Schools White Paper

Baroness Morgan of Drefelin Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating this Statement in your Lordships’ House. I am not going to make the same jokes about punctuation and spelling within the Statement that were made in the other place. We have two tests that we will apply to education policy: first, will it help every school to be a good school and, secondly, will it help every child to be the best that they can? I am sure that the noble Lord will be pleased to know that we welcome important elements of this White Paper but, overall, it fails the tests that we have set rather miserably.

This is a plan for some of our children but not for all of our children. I believe that the Government will have to work very hard to explain how this plan will not result in the damaging of morale in some schools, throwing them into decline and creating a new generation of failing schools. We welcome the retention of a floor target for secondary schools and the Government’s apparent change of heart about the role of targets in raising standards. This builds on Labour’s successful National Challenge programme and I, of course, welcome that. We welcome the expansion of Teach First, which we championed in government. Labour’s legacy, according to Ofsted, was “the best generation ever” of teachers and we share the Government’s aspiration to achieve the best teaching profession in the world. We also support anonymity for teachers who face accusations from pupils.

However, the Government’s overall direction is very worrying indeed. Their direction is driving us towards a two-tier education system. I support the focus on maths, English and science that we promoted vigorously when we were in government. We have seen the take-up of science doubling since 2004, and of course we set that direction in motion. By focusing entirely on the five academic subjects of the English bac, though, are the Government not encouraging schools to focus only on those children with a chance of achieving that particular batch of GCSEs? Is there not a huge danger of cementing the divide between academic and vocational qualifications, which really is not appropriate for the 21st century? There is a risk of the English bac becoming the gold standard by which schools are judged. The IPPR commented yesterday that:

“Schools will have an incentive to focus extra resources on children likely to do well in those subjects, rather than on children receiving free school meals”.

Is this really the right direction?

Is there not a risk that the pupil premium will not be spent on the children for whom it is identified? At a time when we all need to focus more on the 50 per cent of children who will not go to universities, is it not the case that the Government have very little to say to them today? The Government’s message today is that the vocational route is second best. Is there not a real danger that the combined effect of the announcements today will create a new generation of failing schools? Is it not the case that some improving schools will see themselves plummet down the league tables, damaging morale and risking throwing progress into reverse? Has the Minister considered that in detail? Many of those schools are the same ones that suffered from the Building Schools for the Future decisions. What hope can the Government give them today, having been through that experience, of extra support to raise standards for all their children, academic and vocational?

Teachers, support staff and careers advisers have worked so hard to reduce the divide between academic and vocational studies, to raise the aspirations of all children, and the Government seem to be throwing it away. How does that help to create the engineers of the future? There is a strong emphasis on teacher training in the White Paper and that is very interesting, but is there not a risk of ignoring the advice of experts? I know that there is an evidence paper but I have to be honest and say that I have not yet trawled all the way through it. Still, is there not a real risk of failing to listen to the experts? Ofsted said yesterday:

“There was more outstanding initial teacher education delivered by higher education led partnerships than by school-centred initial teacher training partnerships and employment-based routes”.

There is a real question there, and I am sure that the Minister will have something interesting to say on it.

Why are the Government planning to end university-led teacher training for a schools-based model? Why is that happening now? Will the Minister assure the House that it will not undermine the quality of teacher training and that it is not simply about cost cutting?

There is a much bigger contradiction that I am worrying about. Today the Government are laying down prescriptive standards for teacher training, but the message just a few days ago to free schools and academies was that they would be free to employ unqualified teachers. Is that not mixing the Government’s messages a bit and trying to have it both ways? This exposes a major flaw in the Government’s thinking, repeated throughout the White Paper. The Government talk a good game on central standards, but they say that they want schools to have the freedom not to adhere to them. So which is it—standards or freedom? Will the Government be clearer about that?

We support some of the proposals in the White Paper; indeed, we recognise that some important elements are built on our experience. I agree that improving teacher quality is key, but perhaps the Government are not going nearly far enough on that. This is because in reality, as we all know, the Government’s focus is on damaging structural reforms and pet projects like free schools, which are at best irrelevant for the vast majority of parents and at worst harmful, with poor facilities and untrained teachers. There are real risks in this structural obsession.

In the introduction, the Prime Minister quotes the 2006 PISA study to assert that our schools system is second-rate. Can the Minister tell the House how our young people compare using the more recent TIMSS study, which the White Paper commits to use as a future yardstick? Is it not the case that there is more recent evidence that makes a much better comparison and creates a much better picture of how our young people are doing? Is it not sad that that more recent evidence has been airbrushed out of the Prime Minister’s introduction?

In the Government’s rush to reform, mistakes are being made that will damage our education system. Ministers seem not to have learnt the lessons of the mayhem caused by the botched decision-making surrounding Building Schools for the Future. At the most crucial moment in our sporting history, on the eve of a home Olympics and on the very day of the opening of the Ashes, why are Ministers abandoning a school sports system that the Australians have called world-leading? Is this not ideology going too far in the face of really positive results achieved by school sports partnerships around the country? Does this not embody the Government’s approach to education—competitive sport for the elite, and forget about the rest in spite of the evidence to the contrary?

Ministers have been briefing newspapers that they will abandon the local authority role in school funding, but then telling the BBC the opposite. Quite apart from the protocol of coming to Parliament first on these matters, with the local authority acting as the parents’ champion and champions of excellence in our new free school world, can the Minister explain what powers local authorities will have to exercise this advocacy? In particular, will they have any powers to intervene in order to raise standards?

Is not the Government’s biggest mistake to destabilise the school system by telling schools at this incredibly late stage in the budgeting process that their budgets are protected, raising expectations, and by continuing to mis-sell the pupil premium? I have said before that I remain to be convinced that the pupil premium is anything but a con. It does not look very additional to me—in fact, it looks as if the areas of greatest deprivation will lose out. I look forward to being proved wrong on that. Will the Minister confirm that when schools receive their budgets in a couple of weeks’ time, those in the most deprived areas will be the biggest losers?

Far from helping all schools to be good schools and every child to be the best they can, this White Paper represents a plan for a fragmented and divided education system of winners and losers. This Government have nothing of substance to say to young people today. Vocational studies have been downgraded, apprenticeships for young people frozen and the EMA scrapped. As we sit here, listening to the helicopters circling and watching young people protesting outside, should we not all be worried that we are in danger of creating a lost generation as a result of an education system that confuses elitism with excellence for all?