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Andrew Selous: No one in the Opposition believes that the Government set out to bring about the loss of hundreds, or probably thousands, of teacher and learning support assistant places. Does the hon. Gentleman accept, however, that the means whereby the Government have chosen to fund education mean that they have given with one hand and taken away from school budgets with the other? It is sheer incompetence and a failure to understand both education funding and the effects of increases for pensions and national insurance that have brought us to the current problem.
James Purnell: I do not accept that at all. As the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Twigg), has just explained to the hon. Gentleman, the overall number of teachers has risen. There is a big change in the funding formula, with associated transition costs, but my point to Opposition Members is that a severe contrast is offered by the days when millions of pounds were cut from local authorities such as mine to gerrymander the funding formula to allow Wandsworth and Westminster to set extremely low taxes. We all remember exactly why that was done.
The change was justified. When I was selected for Stalybridge and Hyde, in every school that I visited, I was asked to make my first priority a change in the funding formula. The borough was one of the most deprived in the country, yet it received thousands of pounds less than neighbouring authorities because the
funding formula at the time reflected only ethnic diversity and geographic scarcity. The Labour Government have changed the formula so that it properly reflects deprivation.At last, having suffered for between 10 and 15 years due to the gerrymandered funding formula, we are receiving an amount of money that properly reflects the deprivation in our schools. Despite the degree of deprivation in my area, we achieve excellent results. That is what I want to highlight. In contrast to the Opposition's attempt to spread cynicism, we should be optimistic about the results in our schools.
Why do the Opposition want to spread cynicism? They have to convince people that the state cannot achieve what we are setting out to achieve. They have to convince people that things are hopeless, that people might as well not invest in public services and that, if they can afford it, they should use their money to send their children to private school, or perhaps their children will get into a selective school.
We are saying that the state can work; we can invest in public services and it will make a real difference. The Tories try to distract people from that, but the evidence is clear—from looking at local papers or from people talking to their neighbours. That may be why the opinion poll results covered by The Times earlier this week were much less bad than people may have expected.
We must continue to listen to people and deal with their concerns, but perhaps rather than looking at the flim-flam inside the beltway around Westminster—the media hype—people are actually looking at their schools and hospitals and thinking that, yes, they are starting to get better.
In contrast to the Opposition's cynicism, I want to draw the House's attention to a few results in my area this summer.
Mr. Andrew Turner: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
James Purnell: No, I have limited time and the hon. Gentleman was not in the debate, so I shall try to bring my—
Mr. Turner: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
James Purnell: I have already—
Mr. Turner: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker—
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (James Purnell) is not giving way.
Mr. Turner: Will the hon. Gentleman give way? He accused—
James Purnell: I have already referred to the incredible results for higher technology where there was an improvement from 50 to 63 per cent. That includes 71
per cent. gaining five A to C grades among the Bangladeshi community, which is nearly three times the achievement nationally. That is a great credit to Denise Spence and her colleagues, and I hope that the House will join me in congratulating that school on its results. All Saints Catholic college, which has just applied for specialist status, has improved its results from 43 to 45 per cent. of pupils achieving five A to C grades.The results at Dukinfield Astley—another school that the Minister for School Standards has visited—have increased from 26 per cent. last year to 43 per cent.—an improvement of nearly 20 percentage points in a year. West Hill has just reached an agreement with a local company, Atofina, to invest thousands of pounds in the new school and its specialist status. West Hill's result—62 per cent.—is up on last year, and I hope that the House will also join me in congratulating that school on its results. Longdendale, which achieved specialist language status last year and an outstanding result this year—44 per cent.—in what is, in some cases, a very deprived catchment area. Mossley Hollins's result was 24 per cent. last year, but it has gone up to 41 per cent., so I congratulate Drew Duncan and his team on achieving those results.
New school buildings have been built at Alder secondary school, under Bob Wakefield, and there are new primary schools at Pinfold and Arundale on an estate where not one new school building was built during the entire time that the Conservatives were in power. I visited the old buildings several times. Frankly, it was a disgrace that people were being taught in prefabs in the school grounds and squeezed into corridors and other spaces because the classrooms were not in a proper state to be used for teaching. The library was even closed down.
When the Opposition talk about school funding, they should ask themselves whether they could pledge to match our education results. They say that they will match our spending on defence and international development, but they also say that they want to make savings. They cannot say that they will match our education results. The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) says that he stood on a platform of increasing education spending, but he has had to vote several times against spending increases. If the Opposition ever did get into government, they would have to make cuts.
Andrew Selous: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
James Purnell: No. I am afraid that I have limited time.
Copley school is proud of being a comprehensive—it is far from being a bog standard one—and it has managed to improve its results from 41 to 57 per cent. this year. That concludes the roundtrip of the secondary schools in my constituency.
Finally, I congratulate the staff of those schools, as well as their pupils and governors and not least the local education authority, which has played a crucial role in improving schools in my area. Overall, our results went from 42 to 47 per cent. last year. That fantastic achievement is a testament to the effect of spending more money in schools, while having proper challenge
and support from the LEA and central Government. I congratulate them, and I hope that the House will do so as well.7.18 pm
Mr. Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight): Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak in the debate. I do not intend to reiterate the arguments that have been developed so well by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Green) and my other right hon. and hon. Friends today. I want to consider some of the other issues that may have given rise to the problem—I will not call it a crisis—of teacher recruitment and retention, and I wish to try to distinguish between the two because all too frequently they are combined and they need to be taken apart, although the phrase, "teacher shortage" may represent convenient shorthand.
The first symptom of the problem is that many schools have an unbalanced age profile of teachers. In schools such as those in London, there are far too many young and inexperienced teachers, many of whom come from overseas. They need a great deal of support. In other schools, there is perhaps a disproportionate number of more senior teachers. I speak of the schools in my constituency. Such a disproportion is greatly to their advantage in some ways because those teachers bring experience and maturity, but they do not necessarily bring novelty and vigour of the kind that might be expected of younger teachers.
There are problems with turnover. Some schools suffer turbulence—too much turnover—while others suffer stagnation because too few teachers are sufficiently ambitious to want to move on and some might be perceived to be coasting toward retirement. Both situations are unhealthy for teachers, schools and pupils and, I dare say, the future of pupils. It is difficult to get the right balance between recruitment and retention and we cannot always blame the Government or the Opposition for failing to achieve it. The problem is not necessarily related to funding.
My colleagues have made the case on funding but I shall point out other symptoms: the shortage of subject specialism and the movement of teachers to the private sector, which was recognised by the Teacher Training Agency's survey. I shall examine several causes of those symptoms that have nothing to do with money. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on pointing out one during the closing minutes of his speech. The great difficulty associated with teaching pupils with few or inadequately developed social skills should be recognised. We need to tackle the problem at the root. Although I recognise that home start and sure start are part of the Government's prescription for tackling the problem, they are not tackling it at the root by asking why such children were so badly parented. I fear that one reason is the breakdown of families. I know that it is unfashionable to talk about the damage caused by the breakdown of families but it is time that we recognised the dramatic problems that serial parenting causes to the self-image of pupils and youngsters.
The second great problem for teachers is lack of support from parents, which is associated with a sort of rights culture. The party of which I am proud to be a
member has promoted the rights culture in education. It has promoted choice and what are considered to be market mechanisms but it has not necessarily always been successful at promoting a responsibilities culture to accompany the rights culture, although I accept that it is more difficult to do that. A rights culture without a responsibilities culture means that parents sometimes do not accept that their child can do wrong or that a teacher has not only the right but the duty to discipline a child or put him back on the right track if he goes wrong. If one fails to provide teachers with support and effective sanctions, they will fail to maintain discipline, which is one of the key factors that is causing teachers to leave the public sector and, in many cases, teaching altogether.A third element of the problem is the inadequately supported integration of pupils who sometimes have profound special educational needs. The Government are capping the money that local education authorities may hold back. I associate myself with the remarks made by the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) and hope that the Minister will be able to guarantee that that will not lead to artificial capping of the amount spent on special educational needs because support for pupils with SEN represents support for every child and teacher in the schools that such pupils attend. There is too much inappropriate treatment of such pupils, and there are sometimes inappropriate attempts to integrate them when they, their parents and their teachers do not think that that can work. So that is a third problem that has nothing to do with money.
The fourth problem that has nothing to do with money is bureaucracy, work load and initiative overload, as identified by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess). The Government recognise those problems, but they have not been sufficiently effective at reducing teacher work load, although I know that the work load agreement is designed to have that effect and if it is right for teachers, heads and governors, it will be implemented.
The last problem is that of the allegations, sometimes unfounded, against people in the teaching profession. I refer to that principally because of a situation that arose in my constituency in the past few weeks, but the issue is of general concern. I know that teacher unions in particular are gravely concerned about the consequence for teachers of losing their professional, if not their literal, lives as a result of allegations that might not stand up in a court of law. I hope that the Government will examine that problem with the greatest possible care to discover whether there is a way to ensure that teachers get through that heart-rending time in their lives without necessarily losing their professional standing. It may be that after conviction it is right that they lose their professional standing, but currently, they lose it the moment that they are accused and suspended. We need to recognise that problem and tackle it.
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