HC Deb 26 April 1996 vol 276 cc743-50

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Brandreth.]

2.31 pm
Mr. John Marshall (Hendon, South)

I have instituted this debate because I strongly believe that there has been a decline in relative and absolute standards of education in our country. I remember that in 1960 when my late father went as a visiting professor to North-Western university in America, he came back and said that his students in Glasgow were two years ahead of the students at North-Western. When I was a student, my professor of history went to John Hopkins university in America and his colleagues there said that the students at St. Andrews were two years ahead of American students. I do not believe that such boasts could be maintained today.

Standards have declined both relatively and absolutely and, of course, a second factor is that education is the key to the success of our country. We have limited natural resources and depend for our future prosperity upon the skills of our people. Thirdly, education provides the opportunity for children from deprived backgrounds to leapfrog from inner-city decay and decline to successful careers. Historically, grammar schools provided the opportunity for bright children from poor homes to enter university and go on to successful careers.

There is much evidence that absolute standards have declined. For example, a study of O-level scripts in the 1980s and a comparison with GCSE submissions in the 1990s concluded that pupils' spelling, grammar and punctuation had measurably worsened since 1980. There was a comment in The Times of 9 April that prospective employers and university admission tutors have reported a growing inability among many otherwise gifted students to use appropriate English. We are talking about university admission tutors. If such tutors have reported inability to use appropriate English among the brighter members of our population, what has happened to the less bright children?

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research has estimated that British 10-year-olds are two years behind their continental counterparts. In The Times Education Supplement on 15 March, Exeter university said: British secondary pupils start from a lower level and then make less progress than students abroad". An Exeter professor said: We do seem to be underperforming in comparison with European and Far Eastern countries … it is a real concern we are lagging so far behind. Similar algebra problems were given to English and Scottish students and to those from elsewhere. They were solved by 11.3 per cent. of the British students, 12.5 per cent. of the Germans, 16.6 per cent. of the Polish and 23.9 per cent. of the students from Singapore. At the age of 14, the figures were 14.4 per cent. for Britain, 17.6 per cent. for Germany, 2.9 per cent. for Poland and 30.7 per cent. for Singapore.

In an article in The Times Education Supplement on 5 April, Brenda Leonard said: The spread of semi-literacy must be stopped. Anyone who is involved in training post-16 year olds tells the same story—that every day they see evidence of children who have been failed by the education system. Youngsters … have emerged at the end of 11 years of compulsory education with only the barest knowledge of the English language. This morning, as I often do, I visited a school in my constituency. I saw that the children were doing some mathematical sums. The first thing that they were asked to do was to multiply 25 by three. They were not eight, 10 or 12-year-olds—they were 14-year-olds.

Mr. Gyles Brandreth (City of Chester)

Not possible.

Mr. Marshall

I have come straight from the school. The answer is 75, of course—I am glad that we have an accountant as a Minister. The fact that 14-year-old children could be asked to multiply 25 by three tells a story about education in this country.

Mr. Christopher Woodhead is chief inspector of schools. If St. Christopher is the patron saint of travellers, Christopher Woodhead is the patron saint of all those who wish to be upwardly mobile in our society. He has shown that pupils achieve less than they should. Half of all primary schools and 40 per cent. of all secondary schools achieve less than they should. More than half of all 11-year-olds are below expected standards in maths and English. At 14, 45 per cent. of pupils fail to meet expected standards in English, maths and science.

On 4 January, Sir Geoffrey Holland, a former permanent secretary at the Department for Education and Employment, said that education in Britain was placed 35th in the world. The Times of that day said that the results in education were far lower than its funding deserves. The figure for 16-year-olds passing GCSE in maths, the national language and one science is 27 per cent. in the United Kingdom, 62 per cent. in Germany and 66 per cent. in France.

Given a simple addition and subtraction, 4 per cent. of the bottom 40 per cent. of 13 year-olds in Britain could answer correctly, but, with a far more complicated sum, 76 per cent. of German children of the same age could do so.

Sir Geoffrey Holland said that 13-year-olds in Britain are two years behind their continental counterparts. We need a change in emphasis on standards of spelling, punctuation and arithmetic. I object most strongly to those patronising people who say that those are middle-class values. A decent education is the birthright of every child. It is especially important for those who live in our inner cities, as education is the escalator of opportunity—it gives children the chance to escape from a life of mediocrity and under-achievement.

Why have we done so badly? It is not that we do not spend enough money. There has been a failure to recognise the wide variety of talent and ability. There are the very academic, the average and the non-academic, who will be blessed with other talents. For too long, we have ignored the very academic child. I remember interviewing some teachers and asking all of them, "How do you deal with the non-average child?" They all concentrated on the below-average child. God must have loved the average child, because he made so many of them. Nevertheless, other countries deal a better hand to all children.

When I visited Israel, I went first to a very academic school, rather like the traditional British grammar school, where the results were very good. I then went to the technical school at Ramat Gan, which taught children how to cut diamonds because that was the local industry. I then went to a school in Jerusalem that was training children to be motor mechanics and hairdressers. People said to us, "You may wonder why we are training children in these skills." They explained that it was so that all the children would have a job when they left school. Indeed, almost all the small garages in Jerusalem are owned by graduates of that school.

I have visited the curriculum centre in the London borough of Barnet, where people are trained to become bricklayers and motor mechanics. There is an enthusiasm among the teachers and the pupils that we do not always find in other schools. It is wrong to describe such training as education for failures; it is a recognition that it is an appropriate education for people with those particular skills. It is significant that, where people have been given such an education, truancy is low.

I asked the person in charge of the centre how many truants there were. He said that there was none because the pupils loved what the centre was teaching them and knew that they were being given a passport to a job when they left the school.

In our secondary schools, there should be greater selection, more training, more setting and more vocational training. However, the real problem can be found well before children go to secondary schools, because the primary schools have failed to recognise the need to push children as far as possible. I once asked the headmistress of a primary school whether she set homework. She said, "Homework—that is rather unfair to some children because they would not do it." Instead, she is unfair to all the children by giving them no homework. Their love of English was to be gained from "Neighbours" rather than reading a book. Their love of spelling was to come from the spellcheck of a computer. Their mental arithmetic was to come from pressing buttons on a calculator. That is not the way to educate children, but it is the path that we have gone down for too long.

I have just carried out a survey of schools in my constituency, when the question of homework was raised. Some of the schools were very good. For example, in the Menorah junior school, the children in the sixth form are set 50 minutes of homework a day. Another school said: The children will possibly"— possibly, not probably— get homework twice a week. Sometimes parents need to take holidays in school time and may ask for their children to be given homework for that period. How does the school react to that enthusiasm for homework? It does so with the words, "This is not possible."

Another school said that homework is set only at weekends, and when another school was asked about its policy, there was silence at the end of the telephone line. Then it commented: We do homework as and when. We do not want to overload the children. They need some time off. Another school said to my assistant: Of course we have to remember with homework that the teachers have to correct it, and we have to take account of the fact that teachers might be tired. I would prefer to hear of pupils who were tired because they had done some homework, than of pupils who had not had the opportunity to do it at all.

We must not talk solely about academic standards. We should recognise that the children of today are entering a much more complex world than that of 20 or 30 years ago. The temptations of drugs, for example, are just as potent as the temptation of cigarettes was when some of us were slightly younger. The traditional standards by which most people once lived are under attack as never before. What does it profit a child if he obtains four A-levels and loses his soul to drugs? Education is more important than creating only academic standards. It is also important that the right ethos is inculcated in our children. Some of the denominational schools do a magnificent job, but the quality of religious education in some schools is rather pathetic.

I never thought that I would have to quote the editor of The Observer in support of a course of action, but I should like to refer to an article that he wrote on 2 March 1996, in which he said: The second fundamental fact of British education is its surrender to the dictates of social engineering rather than universal high standards". The Times said that the most important thing that we need to do is secure "a change of philosophy in schools". For far too long, progressive methods of education have failed. We want an end to calculators and "Neighbours", and an emphasis on spelling, mathematics and the beauty of the English language.

We also want an end to the philosophy that schools should be expected to underperform because of the social mix of their pupils. If Office for Standards in Education figures have shown one thing, it is that some schools in deprived areas can do very well and others half a mile down the road very badly. The schools doing very well are providing the sole opportunity for their pupils to leapfrog out of the vicious circle of deprivation and decline into which they were born, into a prosperous and successful career.

We also need to look at some of the examinations. I do not know whether the introduction of the GCSE has been an unmitigated success. When I was talking to a history teacher the other day, I was appalled to hear him say that pupils who had succeeded in their GCSE examinations did not know how to write an essay, and that they needed to spend the next two years learning how to do so before they could do their A-level examinations.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State never try to tinker with A-levels. They are the guaranteed gold standard of success. We do not want that gold standard to be debased by people saying, "Well, we shall make it easier for students to pass." An examination that is made easier for people to pass ceases to be an examination and ceases to set any standards.

Lord Melbourne is reputed to have said to Queen Victoria: I don't know, Ma'am, why they make all this fuss about education; none of the Pagets can read or write, and they get on well enough. The reason why I have made a fuss about education this afternoon is that I believe passionately that there is a need for improvement in our education system and that that need is urgent. Otherwise, this country will go down relative to others.

Equally important, we shall condemn a whole generation, who will not be able to look forward to using their talents to the full. If we deny a generation of schoolchildren that right, we are denying it to them not just for the 11 years that they are in school, but for their many years of life after that.

H. G. Wells said: Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. I believe that we are nearing the situation in which we could lose that race. I hope that my hon. Friend will give us some optimism rather than my slightly more jaundiced approach.

2.50 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. Robin Squire)

As is conventional, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall). However, I am entitled to say that his speech was one of the best researched and best argued speeches that the House has heard for a considerable time and I am certain that it will read as well as it sounded when it was delivered. My hon. Friend has established an enviable reputation for his concerns about educational matters.

It is a coincidence that my hon. Friend and I have both visited schools in our constituencies this morning. The small difference is that while my hon. Friend was visiting those at the upper age range I, as Minister with responsibility for the under-fives, among other things, was visiting the nursery school range and I now sport the evidence—namely the paint stain on my jacket, for which I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker; I assure you that the damage is not nearly so serious as that suffered by my right hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Dr. Mawhinney) in a well publicised incident recently.

In the time available, I want to address a number of issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South raised and to confirm to him and to the House that raising standards, which was the core of my hon. Friend's argument, has been at the core of the Government's education policies. The reason for that is simple, and my hon. Friend alluded to it. Our economic prosperity depends on well-educated and skilled people. That has always been the case, but the challenge is growing as more and more countries raise their levels of achievement.

We have raised standards—I can assure my hon. Friend of that—and we have done it through the hard work of pupils and students, through the dedication of teachers and not least through a series of education reforms, many of which were bitterly opposed by the Opposition.

Since the first GCSE examinations—I strongly defend the quality of those examinations—the number of 15-year-old pupils achieving five or more passes at grades A-star to C has risen significantly from 33 per cent. to more than 43 per cent. We have also seen the proportion of 17-year-olds achieving two or more A-level passes more than double since the Government took office in 1979. As my hon. Friend is well aware, almost one in three young people now enters full-time higher education compared with fewer than one in eight in 1979.

What are our reforms? The introduction of the national curriculum and its assessment arrangements were and remain crucial to raising standards in our schools. We have acted to remove overload and we have placed greater emphasis on the essential basic skills of literacy and numeracy. I join my hon. Friend in agreeing utterly that those are the key areas, especially in primary schools.

We have been committed to setting schools free—free to develop their particular strengths and to give parents and pupils greater choice. We now have more than 1,100 self-governing grant-maintained schools, educating one fifth of our secondary pupils. Those schools are popular with parents because they achieve results. GM school pupils achieved higher levels in last year's national curriculum assessments than local education authority school pupils at each key stage and in every subject. At GCSE, nearly half those in GM schools achieved five good passes, compared with 39 per cent. in LEA schools.

Our emphasis on increasing diversity among schools has given parents a real and better choice in deciding the type of education that they want for their children. By allowing schools to specialise in particular subjects we have extended diversity and contributed to raising standards. City technology colleges, for instance, teach pupils of all abilities, with particular emphasis on subjects such as mathematics, science and technology. Last year's GCSE results show that they are starting to succeed in tackling underachievement in the inner cities. So it is scarcely surprising that those colleges are popular with parents, and the original 15 CTCs typically receive at least three applications for every pupil place.

The introduction of performance tables to provide clear and accurate information has supported parental choice and stimulated schools to raise standards. Research shows that tables are increasingly being consulted and valued by parents and students.

I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to the sterling efforts of Her Majesty's chief inspector, Chris Woodhead, in seeking to raise standards. The creation of Ofsted and the introduction of a universal independent inspection system have been fundamental to our efforts to improve education. Since Ofsted was established in 1992, more than 7,000 schools have been independently inspected, and in his recent annual report the chief inspector said that there were clear indications that the processes of inspection and action planning were helping schools to improve teaching methods. As my hon. Friend will be aware, from this month, inspection will include the identification to the heads and teachers concerned of both excellent and poor teaching.

The inspection arrangements also now identify schools that are failing to provide an acceptable standard of education. I shall spend a little time talking about that, because for far too long schools have been able to continue failing their pupils. Legislation that we have introduced is now ensuring that those schools are finally being turned round, or where that is not possible, closed. To date, some 150 schools have been deemed to be failing. Inspectors who revisited 59 of those schools over the past two terms found that almost all had improved, four fifths of them substantially. It is vital that the House should be aware of that good news, because in some cases schools have been delivering poor quality education for several years, and it is the Government's reforms that have succeeded in turning them round.

Through our improving schools programme we are helping to raise standards for all pupils, and in particular seeking to help schools with serious weaknesses. Measures taken include providing extra resources for LEAs to target such schools in this year's school effectiveness grants for education support and training.

My hon. Friend has showed great diligence in his research on international comparisons. I shall certainly read his speech carefully, but I hope that he will accept from me that valid international comparisons can be notoriously difficult to make. It is always possible to find a survey which shows a particular country in a less than favourable light, but quality evidence is hard to find. The last major international comparison of pupils' performance took place in 1990, and covered mathematics and science. Those findings suggested that English pupils at nine and 13 were mid-ranking in both subjects, and by no means way behind our competitors. Nevertheless, I entirely accept that we must continue to raise our standards. That is why the Government have set up a more detailed study—the skills audit—into levels of achievement in four or five of our major competitors; the results will be published this summer.

More widely still, we are participating in the third international mathematics and science study, which compares the attainments of nine and 13-year-olds, again in mathematics and science, in 45 countries. Those results will be published from the end of the year, and we shall then have a much clearer picture of where we stand in relation to the rest of Europe and the world.

Although the Government's reforms have significantly raised standards and enhanced choice, I stress the fact that we are not complacent. We still have some way to go to compete with the world's best education standards, and we plan to build on our successes with a host of new initiatives.

My hon. Friend specifically mentioned levels of literacy and numeracy. The 1995 national curriculum assessment results showed that about half our 11-year-olds reached or exceeded the expected levels in English and maths, and about two thirds did so in science. Those results are disappointing, and show that we must continue our drive to raise standards in schools—a drive that has been the purpose of all our reforms, such as the national curriculum and the improving schools programme.

Time does not allow me to answer all my hon. Friend's questions at this stage, but I have welcomed the opportunity that he has provided to debate the Government's education priorities. Our record is one of which we can be justifiably proud, but we are not complacent. We shall continue to take steps to raise standards, to increase participation and to improve choice and diversity in the education system.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Three o'clock.