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7 July 2009 : Column 207WH—continued
David Taylor: What the hon. Gentleman says is not true. As he rightly said in the opening remarks of his excellent speech, teaching is one of the great professions, along with medicine, engineering, law, accounting, among others. Those four professions would not allow people to practise without qualification or registration; why should teaching?
Mr. Stuart: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and apologise for speaking so harshly to him, as he is such a positive contributor to debates on so many topics. The answer goes back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) about the ability to inspire. The skill set for an effective teacher is not of the same technical importance—perhaps I am struggling here. If someone has the educational wherewithal to communicate and inspire learning in the pupil, there is not the same requirement for academic standards that there would be if they were about to operate on a vital organ in someone’s body.
That is the debate. How do we get the balance right? We do not want to create artificial barriers that limit the supply of people going into teaching. That would have an upward impact on pay, for instance. Contrary to the many myths abroad about how teaching has declined enormously in status, Policy Exchange’s report considering the history of the issue found that 40 years ago, the average pay of a teacher was the average pay of the country as a whole, whereas now it is 50 per cent. higher, yet everyone complains endlessly about the lack of status in teaching. From a pay point of view, teachers are a lot better off than they were. It is questionable—Policy Exchange certainly questions it very effectively—whether it is possible for teaching to be seen as having the same status as law, engineering and so on. However, I will come to that in a moment.
Academics at Cambridge and Leicester universities recently conducted a study on the professional status of teaching for the then Department for Education and Skills. When they asked practising teachers which profession they felt had a similar social status to teaching, 40 per cent. said social work. Policy Exchange repeated the exercise with a major survey of a group of professionals and undergraduates, and got exactly the same answer. In status terms, teaching was seen alongside social work or being a nurse, police officer or librarian. Very few felt that being a teacher was similar to the traditionally high-status professions on the list, such as doctor, solicitor or architect.
Policy Exchange also asked more than 1,000 professionals and managers what the biggest deterrent to teaching was. Some 20 per cent. of respondents said the salaries offered, 12.9 per cent. said feeling unsafe in the classroom, 10.4 per cent. said working with children or young people—one would be glad if that 10 per cent. never pursued a job in teaching, however poor employment prospects were elsewhere—and 8.6 per cent. said low staff morale. Those four reasons were also cited by undergraduates asked the same question. The evidence is fairly consistent. Can we alter teaching’s low status compared with that of other professions? As I said, Policy Exchange thinks that we cannot, and that doing so would have malign effects.
In 2007, the OECD published its programme for international student assessment survey results for 2006. The results showed a drop in this country’s performance
relative to other leading nations in Europe and Asia. The OECD has published its survey every three years since 2000, and this country’s performance has slipped noticeably since 2000 compared with many other participating countries. For the first time, we fell below the international average in the maths category, coming after countries such as Slovenia, Estonia and the Czech Republic. In the literacy category, we finished 17th, while the top position was taken by South Korea.
The report blamed those shortcomings on the poor quality of graduates entering the teaching profession compared with those in countries at the top of the rankings. A number of statistics back up that conclusion. According to the Training and Development Agency for Schools, in 2005-06, 32 per cent. of entrants to the undergraduate bachelor of education course did not have any A-levels. Of those that did, the average tariff score was 269. By comparison, the average tariff score for medicine was 473, equivalent to almost four A grades, and the overall average was 318, or an A and two Bs. The average entrant to the teaching profession was below the average for graduates overall. Those are the people going out to inspire learning in the next generation.
At the postgraduate level, in 2005-06, 2,000 students entered teacher training with a third-class or pass degree and 34 per cent. with a 2:2. If the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) speaks later, as I hope he will, he will doubtless congratulate my colleague the shadow Secretary of State for education, my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), on his decision to prevent those with a third-class or mere pass degree from entering educational training.
The Sutton Trust has found that when high achievers who study at the country’s top universities do go into teaching, a disproportionate number teach in the independent sector. Some 60 per cent. of teachers at independent schools have a 2:1 or higher, compared with 45 per cent. in the maintained sector. Alan Smithers at Buckingham university found that almost half of the Oxbridge graduates who enter teaching go to teach at independent schools. Independent school teachers are seven times more likely to have gone to Oxbridge than teachers in the maintained sector.
My question for the Minister is: what can be done about it? How can we ensure that the standard of people entering teacher training is improved? We need to make it easier for people to move in and out of teaching throughout their career. I found the argument in Policy Exchange’s report compelling. Has she read that report? If so, what is her analysis of its argument about how best to secure “more good teachers”, which was its title?
David Taylor: Will the hon. Gentleman give way one final time?
Mr. Stuart: As it is the hon. Gentleman, I will.
David Taylor:
We should not be surprised by the figures that the hon. Gentleman quoted about teachers who went to Oxbridge going into private schools. Some 7 per cent. of young people are educated privately, but as much as 50 per cent. of the intake at Oxbridge comes
from the private sector, for reasons of which we are well aware. That is likely to replicate itself when those graduates decide where they want to launch their teaching careers.
Mr. Stuart: I take that point on board. None the less, I am sure the hon. Gentleman would agree that it is a shame that a greater proportion of the highest performing graduates who go into teaching do not teach in state schools, in particular in disadvantaged areas.
It will be interesting to hear whether there is new thinking in the Department about how we can incentivise that. Has any more thought gone into national pay scales? If there is a choice in the maintained sector between teaching in a school with great standards of discipline that serves a relatively prosperous area and teaching in one of the most challenging schools for the same money, the tendency will be to choose the former. How can we ensure that we provide proper recompense for people who go into challenging schools? How do we make that seem not only challenging, socially good and good for one’s career in the long term, but financially attractive? Those issues have not been dealt with by this Government, but perhaps it is not too late for them to think again about their approach.
That brings me on neatly to the incentives that must be offered to attract the best graduates. Teach First was launched by the Government as a way of allowing the best graduates to go quickly into teaching in the most challenging schools, and we all applaud that. The problem is that far too few people are going through the programme. It accounts for only 1 per cent. of new teachers each year. Just 253 graduates completed the programme in 2008 and the Government plan for just 850 to do so in 2014.
I do not agree with the critics of Teach First who complain that as many as half of those who enter the programme leave teaching a couple of years later. Such extremely talented people go into teaching on the basis that they will be free to move out, that the skills they learn will be career enhancing, and that they will have the satisfaction of going into some of the toughest schools in the country with some of the most entrenched disadvantage and of trying to tackle it. I would not worry about those who leave. The easier we make it for good people to go in and out, the more likely we are to attract more good people in the first place. We do not want to make teaching a monolithic profession that, once entered, can never be left. That would not help us to weed out those with inadequate teaching skills. I would rather focus on the fact that Teach First allows more outstanding young people who might not have entered teaching to stay, and 50 per cent. of them do stay. I would like the programme to be expanded.
The Policy Exchange report reflects the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster that intellectual ability alone does not make a good teacher, and that being an able communicator and having leadership and empathy skills are just as important. However, it goes on to say that
“there is quite a strong relationship between success in achieving qualifications and performance within schools. Many Teach First teachers, selected out of the group of Russell Group graduates with 2:1s or higher, have a huge impact on their schools within a few years.”
The same report, however, published survey evidence showing that just 20 per cent. of undergraduates were
aware of the Teach First programme. Will the Government expand the programme more quickly and promote it more effectively?
We need to know what happens to Teach First people when they stay in teaching. In response to a written question that I tabled in October, the then Minister for Schools, the right hon. Member for South Dorset (Jim Knight), said of Teach First:
“It does not currently have detailed statistics on the destinations of completers”—
that is an ugly use of language—
“who remain in education, but I already plan to require these to be available for the 2008/09 academic year onwards.”—[Official Report, 6 October 2008; Vol. 480, c. 512W.]
Has that been done yet? Does the Minister have any data for the last academic year?
I hope that the Minister will also speak about the graduate training programme. The Policy Exchange report said:
“When asked whether they would prefer to take a one-year postgraduate course or qualify as a teacher while also working and being paid as an unqualified teacher, 53 per cent. chose the latter option and 29 per cent. the former”.
The problem again is the lack of awareness of the programme, with 58 per cent. of managers and professionals being unaware that it existed. The Government should listen to the conclusions set out in the recent IPPR report, “Those who can?”, which recommended rolling out the “teach next” programme.
Does the Minister want ever more expansion of university training for teachers or does she accept the vision set out in the Policy Exchange report of every school being turned into a training school? Some of the budget used currently for learning support assistants could be used to support the training of wannabe teachers so that they can teach in a school, earn money more quickly and support existing teachers. Does that idea attract the Minister?
Would that idea help to transform continuing professional development, as Policy Exchange suggested? If schools were all turned into training establishments for new teachers and wannabe teachers, would they be more effective in encouraging and improving the skills of their existing teachers? It would mean that teachers were not all sent off for courses elsewhere. Some of those are very good, but what is learned on others dissipates within weeks of the teacher returning. Can we make schools learning environments not only for their pupils, but for trainee teachers and teachers themselves?
The evidence shows that the quality of teachers is critical. It is the prism through which every decision made in the education arena should be viewed. When Ministers decide on any aspect of education policy, they should ask, “Will this decision help to attract and retain better teachers?” The ugly corollary is that we must ask what can be done to ensure that those who are not teaching to the required standard—however worthy they may be as human beings—are removed from the classroom and allowed to do something more appropriate with their talents.
Does the Minister think that the best route is one of ever-longer programmes and courses before one can be a teacher, which would make teaching more like the closed shops of law and accountancy, or does she share the alternative vision of people being able to go in and
out of teaching throughout their careers and of mature people who have served in industry coming into teaching? Such people should not necessarily start at the bottom, but their salaries should reflect the skill sets they have achieved elsewhere, and they could contribute to school management. Can we free up the education system so that the best possible people at any given time are involved in teaching and inspiring our young people? I look forward to hearing the Minister’s answers to those questions.
11.27 am
Mr. Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) on securing this important debate. He will be happy to hear me say that he stated his views in characteristically robust fashion. It is important that such views are on the record, because there are grave concerns about the teaching profession and where it should be going.
Most of my comments will be specific to my local authority in Westminster, but given that we have time on our hands, I will say a little about my hon. Friend’s speech. Few of the people I graduated with in the mid-1980s would have looked on teaching as an option. There had been something of a sea change over a relatively short period. I am one of those Oxbridge graduates who were dismissed by the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) in his usual style. However, I was also a state school pupil.
In 1971, only 13 years before I matriculated at Oxford, teaching was seen as the normal choice, with one in seven graduates from that institution going into the profession. That was even before the large influx of postgraduate students taking specifically education courses. By the mid-1980s, however, going into teaching was, for most, considered to be a reflection of their failure and was seen as a secondary route. That mentality is regrettable. One by-product of the fact that, in the years to come, few graduates will go into the financial services compared with the past 20 years may well be that more of them will see teaching as a valid and acceptable choice.
I have some sympathy with the concern that my hon. Friend mentioned that the teaching profession has become more of an organised, unionised work force. That plays its part in putting many people off going into teaching. He described the prospect of people going into teaching later in life, after they have had a first career, when they have much more to give and want a second career. We all have to face the idea that working ages are likely to rise more and more as time goes by. Indeed, any future Government will have to be a lot more aggressive about that, given the demographics and the pension problems that we will have. People will be working, perhaps full time, well into their 70s in our working lifetime. It is no good simply adding a couple of years for those people who, in 25 years’ time, will reach the current retirement age; we need to be much more aggressive.
There will be the mentality that people can have several careers, so the notion that a person who goes into a career in their 40s can enter it only at the bottom rung of the ladder will, in decades to come, be seen as a rather strange idea, particularly in teaching. Some of the most inspirational teachers are not so well qualified—that was the case with the most inspirational teacher
whom I recall at the grammar school I attended. I remember vividly that, as we started our A-level year, he tried to gee up the 90 boys who were about to enter the lower sixth, as it then was, by saying, “Before me, I see future captains of industry, leading lights in the armed forces and Members of Parliament.” That was the very moment at which I thought that this was something to which I could aspire—something that I probably kept secret at the back of my mind for some years before I had any political aspirations. That teacher had no formal teaching qualifications; he had spent 20 years in the armed forces before deciding to teach predominantly biology, which was a personal passion of his, but in which he had no formal post-school educational qualification.
It is crucial that we open teaching up a little, and I worry about the power of the education establishment—not just the trade unions, but the Minister’s Department and, to a large extent, local education authorities—which believes that there has to be a standard route and one has to move up a particular ladder. Much of what my hon. Friends the Members for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) and for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) are doing in relation to education is forward looking and radical, and I strongly support those radical policies.
Equally, I worry that having a template about precisely the nature of degree and the GCSE grade to have been attained means that we are moving to a tick-box approach, rather than being more open-minded. The hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire mentioned that there are unqualified teachers in the independent sector, but too much of that sort of criticism is driven by the idea of equality. I am sure that the teaching unions would be concerned by that, but one needs only to look at the results of independent schools. I accept that, often, their pupils have dedicated parents and that considerable amounts of money are pumped into those schools, so any comparison would not be like for like, but those results speak to some of the more innovative, forward-looking and radical approaches that are taken to teaching, instead of it being an option that effectively means joining a highly unionised work force. We need to inspire a future generation of people to go into teaching at a later stage in their life, when much of the experience that they have gained can be brought to bear for their charges.
David Taylor: Having a highly organised membership is hardly unique to the teaching profession; it is true of the professions that I mentioned earlier. If the object of that grouping is to protect high standards and promote the interests of members of the profession, there is nothing sinister in that, is there?
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