Qualified Teachers

Andrew Percy Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House endorses the view that in state funded schools teachers should be qualified or working towards qualified teacher status while they are teaching.

In moving this motion, the Opposition call on the Government to uphold the highest standards in our schools. We are delighted that the Deputy Prime Minister—if not his Schools Minister, as we never quite know on whose side he is talking—appears finally to have accepted the Labour party’s position on ensuring qualified teacher status within our schools. As if we needed any further proof of the importance of this point, events at the Secretary of State’s Al-Madinah free school in Derby—where the teaching was inadequate, the school dysfunctional and the care of those with special educational needs a disgrace—proved that right.

This afternoon I shall set out the importance of having a professionally qualified teacher work force; the role that this work force play in allowing children in our schools to reach their full potential; and to urge the Liberal Democrats to rediscover their progressive credentials. I hope to do so succinctly, Mr Speaker, so that many of my colleagues can contribute.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

rose—

[Tristram Hunt]

I shall give way first to a teacher.

[Andrew Percy]

Yes, and one with qualified teacher status—unlike, perhaps, some others.

May I press the shadow Secretary of State on that issue of qualified teacher status? I taught at a time when we had a Labour Government and, at that time, we saw a massive increase in the number of unqualified teachers, a massive increase in the number of instructors, and a massive increase in the number of teaching assistants taking classes when planning and preparation time was introduced. What has changed the hon. Gentleman’s mind?

[Tristram Hunt]

Today we are focusing on the future. Under future Labour Governments, we will have qualified teachers in our classrooms. I find it extraordinary that Government Members do not want the best-qualified, best-trained teacher work force in the world.

In 2010, when the British people lent the Prime Minister their trust and he used to talk about things like the big society, the Government believed in having a motivated, professional teacher cohort. At that time, the Prime Minister rightly said that

“the most important thing that will determine”

whether children succeed at school

“is not their background, or the curricula, or the type of school, or the amount of funding. It’s who the teacher is.”

Sadly, since then the Secretary of State has focused entirely on curricula, school structure and reducing funding, and has done little to support the skills and capacities of our teachers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Gove]

I will happily acknowledge that there are fewer unqualified teachers now, under the coalition, and that it was we who expanded Teach First. What the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central failed to acknowledge when he was asked a direct question by two of my colleagues is that Labour’s record on teacher qualifications was weaker than ours.

[Andrew Percy]

Will the Secretary of State also confirm that the situation is worse than those figures on unqualified teachers would suggest, because we also saw a massive increase then in the use of cover supervisors, who were often used for very long periods to teach GCSE courses that they had never passed the exams for?

[Michael Gove]

As ever, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. He speaks with experience from the front line and he knows that it was under Labour that, unfortunately, there was a growth in the use of cover supervisors in a number of schools. Unfortunately, in tough schools such as the one he helped to turn round we did not have people with the qualities needed to hold the attention of a class and to transform young lives. That is changing now, and one reason for that, which the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central failed to acknowledge, is that we are introducing a raft of reforms that are helping to improve teaching in all our schools.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nic Dakin]

As a practical person and a head teacher, I would give the people employed in my college a framework in which they could get those qualifications, and we could have accreditation of prior learning, assessments and so on. Those people who have not done the job I did will have theoretical views on this, but I know how it is done, because I have done it day in, day out. The people out there know how they are running their schools and colleges, and the people who work in them know what they are doing as well. We trust them, but they need to be in a framework that delivers. We also need to listen to what parents are saying. In a recent YouGov poll, 78% of parents said that they want the teachers teaching their kids to be qualified.

I have just left a symposium in Portcullis House on the Finnish teaching system. I was reminded that not only do Finnish teachers need a master’s degree in their subject knowledge, but the degree has to deal with pedagogy. That is what teachers need: the knowledge and the pedagogy. That is what I needed when I had teachers standing in front of the kids in my college who I had a responsibility to deliver for. I am sure that is what people up and down the land want.

[Andrew Percy]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Nic Dakin]

I am afraid that I cannot give way because so many Members wish to speak and the Secretary of State was so greedy in using up the time.

All my experience tells me that essentially there are only two things that really matter in running schools and colleges: the quality of leadership and the quality of teaching and learning. If we get those two things right, all the rest will follow. Of course, just because someone has a piece of paper, whether a postgraduate certificate in education, graduate teacher status or whatever, does not mean that they can necessarily teach, because there needs to be a framework of support in their school to ensure that they learn the skills of the profession.

To be fair to the Secretary of State, he very much echoed what the shadow Secretary of State said in underlining the importance of teaching as a profession. That echoes what the Prime Minister said quite rightly in 2010, which was that teaching should be a profession. Well, a profession has proper structures for training, qualifications and professional development. That is the framework that delivers high-quality individuals. Within that delivery of high-quality individuals, there will always be people who need appropriate support.

The Deputy Prime Minister was right when he made it clear that anybody teaching in our state-funded schools should either have qualified teacher status or be on the way to gaining it. I am really pleased that the Schools Minister, who is in his place, despite struggling a little to make this clear in the Westminster Hall debate, made it extremely clear when he appeared before the Select Committee that he was alongside the Deputy Prime Minister on that. That is why I am confident, because they are people of honour, that the Deputy Prime Minister, the Schools Minister and the rest of the Liberal Democrats will be alongside us when we vote for the motion today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Wright]

I agree that qualified status is not the end of the matter, but parents need to have confidence that their child is being taught by a teacher with suitable qualifications. There are also important issues about professional development, which I will address later.

On-the-job training is crucial, as is an intellectual evidence-based understanding of teaching methods. QTS demonstrates that a teacher has the skills, the qualities and the professional standards that make such a difference to their students’ education. That is why head teachers value qualifications when they recruit, and why the National Association of Head Teachers and the Association of School and College Leaders support the view that schools should employ qualified teachers.

Of course, there are unqualified teachers who do a really good job in the classroom. We would want to support them in gaining qualified teacher status, and there are several routes through which that can be achieved, according to the needs of the individual. Qualified teacher status is a reliable signalling device for heads wanting to recruit the very best, and a guarantee to students and parents that their teacher has the broad attributes needed to excel in the classroom. However, ensuring that all teachers in state-maintained schools are suitably qualified should not be the extent of our ambition. I have already mentioned our achievements in coalition and the encouragement given to top graduates to go into the teaching professions. There is also further scope to explore how teachers can best be supported to develop at every stage of their career.

We want innovation, creativity and diversity in the classroom. Liberal Democrats also want minimum professional standards in our schools. It is vital that we continue to free up teachers and schools and drive up standards for all.

[Andrew Percy]

Does the hon. Gentleman consider a teacher who has QTS and a postgraduate certificate in education to be better qualified than a teacher who has just QTS? There seems to be a bit of confusion about what lies behind QTS.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

It is the second time this year that I have risen to welcome an intervention from the Deputy Prime Minister. First, I welcomed his intervention on child care ratios, and now I welcome his support of Labour’s position on teacher training. I admit that I have a newfound appreciation of him. Alas, it may not last. Of course, that means the poor Schools Minister is in the unenviable position of having to defend the fact that he defended a policy that he is not now able to defend, without being on the wrong side of his party leader—I think I have that the right way around.

Even more baffling than the political acrobatics being performed by the Lib Dems is the fact that, in 2013, we are having a debate in Parliament about whether we want the people who teach our children to be trained to do so. Anyone who last week watched the last episode of “Educating Yorkshire” will, after drying their eyes as I did, have been left in little doubt about the value of a great teacher, particularly when it comes to getting the best out of the children who face the greatest barriers to learning. Seeing Mr Burton try everything he could to unlock the ability of Musharaf Asghar to complete his English language oral exam—he eventually succeeded—was inspirational. Mr Burton was able to do that not because he knows a lot about poetry, although I am sure he does, but because he knows a lot about pedagogy. That is the thing about the best teachers: they know how to teach the class in front of them—every individual child or young person, with the myriad challenges they each face—rather than just the subject matter.

The Secretary of State is undoubtedly a man of great accomplishment with an impressive academic record but, with respect, I would not want him teaching my children. That is nothing personal. If a Nobel prize winner cannot manage behaviour in a class, and if they cannot tailor their teaching to the strengths and weaknesses of each person in their class, their presence is little better than giving a child a textbook and telling them to go away and read it. Schools are not universities, and teachers are not lecturers. Schools and schoolteachers must be there for every child, not just for the most academically gifted or self-motivated.

I have always thought that teachers perhaps do not get enough training on supporting the one in five children who have special educational needs, either through their initial qualification or their continuous professional development. For the Education Secretary to argue that someone who has had no training is a suitable person to unlock learning for those children is therefore incomprehensible to me.

[Andrew Percy]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Hodgson]

I am sorry—I cannot because of time.

I refer the Secretary of State to Ofsted’s report on the Al-Madinah school, which found that children with special educational needs and disabilities were particularly failed by the school, which did not identify them or provide tailored support, leaving them to struggle.

The Government’s position is not even consistent, because they insist that some members of staff in academies and free schools need QTS—special educational needs co-ordinators. Perhaps the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), who has responsibility for children—he is not in his place—snuck that one, in his wisdom, past the Secretary of State when he was drawing up the new SEN code of practice. I, for one, am pleased he did so.

I wanted to raise a couple of other issues but time will probably run out. In a Westminster Hall debate last week, I described in greater detail the deep concerns among universities, not least the university of Sunderland, about the impact that the roll-out of School Direct is having on the future sustainability of teacher training courses. That is not just another financial hit on universities; it is a question of whether we will lose the capacity to train the number of teachers we need. Some universities are already considering closing courses or losing experienced staff. The Schools Minister was perhaps more concerned with avoiding explaining his party’s flip-flopping last week, so I hope he can address the issue in his closing remarks today.

I want to raise a final point as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on art, craft and design in education. Despite the fact that the creative sector is a burgeoning part of our economy and one of our fastest growing exports, just 358 initial teacher education places were allocated for art and design teachers in this academic year, compared with just short of 600 places in 2009. That is much fewer than for the vast majority of other subjects.

I have more to say, but time has run out, so I will leave it there.