Education: Development of Excellence

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

I will try to do so. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, for bringing this debate to the House. From the number of speakers, your Lordships can see what a popular debate it is; the only consequence is that we have very few minutes in which to express our views. I want to concentrate on one aspect and illustrate it with a number of examples, and to begin by sharing some of the noble Baroness’s words. She paid tribute to the high standards that we have and the improvement that has been made in our education system. She put that down in large amount to the very hard work of school leaders and teachers. I join her in thanking and applauding them. I have not always shared her analysis of where we are now or how we have got here, but perhaps that will wait for a later debate.

The point I want to start on is that where we have had success and raised standards—on almost every indicator, we are performing better than a decade ago—it is because we have identified what works and enabled schools to copy that behaviour. That spreading of good practice has rarely been invented in Whitehall; it has usually been found in our best schools. Whitehall at its best has created the structures and means of spreading that to other schools. I pay tribute to both Governments, as through a whole array of measures—Excellence in Cities; federations and chains; heads working in both good and underperforming schools—we have managed to do that.

I want to concentrate on two or three examples where the actions of this Government are deterring schools from doing what we know works and will raise standards. The first example is in sport and art, and all those subjects which are not in the English baccalaureate. I do not want to make an argument against the English baccalaureate. I do not need to be persuaded that the subjects within that assessment and examination are ones which children should know and learn, and be confident in. Our nation and each of those children need them for the future. However, the consequence of that policy is that up and down the country schools are dropping subjects that are not in that group. The noble Baroness mentioned the consequences of targets and league tables: teachers teach to the test and concentrate on those children who can deliver the results. That is what is happening with the English baccalaureate. I cannot have a definition of a successful education system that is not rich in sport, art, music, creativity and all the subjects that are not part of the English baccalaureate.

My second example is the pupil premium. It is an excellent initiative, and I congratulate the Liberal Democrats on bringing it to government, but they must have been as worried as I was to see the recent research that states that schools are not spending the resource on the interventions that are proven to have the greatest impact on school achievement.

In both those cases, and in vocational education, which I think I can confidently leave to the noble Lord, Lord Baker, the Government are taking actions that are defensible in their own right, but the consequences are that some schools are not doing the things they ought to do.

I know from my experience as a Minister that Governments are bound to have priorities. That is the nature of government and is where Governments put their energy and resources, but the Government have to understand that in having priorities there are implications and consequences. Two years into this Government, some of those consequences are coming to fruition: there is too little emphasis on art, creativity and music, and professional autonomy is not balanced by the obligation to use teacher interventions that work with children. Getting that balance right is crucial to delivering an education system that encourages and delivers excellence for all our students.