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7 July 2009 : Column 225WH—continued
Times have changed and schools are no longer places where an individual stands up in front of a blackboard with a piece of chalk. Classrooms are exciting, interactive places staffed not only with teachers, but with technicians, assistants and others who offer pupils personal support. As a result of our investment and the hard work and
dedication of teachers around the country, Ofsted has rated the current generation of teachers the best we have ever had.
Teachers are now among the most valued and trusted figures in our society, which is in stark contrast with a decade ago when the public did not always accept that working as a teacher was the high-status profession that it should be. That dramatic increase in teachers’ professional status and standing is reflected in the huge progress that has been made over the past 12 years. More than 100,000 more children are leaving primary schools secure in English and maths at level 4 than did so a decade ago, and almost half of young people achieve five good GCSEs compared with just over one third in 1997. That is real progress, but we accept that there is much more to do to ensure that every child is secure in the basics and that every young person achieves a good qualification. Giving the teaching profession a further boost is at the centre of our plans.
I shall talk now about new routes into teaching, because much has been made of attracting a good cross-section of people with the skills and abilities required. We want to ensure that we have the best pool of teachers to choose from. That is why we have developed a range of routes into teaching that focus on attracting the best candidates, whatever stage of their career they have reached. The Training and Development Agency for Schools is overhauling its graduate teacher programme website to make it easier, from September, for people seeking employment-based training to find a suitable school and training provider. It is committed to marketing that route specifically once the website is ready.
The traditional PGCE route for graduates is still being used very well, but there is also the hugely successful Teach First programme, which was five times oversubscribed last year. Mention has been made of the fairly low number of places available, but we are looking for the very highest level of ability in the students, so although the programme was five times oversubscribed last year, there may be a natural limit to the number of places that we can fill. We need to keep a constant eye on that to see how it works out. The programme is making a real difference in the schools where the people are teaching. I think that we all accept that that is a positive development and we want to see the programme continue to succeed.
Mr. Stuart: Will the Minister give way?
Ms Johnson: I will give way for a final time and then I need to make some progress.
Mr. Stuart: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; I am aware that there is a shortage of time. Did the people who failed to get on the Teach First programme do so because they did not have the qualifications, or because the funding from Government placed a cap on the numbers?
Ms Johnson: I cannot answer that specific question, so I shall have to come back to the hon. Gentleman. I can tell him that we shall double the number of Teach First places by 2013, but I will come back to him on his specific question and I shall also consider the statistical data that have been collected by Teach First.
Teaching is in the top 10 choices for career changers and it is the No. 1 choice for new graduates, so of course competition will ensure that there are rising standards in the group that is coming into education and teaching in the years ahead. To ensure that we attract the best career changers from the private sector, particularly in the shortage subjects that we have heard about, we have launched our Transition to Teaching programme. In addition, from September we shall trial a new accelerated six-month route to qualified teacher status in maths and science subjects for outstanding candidates. That is a pilot and we want to see how it works, but again it is about working on some of the ideas that were in the Policy Exchange report.
I was struck by comments made by hon. Members about restricting entry into the teaching profession to graduates with a 2:2, 2:1 or first-class degree and not having people with a third. That struck me as odd because I think that one of the people advising the Conservative party is Carol Vorderman, who I am sure we all agree is quite an inspirational character but who, as I understand it, got a third in her degree. She would not be eligible to teach under that proposal. Perhaps hon. Members should reflect on that.
In the past 12 years, the pay and conditions offered to teachers have improved enormously. The remodelling of the work force has been a big step forward for teachers, children and young people because it is about raising standards and tackling work load, but we must continue to bear down on unnecessary burdens and ensure that teachers receive their statutory rights, so that they can focus on their core job of teaching and learning. We cannot expect teachers to continue to improve standards or narrow the attainment gap if they have not received a proper induction, are not being managed properly, or are spending their time doing things that do not make the most of their professional expertise. That is why we are legislating for a new system of warning notices for governing bodies that do not comply with statutory pay and conditions requirements.
As well as ensuring compliance with statutory rights, we want to ensure that each individual teacher receives consistently excellent training and continuing professional development so that they can improve their practice. We announced last year that we would make teaching a master’s-level profession. The course will be rolled out initially in January next year to newly qualified teachers in schools in the north-west and in national challenge schools. It will be primarily practice-based, with newly qualified teachers learning not just from school leaders but from more experienced teachers. We shall work closely with our social partners and the TDA to ensure that we get it right, because it is a great opportunity for the profession. As there is still much more to do to improve the ability of teachers to identify the children and young people who need extra support to make good progress, one of the four compulsory content areas of the new master’s in teaching and learning covers child development and behaviour management. That new qualification is specifically designed to improve classroom practice.
It might be helpful at this point if I comment on behaviour, because the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) made much of behaviour in the classroom. The present Government are the first to implement a comprehensive national programme to
strengthen schools’ capacity to manage behaviour, and to strengthen the law where necessary. As he will know, the behaviour expert Sir Alan Steer acknowledged in his final report on behaviour in schools, published earlier this year,
“Schools have a broader range of powers than ever before to prevent and tackle poor behaviour.”
I therefore dispute some of the statements made about behaviour in our schools.
The licence to teach was announced last week. Teachers will need to keep their practice up to date to renew their licence, which will be linked to their commitment to continuing professional development. We shall start with newly qualified teachers beginning their training this September, those returning to teaching from September 2010 and all supply teachers shortly afterwards. We think that it will help to improve the status of a profession that is already very highly regarded, but it is not a substitute for the existing robust measures to weed out poorly performing teachers. Those measures are already in the hands of individual schools and head teachers, to be used as and when required if capability is an issue. We want to build on the best elements of the existing teacher registration process, so we shall make provision for the General Teaching Council for England to take the matter forward. We envisage the licence to teach being valid for five years, after which the licence holder would need to undergo the revalidation process. More details will be set out in the coming months and there will be further consultation.
As has been said, the most effective continuing professional development often takes place in schools where teachers can learn from one another, but teachers can also learn from other schools. That is constantly being reviewed. We said in the White Paper “Your child, your schools, our future: building a 21st century schools system” that we are asking the TDA and the national college for school leadership to work together to consider how we can best support the growth of more school-to-school, cluster-based professional development for teachers and, indeed, all the members of the children’s work force in schools.
I have set out how we are building on the foundations of the proper investment that we have made in our teachers in the past 12 years by providing new routes into teaching, ensuring that teachers have fair pay and conditions, supporting teachers with excellent professional development and matching that with the new licence to teach. Those reforms will allow our teachers to remain the best in the world. We are committed to backing them, just as we have backed them in the past 12 years, because that is what we need to do to build schools that are fit for the 21st century in which every child and young person receives the excellent education that they deserve. Excellence in education comes primarily from teachers. That is what parents expect and children need.
Mr. Stuart: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Stuart: The Minister is most kind—her generosity overflows. May I just ask her about men teaching in primary schools? Does she have any thoughts on the shortage of male teachers in primary schools and any proposals to encourage more men to teach at that level?
Ms Johnson: Like most hon. Members when they visit schools in their constituencies, I am always struck by the fact that there are not many men teaching in primary schools. I will talk to officials about how that can be encouraged, because of course good role models in primary schools are important.
Mitcham Jobcentre Plus
12.29 pm
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab): I am delighted to have this Adjournment debate, but I am sorry that we are holding it in the current circumstances. Despite the fact that the Government have made enormous efforts to introduce measures to help people looking for work or training, the people we expect to provide that help are ill-equipped to do so.
Over the past 12 years, unemployment has fallen in my constituency. In April 1997, the unemployment rate was 5.4 per cent. In April 2009, it was 3.7 per cent. The Government’s philosophy has been that those who can work should work. Work should pay, and we will do our best to ensure that it does. I appreciate that the unemployment figures are rising again and that there will be more people for jobcentres to deal with, but that is all the more reason for anyone who can work to be given all the help that they need to get a job.
Many good things have happened in the past 12 years, and I would not want to characterise everything as bad. Hundreds of my constituents have found work through the new deal, and thousands have benefited from tax credits for those who are in work.
I appreciate that working in a benefits office is not easy. I know that because I used to do it. My first job on leaving university was as a clerical officer in the then supplementary benefit office at Irene House in Balham. Twenty-eight years ago, it was very much a case of them and us. Many of my colleagues would look down their noses at the people on the other side of the barrier—in those days, there were real, physical barriers. Colleagues used to tease me because I always signed my letters legibly, and people could tell who had written to them. On one occasion, an Irish man who was in his 50s—not unlike my dad—and who had never before seen the inside of a benefits office was so humiliated by the officer’s questioning that he began to cry, and I am not ashamed to say that I joined him.
The Government have made great progress, and there has been some improvement in staff attitudes. However, one role of MPs is to act as a local information service to the Government nationally. We need to be able to tell the Government how their initiatives are working. If things are not working as planned, however, it is surely our role to bring them to the attention of Ministers, and that is why I called for today’s debate.
I am sure that the Mitcham jobcentre has a lot of work to do, and that work is probably not easy, while some of the people the jobcentre deals with may sometimes be awkward. Equally, I may be seeing only people who experience difficulties, and there may be many thousands of people whom I do not see because their cases are dealt with immaculately. In the past few months, however, I have seen an upsurge in the number of constituents who have contacted me about the jobcentre.
It is not only me who has been contacted. Other community groups and organisations, including the citizens advice bureau and a local community development trust, have told me that there has been an increase in the number of people complaining about the service that they receive. Those bodies have also told me that many of their clients are too intimidated to complain and are worried that making a complaint could see them lose
their benefits or be treated even worse the next time they ask for help. Therefore, rather than seeing the rare, exceptional cases where problems occur, we may be seeing the tip of the iceberg, and that is why I am here today.
Like all hon. Members, I want our public services to be services. I want them to operate at a level that we can be proud of and which will help our constituents to find work or to get the training that they need to achieve their aspirations. That is what the Government are all about and it is what I am all about.
I want to highlight a number of cases that I have dealt with or about which local organisations have contacted me. We are all concerned about the standard of advice at local jobcentres and the lack of knowledge or initiative on the part of the staff. That is almost certainly the result of inadequate training. The problem has been noticed not just by me, but by the citizens advice bureau and local community groups.
While I was out canvassing in Wandle road a few weeks ago, I met a woman who had just lost her job. She had held a quite senior position in customer services and she could not believe her experience at Jobcentre Plus. She commented on the unmotivated way in which she was dealt with and on the lack of initiative. She said that she would never have accepted that lack of imagination and helpfulness in her industry.
When Mr. T from Eastfields, who has a history of serious mental health problems, went to the jobcentre, staff sent him on an entirely inappropriate training course that he could only ever fail. There was a lack of imagination about how to deal with him. His case may well have been complicated, but Merton Mind, a charity that would have been ideally placed to help him, was just across the road.
There is also Mr. F of Mitcham, a former bus driver in his 50s who was finding his work too hard. I noticed that he had a Private Security Authority licence, and I had been to a company that provided transport for special needs children the day before, so I put the company in contact with him. There was a vacancy, and he got the job. The question, however, is why Mitcham jobcentre did not suggest the same during the weeks that it saw him. It was not a difficult suggestion to make.
There is not just a lack of imagination and training; I also get complaints about the attitude of staff. I have heard stories about some of the procedures that claimants are forced to go through, which are extremely discouraging. Staff at Mitcham jobcentre are often thought to be rude or, at best, unhelpful. The jobcentre is thought to give bad advice and bad customer service on occasion.
Let me mention the case of Sandra from Morden, because there is a particular problem with crisis loans. Sandra, too, has a history of mental illness. She spent three whole days in the jobcentre because of complications in communications between Mitcham and the central processing unit in Makerfield. One day, she spent from 8 o’clock in the morning until 7 o’clock at night at the jobcentre. At the close of the day, she was told that she could go to the police station to get help. Obviously, the police officers met that advice with disbelief.
Sandra went in one day to ask whether documents might be faxed to Makerfield. She was told that she needed to make an appointment to use the fax and to
return the following day. When she did go to get her documents faxed, the line was busy, but she was not told. All the time, staff knew that she had no money and that she was walking to and from the jobcentre each day.
That brings me to the issue of photocopying—I can hardly believe that I am talking in the House of Commons about a photocopier at Mitcham jobcentre, but I am. In one particular incident, someone was told to fill in a form, but they were informed they could not do so on the premises. They were forced to leave and to stand on the pavement outside while they completed the form. When they returned, they were told that it had to be copied. There was a photocopier right there, just a few feet away, and there seemed to be many staff in the office. However, the person was told that if they wanted to use the photocopier, they would once again have to leave the jobcentre and stand on the pavement outside. They had to use their mobile to phone Edinburgh to arrange to use the photocopier, which was only a few feet away in the jobcentre. Eventually, they got through to staff in Edinburgh, who booked a spot an hour and a half later on the photocopier, which was right there in Mitcham. If something like that had happened to Victor Meldrew, we would not believe it, but it is routine at Mitcham jobcentre.
From the feedback that local groups and I have obtained, it appears that the worst advice is given to lone parents and to anyone looking for training rather than work. Lone parent advisers and personal advisers often do not know about courses that are available or they provide inaccurate information. Obviously, it is not just the jobcentre that runs courses, and many organisations and colleges also run them, but staff at Mitcham jobcentre do not seem to know which courses they sponsor. There is no written material to advise clients, who are often told to trawl through large numbers of prospectuses, even though they do not know what they are looking for or what might be there for them.
At the other end of the spectrum, there are examples of Mitcham jobcentre enrolling someone on an external course, saying that it includes child care, only for the parent to turn up and discover that it does not. With all the other pressures on young parents, such mistakes are extremely disheartening.
There is also the case of a young woman who was not able to pass any exams at school. She went to see her lone parent adviser to suggest that she wanted to be a beautician. The adviser apparently frowned at her and insisted that she should redo her GCSEs instead, even though it was far more likely that she would get work if she got training.
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