HC Deb 28 January 1992 vol 202 cc797-9
3. Mr. Amos

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will make a statement on the implementation of standardised testing in schools.

The Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Kenneth Clarke)

Testing is the key to raising standards in our schools by providing clear information about pupils' progress. Effective annual tests of seven-year-olds are already in place. Tests of 11, 14 and 16-year-olds will follow in the next three years.

Mr. Amos

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that last year's testing of seven-year olds showed that our schools need less play and more learning, less discovery and more teaching, less mixed ability and more setting, less child-centred education and more whole-class subject teaching? Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the best way to raise standards in our schools is to provide more testing and to make the results of those tests publicly available—both of which the Labour party opposes?

Mr. Clarke

Yes, I certainly accept that. The results show an unacceptably wide difference between the performance of the very best and that of the very worst. They show that those tests have nothing to do with the amount spent per pupil in individual authority areas—some of the biggest spenders were right down at the bottom. They also show that results do not necessarily have anything to do with socio-economic circumstances or anything of that kind. I share my hon. Friend's belief that the answer lies in the sort of suggestions that he made and which have been revealed in the report of the three wise men.

Mr. Flannery

Does the Secretary of State understand that the testing of seven-year-olds does not quite mean that? He needs to be more careful. An academic year has three terms and children enter school at various stages in that year. Many of the children who are tested are only six. The results over two to three years will include those for children who missed out two terms and who were tested before the age of seven—they will account for a large percentage of the results. The Secretary of State has got it completely wrong. Daily assessment has gone on for all these years, with tests occasionally being undertaken—that is a reality. If testing is to be done, it should be done properly. The test for seven-year olds should not include children who have not yet reached that age.

Mr. Clarke

First, the good news. I am delighted to hear my hon. Friend—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh?"] I meant the hon. Gentleman, but he almost became my hon. Friend because of his grudging acceptance of the principle of testing. It is certainly true, as he says, that tests for seven-year-olds are a shorthand way of describing the progress of those at a particular stage. Some of them have spent more terms in schools than others— which must be borne in mind when looking at the position of an individual pupil—but all those factors even out in the local authorities. For example, the performance of the hon. Gentleman's authority, Sheffield, was markedly inferior to that of Rotherham, although the discrepancies of the sort that he described do not exist in those two authorities.

Mrs. Maureen Hicks

Do not we owe it to all our children, right across the country and irrespective of their primary schools, to identify their needs, strengths and weaknesses at an early age? Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the Labour party is a party of slow learners? Not only has the Labour party not realised that GCSE results at 16 in Labour-controlled authorities are some of the worst, but it has learnt nothing—it still opposes standardised testing from the age of seven.

Mr. Clarke

I agree that it is essential to get the basics of primary education right, because until a child has mastered them it has no possibility of gaining access to the rest of education. I agree also that it is absurd to suggest that there is anything wrong with national testing of pupils' progress at certain ages, both to inform parents and to inform localities about the performance of their schools. It is extraordinary that that has been resisted even before we have received the first results.

Mr. Straw

Is the Secretary of State aware that one of the most damning conclusions of the report on primary education which he published last week was the evidence that standards of reading among seven-year-olds have slumped since 1988, over precisely the period when Ministers have produced one change after another in the system of standardised testing for seven-year-olds? Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman ashamed of that record —of the fact that the reading standards of seven-year-olds have slumped by up to five months? Is he ashamed of the fact that every month he has been in office reading standards of seven-year-olds have fallen? Why is it that the Government promised higher standards of education in 1979, 1983 and 1987 but the results of 13 years in office have been lower standards of education?

Mr. Clarke

I seem to recall that the hon. Gentleman was one of those who until recently persistently argued that standards in our schools were not falling and that he resisted pressure for changes in teaching methods and other ideas designed to correct the fall. He merely strengthens the conclusions of the three wise men, who think that there may have been some recent decline but who certainly did not atribute it to the national curriculum, as the hon. Gentleman did. They reject that argument.

The hon. Gentleman has no evidence for asserting that standards have dropped month by month. If he is beginning to share the public anxiety about standards in our schools, he should be ashamed of himself for having resisted each and every reform that has been aimed at reversing the trend and improving them.