Education: PISA Results

Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Statement, which had a much more measured tone than the public pronouncements on the PISA results that we heard yesterday and this morning from the Secretary of State.

The results show that after three and a half years in government, the coalition has so far failed to make any further progress in improving standards in these core subjects of English, maths and science, compared to other countries. Any serious Secretary of State would regard these results as a call to action and a reason to scrutinise very carefully government policy in the light of the findings.

Instead, and typically, this Secretary of State’s line of defence has been one of attack, I think to try to divert attention from his own record. The Secretary of State claims that the UK’s current position in the international league tables is,

“a verdict on the last government”.

I say to the Minister, and believe profoundly, that if we had not had a Labour Government prioritising and investing in education year on year, the UK would be at the bottom of the league table. Without doubt, if the OECD had been comparing countries in 1996—it was not—the UK would have been on the floor. After 18 years of a Conservative Government, the education system in this country was in tatters, with crumbling schools, standards flatlining, teacher morale at rock bottom and a school system in chaos. The Labour Government, quite simply, had to rebuild that system from top to bottom.

That is why we saw the first and biggest transformation ever for pre-school children, with free early years education for all three and four year-olds and, later, for disadvantaged two year-olds. We also saw capped class sizes in primary schools and radical reform of the secondary curriculum. We introduced academies in disadvantaged areas because the Labour Government really did care about social justice and equity in our education system. We also saw massive investment in teacher and head teacher training and development, including the introduction of Teach First, and year-on-year improvements in GCSE and A-level results—achievements which this Secretary of State has ridiculed and said were a fiddle.

When we left office in 2010, the coalition inherited record results and the best cadre of teachers this country has ever had, by common acclaim, including from Ofsted. That was a solid foundation for the continued progress that we agree is undoubtedly still needed for us to compete with the rising economies elsewhere in the world. It would have been good to hear the Secretary of State acknowledge that progress, but instead of doing that and trying to build on it, this Secretary of State is in danger of squandering those advances by taking our education system backwards to didactic teaching and a rampant free market between schools.

The Minister selected certain factors that he thinks these results tell us. However, if PISA tells us anything, it is that the countries doing better have understood and are relentlessly implementing three important lessons. First, as a teacher using the Singapore maths model said on the news this morning, learning by rote is simply not good enough for the innovative technological world in which our children will work. However, this Secretary of State is returning the UK to an obsolete curriculum and an exam system that measures what children remember, not what they can actually do.

The second lesson is that collaboration between schools and schools challenging each other drive up standards. However, this Secretary of State has abolished the London Challenge, where schools worked together, challenged each other and produced the fastest rise in achievements. He also abolished the Greater Manchester and Black Country Challenges, which were beginning to produce similar results in some of the most disadvantaged parts of the country. If the Minister cares about social justice and equity in education, that should not have been done, as the scheme was addressing extreme disadvantage in our education system.

The third lesson is that qualifications, along with continuing development of teachers, is the single most important factor in improving education and achievement. However, this Secretary of State, as we just discussed in Questions, has allowed academies and free schools to employ unqualified people to work as teachers, even in core subjects. As I said, we have seen some academies putting out adverts for unqualified people with four GCSEs to teach maths.

I could not agree more with the Minister about the need to focus on social justice and equity, to introduce rigour and standards into the education system and, particularly, to make sure that those from disadvantaged backgrounds can gain the most. However, although we support some of the Government’s reforms, I cannot agree that all of their measures, taken together, will achieve those ends. Will the Minister explain to the House why the Government’s policies are flying in the face of the lessons from elsewhere in the world, which I have just outlined, that emanate from the PISA results today?

I agree that this is a most important subject and we should use the OECD findings to our advantage as far as we can. Will the Government bring forward a considered and comprehensive analysis of the OECD findings so that we can have an informed debate in public about the implications for the UK, and regear some of the Government’s reforms to ensure that we can position our young people to compete with the best in the tiger economies?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his comments. He made his opening point extremely eloquently and I think we all realise that you do not turn around an ocean liner in a couple of years. He is absolutely right and we should all just avoid having that conversation in the future.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

If the Minister will give way, I have to clarify the points I made in my opening speech. It was not that I expected the Government to have turned around a tanker. What I said was that substantial progress had been made during the years of the Labour Government, and necessarily so because of the state of the education system in 1997. In their three and a half years, the Government could have built on that progress rather than starting again with some very destructive reforms.

[Lord Nash]

We will have to beg to disagree on this because I do not see our going from seventh to 25th in literacy, from eighth to 28th in science or from fourth to 16th in maths as progress.

The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, referred to a war room. I look forward to him perhaps taking me to visit that school at some stage. I entirely agree on the question of leadership. I was particularly impressed when I visited the Perry Beeches schools in Birmingham, which are run by an inspirational head, Liam Nolan, and by how he has managed to turn around a number of failing schools. He has not only kept in place people who were clearly not performing well under the previous regime but promoted them to very senior positions.

I entirely agree, too, about governing bodies. Whether the school is a local authority maintained school, a church school or an academy chain, real decisions can often be made in the governing bodies and we are focusing much more on them. We have recently made it absolutely clear that governing bodies should focus on a few key things: the vision and strategy of the school, holding the head to account for the attainment and progression of pupils, the performance management of his or her staff, and the finance. We need smaller governing bodies, in many cases, but with many more of the appropriate skills.