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Mr. Blunkett: I am going to surprise the hon. Gentleman by saying yes. I am very keen to ensure that we consider sensible suggestions about how to deal with genuine problems. Surrey received an extra £21 million, which is an increase of 6.3 per cent. We need to make sure that the money reaches schools. That is why I published the tables two weeks ago. We need to make sure that there is an additional delegation of at least 5 per cent. per pupil from next April. We need to examine how the standards fund and other resources reach schools, and make sure that they do so in the least bureaucratic fashion possible. Surprise, surprise--I am prepared to listen and to take action in the interests of children.
We are in favour of diversity and we are in favour of choice. In the end, those will only be possible because of the resources and changes that we have introduced.
We are determined to pursue our policies because they are working. More failing schools are coming out of special measures than are going in, and they are doing so in a shorter period of time. We are delivering excellence by spreading it between beacon schools, from where it spreads out into the community. We are already doubling and will double again the number of specialist schools, and placing them under an obligation to share that specialism with the community and with other schools.
We are proud of what we are doing and we are going to carry on doing it. We shall continue to ensure that we put pupils and their parents at the heart of this debate. That debate cannot be about going backwards or arguing about the divisions of the past: in the end, it is the standards of the future that matter.
8.10 pm
Mr. Don Foster (Bath):
First, I welcome and congratulate the new Opposition Front-Bench team. I also welcome the Secretary of State's thoughtful speech, although he was somewhat generous in his comments on the speech made by the hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May). He was absolutely right to say that most of her speech and most of the Opposition motion was concerned with going over old ground. Wordsworth put it slightly differently, writing of:
Mr. Desmond Swayne (New Forest, West):
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Foster:
If the hon. Gentleman is about to defend that old policy, I shall be delighted to hear from him.
Mr. Swayne:
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that, however old the battles may be, they are being fought because Members of Parliament such as myselfare continually and constantly approached in our constituencies by head teachers expressing precisely the problems to which we are drawing attention?
Mr. Foster:
I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I am sure that the House looks forward to hearing a thoughtful speech in which he tells us of the many head teachers who want to go back to how things were under the previous Administration. I shall be extremely surprised if he can seriously tell me that there are many teachers who want to return to a system that was designed to ensure nice schools for nice kids and the scrap heap for the vast majority. If he points out that there are some head teachers who are not entirely happy with everything that the Government are doing, that will not surprise me at all--indeed, I intend to express some of my concerns about Government policy. However, it would be foolish to deny that the new Government have introduced several measures that have brought about real and positive improvements in our education system.
The Liberal Democrats welcome the scrapping of nursery vouchers and the assisted places scheme, both of which added to bureaucracy and, as the Secretary of State is wont to say, gave something to the few but not the many. We welcome the recent White Paper on post-16 education: we believe that the vast majority of measures outlined therein will result in a real improvement in education for that age group. We especially welcome the statement made today by the Under-Secretary of Statefor Education and Employment, the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), about ways of providing additional support to children from disadvantaged areas. If the hon. Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) believes that measures such as those are not popular with head teachers, he must have been talking to an extremely select sample of head teachers.
However, in a debate such as this, it is important to draw attention to those areas of Government policy that cause us concern because they lead to a reduction in choice or in diversity. The Secretary of State has referred
to the literacy hour and the numeracy hour. I was not entirely happy with the introduction of the literacy hour and I am still not satisfied on that subject. It is absolutely right for the Government to provide through their website and by other means support, advice and worked examples to teachers. However, to impose on teachers a specific way in which literacy must be taught detracts from the professional autonomy of our teachers in carrying out a task for which they have been trained. Nevertheless, I am delighted that the numeracy hour has been introduced in a way that appears to acknowledge that the literacy hour was overly prescriptive--it is important that such lessons are learned.
I hope that the Secretary of State accepts that our schools are denied choice if they are denied the funding to carry out their work. He has suggested that a lot more money is getting through to schools, but the reality on the ground is that schools are not getting that extra money--it is almost as if the cheque is still in the post. He might want to claim that that is the fault of local education authorities, as he tried to do in respect of the league tables that were published a few days ago--[Interruption.] The Secretary of State says from a sedentary position that I have said it for him.
The Secretary of State would be wrong to make such an accusation. There are two reasons, the first of which is that, according to the Audit Commission--whose figures I hope the right hon. Gentleman accepts--the amount of money per pupil being made available to our schools has gone down by an average of £50 since the Labour Government entered office. The additional money is not coming through. We know that education spending as a percentage of gross domestic product has declined in the first two years of the Labour Government. We also know that the share of total Government spending on education has decreased. Without sufficient money, one's choices are restricted, but by all three counts education spending has gone down, so schools' choices are increasingly restricted.
Even if I am right about the reduction in money in the first two years of the Labour Government, it should be noted that the Secretary of State said today--and it is precisely stated in the Government amendment--that there is to be an increase in funds of £19 billion. That figure is incorrect. That assertion is based not on my analysis of the Government's statement, but on the report produced by the Labour-dominated Select Committee on the Treasury.
The Government are suggesting that £16 billion of the £19 billion will come to England; but the Committee says that the true figure for the real-terms increase is only £8 billion, and that that £8 billion does not represent a significant increase on the previous Government's education spending projections. The Committee's analysis goes further and shows that it is possible that, with that £8 billion, education spending will reach 5 per cent. of GDP by 2002. That was the percentage of GDP spent on education under the previous Administration, so that is no improvement. Of course I am grateful on behalf of my constituents and those of many other hon. Members for the fact that some increase in funding is promised, but it is wrong of the Government to try to pretend that the sum is greater than it is.
This debate is not only about the school-based education system. We must recognise that the reduction in spending has been experienced in other parts of the
education service. It is interesting to note that, based on the Government's own figures and despite their introducing a fees system, current projections indicate that the amount of money per student in higher education is also set to fall during the first term of the Labour Government.
"old unhappy far-off things, and battles long ago."
I have to tell the hon. Lady that she was fighting battles of long ago and touting an ideology that has been seen to fail and has let down the children of this country for a long time.
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