Education Bill

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

I support the Bill. As a recipient of free school meals who went to his local comprehensive and then to a red-brick university, I think there has been too much concentration on Oxbridge in the debate tonight. There are significant aspects of the Bill that need improving in Committee, but we should recognise the improvements that the Bill will bring to education across the country.

As I have gone round the schools in my constituency, I have seen that they share a number of concerns. In the last year of the Labour Government, they received 5,000 pages of diktats and orders from Whitehall. They faced unnecessary bureaucratic interference. In most schools, which are excellent, head teachers know what to do, teachers know what to do, and they can get on with the job. They do not need diktats from Whitehall telling them how they should behave and how they should operate. I am glad that that will be swept away by the Bill.

All the schools in my constituency have excellent disciplinary records, with firm discipline and leadership from the top. They say that when they have to exclude a pupil, they do so regretfully. They do not rush to do so. They try to support the pupil all the way until, regrettably, an exclusion is necessary. I speak as someone who served on a governing body for a long time and had to chair exclusion panels and go through the appeals process after the exclusions were upheld. It is a nightmare for the head teachers and for the governors, and it is unfair to the poor children who are excluded. We must give head teachers and teachers the power to do what they need to do to maintain discipline in the school so that those children can be taught in a properly disciplined way, and so that they can aspire to be the best that they can be. Without strong discipline, there can be no learning.

I would like to see some aspects of the Bill improved. The first concerns the anonymity of individuals who have been accused of crimes, about which others have spoken. I agree that teachers should be protected, but so should support staff. In a school where I was a governor, the school caretaker, sadly, was accused—falsely, I am pleased to say—of the rape of a young child. The stain on his character after being named everywhere left his life in ruins. It is not fair for that individual or any member of school staff who has been falsely accused to suffer that. We should extend anonymity to support staff.

We need to get right the issue of standard assessment tests, which are not mentioned in the Bill. For far too long, teachers in primary schools have had to teach to the SATs and the league tables, rather than teaching the children to the best of their ability and as broadly as possible.

We must look at the subjects taught in our schools. I share with the hon. Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) the fact that the vast majority of the schools in my constituency have a majority of children for whom English is an additional language. Far from learning French or German, learning Hindi or Gujarati would be far more appropriate for them. It should be an option for them to achieve in schools. When we are talking about global expansion and our relationship with India and the far east, why should we limit ourselves to teaching European languages? That aspect must be examined as the Bill progresses.

Finally, we need to consider the bureaucracy that has built up and the ability of academies to set themselves free and be a beacon of excellence in their communities. I was one of those who opposed the Labour Government’s academy programme because I felt that it was far too elitist. It encouraged people who did not necessarily have the best interests of education at heart to take over schools.

The beauty of the Bill and of the agenda that we are pursuing is that they offer all children the opportunity to succeed to their optimum ability. They will not be limited necessarily by their parentage or by where they come from. By offering that opportunity to everyone, from all walks of life and all backgrounds, we will give children the opportunity to succeed in a much more equal society where their ability can come to the fore and where that is what is important, rather than the accident of their birth. I strongly support the Bill.