BME Communities (Educational Attainment)

Debate between Diane Abbott and Kevin Brennan

Tuesday 26th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) on securing this debate. I welcome the debate, and the tone so far. It is correct to point out at the outset, as other hon. Members have done, that the title of the debate deals with educational attainment in black and minority ethnic communities. High attainment is found in all black and minority ethnic communities, and, as other Members have highlighted, some minority ethnic communities seem to be doing particularly well. We should all be as interested in why that is the case as in why pupils in other communities are not doing so well. Why some communities do well should be of great interest to us.

My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth presented a thoroughly researched and well-argued speech, obviously born out of a desire to do something about an issue that she has encountered in her role as a constituency MP. She is to be commended for bringing to the House an issue that she has discovered in her constituency in order to highlight the need to do something about it. She emphasised the need for a well-rounded approach to educational attainment and mentioned, as did other hon. Members, the importance of parental inclusion. She also pointed out the abolition of the ethnic minority achievement grant, which I may comment on later. I congratulate her on her remarks.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) made an excellent speech, also born out of her constituency experience. She emphasised, as we all should, the importance of rigour and standards in our schools, saying how much had been done, particularly in her borough of Hackney, through effective leadership in our schools. That is a key part of high achievement, as is having no excuses or not accepting low expectations in our schools.

In recent years, there has been real improvement in achievement and attainment in our schools, particularly in our London schools through measures such as London Challenge. That was acknowledged recently on television by the Mayor of London, who said that huge improvements in standards had been made in London schools in recent years. He was absolutely right to highlight that, but, as other Members have mentioned, that may well mask some of the underlying problems in relation to black and minority ethnic communities.

[Hywel Williams in the Chair]

My hon. Friend mentioned the importance of work on exclusion, which I will say more about in a moment. She was also strong in her opposition to introducing any kind of two-tier qualification system, which she called a retrograde step. We will debate that issue on the Floor of the House later today, so I am sure that the Minister will understand why I do not want to go into it in detail now.

[Ms Abbott]

My hon. Friend has mentioned one of the Secretary of State’s innovations, which we will debate later today. Does he agree that the principle behind the English baccalaureate—that every child should get certain core GCSE qualifications—is a good one and that it would help avoid a situation in which too many children are damaged by a culture of poor expectations?

[Kevin Brennan]

I agree that it is extremely important that every young person and child should understand the implications of the pathways that they choose at GCSE. It is important that they understand that certain choices may lead to closing off opportunities at a later stage. I do not, however, support the crude mechanism of the E-bac, because I do not think that it is the way forward for qualifications at 16, and it will not necessarily mean that people will opt for those subjects that it is in their interests to take. There should be a clear understanding of the implications of choices made at 16. We should retain high expectations for young people in their GCSEs, particularly in English and maths, but also allow them the opportunity to make informed choices about the subjects that they want to take.

I want to address a number of points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). She is right to emphasise that this is not a new issue. Indeed, she has been making that point for the 25 years she has been a Member of this House, which she entered in 1987. It is only right that we pay tribute to her efforts on the subject, including her practical efforts in relation to the initiative that she mentioned in her speech.

My hon. Friend and I debated the issue when I was a Minister in the Department for Children, Schools and Families in 2008 and I can confirm that she is passionate about the subject and has a lot to say. As I recall, she took 26 of the 30 minutes that we had to debate the issue and I did my best to respond in the remaining time available. She was quite right, however, because she had a lot to say on the subject. She was right to emphasise its importance and to take me to task, as a Minister, on the subject, as she had previous Labour Ministers and as I am sure she will continue to do to coalition Ministers. It is important to hold our feet to the fire and make sure that our attention is maintained. That applies not just to those of us on the Opposition Benches, but, more importantly, given that the Minister is in government, to those who hold the levers of policy in the Department for Education. My hon. Friend was also right to mention the need for detailed data, which I will return to in a moment.

When we debated this topic in 2008, my hon. Friend made a number of points that caught my attention, one of which was that research by the former Department of Education and Skills confirmed:

“Black Caribbean pupils are significantly more likely to be permanently excluded—3 times more likely than White pupils.”

However, as my hon. Friend has said today, and as she said in 2008:

“In relation to base-line entry tests, black pupils outperform their white peers at the start of school”.

We need to understand what is going on.

My hon. Friend went on to emphasise the importance of teacher training, pointing out that only 35% of newly qualified teachers

“rated their course as good for preparing them to teach black children, as opposed to 60 per cent. who rated their course as good preparation for teaching children of all abilities.” —[Official Report, 1 April 2008; Vol. 474, c. 223, 224WH.]

That is still a significant issue that we all need to consider and that the Minister must not lose sight of in his reform of teacher training.

My hon. Friend talked about exclusion, which absolutely needs to be tackled. When we were in government, we started to look at that subject in more detail and in greater depth than Ministers had at the start of the Labour Government in 1997, when my hon. Friend had a meeting with Education Ministers. In 2007, the Department published a priority review entitled “Getting it, getting it right” on the exclusion of black pupils. It discussed the iconic status of the issue of exclusion in black communities. Black Caribbean parents in particular believed that the school system would not meet the needs of their children unless something was done about the disproportionate level of exclusion of pupils from that particular background. It was extremely important that that report was undertaken at that time, and I would be interested to hear from the Minister about what the Government are doing now to follow up on that issue in relation to the exclusion of black and minority ethnic pupils. It was a priority of the previous Government to try to do something about that, even though they accepted that it was a complex and difficult issue. We undertook a number of initiatives that were specifically designed to tackle the issue of exclusion.

Another matter that was raised in the debate was the expectations of teachers. As long ago as 2003, the London Development Agency undertook major research that showed, among other things, that many teachers had lower expectations of black pupils and that black pupils felt that they received less positive input and, in some cases, even discrimination from teachers in the course of their school lives. Under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, schools have a duty to ensure that they deal with this issue. A significant amount of literature for schools has been published by the Department and, in the past, by the Commission for Racial Equality on the subject. One report found that a significant minority of schools were failing to implement their duties under the race relations legislation. Given that we now have a more fragmented system of education in which a number of schools are no longer run as community schools in a local authority system but have become academies, independent of any local accountability, how will the Department ensure that such schools fulfil their obligations under race relations legislation in relation to black pupils?