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6.16 pm
Mr. Gordon Marsden (Blackpool, South): A clear pattern is developing in Opposition motions. We might call it the Rip van Winkle theory of politics, which allows the Opposition to pretend to have been asleep for 20 years and, having awoken, to see only education today, and not the system that the previous Government left behind. I am disinclined to let them get away with that. We should remember where we came from on education policy.In primary and secondary education, we inherited: underfunding; sterile competition between schools; inequities between grant-maintained schools and others; falling standards in basic subjects; and assisted and overfunded pet minority projects, such as the assisted places scheme and the city technology colleges.
In further education, we inherited: continued cuts; large and impossible efficiency targets; lack of supervision in many cases; and falling standards. In higher education, there was a sense of drift compounded only by what one commentator called the fit of absent-mindedness with which the Conservative Government expanded HE while doing nothing to fund it. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment referred to the fact that, between 1989 and 1997, investment in HE was cut by 36 per cent.
Teachers were battered and demoralised by a continuous stream of denigration and competing instructions throughout that period. The hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) stood before us earlier arrayed in scarlet--appropriate dress for one whose speech about teachers was the biggest masquerade since the wolf put on a cloak and pretended to be Red Riding Hood's granny.
I think that it was Winston Churchill who said that there was no point in Britannia's ruling the waves if we could not flush the drains. Today, after nearly three years of Labour Government, 95 per cent. of our secondary schools and 60 per cent. of primary schools are on the internet. The Tories left many schools with a top priority of removing asbestos from the outside loos, which their Government did absolutely nothing about.
When we talk of excellence in education, we talk of raising standards, but we also mean widening access and social inclusion. I venture to suggest that we have got the
basics right on standards. The literacy figures for 1999, which are up by 5 per cent. for 11-year-olds, the figures for mathematics, which are up by 10 per cent., and the GCSE improvements are testimony to that.
It is not just a question of quantity; we also need to achieve quality. The Government have introduced the new General Teaching Council. Recently, my colleagues on the Select Committee and I interviewed Lord Puttnam and were enormously impressed by such an inspiring and thoughtful choice. We have set up the national college for school leadership. Our targets for primary and nursery teachers have been raised significantly.
We said that we would make improvements in quality and we have done so through the education action zones. We have taken firm steps through the excellence in cities programme. Our A-level reforms will enable us to meet the vocational needs and the demands of globalisation that were neglected by the previous Conservative Government. We have allocated £5.5 billion to school repairs--the bread and butter matters. None of those points was addressed by the previous Government.
Let us talk about access. There is a new educational maintenance allowance. There are new proposals for the post-16 sector. We have made the most generous settlement for years in further education. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has just announced that there will be £68 million of extra help for mature students. That is a valuable part of our programme.
We are taking each segment that was systematically neglected by the Conservatives and dealing with it--special educational needs; education for people with disabilities; the new deal for single mothers. The new learning skills councils and our focus on universities will give a strength of direction that was sorely lacking under the previous Government.
The Labour Government pursue a joined-up education policy. That is why we introduced sure start, the early years partnerships and the connections initiative--a holistic strategy for a proper youth service. We are looking at individuals and not only at output numbers--as the previous Government would have done. The results of our mentoring programmes and the initiatives to cut truancy and social exclusion are increasingly becoming apparent.
We are setting exacting targets, which are being met. Only 10 days ago, it was noted in an OECD report that:
It is hardly surprising that there should be a difference in the performances of Labour and Conservative Governments. It results from the philosophical divide on education that has always existed between the left and
the right. For us, the issue is education for the many--about collaboration and raising expectations. For the Conservatives, it has all too often been about education for the few. It is about cut-throat competition and a narrow hierarchical approach that puts people down--setting up a sheep and goats system, often ending in education paralysis. The Tories have too often been happiest with the mushroom theory in education--as they have in democracy. Parliamentary language forbids me to explore that further.
Labour Governments introduced the Open university and the university for industry. All too often, the Tories have abandoned the bipartisanship of the Education Act 1944. Our view of education threatens the deference, the prejudice and intolerance that has often characterised Conservative views and policies. I am not entirely surprised that some of their backwoodsmen are so comfortable in embracing the bigots' charter of section 28.
Even when the Tories take education on board, they treat it as narrow, repetitive training. They have not acknowledged it to be an empowering aspect of life, as we have done. In government, the Tories produced a stream of unlinked initiatives, which were underfunded on the basis that the market would solve all. In opposition, they demonstrate a sense of atavistic frustration and genuine bewilderment about where to go. A few weeks ago The Times Higher Educational Supplement reported:
Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham):
I have declared an interest in the register, which includes two modest, unpaid contributions to the world of higher education.
The Government say one thing and do another. We have seen that in so many fields. My hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) has shown admirably how the Government have misled the British people over money for our schools--for our children's future and for our education. My hon. Friend and I know that well because the Wokingham local education authority, which covers parts of both our constituencies, is one of the worst affected. Over the past two and a half years, we have received the meanest of settlements from
the Government. There is no relief in sight. Our schools have been put under far too much pressure. There is not enough money for books, nor for all the teachers that they need. It is a disgrace and it is no wonder that we all feel let down.
However, I shall not concentrate on money--others have been extremely eloquent on that subject. Education matters enormously. It is the means through which children from less privileged backgrounds or from families with lower incomes can get on in the world. They can make progress and see that there is a much better world that can stretch their imaginations and, yes, it can even provide them with better jobs and fill their wallets and bank accounts.
I was one such child, who was grateful for the opportunity given to me by a free place to a direct grant school. It meant that I could attend a school that was well beyond the dreams of my parents--they could not have afforded that school place. I and many like me benefited from that and went on to university. Look what followed--I even got into the shadow Cabinet. Then I rode on the great roller-coaster of life in this place--as we saw two or three weeks ago. I would not want to take such an opportunity away from others who come from the same background as me. It can be good fun and good for the soul. I hope that the Government will think again about assisted places--the modern equivalent of the direct grant, free place from which I benefited.
Of course, a previous Labour Government destroyed those direct grant places. That meant that my school had to become fee paying only; it can now only take children whose parents can afford to pay. That is a shame. It is an even greater pity that many children who, only three or four years ago, could have taken advantage of our assisted places scheme find that it has been taken away from them.
If the Government needed more money for more teachers for other schools--there was a case for that--why not find the extra money? Why not save on the glossy brochures and the published lectures of the Secretary of State and allocate the money for extra teachers? Why not find the money from elsewhere--from the quangos and the regional governments that they are setting up? We should have preferred to see teachers in our schools.
It is also a sign of the times that there have been so many rows in the Labour party about a good school such as the London Oratory. I do not wish to go into the details of all the pupils who attend the school, but Labour Members know that there are children who benefit from such a school. Is it not a sad fact of life that now parents at the Oratory are being asked to make a monthly contribution to top up the school's cash because their Labour Government have cheated that school of the money? I believe that it, too, is a good school. It deserves the extra money. Why cannot the mean-minded Labour Government find that money, if for no other reason than to cover the embarrassment of some of the parents caught up in that educational problem?
I also have a word for my hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead. As she knows, I am a strong supporter of her idea of a free school. I believe that, through the free school, we can recapture some of the excellence of the direct grant school, and we can capture some of the excellence to which children had access as a result of the assisted place and some of the excellence that we
were getting through the grant-maintained schools that have been so needlessly and recklessly thrown away, now that their money has been cut, too. However, I hope that, as my hon. Friend develops the policies, she will ensure that several things are part of the scheme.
First, we would not wish to end up nationalising the schools and giving the Department for Education and Employment too much power to fiddle with the schools, to intervene and to meddle too much or too often withthe money formula. The schools must be given that independence and they must be able to use that independence in the certain knowledge that the money will come every year and that they will not have to perform good works or tricks, in the way that they have to for the Government, to qualify for the cash that they obviously need for their progress.
Secondly, we must guarantee that free schools are given every encouragement to expand when they are doing well. When I was responsible for education in Wales, I launched an initiative called popular schools, the idea of which was to offer the money, especially for new buildings, but also for the extra teachers and personnel that would be needed, so that, when a school was doing well and parents wanted to send their children to it, the money was available to add on the extra classroom or classrooms to provide the extra facilities so that more places could be provided. I hope that my hon. Friend will consider that scheme, or a variant of it, and add it to her free schools, because I believe that it will be the magic ingredient that causes many more parents' dreams to come true.
One of the saddest times of year in my constituency, and probably in many others, is the time of year when parents are trying to get their children into the school of their choice but discover that there are not enough places at that school. No wonder parents want to choose, given the enormous scatter of performance even among schools serving a very similar catchment area. In my part of the world, a child who attends the worst-performing school has only a two in five chance of getting five A to C grades at GCSE, which is the bare minimum to allow them to go on to some other advantage in education; whereas a child who attends the best-performing comprehensive school--we have grammars that take some of the brightest pupils--has a four in five chance of getting those five A to C grades. The second child's chances are doubled. The school gets no more money than the school that performs badly. No wonder parents want to exercise their choice.
How sad it is that we cannot get enough money to expand the really good, popular school, so that more parents can have that advantage for their children. One should not have to enter a lottery based on postcode district and address in order to get a good education for one's child. If the Government do not know how to sort out the badly performing schools, let us launch an expanded free school scheme that gives parents the hope that, under a Conservative Government, they would be able to choose and their choice would be translated into action.
"The UK was the only country to come out well on all ten recommendations from a joint report by employers' organisations across seven European countries."
I am not making these points merely because I have seen them at macro-level. In my constituency, I have seen the success of the summer schools and the family learning centres that the education authority has set up with money from the standards fund. I observed the significant reductions in class sizes, and the good response to our sure start project on the Mereside estate. I have seen how the Government and Ofsted--in response to feelers put out by the Select Committee--are tackling mobility. I have seen Blackpool and Fylde further education college and Woodlands special school receive commendation and beacon status from the Government.
"Conservatives have cancelled a long-awaited announcement on higher education policy because it would have been 'premature'.
Neither in theory nor in practice have we fallen for the false antitheses proposed by the Conservatives. The question is not between whether there should be excellence and access in education or education that provides economic utility. Education should do all three. In a globalised world, we need all three. Over the past three years, our Government have shown that our motto for the national health service--"From the cradle to the grave"--should also be applied to education and education strategy.
How, one wonders, can an announcement scheduled weeks ago for next Tuesday, suddenly be deemed premature? After all, the party has had close to three years, since the last election, to come up with a higher education policy."
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