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The Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. David Blunkett): Sixteen thousand? Where did the hon. Gentleman get that figure from?

Mrs. May: My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Mr. Bruce) is right. It is interesting that the Secretary of State calls into question his figure. One problem is the extra financial burdens on young people entering higher education and teaching that this Government imposed by introducing tuition fees and abolishing the maintenance grant.

Those wishing to train for a bachelor of education do not receive the training salary available to those studying for a postgraduate certificate of education. The bachelor of education training course is used mostly by primary school teachers. The recent fall in recruitment in primary as well as secondary schools is sad.

I referred to the issues of stress, work load and bureaucracy. Comments of primary school teachers in a recent National Union of Teachers survey included the following:

Too much to do with not enough time or help. The end result leads to the children suffering in the quality of their education.

That was from a classroom teacher of 20 years experience. Another comment, also from a teacher with 20 years experience, was:

Get off our backs and allow our professional judgment and expertise to get the best from our children--that is if there are any of us left who believe in ourselves.

There is little future in a profession in which people feel that they are technicians, doing what others say. Not only will that not encourage young people to enter the profession, it will not serve children well. If we are to encourage young people and others into teaching, we must make the profession appealing to them. That means leaving them free to get on with the job of teaching and to exercise professional judgment in the classroom. We must cut the chains of red tape and trust teachers again.

Caroline Flint (Don Valley): What would the hon. Lady say to the fact that, under the previous Tory Administration, 40 per cent. of 11-year-olds could not read to the standard expected for their age and, under this Government, the latest chief inspector's report shows that standards are rising and that children are benefiting? Is she saying that the choice to be made is between children benefiting from rising standards--a success that teachers should celebrate--or going back to the old system under the Conservative Government, when 40 per cent. of 11-year-olds realised neither their ambition nor their potential?

Mrs. May: The hon. Lady should have listened to the quote I gave from the primary school teacher with 20 years experience. It is strange that Labour Members now wish to quote the chief inspector. Having opposed the introduction of Ofsted and attacked the chief inspector time and again, they now pray him in aid when they want to oppose the views expressed by teachers. The primary school teacher I quoted said that the end result of the bureaucracy was that the quality of children's education suffered.

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The Government have failed to tackle bureaucracy, despite giving numerous promises to do so during the past three years. They have promised to cut red tape, to give red tape a caning, to cut through red tape, to take action to cut bureaucracy, and to tackle red tape. They claim to have taken steps to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy--but what have they done? They are

working to provide an alternative to paper communication

by providing "more on the Net." Do not Ministers realise that whether information is on paper or in electronic form, it still has to be read? The plans required by the Department for Education and Employment still have to be produced, and the time that that takes cannot be reduced simply by providing the plans in electronic form, rather than on paper. It is clear that the Government do not understand the problem of paperwork.

In addition, the Government appear to have a warped sense of humour. That can be seen in their amendment to the motion, in which they claim that one of the ways in which they are improving

teaching and the rewards for teaching

is through

the Better Regulation Task Force Report on 'Red Tape Affecting Headteachers'.

That report was a damning indictment of the Government's failure to reduce bureaucracy. It described the situation under the current Government as follows:

over-elaborate processes are being used to achieve straightforward objectives, leading to unnecessary duplication and confusing excessive lines of accountability

yet the Government claim that the quality of teaching is being improved by such processes.

Mr. Jon Owen Jones (Cardiff, Central): I speak as one who has direct experience of that sort of bureaucracy. When I was a teacher, I was in charge of delivering the science element of the national curriculum that the Conservative Government introduced. I recall also being in charge of three filing cabinets that were filled with material designed to justify the amount of paperwork that that Government had imposed on schools. The national curriculum was overly bureaucratic and probably remains so, but it is now far less bureaucratic than it was when the Conservatives introduced it.

Mrs. May: The problem with the Labour Government is that they are making things worse. I have some advice for the hon. Gentleman: at the next general election, people will be asking him not what the last Conservative Government did, but what his Government have done--and what they have done is introduce

over-elaborate processes . . . to achieve straightforward objectives . . . unnecessary duplication and confusing excessive lines of accountability.

The Government have increased the bureaucratic burdens on teachers and then told them that, if they want to lighten their load, they should stop doing things such as collating pupil reports, classroom display, administering cover and administering examinations. That misses the point entirely: the Government are creating too much paperwork and they should put their own back yard in order before telling teachers to sort out theirs.

It is time that Ministers put their money where their mouth is and cut their own bureaucracy. How did sending out 23 press releases last week help to raise standards in

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education? It did not. New initiatives are being introduced at a time when teachers are coping with standard assessment tests, GCSEs and A-levels, and with all the work needed to go through the threshold of the new performance-related pay scheme. Perhaps the Government should listen to the warning given by the head of St. Clement's high school in King's Lynn: when called to Downing street to receive an award for consistent improvement, he said that he would tell the Prime Minister to

allow schools to concentrate on the real business in hand.

In addition to the bureaucracy facing them, teachers also have to cope with disruptive pupils in schools. Not only are such pupils a threat to the education of other pupils, but they are often a threat to the teachers themselves. Last September, it was reported that Unison directly blamed the Government's policy of reducing the number of exclusions for the fact that assaults on school support staff in Southampton had doubled in a year. The union said that the Government's emphasis on keeping disruptive children within schools, rather than excluding them, had resulted in staff being exposed to the threat of violent pupils. The Government should abolish their targets for reducing the number of exclusions and let teachers get on with the job of exercising the discipline that is needed in their classrooms.

Another cry I frequently hear from teachers is, "Trust us again". There is too much interference in what teachers do; it is time to let them get on with the job of teaching. The Government cannot even trust teachers to decide which computer to buy under the subsidy scheme. Teachers were told that they would be given £500 toward the cost of a computer, but they then learned that the money would be taxed. They were told that they had to show that they had been trained before they could get the money, but then that they needed to show only that they would be trained. I understand that only 15,000 teachers applied. I assume that they were worried about receiving an on-screen message from the Prime Minister saying "I love you". I do not know which they found more frightening--knowing that the message was a virus, or thinking that it might be true. The list is now closed, but the Government do not even trust teachers to go out and buy the machine they want. They have been given a list of acceptable manufacturers that happens to exclude the UK market leader in retail computer sales. What message does it send when teachers cannot even be trusted to make such a decision for themselves?

On top of all that, the Government are pushing through an overly bureaucratic, cumbersome and administratively expensive performance-related pay scheme, against the wishes of many teachers.

Mr. Richard Allan (Sheffield, Hallam): On a point of information, will the hon. Lady tell us the name of the market-leading company that has been excluded from the list?

Mrs. May: If the hon. Gentleman chose to look at the market share listings, he would know the answer to his question: Packard Bell.

I have always said that it is right to reward good teachers and that there should be open and recognisable appraisal systems in all schools. I also believe that, whatever teachers think of the performance-related pay system, strike action is wrong because the greatest impact is suffered by children.

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The Government are pushing the scheme through without proper training. Most head teachers to whom I have spoken tell me that their training was of little value because trainers did not have the answers to more than half their questions. Apparently, in one case trainers said that they did not know the answer, but if the heads wanted to write their question on a piece of yellow sticky paper and stick it on the wall, they would take the bits of paper down after the session and try to find the answers. Those head teachers were given only one day of training.

Teachers are rushing to get their applications in in time, and schools are worried about the funding implications of the scheme. As one governor of a small primary school in north Yorkshire told me this afternoon, the school has three good teachers, but it faces difficulty because it does not know whether it will get the funds to support future pay increases. [Hon. Members: "Ridiculous."] I suggest that Labour Members talk to governors about the problems that they are facing, and listen to what they say.

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