Education and Social Mobility

Andy Burnham Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I want to make some progress, because I will wrap up shortly.

In the consultation document launched in November, the Government have already pledged £50 million to help existing grammar schools to expand. The same Green Paper made a series of substantial, uncosted pledges to schools that want to become grammars or to academy chains that want to open them. Now, just this weekend, Government sources briefed The Sunday Times that there will be “tens of millions” more to help grammar schools to expand.

The idea that this is the way in which the Government should spend taxpayers’ money is simply baffling. When nurseries across the country are facing closure because the Government will not deliver the investment needed to deliver on their manifesto pledge to provide 30 hours of free childcare a week and our schools are facing deeper cuts in their budgets than at any time since the 1970s, why is this money being taken away from them?

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an outstanding speech. Have we not seen the problem with Tory education thinking this afternoon? Government Members think that some types of schools are better than others and that some children deserve better opportunities than others. That is what is so entirely wrong with what they are arguing today.

[Angela Rayner]

Do you know what? That is the real rub: that is the difference between Labour Members and Government Members. We believe that teachers are invaluable in making sure that our schools are the best they can possibly be, rather than focusing on the vehicle in which those teachers and drivers take forward that mission.

We know that Members across this House agree that this is not the way we should spend school budgets. Members in the devolved nations will want to know the implications for their own school budgets, too. I know that many Government Members share the view of Labour Members that education is the key to social mobility, and that for all our differences on policy, they would not want the Government to waste the Department for Education’s budget on an ineffective vanity project. That must be the key test of every spending commitment made by the Secretary of State.

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[Justine Greening]

I have seen that report. It shows that when people look at the evidence and are prepared to step away from political ideology, they see the reality that grammars can have a transformational impact in some of the most deprived communities in which we want to see the biggest changes.

[Andy Burnham]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Justine Greening]

No, I will make some progress because I have given way to a lot of Members.

As I was saying, we want to improve teacher training. We have therefore started the teaching and leadership innovation fund so that the most challenged schools can build more capacity to have excellent teachers and leaders.

It is vital that the standards and quality of our technical education in this country mirror the excellence that we have been embedding in the academic routes. We have focused on academic routes, so it is time for us to focus similarly on improving technical education for young people. We will work hard to put technical and further education on a level footing with the academic route that other young people already take. Through the Technical and Further Education Bill, we are slimming down the system of qualifications and putting employers in the driving seat regarding how they are designed and delivered so that there are a smaller number of routes that are much easier to understand and lead directly to career pathways for young people.

We have also focused on apprenticeships so that young people get direct work experience as they learn. We plan to create 3 million new apprenticeships by 2020 and, for the first time, British business is investing through the apprenticeship levy to make sure that those apprenticeships are of a high quality. Yesterday, we had the Third Reading of the Higher Education and Research Bill, which will put in place a new teaching framework to drive up teaching quality, to make university outcomes more transparent than ever and, through the planned Office for Students, to promote equality of opportunity throughout our universities.

We have to recognise that one of the biggest challenges faced by the education system is the growing need for more good school places. Despite the progress that we have made, too many children still do not have a place at a good school. There are 1.2 million children in schools that Ofsted says are not good enough. That was why we published the “Schools that work for everyone” consultation, which asks important open questions about how we can use the educational expertise that exists in our country’s independent schools, faith schools, universities and selective schools. We cannot afford to leave a single stone unturned as we drive up opportunity.

[Andy Burnham]

The Secretary of State rightly spoke about building a consensus across the House on education policy, but I put it to her that that will be more likely to happen if the Government stick to their mandate on education. Will she read out the precise section of the Conservative party manifesto from the last election that gives her a mandate to lift the bar on the creation of new grammar schools?

[Justine Greening]

We talked about excellent school places and expanding the very best schools in our country, including grammar schools. I just do not think it is viable for the Labour party to say that it does not like the grammars that we have, but to be equivocal about whether it is still its policy to shut those grammars. I will give way to the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) if she wants to confirm the position. There is a gaping hole in the official Opposition’s policy on grammars. I do not think that it is tenable in a country that has grammars and selection for the Opposition to say they do not like that situation, but that they do not want us to take any steps whatever to see how we can deliver more strongly on social mobility through the schools already in place.

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[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

I begin by declaring an interest: I was a physics teacher and spent 20 years working in the comprehensive sector.

My father sat, and failed, the 11-plus exam. He ended up in the local secondary, St Roch’s, in an inner-city area of Glasgow. Pupils at St Roch’s were not expected to achieve. School was simply a holding area until they were old enough to enter the workforce. My dad set out on the path that was laid in front of him. Most of his classmates went on to work in the shipyards, but he went on to work in the Glasgow parks department, where he remained for over 40 years. He has some good memories, but work was simply something he did to provide for his family. There was no element of choice: you were grateful you had the job, and he was grateful.

By the time my siblings and I went to school, grammars had been completely abolished in Scotland. We also attended the local secondary, but now it was comprehensive and there were no preconceived ideas or restrictions placed upon us. My father watched with pride as one by one his five children went on to university—possible, of course, because we paid no fees and were awarded maintenance grants.

By coincidence, early in my career I taught in my father’s old school. It was, however, transformed. By now, St Roch’s was a comprehensive and a much happier place. The walls were a celebration of past pupils’ achievements—some academic, some business and some vocational—but the real difference was the expectation of achievement. Every young person entering the school was seen as a human being with potential and every young person felt the weight of that expectation. The real problem with selective education is not that we end up with good schools and poorer schools, and not that one set of teachers works harder than another; it is that whole swathes of our young people will be labelled—wrongly, of course—as having failed. With that, social mobility falls.

It might be argued that for those who have the intellectual maturity, or whose parents can pay for the tuition to pass the 11-plus exams, grammar schools offer a more sheltered experience, but the Government should be concerned with every single child. With grammar schools on the horizon, that is simply not the case.

[Andy Burnham]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the major flaw in the Secretary of State’s speech was that she could not bring herself to acknowledge that if she pursues this policy it will lead to the creation of more secondary modern schools? That is the truth that Government Members will not face up to.

[Carol Monaghan]

Absolutely. I actually think there was another flaw in the Secretary of State’s speech. Listening to her speaking in such glowing terms about grammar schools, I wondered why we do not just make every school a grammar. That would solve the problem.

Many secondary schools choose to set their pupils according to academic ability. However, the educational evidence for the benefits of setting is scant. Certainly when pupils are working on the same curricular content, the evidence is clear: mixed ability classes are far more successful in raising attainment. The most able pupils succeed in whatever class they are in. The least able pupils do a bit better in mixed ability. The massive advantage, however, is for the swathes of average attainers who, within a mixed ability class, have no ceiling placed on their ambitions. In fact, when the Government use one of their buzzwords, “aspiration”, it is indeed this large group of middle pupils who embody and can embrace that idea. Conversely, when decisions based on ability have been imposed on pupils, it sends out strong signals about what that particular group is expected to achieve. In other words, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rolling this out on a much larger scale, as is being considered with the return to grammar schools, means that we have young people who have had decisions made on their future attainment before they even have a chance to attain.

The damage that that does cannot be underestimated. To be told at age 11 that you are not good enough is an incredibly difficult thing to overcome. Despite the best efforts of teachers, that labelling is a blow to confidence and self-esteem that can remain throughout a person’s life.

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[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

All Members can agree that a first-class education is the greatest investment we as a country can make in our next generation. I have no doubt about the Secretary of State’s commitment to increasing social mobility, having heard her speak around the Cabinet table over the past few years. I think we can also all agree that post-Brexit it is more important than ever that all our young people leave education well skilled and well educated, particularly if we are to have a new immigration policy in the next few years.

We want excellent education everywhere. As I said at our party conference a couple of years ago, that “everywhere” is fundamental. What is missing from the Green Paper is that sense of a strong and consistent whole system. That might be because it only talks about schools, rather than some of the other issues facing our education system, such as the quality of teaching and the need for more great teachers and for announcements on fairer funding. That said, I was pleased to hear the Secretary of State talking about her commitment to the EBacc.

I should also recognise the Secretary of State’s announcements on opportunity areas. In the White Paper published earlier this year, we identified areas—the achieving excellence areas—that really needed attention, and last week the Social Mobility Commission picked that up. We have heard already about the ResPublica report on Knowsley commissioned by the Knowsley education commission, to which we should pay tribute for recognising the entrenched educational under-performance in its own area and the need to ensure that children and families have choice when it comes to schools.

For me, there are two tests for new schools policies. First, do they specifically tackle areas of underperformance? Secondly—this is at the heart of the debate on selection—is every child being offered an academic, knowledge-rich curriculum? I know that that knowledge-rich curriculum is also of fundamental importance to the Minister for School Standards.

We have to acknowledge that the Government’s Green Paper sets out the dangers of change in selective schools. Paragraph 4 on page 21states:

“while those children that attend selective schools enjoy a far greater chance of academic success, there is some evidence that children who attend non-selective schools in selective areas may not fare as well academically – both compared to local selective schools and comprehensives in non-selective areas.”

The Education Policy Institute published a report in September. It wrote:

“Analysis of educational performance across OECD countries has concluded that a higher proportion of academically selective schools is not associated with better performance of a school system overall, according to results in the international PISA tests taken by pupils at age 15 in 2012.”

I would like to hear more from the Minister about the evidence the Government are relying on in making the proposals in the Green Paper.

We talk about being a one nation Government, so our focus has to be on tackling those areas of the country where school underperformance is still entrenched, where families do not have a choice, where there are no good or outstanding schools and where the opportunity to travel outside the borough boundaries just does not exist. If the Government seriously believe that having more selective schools will raise standards across the board, they would have proposed introducing those schools only in pilot areas where there was underperformance, but the Green Paper talks about local demand being a driver. What if those areas most in need of higher standards opt out of having new schools? Given the inherent problems in the proposals, the Green Paper has to talk about mitigating measures.

My other concern is that the proposals will distract the Department and the Government from the issues really facing our education system. Let me again mention fair funding, which I know colleagues of all parties, and particularly on the Conservative side, take incredibly seriously as an issue that has to be sorted out.

The second test is whether we think all children can benefit from an excellent, academic, knowledge-rich curriculum, which I think is what our future workforce of the 21st-century needs. True social mobility requires that every child be given the same opportunity.

[Andy Burnham]

I am listening carefully to what the right hon. Lady is saying. Does she agree with me that this policy is a distraction, and that if we wanted to make the biggest difference to education in our country, we would do that by focusing on the 0 to 4 age group and ensuring that more children arrive in reception classes ready to learn, with the language and social skills that they need?

[Nicky Morgan]

The right hon. Gentleman is right in the sense that early education is, of course, critically important. One of the issues surrounding more selection is that the attainment gap is already wide by the time children get to the age of 11, and often even before they have reached primary school. The right hon. Gentleman has been a Secretary of State, and he knows that Departments can do more than one thing, so we can focus on early years at the same time as focusing on making sure that every child has an excellent academic education.

As I was saying, true social mobility requires every child to be given the same opportunity, and it is not for other people to make judgments about what children are entitled to. I will always remember my visit to a primary school in Lancashire, whose headteacher informed me that the children in her previous school, a city centre school, were only ever going to be assessed as “requires improvement”. If children are being written off by some even before they have reached the age of 11, that tells me that there is a problem and that it needs to be tackled first.

I will be honest: when it comes to knowing how to vote, I have struggled with both the motion and the amendment before us today. What is being proposed in the Green Paper was not in our manifesto. I really hope that Ministers will listen to the responses to the consultation and to what Members of all parties say today. Let me suggest that if the Government are determined to take forward these proposals, they must set out how the proposals will lift standards in the underperforming areas, and they must start with those underperforming areas.

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[Andy Burnham]

That is a completely useless analogy. Education is about life. It is about the skills that people need to get through life—the basic literacy and numeracy. Sport is not about the entirety of life. That is why education is different, and that is why it is wrong for any child to be labelled second class at the age of 11.

[John Redwood]

The right hon. Gentleman simply does not understand. If a young person from a poor background becomes a top footballer, that is a transformational event in their life, and good luck to them. Why do the Opposition not understand that exactly the same arguments apply to art, ballet and music? We take the children who we think are going to be the most talented musicians, at quite a young age, and we give them elite special training so that they can play to the highest standards in the world.