Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Northamptonshire has been one of the counties most transformed by academies involving a range of sponsors. I thank my hon. Friend for the energetic work that he has done on behalf of the children of Kettering, making sure that standards and expectations are increased.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

8. What proportion of 16 to 18-year-olds were not in education, employment or training in (a) the UK and (b) Isle of Wight constituency in the latest quarter for which figures are available.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Skills (Matthew Hancock)]

Some 9.1% of 16 to 18-year-olds in England were not in education, employment or training in April to June 2013. This is a fall of 1.4 percentage points on the same period last year and the lowest figure in a decade.

Some 4.7% of 16 to 18-year-olds in the Isle of Wight were NEET at the end of 2012. That is a fall of 0.5% on the same period in the previous year. The progress is good, but there is much more to do.

[Mr Turner]

I thank the Minister for his answer. Will he clarify whether schools and colleges are required to get young people a GCSE in English or maths at level C or above or whether that is an aspiration? What sanctions will be imposed on those that fail to achieve it?

[Matthew Hancock]

It is a requirement on schools and colleges that students who have not achieved a C in English and maths GCSE will continue to study those subjects. From next year they will lose funding if they do not, because English and maths are the most important skills. They must study towards GCSEs but can take interim qualifications, such as functional skills, as a stepping stone.

GCSEs

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Those are very generous words from an experienced politician that I shall take to heart.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

What are the Government doing to ensure that a putative future Labour Government will not falsely inflate the grades of schoolchildren, as Labour has done before?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. We cannot guarantee that a future Government, of whatever political colour, will not be tempted to try to flatter itself by bringing in a little grade inflation. We have in Ofqual and in its current regulator a strong leader determined to ensure that that will not happen. It is a pity that we do not have the same robust system of regulation in Wales, for example.

Child-care Ratios

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that there are two kinds of help with nursery schools? There are those who advocate socialism—that is, they want there to be expensive nursery places, but very few of them—and there are those who make decisions for themselves. They can stand on their own feet and make their own decisions about what they want for their children.

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question, and he is absolutely right. What the Opposition are effectively saying is that a lot of parents should be priced out of the market and should not have the opportunities of parents in other countries to access high-quality and affordable child care. The previous Labour Minister, Beverley Hughes, admitted that Labour had got it wrong on child care, so perhaps the Opposition need to think again.

Forced Conversion of Schools to Academies

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main.

I do not know whether those present have ever had the privilege of reading Evelyn Waugh’s “Decline and Fall,” but it starts with the main character, Paul Pennyfeather, being debagged by something he refers to as the “Bollinger club” and having to leave Oxford in shameful circumstances after being caught running across the quad without his trousers. He subsequently takes up a career as a school teacher after going to an agency—a thinly disguised version of what used to be called Gabbitas-Thring—that tries to interest him in going to a school somewhere in Wales that is recommended to him as follows:

“We class schools, you see, into four grades: Leading School, First Rate School, Good School, and School. Frankly”—

says the man at the agency—

“School is pretty bad.”

We may be reaching a point where to confess to being a school, rather than an academy, might be seen as a sign of failure.

I am relaxed about school types. On a personal note, I was educated in grammar schools. I taught for a short period in a secondary modern school, and for much longer periods I taught in an inner-city comprehensive school and a top-flight independent school, so I think I know a fair amount about school diversity.

The result of my experience is that I am not particularly impressed by the labels that schools bear, and I am fairly agnostic about their structures. However, I differ in that respect from most Ministers, of whatever political persuasion, who seem preoccupied by structures, which interest me far less. The reason for that may be because structures are, as far as the passing occupants of the Department for Education are concerned, quite easy things to change. Frankly, on a wet Thursday afternoon in an inner-city school, or in a rural school for that matter, with a class of difficult adolescents, the name on the board outside the school, or the school’s governance structure, makes precious little difference to the reality inside the classroom.

What does appear to make a difference is good school leadership, committed staff, a relevant and inspiring curriculum, a sound ethos and above all—this has been proved to be the principal determiner of educational success—parental involvement and interest. Those ingredients are independent of governance structure. They are not necessarily present in an academy, although I am prepared to acknowledge that some academies exemplify those ingredients, and they are not necessarily absent in other sorts of schools that happen not to be academies. My conclusion is that the best thing we can do with a school that has all those characteristics is to support it and, so far as possible, not to tinker with it.

There are some, quite a few of whom are around at the moment, who recommend academisation as a solution to all educational ills—it is rather like the old medics prescribing leeches for everything—arguing that it is a sure-fire way of improving educational results. In fact, the evidence is mixed and clearly debatable, particularly when taking into account things such as changes in admission policies, pupil profiles and so on. We can believe the likes of Professor Gorard at the university of Birmingham, who sees no benefit from the academy programme; or we can believe the DFE, which has quite a different view; or we can believe neither. However we cut it, the mooted effects of academisation appear not to be exactly game changing.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend tell me how academies that were good schools are coping with the opportunity for more freedom and independence? At the same time, there are frankly awful academies that were forced into becoming academies after being run by the local authority.

[John Pugh]

There is a lot to be said for letting schools elect the structures they genuinely prefer and with which they can work. My hon. Friend may be illustrating in advance some of the possible dangers of forcing schools to make a choice they simply do not want to make.

My point is simpler. Academisation itself is not obviously fundamental to solving our biggest education problem in this country, which is the tale of boys from poorer backgrounds losing interest before their education concludes—the not in education, employment or training phenomenon. I do not intend to pursue the debate on academy outcomes, real or alleged, or, for that matter, the difference between converter and sponsored academies, which have chosen to be academies, and those academies that simply found themselves becoming academies, possibly against their will.

Instead, I simply want to point out the self-evident truth that I do not think anyone sane would dispute. Academies are not the only way to improve results, and they are not necessarily the most efficient way to improve results in this cash-constrained world. That also applies to the Labour programme, which later in this debate might be distinguished from the current Government’s programme.

I clearly do not need to say much about the slush funds the Government have found in surprisingly tough times to support the academy programme—I see that £1 billion has been found from somewhere or other—but I would like to draw attention to the National Audit Office report on the Labour academy programme, which produced bright, shiny, new and very impressive buildings and institutions. The NAO compared the Labour academy programme with its predecessor, which was called excellence in cities, and it found that, although there were improvements under the Labour programme, the improvements were not significantly better than those achieved by excellence in cities at a much lesser cost.

We must accept that none of us comes to this debate without in-built convictions and biases, so I will get some of mine out of the way by fessing up to them. I must acknowledge that I have a principled and ideological instinct against assets funded over many years by local taxpayers being alienated or removed from the direct control of local taxpayers. I have also never been sure how the lack of any local strategic oversight can be part of a proper, efficient funding model for education in any area, which bothers me. And I have never been able to understand why the remedy for constant interference by central Government, about which schools commonly complain, should be independence from local government, given that local government’s powers in respect of schools have declined dramatically over my lifetime. I do not grasp why Government should impose less on those schools for which it has sole charge than on those schools left under the umbrella of the local education authority. I feel that the rationale eludes all but the most brilliant among us.

There is a strongly held view, which I accept—I accept it of the Government; I do not accept it as the best view—that being an academy is a good thing. But even if we accept that view, there is still one more unexplained puzzle: if the Government are confident of their case, and they are clearly unafraid of big-scale change, as we have seen, why do they not just make all schools academies and make the case for abolishing LEAs, thereby ending the division, disruption and death by a thousand cuts?

I have pondered that, and the only answer I can give is the answer the Government normally give, which is that they want schools to choose whether to be autonomous. I understand that is the rhetoric surrounding the programme, but as the programme has rolled out that particular answer has come to seem odder and odder. First, choosing has been confined to a limited group of people. Parents and staff were excluded by the Academies Act 2010, and during its passage I moved an amendment on the Floor of the House that sought to allow parents some sort of voice, but the amendment was not supported. So we moved from a position where parents decided to one where only a limited number of people decide.

Secondly, the choice is constrained by the fact that opting for autonomous independence is linked to another choice about funding, because the funding packages are not the same and depend on whether the school chooses to stay a local education authority school or become an academy. Thirdly, the choice to be an academy is being linked with a choice to be inspected less and have less bureaucracy and prescription from Whitehall. What is actually involved in the choice argument is a skewed choice, vested in those who have the most to gain from making that choice in terms either of power, in the case of the governors, or of remuneration, in the case of the head teacher. Unsurprisingly, the choice to become an academy has gathered some momentum. That is the current state of play as we can best understand it.

However, the Secretary of State has gone one step further and, with gifts bordering on the prophetic, has told us that by a certain date, a fixed number of academies will be in place, with primary schools firmly within that range. Primary schools are normally not big enough to provide all the administration and back-up that independence entails, so it is a puzzle to me how the Secretary of State could possibly know how many schools will choose of their own free will to become academies.

[Mr Andrew Turner]

The hon. Gentleman is concerned about the size of primary schools. I draw his attention to a school in Cheshire that had 12 pupils at the time when it became a grant-maintained school. When grant-maintained schools were abolished, it had about 36 pupils. Size did not prevent schools from becoming grant-maintained schools; why should it prevent them from becoming academies?

--- Later in debate ---

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, Mrs Main, to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon. I congratulate the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh), my neighbouring MP, on securing this important and crucial debate.

The ideological crusade that the Secretary of State for Education seems to be on with his academies programme is deeply concerning, and offensive to the education profession. I do not believe that it has the best interests of our children’s education at its core. I am not idealistically opposed to academies. I believe that for some schools the academy option is in their best interests, but I do not believe that it is the only option for school provision in the country, and schools should not be intimidated and bullied into being academies.

Today, I want to speak up for schools in west Lancashire and throughout the county, which has become an enclave of resistance against the Secretary of State’s absolutism on academies. Throughout Lancashire, head teachers, governors, teacher unions, Members of Parliament and even the Conservative-controlled county council have been steadfast in their opposition to the deplorable antics of the Department for Education, and in their rejection of academies for academies’ sake, and I support them in that.

In recent weeks, there has been significant media comment about the conduct and behaviour of the Department for Education in its promotion of the academies programme, and it seems that the experience in Lancashire is being replicated throughout the country following a certain pattern. It starts with creating a myth about failing schools in an area, irrespective of the truth behind the headlines. Then come the threats that underperforming schools will have to become academies. When that fails, the bribes start.

It seems that the same approach is being taken in Lancashire as in one of the areas that is continuing to resist all attempts by Whitehall to foist academies on them. In the middle of last year, threats were dished out, and in July 2012, the county received a visit from Dr Liz Stillwell. Ahead of the visit, a press release was issued that stated boldly and aggressively that

“weaker schools across”

Lancashire

“should aspire to the success”

of the academy she was visiting that day, and that poor standards of primary education in Lancashire would no longer be tolerated. That press release listed the schools that the Department deemed were underperforming, and four primary schools in west Lancashire were on the hit list. I spoke to each of the head teachers, who were surprised—even astonished—to be on that list. They accepted there had been a blip, but both the LEA and the Department accepted that the performance of the schools was improving. Therefore, against the Department’s measures, the schools were not failing.

The schools commissioner travels around the county, peddling the Education Secretary’s ideological wares as if she was some kind of snake oil saleswoman. With her half-truths and misinformation, she leaves fear and instability in her wake among communities. Surely, she should be absolutely committed to supporting all types of school to improve their standards and performance. She should not be forcing schools down a path that may not be in the best interests of their children.

[Mr Andrew Turner]

One problem is what we mean by a blip. How long were the blips? Were they one year, two years or five years? Five years is a lifetime for a child.

[Rosie Cooper]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that it is nothing like five years. I would be happy to supply him with the detail. There are four schools involved, and each is different.

The situation in areas such as Lancashire has been manufactured under the pretext of improving underperforming schools. That raises the question why the National Audit Office report stated:

“most converters…have been outstanding and good schools”.

In a letter to me on 31 January, the chief executive of Conservative-controlled Lancashire county council wrote:

“we do not understand why some rapidly improving schools are being targeted for academy conversion.”

We are back to the myth-creating: everyone is told a school is failing, when the truth is that it had a blip and its performance is improving. We are then told to make it an academy, and, in a couple of years, it is claimed that the success is the result of academisation. We are encouraged to ignore the good work and the fact that the improvement would probably have happened anyway.

From the safety of Westminster, the Education Secretary has called Conservative-controlled Lancashire county council a “failing education authority”. That makes me wonder on what basis he claims that it is failure. I am sure he would say it is performance. However, he is probably referring to the academy conversion rate.

Let us look at performance. Some 69% of schools in Lancashire have improved, compared with the national average of 29%, and that is to be commended. However, according to the Secretary of State, the academy conversion rate in Lancashire is just 3%, compared with the national average of 9%. Is that the source of his frustration? Just four out of 484 Lancashire primary schools have chosen to become academies, while three others are in the process of being forced to become academies.

In November, the Education Secretary wrote to MPs to ask them to do his bidding by getting our schools to become academies. I doubt whether he will be welcomed with open arms by Conservative candidates campaigning in the forthcoming county council elections in Lancashire.

Let me be clear: failure and unacceptable performance in our schools cannot and should not be tolerated. By the same token, however, the sustained and cynical denigration of the hard work of our schools and schoolchildren should not be tolerated, simply because those schools are not academies. Perhaps the Department for Education, to refer to comments made earlier, should apply its anti-bullying policies to itself and its agents.

All the evidence points to a Department that is ideologically wedded to the promotion of academies for all, rather than the best education for all. In our education system, only 10% of all state schools are academies and free schools, and the figure for primary schools is only 5.3%. Yet one third of Department for Education staff are assigned to the academies and free schools programme, which accounts for 18% of the Department’s revenue and capital budget—a level completely disproportionate to the size of the programme. Then we come to the £1 billion overspend. No doubt that money is being taken from the budgets for non-academy schools, many of which most need that investment.

The whole situation is compounded by the Gove army of brokers. Given that they earn up to £700 a day, some might suggest they are more like mercenaries. I would suggest they are conflicted mercenaries, because many are alleged to have connections to academy chains. These conflicted mercenaries—these brokers—are running round the country offering inducements of £40,000, plus £25,000 for legal costs. That approach to academisation is deplorable, and it is all being done because of the ideological war being waged by the Education Secretary.

Our ambition and aspiration should always be to ensure that our children have access to the best possible standards of education from the start to the end of their school life. Simply forcing schools to become academies is not the solution. We know that one-size-fits-all policy making does not work. In our schools, we need good, strong leadership from the head teacher and governing bodies, with investment in schools buildings and school resources, irrespective of whether the school is LEA controlled or an academy. There should be a consensus among parents, teachers, governors and the community about the type of school they want; that decision should not be forced on the community.

I agree that we need to ensure that all schools reach the required standards. However, we should do so based on the needs of the individual school and its children, not on the imposition of a one-size-fits-all model driven by ideology. I am sure the Minister has come here today replete with the usual lines about school improvement, education for the 21st century and investment, but I remind her that we are talking about the forced conversion of schools into academies.

My message to the Minister is this: nobody believes you. As each day passes, fewer and fewer people believe you.

Personal, Social, Health and Financial Education

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Wednesday 16th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Amber Rudd (Hastings and Rye) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) on securing this important debate. I share many of her concerns and views, particularly her points about teenage pregnancies and the health outcomes for both mother and baby. With those in mind, I set up a cross-party inquiry into unplanned pregnancies at the end of last year, which was supported by the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne) and the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt), who is present. We decided to look at whether we could establish the consequences of the level of teenage pregnancies in this country.

As a reminder, Britain has the highest level of teenage pregnancies in western Europe and is second only to America in the western world. It is five times the rate of the Netherlands and twice the rate of Germany and France. I pay tribute to the previous Government for the enormous effort that they put into the teenage pregnancy strategy from 1999 to 2010. They set out to reduce the level of teenage pregnancies by 50% and reduced the conception rate by 25%. It was a great achievement, but it was obviously not enough, and we remain at the top of this sin league of teenage pregnancies, with the accompanying bad health outcomes.

In the inquiry, we set out to examine the possible causes of teenage pregnancies and what recommendations we could make to the Government.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

What ages are in the group that my hon. Friend mentions? Are they under-16s, under-18s or under-21s?

[Amber Rudd]

We looked at the figures for under-19s. In fact, the figure for under-16s is extremely low. We mainly examined the figures for those aged 16 to 19.

We had a genuinely open mind towards our inquiry. It was public, with several groups giving evidence. We thought that one of the causes might be access to contraception, but we found that relationship education was absolutely the key missing part. Let us not forget the men. Let us not think, perhaps like the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), that the issue is more about men than women or women than men. The issue is about society.

Examination Reform

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Wednesday 16th January 2013 Commons Chamber

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

I do not have an iPad to quote Dickens from, but I do have a couple of bits of paper with some notes on. I have drawn them up from my time and experience, limited though it may be as I am so young, of being in the classroom, both as a pupil and a teacher. I enter the debate on the EBacc with some trepidation, because the last time I did this I was described in a national newspaper as a “left-wing Conservative”, which contrasted somewhat with a description of me on Twitter this weekend as a “right-wing Tory who should be taken outside and shot”. That had not been posted by a constituent, I hasten to add.

As many people have said, the previous Government certainly achieved some great progress in education and in standards in this country. However, at the end of their 13 years in power an awful lot had not been achieved and some great challenges had not yet been responded to. I wish to describe one thing that I saw in the classroom at that time. All Governments find, sadly, that the teaching profession feels that every Secretary of State is, “The worst Secretary of State we have ever had”—until the next one. We used to hear that all the time, but that was largely because the goalposts were continuously changed. The measures were continuously changed and, as happens with all Governments, we ended up focused entirely on the league tables. The one thing they did do was create an inspection regime that punished schools for happening to be in deprived areas. I did not find that the inspection regime helped teachers; it seemed to be more designed to catch teachers out.

We cannot deny that in terms of literacy and numeracy there is something seriously wrong in this country. A lot of employers say to me, “We get young people coming to us who have bits of paper that say that they have reached certain standards in English and maths, but when we put them into the workplace we find that they are nowhere near those standards.” So clearly something is going wrong. When I was teaching we had what I used to call the great GNVQ fiddle. I got a lot of stick for it because I was also a member of the city council at the time. League tables were being fiddled through vocational qualifications and through equivalencies. I saw that in one of my schools, where young people were not actually given a choice and were instead told that they were going to undertake certain GNVQs because we knew the impact that that would have on our league table position. I recall champagne corks being popped on the front steps of the Guildhall in Hull when we had a 600% increase—a 1,000% increase in some schools—in standards. Schools with some of the most challenging catchment areas that had had terrible results in the past were, suddenly, overtaking schools in the neighbouring authority; much more middle-class schools, which had far less pressure on them and had previously achieved much greater results, were suddenly being overtaken, all on the back of the great GNVQ fiddle. Of course, as soon as the league table measures changed and the gold standard was introduced, the schools in challenging areas, sadly, plummeted back down to the bottom of the league tables.

Something had to be done about modular exams, because they have contributed to a slip in standards. So I support a lot of the thrust of where the Government are heading. However, one issue I have a big problem with is the implementation of the EBacc. We are told that a lot of the elements of it are not going to be compulsory, but the reality is that in the teaching profession schools teach to whatever the measure is. The measure will become the EBacc, as it is becoming already. So there will not be this space available—

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Has my hon. Friend considered what would happen if we were to abolish league tables—[Interruption.] We can do that. What would happen if we then gave the power to head teachers?

[Andrew Percy]

I have considered that, but, sadly, I do not have an answer, as league tables are probably a necessary evil. We need to be able to judge schools against one another. We can play about in terms of how we measure them, but we will end up with a league table. The league table will exist in any case, in the form of a school’s reputation locally, if nothing else. So there always has to be some form of measure. The sadness of the situation is that we put so much emphasis on the league table position when it comes to inspection regimes and all the rest of it, and we sometimes forget about what we are actually achieving for our children.

As I was saying, the EBacc will become, in most schools, the standard by which schools are judged against one another. The theory is all fine, and I have heard talk in the past about how everybody should have access to an Eton education. That is a fantastic theory, but it misses the point that although we want everybody from everywhere to have access to an Eton education, it is not always going to be the desirable or necessary route for every young person. I have nothing against providing that as an option, but it is not suitable for everybody. Sadly, schools are ditching subjects that young people may have chosen to do in the past and students are being forced on to foreign languages and even on to doing subjects such as history, which I used to teach. Perhaps in two and a half years’ time I will be delighted that there is increased demand for humanities teachers. Perhaps the Secretary of State has produced a post-political career employment plan for me, but it would not be appropriate for every young person with whom I have come into contact over the years to take my subject. They will not get anything from it. It is not of any value to them in the future.

Among the guff and nonsense in Every Child Matters, the previous Government talked a lot about a child-centred education, and I would like us in this debate to get back to that. We have talked a great deal about what Government want to see. We have talked about what parents want to see. We have talked somewhat about what employers want to see. But at the centre of all this should be what is best for a particular child. For some children, delivering the EBacc and giving them access to it will be appropriate, but for others that is simply not the case.

When we talk about providing an Eton-style education for everybody, we forget the immense challenges that many of our schools face in delivering. I have nothing against foreign languages, for example. I am learning one myself, with less success than I would like. [Interruption.] I am learning Hebrew, with not a great deal of success. Delivering a foreign language in the school that I used to teach in was incredibly hard. Our young people would go home to parents who would say to them, “Why are you learning a foreign language? What’s the point of learning that sort of muck?” They were not going back to a nice middle-class home. A lot of the kids who I used to teach were not Tarquin and Fluella, who would be driven off to a gîte in France every year where they could practise their French, or where they would be told by their parents the importance of doing that. We have to factor into the discussion the child’s background and the possibility that they will not have support at home.

We are, in effect, setting some children up to fail by forcing them on to a subject that they will not get support with at home, that they do not need in the future or for the basis—

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I want to mention the Osborne estate, since no amendment was tabled until the Bill was on Report. Osborne house was of course built by Prince Albert and lived in by Queen Victoria until 1901. Before I was elected in 2001, its long-standing use as a convalescent home had already come to an end, but better accommodation, more modern individual rooms and higher quality facilities were all needed and they were all too costly. Although the King Edward VII convalescent home was much loved by the people of East Cowes, those who worked there and many people on the island and further afield knew that its days had been numbered for some time.

The part of Osborne house that was used as a convalescent home was restricted by dint of the Osborne Estate Acts of 1902 and 1914 and was to be used for the benefit of service people, their families and senior civil servants. That severely limited the chances of attracting those who could make use of the home. When the current Government were elected in 2010, I knew that we would have an opportunity to bring unused parts of that beautiful and historic building into service once again.

English Heritage has been working hard to find new and innovative uses for the buildings, and I have worked with it to obtain the support of local people. We have held two public meetings, one within the house itself and, subsequently, one in East Cowes town hall, which between 40 and 50 people attended. Although no firm plans were put forward, it was clear that most people want the Osborne estate to be regenerated and think that it is a waste that large parts of it remain unused. The limitations on the use of the former convalescent home will be lifted to a certain extent by the new clause 11, and I welcome that.

I am grateful for the work done by English Heritage—in particular, Mark Pemberton, who has worked with me over many years—and my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), who has visited the house and grounds to see for himself the challenges and opportunities offered there. I am grateful to the people of the island, who have worked so hard and assiduously to ensure that Osborne house, the jewel in the island’s crown—indeed, the jewel in the nation’s crown—will have a suitable role that recognises its historic past and looks forward to a unique and exciting future. I have been pleased to support the amendment and I am now happy to support the Bill’s Third Reading.

Secondary Education (GCSEs)

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. That is why I found the discussion about employers knowing the difference between a C at GCSE at different levels attained wholly fallacious. If the big problem of educational attainment is the long tail of under-achievement, the measures to combat that need to be there for all. There is no evidence to suggest that dividing at 14 will help that. We had an interesting contribution today on some of the neurological evidence of the potential for growth from 14 to 16. What we do have evidence for is how overwhelming it will be for the poor and those from socio-economically challenged backgrounds who will be condemned to the new CSEs. That is why the 1980s Conservative Government abandoned this policy. In 1985, Sir Keith Joseph, who became Lord Joseph, unveiled evidence that there is a

“strong association between low achievement and the poverty-related factors of poor housing, single-parent families and a low proportion of children in higher socio-economic groups”.

This policy of division was too divisive even for Sir Keith.

We also hear that with the new O-levels there will be no national curriculum—although a back-door one because of a single qualification authority. This strikes me as a rather strange route to developing the kind of curriculum we want, drawing on a wide knowledge base. It also flies in the face of the Secretary of State’s ambitions to create a national narrative of British history, to teach in all our schools a single notion of British history that imbues notions of citizenship which develops a—rather Whiggish in my view—conception of the British past that all will share. They will not all share that if there is no national curriculum. The greater the division between schools, the greater the division in the teaching of history. Any ambition to teach a cohesive notion of citizenship through the teaching of history is totally undone by the elimination of a cohesive national curriculum.

Internal reforms of the GCSE would be welcome. Clampdown on grade inflation and the proposals vis-à-vis the examinations board are to be welcomed. An end to generalised humanities GCSEs—the merging of history and geography—are to be welcomed. We can learn from the international GCSE, the I-bac. But all that can be achieved within the current system. That is the tragedy of what the Secretary of State is up to.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman mentions the baccalaureate and international GCSEs. If those are acceptable, and it seems that they are, and they are the examinations for able pupils, which they are, what would happen to the other GCSEs that would be occupied by the less able?

[Tristram Hunt]

The point about the GCSE is that it is a general certificate of secondary education. The point about the CSE is that it had stigma attached to it. At GCSE one can have an A and an A*. There is still the GCSE and a structure. The briefing to the Daily Mail is that there is an ambition to return to a more divisive system. The tragedy is that there is so much work to be done: the quality of teacher training; ending the scandal of an ever-expanding key stage 4, which means pupils are finishing history or geography in year 8; ending the relentless examination culture that sees AS exams in the January of the lower sixth—we need to get rid of that; embedding a new strategy for the teaching of foreign languages; driving up numeracy and literacy. These are the real challenges confronting schooling. In the face of these challenges, this political strategy seems a massive misallocation of the Secretary of State’s time and resources and those of civil servants in his Department. The Government are already reviewing the primary and secondary school curricula, so why also begin this tub-thumping policy that is not based on empirical evidence?

This is no way to make policy: revealing these kinds of ideas in the Daily Mail, a newspaper usually opposed to deep thinking, learning and cohesive policy development, and at a time when young people are taking their exams. All we can hope is that it is a rather cack-handed example of kite-flying by a Secretary of State who is slightly puffed up at the moment and that the kite will soon be shot down and normal service resumed.

Secondary Education

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

That is a typically acute point by the right hon. Gentleman; every time he speaks on education, I hear a voice of good sense. It is absolutely right to say that we need to tackle a culture low aspiration that has held students back in many northern cities and in places such as east Lancashire for far too long. Any reform of the examination system and curriculum needs to ensure that we do not place a cap on aspiration in those areas.

I have had a look at the Financial Times analysis and think that it suffers from one thing: it itself is a prisoner of the culture of low aspiration that we are tackling. I hope to work with the right hon. Gentleman and other fair-minded people to ensure that we do not fall into that trap.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Does the Minister welcome international GCSEs, which have always been legal outside the United Kingdom?

[Michael Gove]

We absolutely do, and one of our first reforms was to ensure that they would count in league tables in order to inject additional rigour.

Rural Schools

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Rory Stewart]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. The slogan of sustainability is used to cover up a whole series of crimes perpetuated against rural areas by local authorities. Local authorities imagine that there is an incredibly unfair structural system whereby rural areas are continually subsidised by more densely populated areas, and they demand to know why that should be. The reality, of course, is that rural areas are often in receipt of less funding than urban areas, despite higher costs. For example, education provision in Cumbria is £4,840 per pupil, compared with a national average of £5,140, despite the structural problems that the hon. Member for Copeland mentioned, and which I shall continue to discuss. Our communities put incredible energy into trying to keep those assets open, providing volunteer time and free land, but that is swept aside by the centralising tendency.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

My hon. Friend seems to be talking about small schools receiving more than other schools in Cumbria, but the schools that receive much more are those in towns and cities. It is not a Cumbrian fix; it is a national fix.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Mr Reed) on securing today’s interesting and important debate and on making a powerful case. He told us about the proposal to close Captain Shaw’s school in Bootle in his constituency, which has 16 pupils. I think we would all agree that, in bringing the matters before the House today, he has represented his constituents with great passion. Such decisions can be made only at a local level, but it is right for my hon. Friend to seek to raise the profile of the issue by securing today’s debate. The points that he has raised here should be fully considered by the local authority before making any final decision.

We also had interesting contributions from a number of hon. Members today, including the hon. Members for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) and for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) and—in a rather impromptu manner, but no less interesting and important —the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael).

Before I start, I should set out my own credentials and declare that I live in a distinctly urban area of Newcastle upon Tyne, and it takes me only three hours to arrive here by train. None the less, there is a strong case to be made here in today’s important debate about the issues that face rural communities, especially in relation to schools.

Contrary to the assertions made by the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border, Labour had, within a year of coming into government, introduced a presumption against closures of rural schools. The year in which the number of rural school closures was the highest was 1983, when 127 were closed. The rate of closures continued at about 30 a year until 1997. The measures taken by Labour reduced closures to an average of seven a year throughout the period we were in government. Furthermore, under the Education and Inspections Act 2006, the presumption against closure was strengthened by requiring that the closure of rural schools must take the effect on the community into account and look at alternatives.

[Mr Andrew Turner]

Will the hon. Lady tell me whether the closure of schools under the Labour Government could have been stopped at the national level?

[Catherine McKinnell]

Sorry. I did not quite understand the question.

[Mr Turner]

I am trying to ask whether under the previous Government, closure of schools could have been stopped, as it had been before 1997, by the Government.

[Catherine McKinnell]

That is a point to be debated. I think the hon. Gentleman was asking whether the Secretary of State could have intervened to stop the closure of state schools.

[Mr Turner]

indicated assent.

[Catherine McKinnell]

Not during that period, and not now.