SATs Results

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, a former Chair of the Education Committee. He is absolutely right that Labour Members appear to want to sell young people short, rather than being clear with them about the standards that are needed to compete not just with the best in this country, but with the best in the world.

When this Government came to office in 2010, too many young people entering secondary school were not able to read, write or add up well enough. England’s pupils were far behind their peers in top-performing countries right across the globe. International test after international test showed other nations surging ahead while England’s performance stagnated. In fact, the OECD identified England as one of the few countries in which the basic skills of school leavers were no better than those of their grandparents’ generation. To me, that is nothing short of a scandal, and central to that scandal was that the curriculum being taught in many primary schools, and the tests that the pupils were taking, were not up to scratch.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

My constituency has some spectacular primary schools and some outstanding secondary schools, but as I go around the schools in my constituency, I find that too many young people are let down at the secondary stage of their education. They come out of primary school with very good results, but slip back over their five years in secondary school. What is the Education Secretary going to do about standards in secondary education as well as in primary?

[Nicky Morgan]

I will not give the hon. Gentleman all the details that I could set out if we were having a broader debate about education, because that would risk straying off the subject of key stage 2 SATs. We are, however, reforming GCSEs, introducing the EBacc, looking at technical and professional education and increasing the number of young people over the age of 16 in apprenticeships. Last Friday we launched the skills plan. I do not disagree that there are challenges at both stages of education. The chief inspector of Ofsted has identified those first three years at secondary school as a time when children, particularly bright children from disadvantaged backgrounds, slip backwards. To me, that is also a matter of social justice, and I think that the hon. Gentleman and I can find common cause on the need to tackle it.

The trouble with the attitude of the Labour party is that while it allowed Labour politicians to trumpet ever higher pass rates, the price was low standards that let down the young people trying to master these vital subjects.

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[Andrew Gwynne]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Nicky Morgan]

No, I am not going to give way.

Let me also be clear about what this means for schools. Conservative Members believe that schools have to be held to account for the results that their pupils achieve. However, they need to be held to account fairly, which is why we are judging schools not just on the standards that they achieve, but on the progress that they make with every child, so that schools with challenging intakes get proper recognition for the achievement they are making by pushing their pupils to success. On top of that, in recognition of the fact that this is a transitional year, I have also announced that the proportion of schools judged to be below the floor when the new progress bar is set will be no more than one percentage point higher than last year. That progress bar will be released in September, and no school can be identified as being below the floor before then.

Having listened to the speech by the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne, I was struck by just how easily it could have been written by the NUT’s acting general secretary. It represented the final stage of the Labour party’s transformation into the parliamentary wing of the NUT.

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[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about partnership. Where the tone of this debate has gone wrong today is that we have had comments like “Tory bad, Labour good,” “Labour bad, Tory good,” “Unions right, Government wrong,” and “Government right, unions wrong.” However, we owe it to our schools and teachers to work in partnership, because we all want our children to succeed, standards to improve and the United Kingdom to rise in the global league tables.

[Vernon Coaker]

I agree. Standards have risen over the past couple of decades, but we want them to rise faster. There is still too much inequality and social background still determines educational attainment. We should not blame people; we should ask what is preventing this country from overcoming something that has bedevilled the education system for decades. No one would stand up and say that we want the situation to continue. The question is how we best meet the challenge.

Given the embarrassment of the leaked and abandoned tests, what will the Minister do to improve security in the future? What is his response to the criticism of how the new tests relate to the new curriculum? It was introduced in 2014 and tests are being set on it in 2016—two years for a four-year course. Will that be taken into account? What has been said to schools? Next year, we will be three years into a four-year programme, so will that mean anything for next year’s testing? We all want to hear about that. It would be ridiculous to pretend that this year’s SATS have been an unmitigated success given the real problems. What are the Government going to do about that? How will they improve things? That is what parents, schools and all of us want to hear.

What will the key stage 2 results mean for schools’ Ofsted categorisation? If a school has seen its results collapse, what will that mean when Ofsted go in in September? I do not know the answer, which is why I am asking. The Secretary of State is nodding her head, but I do not know the answer. People want clarity. What will the results mean for a school’s Ofsted categorisation? If the Government set a standard and large numbers of pupils fall below it, including those at schools currently categorised as outstanding, what will that mean when Ofsted inspectors go in? Will the school get cast out? Perhaps not, but that is what schools want to—[Interruption.] The Minister will respond to that to reassure people—thank you.

The SATs have had real problems. Everybody in the House agrees that we need to improve standards. We will never reach a point at which we are all satisfied. Everyone will always want more, but what are we going to do about the problems? How will the tests that have been introduced allow us to build on any progress? What are we doing to reassure schools? What are we doing to reassure headteachers, teachers and parents? What will be different next year to prevent what has happened this year from happening again? Those are the sorts of questions that I was trying to intervene on the Secretary of State to ask. I was not trying to get up and say, “Tories wicked, Labour brilliant.” I just wanted to ask, because, with respect, I thought that people were not going to get answers to their detailed questions. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South (Mr Marsden) will no doubt ask similar questions, but I will be grateful if the Minister answers some of them and makes some other points.