Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I suggest that the hon. Lady speaks to her boss, who has advocated Danish and Swedish child care systems, both of which have higher ratios than we currently have in England. They also have higher salaries and higher levels of qualification.

We are looking at best practice in Germany, France, Denmark and the Netherlands to make sure that we end up with a system in which we pay child care workers more than the £6.60 an hour that they are getting at the moment. That is a legacy of the previous Government. We are paying those who should be highly paid professionals £6.60 an hour—barely more than the minimum wage.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

13. What recent assessment he has made of the success of sixth-form colleges; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

Sixth-form colleges make an important contribution to the education of 16 to 19 year-olds. The latest data show that the sector is performing well in both student attainment and a range of valued-added measures. Nearly four fifths of sixth-form colleges are rated “good” or “outstanding” by Ofsted.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

As the Minister has just said, sixth-form colleges are our most successful educational institutions, in terms of both quality of education and value for money. I suggest that the Government would do well by our young people and taxpayers if they sought to establish many more sixth-form colleges and ensured that those that we have are treated fairly and supported.

[Mr Laws]

We will certainly go on strongly supporting sixth-form colleges. I believe that an all-party sixth-form college group will be formed in the near future with the hon. Gentleman as its chairman. I will be more than happy to meet him in his capacity as chair of that group.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

There was rather a lot in that question. I certainly agree with Lord Sainsbury. The Gatsby Foundation does excellent work in producing more occupational qualifications that have the standing of the industries they support. More occupational qualifications in this country would be a very good thing, because we have serious skills shortages, not least, as the hon. Gentleman has said, in the STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and maths—particularly engineering. We are doing everything we can, including working with Lord Sainsbury, to turn that situation around.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

7. What assessment he has made of the latest construction output figures; and if he will make a statement.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

The latest Office for National Statistics figures show that the seasonally adjusted volume of construction output fell by 2.5% in the third quarter of 2012. The volume of new construction orders, however, rose by 5.4% in the third quarter of 2012.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I thank the Secretary of State for his answer, but the fact is that construction is in deep recession, with output falling by 10% between the fourth quarter of 2011 and the third quarter of this year. Industry is, indeed, in crisis. Is it not time for the Government to boost construction, including a programme of local authority house building to house the almost 2 million households on waiting lists?

[Vince Cable]

Certainly, the construction industry has had a torrid time ever since the collapse of the bubble in residential and commercial property. I know that there is a lot of distress in the sector, but there is some indication of orders improving. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Government have taken action in the past few months. In September, we launched the programme of guarantees for social housing bodies to proceed with construction and raise capital for that purpose, and the autumn statement announced £5.5 billion-worth of new commitments, mainly through guarantees, for infrastructure projects.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

At present, the evidence suggests that 10-year-olds in England are more likely to use calculators than those in virtually any other country in the world, and we are 28th in the world league tables for maths. It is important that children understand and are fluent in multiplication, division, addition and subtraction before they use calculators. That is why we are removing calculators from the primary tests, in line with high-performing countries such as Hong Kong and jurisdictions such as Massachusetts.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

A dozen or so years ago, Lord Moser concluded in his report that more than 50% of people in Britain were innumerate and illustrated that by saying that 50% of the population do not understand what 50% means. Recently I attended a National Numeracy reception and spoke to Lord Moser again, and others, and the problem still exists. Are the Government able to put their finger on precisely what has gone wrong and is the Minister doing enough to put it right?

[Elizabeth Truss]

One of the issues we have identified is too early a reliance on calculators in some classrooms. There is also an over-focus on data in the primary curriculum at the expense of arithmetic and number, which are the basis of a strong mathematical understanding later in life. We are readjusting the balance to make sure that those core basics are secure first.

Industrial Policy and Manufacturing

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris White]

All I will say is that energy and how we deliver on an energy strategy must be part of any industrial policy.

One of the most pressing concerns for manufacturing is access to finance. At meetings of the all-party group and with constituents, bank lending is a theme we return to time and time again. We must consider closely how we will reform our banking system for the benefit of our manufacturers, which must be a key part of our industrial policy.

Skills are another area that the Government must consider and I welcome the work that has already been done, particularly on apprenticeships. They are giving more young people the chance to learn skills in some of our excellent educational facilities—not least Warwickshire college in my constituency. We need to do more to strengthen the whole curriculum, however, so that it supports our economy, particularly by supporting science, technology, engineering and maths—the STEM subjects —at primary and secondary schools. We also need to look at apprenticeships so that we have more of the higher level apprenticeships our country needs to compete with other rapidly upskilling economies.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is talking about the importance of education and training. Is he not concerned that every year we have to import tens of thousands of qualified engineers from abroad because we cannot produce enough through our own educational system even for our diminished manufacturing sector?

[Chris White]

Yes, I share that concern. It is incumbent on the House and on partners with an interest in manufacturing and industry to spread the news and create a greater awareness of jobs in industry. It is a matter of attracting people to those jobs, and our education system has a great part to play in that. That brings us back to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle).

The Government have also rightly focused on infrastructure, on which the UK needs to improve, and a comprehensive industrial policy would seek to address that problem. A modern industrial policy must work to increase investment, by providing the right incentives and ensuring that the allowances and tax breaks make the UK one of the most attractive places in the world to do business.

Of course, an industrial policy should also consider other areas such as research and development, energy, procurement and export support, but I believe that the most crucial thing is that we should act swiftly to work on building a new industrial policy. Sector strategies are useful, but the main obstacles to UK manufacturing are at a national level.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way again?

[Chris White]

If I may, I will continue.

A strong manufacturing ecosystem cannot depend on a few favoured industries but must see the whole of industry succeed. We have an historic opportunity over the next few years to develop consensus on a policy that our country desperately needs, working across political boundaries with business, trade unions and policy experts. I hope the Government will take the opportunity to do that, enabling manufacturing to be the engine of the UK economy once again and putting our country back on the path of sustainable and balanced long-term growth.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

May I first congratulate my new hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Andrew Sawford) on his absolutely splendid maiden speech? I have some connection with him in a sense, because I come from the east midlands, my grandfather worked in the boot and shoe industry, and at this moment I am wearing a pair of English leather shoes that were probably made in his constituency—and splendid shoes they are, too. It really was an excellent speech, and I am pleased that my hon. Friend’s father is here to hear it, because he was a very good personal friend and comrade in this place. I am delighted that my hon. Friend is following in his father’s footsteps and I welcome him to the House of Commons.

I want to mention Bedford trucks as well, because the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) mentioned them. They were made just outside my constituency in Dunstable and are all over Pakistan—thousands of them can be seen there today. Many people think it was a great mistake to stop manufacturing the basic truck, which is so rugged and can work in any conditions—and no doubt is infinitely superior to the Chinese competition.

I want to talk about Britain’s experience of manufacturing. Britain has suffered from savage deindustrialisation, brought about by utterly misguided economic policies enacted over a long period. We have had many figures quoted to us today. We have only to look at, say, the comparable 2006 figures for Germany and Britain, to see that manufacturing comprised 12.4% of our economy in Britain and 23.2% of Germany’s economy—almost twice as much. Germany is indeed the economic powerhouse of Europe, and one can see why. During the period 2000 to 2010, the UK share of world trade fell by 28%, whereas Germany’s fell by a mere 3%. Why are our countries so different? Governments in Britain have made persistent attempts to sustain an overvalued exchange rate. This goes right back even to the 1931 crisis, which sadly destroyed the Labour Government, because they did not realise that they could come off the gold standard and devalue, which is what they should have done and what happened immediately after they lost office.

Then we had the 1949 devaluation—very sensible—and in 1967, again after resisting devaluation for a long time, we eventually devalued, following which the economy of course bounced a bit. But then in 1979 we had the Thatcher Government, who immediately introduced policies that saw a massive appreciation of the pound. In two years we saw a fifth of manufacturing industry disappear and unemployment rise to 3 million, simply because of the massive appreciation of the pound and the collapse in demand for manufacturing. Between ’82 and ’88, in the Nigel Lawson period, we saw a pretty savage depreciation of the pound—by some 35% from peak to trough—and a great recovery because of that depreciation.

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

One of the industries hardest hit has been ceramics. One of the things that we have wanted for years in the ceramics industry is accurate country-of-origin marking and an end to bogus back-stamping. If something says “Made in England”, it should be made in England. Other countries in Europe want that in the ceramics industry, but the UK has always stood in the way. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is time we had a more open mind to such measures to ensure accurate consumer information, to counter counterfeiting and to give our industries a fighting chance?

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, I have a wonderful set of Wedgwood china, which we use on special occasions, that no doubt comes from his constituency.

Then we had the 1990 to 1992 exchange rate mechanism disaster—again, an attempt to pinion our currency, in essence against the Deutschmark. We recovered from that after we devalued substantially—golden Wednesday—and the economy started to strengthen again. Indeed, if that economic strengthening had continued for three or four years longer, Labour might not have won the 1997 election, because we won on the basis of the terrible mistake made by the Conservative Government by going into the ERM. Those are key factors—the key factor, I think—in our economic weakness. But Germany kept its Deutschmark at a low parity for a prolonged period, and was allowed to do so because West Germany had to be, inevitably, the showcase for western capitalism against the east, and everything was done to ensure that Germany succeeded. It was permitted; it was allowed by the rest of the western world to keep its currency low as a necessary condition for economic success. Other factors, of course, were used to ensure that the Germans were successful, including a very strong interventionist industrial policy, which we forgot and left behind when we abandoned, for example, the National Economic Development Council, abolished by the Tory Government.

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

I am very interested in the hon. Gentleman’s remarks about Germany. Would he join me in congratulating the Germans on the important supply side reforms that they have made in recent years, to liberalise their economy and to make it the exporting success that it clearly is? Is that not a lesson for the United Kingdom?

[Kelvin Hopkins]

If the hon. Gentleman thinks that we can recover by taking supply side measures, he is gravely mistaken. It is the macro-economic measures that the Germans took that were the basis for their success. Supply side measures can no doubt help, but having a low parity for the currency and then ensuring that investment goes into manufacturing above all was the key to German success. The euro, of course, is an invention, essentially to pinion the Deutschmark within the euro at a relatively low parity compared with the countries that Germany exports to. If those countries outside Germany but inside the eurozone were permitted to recreate their own currencies and devalue, they would not be able to buy quite so many BMWs and Mercedes as they do at the moment, and that would affect Germany. One of the reasons Germany is so keen to keep the eurozone going is simply that Germans know very well that if the eurozone was disaggregated, or collapsed, depending on how one chooses to describe it, the Deutschmark would immediately appreciate and Germany would have much more serious difficulties.

We have had that constant problem with our exchange rate. Ours has always been high, and Governments have tried to keep it high. Germany’s has always been low and German Governments have made sure it stayed low. I have had a number of experiences, about which I have written in the past, and spoken on many occasions. In 1988 I went to a meeting of the Anglo-German Foundation and raised the question of the “balance of trade problem” with Germany. I was immediately told to shut up by a very angry representative of the then German Government. I thought I was just raising something that was obvious to everyone, but he was very upset that I even raised the issue. In 1988 the Institute for Public Policy Research produced a pamphlet, “The German Surplus,” which raised that issue. That too was suppressed. I tried to get extra copies; I was told there was none. I asked who wrote it; no one would tell me. Clearly, the Europhiles inside the organisation were suppressing that document because it would damage our relationships with the European Union, which we were moving towards.

Macro-economics is the core problem. We could do lots of other things as well, but the macro-economics must be right. We must ensure that our exchange rate is right, and the only way we are going to start to recover industrially—in manufacturing terms—is first to have a substantial depreciation and then to do other things to ensure we recover. If we do not do that, we are in for a very bleak time.

I have with me the fine document produced by the Library every month, “The Economic Indicators,” which I read avidly. Let us look at the trade balances—visible trade. In 2010, Germany had a trade surplus—converted by the Library into dollars, for comparison’s sake—of $204 billion, when the UK had a deficit of $151 billion. That is the difference between countries. They should be, in many other ways, very similar. They have got it right; we have got it wrong. The UK trade deficit with the EU27—essentially with Germany—in August, the last month recorded, was £4.9 billion in one month, up from £4.4 billion in July. So it is getting worse. Most of that is, of course, with the Germans. The UK trade deficit for 2011 tipped over the £100 billion mark—a staggering figure. No other country would be able to sustain that, and we must do something about it in time.

Only a much lower exchange rate will make it possible to increase exports and drive an economic, and specifically industrial, revival in the UK. Only then will we see unemployment come down and living standards start to rise again. We must do this; it is a necessary, vital condition for success, and if we do not do it, we have a bleak future before us.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Skills (Matthew Hancock)]

Debates in this House are often described by those who speak in them as important, but there is something important about today’s debate: on this subject, cross-party unity matters. There has been clear unity across all three parties that have been represented in this debate. Almost everybody stuck to that tone, until a brief period at the end. I will not push the point about who got us into this mess and I will not ask under which Government the number of private sector jobs in the west midlands fell, because it is important, for substantive reasons, that there is a cross-party approach to industrial strategy. This debate has shown the passion of Members and of the Associate Parliamentary Manufacturing Group.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I agree with the Minister that there should be cross-party consensus, provided that that consensus is on the right side. If everybody is wrong, we will drive ourselves further into difficulty.

[Matthew Hancock]

That is a profound point about the need to avoid groupthink, with which I profoundly agree.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) argued that we need to identify the best. He was passionate about enterprise and I heard his message. He will know that I am a huge supporter of enterprise zones.

I enjoyed listening to the historical debate between the hon. Members for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) and for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson), who are continuing their debate as I speak.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) asked a series of questions and brought his huge experience to bear, especially in relation to defence. The defence growth partnership is a BIS-led cross-Government partnership, which the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon), leads. On the specific point about R and D tax credits moving to above the line, the Treasury has consulted on that and is deciding on the detail. I am also grateful to my hon. Friend for helping me with the answer on the joint strike fighter, which I will come to in a moment.

Everybody in the House was struck by the fluent and impressive speech by the new hon. Member for Corby (Andrew Sawford). He described passionately his membership of the Co-operative party as well as the Labour party. My grandfather was part of the co-operative movement. The hon. Gentleman will no doubt want to contact my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), who takes a lead on such issues among Government Members.

The hon. Member for Corby advanced the argument for the living wage powerfully. He spoke of the need to ensure that domestic British people have the skills to take the jobs that are available. Although more than 1 million private sector jobs have been created under this Government, we still have a huge amount of work to do. As Under-Secretary of State for Skills, my prime motivation is to ensure that British people have the skills and ability to do whatever it takes to get the growing number of jobs available. The hon. Member for Corby spoke with great passion, and all those present in the debate will have clocked that—well, let me put it like this: the attitude he showed to the Chief Whip on the Opposition Front Bench, and his ability to ingratiate himself with her, shows that he may not be on the Back Benches for long.

An industrial policy is central to achieving the goal of growth and enterprise, and there is broad consensus on that from the CBI to the TUC, as well as across the House. The reason for that is simple. Any Government in a mature economy has an industrial policy—as the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) argued, a Government cannot choose not to have one. We have an industrial strategy but the question is whether we have it by default or design.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford praised the Dutch system, from which we have much to learn. In my few weeks in this job I have recognised and warmly welcomed the constructive approach taken by the hon. Member for West Bromwich West to chairing the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee. He argued for a cross-departmental approach, and the growth committee on which I sit is an important part of that. He also argued for a cross-party approach, and not only do I agree with that, but I think hon. Members have demonstrated such an approach today. In particular, I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s realism and ability to accept failures on the part of all past Governments. As he said, manufacturing halved as a percentage of GDP, and the passionate argument about that and the history around it was also put forward by the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher).

Crucially, an industrial strategy looks both at and across sectors, and we must ensure that we allow for the challenge of sectors that are yet to be dreamed of. Let me touch on four cross-cutting themes, as well as on sectors such as the automotive industry, life sciences and aerospace, in which we are pushing rapidly ahead with the publication of individual papers.

Life-saving Skills in Schools

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I shall speak very briefly; I am a late interloper into the debate, but I wanted to raise two points. Actually, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) has touched on them already. I recently attended a demonstration of CPR. The instructor was at pains to say that mouth-to-mouth was not essential but CPR was, and that some people are put off volunteering for such courses because they are fearful of engaging in mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. That is what my hon. Friend said, so she emphasised, “Do not press the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”

I congratulate the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) on launching this superb debate, and all those who spoke so excellently. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View deserves a medal because she has saved several lives.

I want to speak specifically about water life-saving, because 55 years ago I acquired an intermediate life-saver’s certificate. I have never had to use it, but I think even now I could do the basics and get someone out of the water without drowning myself, and get them breathing again—free their tongue, and all the things that I remembered when I was 14 or 15. That is a subset of life-saving, but it is very important and I hope that the Government bear in mind the encouragement for people to take up life-saving in water as well as dealing with cardiac arrests.

Those were the two points that I wanted to raise. I promised to speak for two minutes, and I hope I was not too long.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Monday 29th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend has made a good point. The Secretary of State has already said that his ambition is for virtually all students to study maths until the age of 18, and we will introduce a funding condition for students who have not achieved a GCSE in maths so that they can reach that level of aptitude. We will also look at mid-level qualifications for students who have maths GCSEs but do not want to take a full A-level in maths, so that there is an alternative path for them to take.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

14. What assessment he has made of the 2012 GCSE English results; and if he will make a statement.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

16. What assessment he has made of the 2012 GCSE English results; and if he will make a statement.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)]

On 18 October, provisional national and local authority level GCSE results for 2012 were published. The percentage of pupils achieving grades A* to C in English had fallen by three percentage points to 66.2%. The independent regulator, Ofqual, continues its investigation into the awarding of English GCSEs this year, and is now looking into why some schools achieved the results that they had expected while others did not. The final report will be published shortly.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) and I recently met teachers and head teachers in Luton to discuss the problems involved in the GCSE results. It is clear that some pupils were not permitted to take the sixth-form courses that they had chosen, as a consequence of their results, and that some schools that made strenuous efforts to improve their English results have actually been knocked back. Is that not a disgrace, and should not apologies be made?

[Michael Gove]

I share the concern felt by the hon. Gentlemen. We must wait to see the Ofqual report before we can be more certain about what went wrong this year, but it is clear that there were a variety of factors consequent on the design of the examination, and that we need to take steps to remedy them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Norman Lamb]

I am very grateful, Mr Speaker.

It is interesting to note that the evidence gathered from Germany suggests that there was very little change to the level of employment in small businesses after the reforms.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

The Million+ group of universities has concluded that the new fees regime to be imposed on mature students will deter many thousands of them from going to university. That will damage their life chances, and it could damage the universities, but it will also restrict the talent available in our economy. Will the Government think again about fees for mature students?

[Mr Willetts]

Many mature students are part-time students, to whom this Government have for the first time extended loans to cover the cost of fees. That is one of the many features of our higher education reforms of which we are very proud.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The Teaching Agency’s new school experience programme for people who are considering teaching maths, physics, chemistry or a modern language at secondary level provides precisely the opportunities to which he refers. It gives participants an opportunity to observe teaching and pastoral work, and to talk to teachers about day-to-day school life. More than 800 people have benefited from the programme so far, and many more placements are planned for the future.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Last week I listened with interest to a Radio 4 programme about the use of synthetic phonics in the teaching of reading in schools. It was clear that there was a fundamental difference between the philosophies relating to education and teaching methods which had not yet been resolved. Does the Minister accept that until we solve that problem, we will not overcome our fundamental problems in education?

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Getting reading right in primary schools is fundamental to children’s future education. That is why we have introduced match funding for primary schools—£3,000 per school for new training and materials—and why every six-year-old will undergo a phonic check this June so that we can ensure that we spot the children who are struggling with reading. We are determined to end the scandal of one in 10 boys leaving primary school with a reading age of seven or less.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather]

As I just said, substantial new money is going into early years. It is one of the few areas across Government where in fact—[Interruption.] It is two-year olds, but that extra money will of course benefit any of those settings that are working with two-year olds, and most of them will be working with two-year olds as well as older children. It is new money, particularly for disadvantaged areas that might not otherwise have taken two-year olds. I wish that the Labour party, instead of just carping, might sometimes congratulate the Government on putting extra money into disadvantaged areas.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Last Friday I had a meeting with a number of school-based family support workers in my constituency, who are seriously worried about the future of the vital service that they provide. What will the Government do to ensure that such services are not done away with by public spending cuts in constituencies such as mine, where there is a significant amount of disadvantage?

[Sarah Teather]

It makes sense for local authorities to invest in those areas. That is precisely why we called the new grant the early intervention grant, and precisely why we are now working with children’s centres, for example, to ensure that they are paid by results, focusing on outcomes and on providing the services that the hon. Gentleman mentions, which we know make a real difference.

Dyslexia

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir, possibly for the first time. Forgive me if I am wrong.

This debate on dyslexia was initiated following a meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on dyslexia and specific learning difficulties, which raised three particular concerns: first, the changes to the examination access arrangements issued by the Joint Council for Qualifications; secondly, the Green Paper—I will not read out its title—of which we are aware; and thirdly, the continued need to include in initial teacher training the teaching of children with dyslexia.

I am pleased to lead the debate. Dyslexia is an important subject and is of concern to millions of our fellow citizens and constituents. Astonishingly, one in 10 of the population experiences dyslexia to some degree. The condition stays with people for life. Some people can accommodate it to an extent on occasions; others find that more difficult. Like colour blindness, it is a condition that is hidden and sometimes not even recognised. I am sure we all have friends, relatives and certainly many constituents who are dyslexic. The lives of millions of adults have been affected by dyslexia.

Even now, many people live with their dyslexia unrecognised, particularly those of my generation. I suspect I am the oldest person in the room. In my day, it was a strange word; nobody in my experience knew the word dyslexia. There were no doubt children in classes when I was at school who were constantly punished and treated rather cruelly sometimes because they could not spell or read. There was no understanding that they had an inherent difficulty or disability.

Dyslexia affects people across the ability range; it is not limited to people with learning difficulties. Many famous and celebrated people suffer from dyslexia, and it can affect people who are highly intelligent. I give as an example one of my relatives. He failed the 11-plus, essentially because he was dyslexic, yet he finished up studying physics at Imperial college later in life. He is clearly a man of considerable intelligence who could not pass the 11-plus because he was dyslexic. Our concern today is that teachers often lack the skills to identify and support dyslexic children, who need to be diagnosed and given extra support.

As a member of the all-party group, I was pleased when my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families in the previous Parliament and now shadow Chancellor, commissioned a report on education and dyslexia, which became the Rose review. Rose recommended that initial teacher training should include dyslexia and special learning difficulties. However, currently there is no mandatory level of dyslexia training that must be provided in initial teacher training courses.

It is of great concern that little action has so far been taken to implement fully the recommendations of the Rose report. Indeed, the situation is worse, in that thousands of academically gifted teenagers with conditions such as dyslexia have lost the right to extra and other help in A-level and GCSE papers, under a crackdown by exam bodies introduced by the Joint Council for Qualifications.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

Has my hon. Friend read the report of the Science and Technology Committee on literacy interventions from two years ago? If he has not, I will quickly read two quotes from it:

“The Rose report’s definition of dyslexia is exceedingly broad and says that dyslexia is a continuum with no clear cut-off points. The definition is so broad and blurred at the edges that it is difficult to see how it could be useful in any diagnostic sense.

The Government’s focus on dyslexia, from a policy perspective, was led by pressure from the dyslexia lobby rather than the evidence, which is clear that educational interventions are the same for all poor readers, whether they have been diagnosed with dyslexia or not.”

Will my hon. Friend take a look at that report? I am sure it would help him in his work on the Committee.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I thank my hon. Friend for his helpful intervention. We are aware that there is an enormously broad spectrum, from slight spelling difficulties to almost an inability to read. At the same time, there is a definite difference between those who have a degree of dyslexia and those who just have difficulty learning to read, perhaps because they are educationally challenged. Clearly, we need rigorous teaching of reading. In a completely separate context, I am strongly in favour of more rigour in the way we teach young people to read and to learn mathematics and other subjects. I take note of what my hon. Friend said. No doubt the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) will also respond to his points.

The JCQ rules clearly discriminate in that the measurement scores they use affect some youngsters and not others; some are excluded from help and others get help, because of an arbitrary decision by the JCQ on what their needs are. Complaints have been made about that by parents and teachers across the country, including Helen Wright, president of the Girls’ Schools Association, who said that a number of sixth-formers, without being given extra time for exams or other help, would

“definitely fail, and unfairly so”.

There are those who will suffer from the application of the rules who would otherwise do better. I hope the Minister will respond and give further consideration to the question of the arbitrary cut-off point.

Many thousands of children across the whole ability range are not getting the help they need, and are not even being diagnosed, because of the lack of specific training for teachers. There are no doubt some who, even today, do not recognise dyslexia, thinking it is just about youngsters who are not very good at reading, and do not recognise it as a specific and identifiable problem for some people. The problems experienced by those youngsters are distressing for them but they are also damaging to the economy and society as a whole. Clearly if youngsters are becoming disillusioned with education because of their dyslexia difficulties they drop out of school, education or training or have difficulty with apprenticeships and so on. That is damaging not just to their lives but to the economy and society in general. Help for dyslexics to succeed in education at whatever level is a matter, therefore, for national concern and Government action. The Rose review should be implemented in full and the JCQ rules withdrawn.

Although I am not dyslexic, I have taken a particular interest in the phenomenon. I know that it is not easily overcome, but a variety of coping strategies can be enormously beneficial. The academically gifted can perhaps apply those more readily, but there are millions for whom it is more of a struggle. I was recently approached by a group of Labour councillors from Thanet, not because I am their Member of Parliament, but because I happen to be a Labour member of the all-party group on dyslexia. They gave me some interesting statistics from their area. They are concerned that youngsters from the most deprived areas of the constituency were not getting the help they needed and were falling further behind, exaggerating the educational gulf between their achievement levels and others, even those who might have dyslexia. They want the Rose recommendations implemented as a matter of urgency to address those problems.

The Rose review proposed among other things the training of 4,000 specialist teachers in dyslexia over a two-year period. That is quite a tall order, but that is what he recommended. If we are going to approach and attack the problem seriously, we need to follow that recommendation. Other recommendations were to boost early identification from year 1 and effective intervention for pupils with dyslexic difficulties, to make provision for dyslexia-awareness training for existing teachers, to put more special educational needs training into initial teacher training courses and to acknowledge the need for specialist teachers and one-to-one interventions for severely dyslexic pupils. The review also recommended that schools build a positive dialogue with parents and provide them with relevant information, and provide support for children with dyslexia on transfer to secondary school, and that there should be continuing helpline advice for parents and teachers.

Dyslexic children have just as much right as any other child to be educated by teachers who understand them and their condition. We have made enormous progress in recognising dyslexia since the dark days of my childhood, but we must now demand the necessary support and resources for our dyslexic children, and only the Government can provide them.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I fear that the vote in the House has caused disruption for many people who intended to be in this debate, but what we lack in quantity we will make up for between us in quality.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) for securing this timely debate. As he said, I was at the meeting of the all-party group on dyslexia and specific learning difficulties at which he resolved to apply for this debate. His success in doing so gives us a great opportunity to take forward the discussion we were having in that meeting, along with the hon. Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset (Mr Liddell-Grainger), the noble Lords Addington and Clement-Jones and representatives from the main dyslexia organisations. We will continue that debate here today, and I hope we will receive responses from the Minister to some of our concerns.

I want to record my thanks to the Dyslexia-SpLD Trust, Dyslexia Action, the British Dyslexia Association and Patoss for not just the excellent briefings they provided in advance of the debate but for the work they do day in and day out to unlock the world of words for dyslexic people, particularly children and young adults. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton North gave an excellent speech, which drew on the many concerns that those organisations have raised with us about the current direction of travel in the education system—concerns shared by anyone with an interest in helping young people with special educational needs get the most from life.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) commented on the thinking that dyslexia, rather than being a disability, is to do with a very wide reading ability spectrum, along which most of society would fall. He knows that I disagree with him on that point. There is a huge amount of evidence that proves that dyslexia is a very real and significant disability, especially at the extreme end of the spectrum where it goes way beyond a problem with learning to read and affects memory and organisational ability.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I am sure that we have all come across friends and relatives who have slight spelling disabilities, particularly with unusual names and foreign words. At that end of the spectrum, we are not talking about an inability to read. I am sure that my hon. Friend agrees that there is a difference between those of us who fairly quickly pick up names and foreign words and those who do not, and that is, I believe, the thin end of the dyslexia wedge.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I agree. My son is severely dyslexic, and it affects not just his spelling and writing capability. Dyslexics are often much slower in learning to speak, and when my son was younger the condition affected his speech. He was three before he first said a word that was understandable to others—I could understand his grunts and moans a bit earlier. He has very bad memory problems and organisational ability; dyslexia really does affect a large part of his life. My daughter has been a bad speller most of her life—she is 16 now and her spelling is getting a bit better—but in no way would I say that she has dyslexia as I know it. They do say, however, that the condition runs in families, so she might fall somewhere on the spectrum if she was ever tested.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Obviously, I am not an expert in the diagnosis of dyslexia, but there are people who are, and when they do the various tests what comes out is something called a spiky chart. Where there is a huge disparity between performance in non-verbal reasoning and other tests of intelligence on the one hand and reading and writing ability on the other, it becomes very obvious that someone is dyslexic. If someone has not very good reading skills but equally does not have high levels of intelligence, they have a flatter profile. Perhaps at the lower edge of the spectrum, as my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North has said—this is getting into a very technical conversation—diagnosis might be difficult and there might be blurred edges, but as we progress along the spectrum I do not think that the edges are blurred. Again, however, I am not an expert.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My hon. Friend touched on dyslexia being an inherited characteristic, and I am sure that we all know families in which a parent is dyslexic and one or more of their children is. Two male friends of mine who are graduates have three children each, and dyslexia has affected only one child in each family, with that child having a serious spelling disability. All six children went to university and graduated.

[Mrs Hodgson]

The chair of our all-party group, the hon. Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset, is dyslexic, and I believe that his two sons are also. Yes, it is a trait that runs in families, and that is recognised.

Most Members here today know of my personal interest in this issue, as a mother of a severely dyslexic son. My son was unfortunately not diagnosed or helped anywhere near soon enough. The Minister also knows very well most of the concerns that have been raised today, because we have already had debates on the matter and have been in correspondence recently. I thank her for her comprehensive response to my first letter, and I look forward to her response to my reply, which she might preview today.

I wrote that first letter because I had started to see how various changes in education policy could, when taken together, start to put children with certain special educational needs at a disadvantage, and I used dyslexia to illustrate my point because that was the SEN I had personal experience of and knew best—I could see how the changes would have affected my son if he had been coming up to the start of key stage 4 now. I have no doubt that the potential effect is not desired at all by the Minister or her officials, and that it is one of those unintended consequences that we sometimes do not see unless we are looking at something from the outside, or until the effect has begun to manifest itself in statistics.

There are a number of issues on which I will touch briefly. My hon. Friend has mentioned many of them already. It is best in most narratives to start at the beginning, and in this case the beginning is initial teacher training. Without teachers in our classrooms who can spot the signs of dyslexia and teach in a way that does not alienate dyslexic children, we will continue to fail those children. I know from bitter experience that many teachers have a woefully inadequate knowledge of dyslexia. It was not until my son was nine that he came across a teacher who could spot what I now understand were glaringly obvious signs, and even then, that was probably because her own son had dyslexia as well, as I later found out. Too many children in their early years of school life are going through the motions without being noticed and supported. Like other communication difficulties, that can manifest itself in significant problems further down the line such as rebellious behaviour, depression or, as we find in our prisons and young offender institutions, criminality, which often starts as youth disorder.

The answer, in one word, is training. I understand that a module on dyslexia that has the backing of the sector has been prepared and is ready for incorporation in initial teacher training, but the Minister also indicated in her letter to me that the Department has commissioned new materials on specific learning difficulties, which will be available online in the spring. Will those materials form a mandatory part of the initial teacher training course, and will she consider the sector’s calls to incorporate the existing module from 2005 as a minimum requirement? She might be aware that the British Dyslexia Association has an online petition calling for the 2005 module to be used for teacher training; I think the BDA is seeking 100,000 signatures.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My hon. Friend mentioned people in prison and people with personal difficulties in life. I am sure that she, like me, has come across youngsters with behavioural problems at school that can be traced back to self-esteem problems due to difficulties with spelling, which in their case is dyslexia. That stress can be relieved early on by saying, “You have a condition that we can help you to cope with. It is not something you should be ashamed of or behave badly over; it is something that we can help with and that many other people experience.” If we can convey that to young people, we can probably avoid a lot of the problems in life that many of them suffer.

[Mrs Hodgson]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Early identification is vital. The earlier we can identify all special educational needs, not just dyslexia, the better, but we find that speech, language and communication disorders such as dyslexia often have the biggest effect on children’s self-esteem, and can often lead to problems such as youth disorder further down the line. The number of people in prison with speech, language and communication difficulties and dyslexia is anywhere from 60% to 80%. The noble Lord Ramsbotham is knowledgeable about the issue and speaks about it a lot. Much of the problem could be failure to diagnose special educational needs in our schools. We must ensure that children with a label get the right label, whether it involves dyslexia, behavioural problems, autism or whatever, rather than “naughty”, “lazy” or “disruptive”.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

To refer to my childhood, which was a long time ago, teachers regularly used to beat us on the back of the hand with rulers in those days. I was not beaten, because I was not dyslexic and was good at sums, but lots of my classmates were, simply because they had those sorts of problem.

[Mrs Hodgson]

That is a world we never want to go back to. Thankfully, that does not happen in our classrooms now, but what happens is that codes of conduct are given out. I saw it with my own son. He did not write down enough work from the board, so he came home with various punishments. The code of conduct was writing out the school rules. I got off the train from London one evening and walked into the house at 11 o’clock to find him still at the kitchen table writing out his punishment, the school rules. The punishment was given because the teacher thought he had not done enough work.

My son was 14 and had started at a new secondary school when we moved. I insisted that all the teachers at least knew that he was dyslexic. I was not asking for special treatment, just that they knew he was severely dyslexic and was statemented. I was assured that they would all be told. As I walked in and saw the punishment, I thought, “Either this is a very evil teacher, or he doesn’t realise my son is severely dyslexic.” I wrote a note to the teacher saying, “This is as far as my son got. I am stopping this punishment now. He is not going to do any more of these punishments. They must be proportionate to his ability.” It was like a child who came last in a sprint being forced to run a marathon. That was the equivalent of the punishment that he had been given.

A note came back the next day: “Very sorry, Mrs Hodgson, we had no idea your child was dyslexic.” That was unbelievable on many levels. The school was supposed to have told all his teachers that he had dyslexia, and it was obvious to anybody who knows anything about the condition that my son is dyslexic. That had not been picked up in him—a child in a new school. What if he had not been diagnosed in a previous school? At any stage in a child’s journey through school, teachers should be able to diagnose such disorders.

I know that we have plenty of time, but I will go back to the substance of my speech. The latest issue to present itself is the phonics screening that will now be required during children’s first years at school. I was more than a little annoyed to see in a departmental press release over the weekend that the Minister’s colleague, the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), referred to the fact that one in 10 11-year-olds could read no better than a seven-year-old as evidence that his favoured phonics scheme is needed, without mentioning that one in 10 11-year-olds have dyslexia.

Strangely, the same press release did not mention that two thirds of teachers who took part in the pilot disagreed that the check accurately assessed the decoding ability of pupils with special educational needs. That is why there are so many concerns about complete reliance on phonics as both a measure of ability and a teaching method. It is also crucial that children who fail the phonics test, as a dyslexic child almost certainly will, are not made to feel as though they have failed—although the test can be good, from the point of view that it identifies them. Appropriate remedial action, including testing for dyslexia, should be taken in a timely manner.

That brings me to the Government’s plans for the future of SEN provision, and the ability of those who will be expected to deliver it to do so. The Minister knows that I welcomed the Green Paper as a means of opening debate on SEN provision, and that I look forward to seeing the results of the consultation, as I know we all do. However, the concern throughout the sector is that young people with non-medical problems such as dyslexia might not warrant support when school action and school action plus are abolished, as very few dyslexic children are currently statemented. I sincerely hope that that will not be the case. I will welcome any assurance that the Minister can give us.

We then come to how support will be provided if a dyslexic pupil is deemed to need it. Local authority budgets are being stretched to breaking point right now. The proliferation of the academies and free schools desired by the Secretary of State will mean that few funds will be held centrally with which to sustain shared support services. I know that I have asked the Minister this before, but I hope that she will guarantee today that support for dyslexic students will not get worse before it gets better due to the austerity programme being imposed on local authorities, and that when the new system is fully up and running, the money will be there to back it.

I move to the end of students’ time in school. The Minister will know that I have concerns about the key stage 4 curriculum and examinations. I will not labour the point about the E-bac, but needless to say, it has been installed as the gold standard set of qualifications, despite the fact that it will exclude almost all young people with dyslexia, as they are usually not taught foreign languages, whether modern or ancient, for obvious reasons. On assessment, Ofqual confirmed in a press release today that it is implementing the changes to GCSEs that the Government told it to make—scrapping modular examinations, which allow students to break up their learning into more manageable chunks and sit exams as they go along, when the subject is fresh in their minds. Instead, from next year students will be required to learn for two years—a bit like when we sat our O-levels—and commit all of that learning to paper in one go. That intensity will pose a challenge for many children with SEN, but especially dyslexics, given the memory problems I mentioned.

The support that young people with dyslexia need to be able even to sit their exams, let alone do well in them, is also under threat. The Minister will, I hope, have seen my latest letter to her in which I drew her attention to an article by Jack Grimston in The Sunday Times on 20 November. He reports the concerns that school teachers have over the changes that the Joint Council for Qualifications has made to eligibility for access arrangements in examinations, which my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North highlighted.

The changes will prevent bright pupils with dyslexia from getting extra time or a reader and a scribe in exams to mitigate their limited reading and writing abilities, which gives them a level playing field with their non-dyslexic peers. That will have a detrimental effect on the qualifications that they will be able to achieve. There are many bright pupils with dyslexia, as we have heard today, some of whom go on to doctorates in physics. They say that Einstein was dyslexic, and I could list many other examples.

In a timed exam, the most intelligent young person is only ever as good as their ability to read the questions set and transfer the answers from their minds to the paper, which is why the most severely dyslexic pupil is given a reader and a scribe. In making the changes, the JCQ is limiting what intelligent dyslexics can achieve, and from my conversations with the sector, it appears to have done so without any consultation. I urge the Minister to look into the matter and intervene where necessary to ensure that such young people are not held back by their disability.

Finally, I understand from today’s Ofqual announcement that once the exams have been sat, dyslexics will be at a disadvantage yet again during marking, because the proportion of marks for spelling, punctuation and grammar in certain subjects is being increased following interventions from the Secretary of State. Even if a dyslexic pupil gets a reader and a scribe, whose spelling is the examiner marking?

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I am sorry to intervene once again on my hon. Friend’s excellent speech. The points she raises suggest that dyslexic pupils should be identified and the fact that a pupil is dyslexic recorded on the examination paper, so that allowances are made. I heard only today of a young woman who is highly intelligent in conversation and can come top of her class in most things, but has difficulty with writing due to her dyslexia. Every time she is tested orally, she does brilliantly, but when she is tested in writing, she has more difficulty.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I hope that the Minister will take up those other concerns with the JCQ and that compensations can be made in marking. We do not ask for favourable treatment for dyslexics, but for their disability to be recognised and accommodations made, so that there is a level playing field.

I have not set out to make political points today because the debate has been well informed and constructive, and I know that supporting young people with dyslexia is important to Members on both sides of both Houses. I sincerely hope that the Minister will commit to returning with her officials to look at the specific concerns raised today, and that she will take any necessary steps to mitigate, or indeed undo, the impact of what are the, I hope, unintended consequences that the various reforms and changes may have on the education and life chances of the estimated 750,000 young people in our schools and colleges who have dyslexia.

--- Later in debate ---

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Weir. I congratulate the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) on securing this important debate. I have a ten-minute rule Bill, which is barely alive, on special educational needs, with particular focus on dyslexia and pragmatic language disorders. I thank both Front-Bench spokeswomen for allowing me to say a few words. I apologise for being late; I have been in a Committee.

My Bill was motivated by the enormous amount of casework in my constituency. There are very sad cases of extremely large numbers of children who have low to medium educational needs that are not being met by the local authority. I was dealing with about 30 cases, including a young lad with a very mild disability; he has had no assessment yet, so no one really knows what his needs are. He is supposed to be taking his GCSE options next year, but he has never been to a secondary school because a suitable place is not on offer. People do not understand what his issues are and there is no funding for a travel grant, which might open up some options for him. There are large numbers of extreme cases.

My Bill suggests that, common to all the cases I am dealing with, a wider burden of proof for parents to be able to demonstrate that their child has SEN would be extremely helpful. The old statement route catered for people with medium to high need, but did not help to provide leverage for parents whose children had lesser needs. In one case, a young girl with a reading age four years below her age was not considered to be significantly falling behind. If parents have paid for, or got a charity to make, an independent assessment from a qualified assessor, that should be enough to require the local authority to take action.

Teacher training has been mentioned, but training for those in local education authorities is also important. Part of our frustration in getting cases resolved was due to people not understanding what CReSTeD—Council for the Registration of Schools Teaching Dyslexic Pupils—accreditation was, or what the different levels meant for a particular individual. We were not really dealing with educationalists, which was partly due to staffing problems at the local education authority, so I echo the comments of the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). Training should be extended to the LEA.

The local education authority should already be required to publish what provision is available in its area, but many do not, yet such a requirement would help parents tremendously. When the LEA has decided that a need will be catered for under school action plus, it should send the parents a quality letter, not simply one that tells them that the need will be covered in school action plus, so they should not worry. They should get detailed information about what that will mean for their child week by week.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on her ten-minute rule Bill. I hope that it moves to the next stage and influences Government. She said that she wanted detailed letters from the local authority, which not only say, “Your child is falling behind and has a problem”, but identify the problem. There is sometimes an overlap between dyslexia, dyspraxia, low academic ability and other conditions that can confuse the diagnosis, but the local education authority should be able to define dyslexia when it writes the letters.

[Penny Mordaunt]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Getting an assessment to start with is a battle for parents, and then they must have confidence in it and in the remedial action that should be taken. Many parents I have been dealing with have not had satisfaction on any of those fronts.

I would be grateful if the Minister could say more about the statutory responsibilities of the Department for Education and the discussions she may have had with the Department of Health. We need to strengthen the tools available to parents and other advocates for these children. My constituents certainly believe that they pay their taxes to ensure that the education system we provide gives every child the education they need to reach their full potential.

One of my final points relates to costs. Where we have not been able to get a school place for some of the children in my constituency, we have actually funded placements for them, and I should like to place on record my thanks to a number of London livery companies and local Rotarians for providing funds to allow that to happen. In just one year, the girl I mentioned at the start, who was four years behind her expected reading age, has caught up. She is a bright girl, and having been given the proper, full-time dyslexia teaching that she needed, she is now doing really well.

An argument that is often thrown back at us is that providing all the top-notch SEN provision that children need costs too much and that the state cannot possibly afford it, but that is a bit of a myth. The placement that we have funded for the child I mentioned cost less than the provision that the local authority would have had to put in place in the school that it chose for her. It is possible to do these things, and they will often save the state money not only initially, but, as has been mentioned, in the long term, given all the problems and issues that people have if they do not get the help that they need.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Sarah Teather)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Weir. It is a Wednesday afternoon; I am here in a debate that you are chairing; and I am very pleased to see you.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) on securing the debate. It was good to see other Members come into the Chamber, although a bit late, because I was anxious that we would not have so many Members contributing. This issue interests Members right across the House, and I am aware of the hon. Gentleman’s involvement in the all-party group, whose input and advice I have very much welcomed.

I listened with interest to the rather technical debate between the hon. Members for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) and for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer). None us is a qualified educational psychologist, and it has certainly been an awfully long time since I did any neurophysiology. The Government take their advice from the best and latest scientific advice available. The Rose report tried to get away from the debate about the exact nature and cause of the difficulties that people face—something that was often distracting for many students—and instead tried to focus on solving the individual child’s problems, whatever they might be, as they present in the classroom. With that in mind, I will not get involved in the detail of that debate, because it might be better if it took place somewhere else between expert educational psychologists. Instead, I will deal rather more with service provision.

Dyslexia affects a significant number of pupils. From the school census, we know that 78,000 pupils receive support for a specific learning difficulty, including dyslexia and dyspraxia. They receive that support through school action plus or a statement of SEN educational needs. About 11% of all pupils receive such support. Many others will be supported as part of a personalised approach to teaching in the classroom, as a number of hon. Members mentioned. That will perhaps involve additional help from teachers or teaching assistants.

Dyslexia primarily affects the skills involved in accurate and fluent word spelling and reading, and it can occur across the range of pupils’ intellectual abilities. We know from parents and pupils that they are often frustrated with the assumptions made about what they can achieve, and the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West, referred to the case of her son. Sometimes that can lead to incredible frustration and a stymieing of aspiration in individual students.

For far too long, there has been a real attainment gap between students with dyslexia and their peers. The proportion of pupils with a specific learning difficulty gaining the expected qualifications has more than doubled since 2006, but the gap remains far too large. In 2010, fewer than one in six such pupils, or just under 15%, achieved five GCSEs at grades A* to C, including English and maths, compared with more than half of pupils as whole. The Government are determined to see that change and to improve overall outcomes for pupils with SEN or a disability. Support for pupils with SEN is provided within a statutory framework that has, unfortunately, remained largely unchanged for three decades.

One of the first things that I did when I became a Minister was to begin a review of special educational needs. In March this year, I published our Green Paper, “Support and aspiration: A new approach to special educational needs and disability”, which sets out plans fundamentally to reform the special educational needs system. It was a response to a set of core problems that undermined the achievement of too many children and young people, and those problems have been mentioned by a number of hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt). The problems include parents having to battle through a confusing and adversarial system to get the support their child needs; SEN statements not joining provision up, with education, health and care often ending up being provided disparately, and families having to go between the three different providers to negotiate their own package of support; children falling between the gaps in services or having to undergo multiple assessments; and paperwork and bureaucracy adding to delays, rather than providing the support that is needed.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The Minister is talking about delays. A number of members of my family have been schoolteachers, and getting statements has often been an enormous difficulty. Sometimes, it has taken up to a year before a child who clearly needed to be statemented actually was statemented. The suspicion is that local authorities are trying to delay things to save money. I hope the Minister will take that into account.

[Sarah Teather]

One thing that we suggested in the Green Paper was speeding up the process, but this is also a question of trying to make clear what the thresholds should be, and I will say a little more about that later.

The other thing that informed the Government’s work on the Green Paper was Ofsted’s report, which showed that too many children are being over-identified as having SEN. In other words, the wrong children are often labelled as having SEN, and we need to ensure that we put in place the right support for children at the right time.

At the heart of the Government’s vision for the reforms is a desire to support better life outcomes for young people, to increase parents’ confidence in the system and to transfer powers to the front line and local communities, as we are trying to do across all areas of policy. To achieve those changes, we are introducing a new approach to identifying SEN to challenge the culture of low expectations. There will be a new, single early-years setting and school-based category of SEN.

I heard the concerns of the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West, who was worried that it might lead to some young people not getting the support they need, but I should stress that, of course, school action at the moment brings with it no extra funds. School action plus money is provided to schools on the basis of other proxy indicators, rather than the number of children actually in the relevant category in previous years, so it should make no difference to the resources that are allocated. However, it will make it easier for schools to decide how to deal with the young people that they focus on. Many of them say that the existing categories are somewhat bureaucratic. Ofsted has made the point that some children are labelled as having special education needs when really they are just falling behind. That is a rather different debate from the one about specific learning difficulties.

[Sarah Teather]

When Ofsted reported, a rather heated debate took place between teaching unions and Ofsted, and it shed a lot of heat but not light. Many accusations were thrown from both sides about motives. I do not think that teachers label a child as having special educational needs to get round league tables or for similar reasons. It is human nature, when a problem is seen, to label it. Unfortunately, that labelling was often not followed by action. It is all very well to label a child, but it is purposeless to do so if no action follows. The child then carries a label with them, irrespective of whether it is helpful, and does not get the support needed to enable them to progress. We are trying to get away from the focus on labelling, and instead to adopt an approach in which those concerned look at the child in front of them, and ask what they need. Some of that approach, to be fair, is about good teaching practice, which will deal with many needs.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The hon. Lady is right about dealing with individual children. Boys need more pressure and rigour in school, when they are young, than girls do. Girls tend to be more conscientious and are now succeeding in education. In every field and at every level they now beat boys. I agree that we need to consider teaching quality as well, so that youngsters do not fall behind because they are more interested in playing on the computer, or doing something not to do with their studies. Rigour in education is right for all youngsters. However, we also need to take account of those with specific difficulties.

[Sarah Teather]

All sorts of young people fall behind. The fact that so many young people born in the summer are in the school action category is particularly good evidence that we do not at the moment necessarily label the right children. Other children who may have specific needs go through school without being identified. That is not good enough, because such children do not get the support they need.

The Green Paper made some radical proposals to change the system. As several Members, including the hon. Member for Portsmouth North, said, we have just finished a consultation and will respond to it in the new year. The rest of what I say now on the matter will pick up on what we have already said, rather than announcing what we will do. Hon. Members will have to wait a few weeks, until we have finished crunching through the detail of the consultation. We had an enormous number of responses from parents, charities and teachers. That is very helpful detail and we need to work through it.

As I said during my introduction, many pupils with dyslexia receive most of their support in the classroom through high-quality, personalised teaching. We know from the independent review led by Sir Jim Rose that the early identification of problems and the right teaching support are critical to helping dyslexic pupils achieve. Alongside the special educational needs reforms we are also working with schools to support teachers to identify and respond to pupils with dyslexia. Difficulty with phonics and the ability to identify and manipulate the sound of words is central to the challenges that dyslexic pupils face. It is also a critical element for all children learning to read.

We are introducing a new phonics screening check for children in year 1, which should pick up children struggling with early literacy because of dyslexia. I think that the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West slightly misunderstood some things about the statement at the weekend by my colleague the schools Minister. When he highlighted the fact that inadequate numbers of young people were passing the screening test at the relevant stage, he was trying to make the point that phonics, as a system for teaching reading, had not properly embedded in teaching at the earliest stages of schooling. He was not labelling half of children as failing. He was recognising how much further we need to go to embed the practice clearly in the way teachers teach the youngest children to read, from the beginning. We know that phonics is particularly helpful for identifying difficulties in children who have dyslexia.

[Sarah Teather]

I certainly looked at the reading recovery programme, Every Child a Reader, most of which is based around phonics. There are some other, more flexible, practices. We must recognise that although the evidence suggests that systematic phonics is absolutely the most effective way to teach children to read, some children for various reasons will not respond to that system, and it is important to have some flexibility at the margins to pick up the children who have fallen through the net. However, almost all the programme is still based around systematic phonics.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I agree with the Minister and my hon. Friend about phonics for those who do not have the disabilities in question. Two generations of teachers have almost been forbidden phonics in schools. Even in the past year I have come across a teacher working in London who was forbidden to make any reference to phonics in school. We still have a serious problem.

[Sarah Teather]

To support the teaching of systematic synthetic phonics we are making £3,000 of match funding available to all schools with key stage 1 pupils, for phonics materials and training. I hope that that sort of systematic, structured approach to teaching phonics will help, because we know that it supports pupils’ approach to learning to read, particularly for those who are dyslexic.

I want to make some wider comments about support for teachers and work force development, which goes to the heart of our programme on SEN. It begins with the new standards for qualified teacher status, which include a continued focus on meeting the needs of all children, including those with special educational needs or who are disabled. Similarly, as part of the national scholarship programme for teachers, we have a clear focus on supporting teachers to improve and extend their knowledge and expertise when working with pupils with special educational needs and disability, including specific impairments.

It is anticipated that around 50% of those scholarships will be available to support SEND. We have provided funding for up to 9,000 special educational needs co-ordinators to complete the mandatory higher level SENCO award by the end of 2011-12. The Teaching Schools network, which will allow schools to support each other and drive up the quality of teaching, will help to improve the quality of support for pupils with special educational needs or a disability. Of the first 121 designated schools, 113 have been judged as outstanding for the quality of learning and progress of pupils with special educational needs. The new Teaching Schools initiative has real potential to radically improve the quality of peer-to-peer mentoring and support for teachers in relation to SEN.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I recently chaired a meeting of the all-party parliamentary group for social science and policy, at which we considered and had academic presentations on social mobility. A major factor in poor social mobility is the gulf in the use of language and education. Is the Minister saying that for the great mass of pupils, we will ensure that the standard at which they are able to use the language formally will be targeted and improved, or just that we will have a race to the top where the middle class will again have the advantage?

[Sarah Teather]

I agreed with the hon. Gentleman’s first point. The second point seemed to bear no resemblance to the first. To raise aspirations for all is a good thing. To say that it is possible to achieve, regardless of background, is really important. To believe in social mobility and have it at the heart of educational policy, we have to have high aspirations for every child.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

To clarify, if one just gives marks for punctuation, grammar and syntax, certain people from certain backgrounds will have an even greater advantage over people from other backgrounds. The gulf in our society will widen unless extra effort is put in to ensure that everyone has a rigorous education in these methods.

[Sarah Teather]

I really do not accept that point at all. It is simply not good enough to say that, because someone is from a certain background, they will not be able to learn how to spell or use language correctly. That is exactly at the heart of what we are trying to break. I have to say that, as an employer, I meet lots of graduates who do not have dyslexia who have not learnt how to use accurate punctuation and spelling. Unfortunately, it is a continuous frustration, and I sometimes wonder whether I am the best-paid proofreader in the country, given the amount of time I spend correcting grammar and punctuation in the documents that leave the Department—I probably should not say that in Hansard.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I agree entirely. The Minister’s experience and mine are the same, but those who had the rigorous experience that I had at school have an advantage over those who did not, even though they might have been equal in ability in every other way. I appreciate that we are off the subject of dyslexia now. We are running out of time; but it is important to say that, if we are to have a society that is less divided, we must ensure that we provide education for those who do not have natural advantages.

[Sarah Teather]

If we are to have a society that is less divided, we must ensure that all children, regardless of their background, are given the same benefits of that sound education. Putting those marks, even 5%, back into qualifications will create an incentive to ensure that all children have that grounding. That is really important.