and how we can do the best for our children.
When my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made his statement on the White Paper, the response from the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Charnwood (Mr. Dorrell), was instructive. It was energy consumption, and he seemed to be saying, "You can't do that. Where are the resources? Where is the money? All the best ideas are our ideas anyway." He did not welcome anything and he did not say that he would put aside partisan considerations because what happens in education and what happens to our children matter most. He looked at the matter only from a partisan angle. What we got today was the Browning Version of that. The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton did things down, rather than looking at how we could move forward together on a consensual basis, as we can with this White Paper.
Mrs. Laing:
My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning) whole-heartedly welcomed quite a lot of the proposals in the White Paper, simply because they are a version of Conservative policy, reflecting exactly the energy production that has gone on in education for the past 18 years.
Mr. McNulty:
Whatever welcome the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton gave in the early stages was lost in the partisan ramblings that followed, some of which I noted down. She talked about the mother of all U-turns and about satanic influences. The comment that I liked best, because it harked back to old memories, was about statist five-year plans. Apparently my hon. Friend the
The shame of it all is that, even at this stage, a partisan flavour is being introduced into the debate. Even the most right-wing Conservative--I am not casting aspersions on the three Conservative Members who are with us today--would agree that education matters, that education means something to all our children and that the state has a role to play. Most of us start from that and, if the devil is in the detail, perhaps the divergence of opinions is in the detail, too. If we agree with the guiding principles, that is at least a starting point on which to build a consensus. Many hon. Members do agree with those. Certainly people in the education service outside the House do. There are few siren voices in the education service when those people consider the real principles that underlie the White Paper, which has been welcomed in all quarters.
I have already had a meeting, the first of many, with some secondary and primary head teachers in Harrow, which, I happily say, as I said in my maiden speech, was for some eight of the 11 years I was on the council an extremely successful local education authority. It was run by Conservatives, with, so long as it stayed on the path that it was on, full support from the Labour group, of which I was the leader, and the Liberal Democrats.
Harrow has a vibrant LEA which works in partnership with all the key players in the education service in the borough. Because the partisan dimension was stripped out of the education service in Harrow, it was allowed to get on with the job and perform as well as it did, regularly turning in 55 per cent. plus in terms of GCSE results, always vying with Richmond, which was mentioned earlier, to be the leading London borough.
One reading of the White Paper may suggest that it does not offer much to Harrow, because Harrow is already doing all that it needs to do at the moment--it is nice, leafy suburbia and is meeting all the education needs of its children. I was extremely pleased to hear the Minister say that that is not the case. As has been said by others, and certainly by the head teachers whom I met last Monday, all schools--every school--can and should improve.
The head teachers also welcomed the guiding principles in the White Paper. I have to say, if I were reporting back honestly from the meeting, that, yes, they were a wee bit jaundiced and there were perhaps elements of cynicism, but, given where they have been for the past 18 years, I am not surprised. They are still waiting for the detail. I am sure that they will be extremely surprised to learn that, for the first time in a long while, they will have a White Paper on which there will be full and comprehensive consultation and that proper note will be taken of that consultation. They welcome the consultation process, tight though it is around either side of the summer holidays, and know that it will be demonstrably different from what has happened in the past.
All the head teachers welcomed the six underlying principles and the focus, which is there--I think that the shadow Minister is entirely wrong--on standards, partnership and excellence. Above all, they welcomed the inclusive nature of the document and its key underlying principle that all children and all schools matter.
Over the past 10 weeks or so, we have already seen that the first of those principles--that education is at the heart of Government--is not merely empty rhetoric. We
have shown by our actions since the Queen's Speech that that is a real principle, which will guide the Government over the life of this Parliament, up to and beyond the recess. There is growing recognition--certainly in the education service and among parents and governors--that the Government should provide the overall framework for the education service and that head teachers, teachers, parents, LEAs and governors should work together locally to deliver that service, but it must be within a strategic and planned context, which is why the role of LEAs is so important.
One of the key difficulties that the Conservatives had over their time in government was in the notion that they could introduce numerous reforms, and the LEA, rather in the old Marxist sense, would wither away on the vine and no longer be necessary. Even they realised that that was not the logical extension of their reforms and that the LEA does, and must, have a key role.
It is easy to pooh-pooh the notion of partnership and to say that it is mentioned this many times or that many times in the document, but partnership is crucial. To date, it has been the key to the success of education in Harrow and it will continue to be so. The new partnership announced in the White Paper is the foundation on which education success and improvement throughout the country will be built.
It was instructive that, when talking in any detail about schools, I do not think that the shadow Minister ever mentioned children. I apologise up front if she did. When she talked about schools, she specifically mentioned assisted places, grant-maintained schools and grammar schools. In the wider scheme of things, those are but a pin-prick on the national education service and are rooted in privilege. Perhaps her comments would have been listened to with more respect if she had spoken about all our schools, the comprehensive nature of our education service and what it does for our children throughout the country.
What this White Paper is not about, rightly, is elitist selection for the few and mediocrity, or whatever else is left, for the many. That is important. It is not--although perhaps it has already become a cliche--a policy cliche to talk about the many and the few. The White Paper recognises, as I have said, that every single school can and must improve and that--this is not controversial in any way--no school is good enough. For some people, that might sound strange or offensive, but anyone who works in and is rooted in education will accept that straight away.
Of course, no school is good enough. One can and must get away from any notion of complacency. I certainly will in terms of that suburban version of complacency that says, "Well, 55 per cent. in Harrow is wonderful. We'll try to get 56 per cent. next year. If we get 50, no one is going to complain. It is still better than any number of other LEAs every year bar three or four." As a councillor, I have railed against that, because complacency, along with ignorance, is the last thing that our children need.
There is, therefore, room for improvement in schools in Harrow, Harrogate and Hackney and in all other LEAs. Everyone accepts that and that is at the core of the White Paper. That is why its emphasis on standards is so important. All schools and all LEAs must improve on their last best performance. I have a worry that, until now,
there has been a notion that suburban mediocrity will do--hit somewhere in the 50s and it is okay and does not matter--and that, at the other end, the Darrens and Sharons cannot achieve; that is an offensive phrase heard at a recent teachers' conference. There is an acceptance that, in some LEAs, because of deprivation and socio-economic conditions, 20 per cent. is good enough. Well, it is not. It is not good enough in inner-London LEAs and 50 or 60 per cent. is not good enough in outer-London suburban schools or in the best LEAs. All can and should improve.
The White Paper--it is not mistitled--is about excellence in all schools, not excellence in some schools or in some schools that get 10 per cent. of their children through. It is not about giving children in deprived areas a few bob more and a few structures to help them out and to raise expectations; it is about excellence in all areas in terms of children's performance.
It is right, too, that the White Paper focuses on standards and not structures. The shadow Minister is right, to some extent, to say that the two go together. We cannot have one without the other. I was going to say we cannot have eggs without bacon--we can, but it is not as nice. The point is that structures and standards both matter. With the best will in the world, over the past 18 years we have had some sort of anally retentive fixation with structures and how to serve the most privileged within those structures, and standards have fallen off the agenda. That is the key. There is a relationship between standards and structures. All our children can benefit by standards going up, but we must define the structures. That is the right way around for that relationship.
Education is not about a grammar school in every town for the top 5 per cent. of our children; it is about the highest possible performance by education services for all schools. At its core, that requires a light, strategically focused touch by LEAs to support that in each area. I nearly made a Freudian slip: I almost said control that in each area, but I am talking about support.
LEAs will welcome a debate that focuses on school improvement and outlines how they will intervene, but not interfere, by working with all partners. The hon. Member for Bath was right to say that there could be an aberration. For my sins, I am a member of a European Standing Committee and I get thick piles of paperwork. Do we want a White Paper that is the size of the "Children's Encyclopaedia Britannica", all 30 volumes of it, going out to consultation? That is what would be required for all the subsequent detail.
There must be clarity about the role of LEAs, but there is a need for strategic underpinning. That is a key element, but only one element, in the overall partnership that is needed to secure our children's future. I think that those issues will be elaborated in the consultation. Although it is useful shorthand, the phrase "zero tolerance" is rather ugly and clumsy, but that is what we are about if we agree that all schools can and should improve. I should rather be more positive and say that all must excel and improve and that there must be robust intolerance of failure.
All partners have a role in a new and mutually supportive partnership. The shadow Minister is fundamentally wrong. I agree that all those partners have rights, but they also have responsibilities and they must be accountable. The White
Paper goes into some detail on that. We rightly afford parents codified rights and responsibilities and they must be held accountable for those. The same applies to teachers for what they do in the classroom, to heads in the context of their management of schools and to LEAs.
None of those key partners, given the seriousness with which they view education, will worry about being held accountable for their roles. LEAs will certainly not worry about that. The work of the best LEAs shows that they would welcome the notion of an external review and some of them sought to carry out their own external reviews long before such reviews became policies.
The LEAs are publicly elected bodies charged with looking after public money. They must be accountable for education development plans and be subject to external review by the Office for Standards in Education and the Audit Commission. The task forces, the units that are to be set up and the Government should also be accountable. We shall be accountable: if we wax lyrical and focus on and emphasise education for the next four or five years, parents will know, come 2002 or in whatever year the next election is held, whether we have delivered and will judge us on that. We shall be happy to go into that election on our record.
The White Paper is about new partnerships and new deals and it is a shame that the shadow Minister chose to adopt a partisan, knockabout party conference mode, rather than treating the subject more seriously. There are elements for concern in the document, but it is about future partnerships, with all the key players energised to play a role in an education service that matters. I am surprised that the shadow Minister did not notice that the White Paper plainly states that LEAs are not to be afforded a direct, managerial role, which would have been a return to a "Stephen the Stalinist" little plan. The document clearly states that LEAs must earn their place in the partnership. That is right, and LEAs recognise it.
There is a new optimism. It is easy to be cynical and to personalise the debate by speaking about a key personality in a senior role in education who is not necessarily elected, or to pass motions against such people at National Association of Head Teachers conferences. It is easy to be petulant and sceptical and to say that we want everything up front now and cannot wait because we have waited long enough. It is right for the Government to exhort all the key partners to join in the success that will flow from the White Paper. There is no room for smugness or complacency in the Harrows, Hackneys or the Harrogates.
The core elements for a new dawn for education are in the White Paper. We must all work together to avoid complacency and we must shun mediocrity, which in the past has often served as a measure of performance. All partners should start from the premise that they should never write off a child like Darren or Sharon.
It is not too late for Conservatives to leave their partisan mode. I know that they learn in opposition, because I saw that happening in Harrow in 1994 when they were wiped out. Only 16 of 63 were left, and for a while they wandered around looking a bit lost. Eventually, they found a role that occasionally was productive. Education is far too important for people to drop back into partisan roles. We need to work together within the framework of the White Paper to do the best for our children.
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