SATs Results

Baroness Morgan of Cotes Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)]

I wanted to give the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) the benefit of the doubt, because she has not been shadow Secretary of State for Education for very long and I can sense her passion for the subject, in terms of her own experiences in education and her family. However, her speech captured everything that is wrong with the Labour party at the moment: mad conspiracy theories, deferring to the unions, and zero answers to the problems facing this country. This is about young people who were let down by a Labour Government who consistently sold them short in terms of their life chances.

The hon. Lady was wrong on all counts—wrong on tests, wrong on selection, and wrong on giving young people the best start in life. Nothing—nothing at all—is more important than making sure that young people master the basics of the three R’s, and master them early. If they do not, they face a struggle for the rest of their lives and are denied the opportunity to realise their full potential. That is why making sure that every child in this country has a good grasp of literacy and numeracy is a matter of social justice.

[Graham Stuart]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that what is particularly sad is that Labour Members appear to think it is more important to let children think that they are ready for secondary school than actually to ensure that they are?

[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.

[Neil Carmichael]

To reinforce the Secretary of State’s point, is she concerned by the observation of National Numeracy that 78% of this country’s adult population scarcely reach level 2 in maths? That is appalling and we must work with total devotion to put the situation right. The SATs under discussion are one tool in a toolbox that we must use.

[Nicky Morgan]

I agree entirely with the Chairman of the Education Committee. Numeracy and literacy are basic skills and building blocks—the Prime Minister has called them the ultimate vocational subjects. Everybody needs to have confidence in them. On post-16 funding, this Government have required those who do not have a grade C at GCSE English and maths to continue to take the subject. It is worth noting that 70% of key stage 2 pupils who took the new test last week achieved the expected standard in mathematics. They are to be congratulated on their hard work.

This Government refused to accept the status quo that let young people down. That was why, in consultation with experts from across the education sector, we introduced a new, world-class primary school curriculum. That curriculum raised the bar on what counts as a good enough standard in the three R’s so that children would leave primary school genuinely ready for success in their secondary studies.

To measure how schools and pupils were performing against the new curriculum, new tests were required. I know that some oppose testing, but they could not be more wrong. The hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne was challenged by my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) about what tests she would introduce, but she could not answer that question. I think we can agree that tests are a vital part of teaching because they allow teachers to know whether a pupil has understood key subjects, give parents confidence that their children are on track and allow schools to identify where extra support is needed.

These tests are not about holding children to account and they are not exams. The best schools try to make sure that taking SATs involves as little stress as possible. As one teacher said to me just last week, “The children had such a positive attitude towards the SATs, which definitely paid off.”

[William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend knows about teachers’ concerns on this issue. What is she doing to assuage these concerns and to engage with the profession? More importantly, what is she doing to ensure that, next year, more than 53% of children in our primary schools meet the expected standards?

[Nicky Morgan]

I am of course aware of the concerns. I read emails and letters from teachers, and I have conversations with teachers at every school that I visit. Those concerns were inevitable, given that this was the first year. This was always going to be a challenging year, as is the case for the first year of any new tests. I say that as someone who took the new GCSEs in their first year, way back in the late 1980s. We have made moves to tackle the workload and we are, of course, listening to the feedback that teachers have given us this year as we think about the structure of the assessment frameworks for next year. We will continue to do that.

I talked about a positive attitude towards SATs because that is not unique. Polling from ComRes of 10 and 11-year-olds found that 62% of pupils either “don’t mind” or “enjoy” taking the tests. That is far more than the number who say that they “don’t like” or “hate” taking the tests.

As I said, I know that in the first year of these tests being rolled out, the administration was not as smooth as it could have been, and for that we have apologised. However, in the few cases where errors occurred, we took immediate action, ensuring that the overall roll-out of the new SATs was a success. Lower results do not represent a failure of our reforms. I have been very clear that it is not possible to compare this year’s results with last year’s. We have always been clear that because we not only introduced a new curriculum but raised the bar, results would be lower as the new curriculum is bedding in.

That brings into sharp relief the contrast between this Government and the Labour party. We want children to really understand the curriculum so that they can compete with the best in the world. We do not want to run the risk of them leaving school without the knowledge and skills that they need to succeed. The Labour party, in contrast, clearly appears quite happy for that to happen. Labour Members forget that it is not the children in schools in leafy areas with supportive parents who read to them every night who most need their primary curriculum to set them up for life. It is the ones who are not brought up with high aspirations and interested parents who need their teachers and schools to aim high for them, and that is what these tests and the new curriculum are about.

In fact, the results showed that schools have resoundingly risen to meet the higher bar: two thirds of pupils achieved the expected standard in reading; seven in 10 achieved it in mathematics; and almost three quarters achieved it in writing. Despite the doom-mongering from Labour Members, more than half of young people achieved the expected standard in all three subjects. That number will rise as schools and pupils experience more of the new curriculum.

What does this mean for children who did not meet the expected standard? It means one thing: secondary schools are now aware of that and are able to give those pupils the support that they need to catch up. It absolutely does not mean, and never has meant, that those children have somehow failed. The only people who have used these results to label children failures are the National Union of Teachers and now the Labour party. That is absolutely shameful.

[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.

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Nicky Morgan]

No, not at the moment.

It was noticeable last week—this is noticeable today—that there was a greater presence on the Labour Benches for an urgent question about the NUT strike than there was for the previous day’s Education questions.

[Vernon Coaker]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Nicky Morgan]

No, I am not going to give way at the moment.

In our March White Paper, we set out plans to tackle areas of entrenched educational underperformance. What we did not expect was that one of those areas of entrenched underperformance would be the NUT itself. Its readiness to use the word “failure” about children, and to oppose every reform that is designed to recognise and reward great teaching and to enable schools to tackle the not so good, is yet a further example of the chronic underperformance by that union on behalf of its members. More importantly, it is a failure for the children with whom its members work.

We now see the same attitude from the Opposition. In my two years as Secretary of State for Education, I have seen the transformation of the Labour party’s attitude to our education reforms from the secret support of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) to the hedged bets of the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell). We now have the outright hostility of the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne to the raising of standards. I hope that the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) will forgive me for lacking the time to work out where she stood.

The Labour party has firmly chosen, as the motion indicates, to become the anti-standards party, devoid of ideas and determined to protect vested interests and union barons rather than putting children and parents first. It has gone from the party of education, education, education, to the party of low standards, low aspiration and low expectations.

I do not want to end this speech by focusing on the collapsing Labour party; I want to end it by saying thank you. Rather than doing down the achievements of schools, teachers and pupils, I want to celebrate them and commend their exceptional work.

[Vernon Coaker]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The Secretary of State is not giving way, is she? No.

[Nicky Morgan]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I say thank you to the teachers, who once again have risen to meet the challenge and to deliver for young people. I reiterate today that teaching is the most noble of professions. Last week’s achievements in helping young people to demonstrate their mastery of the basics is yet another example of why that is so. I urge the House to reject the motion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Let me state from the outset that am a child of the ’70s when grammar purism was not much taught. I think the Secretary of State and I are of the same vintage—from 1972—so I am not going to be a grammar fascist or purist in this debate. We used to play in the sandpit in those days rather than learn the declensions of nouns.

I want to contribute to today’s debate because of a case raised with me over the weekend by a constituent. She is deputy headteacher of Christ the Saviour, a Church of England primary school that is outstanding in all four categories. This is not a Bash Street school gasworks comprehensive or anything like those sort of places. The deputy head, Katie Tramoni, is someone I was at school with. I have lived 44 years in Ealing, so I have spent a lot of time there, and both the schools I attended are in my constituency. I am now a mum, bringing up my own children in the borough.

As I say, Christ the Saviour is a well-regarded school and I was at school with Katie. This weekend, I went to the Acton carnival, and she literally grabbed me by the lapels and said, “Can you tell Nicky Morgan this from me?” When I saw this debate coming up, I thought, “Now is my opportunity.” Katie is worried about the floor standards of key stage 2. Like everyone else, I have read the headlines saying that almost half of 11-year-old primary pupils will not reach the required standard, but Katie’s issues are with the marking, so let me raise them directly.

Katie tells me that the KS2 reading paper was so poorly marked that 55 out of 86 papers—64%—had to be returned for re-marking. The quibbles sometimes seem very minor, but it costs the school £9 per paper if the complaint is not upheld. That does not seem to make sense economically, and the school is in fear of sending things back because of that £9 penalty. For the GPS paper—on grammar, punctuation and spelling—the complaint was that the marking scheme was exceptionally harsh. If, for example, a pupil inserts a semi-colon in the correct place in the sentence, but in too large a size so that it comes out larger than the letters, it is marked as wrong. A zero mark is given, and there are many things like that. Katie said, “I know I go on and on. Don’t get me started on SATs report; let me know if you need more; I must dash.” It was at 7 o’clock this morning that I noticed this debate was on.

The point has been made by Government Members that we are anti-testing, but that is not the case. We presided over tests for all those years in power. As the Secretary of State pointed out, it was Tony Blair’s mantra that his top three priorities were “education, education, education”. We have never been against testing as such, but the particular tests this year have been a dog’s dinner and a shambles. I know this from numerous examples in my inbox, in my postbag and when people literally collar me when I am trying to go to a fun event at the weekend. Surely it is the Government’s responsibility to make sure that these tests are marked properly.

[Nicky Morgan]

I appreciate the constructive way in which the hon. Lady is raising her constituent’s concerns. If she writes to me or to the Minister for Schools, we will of course convey her views to the Standards and Testing Agency. I should point out that any comments relating to the review of the marking should be submitted by 15 July. The hon. Lady may wish to encourage her constituent to submit her thoughts, but I hope that she will contact us and let us know, because the whole point of the system is feedback that will enable us to do better in future years.

[Dr Huq]

I thank the Secretary of State for those constructive and collegiate remarks.

I conduct a great many assemblies in my constituency. Ealing is a leafy suburban borough, and my seat was a Conservative seat as recently as May 2015. While I am standing opposite the Secretary of State, let me point out that one of the issues that arise is the retention rate of teachers in a borough such as Ealing. Headteachers tell me that they can easily recruit trainees in their 20s, but once those young people want to put down roots and settle, they are off to Slough, Milton Keynes, or whatever is the nearest affordable place to live near the M25. I know that this is slightly off the subject, but headteachers have suggested the introduction of tied housing, which exists on some university campuses, because that would make the jobs more attractive. Some heads say that they have lost people to schools where new arrivals can be accommodated in a caretaker’s house.

Conservative Members have suggested that this is just an NUT diatribe. That is why I wanted to raise the subject of real people—the kind of people who would naturally have been on their side. If the Government are losing the good will of people who would naturally be conservative with a small “c”, I think that they have problems. My constituent told me that education was in crisis. The word “crisis” is much overused, but she was in despair, shock and anger as she told me that.

Both the Secretary of State and I were guinea pigs in 1988, the first year of GCSEs. I realise that any system will have teething troubles, but I understand that teachers and educationists have begged the Government not to introduce these changes so rapidly, and to wait for a year. We are where we are. I know that “NUT” has been portrayed as something of a dirty word during this debate. However, the NUT’s Kevin Courtney has described the key stage 2 SATs as rushed and inappropriate, and has said that the curriculum is wrong and bad tests have been poorly marked. I talked about poor marking earlier. This kind of tinkering has led to chaos and confusion. It seems that these kids are guinea pigs as well. Schools should not be exam factories.

Friday’s edition of the Times Educational Supplement quotes Brian Walton, the head of Brookside Academy in Somerset, of whom I had never heard. He argues that we have a “results illusion”, and says:

“So much rides on SATs that the real purpose of education is lost”

in “statistical positioning”. It seems that we are being seduced by the numbers, and not recognising the whole child for who that child is. According to some assessments, one in 10 teachers has left the profession as a result of falling morale. The housing issue is intrinsically linked with that in areas such as west London, and something must be done about it. It is worrying that Ealing should be a borough in which its teachers cannot afford to live. We are seeing a hollowing out of our capital, and that is obviously wrong.