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Mr. Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Aberavon (Dr. Francis), with his years of experience. He is right to raise the issues relating to part-time students.
The Schwartz report is an important study that highlights major problems in our state education system. It is a concern that only 26 per cent. of entrants to a full-time degree course come from skilled manual or unskilled family backgrounds when that group represents 40 per cent. of the population. It is also odd that in a country in which 93 per cent. of children are educated in the state sector, only 57 per cent. of Cambridge university's intake is from that sector. At Oxford, it is just 55 per cent. and at Imperial college it is 63 per cent. At the London School of Economics, the university attended by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), it is 66 per cent. That pattern is repeated for all the top universities whereas for a large number of post-1992 universities the figures are 95 per cent. or higher. Indeed, at the university of Glamorgan, which the Minister cited, the figure is 97.9 per cent. whereas the benchmark figure for that university is 93.4 per cent. What is being done to encourage more students from the private sector to attend that university?
The reason for the disparity is not that the admissions tutors at Oxford or Cambridge are deliberately excluding state sector pupils out of a snobbish delight. As Steven Schwartz says at paragraph B1 of his report:
"It is important to note that across all universities and colleges, and all subjects, admissions processes . . . appear to be fair."
So the reasons for the disparity are far more serious, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson) said. At paragraph A18, the report says:
"Its principal cause is the continuing pattern of lower prior attainment by young people from poorer backgrounds."
Why is that? Again, the report says:
"DfES analysis shows that pupils from lower-income households are over-represented in schools that add the least value to pupils' performance."
In essence, what Schwartz is saying, what the whole row is saying and what the figures clearly demonstrate is that our state schools are not as good at preparing children—in educating children—as the private schools. If the admission tutors at Oxbridge and the top universities are not biased, which they are not, and if the proportion of entrants to those universities is hugely disproportionate to the balance of state/private education, it is clear that the problem is with the state schools delivering the grades and not with the admissions process.
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I fully understand the temptation to tweak the admissions process to help a bright student from a poorly performing comprehensive. I went to a poorly performing comprehensive in my sixth form and understand the problem. I wish that that had happened in my case. However, if we are trying to create policy to address a problem, surely we should look at the cause of the problem, and not simply address the symptoms.
To counter that argument about state schools, people often cite evidence such as that given in paragraph B7, which says:
"other things being equal, students from state schools and colleges tend to perform better at undergraduate level than students from independent schools and colleges."
Some people cite that as evidence that state schools prepare students for university better than the private sector even though they are not achieving the grades that the top universities require. However, that is not what the evidence demonstrates. The reason why, other things being equal, students from state schools tend to perform better is that they have to be brighter and more self-motivated to achieve a given grade in the state sector than to achieve that same grade if they were educated at an independent school. That is the reality behind the evidence. So the evidence again points to the fact that our state schools are not performing as well as the independent schools.
We then come to the left's argument that the reason the private sector does so well is that all its pupils come from middle-class, educated families who push their children. The left argues that anyone could perform well if that kind of atmosphere prevailed in all our schools. I do not accept that argument either. Of course, some children are more difficult to teach than others and of course a school's GSCE results will be driven, to an extent, by its intake; but the value-added results will not, because they take the intake into account. There is huge disparity in the value-added results of our schools.
The truth is that such things as school ethos, teaching methods, intellectual rigour and competition within the school make a difference. When I put the argument that we should apply practice in the best performing schools—whether state or independent—to all our state schools, it is greeted with horror by many on the left and by many teachers. They say, "Oh, those methods wouldn't be appropriate for children from this or that socio-economic group". I regard that view as utterly patronising nonsense.
I have read reports of the important speech made recently by the Chancellor about the public sector. Of course, there is a role for the state in the provision of public services. I am a passionate believer in state education and in a state-run national health service, but by the same token we have to ensure that the state provides high-quality services. It is wrong to think that the state sector carries some aura—some glow—and that in the name of equality it will persuade people to tolerate a second or third-class service. We live in a wealthy country where we all expect first-class service and quality products. I regret that too much state sector provision is second rate—producer focused rather than customer or user focused. Too often, it looks like something from a 1970s nationalised industry. It is up to politicians to ensure that our public services come up to scratch. Too often, we abandon their stewardship to the producer interest.
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If we allow our public services to decline, people will turn against them and look elsewhere. Parents, whatever their background, want high-quality education for their children. It is up to all of us in this place to ensure that our education system provides that high quality. To do so, we need to look at more than funding—the £20,000 spent on private schools, to which the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) referred; we need to look at what is actually happening in our schools, to ensure that they use the methods that evidence shows produce the best results.
Is it really the best approach that 60 per cent. of lessons in our secondary schools take place in mixed-ability classes? One in five maths lessons is given in mixed-ability classes, as are half of all English lessons and three quarters of history and geography lessons. With the enormously wide range of abilities in our comprehensive schools, is that really the best way to deliver high levels of achievement? Is that what the best schools in Britain are doing? Is it supported by the evidence?
In fact, the evidence says the opposite. Academic evidence on the efficacy of mixed-ability teaching shows overwhelmingly that streaming or setting produces far better results. Two American academics, Kulik and Kulik, carried out a huge amount of research on the matter and found that setting by ability and then tailoring the curriculum to particular ability groups produced enormous improvements in attainment at a high level, good improvements at other levels and no fall in attainment at the bottom. At that lower level, one could target extra resources and adopt smaller class sizes to ensure that there were improvements there, too.
"Prior attainment is the main known determinant of undergraduate performance."
If we want to create a fairer admission system, we must look closely not only at our state secondary education system, but also at our state primary school system. As my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Collins) pointed out in his kind words earlier, phonics teaching produces far better reading standards. I could cite a large amount of academic evidence to show that it would ensure that 100 per cent. of primary school pupils could achieve level 4 by the age of 11, regardless of the degree of poverty in the school's area.
The Schwartz report is important, not because of what it tells us about the admissions process for university, which appears from the report to be fine, but because of what it tells us about our state schools. I hope that the Government will learn the correct lessons from the report and will deal with the problems that face our education system, not the symptoms.
6.24 pm
Alistair Burt (North-East Bedfordshire) (Con): The debate has been interesting, and I am pleased to back the motion proposed by my hon. Friends.
I was puzzled by the response from the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education. I am still unsure whether he can ride the two horses that he tried to ride at the beginning of the debate. Can he reassure Opposition Members and those in university life that OFFA will do nothing more than put a
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benevolent arm around the shoulders of those who are already doing as much as they possibly can to ensure that everyone from the widest possible social background has the chance to go into higher education, and that it will do that without threat or influence and telling the universities what to do? Can he possibly reconcile that form of reassurance with some of the statistics cited by his colleagues, especially the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor), who pointed to the discrepancies between what he described as the benchmarks and what was happening not only in some of the major research universities but also in some others?
I have a simple question for the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, the hon. Member for Bury, South (Mr. Lewis)—God bless him—who will shortly respond to the debate.
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