Life-saving Skills in Schools

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

We have had a very good debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), whose name appears at the head of the motion, on her very fine speech, which drew a lot of agreement across the House. She was absolutely right to emphasise that without compulsion, we simply will not get the levels of performance and the number of lives saved that we want, in comparison with other countries. I shall return to that point later.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) rightly said that we must not underestimate what children are capable of. The hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) rightly said that we need to get on and train the next generation of life-savers, and he mentioned, as other Members did, the survival rate of 2% to 12% of cardiac arrests in this country compared with 52% in the better jurisdictions. He also, movingly, told us about his own personal experience involving his father, which brought a lot of sympathy from across the House.

My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) did her speech gangnam-style, which I thought very appropriate. On MP4’s album, track 2, “Love’s Fire,” is also about the same rhythm, although it is not as well known as the other examples given. The hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) also spoke with personal experience. I can assure him that no one was saying, “Thank God it’s over,” at the end of his speech, which was a very effective contribution.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling), who herself is common sense on legs, told us that it is simply common sense for us to be teaching these skills and making that teaching compulsory. She gave us real examples of where young lives had been saved. We also heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck), who brought her personal experience as a trained lifeguard and who saved her future husband as a result of that training. Only time will tell whether she lives to regret that but, all joking aside, she showed the importance of these skills. Briefly, my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) drew on his personal experience.

We support the inclusion of life-saving skills as a compulsory element in our schools. We are open-minded, as hon. Members said, as to how we achieve that—PSHE might be the best subject in which to include that on a statutory basis. The motion does not actually spell that out, but it says that everyone should learn these skills. My question on these occasions is always, “If that is what the House wants to happen, what is the transmissions mechanism to ensure that it does happen?” The Government frequently talk about the necessity of following the examples of high-performing jurisdictions when we are looking at what schools do well and at the outcomes, so how about, on this occasion their following their own advice and looking at what happens in high-performing jurisdictions around the world as far as life-saving skills are concerned? I am afraid the evidence is clear that unless the Government spell out that such training should be compulsory and must be taught in schools, it simply will not work and we will continue to have the very slow progress in saving lives that the hon. Member for Newton Abbot talked about in her speech.

That would not be acceptable, because we are talking about people’s lives. What is the barrier anyway? All the arguments against the proposal have been demolished in the debate, so the only objection can be an ideological one relating to telling schools what to do. That is not a good enough reason when we are talking about saving lives. Unless this is made a requirement in all our schools, it will happen only in some of them. We can already see that on the ground.

Earlier this afternoon, just before I dashed over here for the debate, I was talking to children from Lansdowne primary school in my constituency. I took the opportunity to talk to them about life-saving skills, and some had been taught those skills, but only as part of their first aid club activities. When I asked whether they thought that everyone should learn them, they were unanimous in agreeing that they should. Children and young people are up for this, and as has been observed, they are like sponges and can learn these skills quite quickly. The training need not take up a huge, burdensome amount of time in the curriculum. There is therefore no reason for the Government not to listen to what has been said by Members on both sides of the House today and come forward with proposals to ensure that this training happens in all our schools.

As the Government’s changes to the school system continue, this proposal will become more difficult to implement. It is already the case that nearly half of all secondary schools do not have to follow the national curriculum, following the academisation programme. We have heard today about the £1 billion overspend on that programme, which will take money away from other areas of the Department for Education’s budget. We have no evidence yet to show whether their academisation programme is working. It is fine to change the name and governance of a group of schools, but we need to see evidence that that is working. There is, however, evidence of the negative impact of those cuts being felt elsewhere. If academies are not required to follow the national curriculum and cannot be directed to introduce these programmes, it is likely that the life-saving skills situation will get worse. The Minister needs to get a grip on this.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)]

Was it not the case that the previous Government who introduced the idea that academies would not teach the national curriculum?

[Kevin Brennan]

Indeed it was, but that was a small, targeted programme aimed at a small number of schools in deprived areas. The hon. Lady’s policy is completely different, in that it aims to roll out academy status. I think that about 47% of secondary schools in England now have that status. So her policy is on a completely different scale from ours, and she must adjust her policy according to those facts.

The Minister will no doubt say that she hopes the proposals will be introduced as a result of the motion being passed today, but unless she can tell us, perhaps in her forthcoming announcements, that they will be made a statutory part of PHSE or that she has some other way of achieving this, it simply will not happen. I can predict here and now that, if she does not take action, we will be back here debating this issue in a couple of years. Unless she makes this training a compulsory part of the curriculum, the statistics will not get much better.

We support the motion, for all the reasons that have been outlined in the debate, and the Minister should tell the House whether she agrees with what has been said. I know that she won the “Minister to Watch” award yesterday at The Spectator magazine’s Parliamentarian of the Year awards. During her acceptance speech, she thanked the Secretary of State for Education for “not fettering or gagging” her. Well, here is an opportunity for her to show that she is not being fettered or gagged by the Secretary of State, that she is her own woman, that she is in charge of her brief and that she is going to get on and make this training compulsory, as everyone here has called for today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Monday 29th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I would not wish to pre-empt any judgment in the courts.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

We know that the Secretary of State is in a good mood, because yesterday was his favourite day of the year, when he gets an opportunity to turn the clock back without anyone being able to complain. Why does his new Schools Minister have no responsibility whatsoever for GCSE English, or even for the curriculum? Is he too ashamed to defend the Government’s position on the GCSE English scandal, is he too busy at the Cabinet Office polishing the Deputy Prime Minister’s shoes, or does the Secretary of State not trust him?

[Michael Gove]

That was a three-part question, and I shall use both sides of the paper. Yesterday was, in fact, a sad day for me: I was in mourning because, sadly, Queens Park Rangers lost to Arsenal, who, with 10 minutes to go, scored a goal that I can only conclude was offside. It was a day of mourning for the Gove household. The Schools Minister, however, is fully involved in all discussions in the Department for Education in every policy area. The two of us are singing from the same hymn sheet, which is, of course, what we should be doing every Sunday, whether or not the clocks go back.

School Governors

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure and honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I also welcome the new Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss). This might be her first performance as a Minister here—perhaps not. I am sure she will enjoy this one as much as she may have enjoyed the previous one. She has appeared before the Select Committee on Education and gave a fine performance. I am sure that we are in for a treat.

I asked for this debate because it concerns an important policy that should be deliberated. We need to think how we can adapt the role and recruitment of governors for the challenges ahead in the education system, which is still being reformed, quite rightly.

I want to thank all the governors who govern. We have nearly 300,000 possible governors; there are some vacancies at the moment. They meet regularly, often in relatively difficult circumstances, to deliberate on their schools and education policy. They must be thanked for all that they contribute to their communities and their schools. What I have to say about reforming governors and governance has nothing to do with the devotion of most governors to good practice and to the future of their individual schools.

Lord Hill of Oareford, one of the other Ministers in the Department for Education, said:

“The most important decision-making group in any school is the governing body… Governing bodies should set the overall strategic direction of a school, hold the head teacher to account and have a relentless focus on driving up standards but not get dragged into micromanaging the school or the minutiae of its day-to-day activities.”

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate, and I echo his words on the efforts of school governors. What does he think of the Secretary of State for Education’s description of school governors in his speech last July? He described them as

“Local worthies who see being a governor as a badge of status, not a job of work”.

[Neil Carmichael]

Out of a total number of several hundred thousand governors, there are bound to be some who are not as good as others and some who are there for reasons not necessarily those that we would all expect or salute. As I said, we have to congratulate and thank all governors generally speaking but note that there are bound to be some who do not rise to the challenge.

I return to Lord Hill’s quotation because I shall address the debate in that spirit. I have been a governor—whether I am a local worthy is another matter—in total for about 20 years in various organisations, such as further education colleges and primary and secondary schools, so I do have some experience. I dealt with a difficult situation quite recently where governance had been judged inadequate and the future of the head teacher became an issue. I am no stranger to controversy in school governance, as well the more reasonable activities of a governor.

I managed to persuade the Education Committee to conduct a full-scale inquiry on school governance, and I see that a member of that Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), is here. He will know that I was keen to do that, and I am pleased that we have an inquiry under way and that the first evidence session will take place in January.

I have also established an all-party group on school governance and leadership. The striking thing about that is that every time we have had a meeting we have had standing room only. There clearly is an appetite and interest in governance, governors and the policy around them. We have produced two publications: “Stronger Boards, Better Education” and “Who Governs the Governors?” We draw two significant conclusions from each of them. I will refer to the direction of travel in my remarks. The question of accountability is clearly at the core of who governs the governors. The question of skills versus stakeholders is clearly at the core of the quality of boards. I will set out those issues in more detail in due course.

As I have already said, there are a number of changes in the world of education, and the academies programme is clearly one of the most significant. It has significant implications for governance in several ways. I have referred to accountability, but the fact is that, as schools become more independent from local authorities, we should ask our governing system to fill the vacuum created. That is not an unfortunate vacuum—it is quite deliberate and quite right that schools are more independent and autonomous—but we must have a proper accountability system within schools.

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[Kevin Brennan]

Now that the right hon. Gentleman is more free to speak candidly than he might have been when he was in government, will he explain his remarks about those aspects of Government policy in the sphere of education that he feels do not contribute to localism?

[Andrew Stunell]

I suspect, Mrs Main, that you would rule me out of order if I answered that question, because it is important to focus on the issues before the Chamber.

Clearly—this is where I challenge my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud—any Government, if they see the need for change and reform, would be strongly tempted. He talked about changing the balance between stakeholders and skills, and I want to challenge that proposition because it is not a dichotomy. It is not a choice between stakeholders or skilled governors, but a question of ensuring that stakeholders are skilled to retain local community accountability. We jump from the frying pan into the fire if, instead of democratic local education authorities and a democratically accountable Secretary of State, we have professionalised experts with special skills running our schools with no special links to the pupils or staff and no democratic accountability. I want to pull back on what he said, and I remind my hon. Friend the Minister that we do believe in localism and accountability to the local community—both to the local community of parents and the broader community—that every school serves.

The net effect of the changes that have been made in the past few years is that governors have more power and responsibility, which means they need more skills and focus. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud that we need to boost and build that.

There is a significant difference in scale and professional need between a secondary school and a primary school. Here, again, I want to make a localism point. Governments have a strong tendency—I experienced this myself, both in government and out of government—to imagine that there is a solution that addresses all the problems. I urge a flexible approach. We should understand that schools come in different sizes and shapes. A secondary school may have a turnover each year of more than £1 million, while a primary school might have a turnover of just a small fraction of that. We need to ensure that we do not over-engineer what we are asking.

Several references have been made to Ofsted. Schools are, of course, required to meet the standards of Ofsted. Whether, in a democratic structure, schools should be accountable to Ofsted is a moot point, but one of the things that is happening now and will happen more in the next year or so is that, even when a school’s results and teaching standards meet Ofsted’s criteria, it may now fail because it does not meet the governance criteria. It is right that there should be such tests of governance and that those tests should be done by Ofsted, but I suspect that quite a number of school governing bodies across the country are in for a bit of a surprise when they realise that they cannot bumble on in their traditional relationship with their head teachers and school bodies and excel as far as Ofsted is concerned.

I believe hon. Members and the Government need to recognise and support the role and development of governors. They are a crucial link in the delivery of good education to our children, and they are at a crucial point in challenging the professionals on what they are doing in the classroom and how they are doing it. Governors are often hard-stretched volunteers, strong on commitment and enthusiasm, but without the range of skills they need to be fully effective. Increasingly, they are the people who not only pass judgment but are themselves being judged on the quality and effectiveness of the education that their school delivers.

What do I think should be done? We have been strong on what might be called “brave words,” but what ought to be done? We should pick up on the Government’s report of two years ago, in which the Government asserted that school governors are a vital part of the education system who are traditionally undervalued and do not have the respect and support that they deserve. We now need to turn that absolutely correct statement of intent into real action. The plea made by the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) for mandatory induction training for governors is something the Government could take on board. Additionally, imposing a training duty without considering the cost would be a mistake when schools are under pressure. Obviously, the degree to which schools are under pressure is different in different places, but all schools face real budgetary challenges over the next few years and, desirable and essential as training is, imposing that through any system without the matching resources would be a betrayal of what the Government are attempting to do to improve educational standards.

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[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I shall give the Minister a bit more thinking time. It is not her first outing in Westminster Hall, but I welcome her as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education. She is obviously a woman of many talents: in addition to what might be regarded as the first part of her ministerial job, she does curriculum, exams and—we have found out today—school governance. It makes us wonder what the Minister for Schools is doing with his time. Perhaps he is over in the Cabinet Office, planning on behalf of the Liberal Democrats. I congratulate her; she is obviously doing a job and a half in the Department.

I also congratulate the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) on securing the debate and on his thoughtful remarks on governance. I thank him, too, for his work on the issue with the all-party group on education governance and leadership. He set out his view that skills should predominate over stakeholders in how governing bodies are set up—he had some interesting thoughts on that—and quoted Lord Hill a lot, as well as in the context of governor training. Lord Hill might benefit from some assertiveness training for the next time he tries to speak to the Prime Minister and resign, so that he is more successful than on the previous occasion.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) made a good point about mandatory training for governors, outlining brilliantly one of the big issues facing us: the unexploded ordnance that must be out there when accountability has been drawn out of the system. There is a worrying vacuum, as some Members have pointed out, in the pell-mell pace of reform set by the Secretary of State in his desire to be seen as a great reformer. My right hon. Friend is not the first to say that, but he said it effectively. I have no doubt that there is unexploded ordnance out there, and that the lack of accountability will result in scandals in the near future.

We have already seen such incidents, whereby powerful head teachers, without mechanisms in place to hold them to account, have been able to misuse public money. In some cases, criminal charges are involved, so we cannot talk much about them here, but I worry, as does my right hon. Friend, about the vacuum of accountability that is developing rapidly as the academies programme proceeds without sufficient thought having been given to the issue of governance.

I welcome the right hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell) to the Back Benches following his stint in the Government. Clearly, he was a little unhappy for some of that time. He hinted to us, while rightly staying in order and not going into too much detail, about some of his unhappiness with Government policy in this area, particularly on local accountability and education. I look forward to hearing more from him in the House on that subject in the weeks and months ahead as we debate education policy more widely.

[Andrew Stunell]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that he will hear more, but it will not be in any way to undermine this Government’s bold moves on localism, including in education. I was pointing out to him—I regret that I did not convey it more accurately—that if we take power away from one institution and give it to another, we must ensure that that institution has responsibility and the skills to bear that responsibility.

[Kevin Brennan]

I interpreted the right hon. Gentleman’s remarks as meaning that he was worried that, in some cases, for “localism” read “centralisation”, but perhaps I was reading too much between the lines. Nevertheless, I look forward to hearing what he has to say on the subject in the weeks and months to come.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) spoke about the need to build capacity within the system, given that a vacuum has been created by what he described as a slapdash approach to reform and its impact on governors and local accountability. I urge the Minister to reflect on hon. Members’ contributions about their concerns over the vacuum that is emerging.

I join others in praising the 300,000 volunteers—probably the country’s largest volunteer force of any kind—who give up their time freely to serve on governing bodies across the country. I suspect that almost everybody participating in the debate has served at one time or another on a school governing body, and that everybody therefore brings a degree of expertise to the debate, having seen how governing bodies work.

In government, we continued a process of giving more responsibility to governing bodies, tried to reduce local authority interference in how governing bodies operate and made changes relating to the composition of governing bodies. We also started the academy programme—a targeted intervention to try to lift the worst-performing schools in the country’s most deprived areas, which successfully raised standards. I say in passing to the Minister that that is different from simply re-badging a school as an academy and expecting school improvement to happen automatically. It will not happen without a genuine intervention to try to improve standards. However, I will not stray too far from governance while making that point.

I praise governors. We tried to enhance their role. Hon. Members have referred to some of the work done latterly by the previous Government, particularly by the former Schools Minister, Lord Knight, who is now in another place. Unfortunately, some of his initiatives ran out of time as we reached the general election. The discussions held at that time outline the difficulties of reaching consensus—I sympathise with the Minister on this—on the right balance between governing bodies’ ability to perform their strategic role in improving performance in schools and, as other hon. Members have mentioned, the need for governing bodies to have their feet on the ground and their roots in the community, and to use local information and intelligence to do a good job. This is not an easy issue to tackle, and it is appropriate that we try to build consensus on reforming governance in our schools, rather than making the issue a big divide between Government and Opposition.

However, it is important that that debate is held in a tone that shows respect for the work done by governors across the country. That is why I mentioned, in an intervention on the hon. Member for Stroud, the Secretary of State’s speech on governors earlier this year. I suspect that he was trying to make the same reasonable point that the hon. Member for Stroud made: standards vary, and governors are a mixed-ability group like any other. However, in his temptation to use figurative and colourful language, the Secretary of State deeply offended many governors across the country by using the phrase “local worthies” to describe the people who give up their time to serve on governing bodies. The full quote is:

“Local worthies who see being a governor as a badge of status, not a job of work.”

That remark deeply offended large numbers of people, whether it was intended to do so or not. When the Secretary of State wants to offend, he is usually quite deliberate about it, but I am not sure whether he did on this occasion. Libby Purves, who has sympathy with the Secretary of State’s approach to some things, wrote on 9 July in The Times:

“The expression ‘local worthies’ has no place under any government, let alone a Conservative one that claims to want a Big Society and less central nannying.”

I make a plea to the Minister at least to tell us that she will not use such derogatory language when talking about our country’s largest volunteer force, who give up their time to do the difficult and challenging job of helping our schools be the best that they can be. That would greatly help to raise the tone of the debate, so that we can get on with discussing the important, central issues.

On another recent occasion, the Government tried to recruit governors effectively as spin doctors for their policies by putting out a plea via e-mail. The Guardian reported in August that the Department for Education, having created a database of sympathetic head teachers, was trying to enlist governors. An e-mail was sent from the National College for School Leadership to approximately 40 school governors saying that the DFE’s school governance unit is planning “communication activities” around new regulations coming into force next week regarding the size of governing bodies.

School governors are volunteers who give up their time to serve their local schools. They are not there to be recruited as spin doctors for the Secretary of State and his reforms. I hope that the Minister will distance herself from that approach by the Department.

There are real challenges to be faced to get the balance right between the strategic job that governors have to do and the local input required for them to represent the local community effectively. Views differ widely. Some colleagues believe that in this new world in which most secondary schools are now academies, and where they are no longer in the orbit of the local education authority, there is a case for the professionalisation of governing bodies and for executive governing bodies to be in charge of a chain of schools, with, perhaps, more local advisory bodies for local schools. That is one end of the spectrum. At the other, there are others who think it essential to maintain that aspect of localism and ensure that every school, whatever its size, has its own governing body and chair of governors.

I want to probe the Minister on the Government’s current thinking on the governance of schools. Is it her view, and the Government’s, that governors should remain as a voluntary force in support of our schools, or that they should be professionalised and become a strategic board, with at least the chair of governors, and perhaps others, being paid for their work? What is her current position on the payment of governors? Is it Government policy to pay more governors?

Does the Minister believe that there should be fewer governing bodies? In other words, rather than having governing bodies for each school, should there be governing bodies that look after a chain of schools? Does she agree with the Secretary of State that governors are glory-seeking “local worthies”, or is she prepared to recognise the work of local governors? I look forward to hearing her answers.

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[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. What I am saying, though, is that the capability of governors and the outcomes of governance will be assessed as part of the Ofsted assessment. It is not just a matter of looking at the academic performance of the school; it is also about understanding what the governors are doing and how they are carrying out their duties.

[Kevin Brennan]

The Government have legislated so that some schools that are doing well academically do not have to be inspected. My right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) was making the point that that can mask corrupt practices and there will not be sufficient governance or training in place for governors to monitor that properly and nip it in the bud before it becomes a huge issue.

[Elizabeth Truss]

The Ofsted inspection will take place in due course, if the school performs below satisfactory levels. The reality is that, often—I could tell the right hon. Member for Exeter about similar cases in my constituency—poor performance on financials is related to poor overall school performance.

My colleague, Lord Hill, who leads on governors in the Department for Education, has already presented the awards for school clerk of the year, which was mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove, who also spoke about ensuring higher take-up. I understand that Lord Hill has committed to doing so again next year, which is good news for all of us.

I was interested the suggestion that we run a “becoming a governor” campaign and will take that back to Lord Hill for further discussion. We are, of course, happy to listen to suggestions from all parties in the House about how to improve standards of governance. As right hon. and hon. Members rightly said, there is a process for ensuring that all governing bodies attain the capability that we want, so that they can carry out their functions.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud raised some other issues. His organisation’s work promoting skills in governing bodies is important. He is right; we need wider recruitment of governors, including business people who have financial skills that would help, as the right hon. Member for Exeter mentioned. My hon. Friend welcomed our efforts to relax the constraints on the size of governing bodies, so that we have governing bodies that are fit for purpose and offer the right scrutiny of what head teachers and schools are doing.

Being a governor can help build the individuals’ skills and experience. We have talked a lot about how the governors’ skills and experience can contribute to the schools’ performance, but we should also see it the other way round. I know a lot of people who have benefited from their time as a governor and have been able to build up their capability to understand how a school works and education policy, management and financial scrutiny.

The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central mentioned the platoons that we are seeking to support in society. In that regard, it is important that we retain governorship as a voluntary service, because it is a two-way process, with members of the community gaining experience as well as contributing to the future of a school and schools gaining from that experience of the community. The Government do not have any plans to pay governors and go away from the well-established principle of voluntary governance. There might be times—for example, if a school is in trouble and an interim executive board is needed for that failing school—when payment might be appropriate, but in the general run of things, we support a continuation of the voluntary governance principle.

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that any proposed exceptions will be the subject of secondary legislation and will therefore be debated. Each separate element of a statutory instrument can be debated—that is the function of the secondary legislation procedure.

Amendment 75 would require the Secretary of State to take into account any feasibility study undertaken of which organisation is best placed to issue licences authorising the use of orphan works.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Matthew Hancock]

On this point?

[Kevin Brennan]

On the point being debated, yes.

[Matthew Hancock]

I give way.

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[Kevin Brennan]

It is usual to give way during this stage. What does the Minister think is the maximum number of exceptions that ought to be included within one statutory instrument, given that he has been unable to give the assurance sought by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Jim Dowd) that each exception will be treated separately if secondary legislation is used? Also, will he confirm that in all cases the affirmative procedure will be used?

[Matthew Hancock]

I give the assurance on the second point: the normal procedures will be used. The normal procedures will govern what goes into one statutory instrument and then, as we all know, debate on a statutory instrument covers all elements of the instrument. That is the procedure for a statutory instrument that is debated.

Amendment 75 proposes that account be taken of any feasibility study before the Government lay regulations on the orphan works scheme—that is, I think, the essence of the amendment. In principle, we understand the need for studies and consideration of such important questions, but we do not think that such a requirement is appropriate in primary legislation. If the proposal is that the conclusions of a feasibility study should automatically and immediately have legislative effect, we have to ask what would happen if the recommendations of a commissioned study could not, for good and legitimate reasons, be accepted. However, I can assure the House that the Government will carefully consider which bodies or body should be responsible for licensing orphan works, including whether they have the necessary independence, expertise, resources and processes.

Although there is some work still to do on deciding which organisation should be responsible, it is unlikely to be a new body. We looked at the arrangements in other jurisdictions: in Canada, the copyright board has that responsibility; in Hungary, the intellectual property office has it. Jurisdictions overseas locate the role in different parts of Government, according to where the appropriate expertise is found. There could be a role for collecting societies to license orphan works of a type where a collecting society already operates in that sector, but many of the orphan works held by museums and archives, for example, are not of types that are currently collectively licensed; such works include unpublished diaries, old photographs and oral history recordings.

In the light of those reassurances and given that the regulations cannot be laid until the work is completed, I ask the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) not to press amendment 75 and the House to support Government amendments 23 and 24.

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[Kevin Brennan]

Will my hon. Friend also seek an assurance from the Minister that, when in future he considers any piece of legislation containing clauses relating to copyright, never again will the umbrella body for the UK music industry be given absolutely no prior knowledge of it? Perhaps the Minister could give the House that assurance when he responds.

[Mr Wright]

I absolutely agree. I will take this opportunity to wish my hon. Friend a happy birthday for yesterday—a birthday he shares with several other Members, not least the eminent Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale). My hon. Friend made two important interventions. When he intervened on me he mentioned the lack of consultation and the surprise of important stakeholders, such as UK Music, about these provisions. That is not the way to have clarity about Government policy on something as important as the creative and cultural sectors. I hope that that is a wake-up call, because we have seen the Government do the same elsewhere, for example with the feed-in tariffs and the oil and gas tax charges. To move without any concern for what stakeholders are thinking is not in the best interests of the British economy and industry.

The second point that my hon. Friend made, when he intervened on the Minister, relates to the use of statutory instruments. I rose to say that I felt more confused as a result of the Minister’s comments than I did when I entered the Chamber today. Part of our discussions in Committee was about the fear of bundling some of these points into a single statutory instrument. The Minister must have served on a delegated legislation Committee during his time in the House and will know that the only way the House can express a view on such instruments is by voting in favour or against; there is no way we can express a view on individual provisions. Therefore, will he clarify to what extent he will be able to bundle points relating to copyright exceptions into single SIs, which would not allow the House to express our views?

I now to turn to our amendment 75, which proposes that the Secretary of State

“must have regard to any feasibility study commissioned on the licensing of orphan works in advance of the regulations being laid before Parliament.”

We are not against the concept of orphan works, as I mentioned in Committee, provided that safeguards are in place to ensure that the party that wants to use the work has undertaken a diligent search. I recognise—the Minister alluded to this—the huge benefits that could be unlocked as a result of orphan works licensing. For example, I can anticipate SMEs building new platforms and applications for the re-use of digitised content, with innovation and new business models coming forward to use the content commercially so that Britain can lead the world, enriching the research and cultural environment and thereby consolidating the UK’s position as the destination of choice, whether literally or online, in the 21st century as the place for education and research, particularly in the cultural sector.

The Bill provides the legislative framework for orphan works licensing but is, as is probably inevitable and desirable in primary legislation, high-level and somewhat vague in detail. The crucial details that stakeholders will be looking for have yet to be determined and will be available via regulations. However, it would be useful to get on the record as much certainty and clarity as possible about the Government’s intended direction of travel in order to allow the industry, including existing players and potential new entrants to the market, to start gearing up to use the licences commercially. The purpose of our amendment is to probe the Minister on his intended direction of travel and ensure that a feasibility study considers certain aspects of the policy and that the Government take these findings into account, not in a completely solid way but making sure that these matters are addressed.

Will the Minister indicate the identity of the authorising body or bodies? He mentioned it briefly in his opening remarks, but it would be useful to put a little bit more meat on the bones. What sort of time scale is he working towards? When does he anticipate that the introduction of such schemes, and the laying down of regulations as a preliminary step, will take place? What will be the scope of the orphan work licensing schemes? Will this be done on a sector-by-sector basis? Will it be based on a “specific types of work” approach, or will there be a big bang in which all possible orphan work schemes will be incorporated from day 1?

Will the Minister outline how he anticipates that any diligent search on a work-by-work basis will move forward? I am fairly sure that every such search will have to be done on an individual work basis rather than by batching works together. Am I right in that thinking, or is he considering any change in the individual works versus batch approach? Could diligent searches be re-used within a certain time period? How will the Minister—again, this is part of the feasibility study leading into the regulations—strike the balance between the rights of the licensee, allowing the licence holder to commercially use the rights arising from that licence, and the rights of the relevant rights holder? What will happen in the event that the parent comes forward? How will remuneration be worked out in such an event? Will a certain amount of time be stipulated in regulations following the awarding of an orphan works licence?

We lead the world in the cultural and creative industries, and many people will want to take that away from us for a variety of reasons. We need to make sure that we can maintain our competitive advantage. That requires close co-operation, with an active industrial sector strategy between the industry and Government. Sadly, during the passage of the Bill, that has been lacking in the provisions on copyright. I hope that the Minister has learned his lesson and look forward to his comments.

Teachers Pay

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Tuesday 18th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I congratulate the Minister for Schools on his new role, and I welcome him to that post. One downside of having such a role is ending up on a Tuesday afternoon, when he probably has better things to do, for over an hour and a half in a half-empty Chamber answering a debate. Fortunately, I have prepared a Castro-like peroration that should adequately fill that time, and more, should we need it.

I apologise in advance, Mr Hollobone, because you will also have to put up with my presentation not being as seamless as I would wish and with my being more discursive than I ordinarily am. That is largely a product of the fact that, having extensively prepared for this debate, I e-mailed myself my thoughts and considered analysis, only to discover about half an hour ago that the e-mail had not actually arrived. I therefore had to reconstruct everything from the beginning all over again. However, I broadly know what I want to say, and I genuinely want to put it on the record. It is worth while to discuss what will soon be a topical issue, particularly at the Liberal Democrat conference, where we will debate regional pay.

Teachers pay has always been subject to national negotiation, and most teachers have been paid on the same scales across the country. There have always been independent schools. Some, such as Eton, have paid a lot more than the state’s going rate; some—the poorer ones—have paid a lot less; and some have shielded themselves behind the state system. It was quite common for independent schools to have a pay spine that adequately reflected the state system, which enabled an easy interchange of teachers between the state and the independent systems. However, most independent schools had arrangements that allowed them some of the benefits of the state system as well as additional opportunities—for example, to give people particular allowances or perks for coaching sports and the like. Independent schools had real advantages from that arrangement, partly because teachers could obviously retain their pension arrangements when they moved from sector to sector.

There was a halcyon day long ago when the particular scales and positions on offer at an individual state school were determined by the local authority. Certainly, in my early days on a local education authority we discussed whether this or that school should have, for example, further scale 4 posts or deputy head or senior teacher posts. Those days disappeared when schools argued quite vocally for more control over such matters. The tendency started in Cambridge, with local management of schools, and it spread rapidly through the country and was eventually enforced by the Government.

The whole picture of teachers pay is one of increasing flexibility. One flexibility offered recently has been the ability of head teachers to be remunerated irrespective, almost, of the size of their school. At one time, a head teacher’s wage was entirely fixed by the number of pupils in their school. In their wisdom, the previous Government saw fit to give governing bodies some discretion over that. Not surprisingly, right across the country, head teachers salaries went up very appreciably, regardless of the size of their school.

In the previous Government’s education policy, the thinking was that teachers who wished to stay in the classroom and were good classroom teachers should be remunerated more flexibly. Yet again, a new offer was put on the table and it was taken up avidly in many schools, in which pretty well everyone, regardless of the quality of their teaching, was given additional funds. Historically, there was a real identification of the need to remunerate teachers in areas of appreciable stress, particularly inner-city areas. That goes back a long way. I think that, under the previous Conservative Government, teachers working in areas of identifiable deprivation were given an additional salary for remaining there. The net effect was not quite what was intended: in some cases, such teachers simply stayed there, because to move anywhere else would normally have resulted in a loss of income. They were to some extent beaten into submission over a period, and they remained for decades in the same school, ploughing the same furrow.

Recently, people have thought of bringing performance management into teachers remuneration. That is clearly reflected in the current scales and the arrangements whereby teachers can move between different scales. It has to be said, however, that the research is mixed on the actual benefits, and I have seen research from the OECD that raises some questions. Locale has obviously been another determinant of teachers pay. Historically, for as long as anybody can remember, there has been a London weighting that reflects the difficulties that teachers sometimes experience in acquiring affordable housing in the London area. Finally, another flexibility that can be identified is that Governments have periodically put extra funding on the table to attract teachers in particular shortage subjects or to welcome into schools those who had not previously been teachers.

There have been variations over time. I accept that such variations will continue and will have different effects, and that some of the intended effects will be wholly successful and some will not. However, the bulk of the changes that I have outlined have been relatively uncontentious, because they were seen as clear and necessary and they recognised adjustments to schools’ needs. The picture resulting from those various manoeuvres has not been a big political difficulty for anyone. It is quite clear that there are different degrees of teacher turnover throughout the country—teachers find it hard to move out of some areas and hard to move into other areas.

The profile of teachers to some extent varies across the country, in different places at different times. I suggest that the profile of the teacher work force in London represents a younger cohort than, for example, in the north-west, where I live. However, the teaching force of England, under the arrangements for teachers throughout the country, has by and large subscribed to the argument that it is a good principle to have equal pay for equal work.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

For the record, will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that in the context of national pay scales for teachers, we are talking—this is rare these days—about England and Wales?

[John Pugh]

I am happy to do so. Historically, however, equal pay as a principle has not been adhered to, because there was a phase—long before the living memory of anyone in the room—when female teachers were paid less than male teachers. There has been a recent drive in local authorities to equalise pay in schools, for, say, people working in catering establishments. Previously, manual workers in local authorities were usually female and were paid less than their male equivalents.

[Kevin Brennan]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned that. On that basis, does he regret as much as I do the Government’s decision to abolish the support staff body that was trying at least to set some guidance on pay scales for such staff?

[John Pugh]

I am aware that most local authorities have had to dig deep into their coffers to adhere to a principle, which, at the time at least, was thought to be largely uncontentious but entirely necessary. In fact, it was prohibitively expensive for a large number of councils.

The principle of equal pay for equal work is not peculiar to teaching or to the public sector. Many national employers—I shall not bother to list them now but I can provide the details if Members are interested—are not aware of where their workers live and, by and large, wish to pay people the same amount for the same job. As this is such an obviously transparent principle, we do not want to depart far from it or we would require a good reason for doing so. That is where my argument takes off. I am suggesting that equal pay for equal work is a sound principle and that to depart from it requires a solid reason.

A reason that has emerged in recent days, which no one would put as blatantly as I will, is that we do not need to pay equal pay for equal work because we can get away with not doing so. Most people would not generally announce such an argument in all its gory detail because if we follow it through, we would probably end up paying women less than men and migrant workers less than native workers, and do a whole series of things that would be regarded as poor industrial practice. None the less such practice may be implied by some talk about market-facing pay.

Another reason why teaching can depart from the principle of equal pay for equal work is that it can be applied to an individual employer. It could be argued that state independent schools—academies and the like—cannot differentiate within their work force, but they can differentiate between their work force and other people who work for other institutions. In that case, teachers are seen not as a national work force but as an individual work force assigned to a particular school. We are, therefore, accepting the principle that each individual school can make up its own mind. I am told that 35% of academies have, to some degree, departed from national pay and conditions. The majority of them, for quite sound reasons, have not done so because it creates more ructions than people need or welcome. Even independent schools that are not in the state sector prefer, for quite solid practical reasons, to abide by the national pay schemes. If our employers play fair by all their employees, I cannot argue with them and say that they are not offering equal pay for equal work.

There are two other arguments that I want to attend to and dwell on. One argument for paying teachers differentially in different areas, which has been put quite forcibly in recent times, is that it will have other non-educational benefits for those areas. We might refer to that as the crowding out theory, which is quite well analysed in the document “Crowding out: fact or fiction?” Notwithstanding that it is prepared for Unison, it contains a lot of pretty solid research in and around the subject. It insists that if teachers in a low-wage area are paid less—in other words closer to the average wage for those areas—more people would seek work in the private sector and fewer would seek work as teachers.

It is not obvious to me that we want fewer people seeking to be teachers in areas of disadvantage, or that more people seeking work in the private sector where jobs are scarce and oversubscribed would be a good thing. There is no real shortage of vacancies in the private sector in those areas where teachers are paid above the average wage for that area. Certainly, the idea of getting more teachers to drift in that direction would not necessarily solve any problems, nor would it make a difference to the number of jobs available in either sector. I simply do not follow the logic presented there. It is quite clearly the case that in the private sector, there is a real dearth of jobs.

[Kevin Brennan]

Just to keep the hon. Gentleman going on that point, is it not also perfectly possible that, as a result of his argument, there could be fewer jobs in the private sector as a result of such a policy, because its net effect would be to reduce the spending power in that locality? That would impact on the availability of private sector jobs, as the demand for labour is a derived amount.

[John Pugh]

The hon. Gentleman could almost be quoting from this excellent document on regional pay, which is submitted by more than 20 Liberal Democrat MPs. The point is that the one thing that we will do if we repress the amount of money going into the areas of less advantage is to reduce demand for private sector opportunities, services and goods. That is demonstrable. If we want to balance out the economy, as the Government do, and so they should, that is not a part of doing that. We could argue that as a result of public sector jobs being that little bit cheaper, we will get more public sector jobs in those areas, so the total amount of money will not diminish. However, I am not aware that it is the Government’s current intention to increase the number of public sector jobs.

[Kevin Brennan]

Would not the whole point of such a policy be to bring about a fiscal transfer away from those areas in order to be able to pay a greater salary to public sector workers in other areas?

[John Pugh]

Yes, I do not dispute the hon. Gentleman’s analysis. We could assume—this would be the sole salvation of the theory—that there are lots of people currently teaching or in other public sector areas who have the in-demand skills that cannot easily be found in the private sector in the less advantaged areas. However, I see no evidence that that is the case. It rather goes against the general view that we need to attract science graduates into schools and away from better paid jobs in industry, which both Governments have endeavoured to do. The theory baffles me and it is incapable of intelligent presentation. A confirmatory bit of evidence that might lead us to think that there is something seriously flawed about this theory is that it is rarely voiced by people who are genuinely engaged with the business of regenerating disadvantaged areas. I have been to many events where the main topic has been the regeneration of the north and I have not come across anyone who has ever said, “What we want is for somebody to take public sector wages down a slice. That would do it.”



Curiously, the only people whom I have heard put those sentiments are bright young men in think-tanks in London; people who have their feet firmly on the ground, particularly the ground in the north, tend not to say those things, if ever. As an argument for regional pay for teachers, that does not seem to be sustainable.

I want to look at another argument for having variations in teachers pay across the regions that has emerged very recently. It is a different type of argument and, frankly, it is one that, when I put together the analysis for the Liberal Democrat submission on regional pay, we did not really take on board. The regional pay submission deals quite adequately with issues such as crowding out, and so on, but what we did not expect was an argument that public services themselves would improve if teachers were paid differentially across the country.

The new argument emerged from some research carried out by the university of Bristol—by Carol Propper and her team, I think—into the benefits of a regional pay system, or, to put it the other way round, the disadvantages of a national pay system. Members will recall that the research was covered quite extensively in the press, and it seemed to have the consequence of leading people to believe that if pay in London or the south-east was markedly better than pay in Humberside or the midlands, not only would that be “a good thing” or make it easier to get teachers to London, but it would improve the performance of schools in London; and that a national pay system actually disadvantaged educational outcomes in the south-east and other areas of high average wages. The research received an enormous amount of media coverage about two weeks ago, and it paralleled previous research by the same body at the university of Bristol which argued that similar sorts of effects could be observed in the health service—that, for example, people in certain high-demand or high-wage areas were more likely to die as a result of a heart attack than people in other areas, simply because there were national pay scales.

Looking briefly at that research, it is based on an examination of pupil progress between key stage 2 and key stage 4 and of average professional wages in different parts of the country. It notes that pupil progress, as measured by class data in a value-added way, does not seem to be as significant or as appreciable in high-wage areas as it is in low-wage areas—in other words, those who live in a wealthy part of the country are less likely to see the same degree of value-added progress in their school as others elsewhere do. I will explain that in a little more detail. We are not talking about attainment here, as attainment by pupils in wealthy areas is better than that of pupils in poorer areas. We are talking about the difference from key stage 2 to key stage 4, and in particular whether key stage 4 replicates or improves on key stage 2.

When that research was reported, the press coverage was fairly stark and fairly crude. I have to say that the press release for the research was also fairly stark and fairly crude. I do not believe that the report is wholly warranted by the data as presented by the Bristol team, but the quality of the research is pretty hard to judge, because the correlation established is not based on raw data; it is arrived at after data have been manipulated and tweaked in a very complex way. The description of what was done to the data is a little opaque for the faint-hearted and for journalists, and perhaps also for policy makers. I wanted to terrify the Hansard writers by reading out the equation, or set of hieroglyphics, that is presented in the research. It is enormously formidable, I am afraid. It says that it is:

“A simple education production function…which considers the importance of controlling for alternative labour market opportunities when examining the degree to which teacher wages affect student outcomes”.

I can only illustrate this visually, but there follows a line of hieroglyphics containing so many variables that it would take a brave man to say what each individual one means. I must say that there is an opacity to this equation—the way that the variables are treated—that makes it rather difficult for all but the most resolute to understand how the data have been treated, and consequently we have seen nothing so far in the way of peer review. The equation is described as being relatively “simple”, but anybody who has looked at page 9 of the Bristol research will have been terrified by what they saw and may not have ventured any further; consequently they will be reluctant to engage in intensive peer review.

The theory claims to establish only an association between being in an area where average professional wages are high and not seeing an enormous amount of value-added effect between key stage 2 and key stage 4. That is not the same as a causal connection. As far as I can follow it, the research does not claim that national pay causes lesser progress in wealthy areas, although of course that could be claimed and in fact many of the press reports read into that research exactly that claim. Furthermore, the research does not necessarily imply any clear policy response even if a causal connection were to be established. After all, regional pay along the lines anticipated by the researchers might actually widen the differences in attainment between richer and poorer areas. We might argue whether or not that would be a good thing.

There are other associations that we could talk about, which show the difference between establishing association and establishing a causal link. It is generally the case that in areas of wealth, the behavioural challenges presented by pupils tend to be less, and in areas of deprivation the behavioural challenges presented by pupils tend to be greater than those found elsewhere, but it would not be safe to draw the conclusion that pupils in the wealthy areas need to play up a bit in order to get better results. That would be a wholly inappropriate conclusion. As I say, establishing association is not establishing a causal link; that is the first point.

My second point is that it could be said that research by the university of Lancaster into value-added, which Members may be familiar with, shows that there is only a loose connection between what a school does and value-added measures. There is a lot of research on this subject, which brings into question what value-added data actually tell us. Also, it is interesting to note that selective grammar schools that teach their pupils well score comparatively poorly on value-added measures. We may not be assessing the school in the way that we believe we do with the current value-added measures.

I do not want to be counter-intuitive and suggest that teachers’ salaries in areas of high cost make absolutely no difference, but I am sceptical that they make the difference that the Bristol research suggests. Obviously, if a teacher moves to an area such as London, a lot of their salary will be used to pay the mortgage; people have always recognised that and the need for a London weighting—it has added to an already overheated market, but I think people can see a broad case for it, none the less. Housing aside, however, living in the capital is not necessarily more expensive than living in Yeovil or Norwich. Certainly transport in London is a lot cheaper than in those places, and utilities and consumables are at least as cheap, if not cheaper, in London.

I do not dispute that high house prices have an influence on staff turnover; they clearly do. Often when a young couple want to start a family, they have to move to areas of cheaper housing to find family-sized accommodation. Therefore, quite naturally, London’s teacher profile tends to have a disproportionate number of second wage-earners, many of them female, and young teachers who have not yet got to the stage when they want to start a family. That may be a good thing; it is not necessarily a bad thing.

The Propper thesis, however, is that national pay schemes lead to worse outcomes and experiences. That is the nuts and bolts of it—the heart of it. It is fundamentally what Propper is leading us to believe, and it is the conclusion that some people are inclined to draw. How does one respond to that?

[Kevin Brennan]

Is it not also part of the theory that much of what teachers do is—I think Propper used this word—discretionary, and therefore there is a wage disincentive effect that means that teachers are, in effect, lazier in certain areas than in others?

[John Pugh]

From the value-added data, there is an implication that in high-value areas—wealthier areas, where housing costs are higher and where we may want to make some adjustments in teachers’ salaries—something is happening in the teaching force that explains the difference in the value-added data between such areas and others.

My response to that is to set Propper against Popper, by whom I mean Karl Popper, author of “The Logic of Scientific Discovery”. I am sceptical about economics as a science—certainly as a predictive one—but the one hallmark the philosopher Karl Popper taught us to look for in any theory was: how might it be falsified? If a theory cannot be falsified and yet is potentially falsifiable, it is a good theory and worth sticking to. The question one has to ask is: if the theory holds water, or if the data stand the interpretation given, how would one know that?

I would like people to ask themselves this question: what ought not to happen if Propper’s theory is true? I will suggest just one thing. What ought not to happen—what we ought not to find—is that lessons in wealthy areas, where the teaching pool is smaller, are as good as those in less wealthy areas. That is easily testable by looking at not the data, but Ofsted reports and the number of lessons that the reports say are satisfactory and less than satisfactory. I presume—I have not checked this, although I have tabled questions—that those reports show nothing that will confirm the Propper hypothesis, and that lessons in Barnet are just as good as those in Salford. I expect that to be the case, so I do not think that we need to be over-detained by the theory, despite the publicity it has received. We should put the theory rapidly to a clear test and see whether what the theory leads us to anticipate in fact happens. I suggest that it does not, and we probably know that.

Why is all that important? Why have I gone out of my way to criticise both the crowding out theory and the Propper data? It is because there is an important issue concerning the debate on regional pay that is probably bigger than that debate itself. Politically, it is stupid for any Government to antagonise the teaching profession, which normally thinks, in a communitarian spirit, that regional pay is not necessary and which will not be persuaded by the need, rationale and motives behind the regional pay push. I think it is unnecessary to antagonise a group that is already sufficiently involved in asking questions of the Government regarding policy on pensions, pay freezes and the like.

The big game for all of us is to improve educational standards in the country. We need teachers to buy into the Government’s agenda and to make it theirs. In my experience of education policy, nothing much is achieved without teachers embracing, endorsing and involving themselves in it. We have seen Secretaries of State over the years come forward with initiative after initiative, and only some of them have had an impact. Those have been the ones that teachers have been able to believe in themselves, such as local management of schools, which I mentioned earlier and which I think is widely believed in. The ability to build a consensus across the piece, which is necessary, will be hampered if we get into a debate about regional pay apropos teaching. It is simply not worth the candle for the limited dividends it potentially can bring, even for those whose support it, and it will produce only tears at the end of the day.

Improving education is a long and collaborative process. Yesterday in the Chamber, the Secretary of State introduced quite significant reforms that we need to examine. Not all teachers have necessarily bought into them straight away—they have concerns about them, and they wish that they had been consulted in advance as well as post hoc—but it is possible to get everyone behind the same agenda, and if we do not do that, we simply do not get any results. We saw elements of that yesterday in the Chamber. I was watching the debate on the monitor, and I noted significant contributions from the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) and the former chair of the Select Committee on Education, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). Both said exactly the same thing to the Secretary of State: if we are going to make progress—the kind of progress that no one disputes should be made—there must be a prevailing consensual atmosphere.

[Kevin Brennan]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the problem with the way in which the Secretary of State has gone about reform in this area—an area in which we all believe there should be reform—is that he has chosen to do so in order to make a political point about rigour and standards, not an educational one? If he had wanted to make that point, he would have shared his approach with the Opposition, teachers and the devolved Administrations, rather than ridden roughshod over everyone.

[John Pugh]

I think the Secretary of State said, at the end of his statement yesterday, that he was offsetting the 10 years of drift and confusion—frankly, I think that was a rather schoolboy remark. Teachers listening to it will have recognised that there have been difficulties in exams, that changes have been made and that we need to make further changes, and teachers will get behind further changes, but to say that 10 years has achieved nothing and that today we will start on a new venture in which everything will be that much easier, is to mistake what has always happened throughout the history of British education. When things work well and progress is made, everyone has their shoulder behind the wheel because everyone can see the sense of it. When we try to appropriate success or schemes that other people either do not acknowledge, do not understand or do not appreciate, we hamper the degree of progress, even by our own lights, that we intend to make.

I have gone on long enough and my Castro-like peroration is now at an end. There is not an intelligently defensible case for regional pay—certainly, neither the Propper hypothesis nor the crowding out theory provides such a case, although I am happy to debate them ad nauseam—but even if there were, it would be a political minefield that, judging by the extent of the political opposition, is not likely to lead to beneficial results but is likely to lead to a scarring debate that will hamper progress in significant areas of education.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) for his speech and congratulate him on securing this debate. His peroration was not Castro-like at all; it was considerably better argued than a Castro speech and considerably shorter, although it was perhaps long for this Chamber. As usual, his extremely well argued speech was a philosophical trot through the issues.

I also welcome the Minister for Schools, the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws), and wish him good luck in his new role. As he knows, his job is very important. This is the first time I have faced him since the reshuffle. We came into the House at the same time. In fact, we made our maiden speeches on the same day, so I have watched his progress with great interest; obviously, I will watch his progress with even greater interest in the months to come. In the reshuffle, a number of Education Ministers have gone: the hon. Members for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb)—whom the Minister replaces—and for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton). One other Education Minister wanted to go but was unable to do so. If, as often happens after a reshuffle, training is offered to Ministers, the Schools Minister might want to suggest an assertiveness training course for Lord Hill for the next time he tries to resign from the Government.

The Schools Minister takes his post at a time when teacher morale is at a pretty low ebb, and he needs to do something to try to improve that situation, because low teacher morale is not good for learning or for standards and outcomes. He may be aware that I was a teacher in a previous period of low morale in the 1980s, which sadly resulted in a great deal of disruption because of an approach to pay and conditions that led to a great deal of unhappiness among teachers. In the context in which we meet today, at a time of low morale with the Government considering the whole issue of national pay and conditions, it would be a welcome step if the Minister took a grip and rejected, for many of the reasons outlined by the hon. Member for Southport, the approach to teachers pay to which the Secretary of State seems philosophically wedded.

The Minister may be aware that the School Teachers Review Body is currently considering teachers pay at the Secretary of State’s behest. The other day, I read with interest the Secret Teacher’s contribution to The Guardian on teachers pay, which summed up quite well some of the teaching profession’s anxieties. The Secret Teacher’s birthday is on 28 September, which is the deadline the Secretary of State has given Patricia Hodgson, the chair of the School Teachers Review Body, to return her recommendations on teachers pay. I hope the Minister does not use that information to try to ascertain the secret teacher’s identity, but the Secret Teacher points out just how anxious teachers are about the steps the Secretary of State is taking to consider market-facing pay, regional pay or whatever we call it in the end. The Secret Teacher also points out that one of the common features of high-performing jurisdictions, which, by the way, we are too in this country—perhaps the Secretary of State should say that more often—is long-term investment in pay to attract a higher quality of applicant to the job. The Labour Government tried to emulate that.

The hon. Member for Southport mentioned that teachers pay is now linked more to classroom performance, and I make no apology for that. Certainly when I was a teacher, often the only way for a teacher to get paid more, apart from through the incremental points for experience, was to take on a responsibility outside the classroom. Some of the best teachers ended up doing administration rather than what they should have been doing, which was standing in a classroom and using their excellent teaching skills to help young people to achieve their potential.

There is a great deal of unhappiness among the teaching associations and unions on teachers pay, and I hope the new Schools Minister will take an approach of dialogue, consensus and working in partnership with the teaching profession to work through some of those issues, rather than taking the more confrontational and “impositional” approach that the Secretary of State tends to take from time to time.

On regional pay in education, the hon. Member for Southport gave a fairly comprehensive presentation on the arguments. The argument seems to be that, where local pay and costs of living are below average, the Government can get away with saving money by paying less. That is certainly one reason why the Government could go for local and regional pay. Another argument is that relatively high pay in the public sector makes it harder for the private sector to recruit, which he referred to as the “crowding-out” argument. He also referred to research from Bristol university, which I will come back to towards the end of my remarks.

Why would the imposition of local and regional pay on teachers be the wrong approach? Well, there are a number of reasons, both educational and economic. Earlier, we discussed the potential damage if spending power is taken out of the economies of more deprived areas. Economics is a dismal science, as the hon. Gentleman hinted in his remarks, and it would be a big mistake simply to take a micro-economic argument in isolation from the macro-economic argument, which is exactly the mistake the Government are making in their overall economic policy on the deficit. On regional pay, if a significant amount of spending power is taken out of those areas of the country by reducing the wages of reasonably well paid public servants in the hope that that would make the private sector more attractive to them, the Government would have to posit a huge increase in private sector productivity for that to have a positive economic impact. Those of us with our feet on the ground know that, in practice, cutting fairly well paid jobs in such areas would take spending power out of the local economy, thereby damaging the provision of public services and damaging the private sector by suppressing demand for goods and services, so there is a strong economic argument against going down that road. It would also make it harder to recruit good teachers in more deprived areas. As the hon. Member for Southport suggested, the job is often more challenging in such areas, which are not necessarily seen as the most desirable places to live in.

The hon. Gentleman also raised the basic philosophical issue of equal pay for equal work. Yes, we could take a purely laissez-faire approach and pay different people at different rates for the same work; but we still have a national education system, despite the increased number of academies, and it seems to me that we should try to hold on to that basic principle.

As to the overall impact on teacher morale—I referred earlier to the Secret Teacher article—there is no doubt that it is at a low ebb at the moment. Introducing relative pay, or reducing it in some areas, especially in the current context of pay freezes, would have a major impact on teacher morale. The question would arise, I guess, of how to stop schools paying what they wanted to. The only way would be to reduce the funding available in areas where it was intended that pay should be reduced. There are thus also huge implications for school funding, which are not being planned for.

Bureaucracy is also an issue. What structure would be required to determine the rates that would apply; or would that be left purely to the market? There is no real evidence that relatively high public sector pay damages the private sector. At a time such as now, when there is high unemployment, including graduate unemployment, there is, if anything, an excess supply of labour available for the private sector to recruit from. Regional pay variations in similar jobs are relatively small. Large organisations in the private sector typically tend to have national pay structures as well, with limited variation, except, of course, for the same variation that has existed for some time in the teaching profession, for London and the south-east. Of course, the TUC recently gathered evidence about regional pay. Its research found that very few large private sector employers use local pay. That was attributed to the wish to have some sort of control over labour costs, and to avoid a duplication of the bargaining process, with the time and resources that that would entail. The complexity of regional or local differentiation outweighs the possible gains for those employers.

[John Pugh]

The hon. Gentleman is surely also aware that what is envisaged may be more complex than was at first thought even by those who support the concept. The Department of Health, under the previous Secretary of State, made a submission suggesting regional pay—but only at a certain level of the hospital structure. As to facing the market, in the higher reaches of the hospital structure the market was national rather than regional; so even within one institution regional pay might not be right. Equally, it is recognised that there are hot spots within regions, where it would not be desirable to pay much less than London rates.

[Kevin Brennan]

The hon. Gentleman puts his finger on the point that I was making, which is that the policy introduces a level of complexity that leads to cost—the opportunity cost, and the time that people will have to spend on resolving anomalies and complexities in the system, unless the Government intend to take a laissez-faire approach to public sector pay. As far as I know, that is not what they propose, but the costs, otherwise, cannot be ignored.

There are good reasons why regional pay is not common practice among large private sector employers. A lot of the commentary about regional pay seems to be based on poor knowledge of private sector pay systems, and of the existing flexibilities within the public sector pay system, including those affecting teachers. A recent “Today” programme on Radio 4 posed the question why a teacher should be paid the same in Sunderland as in Surrey. Well, those teachers are not paid the same. The pay system has four bands or zones, and teachers in Sunderland are in a different band from those in Surrey. It seems there is not enough knowledge generally about the current system; people do not understand that it is sufficiently flexible to remove any need for a much more laissez-faire approach to teachers pay.

The teaching unions have made a joint submission to the pay review body, and as its report is imminent I shall summarise some of their points. In their view, local pay in teaching would not contribute to the raising of standards, because schools in disadvantaged areas already face the greatest challenges in recruiting and retaining teachers, and in providing opportunities for the most disadvantaged students. Local pay would create even greater obstacles to overcoming inequality and raising standards of attainment for all—an objective that I think all hon. Members share.

The unions believe that local pay would be likely to inhibit teacher mobility and create long-term teacher shortages in areas where pay was reduced. There is no particular reason why it should assist with teacher supply problems elsewhere. It also offends against the principle that we discussed earlier: the rate for the job and equal pay for equal work. The unions believe that pay cuts would be likely to fall more heavily on women teachers, so there is an equality aspect to the issue. The Government would, I think, need to carry out a full equality assessment of any proposal to introduce a regional or market-facing pay system.

The approach would also make determination processes costlier—something that we have already discussed. Other interrelationships with pay flexibility should be considered, because the limited use of existing pay flexibility for recruitment and retention suggests that schools do not believe that the pay structure should develop further in that way. Increasing the scope for variations in pay could lead to schools competing for staff—at local level anyway—through wages. Another issue is reconciling the introduction of local pay with a clearer and more transparent funding system for schools, and more effective financial planning by schools. The unions echo the points that I made about private sector employers and the local economy.

That leads me on to the Bristol research, which the hon. Member for Southport spoke about. As he said, in August a study by the centre for market and public organisation at the university was published, under the somewhat non-academic title of “Wage Regulation Harms Kids”. It claimed to show that pupils’ performance at GCSE is affected by how teachers pay compares with pay generally in the area. As the hon. Gentleman said, it suggested that where pay is generally high compared with teachers pay, pupils do worse, and vice versa. The conclusion that is drawn is that there should be more variation in teacher pay, and, in particular, that teachers in high-wage areas should be paid more.

[John Pugh]

I think the hon. Gentleman used the phrase “do worse”, but I believe the conclusion is that those pupils improve less: in high-wage areas, generally speaking, attainment is better, or higher.

[Kevin Brennan]

I think improving less probably is doing worse; but I take the semantic point, and those who want to perform a textual exegesis on our deliberations this afternoon can take a look at it later, when they consult Hansard.

The argument runs that where teachers have low pay compared with others in their area, teacher recruitment will be more problematic, and teachers will be less motivated. That relates to the point that I was discussing earlier with the hon. Gentleman. “Wage Regulation Harms Kids” says:

“The nature of teaching is that a large proportion of the work is discretionary (lesson planning, after-school programmes, time invested in individual children) so there is scope for reductions in effort in response to relative wages.”

The case is based on the contention that teachers in more affluent areas are lazier than teachers working in other areas, because the ratio of their wages to wages for other jobs in the area is lower than that of teachers in other areas of the country. The study offers no real objective evidence to support that contention. The hon. Member for Southport has gone through the methodology used; it is almost entirely an exercise in statistical correlation, and relies less on causation than on an association of numbers from the evidence that it considered. No evidence is offered that the amount of teacher pay compared with pay in the area generally has a causal relationship to pupil performance, despite the report’s title.

Nor does the document consider any alternative hypothesis for the statistical link that it claims to have identified, which seems strange. It makes no attempt, for example, to consider Ofsted ratings for teaching, as the hon. Gentleman suggested could be done in different areas, to see whether there is inspection evidence that teaching is worse or teachers lazier in more prosperous, high-wage areas. It does not consider whether the challenges of teaching in less well-off areas require more of teachers and, conversely, whether a lot of schools in more prosperous areas are coasting and not being challenged by the nature of the task. It might have nothing to do with pay. That explanation is at least worthy of some investigation by such a study.

The case of London is especially relevant, as the hon. Gentleman said. London has high and rising standards, certainly in recent years, but also the largest gap in the country between teacher pay and pay generally. It does not seem to make a great deal of sense. Much of the analysis is based on dividing the country into just two areas and comparing them. That is a very broad-brush approach that can miss many local variations. I will not go on, but there are also problems with the report’s grasp of how teacher pay works and some confusion about external tests at key stages 1 and 3, which no longer exist. That did not inspire much confidence in me either.

The Secretary of State has been known from time to time to take pieces of research such as the programme for international student assessment tables, ignore the parts that he is not keen on and highlight only the bits that he is keen on, or even to ignore completely some pieces of research, such as the pupil achievement research on trends in international mathematics and science study. I am not suggesting that he will necessarily do so, but if he is planning to use this piece of research to justify the introduction of regional pay on the basis that teachers in areas such as his constituency are lazier than teachers in other parts of the country, without any real evidence for doing so, he is on extremely shaky ground.

I end with a couple of questions for the Minister. What is the Government’s current position on regional pay? We have heard conflicting voices from within Government in recent months; one minute it is on, the next minute it is off. Will he give us an update on the latest position? Does he think that Yeovil teachers should be treated differently from teachers in Surrey for doing the same job, and paid a different rate? Does he grasp how demotivating this debate is for the teaching work force that he now has the privilege of serving, in addition to the pupils and parents of this country, in his role as Schools Minister? What assurances can he give us that all of this is not just a softening up for the ultimate privatisation agenda that some of us think the Secretary of State has in mind in the longer term?

GCSE English (Marking)

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Tuesday 18th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Nic Dakin]

My right hon. Friend makes a salient and pertinent point. What is important is that young people in Scunthorpe, in Southampton and indeed throughout the land are treated fairly. The regulators recognise their own incompetence when one of them comes out with comments such as some students “got lucky”, but that is not good enough, is it? The incompetence that they recognise should not stand in the way of young people being treated fairly.

It is worth noting that, nationally, 26.7% of students doing the foundation paper in June 2011 got a C grade, while only 10.2% got a C grade in June 2012. Those statistics corroborate my local head teachers’ view that students taking the exam in June 2012 were disadvantaged compared with similar students who took the exam in June 2011.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the conditions on which Ofqual was set up by my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham) and the now shadow Chancellor was that its duty was to maintain confidence in the exam system? How does a comment from the chief executive of Ofqual that some kids “got lucky” maintain such confidence?

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Willetts]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the importance of R and D. We are improving the tax reliefs available to businesses, and especially to small businesses, when they invest in R and D to encourage them to do so.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State mentioned the importance of growth in his Department’s mission, and yet, as we have heard, the OECD has this morning revised its growth forecast for the UK economy from plus 0.5% to minus 0.7%. Does he not see the need to change course?

[Vince Cable]

We recognise the economic difficulties faced by most of the western democracies, including our own, and the hon. Gentleman knows the reason for them. We had a boom in this country that got out of control and left a substantial legacy; we have broken banks; we have a very serious consumer debt problem; and we have major problems in our export markets. Those are the factors that contribute to the current difficulties, but we have a range of policies, several of which have been announced today, that are designed to counter those areas of weakness in growth, especially in construction.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Monday 3rd September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Again, I stress that Ofqual is the appropriate regulator and will want to hear from all schools affected. The report that I hoped would be delivered and which Ofqual did deliver rapidly this Friday dealt in broad terms with the issues about grade boundaries. However, there may be school-specific cases that, like the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), my right hon. Friend, as an assiduous constituency Member, may want to bring to Ofqual’s attention. I encourage all MPs who believe that there are specific cases that defy logic in schools of which they are aware to bring them to Ofqual’s attention.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State said earlier that this year’s problem arose because the modular English exam was “unfit for purpose” so nothing could be done to rectify the injustice this year, yet the same exam will be sat next year. Is he saying that next year’s pupils can look forward to the same injustice on his watch?

[Michael Gove]

It was a Labour Government who introduced modularisation of GCSEs. We made it clear that we thought that was a mistake and we moved as quickly as possible to end it. I hope that we can count on the hon. Gentleman’s support in making that reform.

Secondary Education (GCSEs)

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

No, thank you.

We not only have a two-tier system in the split between foundation and higher tier GCSEs, over which Labour presided—

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

You introduced it.

[Michael Gove]

Quite right. I did not come into Parliament to defend the status quo, unlike the small-c conservatives opposite. I am a radical who believes in liberating human potential. It is interesting that the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby and the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) are disciples of Keith Joseph. I regard myself as being in a slightly more radical, reforming, modern and liberal tradition than the late Member for Leeds North East, bless his soul.

As a reformer, it offends me not only that is there a division incarnated in our state schools, but that independent schools are opting for the IGCSE because the GCSE is not rigorous enough and that, as a result, there is a two-tier system between state and independent schools. There is also a two-tier system between this nation and other nations because other countries have more testing examinations at the ages of 16, 17 and 18, whereas we have incarnated low aspirations in the way in which we judge our young people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Stuart]

Time for a coffee and to let others speak.

However, over the last two years the Government have made a series of announcements looking to put greater rigour into the system. They announced the ending of modularisation of GCSEs, tackling the culture of re-sits, ending equivalences and promoting the English baccalaureate, which, of course, rewards those students who achieve good GCSEs in English, maths, two sciences, a language and either history or geography. However, at the end of that process, if the leak is to be believed—I am in a state of confusion now—they suddenly announced the scrapping of GCSEs altogether. That does not seem terribly coherent.

Just last June the Secretary of State said the following about GCSEs:

“So next year the floor will rise to 40 per cent and my aspiration is that by 2015 we will be able to raise it to 50 per cent. There is no reason—if we work together—that by the end of this parliament every young person in the country can’t be educated in a school where at least half of students reach this basic academic standard.”

He went on to say:

“A GCSE floor standard is about providing a basic minimum expectation to young people that their school will equip them for further education and employment.”

That was the direction of travel then; suddenly, a year later—if we are to believe the Daily Mail—that has been scrapped. On the other hand, if I understood correctly what the Secretary of State said today, that was an entirely false idea and there is no plan to do such a thing at all.

[Kevin Brennan]

I think we are all trying to decipher what the Secretary of State said. Is it the hon. Gentleman’s understanding that the Secretary of State said that he would expect 80% of pupils to sit this new single-paper GCSE, and if so, what does he think ought to happen to the other 20%?

[Mr Stuart]

As I have said, I think that increased rigour throughout the system is necessary and important. I think that the accountability system for schools needs to be changed so that it does not have perverse outcomes, such as putting people on courses that lead nowhere but allow the institution to meet its benchmark—we on the Committee have been critics of that for some time. Perhaps the announcement, or the leak, suggests a change in view by the Secretary of State on that front.

If we look across the system, where we need more rigour and we need to ensure that we end the perverse incentives, we find that the biggest problem we face in a global knowledge economy, where the first rung of the ladder keeps rising up, is what we do about people who are not getting those basic skills and that basic education. The Government have two priorities for education: raising standards for all; and closing the gap. Those are right, but when setting priorities it is terribly important to show what the top priority is. I am yet to understand how the changes specifically will help the least able, but then again I am unclear as to what exactly the proposal is—even if I have not quite fallen to the level of the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), who of course got so confused about percentages last week.

[Kevin Brennan]

I did get a grade A O-level—

[Mr Stuart]

That is a lot better than I did, so I will leave it there.

Ofqual now has a statutory duty to ensure two things, one of which is that we maintain standards over time. We shall see whether it does its job right; it is relatively newly empowered and we need to give it the chance to see whether it can reverse this grade inflation and keep us up there with our international competition. Has it said that there needs to be a restructuring of the examination system, not necessarily the administration of it, but the whole quality of it and the possible tiering of it? I would like to hear from the Secretary of State about that.

I have only a minute left, so I shall finish by repeating that the central problem is what we do about the young people, all too many of whom are now not in education, employment or training—NEET—and are being left behind. A more rigorous system is great, but the only way to raise standards ultimately—this is the only thing that matters in education—is through quality of teaching. We need to ensure consistent, high-quality teaching and an excellent institution for everyone, everywhere. At the moment, there are all sorts of incentives in the accountability system to focus on borderline pupils at the expense of those at the bottom, and within the system for people to move from a school that is very challenging to one in the leafier suburbs—a much more congenial place for many people to teach in. We need to look at re-gearing our whole system in a way that the Labour Government failed to do, despite efforts in that direction, to ensure that we provide opportunity for all, because both socially and economically we cannot afford to have so many children left behind, unable to get on the first rung of the economic ladder and thus be full members of our society. If any proposals from the Secretary of State are driven by that central insight, he can certainly look forward to my support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

In contrast to the Chair of the Select Committee, because I have a more cynical frame of mind, I will work on the assumption that the Daily Mail report of 21 June was correct and that the briefing came from someone close to the Secretary of State’s office, from a special adviser or perhaps the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) at last earning his crust. I will also work on the assumption that today’s debate is part of testing the response to that. If at any point the Secretary of State wishes to stand up and say to the House, “No, Mr. Tim Shipman of the Daily Mail as ever got it totally wrong and we have no plans in this direction,” I will happily yield the floor. But I also warn the Secretary of State that he is going down a dangerous road, because if, as we have heard this afternoon, he has no plans in this direction, there is little more dangerous than the Daily Mail spurned. But for the moment I will work on the assumption that it is correct.

[Kevin Brennan]

If my hon. Friend is incorrect and the Secretary of State has performed some kind of humiliating climbdown today, does he think that the Secretary of State will have to apologise to all those who came on the media to back him, including Toby Young and all his other friends in the right-wing press?

[Tristram Hunt]

It was amazing how they were all ready, almost whipped in, but perhaps the Secretary of State will have another visit to the High Court and his friend Judge Leveson to explain all this.

The Secretary of State will know that I have no problem with some of his policies. I am happy to support the English baccalaureate, much greater rigour in standards, and the ending of endless repeat examinations and an end to semi-vocational, grade-inflating GCSE-equivalent exams. However, I share with my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State serious reservations about the downgrading of the engineering diploma, at a time when we are interested in rebalancing the British economy. I am in favour of schools being allowed to conduct internal streaming, of academy schools in the right circumstances, of apprenticeships when done properly. As an historian, I am also in favour of pupils learning dates and poems, because that provides the structure and the architecture that allows for greater learning and understanding. I am in favour of the Wolf report and what it means for skills training.

A large part of the agenda I can concur with, but this bizarre decision to think about abolishing GCSEs and reintroduce O-levels and CSEs strikes me as deeply misguided. How would this help children in my constituency of Stoke-on-Trent? I want students in my city to take GCSEs in relevant subjects, to be taught well and to aspire. I do not think that at the age of 14 they should be hived off into CSEs; for their aspirations to be put into a straitjacket. As the Chair of the Select Committee said, we know the problems about standards, but no Government Member has been able to stand up and say, “Yes, the solution to this problem is, as reported in the Daily Mail, the O-level/CSE divide.” Until we hear that, this is, as the Chair also said, a slightly bizarre debate. But I will continue working on the dangerous assumption of Daily Mail correctitude.

Looking at the Financial Times research, 25% of children in my constituency would be put into the straitjacket of CSEs. That is not the soft bigotry of low expectations, but the hard bigotry of low expectations in action. It demonstrates a total poverty of ambition.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

This has been a confectionary debate featuring a number of individual sweets, not least the polo mint that constitutes the motion. I have studied it in great detail and found nothing that takes forward this country’s education debate. In the words of one coalition colleague, it is an “opportunistic wheeze.” Having studied the motion and found nothing of substance, we should then go back to the words of the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), who so enlightened the House when he outlined the Opposition’s education policy last Thursday:

“We on the Opposition side of the House believe in a modern education system that promotes high standards, rigorous exams”.—[Official Report, 21 June 2012; Vol. 546, c. 1026.]

He had earlier sought an apology, but of course thus far we have had no apology for his claim that three in 10 pupils equalled 60% of them. When one studies the specific proposals he put forward last Thursday, one has to ask oneself, “Is this not lighter than air?” It is the Aero policy we are now studying—

[Kevin Brennan]

This is the humbug speech.

[Guy Opperman]

No. I can assure hon. Members that it is the hon. Gentleman’s proposals that are lighter than air; I have studied them and found that there is not much in them.

We then move on to the Celebrations moment. While I was in hospital last year, when something took place that was of good order I would be provided with a large box of Celebrations. There was such a time earlier today: the shadow Secretary of State, like St Paul on the road to Damascus, stood forth and admitted for the first time that there had been grade inflation under Labour. However, despite repeated questioning by me and others, he refused to state when he first discovered this grade inflation. Was it 1997, 2005, 2010, 2012, or was it yesterday? He failed to divulge when that magical event took place. That is a crucial point, because the discovery of grade inflation is utterly important to an assessment of how this policy is going forward.

Despite throwing money at the problem, the previous Government did not see the results. As other Members have outlined, maths, literacy and science all declined, whatever type of test was taken. Academies do work, and I applaud the expansion of that programme. Let us take as an exemplar the words of Andrew Adonis, the former Schools Minister, who said there should be “strong independent governance” that was “free of local authority red tape”, with exemplary leadership and “brilliant teachers” who were specially chosen. That is the way forward.

In Northumberland, part of which I represent, schools saw little of the financial benefit that the previous Government bestowed on individual local authorities. The situation has changed, I am pleased to say, with the rebuild announcement for Prudhoe community high school, and I look forward to welcoming the Secretary of State when he visits Northumberland shortly. I will also be showing him the amazing Queen Elizabeth high school in Hexham, another school that was denied any sort of funding or rebuild under the previous Government.

However, I have two reservations that I want to raise with the Minister. First, we should be wary of change for change’s sake. Every teacher in Northumberland I spoke with before the last election explained with growing depression how every year there was a different syllabus, a different amendment or a different set of textbooks, all costing huge amounts of money, in circumstances in which some consistency was clearly needed so that they could get on with what they wanted to do, which was to teach.

Secondly, I wish to echo some of the comments that have been made on vocational education. I am not a fan of nail technology being a GCSE. However, I represent a constituency in rural Northumberland where we value vocational education very highly. I suggest that the lesson the Minister should take forward is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It is absolutely vital that we hang on to the engineering and alternative qualifications. I totally understand and applaud the desire to reduce the number of vocational qualifications, but there is a danger of being excessive in that policy, and in rural areas in particular that will affect the quality of education provided.

Given the time limit and the number of Members who wish to speak, I will bring my remarks to a close. I suggest that in these circumstances there is a great deal of scope. I support what the Government are doing and think that the motion has absolutely no merit whatsoever.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

We have had a fascinating debate, with contributions from 13 hon. Members: my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South (Mr Marsden), the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson), my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell), my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) and my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith). It has been an interesting, although not entirely illuminating, debate.

The Opposition have no disagreement with the case that there is a need to reform the GCSE. As the House knows, the GCSE was first sat by pupils 25 years ago. I was teaching at the time. The idea that the world has not changed sufficiently since then for the GCSE to require reform is as ludicrous as the idea that the world is sufficiently similar to how it was 50 years ago that we have to return to O-levels and CSEs. The raising of the education and training leaving age to 18 raises the fundamental question of what public examinations we need at 16 and what they are for. That is a legitimate debate. One hon. Member asked whether we need to spend the huge amount of money that we spend on examinations at the age of 16. We have to ensure that GCSEs are fit for purpose, but we do not need to go back to the future.

In the words of the Deputy Prime Minister, we do not need to recreate

“a two tier system where children at quite a young age are somehow cast on a scrap heap”.

The more observant hon. Members will have noticed that we included those words in our motion. However, the Government amendment, which is signed, among others, by the Deputy Prime Minister, would expunge those words from the motion. That is a novel approach. It might well be the first time that a senior Cabinet Minister has tabled an amendment to delete his own words.

[Dan Rogerson]

There would be a problem if the Deputy Prime Minister had said something in the amendment that disagreed with what he said before. The amendment has a different emphasis, but there is no contradiction between the two.

[Kevin Brennan]

In that case, the Deputy Prime Minister could have left his own words in the amendment that he signed, but he chose to delete them. I am tempted to say, in the words of the late, great Amy Winehouse, “What kind of Lib-Demery is this?” Let us allow for a moment the notion that the Deputy Prime Minister meant what he said about a two-tier system, despite trying to delete his own words from the motion.

The Government amendment appears to contradict the leaks from the Secretary of State’s advisers last week that he would not need parliamentary approval or Lib Dem support for his proposal to bring back CSEs and O-levels. We have it from the Financial Times that Downing street now insists that the Secretary of State cannot go ahead without approval with the proposals that he leaked to the Daily Mail last week. The Financial Times article goes on to say that

“the idea of a lower qualification for less academic children”

is “dead in the water.” Perhaps when he responds, the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb) will confirm whether that idea is dead in the water. If it is, why are the Secretary of State’s advisers at this moment spinning to the press lobby in the House of Commons that a lower qualification known as an N-level will be introduced—something that he did not announce to the House?

The Minister needs to come clean when he winds up. Is the two-tier plan that was leaked to the Daily Mail by the Secretary of State’s closest advisers dead in the water or not? Is it full steam ahead for the Secretary of State, or is this a humiliating climbdown? The Secretary of State was asked on three occasions—or as he would say, thrice—whether the Daily Mail report was wrong, and thrice he demurred and did not tell us. If he is making a humiliating climbdown, he must apologise to all his friends who came out in support of the proposals in the media.

The manner and timing of the leak to the Daily Mail were a disgrace, at a time when students up and down the country, who have been working hard for months on end, were sitting their GCSEs. What a contrast that is to the way in which the GCSE was introduced all those years ago. A debate was kicked off in 1976 by Jim Callaghan, the former Labour Prime Minister. It was developed by Shirley Williams, although she has gone off the tracks a little since then. Come to think of it, we have not heard much from her on this subject. It would be interesting to know what she thinks. The idea was picked up by Keith Joseph—that well known lily-livered, liberal, loony lefty—and implemented by Mrs Thatcher’s Education Secretary, Kenneth Baker, following thorough debate and consideration. It was welcomed across the House.

In contrast, we now have a proposal to rip up the GCSE, with accompanying disparaging rhetoric, cooked up by a cabal, no doubt using private e-mail accounts, with no reference to the Department’s officials or to other Departments, and kept secret even from one of the Secretary of State’s Education Ministers. What a ludicrous way to run a Department that is, and how symptomatic of the Secretary of State’s seething lack of trust in his own Minister and officials.

At least we can assume that the Secretary of State would be kinder to and have more faith in those on his own side. Not so, because we now find out that not even the Prime Minister knew the details of what he was about to leak to the Daily Mail. A Downing street spokesman told the Financial Times:

“It looks as if we’re being bounced into something we weren’t prepared for.”

What about the Education Committee, which is chaired ably by the Secretary of State’s Conservative colleague, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness, who as always made a thoughtful contribution today? Let us be clear that the Chair of the Select Committee is no fan of Labour education policy. We have had many discussions about it and, to save him any embarrassment, I confirm that he is no fan of Labour education policy. Nevertheless, we respect his long-standing commitment to raising the standards for those at the bottom. As the Secretary of State well knows, the Committee is at this moment undertaking a review of qualifications and examinations that seeks to address some of these questions. What contempt the Secretary of State has shown for the Education Committee by publicising his plans in the press without any consideration of the Committee’s work. I took a sharp intake of breath when the Secretary of State said to the Chair of the Select Committee, “If the cap on aspiration fits, wear it.” That was uncalled for and was off the mark with regard to the hon. Gentleman’s commitment to helping those at the lower end. However, I know that he needs no help from me.

I met the CBI earlier today. Like us, it thinks that the GCSE needs to be looked at again. Like us, it thinks that a much wider debate is needed than the headline-grabbing call for a return to O-levels and CSEs that we have had from the Secretary of State. GCSEs are not, despite the impression that the Secretary of State tried to give last week, a worthless piece of paper, but that is exactly how Kenneth Baker described CSEs, which the Secretary of State last week seemed so keen to bring back. As my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe pointed out, many O-levels were not rigorous qualifications, but required little more than a Gradgrindian regurgitation of facts. Factual knowledge is not enough in a world in which, as the CBI told me today, more data will be created this year than have been created in the previous 5,000 years. Rote learning is insufficient in a world that needs citizens who can process intelligently a mass of information and data in their daily lives. We need breadth and balance in the curriculum.

The GCSE was brought in not as a single examination paper, as some Government colleagues seem to think, but as a single examinations system that would give everybody the chance to succeed if they reached the required standard. That is a principle worth preserving. Reform, yes; back to the future, no.

BME Communities (Educational Attainment)

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

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

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

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

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

[Hywel Williams in the Chair]

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

[Ms Abbott]

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

[Kevin Brennan]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We need to understand what is going on.

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

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

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

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

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

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I am sorry to have missed part of the debate, but I am pleased that it is taking place this morning. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is a particular concern now given that the Government intend to repeal the good relations duty on the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which is of course the institutional framework by which this kind of mechanism can be applied?

[Kevin Brennan]

Yes. My hon. Friend speaks with a great deal of expertise on this subject. We are all concerned that a lot of very good work on equality could be undone—perhaps not in a deliberate sense—by Ministers who desire to follow their own path and ensure that they distinguish themselves from the previous Government in their approach to education and schools. They could be undoing very good work and taking a significant step backwards in relation to the education system and the topic that we are debating today.

My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth talked about the impact of exclusion on people’s lives and about the fact that the Department itself had calculated that there would be a significant loss of earnings for pupils who were excluded in the course of their lifetime. At the time of that study, I think the reduction in lifetime earnings as a result of exclusion was calculated at £36,000. Worse than that, 80% of the juveniles in prison had been excluded from school at one time or another. That statistic made me sit up at the time, and should make the Minister focus on the issue. If 80% of juveniles in prison have been excluded from school, that must tell us something about exclusion and whether it is effective in trying to change the sort of behavioural problems that probably led to exclusion in the first place. If that exclusion has a racial component, we should be significantly concerned.

[Meg Hillier]

I would always defend a head teacher’s right to manage their school, and clearly exclusion may have a place in that, but a concern that I came across recently is a child who was excluded but brought back into school with intense provision for a short period. That intense provision was for only half a day, so the working parent was left with half a day to try to cover, and it also took the child out of their normal environment. Has my hon. Friend given any thought to how that might have an effect on the outlook of that young person when they re-enter the school?

[Kevin Brennan]

For many years, the scandal was that excluded pupils received little or no education after they had been excluded. My point is that exclusion should be a last resort, and it is sometimes necessary. As a former teacher, I absolutely defend the right of schools to exclude, having followed due and proper process. The Government have reformed that process, and changed the way in which an appeal can be made against exclusion. Instead of insisting on reinstatement, they have introduced fines on schools and head teachers who refuse reinstatement after that has been recommended on appeal.

I do not want to go into the details of that, but I want to make the point that responsibility for that child does not end when they are excluded, and that includes a responsibility on the head teacher and the school that excluded the child, on other schools in the area, even if they are independent academy schools in the state sector, and on all of us who are interested in education. Responsibility for that child does not end at the point of exclusion. One reason why so many young people end up in the juvenile justice system is not that they are inherently bad, but that, at the point of exclusion, there is no proper follow-up to ensure that the child receives an education, let alone attempts made to try to prevent exclusion in the first place whenever possible, given that it should always and everywhere be a last resort.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington said that improvement in GCSE achievement might have been due partially to the use of equivalencies at GCSE, but I think the facts will show that even if that were taken out of the equation, the improvement in London schools in recent years is real, as the Mayor of London said. In fact, results for black Caribbean pupils were rising at a faster rate than those for many other groups, but that does not mean that there is not a real and continuing problem, and my hon. Friend was right to highlight that.

My hon. Friend also spoke about the need for detailed data, and I appeal to the Minister that in his wish to unburden schools of bureaucracy, which is laudable, he does not fail to collect the data that are essential to tackle issues such as this. The Government are keen on having masses of data available in other areas, and that is good because it enables people to trawl through and analyse it, and to get to the root of a problem, but in this matter, less data are likely to be collected and that would be a significant mistake.

I have a few questions for the Minister before concluding and giving him time to respond. In tackling the problem, how will ending the ethnic minority achievement grant help? How will introducing a two-tier qualifications system, if that is indeed what he intends, help to improve black and ethnic minority attainment? How will not collecting proper statistics help? How will abandoning the approach of Every Child Matters help? Obviously, educational achievement is partially a case of good leadership in schools and so on, but it does involve wider issues, which many of these children may be bringing to school with them and which need to be tackled. How will a fragmented approach to exclusions help to tackle this problem? I would be grateful to hear the Minister’s response to those questions.