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Mr. Christopher Fraser (Mid-Dorset and North Poole): Does the right hon. Gentleman accept the criticism that has been levelled against the Government by schools in my constituency that every hour of the literacy hour requires at least three or four hours of preparation by the teacher? That takes them away from being in the classroom.
Mr. Blunkett: That would be a shame if it were true, but the literacy framework and the materials provided with it have given a structure and the back-up to help all teachers, including newly qualified teachers. I meet NQTs all the time and they say that it is a phenomenal change and a real improvement. Linked to a new induction from September, it will make an enormous difference to them. They do not have to reinvent the wheel, but simply have to use what works best across the board.
Dr. Stoate: When I visited Knockall school in my constituency, I found those there delighted by the literacy hour. I took part in it with the children and the teachers. They were even more delighted about piloting the numeracy hour. I was astounded by the numeracy of the children in year 5. I was at Fleetdown school this morning, which was also doing extremely well in the literacy hour. Those schools are examples of success in delivering excellent education to children.
Mr. Blunkett: Quite right. I am sure that the chief inspector of schools would not mind my referring to his comments this morning on Radio 4, when he said that the literacy and numeracy hours were not an imposition and were not bureaucracy, but were clearly working in the interests of children.
Mr. Willis: And the chief inspector is always right.
Mr. Blunkett: I am being heckled, but just for once I shall not rise to the bait.
What about the golden legacy of no basic curriculum for teacher training, no new deal for schools, none of the investment that we are making in transforming the environment for schools and no learning grid?
I was interested to learn tonight that there have been grumbles from St. Joseph's primary school about the way in which the learning grid resources are being allocated. I thought that we were supposed to rely on the diversity of local government to arrange that allocation with schools. I thought that we were being chided for being too centralist and for running everything from Sanctuary buildings, and we are told that we should let county councils and schools run everything. However, on every scheme that we are not running from Sanctuary buildings, we are chided for what is happening at local level, which is the fault of the county council.
Here is another conundrum: every time we have formula funding, we are criticised, as we were criticised tonight in respect of St. Joseph's, and when we do not have formula funding, we are criticised for making the funding too specific. What do the Opposition want? Do they want formula funding, or do they want funding to be specifically provided to schools? Do they want the local authority or the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions to determine that funding? Do they want a literacy hour and a numeracy hour, or would they like to leave two out of five children languishing without a decent education, as they were before?
Dr. Julian Lewis (New Forest, East):
I have a positive suggestion to make, and I want to know whether the Secretary of State will subscribe to it. Given, as he rightly says, that the key problem is that by the time children move on, at age 11, to secondary school, too much damage has been done by insufficient levels of literacy and numeracy, does he accept that it would be in everybody's interest if national performance tables were published, showing the results of the tests at age seven, so that one could find out which schools were succeeding and which were failing? Would it not be helpful also if the tables contained a register of how much cash was being spent per pupil at each school and the average class size at each school? We would not then be having these debates in a vacuum; we would have solid data and people would know what was working and what was not.
Mr. Blunkett:
I thought that we were being criticised for taking too much time and spending too much money on measures that are not directly related to teaching in the classroom. We are criticised for collecting too much information, for asking too much of schools and teachers and for giving them too many forms to fill in, so that too much information is coming out of Sanctuary buildings. We have been so hurt by that criticism that I have asked the Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), to spend a great deal of his time unravelling that process and making sure that we do not place greater demands on schools. The Conservatives sent out 80 separate documents when they organised the national curriculum, but we have reduced that to one document.
We are doing our utmost to respond to the needs of teachers and schools. I am hurt by the terrible fact that whatever we do, we cannot get it right. The only consolation is that we are turning things round and making a difference. We are changing what is happening
in schools and motivating decent teachers and lifting their morale. We are ensuring that schools are building their confidence. They will have the resources to do that over the next three years. They are having their buildings repaired. They are getting a learning grid that never existed under the Tories.
This August, there will be 1,200 summer schools that never existed under the previous Government. There is a new excellence in cities programme. There is a new pay and performance programme with £1 billion of extra resources to pay teachers. There is a new admissions code that tries to unravel the shambles that we inherited which has bedevilled the delivery of education at a local level and undermined choice and diversity for parents.
Mr. Andrew George (St. Ives):
I seek the Secretary of State's advice and guidance on an area of the legacy to which he is referring. There is a lack of choice in rural areas, such as my constituency in west Cornwall, because as a result of the Rotherham judgment, of which the Secretary of State will be aware, parents can no longer choose to send their children to the school in whose catchment area they live. What action will the Department take to ensure that parents do not have to bus their children to the nearest market town instead of the local school that they want their children to attend? That has been the result of that judgment and previous Tory policy. Will the right hon. Gentleman continue to follow that Tory policy?
Mr. Blunkett:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reminding me that in the admissions code and the regulations that have been published, which take effect from this autumn, we are establishing local admissions forums and providing an independent appeals process for parents. We shall ensure that there is adjudication over school reorganisation and that parents living near the school can exercise their preference, which they must do at the beginning of the process. That process will be open and transparent, and we are building in new information requirements for parents. All that will help enormously.
In the end, parents can only state a sensible preference and have any semblance of choice if we raise the standard of education in schools across the board. People will then make preferences based not on the fact that some schools provide an awful education--in which case supply and demand are out of kilter--but on the diversity to which Conservative Members have referred. If we raise the standard of all schools, choice will be made according to the ethos of the school, not the standard of education on offer. While demand for and supply of schools is not in equilibrium, we are letting down parents and children. Some parents will get their child into a school at the expense of someone else's child.
What we heard from the Conservatives earlier was tragic because it was all about the few, rather than the many. It was all about what had happened to a small number of children. I have made it clear that we value children, teachers and parents, wherever they are and whatever their status. It is no good the hon. Member for Maidenhead or her colleagues going over old ground. They can refight the 1997 election on grant-maintained schools and selection as often as they like, but it is a dead agenda. It has been dead from 1 May 1997. The GM
schools have moved on and so have the parents. We have all moved on to ensure that we raise the level of funding in all schools to the level that GM schools had, not the other way round. Those schools respect and accept that, and I am proud that we have managed to reach an accord with them.
In the end, all that matters is that children get a decent education. It does not matter whether we fall out here tonight or whether we knock spots off each other. We shall be judged on whether we have made a difference.
Mr. Crispin Blunt (Reigate):
The right hon. Gentleman will need no lessons about the fact that secondary school heads are extremely busy people with onerous responsibilities. Twenty of them came from Surrey to lobby their MPs, and they included heads of grant-maintained schools who are struggling with the change and have experienced a cut in resources per pupil. However, that is not the point that I want to make.
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