HC Deb 18 July 1988 vol 137 cc907-14

Lords amendment: No. 39, in page 13, line 42, at end insert `and "foundation subjects" includes "core subjects"'.

Read a Second time.

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Mr. Fatchett

I beg to move amendment (a) to the Lords amendment, in line 2, at end insert '(notwithstanding that "core subjects" shall be mandatory for all pupils in accordance with any Order made under section 4(2)(a) or (b) above, and that the other "foundation subjects" shall be advisory for the purposes of enabling teachers and headteachers to implement the National Curriculum having regard to any attainment targets or programmes of study specified under that section.)'. The background to the amendment is of particular interest. The original intention according to the Secretary of State was to have the national curriculum of a grammar school type. The argument was that that curriculum would be common to all parts of the country. We heard from one Minister after another that the major purpose was to ensure that if a child moved from Devon to Durham the curriculum would be exactly the same.

During the life of the Bill in Committee, in another place and outside this House, that original notion of the national curriculum has been subject to heavy criticism. In his book "Take care, Mr. Baker!" Julian Haviland made the following comments on the Secretary of State's original concept of the national curriculum. He said: I cannot recall one response that endorsed without reservation the structure for the curriculum which the Government was proposing. That criticism from outside was echoed in the Chamber and in Committee. In Committee and on Report, hon. Members on both sides of the House expressed concern about the original concept of the national curriculum—its inflexibility, its inability to take account of cross-curricular activity, its inability to take account of innovation and to satisfy the needs of those who advocated particular subjects.

You will recall, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that in the autumn last year we had a very interesting late-night Adjournment debate on the role of Latin in our schools and whether it should form part of the national curriculum. That reflected a debate, not just on the Opposition Benches but on Conservative Benches, about the composition, nature and structure of the national curriculum. Legitimate points were made about the flexibility of the original proposals.

When the Bill reached another place, that process was strengthened by several contributions, not least that of Lord Joseph who argued very strongly that he was worried about the Government's national curriculum. He argued not that he was opposed to the Bill, but that he felt that the national curriculum was too prescriptive and was run in a way that was contrary to educational and political experience in other countries. He argued that it was contrary to his White Paper, "Better Schools", published two years previously in which the Government argued not for a national curriculum but for a core curriculum.

The next point is crucial in terms of the chronology of events. In the debates in another place, the Government seem to have recognised the need for change from a curriculum that is tight and prescriptive to one that is a good deal more flexible. Baroness Hooper suggested—and this reflects the purpose of the amendment—that there should be a three-tier national curriculum with different characteristics for each tier. It was said that there was to be a core curriculum of mathematics, English and science, and that within it there would be tight attainment targets and work projects. Outside the core curriculum, there are to be foundation subjects, in which the attainment targets and the proposed work will be less tightly prescribed and more flexible, leaving teachers with the initiative to develop work fitted to the needs of their schools and pupils.

There will be a third area of subjects comprising music, art, physical education and—I would argue—religious education, where there will be even less prescription and content in terms of attainment targets, and even more flexibility for individual teachers. What we have is not the national curriculum that the Secretary of State introduced to the country a year ago, and which he said would be taught in all our schools. He gave the impression that it would be totally tight and totally prescriptive.

We have now seen emerge from the House of Lords a wholly different animal, which suggests that the Government have learnt a great deal from the criticism they received from the House and those outside it. According to Baroness Hooper, the Government are now proposing a flexible, three-tier national curriculum. Tonight, we want to hear from the Minister of State whether she agrees with her ministerial colleague, and that the nature of the Government's curriculum is as her noble Friend described it.

If it is, and if the Government have arrived at a nationally-determined core curriculum, could they not have saved themselves a great deal of trouble, and the House a great deal of time, if they had pursued their proposals in a different way, instead of refusing to consult teachers, local education authorities and parents? The Government had a unique opportunity to devise a nationally-agreed core curriculum, for which there was support from both major political parties, from the teachers' unions, and from parents. We now want to know whether the Minister has learnt from experience and agrees with us that this country needs a consensual, core curriculum for our children. That is the question that arises from these amendments.

We are still awaiting an indication from the Government of the national curriculum's detailed time scale. They still like to believe, and to create the image, that there is a national curriculum ready to be taken off the shelf and delivered to parents, to schools and to children. That is far from the case. We want to hear from the Minister what are the nature of the time scales.

We want to hear also how the Government will deliver the national curriculum. Where are the teachers? We now know that fewer and fewer youngsters are entering teacher training and that the Government will face acute embarassment in providing teachers of science and modern languages, and of other subjects as well. Where are those teachers to come from when we have a teaching profession that has been demoralised by the Government's actions?

Finally, we want to know where the money will come from for the national curriculum. Time and again, we have been told that it will be easy to finance, but the truth is that the Government are spending more money this year on promoting CTCs than they are on promoting the national curriculum for all of our children. That is a measure of the Government's priorities.

When the Association of County Councils, which is not Labour led, told the Government that it needs £600 million of additional resources to implement the national curriculum, the Government responded not with money but with a deafening silence, which suggests that they have no interest in ensuring that our national curriculum is adequately resourced. The Government refused to give adequate time and resources to the GCSE examination, and thousands of children up and down the country have suffered as a result. Will they do the same with the national curriculum?

Finally, let me raise a question that has already been raised by a number of people outside the House. Reliable sources suggest that the teaching of the languages of the European Community and of Russian, Arabic, Japanese and Chinese will be acceptable for the national curriculum. The Joint Council of Language Associations has written to me, and, I suspect, to other members of the Standing Committee. The letter says: We are worried about the discrimination implicit in the very idea of listing languages. The above proposals would mean, for example, that a child with an Italian or Chinese background would be perfectly entitled to continue the study of their language at school and achieve examination recognition, whereas one from an Indian background would not. What have the Government in mind for foreign language teaching?

What has happened to the national curriculum in the Bill's passage through the House is an indication of the effective opposition led by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw). That opposition has allowed us time after time to put forward constructive criticism of the Government's proposals. We have been able to show that the Government's initial approach was too prescriptive, too inflexible and simply unworkable. We welcome a new flexible approach and a greater reliance on teachers and their expertise.

The Government have learnt from Labour: they have learnt from our arguments and our criticisms. That learning process will not help the Secretary of State with some of his Back Benchers who wanted dogmatic, centralised control, and it may not help him with the Prime Minister, but it will certainly improve the national curriculum and the Bill. What now stands on the curriculum is a victory for the Opposition.

Mrs. Rumbold

There is nothing really new about the statements made by my colleague in another place about the national curriculum. It is obvious from what the hon. Member for Leeds, Central (Mr. Fatchett) has been saying that Opposition Members have been labouring under serious misapprehensions during all our debates. Let me make it clear that Lords amendment No. 39 was not a Government amendment. We believed that the Bill was clear in including the three core subjects among the 10 foundation subjects as set out in clause 3. But the point caused some discussion in Committee and in another place, and we are therefore happy for the clarification to be included in the Bill.

The amendment gives us an opportunity to consider the final shape of our national curriculum provisions as they have emerged from Parliament's consideration. They are, in essence, unchanged. The concept of a national curriculum backed by statute has been generally accepted and, indeed, welcomed by all concerned, but there have certainly been some improvements as a result of extensive debate and consultations outside the House. The most important changes have increased the flexibility in the application of the curriculum. We debated many of the relevant issues in our earlier discussions on special educational needs, but we have seen off all attempts to increase flexibility to a point at which the curriculum's objectives would have been at risk. We have rejected the notion of schools opting out of a broad and balanced curriculum, and that of limiting the curriculum to a core of three subjects, which—as we have said on a number of occasions—would offer little improvement on the present position in schools.

We have secured a framework within which all pupils, of all abilities, can be treated in accordance with their needs—needs which will be much better identified as a result of the new assessment arrangements. Schools will continue to have the opportunity to offer pupils a range of additional subjects in their later secondary years, and there is no question of subjects being under threat because they do not form part of the national curriculum. All we are saying is that such subjects cannot replace the elements of the national curriculum.

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The national curriculum is therefore central to our policies for improving standards. The Bill sets the framework, and what matters now is that all concerned should work together to implement the best possible curriculum for all pupils. I have been encouraged that, as more has become known about our practical proposals—for example, acceptance of the main TGAT recommendations—the more they have been welcomed. They have been welcomed by the teaching profession, by parents and by the outside world generally. I am confident that when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State puts the formal proposals on maths and science to the new National Curriculum Council next month, which will be based on the working group's final report, they, too, wall be recognised by all teachers as reflecting good practice and as helping, not constraining, the classroom teacher.

The NCC and SEAC are now established in shadow form. They are ready to get to grips with their important roles. The NCC is preparing to carry out the wide consultations that will be required on my right hon. Friend's statutory proposals. The timetable for this, and for the work on the assessment system that SEAC will carry out in parallel, is fairly tight, but I am confident that the new bodies will rise to the challenge.

We shall be keeping up the momentum, with a view to introducing the first programmes of study and attainment targets in September 1989 for maths, science and primary English. We shall also on that date require that pupils in the first three key stages are offered the full range of foundation subjects.

There is much to be done before September 1989 and thereafter as the national curriculum is implemented progressively for other subjects and age groups. We shall be keeping the education service and parents fully informed as the various requirements come on stream and helping the local education authorities and schools to meet their new responsibilities through the education support grants and in-service grants. But the next steps are very much in the hands of the local authorities, the schools and the teachers who, I know, share our aim of offering a better education to all pupils. I hope that they will be prepared to seize the opportunity that we are offering them to do so much more effectively.

I was asked during an earlier debate about the relationship between TVEI and the national curriculum. TVEI does not embody a specific curriculum. It is about the delivery, through a wide range of curricular frameworks, of a practical approach to learning. It is true that, as its name implies, schools in particular that participate in TVEI will be expected to bring out the technical implications, where that is appropriate, but anybody who has had any contact with this initiative will know that it allows room for a broad range of approaches to the curriculum and that it is one of the reasons why it has been such an outstanding success.

As TVEI has developed, it has become increasingly clear that one cannot say that specified portions of the curriculum are or are not within the initiative. TVEI is something that, in the best examples, pervades the whole curriculum for pupils of all abilities.

Mr. Ted Rowlands (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney)

Is the Minister aware that in a document entitled "Checklist for scrutinising proposals," by education authorities for the TVEI extension, two questions are posed for education authorities? They are asked whether the technology time slot is 10 per cent. in the entitlement of core curricula and whether there is a balanced science time slot of 20 per cent. in the entitlement of core curricula. Added together, they mean that the TVEI extension will lead to local authorities expecting 30 per cent. of the core curriculum to be devoted to technology and basic science. The Secretary of State has made the point that 70 per cent. is the limit to cover all foundation and core curriculum subjects. If that is so, how can teachers be expected to cram all the other subjects into the remaining 40 per cent.?

Mrs. Rumbold

I can reassure the hon. Gentleman on that point. The working groups are making recommendations to the National Curriculum Council on what is contained in science and technology and on the practicalities of what they consider, after a great deal of consultation, to be the right amount of time that shall be spent by children in schools on those subjects. Whatever has been said by other bodies, the definitive statement on that will come when the recommendations are made to my right hon. Friend by the National Curriculum Council.

Mr. Rowlands

The Minister has just made an important statement. May I assume that the Training Commission document, and particularly its checklist for scrutiny, has no real authority and certainly does not override the many other studies taking place with the National Curriculum Council and that it is not the definitive definition of how a TVEI scheme will be extended or how education authorities will qualify for those extensions?

Mrs. Rumbold

In relation to what happens with TVEI, what the Training Commission has suggested will obviously be considered by the working groups on science and technology, but that will not be the definitive statement. We shall have to wait until both those working groups have produced recommendations about the amount of time that they consider to be right and proper for pupils to spend on those subjects in conjunction with the rest of the timetable that has to be set out for the national curriculum subjects and other subjects.

Mr. Fatchett

The Minister has raised a number of important points. Will the working parties be prescriptive on the amount of time in the school timetable to be taken on core subjects and on foundation subjects?

Mrs. Rumbold

The task of the working parties and the groups on specific subjects is to set out for the National Curriculum Council attainment targets and programmes of work that they suggest youngsters should be able to reach at specified times during their school careers. All those recommendations from the working parties will go to the National Curriculum Council, which will consult widely with teachers and others who have a legitimate interest before it comes back to my right hon. Friend, who will take into account those consultations, make his orders accordingly, go out to consultation yet again to make sure that the time recommended to be spent on specified subjects is right, and finally lay orders before the House.

That will allow the National Curriculum Council to continue to examine what is being taught, to update and progress the curriculum as it considers right, and to make proposals to my right hon. Friend, so that, if necessary, he can make amendments to what happens in schools.

Mr. Fatchett

I am interested in what the Minister says about how the procedures will work. I understand what she was saying about the consultation period, but she said that at the end of the consultation period the Secretary of State would decide how much time on the timetable would be necessary for each subject, taking into account the comments made by the working parties and after consultation. Will the Secretary of State be prescriptive in that way?

Mrs. Rumbold

No. The Secretary of State is unlikely to be in that position. It is not anticipated that there will be anything more than a broad outline of how much time youngsters will be expected to spend on certain subjects.

Clearly, one could go round this particular mulberry bush indefinitely, because in a school curriculum, as everyone well knows, periods are allocated each day throughout the school week for certain subjects. I anticipate that most children will have an English lesson, a maths lesson and a science lesson at least once a day during the week if they are satisfactorily to conclude the work that they will need to do to fulfil the terms of the national curriculum. Similarly, other subjects will require a certain amount of time, but not so much as the maths, English and science, and possibly one or two other subjects. However, at this stage it is not for me or my right hon. Friend to make suggestions, because we have not yet received the recommendations from the working groups and certainly the National Curriculum Council has not had an opportunity to make its recommendations.

Mr. Rowlands

The Minister has said that it is not a matter for her or for the Secretary of State. Therefore, it is certainly not a matter for the Training Commission. Will the Secretary of State write to the Training Commission to establish the authority and basis upon which the criteria are to be used? As I understand it, they are being used now to decide whether a TVEI extension scheme will be applied to an education authority.

Mrs. Rumbold

The hon. Gentleman's worries are somewhat premature because the National Curriculum Council has not yet fully started its work. As soon as it is established, it will take on board the recommendations from the working parties. Nothing that the Training Commission may have suggested to schools can override the National Curriculum Council's conclusions. That must be the reassurance for which the hon. Gentleman is looking.

I have been pressed, particularly by the hon. Member for Leeds, Central, about teacher numbers. The hon. Gentleman was concerned about that. Pupil numbers in secondary schools are still declining. In England, secondary school numbers will fall by 280,000 between now and 1991. That constitutes a drop of 9 per cent. The recovery in numbers will he much slower than the fall. It will be the year 2000 before the current year's level of secondary school numbers is reached again. At present the ratio of pupils to teachers is at its lowest ever level, and it is still falling. Our expenditure plans are framed on the assumption that it will fall as low as 17:1. That will provide local education authorities with scope to redeploy teachers and to make the most effective use of the collective skills and expertise of the teaching force in order to prepare for and implement the national curriculum.

Some teachers will require further or new in-service training. We are preparing to make grants available in order to implement the possibility of teachers preparing for the specific requirements of the national curriculum.

Ms. Armstrong

The Minister talked about falling rolls. That will mean fewer children leaving school at 18 and training as teachers. There will be fewer people available for recruitment. How can the Government estimate how many teachers they need, given that there is now such confusion about the amount of time that will be spent on each subject? How can the Government reassure parents and children that there will be sufficient teachers to be trained to deliver the curriculum?

Mrs. Rumbold

The confusion is confined to the hon. Lady's mind. Falling rolls will have a considerable effect on the availability of teachers for retraining or for returning to the subject in which they were first trained. It is well known that there are some teachers, particularly in our secondary schools, who are not teaching their first discipline. It is also true that demographic changes will have some effect on the recruitment of people into teaching. It is for that reason that we have taken steps to undertake high profile recruitment at universities and among those who might return to teaching. It is also why my right hon. Friend has suggested that there may be a new form of teachers with licensed-teacher status to ensure that our children are provided with the best teaching force available.

Under the orders listing foreign languages we can provide that a child cannot satisfy the national curriculum requirement by studying his or her mother language. We have not yet set up the working party on foreign languages. It will be for that working party to take into consideration the matter that has been raised with me.

Mr. Patrick Thompson (Norwich, North)

When considering the supply of teachers, will my hon. Friend also consider the supply of ancillary staff and technicians, who are just as important for the successful teaching of subjects?

Mrs. Rumbold

My hon. Friend makes an important point about ancillary staff—

It being half-past Eleven o'clock, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER proceeded, pursuant to the Order this day, to put the Question already proposed from the Chair.

Amendment negatived.

Lords amendment No. 39 agreed to.

Lords amendments Nos. 40 to 53, 55 to 67 and 69 to 88 agreed to.

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