HC Deb 30 March 1993 vol 222 cc145-6
9. Mr. Pickles

To ask the Secretary of State for Education if he will make a statement on the results of the tests for seven-year-olds.

Mr. Patten

Last December I published the national and local results of seven-year-olds in the 1992 tests. Those results fully supported the importance of the tests, showing some worrying variations in performance between local education authorities and continuing weaknesses in key areas of the curriculum: for example, the tests revealed that just under a quarter of seven-year-olds still could not read independently by that age. Much more needs to be done.

Mr. Pickles

I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply, which will be read with great interest by teachers in my constituency. Given that the children who sat the test for seven-year-olds are likely to be the beneficiaries in full of our education reforms, and given that a recent report showed that the quality of both teaching and learning were improved by the tests, does my right hon. Friend agree that children go through the education system only once and that valuable lessons can be learnt by those who seek to boycott the tests at 14? Will my right hon. Friend give a commitment that he will not leave these children at the mercy of those who want to ruin their education and that he will continue with our education reforms so that every child gets a chance?

Mr. Patten

My hon. Friend has carried with him his robust turn of phrase and accurate analysis of a situation in his journey from Bradford to becoming a born-again southerner in Brentwood and Ongar.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I can give him every undertaking for which he asks. The evidence produced by the independent inspectorate this week clearly shows that, year on year, the tests have produced improvements in learning and teacher assessment. Best of all, they have improved the expectations of individual teachers about what children can achieve.

Mr. Skinner

Would it not be a good idea for the whole Cabinet to have another test? Is it not a cheek to be talking about testing seven-year-old kids when the Cabinet got the poll tax and council tax figures wrong, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was £15 billion out on the public sector borrowing requirement and £10 billion out on the balance of payments and chucked £10 billion away on Black Wednesday, and the right hon. Gentleman—who is supposed to speak for education—is educated beyond his intelligence?

Mr. Patten

All I can say to the hon. Gentleman is that the voters of Bolsover clearly got their electoral tests wrong time after time.

Dr. Spink

Will my right hon. Friend encourage the use of the seven-year-olds' test results to report to parents in terms of value added in future years, which will be much more useful than giving an absolute level of result?

Mr. Patten

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The tests will make it possible to judge the improvement or not of a group of children at each age level as they progress from seven to 11 to 14 to 16. It is the best sort of value added measurement that the tests will reveal over the years.

Mr. Win Griffiths

Will not the Secretary of State admit, to his own shame, that the poor results to which he referred to for seven-year-olds were produced after 14 years of Tory government? The Office for Standards in Education report to which his hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) referred, and to which the Secretary of State referred in his reply to him, says that the benefits and costs are finely balanced. There are some clearly discernible signs that the impact of 'teaching to the test' and the complexities of the assessment required could lead to a distortion between teaching, learning and assessment. Will the Secretary of State heed that warning and undertake a review of this tortuous system of tests and assessment, consult teachers and then introduce reforms along the lines of those that were introduced by his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland—reforms which have already happily been accepted by teachers, parents and pupils in Scotland?

Mr. Patten

Each year's tests are preparations for the next year's tests. Each year's tests are refined on the basis of experience of the tests of the previous year. The pilot tests have conclusively shown, both at age seven and at age 14, that there is an unacceptably long tail of children—perhaps up to 30 per cent.—who do not come out of school with the standards of literacy that we should expect. That is justification for the testing regime, let alone the very clear way in which the inspectorate has pointed to these tests as raising standards overall and the expectations of teachers about what children should achieve. Above all else, I believe that we need a more competitive education system and that expectations should be very much greater than they have been in the past.