Catholic Schools (Admissions)

Debate between Damian Hinds and Kevin Brennan

Wednesday 30th April 2014 Westminster Hall

[Damian Hinds]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s unique geographical perspective. This comes up time and again, and I will shortly address some of those instances, but on the key point of whether Catholic schools are some sort of filtering device for middle-class, wealthy and bright kids, the answer is no. That would be a fundamental misunderstanding of the demographic profile of this country’s Catholic population, the location of those schools and the communities that they serve.

There is a school about a mile from here across the river that may be a contender for England’s most diverse school: St Anne’s Catholic primary school in SE11. The school’s pupils come from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds. Half of key stage 2 pupils are classed as disadvantaged, with most coming from the immediate wards, which are among the poorest in London. The school’s deprivation indicator is in the top 10%, but there are also families from higher income brackets. Altogether, pupils speak 32 different mother tongues, and 99% of pupils have English as an additional language, which is what we used to call English as a foreign language. The one thing that almost all pupils have in common is their faith, with more than 95% being baptised Catholics.

That is a striking example—that is why we politicians use such examples—but overall the profile of Catholic schools is more diverse than schools in the maintained sector in general. At primary level, the proportion of schools at which more than 5% of pupils do not speak English as their mother tongue is 57% for Catholic schools and 38% for schools overall. Some 34.5% of Catholic primary school pupils are from ethnic minority backgrounds, compared with 28.5% in the maintained sector as a whole; at secondary level, the figures are 30% for Catholic schools and 24% for other schools.

The proportion of children on free school meals at Catholic schools is somewhat lower on average than at other schools, and there are various explanations for that, but I do not think we know the answer conclusively. One thing that we do know conclusively is that pupils at Catholic schools tend to come from poorer places than children at schools in general. At secondary level, 17% of children at Catholic schools are from the most deprived wards, compared with 12% for schools overall. At both primary and secondary, Catholic schools over-index in the bottom four deciles and under-index in the top six deciles.

The diversity of Catholic schools, notwithstanding the water boundaries of some places, is partly due to the potential for much larger catchment areas. Typically, a Catholic school may have a catchment area 10 times the size of a typical community school’s catchment area. I saw a bit of that in my own schooling. The school that I went to in south Manchester had kids from leafy north Cheshire, but it also had kids from Stretford, Old Trafford, Stockport and Warrington. It really had a very wide intake.

Schools must comply with the schools admissions code, and over-subscription policies mean that Catholic schools typically give priority to Catholic children over the wider area and welcome others where there is remaining capacity. That system enables more parents who desire a Catholic education for their children to get one, bearing in mind that it is a minority religion in this country, so the population is likely to be more sparsely spread.

As has been mentioned, the admissions criteria of faith schools make regular media space-fillers. Headlines have included, “Faith schools ‘biased towards middle classes’”, “Faith schools ‘skewing admissions rules’” and, “Faith school admissions ‘unfair to immigrants’”. Those came respectively from the Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian after the publication of the schools adjudicator report in 2010. As was alluded to, we had the chief adjudicator into the Education Committee to discuss that report, which was extremely fair and balanced and made hardly any reference to faith schools. Somehow, between the publication of that report, the press conference and journalists filing their copy, the story became about bell ringing, schools insisting that parents clean churches and giving priority to white middle-class families. I do not know about you, Mr Dobbin, but I struggle to think of many Catholic churches that even have a bell tower. Anyone saying that people who clean churches having priority somehow advantages white middle-class families has a poor understanding of the demographics of those who clean churches.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the London Oratory school withdrew that requirement from its admissions criteria as a result of the adjudicator’s ruling?

[Damian Hinds]

I will tell the hon. Gentleman what I acknowledge: there are 2,000 Catholic schools in this country, and one of them is the London Oratory school. When these stories come up, they always centre on literally a handful of schools, virtually all of which are in west or south-west London. They are in no way representative of Catholic education as a whole, whether in location, resident population or type of school and so on.

[Damian Hinds]

That is probably a road that we do not want to go down today. Overall, notwithstanding the poster child cases that can be found on occasion—

[Kevin Brennan]

You mentioned the cleaning.

[Damian Hinds]

I say gently to the shadow Minister that that was represented as faith schools plural, not as one school where it was the case. The figures speak for themselves. In 2010, 337 Catholic secondary schools made 54,830 offers of a place to year 7 pupils. The number of complaints to the Office of the Schools Adjudicator about the application of the admissions code in Catholic schools was nine. In fact, there were proportionally fewer complaints about Catholic schools than there were for schools of no denomination.

There is a view that no admissions procedure or criteria should include a religious element and that if these are high-quality, sought-after schools, they should be made available equally to all, so that more people, or at least people living closer to the school, would benefit. I contend that that misses the point of what makes Catholic schools distinctive and sought after. If they were open to all, they would lose their distinctive character—not immediately, but over time.

Schools can withstand some variety, which is a good thing, in admissions. The proportion of non-Catholic children at Catholic schools today is 30%, which is probably higher than most people realise. A 50% cap on admissions would gradually erode that character in two ways. It would not only erode it directly by diluting the religious nature of the school’s population, but indirectly, because Catholic parents would cease to see a distinction between those schools and entirely non-denominational schools, as my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban) effectively argued in a recent debate in this place. Put simply, a half-Catholic school is not the same thing as a Catholic school.

The 50% cap is not in the coalition agreement, but is an interpretation of some of its wording. We would probably all agree that it was well-intentioned, because there is concern about diversity, inclusiveness and mixing in schools, and I understand the sensitivities around those topics. As I hope that I have demonstrated, Catholic schools are more diverse than the average, with mixing beyond that available in the average school. The cap is inhibiting the creation of new quality schools that will be just as sought after. It is clear that the 50% cap directly precludes the creation of Catholic free schools, because the Catholic Church feels unable to support, with all the implications of commitment that that brings, new so-called Catholic schools that would in the end have to turn away some families seeking a Catholic education for their children in favour of others who happen to live a little closer to the school.

There is an alternative, which is to create a new voluntary-aided school that can subsequently convert to an academy, and the same result could be had that way. That is not an impossible route to pursue, but there are two problems with it. First, it is a somewhat convoluted approach to reach that end, inevitably carrying additional inefficiencies and costs. Secondly, it is not as straightforward as a free school application, because voluntary-aided applications do not have the same priority as free school applications. The applicants for the new voluntary-aided school at Richmond experienced a legal challenge from the British Humanist Association, which claimed that the Government had to look first at free school applications that would have the 50% cap. That legal challenge failed, but it is inevitable that parents will feel some uncertainty about what will happen with future openings. That could affect the number of applications and the viability of such a new school.

[Kevin Brennan]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned that voluntary-aided schools do not have the same priority as new free schools. Why?

[Damian Hinds]

The hon. Gentleman is a man of letters, and he will understand that I can answer the question only in the sense of why I said that, which is because it is my understanding. It is for the Minister to talk about how these things work in practice, and he might want to contend that point.

I have some questions for the Minister. First, has the Department made projections of demand for Catholic places at schools, the growth or otherwise in the Catholic population and the propensity of parents of those children to seek a Catholic school? Secondly, has the effect of the 50% cap on applications for faith-based schools been assessed? Thirdly, would the Department consider a pilot of a Catholic free school without the 50% cap? Fourthly, is it possible to construct a new fast-track, voluntary-aided through to converter academy route that would effectively be a single process?

In conclusion, Catholic schools are a key part of the education landscape in this country, and have been for a long time. They are diverse—more diverse, in fact, than the average—and that diversity includes already having a substantial proportion of non-Catholic children. They also have something special about them, and that specialness comes at least partly as a direct result of their religious nature.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan]

No, it is not, and it will not be Labour policy. For the very reasons I have outlined, I do not think that is in any way necessary—but it is necessary that there should be fair admissions, which is the point that I am making. All schools, when they are criticised by the schools adjudicator, should not try to evade the issue. They should take it seriously and ensure that their admissions policies are meeting the criteria.

Yesterday, the former Secretary of State for Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), issued a report for the Labour Front-Bench team. I will read a short bit from it, to put it on the record—although it is a consultation, it is essentially an outline of the position that Labour are taking regarding admissions. We said that

“whilst the Office of the Schools Adjudicator…annual report noted that only 10% of Local Authorities objected to the arrangements of other admission authorities in their area, the OSA has separate evidence of much more widespread non-compliance. This review recommends that the School Admissions Code is strengthened by removing the possibility of individual schools ‘opting-out’ of the locally agreed admissions framework. This would not prevent changes to arrangements locally or agreed experimentation by Admissions Authorities, but would avoid the detrimental impact of rogue action with one school damaging the admissions of other schools in the locality. This recommendation does not interfere with the role of diocesan authorities, academies or schools as their own ‘Admissions Authority’, but reinforces the necessity of agreed and coherent arrangements within the relevant local area.”

It is important to put that statement on the record, because there are concerns about the watering down of the role of the schools adjudicator by the current Government and about the continuing disintegration and fragmentation of the school system as a result of the Government’s academisation and free school policy. I commend the document to hon. Members, if they would like to read it further.

[Damian Hinds]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reading out the passage from the document, and I apologise if this is just me being hard-of-understanding, but could he explain what it means in practical terms?

[Kevin Brennan]

Yes, I can. It means that Labour will, as we previously pledged, strengthen the role of the schools adjudicator to make sure not only that admissions arrangements are fair, but that when the schools adjudicator makes a ruling, the changes are put in place—if necessary, by the schools adjudicator. I will explain that with a further quote from the document:

“It will be necessary to strengthen the OSA and re-instate its power to change admission arrangements directly on upholding an objection (rather than merely issue a ruling).”

That was a source of great contention earlier in this Parliament, when the Government removed the power of the adjudicator and effectively made it extremely difficult for parents, when they have objections to admissions arrangements, to get those changed.

[Damian Hinds]

To be clear, does that mean that in the case of faith schools, in the Labour party’s outline plans, the definition of practising a religion—or an element, I suppose, of practising a religion—would fall further towards the Office of the Schools Adjudicator and away from diocesan authorities?

[Kevin Brennan]

It need not affect in any way the essence of practising a religion, but where there are requirements—as in the case discussed earlier—for people, for example, to undertake cleaning, the Office of the Schools Adjudicator could rule that that was an unfair part of an admissions policy.

[Damian Hinds]

Forget bell ringing and cleaning—let us talk about late baptism for a moment. As a practical example, could the Office of the Schools Adjudicator decide that children having had a late baptism should not count, in a sense, as being Catholic in the same way as those who had infant baptisms?

[Kevin Brennan]

I am sufficiently well versed in Catholic theology to know that there is no distinction between Catholics, regardless of when they were baptised. Of course that would not be applicable; it would be ludicrous if that were the case.

This has been a very good debate. It is extremely important that we have an opportunity to air these subjects. I want to place on the record my support and praise for the work of Catholic schools throughout the country and to commend, as I said, the Catholic Education Service for the serious engagement that it has had with the issue in relation to admissions. I ask the Minister to respond to the questions that hon. Members have raised about the 50% rule with regard to free schools and to give an answer about why voluntary aided schools cannot be set up as quickly and easily as free schools under this Government’s policy.

Educational Attainment (Disadvantaged Pupils)

Debate between Damian Hinds and Kevin Brennan

Tuesday 25th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Damian Hinds]

Can we hold that point? I will come back to it a wee bit later.

If the difference is not the London challenge alone—I totally acknowledge the beneficial effects of many of the programmes within it—is it simply more money? Of course, whenever we mention London’s outperformance, people say, “Oh, they get more money.” Yes, London schools get more money, but when we adjust that for deprivation, we discover that the difference is not quite as big as it at first appeared. In other words, when comparing the high number of free school meals in London with those in the rest of the country, the funding premium is not quite as large, although costs are higher in London, which is why there has historically been higher funding.

If we were to say it is just about having more money, we would have to say what more money has bought. Since I started working on this subject, people have told me that class sizes in London are smaller, but they are not. Bizarrely, they are slightly bigger than in the rest of the country, except at key stage 3. There is not a higher proportion of teaching assistants. Teachers are paid more, as are people in lots of occupations and professions in London, because of London weighting, but the difference in pay for the average London teacher versus the average teacher elsewhere is less than advertised. According to the ads, someone can earn up to 25% more as a newly qualified teacher in London, but the actual difference in take-home pay is on average smaller, because London teachers are younger and further down the pay scales.

What is different? I shall come to some of the things that the hon. Member for Gateshead mentioned. First, all sorts of things about the city are different compared with other parts of the country. The employment market is different, as he rightly says, which manifests itself in different ways. There are differential rates of unemployment, and youth unemployment in London remains concerning. In addition, there is the visibility of opportunities. If someone is travelling on buses and underground trains, they will be interacting with all the adverts, the people and all the rest of it. There is the cultural capital of the city—the museums and art galleries—and the pull factor of more university places. There are more university places per head of population in London than in other cities, and most people travel only a short distance from home to go to university. Everything is nearer. That helps with school choice—children go across local authority boundaries to go to school—and it helps schools wishing to co-operate with one another.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I have read the report by the hon. Gentleman’s all-party group on social mobility. It is a fascinating, interesting and detailed piece of work, and I congratulate him on it. However, all the factors that he has mentioned have not changed in the past 15 years. London is no further away from anywhere else than it was 15 years ago. I presume he will go on to explain what he thinks has changed.

[Damian Hinds]

The shadow Minister is such a nice man. He has read “Capital Mobility”, the report by the all-party group. I did not realise he had also read the sheet of paper in front of me, which states that many of those things were also true when London was the problem child of British education, before it became the poster child. Although such factors are relevant, we cannot ascribe the difference in London performance specifically to them.

The population make-up of London is one massive change and a massive difference. London is diverse on a scale unknown in the rest of the United Kingdom—indeed, unknown in most of the rest of the world. London’s state secondary schools are now 32% white British by ethnic origin, and the statistic for kids just starting secondary school is extraordinary: 48% do not have English as their mother tongue. An even more surprising statistic is that children with English as an additional language come very close in performance by GCSEs to children who have English as their mother tongue, and in London they beat them—in GCSEs in London, children who do not speak English as their mother tongue very slightly outperform those who do. That raises difficult questions.

I do not want to pre-empt tomorrow’s Committee meeting, at which, sadly, I will not be able to join my Opposition compadres, but I know the Minister will be appearing before the Committee to talk about the performance of white working class pupils. It is true that all ethnic groups do better in London than they do outside—spectacularly so in the case of children of Pakistani origin. There is a 14% gap between the performance of pupils of Pakistani origin in London versus the rest of the country.

There are other relevant differences in London, some of which might be driven by differences and diversity in ethnicity and religion, such as larger families and older, better educated mothers. Surprisingly, it is estimated that parents in London are slightly more likely to be married than parents outside London. It is slightly odd that we can only estimate that, but that is another question altogether. There are more families with a parent at home. There is less use of formal child care, slightly lower participation in free school provision, and slightly more use of tutors. One would normally associate such things with lower educational attainment, particularly in terms of early years participation, which again raises important, difficult and challenging questions.

What is different and what might we be able to have an impact on, given that we cannot have much impact on the composition of the population? London teachers are more diverse, more likely to have been educated abroad, more likely to be full time, and, before somebody says it, a bit less likely to have qualified teacher status—given the sorts of numbers we are talking about, I do not think that that is particularly relevant.

Teachers are also a little less likely to be on upper pay scales or the advanced skill scale and more likely to be on the main pay scales. Within the London challenge, there were various recruitment initiatives, which included addressing housing problems. One of those initiatives was Teach First. Opinions vary and sometimes teachers get wound up if we bang on too much about Teach First, but Teach First teachers can have a positive, disruptive impact as they come into schools, observe existing teachers, bring ideas of their own, swap things around and so on. Some 48% of Teach First teachers are still in London, and I think there is an opportunity to spread that scheme more widely.

There was a big focus on leadership in the London challenge. It was about supporting leaders in schools and ensuring that they were paid properly. As an aside, primary schools in London are on average a lot bigger than primary schools outside, and I wonder whether that means it is possible to afford more by way of leadership. Alongside that support and remuneration was intense scrutiny and what people close to the London challenge operation would describe as verging on ruthlessness to ensure that schools were being run absolutely as well as they could be. That was all facilitated by an intense use of data and what are called families of schools, whereby someone could compare their school to others in similar circumstances, so they could see what was really possible.

London also over-indexed greatly on sponsored academies. Compared with the rest of the country, London is much more likely to have sponsored academies. That relatively small number of schools had a disproportionately larger impact on the overall performance of London as a whole, because the results tended to go from very low to very good.

Where does all that leave us? I should like to put a number of things to the Minister. I do not pretend for a moment to have all the answers, or even most of them, but some things are obvious challenges. First, on attracting the best teachers, we know that most people stay in their home region. That puts a premium on marketing intensely the teaching profession to high performers within the areas and regions where they are most needed, at school-leaver level and university graduate level.

Secondly, there has to be a big opportunity for Teach First outside London. That is happening, or starting to happen, already. There is now a focus on Bournemouth, which is welcome. We need to bear in mind why 48% of Teach First teachers were in London. One reason is that the programme started there. Another is that, of course, young people like to move to London; that cannot be changed very much. Another big factor is the network effect: knowing that other new graduates are doing the same programme in schools relatively nearby and so having social and support networks. Some co-ordinated, geographically-focused expansion of Teach First would be smart.

There are always questions in some schools about what the pupil premium can be used for. What is the Minister’s attitude to schools in heavily disadvantaged areas using it to pay teachers more, to attract the best? Alongside attracting the best teachers, there is also the matter of getting top leadership to the areas where it is needed most. In that regard, I look to the growth of initiatives such as Future Leaders. I wonder whether the incentives are enough. Can those be looked at, to ensure that they are sufficient and that they persuade people to go where they are most needed?

I turn to geographical patterns. There can sometimes be an over-supply of national education leaders in areas away from schools where their support would be most beneficial. I wonder whether it is possible to improve that situation by using technology, for example.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct.

I appreciate that the civil service’s work load may be great. I understand that in the most recent survey of civil servants in the Department, many of them expressed concern about how they are being treated. However, a year is a reasonable period, after a survey has been completed, to publish it. In this day and age, the Department does not need to analyse the data; it should just publish them. Others, including the Education Committee, the hon. Member for East Hampshire, who is thorough in his research, as we have seen today, and many others in the blogosphere so loved by the Secretary of State for Education, will tell us what they conclude the survey to say. Will the Minister commit today to publish the survey, in the interest of letting us know what is happening with teachers; whether the Government are getting it right in doing what they said they wanted to do in their White Paper a few years ago, which is to give proper status to the importance of teaching; and whether the work force are well motivated by the Government’s policies? I hope that he will tell us in his conclusion when he will publish the report, with the emphasis on “when”.

The London factor was mentioned a lot in this debate. There is considerable evidence of the impact of the London challenge. I accept what the hon. Member for East Hampshire said in his remarks—that that is not the only factor we should consider regarding the performance of London’s schools, which have outperformed schools in other parts of the country and are the most improved schools in the country—but the London challenge is undoubtedly an important part of the London factor.

An Ofsted report published in 2010 found the London challenge to be a great success. The report attributed that to a number of factors:

“Clear, consistent leadership…Improvement programmes which matched strategies to the needs of individual schools…Strategic deployment of support from the London Leadership Strategy…Successful heads mentoring head teachers in target schools…Sensitive matching of partners under the leadership of LC advisers…Support, ‘without strings attached and without conflicts of interest’, from local authorities…external consultants or teaching schools aimed at raising the quality of teaching and learning…Collaboration between schools and grouping schools in families…Continuing development programmes for teachers…Teachers being committed to all London children not just those in their own school…The development of robust tracking systems to monitor children’s progress.”

Those kinds of factors are the ones we should be seeking to replicate across the country. I have a concern—I put it no more strongly than that, in this more academic forum this morning—that elements of the Government’s approach to education policy are militating against the ability to achieve the 10 key factors that were identified in the Ofsted report.

[Damian Hinds]

Just out of interest—this is not meant to be a political challenge—regarding all the things the hon. Gentleman mentioned that could be replicated, the Labour Government tried to do that in 2008 in the black country and in Manchester. I am interested in his analysis of why there was no read-across.

[Kevin Brennan]

I think there was some read-across, particularly in Manchester, where it worked better than elsewhere. I do not think the policy was given enough time. This Government were wrong to abandon that approach when they came in, in favour of a wholesale structural and cultural revolution, rather than looking at those key factors and attempting more effectively to replicate them. The system has been endangered by wholesale atomisation—the creation of this kind of Govian archipelago of schools across the country that are not well connected.

What the London challenge tells us—I sense sometimes that the Schools Minister may have some sympathy with this point—is that, while autonomy at school level is important, it should be provided within a collaborative system and a culture of collaboration, with highly qualified and well motivated professionals working together in the interests of all the children in that particular area. That was the lesson from the Ofsted report, which should be returned to and should become our mantra in trying to improve schools across the country. We should not simply rely on the idea that changing the sign at the front of the school and introducing academies and free schools will solve all our problems. It will not, and any intelligent analysis will show that.

We accept that we now have a variety of different types of schools, but let us re-introduce into the system the values of the London challenge that have been shown to be valuable in raising standards. That is not to say that everything from London is replicable across the country, due to many of the factors mentioned by the hon. Member for East Hampshire, but it is clear that they are key features of the London challenge that worked, and features of school systems in other parts of the world that show them to be a success.

I am conscious of time and I want to leave the Minister with time to respond, so I will briefly say a few more things. We have not heard much today about the importance of early years. I am not going to speak extensively about what the previous Government did on that; it has already been mentioned by other colleagues. We welcome and support—in fact, we proposed this—the extension of early years to two-year-olds. However, we need to do much more on that, and we need to have a much better offer for parents, particularly in relation to child care. We have already proposed a primary child care guarantee and extending free child care for three and four-year-olds from 15 hours to 24 hours per week. The Government ought to consider those proposals.

The pupil premium has been mentioned. Let us be clear: it was not really a premium, in the sense that it did not constitute any extra money in the system. When in opposition, the Schools Minister had said that there would be additional money—

Qualified Teachers

Debate between Damian Hinds and Kevin Brennan

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I welcome you to the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is the first time I have spoken since your elevation.

I congratulate all hon. Members who have participated in this interesting debate. We would have liked to have explored the technical and legal sides of qualified teacher status more, but time was limited, as it often is on these occasions.

This is essentially a simple debate on a straightforward motion concerning a proposition supported by the majority of Members of this House, so it ought to pass. We have been spared complication by not debating the coalition Government’s position. However, for those interested in the context, that position is still worth checking, if only for its comedy value. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time in the history of the House of Commons that a Government have tabled a satirical amendment. I will not go there, Madam Deputy Speaker, because you would rule me out of order if I did. What we have is confirmation of what I said at the outset, namely that the Deputy Prime Minister and his colleagues believe that

“all schools should employ teachers with Qualified Teacher Status”.

If they believe that, the motion should pass.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

rose—

AS-levels and A-levels

Debate between Damian Hinds and Kevin Brennan

Tuesday 16th April 2013 Westminster Hall

[Nic Dakin]

For a start, when we are dealing with young people, we are dealing with a collection of individual choices. In my experience, as someone who has spent a lot of time advising young people and encouraging them to make choices, if they are focusing on three subjects, languages are often vulnerable to not being tried. What turns out to be someone’s fourth subject—the one they drop down to AS—might not have been their fourth subject when they picked it. We can play around with statistics, but what is important is the impact on the young person at the point of choice, when they decide on their post-16 programme. Being able to do four AS-levels and then either take all four through to full A-levels or to bank one, increases the flexibility of choice, minimises risk and encourages people to take subjects that would be beneficial to them—mathematics, for instance.

[Kevin Brennan]

My hon. Friend knows what he is talking about, and the Association of Colleges backs what he says. In the briefing for this debate the association states that

“the removal of the AS as a stepping-stone may well reduce the take-up of subjects which are regarded as significantly harder at A-level than at GCSE,”

in particular,

“maths and modern languages.”

[Damian Hinds]

My question was about what the evidence was, not the effect.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan]

Apart from the strange explanations that we get from Ministers about trying to free up some time for people to do other things in year 12, the only reason that I have heard is that it relates to the experience of the Ministers in the Department and that they want to go back to the good old days when four out of five of them were in private school doing their A-levels. Perhaps they think, “It was good enough for me; why shouldn’t it be good enough for everyone else?” If that is what they are doing, they are ignoring the evidence.

I challenge the Minister today as someone who says that he is committed to fairness, who is a Liberal Democrat Minister, who has enjoyed the privilege of a fee-paying education and a Cambridge university education and who claims to be committed to social justice. How can he defend this policy in the light of the clear and thoroughly researched evidence that it will result in university entry becoming less fair?

[Damian Hinds]

We must be a little bit careful with this widening participation and access argument. Although it is undeniably true that many more young people have gone to university in the past 10 years, the figures show that the intake of the most selective universities has changed very little by comparison. Of course it is a very good thing that more young people have gone to those universities, but we must not confuse the two things and say that AS-levels have been a force that has made Cambridge university much more open.

[Kevin Brennan]

The hon. Gentleman makes my point for me. Cambridge has been the university that has most used AS-levels to bring about widening access. It can show that it has widened access as a result of them in the past 10 years. If he wants to challenge the admissions tutors on the claim that they have successfully widened access through the use of AS-levels, he is free to do so. They are absolutely clear about it and say that if AS-levels disappear, university entry will become less fair. The Minister must answer that point. So far, Ministers have failed to answer it, or to explain why they are persisting with the policy.

In any case, the Government accept that Cambridge is right, and presumably that the Russell Group, the 1994 Group, Universities UK, the Association of Colleges, the Sixth Form Colleges Association, the National Union of Students, the teachers and head teachers associations and we, God forbid, are right about the usefulness of AS-levels. Nevertheless, the Government will proceed with the damaging and unnecessary divorce of AS-levels from A-levels. Like the EBacc certificates, no one supports the move. The Government quite rightly abandoned their proposals on the EBacc. The Minister might well have had an influence on that decision. Who knows? It happened to coincide with his appointment to the Department. As I said earlier, we will not proceed with the divorce of the AS-level from the A-level, and everyone should be aware of that.

Internet-based Media Companies

Debate between Damian Hinds and Kevin Brennan

Wednesday 31st October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) on securing the debate, and other hon. Members who have spoken. I have a lot of sympathy with some of the points made by the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) and hope that she is successful in persuading the Government to take action. I also agree with many of the points about advertising made by the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), and with those made by my hon. Friends. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Mr Harris), who made several interventions, has a point, with regard to our being clear about free speech, and being clear that we should always, whatever our view of something posted on the internet, condemn violence, which is never justified and certainly was not justified in the cases that we have heard about.

When I was a Minister in the Department for Children, Schools and Families in the previous Government, we took forward the Tanya Byron review on internet safety for children, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Devizes. That was an interesting experience. I commend that report to hon. Members, because it is still relevant, even though it is a few years old. At the time, my daughter, who has just started university, was a teenager, and I thought that, as the Minister responsible, I had better look a bit closer at what she was doing online. She had been making videos and putting them on YouTube. I asked her, “Why do you do that?” She said, “I’ve got to think of my followers.” I asked what she meant and she said, “I need to be sure that my fans are getting some good videos.” I had a look, and one of the videos that she made had more than 100,000 views on YouTube. One comment underneath a video—these were Harry Potter fan videos—said, “How old are you?” She replied, “It’s not my policy to reveal my age.” That made me think, during the Tanya Byron review, that having built a swimming pool, the most important thing is not to put up a sign saying, “Danger! Deep end”, but to teach people to swim, and to have the resources to understand the medium they are dealing with, including who is at the other end of an online comment. By and large, although they can be vulnerable, children are quite savvy and intelligent. That proper level of education about the dangers on the internet is the first and strongest protection we can give, before starting to talk about what the Government can do in relation to regulation.

As several hon. Members have said in relation to responsibility, this is relatively new. The internet has emerged as the hugest, most important technological change in the past 20 years, and has changed our lives in a transformational way. It started as a wild west area, but the observations made by the hon. Member for East Hampshire are important and pertinent here, because this is essentially, overwhelmingly, a tool for carrying advertising. In relation to some of the irresponsible things that we see online, including on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, what drives those platforms’ existence, ultimately, is advertising. People advertising on websites are, by and large, companies—often large companies—with corporate social responsibility statements that would not tolerate their brand being associated with some of the things on the internet that we have heard about today, including the activity of trolls, child pornography, and so on.

Turning to public policy, we should hold the advertisers to account, as well as the people who provide the platform, to ensure that we are naming and shaming, and showing companies that purport to be socially responsible corporations where their advertising is appearing, and what it is appearing next to, from time to time. Ultimately, that commercial pressure will force, and is forcing, greater responsibility on to some of the newer companies, such as Facebook, which have only existed for a small number of years. That is important.

In Westminster Hall not so long ago, we debated the way that search engines, because of the algorithms that the hon. Member for East Hampshire mentioned, often throw up results at the top of the page that, say, encourage people to download a music track illegally before they are even offered the opportunity to purchase it legally online.

[Damian Hinds]

The hon. Gentleman makes some important points about the responsibility of advertisers. Will he acknowledge that a development on the internet that a lot of people do not understand is that an advertiser may not know where their advert will appear, because they give agency, effectively, to the search company to put it in context according to its algorithms, providing them with the greatest number of hits?

Financial Education

Debate between Damian Hinds and Kevin Brennan

Thursday 15th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan]

I am sure the hon. Lady is right; she thinks deeply about these subjects and makes intelligent contributions. The report, however, states:

“Personal finance education should be a compulsory part of every school’s curriculum.”

If that is going to be delivered, there must be some transmission mechanism. I am afraid that history teaches us, and future events will teach us, that exhortations from Secretaries of State—no matter how talented or eloquent they be—are not sufficient to make things a reality on the ground. As I say, there has to be a mechanism to make it happen.

In thinking about this issue, the Minister will need to clarify what the role of the national curriculum will be in a schools landscape where most institutions will not be required to follow it. How will that fit in with the original vision of a national curriculum to be taught by all schools across the country, as introduced by Kenneth Baker, now Lord Baker, who was the Secretary of State when I was a teacher back in the 1980s? How can the Minister ensure adequate teaching of financial education if most schools will ultimately be free to follow their own path?

[Damian Hinds]

The shadow Minister says that a transmission mechanism is required. Does he agree with me that if practical maths were made part of the GCSE syllabus for each of the main awarding bodies, such a transmission mechanism would exist?

[Kevin Brennan]

That is for 14 to 16-year-olds. If GCSE maths is taken between the ages of 14 and 16, young people would indeed receive some of this provision. The hon. Gentleman is correct about that, but the report goes much further in its recommendations for making financial education compulsory across all ages in the curriculum.

[Damian Hinds]

rose—

[Kevin Brennan]

I will give way again in a moment if the hon. Gentleman is dead keen. All right; I will carry on.

The Government are correct in their desire for people to take responsibility for their finances in order to reduce unaffordable debt, but they have to get the ball rolling, which means that they need to find some way of getting this going in our schools.

Education Bill

Debate between Damian Hinds and Kevin Brennan

Monday 14th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan]

That is extremely helpful. The Minister’s words will probably satisfy us so that we need not press that amendment to a vote later.

The chief inspector and the question of whether schools can be exempted from inspection were the subject of our earlier debate and of some interventions by me, the Chair of the Education Committee and my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), who is no longer in his place—I almost said Grimsby, but it is important to get the right part of Lincolnshire. Those remarks, and what the Prime Minister said earlier today about coasting schools, bring the issue more clearly into focus. As it stands, the clause removes the requirement for Ofsted—in other words, the chief inspector—to inspect and issue a report on each school in England, at a frequency set out in regulations, that rates the overall quality of the school and sets out its areas for improvement. Clause 41 will have a similar effect on further education institutions, which will be debated in the second group of amendments.

In effect, the provisions would exempt certain schools from section 5 inspections. Furthermore, the exemption would not be for a fixed number of years, and neither would a school be exempt only until something indicated that standards needed to be re-checked, such as a complaint from parents or pupils, a change of head, or concern being expressed by the local authority. It is possible that, under the clause, some schools could be exempt from inspections almost in perpetuity unless they wanted to pay for one.

It was pointed out earlier that a school could still be inspected under the chief inspector’s programme of surveys of curriculum subjects and thematic reviews, during which time the chief inspector may elect to treat the inspection as a partial section 5 inspection. However, that does not mean that every school would be inspected—far from it. In the case of the curriculum and thematic reviews, only parts of the school’s performance would be looked at.

The Prime Minister said earlier today that he was concerned that comprehensives in wealthy villages and market towns were sometimes coasting, although I do not know why he picked out comprehensives; that could apply equally to grammar schools in some parts of the country. He said that the fact that their

“respectable results and a decent local reputation”

hid the fact that their pupils could be performing much better. We know how quickly schools can move, for a variety of reasons, from being outstanding to what the Prime Minister describes as “coasting”. The Opposition’s proposals to provide more triggers for inspections when real concerns arise should have been accepted by the Government.

When Sir Michael Wilshaw gave evidence to the Select Committee on 1 November 2011, during his pre-appointment hearing before taking on his role as the new chief inspector of Ofsted, he said:

“Ofsted is about raising standards and it seems to me that there are only two levers for raising standards; one is Government and regulation, and the other is Ofsted.”

He later went on to correct himself, saying that he meant “two main levers”, stating:

“In terms of accountability, Government and Ofsted are the two main levers.”

In relation to the amendments, will the Minister tell us whether he agrees with the new chief inspector of schools in that regard?

[Damian Hinds]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the theoretical possibility of a school not being inspected for a very long time is not at all the same as that being likely? Does he also accept that the total basket of performance indicators that will be available under the new system will give much more richness, and a greater ability to identify the appropriate times to make such interventions?

[Kevin Brennan]

There are lots of indicators now, but we need triggers to make inspections happen at the appropriate time. We have sought to achieve that throughout the Bill. Given the seriousness of the step that the Government are taking, and the lack of consultation on this proposal, it should at least be the subject of the affirmative resolution procedure the first time that it is put in place. To that effect, we have tabled amendment (a) and the related amendment (b) to Lords amendment 27. We feel very strongly that if the Secretary of State is not going to provide us with any more triggers at this stage, he should at least have to come forward with an affirmative resolution the first time such a provision is enacted. We also think there should be a time limit on the provision. Amendment (b) to Lords amendment 27 would mean that exemptions could hold for only seven years, so the Government would be required to renew regulations at least every seven years.

Education Performance

Debate between Damian Hinds and Kevin Brennan

Thursday 12th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Damian Hinds]

indicated assent.

[Kevin Brennan]

Just the Minister and the hon. Member for East Hampshire. [Interruption.] I see there are a few other late developers. Since I asked that question, it is only fair to say that I did not pass the first time round, and I admit to the hon. Member for Wells that I had to do the dreaded resit. We should be careful about banning resits; the Secretary of State would not be able to drive had he not been able to resit his driving test on several occasions. The hon. Lady should be careful what she recommends.

Let us move to the substance of my remarks. The context for this debate was reflected in the e-mail sent out by the hon. Member for South West Norfolk, and concerns the way that the Secretary of State has used data from international surveys as the evidence base for his reforms. We have debated some of those reforms elsewhere—the Minister and I were recently on a Public Bill Committee and I know he is sick of the sight of me.

Part of the context for this interesting debate was provided by the Secretary of State in the White Paper and concerns international evidence. Quite frankly, I thought that all hon. Members present today made a better effort than the Secretary of State to put that evidence into some sort of context, which is why it has been a better debate. When the Secretary of State speaks about our educational performance in international comparisons, he quotes only from the PISA survey. He did not turn up for the Education Bill’s Third Reading, but on Second Reading he stated:

“We moved from fourth to 14th in the world rankings for science, seventh to 17th in literacy and eighth to 24th in mathematics by 2007.”—[Official Report, 8 February 2011; Vol. 523, c. 167.]

It is, however, misleading to quote out of context the UK’s raw rankings in figures from the PISA survey between 2000 and 2009 because, as other hon. Members have pointed out, the number of countries that take part in the PISA survey dramatically increased over that period. I am sure that if a survey took place in Norfolk, the hon. Member for South West Norfolk would be found to be the best MP in Norfolk—there is probably no question about that and since there are no Labour MPs in that area, I can say it with safety. If that survey were extended to the whole of the UK, and for the sake of argument, the hon. Lady finished in 11th place—this is purely hypothetical; I am sure she would still finish first—that would not mean that she had become a worse MP, but simply that there was more evidence and more MPs included in the survey. That is exactly what happened with the PISA survey—over time, there has been a huge expansion in the number of countries that participate. Furthermore, the OECD has stated that it is not statistically valid to make the comparisons over time on which the Secretary of State has relied, because there was no statistically valid sample from this country in the first place.

There is no consensus among statisticians and educationalists that the PISA survey can be relied on, let alone treated as a sort of religious text in the way it is by the Secretary of State—I must be careful because the hon. Member for South West Norfolk is an expert in this area. The Secretary of State likes to say that Andreas Schleicher, who compiles the PISA tables, is the most important man in our education system, but if he wants to base his policy on evidence he should consider all opinions, not just that of one person.

The PISA statistics will be examined in the months and years ahead, but I warn the Secretary of State not to rely too heavily on them. A Danish academic, Professor Svend Kreiner, is preparing a paper that will soon be published. He says that the PISA survey does not compare like with like across all countries, and is not therefore an objective performance benchmark. In this country, Professor Stephen Heppell has long contested the accuracy and usefulness of the PISA results, and his website cites research into PISA’s methodology. Professor Alan Smithers doubts its ability to compare like with like. S. J. Prais of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in London has previously used the example of England’s results to demonstrate serious flaws in the response rates and sampling of Pisa, which necessarily lead to biased results.

Gjert Langfeldt of Agder university questions the validity and reliability claims made by PISA, pointing to

“constructional constraints, methodological mishaps and the cultural bias embedded in the PISA design”.

Svein Sjøberg at the university of Oslo analysed PISA items and found that some involved confusing and erroneous material. For example, he observed that the title of an article about cloning, “A Copying Machine for Living Beings”, was translated literally word for word into Norwegian, rendering the title totally incomprehensible. The questions are supposed to be culturally neutral.

I could go on, but the point that I am making is that it is not accepted universally or even in a widespread way among academics and educationists that PISA can be relied on solely to provide the evidence required. I would forgive the Secretary of State on this if it was the only evidence available to him, but he did not mention in the Second Reading speech that I referred to, which he did turn up for, that other pieces of evidence were available. The hon. Member for South West Norfolk did, but the Secretary of State did not. We might have presumed from what he said that PISA was the only evidence available, but as has been mentioned in the course of this debate and as the hon. Lady mentioned in her remarks, because she is a very honourable lady, there is the trends in international mathematics and science study—TIMSS. She rather played TIMSS down. I will not at this point, having just tried to trash some of the PISA methodology, say that the TIMSS methodology is perfect. All I am saying is that it should be cited at the same time by the Secretary of State when he is making policy that is supposed to be based on evidence.

TIMSS showed that between 1995 and the last tests in 2007, England’s primary school maths performance improved by a greater margin than any of the other 15 nations that had pupils taking tests in those years, including Singapore, Japan, the Netherlands, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Norway. Our score went from below the international average in 1995 to comfortably above it in 2007. Our ranking improved from 12th out of 16 countries in 1995 to seventh out of 36 in 2007. It was an expanded table in which we had gone up. An example of that kind of performance would be the hon. Member for South West Norfolk going from 10th in Norfolk to 1st in East Anglia.