Education (Merseyside)

John Pugh Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) on having started this crucial debate. I do not know about you, Sir Roger, but I think that we hon. Members often find ourselves talking in this place about things we do not know a great deal about. Happily, I do not think I am in that position today, because I spent 30 years teaching in a variety of schools on Merseyside. I was married to a supply teacher who taught all over Merseyside. I have been a member of a local education authority and a school governor. I have had four children educated on Merseyside, and I even started my education in, I believe, the constituency of the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby, at Corinthian Avenue Primary School, if it is still there. The hon. Gentleman is nodding his head, so it must be.

I want to make just a couple of observations. Liverpool and Merseyside are seen as problematic in educational terms, but as Michael Wilshaw said in drawing attention to some of the problems:

“Are you really telling me that they lack swagger and dynamism? That they cannot succeed in the way London has succeeded? These are the cities that built Britain. They pioneered a modern, civic education”.

When I think of the history of Liverpool and Merseyside education, I think of a number of cracking schools, or schools that have been very good quality. Some of the names are now historical; some of the names have been changed, and sometimes the structures of the schools have been changed, but I am thinking of St Francis Xavier’s College, Liverpool Collegiate School, Quarry Bank and even Ruffwood in its pomp. I also think of Blue Coat, Alsop, Holly Lodge, the Liverpool Institute, which I know has gone but which my dad went to, as did two members of the Beatles, Prescot Grammar School, which I attended, De La Salle, St Margaret’s, St Julie’s and so on. There are a lot of good schools in that mix, and a lot of very eminent people were pupils at those schools. Incidentally, many of the schools that are now wholly private, such as Blue Coat, started off as schools with a particular impetus to address the needs of the most deprived children in Liverpool. There is a great academic tradition there, and we ought not to be in any way shy about declaring that.

Unfortunately, there has also been quite a mediocre tradition, in terms of technical education, and there is another less commendable tradition in the area: many families and many generations across Merseyside have seen education as a necessary evil—as a time-consuming interlude before the real world of work. In the past, that meant the docks, car factories, wholesale distribution or whatever. We can call that low aspiration, but at one time it was a perfectly realistic aspiration, because there were those jobs. Sadly, there are not those jobs now. The world has moved on, but attitudes have not shifted across Merseyside quite as quickly, so there is a problem that we need to face up to. The problem is that it is a low-skill economy. Despite all efforts in the past to do a great deal about that, not a lot has changed over the last few decades. There is low educational attainment in certain areas. What worries all of us, including, I know, the Minister, is the tale of girls and boys who simply do not achieve what they should, and who face a problematic employment future.

I know that the solution is pretty complex. It is multifactorial; schools are only part of the solution. We have to address such issues as housing, employment and family structure. However, it strikes me that the educational fix is pretty clear; it was well laid out by the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby. Good early-years education is crucial, as is family support alongside that for those people who are unable to support their children in the way that we might hope. Strong school leadership is pivotal, and explains the destiny of some of the schools that I mentioned. Morale, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned, is also crucial, because it is no good having a great leader if he is not followed by troops who are persuaded that he is doing the right thing and are supportive of the task. Capital and revenue resource clearly makes a difference, and underpins the success of programmes such as the London Challenge. Also necessary is an intolerance of failure, which the Minister has voiced on several occasions.

The interesting thing about that solution, which I think we would all recognise and buy into, is that it is, as the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) said, very little to do with most of the Government’s initiatives at the moment, which are all to do with structure. How changing schools to grammar schools or academisation actually delivers these things eludes me. What seems deficient—the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby mentioned the Liverpool city region—is a vehicle for local delivery, something that could make a London Challenge in Liverpool, because ensuring that there are good schools across the area cannot be done piecemeal. It is easy to get some good schools here, some indifferent schools there, and some sink schools elsewhere.

We need a powerful strategic player, and traditionally that has been the local authority’s role. As the Minister will not be slow to point out, some local authorities have failed. To be fair to the right hon. Member for Knowsley, over the years Knowsley has struggled badly. Equally, mayors can fail; for whatever reason, Mayor Anderson has not delivered on the 2012 ambition he set himself. Local authorities are a key player and need to be burdened with that task. Too often, historically, local authorities have been slightly obsessed with what we might call their premium brand; the mayor always showed up to the grammar school for speech day, but was not necessarily there when other schools had similar events. We need local authorities in this because we have to ensure equity of outcome, proper prioritisation across the piece, and that what is delivered in education is economically and socially relevant.

Wholesale educational improvement, which the debate is about, is a community task—it is a community treasure when delivered—but it is definitely in the whole community’s interest. I fail to see how we can do that without reinventing the LEA in some form or other, to give proper strategic leadership to the task presenting itself to us.

Schools that work for Everyone

John Pugh Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

We are setting out a number of conditions that new grammars would have to meet for them to be able to open in the first place. Part of that would be working with local communities and demonstrating local demand. It could also involve setting up a non-selective school or sponsoring one that is already there, or setting up or sponsoring a primary school in a more low-income area that feeds the grammar school, so that it absolutely reaches into some of those communities that we want to benefit most from the good or outstanding grammars that are established. I encourage my right hon. Friend to look at the consultation document, which opens a lot of questions about how we can do that effectively. I will no doubt be interested in her response.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I have listened to the Secretary of State carefully and am quite sorry for her in a way, because I am sure this policy is not directly hers. Could she tell us confidentially whether she was as surprised as hon. Members when we found out the chaotic nature of future Government policy, and when she was informed of it by Government Spads in Downing Street?

[Justine Greening]

On behalf of children in Britain, that was a totally pointless question. In fact, I will not bother answering it.

New Grammar Schools

John Pugh Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I think we should hear from a philosopher. I call Dr John Pugh.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. On a consensual note, the Secretary of State will surely share the view that the biggest and most significant problem in British education is the long tail of underperforming boys in our poorer areas, few of whom will actually pass the 11-plus. How on earth does she think the creation of grammar schools, in simple terms, is a solution to this problem?

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to hear that the Department for Education has a range of different policies. We are allowed to have more than one policy to tackle poor attainment. We will be bringing forward proposals on how we feel the broader schools system, including grammars, and the broader education system can work together more effectively to raise attainment. He is absolutely right to highlight the point about white working-class boys. Interestingly, the Sutton Trust looked at primary schools that were doing a good job on improving attainment for white working-class boys. Sadly, only about eight or 10 really improved attainment dramatically. We can, however, learn from that experience and make sure that best practice is spread more effectively. The issue is absolutely critical and he is right to focus on it.

Higher Education and Research Bill

John Pugh Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I want to make a little more progress, because it is important that I continue to inform the House of how the office for students will work, and particularly how it will regulate providers.

If a provider breaches its conditions of registration, the OFS will have access to a range of sanctions, including monetary penalties and, in extreme cases, suspending or deregistering providers, to safeguard the interests of students and taxpayers and to maintain the world-class reputation of the sector. Our proposals have the support of those who know best, with the likes of Professor Simon Gaskell, chair of a taskforce that was established to review the regulation of the sector, commenting that

“there have been a number of significant changes to the funding of higher education and to the number of providers offering courses. Regulation of the sector needs to keep pace with these developments if confidence, and our international reputation, are to be maintained.”

Indeed, only today the University Alliance described the Bill as

“a raft that can take us to calmer waters”.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

The Secretary of State has emphasised the need for collaboration. Clause 2(1)(b) mentions

“the need to encourage competition between English higher education providers…in the interests of students and employers”.

She has identified that collaboration is in the interests of students and employers, so why is she objecting to putting it in the Bill?

[Justine Greening]

I feel as though we are already delving into the Bill Committee debate that will no doubt take place on this clause. I welcome the House’s engagement with the Bill. It is important to get it right, and we will have an important debate to make sure that it is properly structured. I look forward to the Bill Committee debate when Parliament returns after the recess.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jo Churchill]

Indeed you are. The words “top flight” came from the top of my head and I fully agree with the hon. Gentleman. My daughters have enjoyed red brick universities, but my friends’ children have been to all manner of providers, including good further education colleges and good apprenticeship schemes. There are fewer degree apprentices at the moment, because that system has not filtered through. More than anything, people need the appropriate qualifications.

I do not want to go on about the statistics around white young men and those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, because they speak for themselves. I would instead like to articulate the situation of career changers: mature members of our society who, in their 30s and 40s, when they have mortgages and children, want to change careers. That includes the nurses who want to become doctors, and the parliamentarians who want to become teachers.

[John Pugh]

Where are they?

[Jo Churchill]

Exactly. All manner of people who might want to take a different career path are precluded from doing so because they cannot get the appropriate qualifications, and we need to look at that. I was lucky when I did my MSc as a mature student, because I lived in Nottingham. The hon. Lady whom I followed; I am sorry, I cannot remember her constituency—[Hon. Members: “Walthamstow!”]. She spoke articulately about need, and made a good point about the 3% in the system being such a small number, and it is. However, when I was a mature student under the previous Labour Government, I could not access support to help me with nursery fees for my four small children or to help me with my MSc. Things have not got better, and the Bill will allow us to start to push things forward. So although I am open to criticism, I think that what the hon. Lady said was a little unfair.

Earlier in the debate, Members spoke about collaboration and the need to make collaboration mandatory for institutions, and I would like to use East Anglia as an exemplar of joined-up thinking. Next to us sits Cambridge University, which has the most money for research; the University of East Anglia is a leading university in Norfolk; and the new University Campus Suffolk, which has just been granted the ability to award degrees, is a community university. That blend offers people choice. That university in Suffolk, which has a campus in my constituency, has a member of the LEP and the local authority on the board. We need to encourage that sort of thing rather than making collaboration mandatory. They talked to further education providers, schools and businesses about how to fill the gaps in IT and engineering and to boost productivity, looking at nuclear power, farming, health and care. That is what I want the Bill to support.

SATs Results

John Pugh Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Sometimes in debates such as this, criticising the Government can be quite difficult. When the Secretary of State describes the debacle of SATs as a great success, however, criticising Government policy becomes relatively easy. It is like shooting fish in a barrel.

I start by referring to a headteacher in my constituency—headteacher of the largest primary school in the north-west; it is a standard, middle-class school—who put his pupils through SATs recently. He was so shocked by the outcome that he felt it necessary to write home to the pupils in the following terms. He told the children to look on the bright side, and he wrote:

“The only thing people will remember about the tests from 2016 was that they were one big mess! Your result will not stop you achieving really well at high school and going on to be a fabulous success in the future. Put whatever you got to the back of your mind and move on!”

He told the children:

“Fairness is always vitally important in whatever we do in life. Unfortunately, these tests were really not fair.”

This is a very experienced headteacher of a large primary school, in a standard, middle-class area, which has a record of success behind it. He said to the pupils:

“They were much harder than usual and this meant that you didn’t get the chance to show how much you have learned. There has been lots in the news about this in the past week and schools all over the country are feeling the same…I think we all feel a bit let down.”

He continued:

“You feel let down because you worked so hard and maybe you didn’t quite get what you deserved. Your teachers feel the same because they have tried everything in their power to help you achieve and they are frustrated because it hasn’t quite turned out as they would have wanted.”

He went on to say what a great experience it had been to have the children at the school and that, compared with everything they had enjoyed at school,

“a few test scores mean very little, particularly when the test was unfair anyway.”

[Graham Stuart]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman is as disappointed as I am that when we had inflation in standards—when we had the perception of success, but not the reality—headteachers such as the one he speaks about did not write letters home to parents. It would be good if, in response to that selling out, they had showed outrage similar to that which they showed at the early implementation of a new, higher standard.

[John Pugh]

I am sure that this headteacher would have done whatever was professionally necessary at the time. I am not sure that he was a headteacher at that time, so I cannot really comment for him. He concluded his letter to his pupils:

“We don’t need tests to tell us how great you all are.”

The worst thing about the letter is that it shows that there was a clear need to remove the feeling among those good, hard-working children that they had failed. I do not think that anyone here is against the summative assessment of primary school children’s progress. I do not think that any Labour Member said that. Nobody is against meaningful feedback or having a tool to establish a baseline for improvement. No one wants to go back to the days of total freedom where there were no reasonable expectations, but we must all—including the Government—be prepared to learn something. We must learn from places such as Finland, which has few tests like our SATs but which, as everybody knows, does very well. We must learn from experts and from teachers who have to implement what we impose. We need a sense—this is clearly lacking from the Secretary of State’s comments—of common enterprise between the teaching profession and the Government. I know that the NUT is the teaching profession, but the Secretary of State needs to incorporate some measure of support for what teachers have been trying to say to her.

We need a bit of humility, which perhaps I can illustrate by using the vexed issue of grammar—I took a look at the grammar sections of this year’s tests. I think that grammar has its place. It provides a recursive definition of a living language and, like a language, it evolves. I happen to think that grammar helps more in understanding foreign languages than our own, and I argue that the greatest orators in this place are not necessarily the greatest grammarians. If someone was stopped mid-sentence and asked what type of clause they were using, they might be in some difficulty. Most people have been speaking grammatically for most of their life with a fair amount of success—it is rather like Molière’s character Monsieur Jourdain, who found, with some surprise, that he had been talking prose all his life.

There may be value in trying to understand the rules that one unconsciously follows, and there is genuinely value and fun in a bit of clause analysis—I certainly enjoyed it when I was at school. However, it is arguable how far that benefits the users of language, and how much meta vocabulary one needs to acquire, particularly as there seems to be no particular consistency as to what vocabulary one ought to have, and there seems to be some opacity in what terminology one needs to pick up. Fronted adverbials certainly were not there in my day. I did Latin, preferring the imperfect to the past progressive. All these things are fairly arcane, esoteric stuff, and it is arguable how far you can go down that road without descending into the kind of pedantry that dismisses split infinitives or ending sentences with prepositions. But it is simply unarguable that imposing, in haste, a curriculum and test of limited value, with scant preparation, and discouraging well-intentioned pupils and teachers in the process, is rash. It is rash, and it requires some serious explanation and apology.

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Stuart]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The whole House has a role to play and ought not simply to trumpet the negatives, as the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) did, in this early outing as an Opposition spokesperson. It might have been more devastating to be understated than to suggest that this was a return to the 11-plus, which it clearly is not. But there are issues about maintaining engagement with teachers.

People might think that the Secretary of State’s fairly vicious assault on the NUT was over the top, but, given my experience of the NUT, I do not think it was. The NUT opposes almost everything. It is tragic. All I can say by way of uplift is this: when I go to primary schools, yes, I meet teachers concerned about the changes in the curriculum and the assessment and about the speed, from their end of the telescope, so to speak, at which they feel the change is happening—they genuinely find it difficult and challenging—but I find them to be a lot more positive than their national representatives on the NUT. It is unfortunate that the NUT is so often seen as speaking for all our teachers. I do not think it does.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) is right that we need to keep teachers on board. We must recognise that the teacher is the most important person in the system. Teacher quality is the key. The one thing I learned in five years chairing the Education Committee was that teacher quality was the most important thing. Leaders are important only insofar as they help to bring out the best in teachers. Teacher quality is transformational.

[John Pugh]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Graham Stuart]

I promised I would not be that long, but I have obviously broken my word—not for the first time.

[John Pugh]

What does the hon. Gentleman make of the example of Finland, which is very light on tests but very strong on teacher buy-in? What conclusions does he draw from its favourable ranking in the PISA table compared with us?

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman is right to lay down that challenge—though before mentioning Finland, he said he remained in favour of tests too. When a system moves to a certain level of excellence, as in Finland, and starts to recruit teachers from the top 30% of graduates in the country, and when 10 people are competing for each job—these are old data, admittedly—not only does it get people with high academic ability but it can select on empathy, enthusiasm and other skills as well, and then has a first-class workforce.

We are a much bigger country with different challenges, and we do not recruit our teaching workforce from the same pool as Finland. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman ever saw the work by McKinsey about how good systems keep getting better. It is a fairly basic thing when one hears it, but one has to hear it to realise it. Systems are different and require different interventions at different points in their development. I look forward to the day when we have such a self-confident, self-critical, self-improving education system that we can slowly cut down Ofsted and the accountability system and leave it to keep improving by itself. The reason why the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne, the hon. Member for Southport and my hon. Friends have not reached that point is that we do not yet have the confidence, but I hope that one day it will come.

I have one final point on the issue of children’s stress. It is important not to talk up lurid references to failure and it is important to say to schools generally that they should look at the schools where the children are not showing any stress. Does the system mean that all children have to be stressed? No, because we can find many instances where children are suffering no stress. They can be prepared for SATs without it feeling like some great ordeal coming down the road on which their whole future depends.

The message that the House should send—hopefully from all sides—is that schools should look at and learn from the schools that do not put stress on kids and use the SATs as an “assessment for learning”—call it what we like—rather than making them into an ordeal. Teachers and headteachers need to ensure that whatever the stress they are feeling—they are accountable for their results, so they should be feeling some—they do not pass it on to children. It is possible for that to happen; it does happen; it needs to happen everywhere.

Early Years Development and School-Readiness

John Pugh Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Westminster Hall

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (James Berry) on securing this debate. I cannot compete with the expertise. A lot of people have done a lot of work in this field already. I am, however, the grandfather of six grandchildren, all of whom are close to me. Two live next door. I spend at least as much time every week playing narrative games with Playmobil as I do making speeches in this place, and to somewhat better effect.

The goal of education—and life, I suppose—is the fulfilment of potential, and fulfilment is far more variable than potential. Crucial to that, as we have all recognised, is a good start. What does that good start look like? I think it can be defined only in broad terms, recognising that not every child does or can develop in precisely the same way. There is a danger in this debate of being far too precise, because a good start is not the same as an accelerated start, and the phenomenon of tiger mums and people fretting about their child’s development is a new cultural phenomenon. In our society, we tend to value educational learning, possibly above other factors that other cultures might value, such as emotional resilience or social skills.

Broadly, however, we have a concept of what a happy, developing, normal child is like and what their capabilities should be, and we simply find that some children do not match up to that, and it is fair to call them deprived. They are deprived in a range of senses: sometimes deprived of environmental stimulus and emotional support, and often deprived of parental attention and opportunities for creative play. Those are all forms of deprivation, and such children therefore arrive at school less capable of taking advantage of school and without parents who can teach or encourage them in how to take advantage. School therefore becomes a struggle and life becomes a struggle. We all recognise that; it has been well laid out by other Members in the debate.

Sure Start and many other policy initiatives sought to correct that. There has been a whole pile of initiatives, local and national, and they have varied in reach, impact, resource and effectiveness. I pay tribute to all the researchers and policy makers. I pay particular tribute to a Member who is not here and who has done an enormous amount of work on this matter in this House: the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen). He has done a tremendous amount to put it on the agenda. Some of the policies, it has to be said, are slightly conflicted. Is childcare primarily about developing the child or about freeing the employment market a little bit?

My central and only point is that key to so much of this is the acquiring and teaching of parental skills. Children spend a lot of time at home—more than they ever will at school—and we cannot just assume that the skills are transmitted and passed on. As a Government, we recognised that fact, but we tinkered rather than addressed it full on. When Sarah Teather was in the chair that the Minister now occupies, some pilots were conducted and the Prime Minister spoke warmly about developing parental skills.

Most of the learning that we engage in during our hard-pressed time in school—learning the pluperfect, trigonometry or how to make a coat hanger, none of which I have had to use—has not done me any good in life. But I have had to be a parent, as will most people. Early learning development is simply not on the school curriculum in the significant way that it ought to be. There is a serious danger that in trying to develop all the policies outlined today we leave parents out of the equation, and we also leave the training of parents as very much a backstop issue rather than something that we ought to put up front as a major policy issue for any Government.

Teachers Strike

John Pugh Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

We have protected school funding on a per-pupil basis. School funding is now at £40 billion—the highest it has ever been, and £4 billion more than in 2011-12. Because of the decisions that the Chancellor took in his Budgets, particularly the June 2010 Budget, we are not facing, and have not faced, the crisis facing countries such as Greece that had the same deficit as a percentage of the budget. We have not faced their crisis of closing schools, slashing salaries, and cutting numbers of teachers; we have maintained stability in our system. The average class size has remained stable in that period despite the fact that we have also created 600,000 more school places.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

There is a section of the Government that does not believe in experts, but, for the record, is the Minister really contradicting the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which predicts an 8% fall by 2020 in school budgets, in real terms?

[Mr Gibb]

We are aware that there are costs that schools have to face in the coming years, but we have protected school funding. If we look across Whitehall, we see the reduction in spending that we have had to secure to tackle the record public sector deficit that we inherited in 2010—£156 billion, or 11% of GDP. It is now down to less than 4% of GDP, thanks to those savings. We have issued significant guidance to schools about how they can manage their budgets and procure savings and efficiencies in the way they run their schools to meet these challenges.

Education, Skills and Training

John Pugh Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ms Eagle]

We must look at the policy on schools against what the Institute for Fiscal Studies has called a real-terms cut of 8% in budgets over this Parliament. We have to judge it with that as a background.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Does the hon. Lady accept that the volume of legislation is not an indicator of the quality of government, and a little legislation on schools would not go amiss now?

[Ms Eagle]

I certainly agree that quantity is not all. I will come on to some of the detail of those Bills as I make progress with my speech.

Michael Portillo went on to say:

“The Government is in total paralysis, because the only thing that matters to the Government now is the saving of the Prime Minister’s career”—

by—

“winning the referendum.”

In what will be a damning epitaph of this Tory Administration, he said that the majority that the Prime Minister secured last year is “all for nothing”. He said:

“The Government has nothing to do, nothing to say and thinks nothing.”

We have this “nothing” Queen’s Speech before us. We have a few eye-catching announcements designed to distract attention from the emptiness of the Government’s programme. We were presented with the possibility of driverless cars on our roads in four years’ time and even private spaceports, but there is still no sign of a decision on the much more pressing issue of airport capacity for the travel that millions must now undertake.

We were told that there would be a legal right to access digital broadband, but there is no clear route to resolve the scandal of this Government’s total failure to provide adequate digital infrastructure for all. Despite being the fifth largest economy, we still languish at 18th in the world for broadband speed.

Perhaps it is a sign of just how toxic things are in the Conservative party that even this self-described “uninspiring, managerial and vacuous” legislative programme has already caused yet another Tory Back-Bench rebellion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michelle Donelan]

I am delighted by my hon. Friend’s excellent point. We do indeed need to make sure that we are supporting all businesses. Bakers, plumbers, electricians and so on are the backbone of our economy, and very important to constituencies like ours.

The Government are rightly pushing ahead with ensuring that education is rigorous and that students get the key skills and core skills that they need in the workplace. I fully support this, and I would never, ever suggest that it is anything but a robust and clear plan. However, the push towards the EBacc in its current form threatens to undermine the progress being made and does not address the stigma against design and technology and engineering. I hope that the new education Bill will address this. I would like the vastly improved, highly academic, highly scientific design and technology GCSE that we now have to include the option of a science element. There is huge support for this within the business community, who are crying out for change. Let me be clear: this would not represent a U-turn on policy but would be a minor change to strengthen, improve and safeguard the Ebacc. Given the scientific and academic nature of the new design and technology GCSE, which this Government have invested heavily in and done a great deal of work on, there will be no outcry from other vocational subjects, because this is a totally different matter.

There is also a precedent with computer science, which was introduced to the EBacc because of shortages in the field. Yet that does not make a lot of sense when the shortages in design and technology, manufacturing and engineering are far greater than those in the digital industries.

What I am proposing is that design and technology be included as a science-based option, just like computer science, but that there should be an either/or choice so that students can pick between the two. That would ensure that it does not water down the EBacc or its academic rigour; instead, it would enhance it. It would also enhance the status of the excellent route into research, development, design and manufacturing provided by design and technology, as well as highlight that this Government have yet again listened to the business community and acknowledged the needs of our future economy.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

That is an excellent suggestion, but does the hon. Lady agree that there is an overlap between design and technology and IT, and that that might be affected by her proposal?

--- Later in debate ---

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I apologise for missing the Minister’s opening peroration. I am sure it was very impressive and persuasive.

Politicians are, generally speaking, good talkers but poor listeners. However, I and many others listen carefully to the Queen’s Speech. I also try to listen to the Minister for Schools, the Secretary of State for Education and the Department. Indeed, I listened carefully to their avowed policy aims: excellence, opportunity, development and employability—and I applaud them. It is the explanation of their methods, their solutions and their prescriptions that I have a problem with: the restructuring, the tinkering and the arbitrary diktats. Frankly, that is what most people have a problem with when it comes to this Government’s particular policies, but I still try to listen carefully to the arguments even for this. I have picked out three features of their standard arguments that trouble me—what I would call three persistent fallacies, or three repeated mantras—which I shall briefly sketch. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond, because I mean this to be a helpful critique.

First, I do not know whether the Minister is familiar with the great Austrian philosopher Karl Popper, but he drew a distinction between good and bad theories. Good theories are testable and, in principle, falsifiable, while bad theories can never be tested, and are never falsifiable. Mindful of that, I have listened when the Minister has cited learned or professional opinion in support of Government policy, and I have heard good evidence and good support; but I have also listened when the Minister has declared that the total absence of any learned or professional backing for some policies is sure evidence that the Government are doing something challenging, difficult, important and, of course, right. Either way, the Government are correct, and the policy is simply unfalsifiable.

The second fallacy follows on from that. When Government policy prompts howls of protest from professionals and teachers—as it often does—that tends to suggest to the Government that the provider interest is being challenged in the interest of the pupils. Recently, they have talked darkly of “vested interests”. That assumes, erroneously, that it is, or could be, in the interests of teachers not to deliver lessons that are relevant, appropriate and interesting to pupils, and aligned with pupils’ development and capabilities. Well, just try doing that—not delivering good lessons—if you are a teacher. Teachers who try not to do it, in any educational context, generally crash and burn. The conflict of interests is simply an illusion.

The third fallacy to which I wish to draw the Minister’s attention is the tendency to announce a policy with a laudable objective, which is designed to solve a problem but which is of doubtful efficacy, and then to suggest that rather than its being subjected to proper assessment, it is necessary to press on with it immediately and imperatively. That was the language that surrounded the “coasting schools” debate. No day could be lost, it was said, or the pupil would suffer irrecoverably and would never catch up. Unevidenced policy must be applied forthwith. We can imagine how much harm would be done if the same policy were applied in medical circles.

I have invented none of that. Those are the standard arguments that I have heard put by a beleaguered Department from the Government Front Bench—and I do, genuinely, try to listen.

Let us forget the dogma and the prejudice behind the policy for a moment, and look only at the logic. The logic of the Government’s position is quite troubling. Dark talk about specific vested interests—I do not know whether that refers to the unions, the teachers, the parents or the academics—or talk of what used to be known as “The Blob” smacks of paranoia rather than rationality and critical thinking, of which the Government are supposedly in favour. Always seeing critics as enemies is the mark of a zealot, not a feature of sane, leisured policy making. Let me impress on the Government that I am in favour of sane, leisured policy making, and of buying in from as many stakeholders as possible.

Key Stage 2 Tests

John Pugh Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have been declining in the programme for international student assessment tables internationally. We have to continually improve our education system, because other countries are not standing still. They are continually improving their education systems, and unless we do the same, we will fall behind. That is why we reviewed the primary curriculum, why we increased the demands and rigour of mathematics and English, and why we are focusing so much on getting every child to become a fluent reader, who not only masters the mechanics early in their education but becomes a regular reader, reading books for pleasure and developing a lifelong love of reading. We have reformed the secondary curriculum, and we have reformed GCSEs so that they are more on a par with the qualifications in the best education jurisdictions in the world. We have also reformed A-levels, responding to the concerns of employers and universities about the standard of undergraduates and employees.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Returning to the tests, the Minister cannot do them, the Department cannot organise them and schools cannot understand them. Does the Minister agree with the headmaster of a major primary school in my area, Adrian Antell, who wrote to him saying,

“The primary assessment system in our schools is nothing short of shambolic…Yet again, the professional judgements of experienced educational professionals is ignored by politicians trying to make a short term political gain”?

[Mr Gibb]

No, the tests were developed by educational professionals—a huge number of such professionals were involved. A large number of professional educators, headteachers and experienced teachers were involved in the review of the curriculum. The tests assess the ability of schools to deliver the new curriculum. That curriculum is more demanding, and we do not resile from that; it was a deliberate decision to raise academic standards in our primary schools and secondary schools as we respond to an increasingly demanding world and to the concerns of employers, universities and others.

“Educational Excellence Everywhere”: Academies

John Pugh Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

We remain committed to a national funding formula review. It cannot be right to have 152 different local formulae operating across the country. As I have talked about having a strong, consistent education system across the country, that must mean that we have a strong, consistent funding system too.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Can the Minister specify why she objects to the line put across in The Times today by PricewaterhouseCoopers—presumably, a vested interest—who argue that academisation is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for school improvement, or is evidence utterly irrelevant?

[Nicky Morgan]

Plenty of evidence can be cited in favour. I point the hon. Gentleman to the PISA and the OECD evidence, which I have already talked about, which sets out clearly the benefits of autonomy in our school system.