Education Performance

Elizabeth Truss Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

I am delighted to have secured this debate under the auspices of the Backbench Business Committee. Underlying many of the key questions facing us, such as where our future growth will come from and issues about youth employment, is our country’s education performance, and how it compares with that of our international competitors. There has been much soul-searching around the world about education performance, so when Germany did badly in the programme for international student assessment tables in 2000, it upped the academic standards in many of its technical schools to address the issue. Other countries have delayed specialisation, and the US has introduced new policies in teaching. In Britain, there is not enough soul-searching, either in politics or in the wider education community and establishment, about our performance.

I want to talk about how our results compare internationally, the impact of that, and the main causes. I have identified two. The first is the false choice that is often presented between quality and quantity in our education system, which has led to a decline in standards, and the second is our process-orientated system, which does not rely on the student driving it. I also want to talk about how we can start to move towards the high-quality mass education system that should be our goal in Britain.

There has been much coverage of the hourglass economy. The number of high-skilled jobs has grown by 30% in the past 10 years, and the number of medium-skilled jobs has declined by 10%. There is an increasing return to education throughout the global economy, and if the 20th century was a human capital century, surely we will see an acceleration of that in the 21st century.

The US was very successful in the 20th century, having universal high school education and increased college access, but it has acknowledged that the quality was not there, although the quantity was. There has been a catching-up with that in the UK, where participation has increased at high school and university level, but unfortunately quality has fallen. We see the evidence for that in the PISA league tables. Although flawed, as all international comparisons are, they at least represent students sitting the same test in each country. They show that Britain has dropped to 28th in maths, 16th in science and 25th in reading. Some people will cite TIMSS—the trends in the international mathematics and science study—which shows that the UK came seventh, but we were still behind the Asian elite countries, such as Japan and Hong Kong, and France and Germany were not included in the comparison. However we look at the issue and however it is sliced and diced, we are performing worse than we should as the sixth largest economy in the world.

As well as our current standards not being good enough, our historical standards have also been poor. The problem is deep and historical. According to a CBI survey, 40% of people in the UK do not have basic skills, compared with 34% in the US, 28% in France and 22% in Germany, yet the political debate in this country has been dominated by the idea that our standards are rising year on year, despite the fact that we are clearly not producing enough rigorously educated students to fill available jobs. Schools are producing strings of A* students, when there would previously have been a smattering of As. According to Durham university, a maths A-level grade E in 1988 would now be a C or even higher.

There is still a persistent failure in basic qualifications, with 45% of students not achieving a GCSE in England and maths at grade C or above. The economic impact of all that is clear, and I see it in South West Norfolk, where companies struggle to recruit skilled engineers and graduate business managers, and we have a shortage of teachers in critical subjects such as maths. Between 1997 and 2007—the boom years for our economy—the number of jobs increased, but the majority were taken by people from overseas, many of whom filled our skill gaps. Employers consistently say that they are not satisfied with the quality of people leaving school and university—71% are unhappy with language skills, and half of all universities have remedial courses in English and maths to bring students up to standard. I have spoken to academics at Cambridge university, Greenwich university and throughout our university sector who say that our education system is not delivering people who are ready to learn and able to think for themselves. That is a crucial problem.

Some people say that it is inevitable that if we have more people in our school system, send more people to university, and have higher participation, standards will decline. They claim that there is a trade-off between mass education and standards. I have heard it said during the past year that some students are not suited to such education and are not up to it because they are not academic. I think that belief is holding our country back, compared with other countries, and has driven an unwelcome change in our school system.

Encouraged by the crazy equivalence in league tables and UCAS points, media studies has been given the same value as mathematics in our league tables. I studied both subjects, and I know that they are not equivalent. That has hastened the flight from academic subjects, particularly in comprehensive schools in this country. Employers and universities are absolutely clear about what they want: they want maths, languages, science, and people who can think and analyse. Nevertheless, fewer and fewer people are studying those subjects, and there has been a fall in the number studying GCSE languages from 79% to 44%. There was a fall in the number studying core academic subjects at A-level from 60% to 50% between 1996 and 2010.

That is a uniquely British phenomenon. It is not happening elsewhere. In fact, academic standards elsewhere are being tightened, so at the end of high school in a top US state such as Massachusetts, students will be studying maths, science, humanities and languages. In France, all students studying for the French baccalaureate study maths, French and foreign languages. In Japan, 95% of 18-year-old students are studying maths, sciences, languages and humanities. We are an outlier. Indeed, the Nuffield Foundation produced a report that showed that we are unusual in not requiring maths from 16 to 18, and that is feeding through into our school system. Unfortunately, we now have primary school teachers—I have seen this in classrooms—who do not understand maths concepts, and are unable to communicate those concepts to the next generation.

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes interesting international comparisons. Does she have any data for China and India, the two great economic superpowers of the 21st century that she rightly heralds? The great changes being made in schools in those countries, and their passion for what my hon. Friend would regard as hard subjects, is equally important, and augurs badly for the state of our education system.

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is right, and I believe that the Shanghai region of China is included in the study that I mentioned. The appetite for education in some of those countries—as shown by the thousands of applications for the Indian Institute of Technology—shows a cultural attitude towards education that will help drive those countries in the future.

In Britain, we hear the idea that introducing new subjects is somehow modern, or that it is inclusive to different types of people and that is what is wanted by employers in the broader world. That is simply not the case, and the accusation that it is somehow retrograde or old-fashioned to want those core subjects is wrong. We can see the subjects studied by our international competitors. The reason why those subjects are taken is that an in-depth study of an academic discipline provides a level of rigour and the ability to analyse and think, which prepares a person for any kind of job. Technology is changing rapidly, and we do not know what skills and abilities we will need in 20 or 30 years’ time. Studying an academic discipline to a high level gives a person that vital ability to think and learn. Such study is not an elitist or minority pursuit. If it were, how come 95% of students in Japan already study in that way? Why do many emerging countries aspire to study those subjects?

The system in Britain actively encourages students to study subjects that provide little return. I was pleased to hear the announcement earlier by the Secretary of State for Education that some of those qualifications will be removed from the league table, but I think we should go further and also remove low-quality GCSEs and A-levels that are not equivalent to the more rigorous core subjects. Our system hampers young people’s chances of going to university, particularly our country’s top universities. Computer programming can be studied at Oxford, but it requires maths, not an A-level in information and communication technology. A student is 20 times more likely to study A-level law if they attend a sixth-form college as opposed to a private school. If they take that subject, however, it will not help them to study law at a Russell group university, because that is specifically prohibited. Students are being misled about the kinds of subjects that will help them get ahead in life.

This debate is not only about the sort of subjects that people study, but about the way some subjects are studied. A combination of modular examinations and bureaucratic intervention has damaged the intellectual integrity of many subjects at A-level. I frequently hear academics in universities complaining that students do not have a holistic view of the subject, and that they have been taught a pick-and-mix of various elements and therefore do not have the deep understanding and practice that they need to move to a higher level.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

Before the hon. Lady leaves the topic of subject choice, I recently visited many schools around the country, and the strong message coming across from young people was that they become interested in, and start thinking about, what they want to do quite early—perhaps as early as year 6 of primary school or the first year of secondary school. By the time they receive what they regard as good advice, it may be too late to have an influence on the subject choices that they need to make to achieve their aspirations. The hon. Lady makes an important point; it is about starting early and not underestimating pupils’ competence.

[Elizabeth Truss]

I agree completely with the right hon. Gentleman. Too often, limiting choices are made early in a student’s educational career. I support the English baccalaureate because if that becomes a more general qualification, people will not limit their choices early on. The lesson from other education systems seems to be that delayed specialisation is a good thing, and that too much early specialisation has a damaging effect. I oppose the suggestion that GCSEs be taken earlier, for example, as I think that would be damaging.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady makes a thoughtful speech. On early specialisation, and given the point made by the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), does she believe that selection at age 11, for example, is a good idea?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I would not personally have such a system, but existing grammar schools do very well, and to abolish the most successful schools would be a mistake; we should improve the other schools instead. My point is about how wide a choice students are given in each school. I am all for freeing up schools and enabling them to select should they so desire. A school in my constituency, for example, wants to select the 20% of pupils who find school hardest. That is a good thing, because it will put a group of learners together to study and achieve academic qualifications. I am in favour of more flexibility, although I am not in favour of imposing mass-selection across the education system.

I was speaking about examinations and how they have changed. One of my concerns is that in trying to ensure that examinations are fair for all students, a lot of use of judgment has been removed. For example, rather than having multi-step questions in which a student has to think about where they want to get to, we have one-step questions that ask for a simple response. That has damaged the ability of young people to think, be flexible and solve problems.

Our system has also diminished the role of teachers, who, for too long, have been forced to jump through hoops. We have a textbook regime; many textbooks are designed by exam boards and are essentially “how to” guides on how to pass the exam, rather than engendering a deep knowledge and interest in the subject. I speak to a lot of teachers who spend their weekends preparing lessons for the week ahead and essentially reinventing the wheel in subjects that have been taught for decades, if not centuries. Teachers in other countries often use a respected textbook that enables students to study in their own time, rather than only in the classroom. One of our problems is that not enough responsibility for study is given to the student; instead, it is passed to the system. The student is seen simply as a cog in the wheel, or a sausage in the factory. A process that focuses on getting through the exam encourages students to value education as a piece of paper, rather than as a way of gaining and developing capability.

I am an ardent free marketer, and in answer to the question by the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), I generally support freedom. However, I question our current set-up of examination boards, which is not a free market but an oligopoly of three organisations in a system. The innovation mentioned by those exam boards often involves innovating a race to the bottom to put easier qualifications into schools. The system also involves an incredible amount of regulation from Ofqual, which I have criticised in the past and which consumes a lot of public money. There is a strong reason for us to look again at the examination system and at how it can be better delivered. If we are to have national standards for exams such as the E-bac, and if we are to regulate exam boards, does it make sense to have those three exam boards in their current structure?

The issue of textbooks urgently needs to be addressed. We are one of the only countries in the world with this exam board structure, and where textbooks are set by the exam board. In my view, that is a conflict of interest. It would be better if independent bodies produced textbooks that students could study, and with which they could take responsibility for their own learning.

I mentioned subject choice. I want particularly to address the issues relating to low-income students, because one of the worst aspects of our educational performance is how much we let down low-income students compared with other countries. The OECD particularly highlighted that in its report; 77% of the performance in UK schools is down to socio-economic background. That is the second highest percentage after Luxembourg.

On the point about subject choice, someone at a private school or grammar school is twice as likely to study A-level maths as someone at a comprehensive school, and three times as likely to study a modern language. Students at comprehensives are seven times more likely to study media studies than students at private or grammar schools. What we have is essentially a reintroduction of the secondary modern in our school system. That huge segregation is a big problem. I have met bright students who are studying subjects such as psychology and media studies. Realistically, they will not have the opportunity to go to Russell group universities. We need seriously to address that.

The other point to make about Britain is that a study from Chicago showed that we have the largest differential between the teaching qualifications of teachers teaching low-income and high-income students. We are actively giving worse teachers to low-income students compared with other countries. The present Government have made excellent progress in reforming the supply side of our education system—opening up academies, developing the free schools programme and reforming the teaching profession. I would like further reforms, including an abolition of national pay bargaining. I would like teaching to become a really well-respected profession, and would like teachers to lead on some of the issues that I have been talking about.

However, the reform that we look to across our education system cannot be just about Government. We have been through 25 or 30 years of education reforms that Governments have tried to drive from the centre. That has happened under both Labour and Conservative Governments. It has shown that a wand cannot be waved by central Government. There must be a change in education culture in this country, and that must involve many institutions and people. One reason why I was so keen to have the debate today was to open up the discussion, not just in Parliament but at national level, about what sort of education system we aspire to.

We need to end the mindset that trades off quality and quantity. It is possible to have a high-quality, high-quantity education system. Countries such as Japan and Germany show that. Germany shows that it is possible to reform a system that has previously educated just the elite so that it becomes a much more broadly based system. The Germans are doing well on that basis. The English baccalaureate is a good start to focusing on the core subjects. We need to widen the number of people taking it. Reporting it on a points basis would be a good idea. Reporting how every student does proportionally on the E-bac would be a good idea. I would like that to be extended to A-levels, so that we get rid of the divide in what A-levels students are studying in different types of schools.

There is a strong case for removing low-value A-levels and GCSEs from the league tables. I said earlier that I thought that there was mis-selling of some vocational qualifications that were given the same value as other qualifications. We are lying to students if we say that those qualifications are of equal weight and worth when they are not. All we are doing is putting our universities in a very difficult position, because they are not getting the necessary applications. We are not getting people ready to enter the top universities because they simply have not studied the necessary subjects.

[Simon Hughes]

I will intervene just once more; I have come here specifically to hear the hon. Lady. Will she accept that another thing that might help—consensus appears to be growing on this—would be for all schools to have to publish information about their successes in widening participation and access? That would enable people to know where young people go on to from a school—what they do after 16 when they have those choices. Once we start showing that to the wider world, people will start challenging those schools that have a poverty of ambition and a poverty of aspiration.

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[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I agree that transparency is the way forward. I would like every school to find its 10 brightest pupils and suggest to them that they apply to the top universities—Oxford and Cambridge and the Russell group universities—so that we monitor how many people are applying from each school. I plan to write to every school in my constituency, asking them how many students from their school applied to Oxford and Cambridge and encouraging such applications next year. There are six secondary schools in South West Norfolk. I am sure that there are six secondary schools in many other hon. Members’ constituencies, and that is something we can all do.

My dad is an academic, so I was strongly encouraged in that direction, but many students at the Leeds comprehensive that I went to did not have aspirations in that direction and, frankly, a lot of teachers were not very supportive of those aspirations, perhaps because they had not been to such a university themselves or because they did not have any knowledge of them. There is a culture that needs to change, particularly in our comprehensive schools, so that those universities are seen as a place for the brightest students in the country, not just those who fit into a social perception.

I have already talked about reforming the examinations system so that we stop the tail wagging the dog. It is important that we understand what subjects ought to be examinable at that level, and ensure that the quality holds, rather than allowing a system of downward innovation, which is what we have seen in the past few years.

I hope that this is the start of a debate. I am very pleased to see so many hon. Members here on a Thursday afternoon. That shows the interest in the subject. Other countries have shown that it is possible to have a high-quality mass education system. We can do that here, but we need a lot of things to change, and it is about time we changed them.

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[Dr Coffey]

I would not say that the hon. Gentleman had wasted any of his life, although if he had had the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) as a pupil, we might be in a better place today. However, I studied a bit of economics at university, and I can assure hon. Members that I did not do A-level economics beforehand. As to whether someone teaching business studies at school will have ever run a business, I do not know, but that may well be a possibility with Teach First and Teach Next.

[Elizabeth Truss]

When I speak to economics academics at university, it is interesting that they often say that they would rather that people did mathematics than economics as a precursor to the subject. There is a question about what level we are studying subjects at, and that is particularly true of law. One thing that economics—

[Andrew Rosindell (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind the hon. Lady that she should make brief interventions rather than a second speech.

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[Stephen Twigg]

I will read that article.

Whenever we discuss test scores, there is always this argument about whether people are being taught to the test. Of course there are other pieces of research that show rather different outcomes. I know that this has been referred to in previous debates, but the trends in international mathematics and science study, which does not cover English or reading, looked at scores in years 3 and 9 between 1995 and 2007. In terms of progress in both mathematics and science, the United Kingdom was towards the top of the most improved countries in the world.

[Elizabeth Truss]

I mentioned TIMSS earlier. Part of the concern about TIMSS is that it is based on the curriculum of a particular country. It is not a standardised test that people sit across countries in the way that PISA is. Moreover, France and Germany did not take part in that study. We were still trailing all the Asian tigers, such as Japan and Hong Kong.

[Mel Stride]

rose—

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[Elizabeth Truss]

In response to the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), we are not arguing that the standards have necessarily gone down, but rather that the standards in other countries are going up faster. That is the key issue.

[Kevin Brennan]

In one study.

[Elizabeth Truss]

From a whole series of studies, including TIMSS.

[Stephen Twigg]

I am not sure whether TIMSS shows that, but I want to move on. When the hon. Lady spoke about China, she mentioned the cultural attitude to education, and that is clearly a factor. We know that in our own country from the data for achievement by ethnicity. Chinese and Indian children consistently outperform all other sections of the population in tests and exams, even when they are from the poorest families, as measured by free school meals, so there clearly are cultural factors.

In my remaining time, I will say a little about progress over time and highlight some successes in Liverpool. I will say a little about the factors that shape success and then something about learning from elsewhere. I want to say a bit about Teach First and about the US and Swedish experience of chartered schools and free schools respectively and then finish by saying something about E-bac and the surrounding debate around measuring achievement.

Between 1997 and 2010, we saw a significant improvement in the scores in the key stage tests—the SATS—A-levels and GCSEs. The national improvement in the five A* to C measure was from 32% in 1997 to 55% in 2010. I wanted to use that fact to pay particular tribute to the schools in Liverpool, which improved by a more significant margin—from a miserable 24% in 1997 to 53% last year, which was just two points below the national average. Linked to that, because of the success that those children and young people have had in their GCSE results, more of them are staying on at school or college after the age of 16. Nationally, there has been an improvement from 64% in 1997, just below two-thirds, to 79% last year, just below four-fifths. Again, in Liverpool, there was much more significant improvement, from just over 50% in 1997 to 78% last year.

There is a very important debate to be had about why those rates are changing. I agree with the hon. Member for South West Norfolk that improving educational performance is not just about Governments waving a magic wand. We will always have a debate about resources. Resources are not the focus of today’s debate, but spending is clearly a factor. There is also a debate to be had about the appropriate accountability measures and I will return later to that issue. However, improving educational performance is actually about what happens at the school level and the local level. We know that, because we know that schools with very similar intakes that have very similar amounts of money spent on them perform very differently from each other. Improving educational performance cannot be only about the context or the amount of money that is spent, although clearly both those things matter.

I agree with the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock that the head teacher in a school is critical. The quality of leadership around and below the position of head teacher is also important. Governors are important, too; the hon. Gentleman referred to his own role as a governor. All those positions are also vital.

Let us consider what we can learn from elsewhere, because it is important that we examine all the evidence available. I have praised the Government for the expansion of Teach First. One of the earliest decisions that I had to make when I became a Minister in 2002 was about whether we should support a programme that was initially called Teach for London, but eventually became the Teach First programme. We can learn a great deal from the Teach First programme.

The hon. Member for South West Norfolk—or perhaps it was one of her colleagues—spoke about the attractiveness of teaching in some of the toughest schools and how the best teachers often may not want to teach in them. As I say, Teach First began in London before expanding to other parts of the country and the whole basis of the programme was to place some of the brightest graduates from some of the top universities in some of the toughest inner-city schools in London as teachers.

Some of the examples of teachers who have gone through the Teach First programme are truly remarkable. Moreover, the number of teachers who went through the programme and stayed in the education world rather than following other careers that are probably much better paid has been another truly remarkable achievement. Research by Manchester university shows that schools in challenging circumstances where Teach First graduates are first placed have seen a statistically significant improvement in their GCSE results and that there is a positive correlation between the degree of improvement at GCSE level and the number of Teach First graduates in a school.

Teach First is a great programme and a great example of learning from another country, because it was modelled on a scheme in the US that enjoys strong cross-party support. Whatever else happens in the field of education policy, we should all continue to support and encourage the further expansion of the Teach First programme.

Having said that, I should add that there is a need to be cautious when we are studying school reform movements in other parts of the world. When the case is made for the Government’s policy on free schools and academies, great emphasis is placed on the experience of the US charter schools and the Swedish free schools. In preparation for today’s debate, I have looked at some of the evidence from the US and Sweden, and I think that it is fair to say that the evidence from both countries is mixed.

I think that the Secretary of State for Education and the Minister who is here today have both referred to a US programme called KIPP, which is the Knowledge is Power Project. I had an opportunity to visit KIPP schools in New York and Texas some time ago and I was hugely impressed by what was being achieved in those schools. KIPP schools are a great example of how some of these new, more autonomous schools in the US are delivering, particularly for children from some of the poorest backgrounds. There is no doubt that both the US charter schools and the Swedish free schools are hugely popular with the parents of the children who attend them.

However, the evidence about the impact on standards of those schools is mixed. There have been a number of studies in New York that suggest there has been real improvement in the charter schools compared with non-charter schools and that in particular some of the poorest children from ethnic minorities have done better than they might have done otherwise. On the other hand, the Centre for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford university published a report in 2009 that suggested that there is a much more mixed picture across the US, including significant state-by-state variation. That suggests that the extra autonomy granted to those schools may in itself bring benefits—but there are clearly other factors at play in addition to that extra autonomy, which help to determine whether those schools are successful or less successful.

In some ways, the picture in Sweden is quite similar. The Swedish free schools are popular with parents. One piece of research that I looked at showed higher grade point averages in free schools compared with those achieved in other Swedish schools. It has been suggested that in an area with a concentration of free schools, there was a wider positive impact. On the other hand, other significant studies that I looked at earlier today suggest that there has been a general worsening of performance in the Swedish school system in recent years, so that it is perhaps the case that the free schools have not delivered the national system-wide improvement in Sweden that their proponents originally anticipated.

Furthermore, there is real concern in Sweden—this is different from the experience in the US of the charter school system—that the gaps in terms of socio-economic achievement have widened in the country. Admittedly, those gaps in Sweden have always been much narrower than the gaps in the UK, so I still think that we have a lot to learn from Sweden and from some of the other Scandinavian countries. Nevertheless, we still need to tread with care on both sides of this debate, because I have heard both advocates of the Government’s proposals and critics of them somewhat overstating the case for or against by citing evidence from the US and Sweden. As I said, the evidence from those countries is decidedly mixed.

There is a very difficult debate to be had about how we measure how well schools are doing—and, indeed, how such measurement can itself have an impact on what happens in schools. That is really the debate about E-bac. That is a very difficult debate; I do not think that it is easy or straightforward at all. The hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock said something that I passionately agree with—that we should make the contextual value added the key indicator of schools. He then added a very important caveat by saying that we must also find a way to make CVA understood. I remember that when I was a Minister I said, “Why can’t people see that the value that this school is adding is actually far more significant than the raw score?” But people did not look at the value that was being added. They looked at the raw score.

The dilemma that all of us who care about education policy face is how we best measure schools and how we ensure that that measurement does not distort choices. I am concerned about E-bac, but that is not because I am not passionate about history, geography and modern foreign languages; I am passionate about all three of those subjects. However, I am not convinced that making them compulsory for all children, which could happen as a consequence of the E-bac, or emphasising them over other subjects, is necessarily the wisest way to encourage more children to have a passion for, and therefore to learn, foreign languages, history and geography.

The jury is out. We need to look at that issue further. As a Minister, I had some responsibility for the work that we did on modern foreign languages after they were made optional. I had mixed views. In the end, I think that it was probably right that they were made optional. What we sought to do was to encourage primary schools to take up modern foreign language teaching. We have seen a big expansion in such teaching in our primary schools in recent years. I hope that that will result in primary schoolchildren having a passion for foreign languages and that they maintain that passion as they go on to secondary school. That was the thinking behind encouraging language teaching in primary schools.

I can understand the desire of a new Government who are in a hurry to do something quick on E-bac, but I worry that it is effectively being introduced retrospectively. As I said in the Education Bill debate yesterday, there are schools in my constituency that are getting year 10 pupils who are midway through the year to change subjects so that they do E-bac subjects, because the school thinks that it will be measured by the performance in those subjects. I am not convinced that that will either prepare those children well for the world of work or give them a passion for those subjects that they have been told they must switch to.

I will finish by referring to the other thing that I agree with the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock about—the importance of recognising that progress takes time. The political and educational cycles are not exactly the same. When the Minister responds to the debate, he will say that of course the Government want to see progress. We were the same when we were in government.

We all want that progress for good reasons; it is not only to gain political kudos, but because all of us are passionate about children and young people being able to do well at school, so that they are fully equipped and have the best possible chances later in life. However, we often expect change in schools to happen too quickly. We set hurdles that cannot be crossed. As the hon. Gentleman said, schools cannot necessarily improve every year, because they have a different set of children each year. That is not an excuse for failure; it is just a recognition of reality.

When we assess how well schools do, let us look at subjects beyond English and maths, but let us not lose that vital core of literacy and numeracy. Let us look at a school’s progress over the previous five years, and let us look at value added—at how well particular children do at age 16 compared with how they do at age 11.

I very much welcome the opportunity I have had to participate in this debate, and I apologise for taking a bit longer than other Members. However, as I am the only Member on the Opposition Back Benches today, I can assure everyone that everything I have said is on behalf of all Labour Back Benchers. It is vital that we regularly debate education because, in spite of our real policy differences, we all know that education is vital if we are to be a successful economy and a fairer society with greater social mobility.

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[Elizabeth Truss]

We have had a most interesting debate. I thank everyone who has contributed, particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) and for Wells (Tessa Munt), who pitched with me to the Backbench Business Committee to secure the debate. I hope that we have future debates on this important subject, so that we can get to the bottom of what the issue is.

We have had a lot of disputes about what is in the table. My hon. Friend the Minister put it very well when he said that average is simply not good enough in today’s world. We have seen some acknowledgement of that by the Opposition. I am an optimist, and I hope that the Opposition will be less defensive about their record, so that they can focus on the future and on how to raise standards. That is important for everyone. If Japan can get 95% of students from 16 to 18 studying maths, science, languages and humanities, so can we and we can compete internationally.

Question put and agreed to.