Primary Schools (Hansard, 5 June 1996)

§ Dr. Robert Spink (Castle Point)
Education is our key political problem. If we get education right, we will create the means to resolve all our other difficulties. We shall generate the wealth to invest in the health service and the means to give pensioners a better deal. Better education gives more people a stake in society. If we get education right, there will be fewer disaffected people therefore there will be fewer law and order and environmental problems. If we do not get education right, however, we shall be firefighting on all other fronts.
After national security and the defence of our sovereignty and democracy, education is our key political problem. Primary education is the key to success. If we get the foundation right, the rest will be easy. If we do not, whatever we do at the secondary level and however much money we throw at it, our efforts will be wasted and we will never overcome the problems.
There are three essentials that children must have when they start school as rising fives. The first is discipline. Without a sound framework of discipline, they will not enjoy their time at school and they will not benefit from it. So discipline is an absolute prerequisite. Secondly, we must give them joy in and enthusiasm for learning. Teachers and parents are responsible for that. Thirdly, we must give them knowledge and the skills that they need to apply that knowledge, particularly the skill of reading, to which I shall return in a moment.
I shall set out today that too many children are failing to reach standards appropriate to their ability and their age; that funding is a contributory factor in this failure, but it is a relatively minor one; that parents also have a part to play in that failure, but their part is anything but minor; and that teachers and schools also contribute to the failure.
We should start by addressing the methods. The Government decided what should be taught when they fixed the national curriculum some years ago. It has settled down nicely although it still needs some fine tuning. We must now focus on how to teach. Teachers and the unions will resist us, but they resisted all our reforms when we introduced them, yet they now accept many of them.

§ Mr. Mike Hall (Warrington, South)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way so soon in his speech. If he is so concerned about the quality of teaching and education, can he say why the teaching profession and academics accepted the recommendations of the James report in 1972?

§ Dr. Spink
I shall come to that point later in my speech.
I want to premise my remarks by praising teachers. The more we do that the better, as the majority of teachers are dedicated, professional and caring people. They are teachers because of the vocation, not because of the vacation. They deserve our praise and recognition for their efforts and their integrity. Head teachers such as John Poskitt of Montgomerie school are dedicated and achieve excellent results. Diane Conway of Hadleigh junior school was given an excellent Ofsted report which praised the enthusiasm, conscientiousness and caring attitude of the 544 staff. It was typical of Ofsted reports on schools in my constituency. I must premise all my remarks by saying that we should thank our teachers for their dedication.
Having said that, let me establish that there is a problem with primary standards. Sadly, it is not difficult to support that assertion. The difficulty is in selecting which evidence to adduce, as there is so much available.
I turn immediately to reading. Last month, my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Riddick) said that reading was the essential skill. He was so right. If education is the foundation of Britain's future success and primary education is the foundation of good overall education, reading is the foundation of primary education. This must therefore be the pivotal issue in the debate. Unless and until children acquire proper reading skills, they cannot progress in other subjects.
I take no joy in reporting that many primary schools and primary teachers are failing to teach good reading skills. Regrettably, there is substantial evidence of that phenomenon. The Ofsted report on the teaching of reading includes in its main findings the following comments: Good teaching was found in about a quarter of the lessons observed in each year group. Far too many children were found, however, not to be making the progress which they should. The main reason for this is weak teaching. That could not be a clearer statement. It needs no embroidery or explanation from me. The report related to 45 inner-London primary schools but its implications are far wider and apply generally throughout the country. The problem is national and widespread. Bad reading is now endemic within education.

§ Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Lancaster)
My hon. Friend said that the problem was endemic. Happily, Lancaster has been exempt from that epidemic because we retained the 11-plus. We still have our grammar schools. Therefore, all the primary schools in my constituency have been obliged to aim for a certain standard. They never went mushy as did schools in the rest of the country. They all retained a high standard in reading and basic skills and they are now where others are seeking to be and they are getting excellent Ofsted reports.

§ Dr. Spink
I am delighted to hear my hon. Friend make that point. Later in my remarks I shall be addressing the part that selection, streaming and setting have to play. In Lancashire, there is a model—

§ Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman
Not in Lancashire.

§ Dr. Spink
I apologise to my hon. Friend. In Lancaster, there is a model that we should be looking to follow. The selective system also works in Southend and Dorset.
Sadly, last year's national test results for 11-year-olds illustrated the failure of primary schools. They showed that 52 per cent. of children failed to achieve the expected standards at national curriculum level 4 in English. Of more concern, the Basic Skills Agency reported that one third of children who had not learnt to read properly by the age of 10 would never recover from that failure.
The recent Ofsted report found that almost half the schools it covered were not meeting all the requirements that the national curriculum programme of study for reading sets out. That failure should not be tolerated, and 545 the fact that it has been is an indictment of local education authorities, schools, teachers and politicians. We should not put up with it; we must do something about it.
The Ofsted report can be a positive mechanism for improving standards in primary education. It exposed poor teaching methods, poor leadership and poor monitoring of teachers' performance by head teachers, and provoked a defensive response from weak head teachers, teachers and self-seeking trade unions. But the report should not be treated negatively, as it could be the catalyst that we need to burst the politically correct cycle of acceptance and tolerance of inexcusably low standards.
Those who are seeking a panacea from nursery education will be disappointed. If schools have children every day for 12 years and still cannot teach 20 or 30 per cent. of them to read and leave 20 or 30 per cent. of them functionally illiterate, then bolting an extra year on the front by nursery education will not solve the problem. It does not need much common sense to understand that.

§ Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman
I may be lacking in common sense, but I firmly believe that nursery education is crucial, particularly for children from deprived homes or remote areas. Nursery education is crucial to a child who lives in an isolated farmhouse and who may have no other child to talk to, and he will never lose that advantage.

§ Dr. Spink
I do not disagree with my hon. Friend, who makes a sound point. But I think that she is missing the point that I am trying to make. If we simply bolt on an extra year of nursery education and continue for the following 12 years to pursue the current child-centred project methods that are failing to teach children to read, write and be numerate, we will not solve the problems. We must change the whole system, as we cannot simply inject quality by one year of nursery education and ignore the rest of the system's failings.

§ Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman
indicated assent.

§ Dr. Spink
I am glad to see that my hon. Friend now agrees.
Having established that there is a problem, I shall address its causes. Funding has a part to play and, as society develops, we should direct a greater proportion of our national wealth towards education and training. However, increasing spending on education does not necessarily result in improved standards, and there is often an inversely proportional relationship between the amount of money spent per pupil and the standards provided. That is the case even in areas that appear to be socially comparable, such as areas within Essex—but I will not embarrass my colleagues by going into detail.
I want to address the distribution of the total available education funding between the phases, as I believe that the primary phase does not get an appropriate share of the overall resources. I have long held that view, and fought on the issue in Dorset in the 1980s and in Essex in the 1990s, where I started a campaign to shift funding towards primary education in 1991. I carried out a Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accounting statistics analysis and revealed that Essex primary schools were among the worst-funded of the 106 LEAs. A report in the Yellow Advertiser on 29 January 1993 said: 546 Spink launches new attack on primary school funding. MP Dr Bob Spink has returned to the attack about the underfunding of local primary schools which results in children of two different year groups being put in the same class … Rick Morgan, spokesman for Essex Primary Heads Association, said, 'We are fully behind Bob Spink in his stand to get better funding for Essex primary schools as they are the poor relations compared with other counties, and are also badly off when you see the gap with the funding Essex gives to its secondary schools. I was delighted to receive the support of Rick Morgan, who helped me in my fight and helped to change society in Essex for the better by forcing Essex to shift funding. His hard work will pay dividends, and he is to be congratulated. A letter on 13 May from Paul Lincoln, the director of education in Essex, illustrates the change that we forced upon the Essex LEA. The letter states: the funding of primary schools is a priority for the County Council". It was not a priority until Rick Morgan, myself and other good people forced the council to make it a priority.
The letter goes on to say: the total primary school budget has increased in each year, between 1992/93 and 1996/97 … there has however been a significant increase in the number of pupils in primary schools and whilst the expenditure figures … indicate a 31 per cent. increase in funding, when compared on a per pupil basis this reduces to 23 per cent. I am proud to have initiated the move that brought about that change. The figures do not indicate that there has been any starvation of funding from the Government or Essex county council, and I congratulate both of them. However, I insist that they go further.
Emboldened by my success in Essex, I took the matter to the Education Select Committee, of which I was a humble member. I initiated an inquiry by the Committee into the relative funding of the phases and, in July 1996, the Committee published a report entitled "The Disparity in Funding Between Primary and Secondary Schools". There is insufficient time to go into the details of that report, but it was excellent and I recommend it to all my colleagues.
The Government response to the report was published in October, and its conclusion stated: The witnesses with secondary school backgrounds regarded the disparity between the phases as being relatively small, but not so small that it could be adjusted without serious disadvantage to secondary schools. Those with primary school backgrounds and most of the neutral witnesses thought that the disparity was too large and should be reduced. We are persuaded that the latter are right. I was greatly gratified that the Government were persuaded, and the response went on to specify: Any real terms increase in funding that becomes available, from either national or local government, for example to fund additional pupils in the system, should be distributed disproportionately (as compared with historic practice) in favour of primary schools. In addition, there should be a small annual shift between the sectors, especially with regard to administrative costs. All primary schools should be enabled to benefit from the latter changes. I quoted from the conclusion extensively because it is important that the Department for Education and Employment does not forget that commitment.

§ Mr. David Nicholson (Taunton)
As a current member of the Education Select Committee, I congratulate my hon. Friend not only on gaining this debate—thereby raising the priority of the subject—but on what he has achieved in primary school funding. Will he tell us 547 whether the Government have carried out their intentions? Before he concludes, will he reiterate that there is no point in having vast resources unless one has the right teachers and the right teaching methods? In that respect, I draw the attention of the House to the amazingly interesting "Panorama" programme the other night.

§ Dr. Spink
My hon. Friend makes a number of extremely important points, and I will deal with them in my speech. I also intend to deal with the point raised by the hon. Member for Warrington, South (Mr. Hall) in an intervention at the beginning of my speech. I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will address the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. Nicholson) about the progress that the Government have made in shifting funding towards the foundation of primary education. If we get it right there, it will be cheaper to fund the latter stages.

§ Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman
We must include nurseries.

§ Dr. Spink
My hon. Friend continues to ride her own hobby-horse.
It is important to keep changing the balance of funding between the phases of education. It is wrong that, in some instances, we spend double the amount on a 15-year-old that we spend on a six-year-old, because it is more difficult to change the attitude and improve performance of that 15-year-old, whereas it is easy to change the attitude of six-year-olds and to instil in them the discipline and skills that they need. It is essential to build that foundation.

§ Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman
It is not just the discrepancy between the 11-year-old and the 15-year-old that is of concern but the discrepancy between the nearly 11-year-old and the just turned 11-year-old—that gap is enormous. My hon. Friend may be aware that that discrepancy is bad in Lancashire, but unfortunately discretion lies entirely with the county council. I do not believe that it is possible for the Government to lay down the law unless they can manage to influence dreadful councils such as Lancashire.

§ Dr. Spink
My hon. Friend makes another good point. The report of the Select Committee on Education on disparity in funding considered the jump between year 6 and year 7 and made some recommendations about it. I recommend my hon. Friend to read those recommendations, because she will be gratified to find that her views are supported by the Committee. It is interesting to note that Japan does it the other way round and spends more per pupil on primary children than it does on secondary children. Perhaps that offers a message for us.
It is important to get the foundations right. As my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton said, funding is not the essential problem. I accept that we must address that issue, but it is not the key to resolving the problem of low standards in schools. My hon. Friend has already told us the key to that.
Parents are much more important than funding. A child's outcome in education is critically dependent on his parents' attitude, involvement and motivation. That 548 correlates positively with success, whereas a parent's indifference correlates with failure. I am not aware of any formal research into that problem, which would be difficult to undertake, but I would be pleased to know of some. Common sense dictates that parental involvement is more important than almost anything else.

§ Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman
Hear, hear.

§ Dr. Spink
My hon. Friend is agreeing with me again—I am grateful.
It is difficult for me to see how politicians can encourage more self-reliance and understanding among parents. Often today's parents are the product of failed socialist progressive methods. They are victims of the politically correct systems and attitudes of the 1960s and 1970s that have hung around for far too long.
Parents have the key responsibility for their children's education. Many do not understand that fact. They have the key responsibility for anything concerning their children. They bring their children into the world and they are responsible for their behaviour, education and even their diet—not us. They think that we are responsible, but we are not. Teachers do not have the key responsibility for children's education, nor do the schools, the LEAs, the Government, the Department for Education, and Employment, or I. Parents have that key responsibility. But it is the fashion to resist accepting responsibility. Today many people try to shift responsibility to the state; they blame it for everything. That does not wash. I do not know how to break that problem, but I know that break it we must. We must promote self-reliance and reject the nanny state. We must reject bigger government in all its forms and seek smaller government.
I have no solution to the problem of promoting parental involvement and responsibility, but we have provided solutions to another key problem of maintaining standards in schools and of teaching. The Government have introduced excellent reforms. We gave control back to schools, governors, parents and took power away from the state and the LEAs. We devolved power to those directly concerned with their children's education. We performed the ultimate act of devolution and democracy, and it worked. The local management of schools gave financial control to every school but Labour resisted it.

§ Ms Estelle Morris (Birmingham, Yardley)
That is not true.

§ Dr. Spink
The hon. Lady must accept that it is true. The schools resisted it and LEAs resisted it, but not now; they now see that it was right. I remember well when LMS was introduced in Dorset when the Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors who sat opposite me resisted it fiercely.

§ Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman
Where are the Liberals?

§ Dr. Spink
I must tell my hon. Friend that the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster), the Liberal spokesman on education, is upstairs in Committee. He courteously apologised to me for his absence before the debate, and I respect that. He has a job to do for education in Committee.
549 Going grant-maintained gave schools management control. We need many more such schools and we must find the means to increase their number dramatically. GM status means that schools are prised away from the dead hand of extensive bureaucratic—and, too often, politically motivated—LEA control. We imposed the national curriculum, which has set out a clear set of entitlements to skills and knowledge for every child at each key age. We have established a common national set of standards and we have tested and measured achievement against them. We have now ensured that no child need unnecessarily fall behind, because we can now monitor his progress and report it to his parents.
We also set about measuring teaching quality through a system of inspections using registered inspectors. We have published the results so that education has become publicly accountable. We trust parents, employers and communities with the key information about their children's achievement, but Labour does not trust parents and the community with that information. We trust them and we have empowered them, but Labour would take away that power and hand it back to its band of local Labour activists. We know who I and my constituents would prefer to control our children's education.
We have now begun, finally, to tackle the problem of teacher training. With hindsight, that should have been among our first reforms, not our last, which we should have tackled in 1980. The Teacher Training Agency has been established for 18 months. It is still developing its role and working on a clearer statement on teaching skills. It should move fast and it should be starting to flex its muscles to force change, where necessary, in teacher training colleges.

§ Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman
There again, my constituency is singularly fortunate because our local college, St. Martin's university college, has just been given four excellent ratings on its training. It is quite outstanding, and it makes a difference—that is why we have such a lot of good teachers around our way. Once they come to Lancashire, they do not want to leave. They go to St. Martin's and they are beautifully trained. Those student teachers are doing a wonderful job in the classroom; so, once again, we are singularly fortunate.

§ Dr. Spink
I read about St. Martin's just last night, and I wondered whether to mention it as an example of good practice that should be repeated elsewhere. I am delighted that my hon. Friend has done that for me.
The right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) has said that Labour wants 15,000 bad teachers to be sacked. He makes the time-honoured mistake of attacking the symptoms when he should be attacking the cause. Ineffective teacher training colleges should receive the bulk of our attention.

§ Mr. Greg Pope (Hyndburn)
Mr. Woodhead said that 15,000 teachers should be sacked.

§ Dr. Spink
I agree that the chief inspector said that, but I believe that the right hon. Member for Sedgefield agreed with him.
550 If certain teacher training colleges fail to improve and to drop their politically correct progressive ideology, the TTA should close them down and their accreditation should be withdrawn. We should start that progress quickly.
It is not enough, however, to tackle the problem of teacher training colleges. Just 20,000 teachers qualify each year, but 400,000 teachers work in our classrooms every day. All of them need to train and improve constantly, as we all do. I welcome the fact that the Government have made available £400 million for in-service training, but we must ensure that that money is used wisely.
I welcome the 13 literacy centres set up by the Government to improve standards. I also welcome the HEADLAMP scheme to support newly-appointed head teachers. The Government have introduced these and other improvements, which are needed because the task of reforming education is desperately difficult as well as important.
It is fashionable to say that teachers suffer from innovation shock and that they should have no more change for a time. I reject that argument. There is some truth in it, but teachers, like the rest of us in the real world, must change. The world is changing fast and moving forward, and if we do not change we shall be left behind, and so will the teachers. They must change or fall behind.
We cannot wait to do what is right. For every year we wait, a year of our children's time is wasted at school because they are not making the progress they should. Young Tommy and young Sophie cannot redo their year 6 at school because the teacher has got it wrong. If the teachers get it wrong, that opportunity is gone for the rest of little Tommy and little Sophie's life, so we cannot delay.

§ Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman
Talking about people being reluctant to change, it was interesting, in "Panorama" on Monday night, to hear a headmistress who had not been in favour of whole-class teaching who then started it and found it such a huge success that she and her staff now advocate it to other schools. It has made a startling difference in that school. That shows that teachers can change if they see the results.

§ Dr. Spink
I agree with my hon. Friend. She, like me, does not advocate traditional methods only because it is fashionable. I did so in the 1980s, and was ridiculed. I did so in 1991, and was blasted in the local newspapers, before I became a Member of Parliament, as being out of control. I said that teachers used to be one of the top professions, rated alongside doctors, dentists and accountants, but that that was no longer the case because they were not acting as professionals—sitting in Levi jeans and baggy sweaters on the corner of the desk and not teaching the children, allowing the children to learn at their own speed and following child-centred progressive methods. I was ridiculed and laughed at for saying that.
What I now find pretty hard to swallow is hearing Opposition Members, not laughing at me, but pretending to agree with me. But they really are still advocating the socialist ideology that has submerged education in an execrable process of levelling down. That is what socialism is about—levelling down. As my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton said, Labour opposed selection, setting, streaming, testing and the publication of results. 551 Labour betrayed generations of children by its socialist Plowden project-based ideology. We need traditional methods; we need whole-class teaching; we need phonics, which contribute to the accuracy, fluency and confidence of children when they read.

§ Mr. Nicholson
My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the history of the Labour party's position on this matter. Perhaps I might be a little more charitable to Labour. Labour Members appreciate that the children of their supporters, who do not necessarily grow up in a family with a reading environment, are being let down by some of these progressive teaching methods and the absence of whole-class teaching. We should welcome the evidence on the "Panorama" programme that some elements of the Labour party, such as Dagenham, which is a Labour-controlled borough—perhaps new Labour—are beginning to see the sense of reform. I imagine—my hon. Friend might like to explore this—that this will open up new divisions in the Labour party between those who realise that modern methods are wrong and those who will resist to the end any attempt to replace them.

§ Dr. Spink
My hon. Friend is wrong. There is no such thing as new Labour. It is a con trick. It is a complete and utter fraud on the electorate. I hope that the electorate never have to find it out.
As my hon. Friend says, it is important for children to have books in their homes, so perhaps he would explain—I am sure that no Opposition Member will—why Labour-controlled Essex county council this year cut the library book fund by an unprecedented, massive, disastrous 25 per cent. That will not teach children to read. Labour sends kids down the video shop—that is what Labour is all about.
We need more selection at school and class level. Mixed-ability teaching, which was a socialist levelling-down mechanism, has failed. We have now understood that we should be ruthless in driving it out. It betrays the weaker child as well as the stronger. Labour has not really understood that. It would return to its old ideology and would be the puppet of the unions and the teachers' producers' influence if it ever came to power. It will not, because the country is not so foolish.
Labour tries to give the illusion that it accepts what I am saying, as my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton suggested. It claims to have undergone a Damascene conversion on education, as in all sectors, but we should not believe it for a moment. Labour's instincts are still driven by the politics of envy and its education policy can be summed up by the expression "levelling down". That is what Labour is about. Its words are warm, but they are dangerous. Labour would damage your children's education.
Labour claims that class size is very important. It is not. The Office for Standards in Education, with which I agree on this point, found that class size was only important for infant pupils. Its research was based on the evaluation of 200,000 lessons. It was reliable and valid. Ofsted found that the effectiveness of teaching has greater influence on pupils' achievement than class size.
Of course, some unions with vested producer interests do not agree. What is new? Labour wants to destroy choice and diversity. It would scrap our grant-maintained 552 schools and make them revert to the status of foundation schools. It would place them, again, under the dead bureaucratic hand of the local education authority and its political placemen. It would scrap selection—along with child benefit, student grants and so on, but I do not want to stray off the subject.
Even Labour now knows that that would reduce standards. Labour Members show us that they know that because their party leader, their Front-Bench health spokesman and many other Labour Members have taken for themselves the benefits that we provided through choice and diversity. I congratulate them—they were absolutely right to do what they did—but I find their hypocrisy breathtaking. They seek to secure for their children the benefits that they seek to deny to everyone else. That is indefensible.
Labour's policy was best summed up by the Secondary Heads Association, which stated that Labour's recent education policy was simplistic … bland … will not raise standards … is poorly thought out … uncosted … short on ideas … lacking in detail … an uncomfortable combination of the naive and messianic". Those words all appear in a Secondary Heads Association publication. I get the feeling that the Secondary Heads Association does not like Labour's education policy. It is right to reject it, because it is a sham.
We need to continue our reforms. We obviously need to improve teacher training, and to do so faster than we appear to be doing at the moment. We need to inform parents and educate them, and to focus them on their prime responsibility for their children's education.
We need to drop the Plowden socialist-based child-centred methods that have devastated education in primary schools for 30 years, and adopt the so-called traditional methods. In doing so, we must bear it in mind that those methods were foist on us by socialist dogma. We need to test and publish all the results that we can, even though I know that the Labour party will resist it. We need to bring forward the concept of value added as soon as possible because, without measurement, we cannot even start to control standards. We must continue to increase the proportion of funding in primary education as opposed to secondary education. We need more discipline in schools to make them happier and more productive places for everyone.

§ Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman
Does my hon. Friend agree that a test for youngsters soon after they entered primary school would give those in deprived areas a much better chance? I have a particular school in mind, which does an excellent job, but that it is not apparent from the results. If children were tested at five and then again at seven, we could see what the school had added. Often, it is extremely good. I believe that we need another examination.

§ Dr. Spink
I agree entirely with my hon. Friend and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will tell us what progress has been made towards establishing value added measurements, because they are important. It should be possible for us to provide value added information to parents.
553 In my constituency, we need to provide pull as well as push for primary schools. By that I mean that the secondary sector must be enhanced in order to provide incentives for the primary sector. Thereby, for the next few moments, I intend to bring my remarks into order.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris)
Order. The hon. Gentleman has been in order throughout his speech and I hope that he will stay that way.

§ Dr. Spink
I give formal notice to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that we must be granted a specialist technical school—other constituencies have them and Castle Point does not. We need at least one. We must have a sixth form facility for Canvey Island. I will seek to raise those subjects in the near future if I may.
All schools owe a debt of gratitude to Chris Woodhead, the chief inspector of schools. He has done society a great service by exposing the problems in education and it is typical of the socialists that 50 Labour Members signed an early-day motion calling for his resignation because he blew the whistle. It is the sort of socialist antediluvian, shoot-the-messenger reaction that we have come to expect from Opposition Members.
We need Mr. Woodhead to look at moral education and guidance in schools, particularly primary schools. A good start would be to include in every inspection report—I do not think that it happens now—a section on the school's achievement, in quality as well as quantity, in delivering the statutory acts of collective worship and religious education which must be broadly Christian-based and which many schools are not achieving.

§ Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman
I regret having to mention the hon. Member for Bath in his absence but, as he is unavoidably delayed, I have no alternative. He suggested in a pamphlet that we should abolish religious education in schools as well as the collective act of worship.

§ Dr. Spink
That is another silly Liberal Democrat policy which ranks alongside legalising cannabis.
I am sure that you will be appalled to learn, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that, during a visit to a primary school in my constituency, when I asked why, during the service, they had sung only politically correct hymns about yellow buttercups and had made no reference to traditional hymns, to our saviour Jesus or to Christianity, I was told that they did not like to "indoctrinate" the children. I could not believe what I was hearing. We must ask Chris Woodhead to address that problem.
I do not accept that there is no time for moral guidance in our schools. I accept that there are often practical difficulties getting all the children together in one place at one time. Those difficulties must be addressed within the national curriculum. However, we need to find time to give moral guidance as well as academic skills because an articulate young thug is just as objectionable as a stupid young thug. Time must be made to give meaningful moral guidance, both structured and unstructured, and I hope that teacher training colleges and the inspector will address that.
It is worth listening to businesses and what they have to say because they have a valid stake in our primary schools. For example, the finance director of AssiDomän, 554 Mr. Simon Redman, believes that we need more linguists and engineers. He feels that we could greatly improve our export performance if we could speak foreign languages more fluently, and I agree with him. He believes that the best time to start learning foreign languages is at the age of six or seven, or even earlier, which is when they start on the continent. That is why they are so much better than we are.

§ Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman
I am sure that my hon. Friend will rejoice with me at the fact that Ripley St. Thomas school in my constituency has just been made a specialist language centre—one of only two in Lancashire. That is an incentive to all the primary schools in the area to improve their languages.

§ Dr. Spink
I am delighted to hear once again of progress in my hon. Friend's area. It does not surprise me. I agree that we should find more time for languages.
Mr. Redman also said that we must improve the status of engineering, technology and science. The best place for that is in the primary school. We need to educate primary teachers to understand and value those key wealth-generating professions. Too often, they are put behind the doctors, dentists, accountants and solicitors, and they should not be so denigrated. They are equal, if not superior, professions. Teacher training colleges must address that as well.
As part of their jubilee celebrations, pupils at Montgomerie county infants and junior schools in my constituency are planting a time capsule on Monday 1 July. The special plastic capsule was provided by the European Nature Conservation Council, which has set up a nationwide scheme. [Interruption.] I hear my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess) say, "Hear, hear," when I mention a European institution. I am surprised to hear him say that, because it made me raise an eyebrow.
In 25 years, 200 buried time capsules throughout Britain, including that planted by the excellent children of Montgomerie county school, will be unearthed. I shall ask the head teacher, John Poskitt, whether a copy of this debate can be buried in the capsule.
I wonder whether, in 25 years' time, when the capsule is dug up, we will have solved all our education problems and be making the right investment in education for the benefit of our children and our society. I truly hope so.

§ Mr. Ken Eastham (Manchester, Blackley)
The hon. Member for Castle Point (Dr. Spink) has been waffling on for 47 minutes about so-called standards and I must question the content of the end of his speech. He suggested putting a copy of his speech in the time capsule, but it would be better to put the hon. Member in and never mind his speech.
We all desire high standards in education and on occasions we have to listen to Conservative Members attacking Opposition Members as though we do not care about education. That is an insult. In the early part of his speech, the hon. Gentleman said that we could not just throw money at education. That could never be said of the Conservative party, which has done anything but that.

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. Robin Squire)
I hesitate to interrupt the hon. Gentleman's flow, but I must 555 put on the record again that, as he knows, expenditure per pupil since 1979 has gone up by some 50 per cent. in real terms—a record of which the Labour Government prior to 1979 would have been proud.

§ Mr. Eastham
Later, when I have developed my remarks, I will take the Under-Secretary of State to task about the so-called big expenditure by the Conservative Government.
Standards are not just about examination results. We need good standards for school buildings and to provide the right equipment for children's education. Month after month, we experience Conservative Members talking about standards and about examination results. They never talk about standards for children who are handicapped or children whose first language is not English. They talk about the top few. It is a fact of life that some schools will never get into the examination charts, but nevertheless a good job is being done in those schools by the teaching profession.
Outrageous attacks have often been made on teachers, and we heard some more today. It is no wonder that teachers become demoralised when they have to suffer the sort of attacks that we heard in the previous speech. The teachers can do little about those attacks because they cannot stand up in the Chamber and take hon. Members to task. The teachers depend on some of us, who are not educationists but are interested in a fair deal for the teaching profession and for the kids in schools.
If the hon. Member for Castle Point does not know, I can tell him that teaching is often seriously under-resourced. I remember the Education Reform Act 1988, because I was on the Committee that considered it. Months after the Act came into force, schools still did not have the books and materials that they needed to fulfil their obligations under the Act. That was not the teachers' or the children's fault: it was the fault of under-resourcing by the Government.
When we talk about schools and achievement, we should consider every aspect of education provision, including learning conditions. Many schools, not just in my city of Manchester but in many other cities, are in such a poor state that if they had been in industry the Health and Safety Executive would probably have closed them down. Some of the schools should be condemned.
The Under-Secretary would be disappointed if I did not take up the points that he made and I will give the House some examples of the situation in many schools in Manchester. Many other authorities have the same problems, but I have more details about Manchester. We have had 17 continuous years of a so-called caring Conservative Government who supposedly give education a high priority. When I went to see the Under-Secretary of State last year with the chief education officer and some politicians to present the case for some realistic funding, the hon. Gentleman claimed to have spent more money. But many cities have not smelled much of that money in their authorities. Expenditure has often been weighted towards well heeled and better-off authorities and the direction of funds has been jaundiced.
Instead of waffling, I wish to comment on the situation as it really is. I do not want to make a pretty speech for 45 minutes but actually say nothing. I was so concerned about the schools in Manchester that I wrote to the Health 556 and Safety Executive last year. The Minister claimed that expenditure had increased, but the HSE's letter to me stated: Inspectors in this Area have become involved on a number of occasions when parents, teachers or governors complaints have been received concerning structural, electrical and other safety aspects of school buildings. To date we have not found it necessary to take enforcement action since the Local Authority and governors have been aware of the problem and willing to take appropriate action, mindful of their duties under the Health and Safety at Work etc Act to ensure the safety of staff, pupils and visitors to school premises. In general structural safety matters are the clear responsibility of the Local Authority. In the event of our finding a dangerous situation and the Authority or governing body not being willing to take appropriate action, the use of enforcement notices would be considered. It is not possible to enforce remedial work to a dangerous part of a building as the employer has the option of taking other equally effective measures to ensure safety which may include preventing access to any unsafe part of a school. This has happened in a number of cases in Greater Manchester. The Director of Education has been made aware of our concern in correspondence following visits to several schools by inspectors. Rightly, safety is the responsibility of the local authority and if the authority does not take some action, the HSE will issue an enforcement notice to close the school. The action that local authorities have had to take is to put kids in buses for a 20-minute ride to other schools. The authorities have never had the money to deal with problems—for example, to make the school windows watertight—when the HSE drew problems to their attention.
I have a report from last year, entitled "Expenditure on Education Premises and Equipment in Manchester—Some Facts and Figures", in which the Under-Secretary may be interested. If he wants to make a note of the figures, I will give him a chance to get his pencil out. The report states: Estimated annual requirement to improve and maintain buildings: £50 million. DFE allocation 1994–95: £12.9 million". The authority needed £50 million, but the allocation was £12.9 million. The Department for Education and Employment also put a cap on spending so that the local authority could even not spend that amount. It spent only £5 million. The report continues: Estimated expenditure needed over next 4–5 years to bring schools and other establishments up to a satisfactory standard: £500 million. We have a legacy of an accumulating need for spending. Year after year, there have been cuts in funding and allocations. After 17 years of continual cuts, a massive problem has built up. I worry about where the next Labour Government will get the hundreds of millions of pounds needed to cope with the neglect by the Conservative Government.
I have another report, entitled "Manchester's Crumbling Schools", although I emphasise again that the problem does not affect only Manchester. It gives some basic facts about the standards in schools. It states: The estimated value of Manchester's school buildings and associated furniture and equipment is £630 million. Over the last few years the Government has approved less than £1 million each year for general repairs and improvements … To bring schools up to a satisfactory standard £500 million needs to be spent". 557 Another part of the report itemises some of the defects, because it is not always a case of putting a new roof on a building—although, God knows, we need plenty of those. The report states: In many schools substantial items of engineering equipment and installations, such as heating systems (boilers), electrical wiring and fire alarms have exceeded their economic and/or serviceable life span of 15 to 20 years and need to be replaced as part of an on-going programme. The Department of Education and Science (DES) Building Bulletin No. 70 (1990) states that the economic life of commercial boilers is between 15 and 20 years. Some of the boilers are listed; the report states that 61 schools have boilers that are more than 25 years old and that some of them are more than 40 years old. They are in Victorian buildings. There are 40 schools with boilers aged between 20 and 25 years, and 291 boilers require to be replaced. In winter, when it is snowing or raining, everybody in the school may be freezing because the boiler is not working. Hon. Members smile, but that is hardly a good way to raise standards. Would it put kids in a good condition to improve their reading and writing? Would it be good for the teachers to be freezing in the corner? Do you think that standards should include such matters?

§ Dr. Spink
rose

§ Mr. Eastham
If you want to intervene, I will gladly give way.

§ Dr. Spink
Of course we must look after the fabric of our schools. Would the hon. Gentleman care to predict whether his Front-Bench spokesman will promise to spend extra money on education above the amount that we are spending?

§ Mr. Eastham
I promise that we will make a better job than your Government.

§ Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes)
Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman of the convention that all remarks are addressed through the Chair.

§ Mr. Eastham
I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker, but sometimes hon. Members make such silly asides that one becomes outraged.

§ Madam Deputy Speaker
That is why remarks are addressed through the Chair.

§ Mr. Eastham
I do not think that the hon. Member for Castle Point intervened through you, Madam Deputy Speaker. He intervened directly on me. The convention should work for hon. Members in all parts of the House and not just for Opposition Members.
If you want to improve standards—and you keep on professing that you do—you have to put your money where your mouth is and start spending on schools. You have to give them good working conditions. Some schools in Manchester are Portakabins with holes in the walls. They have no heating and are rat infested and you are doing nothing about it. It cannot be said that it is up to a Labour Government because Labour is in opposition. For God's sake, the Government have been in power for 558 17 years. [Interruption.] The Minister makes a seated intervention which, of course, was missed by the Deputy Speaker. It was directed to me

§ Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I am not aware of missing any intervention.

§ Mr. Eastham
In that case it looks as though you have condoned the Minister speaking to me. Perhaps it is all right to make such remarks, but on our side we cannot make them.
The Minister's little aside was about LEAs, but where do the Government come into these matters? What is their part in the formula? Are they not responsible for spending taxpayers' money on education in the cities? What are you collecting taxes for if you do not disburse money in the interests of education? The hon. Member for Castle Point spoke about the high priority of education. We are paying a great deal of tax, and a fair proportion of that ought to be directed to education.
When I met the Minister, he was very kind and he finally sent me a letter which stated that the Government had finally agreed that two schools would have some assistance. There was £233,000 to Manchester local education authority in recognition of its education capital expenditure needs in 1995–96. As I have said, we need £50 million a year and we have a growing problem that requires £500 million, but that is the sort of response that we got. We are grateful for it, because it will affect two schools, but we have 250 schools.
No one should think that standards can be improved by demoralising teachers by saying that they are not up to it. I accept that one or two teachers may not be up to it, but one or two hon. Members are not up to it either. The teaching profession, like the House, covers a broad spectrum. There are some incompetent hon. Members and some have sleaze as part of their upbringing in this place; hon. Members are a cross-section of the population, and the same applies to teachers. I am not defending anybody who is not up to the job. Nevertheless, if we want to improve standards for schoolchildren, we must make provision for them. That means providing decent, warm, watertight schools with good teachers and support from the Government instead of constant attacks.

§ Mr. David Amess (Basildon)
I apologise for not being here for the start of the debate. I hope that the Whip will note that I was listening to proceedings in the Select Committee on Defence. I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Dr. Spink) for not hearing his opening remarks, but I got the flavour of his speech and thoroughly enjoyed it.
In the four minutes remaining to me, I should like to reflect on the two main Opposition parties. I became a Member of Parliament at precisely the same time as the leaders of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties. I stand by exactly those matters on which I was elected in 1983, but those two party leaders seem to have changed their views on a range of issues.
There is some irony in my personal circumstances in that my family's education was attacked by both the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties. The attack was led by a former Labour Member, Mr. Arthur Latham, who for a time was the leader of Havering council, which is the 559 council that the Minister is under. I was criticised for sending our eldest child to a non-selective, non-grant-maintained, single-sex school. There are none in Basildon—the school was outside my constituency—and the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties behaved disgracefully. The House can imagine my disgust when some months later I learned precisely what the two leaders of the Opposition parties were up to. Last Thursday, the Labour and Liberal Democrat alliance lost control of Havering council.
Last year I visited every primary school in my constituency and we ended with a meeting with the Secretary of State for Education and Employment. I was proud of the way in which all my head teachers conducted their discussions with the Secretary of State. We shared views on many issues. There are many single parents in my constituency, and when we debate standards in education it is quite wrong for any hon. Member to expect schools to bring up our children for us. I take my hat off to those parents who, for various reasons, are on their own and struggling against all the odds.
I suppose that all Members of Parliament draw on their own circumstances. My education started four decades ago, in the London borough of Newham, and I shall reflect on the remarks made by the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Eastham). All the classes were of 50 or more, in poor Victorian buildings. As an individual, I owe everything to my teachers, and salute them for their efforts, as we could spell properly, write clearly and could certainly command the rudiments of basic arithmetic. I am not sure what conclusions I would draw from that. My hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point mentioned languages. That is fine, but I hope that our children can master English first, as occasionally there is an over-emphasis on computers.
I was a councillor in Redbridge, which has high standards in education. I aspire to stand as a candidate in the Southend, West constituency in the next election. I have visited every school in Southend, West over the past year, where the circumstances are rather different. In Southend, we have selective education and our young people take 11-plus examinations. In the time leading up to the general election, I shall want to know where the candidates who will stand against me stand on the important issues of selection in the borough of Southend. Southend, West has the largest primary school in Essex, Westborough, with 680 children. There is a real funding problem to be addressed, but I thank my hon. Friend for introducing the debate, which has been thoroughly worth while.

§ Ms Estelle Morris (Birmingham, Yardley)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Castle Point (Dr. Spink) on securing the debate, since when—I am sure that it is just a coincidence—the newspapers have been full of primary education matters.
I agreed with the hon. Gentleman on one point, but my enthusiasm for his speech ran out thereafter. He said that we have not given primary education the priority that it deserves in recent decades. I whole-heartedly agree. The blame lies not only with the Tory Government but with past Labour Governments and councils. It is an error that everybody has made. We say that the years spent in primary education are important, and we know that unless 560 we get it right at five, six and seven, it will be much more difficult to get it right at 11, 12 and 13. Despite that, we consider it unacceptable for sixth-form classes to have more than 15 students, when children are well motivated, yet it is tolerable, apparently, to have classes of more than 30 at age five and six.
Historically, the teachers with the best qualifications were always guided into secondary education. The Government must act on the recent work carried out by the Select Committee into the disparity in funding between secondary and primary education. As a former secondary school teacher, I know that everybody in education, no matter in what area their interest lies, accepts that primary education has been the Cinderella part of the service, and it is high time it secured the resources to which it is entitled.
I agree with the hon. Member for Castle Point that there is much good going on in primary schools. For many children, it is the point in their lives when their love of learning is born, when anything that they achieve thereafter can be traced back to a good relationship or experience in a reception class. All of us know the precious enthusiasm that a child has when he or she starts school. Some of us are saddened and wonder where it has gone by the time they start secondary school, but to have the task of nurturing it and ensuring that it grows into a love of learning and to ambition and high aspiration is one of the joys for those who choose to spend their teaching career in primary education. To the teachers who get it right and thus give the children a good start in life as a result we owe a debt of gratitude as a nation.
Having said that, it would be silly to have a debate on primary education and not express concern about some of the real problems in that sector. The evidence that we are falling behind is overwhelming, from reports from the Office of Standards in Education, from international studies and from the Basic Skills Agency, which reports that one third of inner-city children are starting secondary education with a reading age at least two years behind their chronological age. What worries me most is that the gap between those who do well and those who do not is wider in this country than anywhere else. It is growing. Even the Prime Minister made mention of it, as recently as two years ago. We must address that problem. The crusade and the challenge is to bridge the gap so that everybody can have a chance to do well.
That is where I parted company with the hon. Gentleman for Castle Point, because the rest of his speech seemed to fall into the old Tory trap of saying that it was everybody else's fault except theirs. He said that it was the fault of parents for not taking responsibility, that it was the fault of socialists, labour councillors, the Teacher Training Agency, and information technology—all and sundry, but it was not the fault of his Government. I do not know why a party seeks power other than to try to achieve change and to do the things that it wants to do. The corollary is that, at the end of their period in power, the Government are judged by what happens.
The Government must be judged by what has happened in primary education, because they have played their part in that process. The national curriculum was introduced, withdrawn, introduced again, withdrawn again and then reimposed. Testing was introduced, taken out, introduced again, then changed, then delayed, taken out and introduced again. It has been chaos and disaster. During the debate in the Tory party about what knowledge is 561 acceptable in the national curriculum—whether it should be testing this or testing that—teachers were trying to teach and pupils were trying to learn, with constant stops and changes to the curriculum and changes to the way in which they should be assessed. That is not the stability that everybody needs, particularly those in primary education, if they are to do well.
Also under the Conservative Government, class sizes have risen. Figures announced last week show that 40 per cent. of our children at primary level are now in classes of more than 30, and more than 17,000 are in classes of more than 40.

§ Mr. Robin Squire
rose

§ Ms Morris
The Minister will excuse me if I do not give way, as the opening speech went on for 48 minutes, which limits any interventions.
There has been no systematic attempt at research into teaching strategies that will work. We have moved from shock report to shock report. At every stage, the Government have announced, in the words of Lord Henley last month, a number of additional measures. It is more than that. It is about sustained research and planned work into building on good practice, seeing what goes right, spreading that information to other schools and ensuring that they have an opportunity to do that as well.
I can see the problem arising again with Conservative Members who have talked about the "Panorama" programme, which I saw, too. It was absolutely fascinating, and there is much that we can learn, but if Conservative Members think that what we saw in the programme, in Dagenham or abroad, is a return to something that existed pre-Plowden, they are badly wrong.
In class teaching pre-Plowden, children were not engaged in conversation and answering questions. Teachers did not interact with children in that manner. They did not involve. They told children what to do and the children sat quietly. What we saw on "Panorama" was a very exciting strategy. It took the best of the whole-class approach, in which it is easier to monitor children, but involved children in the learning at every single stage. That is the excitement of it.
If Conservative Members think that it was moving backwards, they will make a mess of it, as they have of so much in the past 17 years. It was new and it was exciting. The next Labour Government will build on that by making the research that exists in bucketloads in education institutions and local authorities available to all teachers, so they can develop improved teaching and learning systematically—not in a dogmatic way or to fight their own political corners.
My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Eastham) was right to stress the need for good school buildings. I was a pupil in a Manchester school when my hon. Friend was a member of Manchester city's education committee. The physical surroundings in which I was educated did credit to that Labour administration, working in conjunction with a Labour Government. I did not experience the surroundings that my hon. Friend described as existing in Manchester today.
562 I think sometimes that Conservative Governments seek power as a platform to criticise others. Labour seeks power as a platform to work with others, to raise educational standards for all our children. We will reduce class sizes for five, six and seven-year-olds to no more than 30 pupils. We will build on things that the Government got right—reading recovery and section 11 funding for ethnic minorities—but have chosen to withdraw. We will make good research evidence available, and we will ensure for the first time in 17 years that all the essential partners in the education service—central Government, local government, schools, teachers, parents and governors—are united on a common agenda and speak a common language, to make certain that children in primary education get the best possible start by learning the basics, mastering information technology and having a well ordered learning environment.
That cannot be achieved in the fragmented and divisive way in which the Government have been behaving. The next Labour Government will at long last ensure the partnership that will accomplish the task that every parent in this country wants completed.

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. Robin Squire)
Having given a little time to others, I hope that the House will understand if, unusually, I do not give way to interventions—as I normally do. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Dr. Spink) on securing this important debate, and I am grateful to him for providing the opportunity to discuss primary education.
I am sure that it was a slip of the tongue on the part of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Ms Morris) when she said that above 40 per cent. of classes number more than 30 pupils. I dare say that she meant to say that the figure is 29 per cent. I believe that the hon. Lady was including classes of 30 pupils, which account for a significant proportion of all classes. The figure of 29 per cent. is less than that for 1979, and the number of classes of more than 35 pupils has halved by comparison with 1979.
I completely challenge the assertion of the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Eastham) that resources are at the heart of standards. The hon. Gentleman will have read, as I have, many independent reports on schools. Few of them highlight resources, but emphasise instead that good teaching delivers good education, while highlighting how resources are applied. I urge the hon. Gentleman not to be confused by resources. Overwhelmingly, attitudes and teaching style are at the heart of quality teaching.
As to buildings, the figures show that the capital resources made available to schools this year of £700 million are 7 per cent. more than last year. The hon. Gentleman would struggle, as I would, to find another budget area that has increased by that amount year on year. Councils should regard schools as being as important as council offices, town halls and all the other public buildings in their ownership. It is no use councils saying that the condition of their schools is all the fault of Government—they have a responsibility in law and common sense to maintain in good order all the buildings in their ownership.
Primary schools have increasingly come under the spotlight in recent years, and rightly so. There has been speculation about standards, how teachers are teaching 563 and how much children are learning. I welcome that attention. The effects of a child's first few years in school can stay with him or her their whole education and beyond. The child who leaves primary school reading with confidence, and with basic self-discipline and powers of concentration, is equipped to tackle the academic challenges of secondary school and the wider challenges of adolescence. The child who has only a hazy appreciation of numeracy and who cannot work without close supervision will find secondary school and life beyond the classroom that much harder.
We have done much to ensure that primary education meets pupil needs. We introduced the national curriculum and associated assessment, so that for the first time—thanks to a Conservative Government—parents have a guarantee that their children will be taught the most important subjects and tested on what they have been taught. We have taken steps to find out exactly what is going on in schools. By the end of this term, Ofsted will have inspected nearly 7,000 of our 19,000 primary schools, which is no mean achievement. Primary inspections only started in September 1994. Before then, the average primary school could expect to wait 200 years for the inspectors to come calling.
Ofsted inspections and national curriculum assessment are providing the first ever comprehensive audit of teaching and learning in primary schools, so the debate about standards can move from assertion and speculation to proper consideration of the facts. Inspection and assessment reveal a wide range of achievements. At one end of the spectrum are outstanding primary schools, including those identified in the annual report of Her Majesty's chief inspector. Those schools, some in extremely deprived areas, achieve high standards and provide their pupils with the best possible start to school life. At the other end of the spectrum, some 90 primary schools have been judged to be failing their pupils. The majority of schools fall between those extremes—they have some good features but also room for improvement.
Last year's national curriculum assessment results for 11-year-olds were disappointing. The Government are taking action to tackle particular problems and to raise overall standards. Where schools fail, the special measures regime comes into play. Primary schools respond well. They generally improve more quickly and need less time on special measures than secondary schools. We will publish primary school performance tables reporting this year's assessment results for 564 11-year-olds. Parents want and are entitled to that information. The chief inspector has pointed out before that tests and the publication of performance tables are helping to raise standards.
We are funding 23 local education authorities to run projects in primary school improvement. Performance measurement and target setting have been used to great effect in secondary schools, and we want to help primary schools the same way. We will extend the assisted places scheme so that gifted children of primary school age can benefit from the scheme's advantages.
Each of those initiatives and more will help to raise standards, but what matters most is the quality of teaching that children receive each day. Good teachers—and there are many of them—use effective methods to get results. That is as true in the most deprived inner-city area as it is in the leafiest shire school. The Government are determined that all teachers should know what works in the classroom and what does not. We know that children need to be taught—that they do not learn simply by exploration and investigation. The same applies to student teachers, who deserve to be properly prepared to take charge of the classroom.
We have tightened the requirements for teacher training to make courses more practical and relevant. From September, all primary teacher training courses will include at least 150 hours each of English, mathematics and science. At least 50 hours will concentrate on the teaching of reading and 50 on the teaching of arithmetic.
We have given Her Majesty's inspectorate the right to inspect training courses. Those inspections will reveal whether the 68 colleges that train primary teachers are using their time well or whether they are using discredited teaching methods. Reports on colleges are being published so that schools and students will know whether a course is up to scratch.
We are not neglecting teachers already in schools. We have started where it matters most—with the teaching of literacy and numeracy in primary schools. As the House knows, we have initiated 25 literacy and numeracy centres. We have, however, some way to go. I noted from The Daily Telegraph of Monday the comments—I know not whether they are accurate—of Mr. Colin Richards, formerly of the Office for Standards in Education. In criticising the chief inspector, he regretted that the chief inspector sees primary education as essentially concerned with teaching children to read, to write, to calculate, to distinguish between right and wrong and behave in a sort of disciplined, responsible way". I should be delighted if all our schools were doing that.