Education Bill

Glenda Jackson Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Slaughter]

rose—

[Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

rose—

[Michael Gove]

I will be happy to give way in due course, but I want to make a little progress. It is important that I move on to one of the central parts of the Bill, on which I am genuinely worried that the Labour party may be about to put itself on the wrong side of the argument.

If Labour Members vote against the Bill tonight, they will also be voting against the measures that teachers and teaching unions want in order to ensure that teachers are safe in the classroom. We know that the biggest reason why professionals leave teaching, and the biggest barrier to talented graduates entering teaching, is the quality of behaviour and discipline in our classrooms. We know that every day, there are 1,000 exclusions for abuse and assault and that last year, 44 staff were assaulted so severely that they had to be taken to hospital as a result of violence in our schools. We know that two thirds of teachers surveyed say that poor behaviour is driving people out of the classroom.

I believe that the time is now right for the House to send an unambiguous signal to the professionals who work so hard on our behalf in the nation’s classrooms that we back them, and that we will give them the tools they need to keep order. We will ensure that they have the power to search students for items that may cause violence or disorder in the classroom. We believe that it should be easier for teachers to detain pupils who are guilty of disruptive behaviour, and that the authority of head teachers should not be undermined by exclusion decisions being overturned, allowing excluded pupils, many of whom might have been guilty of violent offences, to march back into the classroom. We also believe that teachers deserve the right to enjoy anonymity up until the moment when they are charged with any offence that occurs in school. We believe that those four basic protections are no less than our professionals deserve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point and for his personal support on discipline. I know that when he was a Minister in the Department for Children, Schools and Families, he did good work in that area. However, I have to let him know that if he votes against the Bill on Second Reading, he will be voting against the measures that I have described. If he believes that those measures are worth while but has problems with other aspects of the Bill, he is perfectly at liberty to seek to amend parts of it in Committee. We are very fortunate that we will have in Committee, in the person of the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), one of the most reasonable Members of the House. As I said earlier, we will be happy to work in a consensual fashion when the hon. Gentleman or other hon. Members make cases to improve the Bill. I am sure that the Bill can be improved, but it should not be opposed or thwarted for narrow political reasons by politicians who are not prepared to stand with our professionals and say, “You’re doing a fantastic job and you should be defended. Discipline and behaviour are the foundation stones of good learning, and we will ensure that you are backed with one voice by a committed House.”

[Glenda Jackson]

Has the fact that the Secretary of State stood at the Opposition Dispatch Box and argued that we need unqualified teachers in our classrooms passed from his memory? That did not seem to be a message of endorsement for our teachers.

Not only in my constituency, which is served by two boroughs, but throughout the country, Sure Start and children’s centres will close, and there is no protection for them. They are important because they prepare children for primary school, but the situation is further exacerbated by the fact that nothing in the Bill will create more of the desperately needed primary school places in both boroughs in my constituency.

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady is passionate, and I do not doubt her commitment—

[Glenda Jackson]

Don’t patronise me—just answer the question!

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady has won an Oscar for being successfully patronising to others. It is a pleasure to be patronised by the Virgin Queen—I feel rather like the French ambassador. I hope this requires no translation: the Bill includes provision for improved primary education and for extra investment in the early years, which is why I hope she will put aside the histrionics and give us her support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Gove]

I note that the right hon. Gentleman has not answered my previous question about EU nations, but can he perhaps enlighten the House on—

[Glenda Jackson]

He is talking about children with special educational needs and you are going on about other matters. It is a disgrace—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order.

--- Later in debate ---

[Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

What a pleasure it is to follow the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who has broken the overwhelming trend in the contributions we have heard from Government Members, which has been to paint a virtually dystopian picture of education in our country in which virtually every classroom is a battlefield, every teacher is incompetent and lacking in inspiration, every child is badly taught and where examination results are lamentable in comparison with other countries.

The ability of children who receive free school meals to make it to Oxbridge seems to have been the recurring theme. The hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), who was the most recent Member to make that contribution, gave the example of Westminster school. If he is so concerned, why is he not arguing ferociously with the Government to fund pupils in our schools to the level charged in fees by Westminster and for class sizes to be as small as the standard not only in Westminster, but in every private school in this country?

As far as I can see, the Bill is a typical Government piece of legislation; it purports to be under the overarching aegis of giving back to people in this country the right to make local decisions that affect them in their local areas, but it does exactly the opposite. It will put powers into the hands of the Secretary of State that are currently undreamt of by many local authorities and by the schools in my constituency.

What I find most paradoxical is the way Government Members have bought what the Government are attempting to sell in the Bill. It starts with early-years education, because the Govt have trumpeted loud and long that every disadvantaged two-year-old—we are yet to know what will constitute that disadvantage because the Government have given us no detail—will be able to have nursery education. They then attempt to convince us that a child going from age two to five will of course be given a place in a local primary school—there is a desperate need for primary school places in my constituency—and that there will then be a gradual progression on to secondary school. Hang on a moment, because it looks, certainly from what the Government have said and from what has happened in my constituency, as though when children get to the age of 11 there will be no comprehensive schools left, only academies and free schools. The central and monstrous aspect of the Bill is that it will reintroduce a form of selection in schools. If there is no concerted local area agreement on what constitutes an admissions policy for all schools, we will see a return to what people of my generation lived through, which is the “them and us” approach to education for all our children.

The Secretary of State’s speech this afternoon culminated with the example of two schools that he admires and wants us to admire, but he ignored the fact that they rose to their present heights under a Labour Government.

[Kate Hoey]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Glenda Jackson]

No.

The Secretary of State also asserted that the Government are committed to ensuring that every child in this country has the best possible education. How can that conceivably be so when we are looking at a situation in which academies and free schools will be the only schools available to local people? We have no idea what the capital costs or revenue costs of those schools will be. The idea that we are making a real inroad into affording opportunity and aspiration for every child, however disadvantaged their background, by introducing free education for two-year-olds, when we know that Sure Start facilities are being closed even as we speak—

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

No they’re not.

[Glenda Jackson]

Oh yes they are. Children’s centres are being closed—

[Michael Gove]

Where? At half-past 9 on a Tuesday night?

[Glenda Jackson]

The lack of imagination from Government Members never fails to amaze me.

The idea that this Bill is going to ensure that every child has an absolutely clear ride from the age of two to 18, that there will never be a bump on the way and that at every single point they will be encouraged, inspired and told to aspire is utter nonsense. I shall not go down the road of discussing the abolition of the education maintenance allowance for those who stay on at school until aged 18.

For Liberal Democrat party members—who I presume obtained their degrees from the Pontius Pilate school of political philosophy—to support this Bill is yet something else of which they have real cause to be ashamed. But no one should be as ashamed as the Conservative party, which, despite its protestations about caring for every child in this country, is setting in train an educational system that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) said, will create not just one or two but three tiers of education in this country.