Teaching Quality

Debate between Damian Hinds and Stephen McPartland

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), my erstwhile colleague on the Education Committee, who spoke passionately and, for the most part, compellingly. I agree entirely that teaching is a noble profession and a vocation.

I also agree with three key aspects of Labour’s motion. First, it is obviously right that the quality and effectiveness of a school system cannot exceed the quality and effectiveness of the teachers in it. Secondly, those teachers must be able to access the best possible training and ongoing development, and not just in subject knowledge, but in classroom management, lesson planning, progress tracking and all the other things that are so important. Thirdly, I agree about the importance of validating and revalidating teachers’ effectiveness, because if we want to raise the bar and improve the overall level, we cannot wait for a turnaround in all the generations of teachers. I disagree on exactly where and how that validation should happen, however, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore).

There are also three important deficiencies in the motion. First, in its headline emphasis on qualified teacher status, it refers to a very small proportion of teachers. It is often said that no one forgets a great teacher. Sadly, most of us can also remember at least one who was pretty rubbish. I mean that not as a value judgment or a political point, but as a statement of fact; some teachers are better than others, and some are just not very good at teaching. That person we remember was almost certainly a qualified teacher. According to the 2012 work force survey, 96.5% of teachers were qualified, which means 3.5% were not, and the figure is now lower than it was under the previous Government. As the Secretary of State pointed out, the part of the country that does best in education is the part with the highest proportion of non-qualified teachers, and—to add another little fact—four fifths of them are not on a route towards QTS.

Secondly, the motion is logically inconsistent. If QTS is an irreplaceable standard that every teacher should reach before being let loose in the classroom, how can it possibly be acceptable to have someone teaching who has only just begun the route towards QTS? Thirdly, the motion’s critical deficiency is that it conflates two words that sound a bit the same but are completely different: “qualifications” and “quality.” I note that the conflation extends even to the hallowed institution of our democracy, the Order Paper, because two days ago it referred to a debate on teacher qualifications, but today that has morphed seamlessly into a debate on teacher quality. Either subject would have been an important and interesting subject for debate, but they are completely different topics. That is the fundamental problem here.

I do not expect a sudden flood of teachers who have not done a PGCE or other qualification to come into teaching. When Mary Beard appeared before the Education Committee, she talked about Jamie’s dream school—I hate to bring it up again—and, when asked what she would have done differently, said, “A bit of training would have been nice before going in to teach the kids.” What an understatement. Of course, an individual going into teaching, let along the school and the parents, wants to know that they have been properly trained to cope with the situation.

There are, however, circumstances in which somebody has a lot to give, and in which taking the necessary time out for full retraining—something like a PGCE—would put them off. They might be someone who has taught for years in a private school, a university lecturer, a business leader who goes in part-time to do lessons in entrepreneurship, or an artist, musician or actor with unique skills and creativity. I want such things to be available to kids in our state system.

Private schools educate only 7% of children in this country, but they account for 32% of AAAs at A-level. There are differences between private and state schools, the biggest of which is in the resources of money and facilities that are available. One of the others is the freedom accorded head teachers, reporting to governors, about who they employ and how they run their school. We have a rigorous accountability regime for exams, Ofsted and pupil choice. Within that framework, a head teacher, reporting to their board of governors, should be able to decide the direction in which their school goes. There are things we should focus on to improve teacher quality.

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the focus should be on the quality of education for children in schools, as opposed to the quality of delivering paperwork to be revalidated?

Education Bill

Debate between Damian Hinds and Stephen McPartland

Monday 14th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Stephen McPartland]

I thank the Minister for that clarification. One of the little-known problems with Ofqual’s relationship with awarding organisations is that often when it requests information the organisations can ignore it—I am not saying they do so—because they know that Ofqual only really has the nuclear option; it can either engage with them or not engage. That becomes the organisations’ point of view on the relationship they want with the regulator, rather than the view of the regulator in trying to regulate the industry. We referred to the industry earlier as a market, and it is worth almost £1 billion a year in the UK. There are 182 awarding organisations.

[Damian Hinds]

On the question of reputational risk versus the power of a fine, does my hon. Friend accept that the two are not necessarily alternatives? Being fined or, in an extreme case, being given the highest fine the regulator can give will itself contribute to the costs of reputational risk, so the two can reinforce each other. Reputational risk appears to have been an insufficient deterrent hitherto. Otherwise, we would not have had the extent of problems we saw this summer.

[Stephen McPartland]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend, because reputational risk is very important. The problem is simply that it comes back to reputational risk and the nuclear option, as many awarding organisations can take a chance and build into their business models the number of mistakes they can make before they appear in national headlines. I am not saying that that is what they are doing, but with Ofqual’s current position there is a very odd situation in which the awarding organisations can identify the relationship they want with the regulator, rather than the regulator regulating the industry.

Providing Ofqual with the ability to fine awarding organisations at 10% allows it to say, “If you don’t comply and engage with us, we can fine you up to 10%.” I agree with the Minister that there will no doubt be a sliding scale and that it will be introduced with consultation, but the key point, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) noted earlier, relates to the Japanese example of smashing one circuit in 1,000 to ensure that they comply. We do not want one mistake to ensure that Ofqual and the awarding organisations comply with one another; we want them to have a relationship based on trust and understanding and, as a last resort, for there to be the threat of fine if the awarding organisations do not engage with Ofqual. Reputational risk is important, but I think that we all understand that what affects people ultimately is the bottom line: what profit they are making and how they are engaging. That is what is important, because that is what they are employed to do. I broadly agree with the Ofqual situation. There is a bit of conflict, because it means giving a quango more powers, but in this situation I think that that is correct.

We also had a robust and prolonged debate on Ofsted, with many interventions. There was a suggestion that some schools would not be inspected for perhaps 10, 15 or 20 years, but in practice that is unrealistic. I was under the impression that when a new head teacher took over a school, particularly a primary school, traditionally that would trigger an Ofsted inspection within a couple of years. I understand that under the Bill’s provisions Her Majesty’s chief inspector of schools will trial a new approach so that, when a new head teacher takes over, the inspector will contact the school to discuss the performance and the head teacher’s plans for the future, which I think is a much more effective way of working with outstanding schools.

Triggers have been mentioned. I understand that there will be a guaranteed minimum re-inspection rate of 5% and that governors, through the powers and freedoms we are allowing them—the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) spoke effectively about this in Committee on several occasions—will be able to say that they are losing confidence in how things are going. If parent governors in our constituencies believe that children are not getting access to the best education, they phone their MP or local authority straight away to demand the best for their children. That would also ensure that those schools will have the best from the new freedom to engage and not to be inspected every couple of years.

On a wider note, I am pleased that Ofsted will no longer give six or seven weeks’ notice of inspections. The notice period had meant that teaches would often work for 15 or 16 hours a day for six or seven weeks, including weekends, to try to ensure that their school is seen at its best. I do not believe that that is the best way of conducting inspections. What Ofsted is doing at the moment is giving a couple of days’ notice before turning up, which provides a much better reflection of the school. As the years go by, that will provide a much better snapshot of what is happening.

Also, the freedoms for academies in the Bill will lift education across every constituency and local education authority area. Competition is the wrong word to use in a debate on education, but those schools, head teachers and teachers will be seeking to attract the best children. It is important to focus on providing the children with the best schools. Many of the outstanding schools will not now be inspected as often as before, but they will be spending their time helping neighbouring schools that do not have the best procedures in place to move towards becoming outstanding. I welcome the Bill’s proposals in this area.

My final point relates to direct payments for special educational needs. The Minister said earlier to my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford that people would be able to opt into this process, and I am grateful to him for that, because I would have had great hesitation in supporting any kind of compulsory measure. Now that the Minister has clarified the position, however, I can support the proposal.