Investing in Children and Young People

Anthony Browne Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I very much welcome this debate and, like my colleagues, I pay tribute to the teachers in my constituency, who have been working really hard during the difficult last year in extraordinary circumstances, delivering education to pupils and ensuring that as few as possible fall behind. Inevitably, some children have fallen behind across the country, and it is vital that we do everything we can to ensure that we do not leave a generation behind and that no child loses out from this pandemic.

The Opposition have called this debate because they say that they have a plan to recover education, so it is fair enough for us to look at how previous Labour education plans have done. What is the evidence on whether Labour’s education policies actually work? The last Labour Government up to 2010 had a range of education policies. “Education, education, education” was their mantra, and where did we score on international league tables in that time? From 2000 to 2009, we dropped from seventh to 25th place in the international scores for reading, we dropped from eighth to 28th place in the international league table for maths and we dropped from fourth to 16th place in the international league table for science.

What about Wales? Labour has been in charge in Wales for the last 22 years and responsible for education policy there, and what are the results? Labour education policies have led to Wales scoring below the international average on the PISA scores not just in one subject but in every subject tested. In science, maths and reading, children in Wales fall below the international average. In contrast, pupils in England score above the international average in every single subject. It is not that pupils in Wales score less than some in the rest of the UK and better than others; they score worse in every subject compared with every other part of the UK—compared with Scotland, Northern Ireland and England.

So there you have it: Labour has controlled education policy in Wales for 22 years, and now Welsh pupils score worse in every subject tested compared with pupils in every other part of the UK—talk about a lost generation. This has real world consequences. The number of students from Wales studying in the UK’s top Russell Group universities has fallen. Graduates from Welsh universities are now the lowest paid in the UK. That is the hard evidence of Labour’s education plans.

If I were marking Labour’s education performance, I would give it a big F for fail. Labour trying to teach anyone else how to run an education system is like Mr Bean trying to teach someone how to be a secret agent—it has no credibility. The fundamental problem with Labour on education is that it suffers from producer capture—the blob says, “Jump” and Labour says, “How high?” Labour is, in effect, the political wing of the education unions. Education unions no doubt do a lot of good work for their members, but as we have seen time and again during the pandemic, the unions do not really have the best interests of children and parents at heart.

From free school meals to league tables to academies for our primary schools, education unions and Labour have resisted every successful education reform. In 2001 in Wales, working closely with its education union paymasters, Labour scrapped league tables for schools, which was followed closely by scrapping national testing for 14-year-olds. Nationally, the Labour party stood on an election platform with a manifesto commitment to scrap Ofsted, which plays such a vital role in keeping standards high in education. Labour will never improve education standards if it does just what education unions tell it—they have nothing to teach about education policy.

The pandemic has been terrible for the education of many children. The Government must help, and are helping, children to catch up with their education recovery plan. I fully commend it.