HC Deb 08 June 1976 vol 912 cc1172-5
2. Mr. Gwilym Roberts

asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will initiate an inquiry into the advantages and disadvantages of traditional teaching methods as compared with a less orthodox approach.

8. Mr. Newton

asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what recent research has been carried out on the results achieved by different teaching methods; and what conclusions he has drawn.

Miss Margaret Jackson

Research workers at the University of Lancaster recently published a report on teaching styles and pupil progress. As I stated in reply to a Question by my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) on 3rd May, the Department and Inspectorate are studying the Lancaster University report but are not yet in a position to decide whether further research is needed.

Mr. Roberts

Does the Minister accept that this report tended to mix up the two issues of teaching methods and the unrelated question of comprehensive education? Many of those who are totally committed to comprehensive education are seriously worried about whether one or two of the newer methods used are capable of producing the necessary numeracy required as an essential basis for higher scientific and technical work.

Miss Jackson

My hon. Friend is raising two different issues. First, it is true that people have sought to draw from the report lessons that are not contained in it, about the benefits of comprehensive education and the relative effects of formal and informal teaching. Dr. Bennett said that such lessons should not be drawn from the report. But standards of literacy and numeracy are separate issues, and a matter about which all of us are concerned. This is why the Assessment of Performance Unit was set up in the Department to monitor these kinds of methods.

Mr. Newton

Does the Minister agree that at the very least this report confirms the anxieties felt by a lot of parents? In these circumstances it is time that the Ministry showed signs of taking the problem more seriously than it has done to date.

Miss Jackson

I do not think that the report confirms the anxieties of parents. The very exaggerated and often quite inaccurate comments made about the report by hon. Members opposite and people outside this House may have caused unjustified anxiety among parents. Anyone who reads the report and considers what it says, as opposed to what is said about it, will realise that it is very hard to give a simple judgment of these things. It is difficult to decide how far a judgment made in the Bennett Report can be applied over the whole country. If the hon. Member is seeking to make a point on the value of informal and formal teaching methods, I remind him that a teacher who used basically informal methods got the best results in the survey.

Mr. R. C. Mitchell

Does the Minister agree that change for change's sake is not necessarily a good thing? Will both she and her Department take a little more interest in this question, and make sure that new teaching methods which are not fully tested or tried are not inflicted widespread on all children throughout the country?

Miss Jackson

I accept that we should not have change for change's sake, or rush about installing new teaching methods. My hon. Friend's question seems to be a classic statement of the argument that we should not seek to rush about trying to reinstitute more formal methods of teaching in schools, and instituting change for change's sake. That is a very good reason for looking carefully at the result of this study, as with everything else contained in the report. We by no means dismiss the report, or take it lightly. We wish to consider seriously the real lessons to be learned from the report, and not to regard it as some kind of educational propaganda.

Mr. Thompson

Will the Minister assure us that when new theories are being put into practice there will be proper pilot schemes and a proper evaluation of those schemes before the theories are applied generally? My experience as a teacher of modern languages is that we have gone from one thing to another in that subject without properly evaluating anything, and we have lost a great deal in the process.

Miss Jackson

I take it that the hon. Member is saying that we should not rush headlong into formulating new theories of excessively formalised education on the basis of the Bennett Report. I agree with him.

Mr. George Cunningham

On the subject of teaching methods, does my hon. Friend agree that it will be useful to us all finally to get hold of the report of the ILEA inquiry into the Sir William Tyndale School? Does she realise that it is now eight or nine months since the inquiry began, and at least three months since it finished? Will the Department, realising that it has no locus standi in the matter, simply use its influence to chivvy the ILEA into getting the report out very quickly?

Miss Jackson

This report is a matter not for us but for the ILEA, but we are concerned that it should be available as soon as is reasonably possible. My hon. Friend should not forget that it was a very long and complex inquiry. I cannot judge what the report says until I have seen it.

Sir G. Sinclair

Will the Minister take the report as a serious warning of some of the things that are going wrong, and that can be improved? Will she consider taking early steps to see that structured teaching is more widespread in all schools?

Miss Jackson

It is a little hard to see what lessons we can learn from a report that I understand is not completely written yet, let alone published. On the hon. Gentleman's second point, I must tell him that Her Majesty's Inspectorate has always, consistently throughout the years, advocated a structured framework of teaching in schools. There is nothing new, revolutionary or unacceptable about that.