Teaching Quality

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt]

Such examples prove the power of leadership, of purpose and of camaraderie among teachers. It is the teachers and the head teachers who are the real agents of change, as Martin Tissot at St Thomas More school has shown. Labour’s academy programme was about delivering that sense of autonomy and leadership, which can prove instrumental in that regard.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) mentioned Wales, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) has just talked about the importance of leadership. The hon. Member for Lichfield was dissing Wales, but I should like to inform him that Rhyl high school in my constituency, which was a failed secondary school five years ago, is now the best school in Wales. That is down to the leadership of the head teacher, Claire Armitstead. Will my hon. Friend pay tribute to Claire and to Rhyl high school?

[Tristram Hunt]

I would be delighted to pay tribute to the leadership of Claire Armitstead. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend for promoting mindfulness and attentiveness in the classroom. Those are the kind of disciplines that help to achieve results.

What happens in the classroom is essential, and the point is simple: good teachers change lives. They engender curiosity, self-improvement and a hunger for knowledge. It is they who awaken the passion for learning that a strong society and a growing economy so desperately need. They are the architects of our future prosperity, not the enemies of promise.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Gove]

I said, “teachers from our top universities”. Of course, I refer to Oxford university as one of our top universities, but perhaps I should have included Cambridge and Imperial, or Aberdeen and Edinburgh for that matter—there are many. The point I am making is that the Opposition cannot have it both ways. They cannot say that we want teaching to be an elite profession and then, when we congratulate those people from elite institutions who go into teaching, decry us for somehow being snobbish. I have taken the hon. Gentleman’s point. In fact, I have expanded it into a logical argument, only subsequently to refute it.

[Chris Ruane]

Aren’t you the clever one?

[Michael Gove]

Yes.

I know what the shadow Secretary of State will say, because I have heard him say it before. He will say, “Okay, Secretary of State. The quality of teachers at the moment—it pains me to admit it—must be good, but I prophesy that the situation will deteriorate. It will deteriorate because of your open-door policy on teaching.” Like his fellow west midlander or black countryman Enoch Powell, Tristram sees the Government letting all the wrong people in. As a result of our dangerously liberal policies, he can see torrents of rubbish being taught in our classrooms. His is what one might call the “rivers of crud” prophecy.

What is the truth? The number of teachers without qualified teacher status is going down under this Government. In 2012, unqualified teachers made up only 3.3% of the teaching work force in all schools, down from 4.5% in 2005. The proportion of unqualified teachers has diminished in every year that we have been in power. That utterly refutes the scaremongering of the Enoch Powell-like figure on the Opposition Front Bench. We know that Labour will say, “Well, it’s going up in academies and free schools.” Labour uses a statistic, and I will leave it to the House to decide exactly how accurate and helpful it is: in its proper scaremongering way, it says that there has been a 141% increase in unqualified teachers in academies and free schools since the election. Like the Fat Boy in Dickens, he wants to make our flesh creep.

The truth is that the number of unqualified teachers in academies has risen only because the number of academies has increased so much. In fact, the proportion of unqualified teachers in academies has halved since 2010, from 9.6% to 4.8%, and the number of qualified teachers in academies has increased by 460%—North Korean levels of achievement under the coalition Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

I have now been an MP for 17 years. Before that, I was a teacher for 15 years in a Catholic primary school with 550 children. For every one of those 15 years, I was on a professional development course, whether a diploma or a master’s—I never actually finished the master’s course—in Welsh, media, science, computing, religion and a variety of other courses. That did me a power of good: I loved it and the children benefited from it.

We have to look at the pressures on children today. Many of the facts and figures that I will give have come from parliamentary answers to questions that I have tabled. Children today check their phone six times an hour or every 10 minutes. That is 600 times a day and over 200,000 times a year. My hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) mentioned the positive aspects that the digital age has brought to teaching, but it has also had negative effects. Young people make constant comparisons through Facebook and Twitter. It has brought cyber-bullying. A young person watches 180,000 adverts by the time they are 18. Those adverts give mixed messages that confuse children. The fashion industry tells them to be size zero; the fast-food industry tells them to go large. The cigarette industry, the sugar industry and the fat industry are all targeting young people. That is having an effect on their bodies and on their minds. In America, 8% of children are physically addicted to computer games.

In this country, 32.3% of 16 to 25-year-olds have one or more psychological condition. They have those conditions when they are doing their GCSEs, A-levels and degrees. Two per cent. of that age group have severe attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and 9% have mild to moderate ADHD. How can young people learn when there are such massive pressures on them? It does not get much better for 25 to 35-year-olds. Thirty per cent. of them have one or more psychological condition. Any training course that we provide for teachers needs to recognise that.

A key element that could help young teachers and young pupils is mindfulness. Mindfulness is a way of breathing, relaxing, expressing gratitude, gaining balance and equilibrium, and gaining focus and attention, all of which could help people in their education. It also improves people’s social skills, develops their character and helps them to flourish as young individuals.

I pay tribute to the Prime Minister for establishing the measurement of well-being in 2010. However, what is the point of having that measurement if we do not reflect on it and use it? We ought to concentrate not just on people’s academic side, but on their social side. Mindfulness can help with both.

There have been 22 international studies on mindfulness. A British professor, Katherine Weare, has made a fantastic assessment of that evidence base. I ask Ministers to make their own assessment. Britain is ahead of the rest of Europe on mindfulness in education. Oxford, Cambridge, Bangor and Exeter are all centres of excellence. Professor Willem Kuyken, Professor Felicia Huppert, Professor Katherine Weare and Professor Mark Williams are the cutting-edge scientists who have proven the science behind mindfulness. They have proven its contribution to health to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. We now need to assess its contribution to education.

Mindfulness is gaining traction around the world. Tiger Woods, the golfer, uses it. The executives of Google, Facebook and Twitter use it. The executives of Goldman Sachs and Transport for London use it. There are even 70 MPs and Lords in this Parliament who have had training in mindfulness in the past year.

The health effects of mindfulness are scientifically proven and they can be proven in respect of education. I thank the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) for the positive attitude that she has shown on this matter in Adjournment debates. I ask the Secretary of State whether he, too, will look at the evidence and see whether mindfulness can be used in education.