Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Gibb and John Pugh

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

The purpose of the GTCE and the Teaching Agency is not to provide a right of appeal for action taken locally. That is a local decision. The GTCE’s functions were additional to the sanctions available locally. We are removing incompetence from the matters that are referred to the Teaching Agency. It will look only at cases of serious misconduct. Cases that do not reach that bar will not be transferred to the Teaching Agency and will not be investigated by it. The GTCE and the Teaching Agency have never been a second road of appeal for action taken locally.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Following the Government’s moves to get rid of bad teachers, will the Minister assure me that the scheme will not be used to eradicate eccentric teachers, who are often very good teachers, and impose a grey uniformity?

[Mr Gibb]

I give my hon. Friend that assurance. We need more eccentricity, not less, in education. There will be a careful filter before cases are heard by the independent panels that report to the Secretary of State.

Technology (Primary Schools)

Debate between Nick Gibb and John Pugh

Wednesday 11th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend is right and that situation undermines the status of ICT. We have seen that in the GCSE figures. In 2000-01, something like 95,200 people took the GCSE in ICT, and last year that figure went down to 31,800, so something has gone very wrong with the content of the specification in ICT GCSE and in the programmes of study that were in recent reviews and that have led to this problem. There is a widespread belief that the existing programmes of study for the subject lack ambition, and that they serve to inhibit schools from engaging with innovative and inspiring ICT initiatives. We have heard that from so many sources—from teachers and pupils, from industry and, indeed, from my hon. Friend just now.

Some of the biggest names in the computer-related industries have told us that, in its current form, ICT is turning pupils away. That, in turn, is hampering the development of more relevant ICT-related GCSEs, with a focus on the more rigorous disciplines of computer science programming. That has had disastrous consequences for our digital industries, which face ever-increasing competition from emerging economies all around the world.

Eben Upton, a computer science academic at Cambridge university, was reported in yesterday’s Guardian as saying of applicants for degree courses whom he was interviewing:

“None of them seemed to know enough about what a computer really was or how it worked…Children were learning about applications, which are pretty low-value skills. They weren’t being properly equipped to think about how computers are programmed…Computing wasn’t being seen as the exciting, vibrant subject it should be at school—it had become lack-lustre and even boring.”

Our proposed change to the ICT curriculum will offer a chance for the subject to be rejuvenated, freeing teachers to explore and innovate, and hopefully to inspire a new wave of pupils to pursue computing and ICT. We need highly-skilled programmers if we are going to continue to compete in today’s and tomorrow’s markets, which will be increasingly dependent on, and driven by, the new digital technologies.

That is why the Secretary of State made the announcement that he did this morning. Pending the outcome of the national curriculum review, ICT will remain compulsory at all key stages in schools and it will be taught at each stage of the curriculum. The existing programmes of study will no longer be compulsory, but they will still be readily available for reference purposes on the web, although no school in England will be required to follow them. Subject to the consultation, from September this year, all schools will be able to use whatever resources they choose to teach the subject, and there is a wide range of excellent materials to choose from. I know that industry and specialist organisations, such as the British Computer Society, e-skills UK and Naace are already working on an alternative ICT and computing curriculum.

[John Pugh]

The worry is that we will go from one phase of prescription to another phase of prescription. We will not get back the days when young men came in and programmed BBC Micros on BASIC and such things, and got very excited about it. Technology is changing enormously. Years ago, if someone in the computer industry was asked about the key skill required, they would have said, “Keyboard skills,” yet touch-screens and so on will make those very skills obsolete. The model that the Minister is suggesting, which involves not only advice from above but interaction from below, is probably the right way forward.

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s support for the radical notion of removing the programme of studies. As the Secretary of State said this morning:

“Imagine the dramatic change which could be possible in just a few years, once we remove the roadblock of the existing ICT curriculum. Instead of children bored out of their minds being taught how to use Word and Excel by bored teachers, we could have 11 year-olds able to write simple 2D computer animations using an MIT tool called Scratch”—

History Teaching

Debate between Nick Gibb and John Pugh

Tuesday 10th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) on securing this debate, which has been of high quality throughout. All contributions to it were valuable. My hon. Friend is a firm supporter of recognising the importance of history in schools and has played an active role in highlighting some key issues relating to this subject, including in his excellent recent report, which paints a worrying picture of the decline of history in our schools.

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend’s view that teaching history should form a key part of a child’s education. As young people develop, taking on the rights and responsibilities of adulthood, they need a good understanding and appreciation of how and why our systems of democracy and justice were developed and established. They also need to understand the aspirations and values that motivated our predecessors to create the society in which we live today.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), who made an excellent, gripping contribution to this debate, that history is a body of knowledge that allows us to understand where we are. The study of history is also an important academic discipline in primary schools and at key stages 3 and 4 at secondary school. As well as providing knowledge, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) set out in interventions, it helps to develop pupils’ skills at reading, précising text and essay writing, which cannot just be left to the English curriculum in a school. It is about developing the skills of scholarship, which are important in a school career.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood has written a number of excellent history books, including studies of Edward VI and Queen Elizabeth I. He would therefore have been as shocked as me to find that, in a survey of history undergraduates entering a Russell group university, only one in three knew who the monarch was during the armada. In the same survey, almost 90% of the undergraduates could not name a single British Prime Minister from the 19th century. Professor Matthews, who conducted the survey, said that the students were

“studying at one of the Russell group of universities, on courses where the entry requirement is an A and two Bs at A level, which probably places them in the top 15% of their generation in terms of educational qualifications. This implies that, all things being equal, 85% of my undergraduates’ age group know even less than they do. In other words, we are looking at a whole generation that knows almost nothing about the history of their (or anyone else’s) country.”

As my hon. Friend highlighted in his report, the decline in the number of pupils taking history GCSE in this country is a matter of concern. In 1995, more than 223,000 pupils, representing nearly 40% of pupils, were taking history GCSE. By 2010, this figure had dropped by more than 25,000, so it is now only 31% of pupils, or just less than a third, taking the subject. If we scrutinise that decline further, as my hon. Friend has, we see a worrying trend around the clear divisions in GCSE take-up between different types of school and pupil background and in whether they are eligible for free school meals. As the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) said, a potential class divide is being created in this country with the subjects that are being studied.

For example, nearly 20% more pupils in the independent sector study history than pupils in maintained schools. My hon. Friend’s report also highlighted the links to deprivation reflected in the take-up of history at GCSE. For example, in 2010 only 25% of black pupils took history GCSE compared with 31% of white pupils; only 18% of pupils eligible for free school meals studied the subject at GCSE level, which is 13% less than the percentage take-up for pupils overall, at 31%. The decline in the study of history has also been reflected in further and higher education, with the proportion of students opting for A-level history remaining static for a number of years. Enrolments in history at university are well below the average compared with other subjects.

I agree with my hon. Friend that the current history curriculum does not give pupils a grasp of the narrative of the past. Last year’s Ofsted survey of history teaching in schools, to which he referred, supports that view. It found that in primary schools, although pupils generally had good knowledge of particular topics and episodes in history, chronological understanding and the ability to make links across the knowledge gained were significantly weaker. It is also clear that many schools are spending less time teaching history. In the recent Historical Association survey of secondary school history teachers, lack of teaching time was the most frequently cited issue that teachers raised about key stage 3, which the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central, who I am glad to see is back in the Chamber having met his constituent, mentioned in his excellent contribution. Part of the problem is that GCSE history is too narrowly focused, with exam choices clustering around certain topics such as the American west 1840 to 1895 or the Third Reich, which has been referred to by many hon. Members. Exams have a significant influence over what is taught, so it is no surprise that pupils have huge gaps in their knowledge of our national story and a disconnected sense of narrative.

There are also issues with teacher training. Last year’s Ofsted report also cited that in most of the primary schools visited, there was not enough subject-specific expertise or professional development to help teachers to be clearer about the standards expected in the subject. I hope that we agree that it is fundamental that a greater emphasis is needed on knowledge and content in the current school curriculum, which is why we have launched a review of the national curriculum.

[John Pugh]

The Minister has mostly outlined the decline in history as taught in all sorts of schools. Will he touch on the causal factors? He has not explained what appears to be an appreciable decline, as documented by the hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore).

[Mr Gibb]

There are all kinds of reasons why the decline has happened. It could be, for example, because of the move to a more skills-based approach. History might be regarded as a tougher subject in which to achieve the grades that a school feels that it needs to achieve to maintain or increase its position in the school league tables. We have had a concern for a number of years about the move to what are called softer subjects in order to boost league table positions, and history could well have been a victim of that process.

The new national curriculum will be based on a body of essential knowledge that children should be expected to acquire in key subjects during the course of their school career. It will embody for all children their cultural and scientific inheritance, and it will enhance their understanding of the world around them and expose them to the best that has been thought and written. We are engaging with a wide range of academics, teachers and other interested parties to ensure that the new national curriculum compares favourably with those of the highest performing countries in the world.

Religious Education

Debate between Nick Gibb and John Pugh

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gibb]

I will come on to why we have included history and geography in a moment, which relates to significant drops in the proportion of the cohort taking both history and geography.

I recognise that there are many concerns about the fact that the non-inclusion of religious studies in the humanities component of the English baccalaureate could have an adverse impact on the study of the subject. The E-bac recognises those pupils and those schools that succeed in securing achievement in the core subjects of English language, mathematics, the sciences, a language and history or geography, which reflects what happens in other high-performing countries. Singapore, for example, has compulsory O-levels in English language, mother tongue, maths, combined humanities and science. In France, the brevet is made up of exams in French, maths, history, geography and civics. In Japan, all students at the end of junior high school at the age of 15 are tested in Japanese, social studies, maths, science and English, depending on the prefecture. In Alberta, there are compulsory tests at 15 in maths, science, social studies, English and French. In Poland, 16-year-olds are tested in humanities, Polish, maths, science and a foreign language.

We deliberately kept the English baccalaureate small enough to enable pupils to study other subjects, such as music, art, RE, economics or vocational subjects. My concern is that the core academic subjects of the English baccalaureate—English, maths, science, a language, history or geography—are being denied to too many pupils, especially the more disadvantaged. In 2010, only 8% of pupils eligible for free school meals were entered for the English baccalaureate subjects, with only 4% achieving them. Of the 24% of non-free school meal pupils who took the E-bac, 17% achieved it.

In 719 maintained mainstream schools, no pupil entered any of the single award science GCSEs. No pupil was entered for French in 169 secondary schools. No pupil was entered for geography in 137 schools and no pupil was entered for history in 70 schools.

[John Pugh]

May I disabuse the Minister of his view that I was arguing for a change in the legal status of RE? I was trying to explore whether there are good arguments that he could give that are rationales for making the subject compulsory, which would not be good arguments for making it an option within the baccalaureate.

[Mr Gibb]

The arguments would be the same except that it is unnecessary to make RE a component of the English baccalaureate, because it is already compulsory by law. That is the reasoning behind our decision not to include RE in the humanities component.

RE is clearly a popular and successful subject. Judging by the increasing proportion of students who take a GCSE, it is one that is taught to an academically rigorous standard. There has been an increase in RE GCSEs from 16% of the cohort in 2000 to 28% in 2010. In addition, 36% of the cohort was entered for the short course GCSE in religious studies. By contrast, there has been a decline in the numbers entered for GCSE in history, geography and languages.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Debate between Nick Gibb and John Pugh

Monday 26th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful for that intervention, as it enables me to repeat that the deal is not done until the funding agreement is signed. That has always been the case: it was the case under the previous Administration and it is the case today. It is the funding agreement that is key.

Let me turn my attention to amendments 78, 4 and 18, which seek to prescribe with whom the school must consult. The Government believe that the individuals who lead schools—the governors and the head—are best placed to make decisions about their schools. They are the ones who know the local area, the local circumstances of the school and how it relates to other schools in the area. We do not intend to be prescriptive over whom schools should consult, as schools will have different views and the level of information they want or can make available at the time of consultation will depend on the point at which they do it. If they consult at the very beginning of the process, they may consult only on the principle of conversion itself. If they consult at a much later stage, they may want to consult on a wide range of additional matters—the curriculum, governance arrangements or a specialism for the academy, for example—on which they may by then have firmer views.

We trust the school to determine how to consult and whom to consult, and we do not intend to provide an inflexible checklist, which would not, in itself, ensure that consultation were any more meaningful. This includes consultation with the local authority, as amendment 18 would require. We do not intend to give local authorities a role that could, in some areas of the country, undermine the Government’s policy—as we know, this has been the case in the past. We do not want to provide local authorities with an opportunity to delay or frustrate applications via the consultation process. The Department’s website, as I mentioned earlier, includes guidance on good consultation practice.

New clause 1, tabled by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), would allow schools that have become academies to return to maintained status if 10% of the parents of the pupils at the academy vote in favour of it. Of course, the academies programme is about freedoms and lack of prescription, so an academy could choose, if it wished, to run itself like a maintained school. The academy could willingly act in such a way that for all intents and purposes, it would be a maintained school, operating with all the restrictions and requirements that apply to them—including the academy buying back services from the local authority and choosing not to use its curriculum or staffing freedoms. Therefore there would be no need for it to change its status for it to be run in a way that is equivalent to a maintained school.

We expect all schools that apply to become an academy to be fully committed to the academies programme. Before becoming an academy, the governing body of the predecessor school will have taken account, as I have said on numerous occasions, of the views of the parents and pupils at the academy.

Let me deal briefly with some of the comments made during the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Dr Pugh) raised the issue of the new politics, which he said that he, like me, supports. I believe that the coalition involves discussion, concessions and change, which we have seen during the passage of the Bill. The coalition is delivering the kind of politics demanded by the public. Today, the coalition has delivered its promise to introduce a pupil premium. The Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) has today tabled a written ministerial statement announcing a consultation process on the implementation of the pupil premium.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) took us back to the halcyon days of Lady Thatcher, which I know he likes to do from time to time, as do we all. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that we need to trust teachers and head teachers and that we need to give parents a genuine choice that will serve as a powerful force to raise standards.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) is right to point out that it is the funding agreement that is the key and the binding moment in the conversion process towards academy status. Schools wishing to convert in September had to apply by 30 June and we expect that those schools most keen to convert in September will already have embarked on consultation. That is what the Department has advised. There is nothing to stop such enthusiastic governing bodies from continuing to consult through July and the summer holidays, and it is inconceivable that they will have kept such matters from parents, when parents are represented to the tune of one third of governors on such bodies.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) is absolutely right that the governors of a school, particularly the parent governors, take their responsibilities very seriously. They care deeply about the school and would not take forward the process of acquiring academy status without taking into account the views of the community, whether or not a particular part of the community were represented on the governing body.

The hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) made the important point that schools are at the heart of the local community, and we agree that they should be, which is why the funding agreement specifically states that academies should be at the heart of the community and share facilities with it. She also raised the issue of the risk to governing bodies of a legal challenge, but clause 5(1) requires them to consult those people whom they think appropriate, and to a large extent, therefore, it is up to the body to decide whom it should consult. Provided that its decision is reasonable, it is unlikely to face a legal challenge.

The hon. Member for Gedling asked for the number of schools that have applied. Those that want to convert in September must have applied to do so by 30 June, but that does not mean that others will not also have applied by that date, and we do not believe that all those that have applied will necessarily be in a position to convert by September. We want to ensure that the process is right, and we will not allow conversions until all issues have been resolved.

The hon. Gentleman also asked where we are with the TUPE negotiations. Employers of staff at schools seeking to convert will be at different stages, depending on when they intend to convert, but TUPE requires the consultation on the transfer of employment to be sufficient, and it will apply outside the Bill in any event. Any proposed September convertors will have been advised to begin a TUPE consultation some time ago, at the outset of their consideration of the application.

Finally, the hon. Gentleman asked about the details of the academy order. It will state that a named school will convert to an academy on such date as is specified in the funding agreement. It is a very short document, and with those few remarks I urge hon. Members and my hon. Friends, when asked, to withdraw their amendments.

[Dr Pugh]

I shall say a few words before putting amendment 8 to the vote. Ministers have been fairly quiet throughout the large part of this debate, and I cannot be alone in sensing a certain embarrassment about some aspects of this legislation and the manner in which it has been pressed.

My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Mr. Hancock) said to me during my earlier contribution that the real reason for weak consultation and no balloting is that it is all about making the establishment of academies easier, and at the time I said that that was uncharitable. Having listened to the counter-arguments, however, I am not sure that he was not after all right and me a little naive.

The ministerial argument against ballots was that they would politicise, but one does not need to be very bright to realise that that is a general argument against any ballot, any time, any place. The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) suggested that we would know the parental view from informal soundings, and to some extent that is correct, but he was unable to explain how that could happen before September, when schools are closed for the holiday. Indeed, if that is such a good, sure-fire method, why do we persist with ballots before changing a grammar school’s status? People were completely unable to answer that, or why primary, secondary and special schools should not have the same privileged legal position.

No one answered the comments from the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart), the Chair of the Education Committee, even though they were repeated. I shall repeat them again: he described the consultation arrangements as appearing like a charade. I recall working for a boss who used to listen to his heads of department, gather them all around, very carefully solicit their views and conclude by saying, “I hear what you say.” After that, he would do precisely what he wanted to do in the first place.

The hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) suggested that parents will be able to vote not necessarily by ballot but with their feet. I describe that as the Burmese school of democracy: “If you don’t like it, you can get out and go somewhere else.” He was quite right that governors generally and usually have a good awareness of and good contact with parents, and that they are likely to know quite a lot about how they might feel and react, but the clear point is that that is not invariably the case. Were it invariably the case, every grant-maintained ballot would have been won, but many were lost. Indeed, the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) and I come from an area where all the grant-maintained ballots were lost.

If Members wish to disempower parents, if people in this Chamber genuinely believe in post hoc consultation, and if they object to rational amendment in the Commons, they should vote against my amendment. I can do nothing about that, but if they think differently I should like them to agree to amendment 8.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Debate between Nick Gibb and John Pugh

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friends have just made the point from a sedentary position that that is not the case. It is not only outstanding schools that are being invited to acquire academy status; it is all schools. We are also continuing to address the problems at the other end of the scale, to ensure that schools that are in special measures and that are struggling can acquire academy status and have a sponsor that can raise standards in those schools. Those projects, and that approach to policy, will continue.

I am surprised at the opposition to these proposals, given that they build on the legislation of the previous Government. They do not represent a major departure from the previous approach. The Bill has only 20 clauses, and the reason for that is that it builds on the legislation introduced by the previous Government.

[Dr Pugh]

I want to test my understanding of what the Minister is saying. In response to the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), he said that he would be perfectly happy for a governing body to spend a fair amount of money on behalf of local children, even though there might not be anyone on that governing body who had any connection to local children. Surely there is an issue of accountability there—

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. This is not a wide-ranging debate on academies in general. We are debating the amendment, so perhaps the Minister could now direct his comments to that.