Education and Adoption Bill (Ninth sitting)

Debate between Kevin Brennan and John Pugh

Tuesday 14th July 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Kevin Brennan]

Yes. My hon. Friend again puts it more eloquently and accurately than I could have. There is a general concern about a lack of attention to pupils with special educational needs and disability needs in a lot of the Government’s thinking, not just with regard to the Bill and this particular provision but more broadly.

The Schools Minister answered written question No. 2637 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) on 22 June. We thank him for that answer, which stated that

“pupil referral units…will…not be eligible to be defined as coasting schools.”

It would, however, be possible to use secondary legislation under section 19 of the Education Act 1996 to include pupil referral units in the definition. The Minister said in Committee on 9 July, column 273, that he would consider extending the clause 7 duty to academise to pupil referral units using secondary legislation. We would welcome further clarity from the Minister on pupil referral units as well as his response to the remarks made by my hon. Friend in his intervention.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I am sorry to have to disagree with the hon. Member, because I have agreed with everything that he has said up to now, but there is another special problem with pupil referral units in so far as their population is very volatile; it changes all the time. A longitudinal assessment over three years might be quite hard to accomplish to help decide whether a school is coasting.

Education and Adoption Bill (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Kevin Brennan and John Pugh

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Public Bill Committees

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I was going to say that it is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan, but we were both on the Crossrail Bill and I have to say that it was not a pleasure all the time.

I have something to add about the appeal mechanism. Although I think that amendment 19 is a little too heavy-handed to address the issue, I want to appeal to all Members to consider carefully the concept of appeal. With regard to governing bodies, in certain cases an appeal for them would be worthless because they can be part of the problem. I am sure that members of the Committee can think of poor governing bodies in their own areas that have very little to say in defence of poor results and performance. However, there is another side of the story and I would like to give an example from my neck of the woods.

I have in my constituency a single-form-entry primary school that fell below the standard for entirely comprehensible reasons. There were quite a lot of staff changes, which make a big difference in a single-form primary school, and the school also had intake changes produced by an increase in migrant workers. The governing body rapidly found itself trapped in a room with somebody who described themselves as a broker on behalf of the Government and said that the school must join an academy chain as soon as possible—with which, incidentally, the broker had some connection. I never knew there were such people called brokers, but there are indeed; I am simply recording what they do. I have heard many descriptions of what then went on. There was an extraordinarily abrasive and unpleasant conversation, in which the broker said that either the school must join the academy chain, or the head and the governing body—the full set—would be replaced.

[Kevin Brennan]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. Is he aware that some of those brokers, as revealed in parliamentary answers, were being paid up to £1,000 a day by the Department for Education to carry out the work that he is describing?

--- Later in debate ---

[John Pugh]

I have not finished describing it. A number of witnesses—people I have learned to trust—described the conversation as brutal and tantamount to bullying, and we are all against school bullying. Neither the head nor the governing body in that case was weak. They were saved at the last hurdle, because Ofsted produced a more favourable picture by bringing in objective data. The school is now thriving, and is part of the local education authority family. Had the broker got their way, it would have joined a chain, in which the nearest other school was 20 to 30 miles away. That example illustrates what can happen if some of the hurdles to what is called improvement are clipped away. Not only might there be a brutal, ineffectual intervention, but we might be endorsing a form of bullying, which we would all regret.

[Kevin Brennan]

I am sure we all want to confirm that we like the Minister. One of the reasons why I like him is because he welcomes the fact that when others disagree with him, they do so vigorously. He enjoys the cut and thrust of debate. We should not be misinterpreted as not liking him on a personal level.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak and the hon. Member for Southport have given practical illustrations of why it is important that there is a safeguard or appeal mechanism in these sorts of processes. This may have settled down a bit now, but during the early years of the coalition Government—I should point out that there were Liberal Democrat Ministers in the Department for Education—some of the activities being carried out by those mysterious academy brokers were extremely dubious. They turned up at schools and metaphorically took the headteacher for a walk in the woods with a rubber truncheon, with the express intention that, by the time they came back from that treatment, they would roll over to anything that was demanded of them—in particular, that they would join an academy chain, whether or not that was the right solution for the school. For doing that work, they were paid huge sums of public money—up to £1,000 a day—by the Government. It is right that a light should be continually shone on those sorts of activities.

In our view, clause 2 represents an unnecessary further step towards centralising control over the school system in the hands of Ministers. It does so in two ways. First, it gives the Secretary of State the power to issue a warning herself. That might seem a small step, because the difference between the Secretary of State telling a local authority to do something, which is what the 2006 and 2011 Acts set out, and doing it herself might seem modest, but it is significant. Previously, the Secretary of State had to channel warning notices through local authorities, thereby ensuring that they are engaged in the process and that schools do not receive mixed messages. The clause does not even contain any requirement for the Secretary of State to consult a local authority before issuing a warning. There is no requirement on her to inform herself properly about what has been going on, merely a right to insert herself into the process whenever she feels like it.

Education and Adoption Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Kevin Brennan and John Pugh

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Kevin Brennan]

I suspect that the Minister might not be surprised if I say I beg to differ about exactly how precise this Bill is in what it does. I suspect that will form some part of our exchanges in the next few days.

Returning to the power that was taken in 2011 by the Secretary of State, ably represented in Committee at that time, as now, by his Schools Minister, presumably there has been a pressing need which explains why that power is no longer sufficient and why the Secretary of State now needs to take the power directly to issue the warning notices. If there was something terribly wrong about the way that local authorities work—issuing warning notices or failing to issue warning notices—Ministers would presumably have had to use the power that they took in the 2011 Act a lot; perhaps to issue dozens, maybe hundreds of warning notices since taking that power to direct local authorities to issue those notices.

What is the actual number of occasions that the Secretary of State has issued such directions since that power became available in November 2011? According to a written answer from the Minister for Children to my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) on 16 June this year, the Secretary of State has issued directions not on hundreds, or dozens of occasions or even double figures; the Secretary of State has issued directions to local authorities to issue warning notices on precisely four occasions in the last four years.

How can the Minister argue that there is a need so pressing for the Secretary of State to have to lay down primary legislation in order to issue orders directly herself when the Government are struggling to average one direction per year to local authorities since they took the power to direct local authorities to issue those warning notices?

The Opposition believe that Ministers should have to demonstrate that they need to acquire more power and are not just doing it to sound tough. If they really needed this power, surely there would have been many more occasions on which they would have chosen to direct local authorities to issue warning notices than there have been in the past four years since they took that power under the 2011 Act, which amended the Education and Inspections Act 2006. We will listen with interest to the Minister’s justification for taking that approach in the light of the coasting attitude to the need to issue directions to local authorities over the past four years.

Even if the Minister is unable to accept amendment 15 as we have drafted it—I understand that Ministers generally have an aversion to accepting any wording proposed by the Opposition—will he assure the Committee that any actions set out in warning notices by Ministers will be reasonable? What is his assessment of the example I gave of an academy warning notice required by Ministers? I do not argue with the prescriptions within that warning notice—they seem to be fairly standard proposals. Do Ministers seriously put forward the idea that they are the sorts of things that could reasonably be achieved in full during a one-month warning notice period?

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Would it be helpful if the Minister told us how many warning notices—over and above four—have been given to academies?

[Kevin Brennan]

Yes. I apologise for not having that answer to hand myself. I am sure that if the Minister does not have that number before him or in his mind, he will—through the well-established process of parliamentary in-flight refuelling—be able to obtain that information by the time he gets to his feet.

Education and Adoption Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Kevin Brennan and John Pugh

Tuesday 30th June 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Kevin Brennan]

Q 35 I apologise for stopping you, but briefly, the Bill says “must” and that was the question I asked you earlier. It does not envisage an IEB as a possible tool to be used in those circumstances.

Sir Daniel Moynihan: No, but IEBs have often been used in those circumstances, so part of the success of the figures that we have just heard is that of IEBs on their way to delivering an academy solution. I know all academies are not successful and I am not claiming that they are, but not all treatments for any problem are successful and it does not mean that you should not have the treatment. In many cases, sponsored academies are doing an amazing job.

Richard Watts: One thing I would add is that local authorities face some bureaucratic hurdles in trying to place IEBs on schools that we think need some intervention. One of the changes to the Bill that we would like to see is to give local authorities the power to introduce IEBs without having to go through the process of applying to the Secretary of State, as that allows us to tackle problems more quickly.

Malcolm Trobe: Coming back to the original question, I would urge members of the Committee to look at the ASCL blueprint for a self-improving school system. We believe that school leaders are very committed to having a system in which there is school to school support, whether that be through federations, schools working together or through multi-academy trusts. The expertise to improve schools is within the profession itself and we believe that it is by schools working together that we will see a continuing improvement in our education system.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Q 36 Following on from that, clearly the problem is coasting. Everybody wants the problem of coasting addressed. The only solution in the legislation is academisation. Apart from changing governance and headteacher, which often follows with academisation, what do academies have in their toolkit to address the problem of coasting that an LEA does not, and vice-versa? Councillor Watts, could you begin?

Richard Watts: My take is that actually governance status is not a very good indicator of any organisation’s capacity to change. There are some very good academy conversions—Harris is an extremely good chain—and there are some very poor academy conversions. Governance status is to my mind a distraction in all of this. There is a set of toolkits which are about getting outstanding leadership and teaching into schools, and any middle-tier organisation, be it an academy chain or a local authority, should have the powers to do that quickly and decisively. Primarily, good schools are made up of outstanding leaders, good teachers and a capacity to improve internally, working with partners. That is the only proven record across the piece of driving up schools.

Catholic Schools (Admissions)

Debate between Kevin Brennan and John Pugh

Wednesday 30th April 2014 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Dobbin, to participate in this debate under your chairmanship. I congratulate the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) on his charity in taking on this debate when the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) was unable to. As ever, he led the debate ably and elucidated the issues very well.

The hon. Member for East Hampshire mentioned that free schools—this may come up in the Minister’s response—are given priority over the setting-up of a new voluntary-aided school. If a new Catholic school is needed because there is demand from a sufficient number of Catholics in an area, why should free schools or any other schools be given priority over voluntary-aided schools? The Minister could solve the problem here and now, and perhaps he will pick that up in his response. I do not see why that should not be possible.

The hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) told us that he taught at St Kevin’s school in Kirkby.

[John Pugh]

To put the record straight, I should say that I used St Kevin’s in Kirkby as an example; I believe it does not exist any more. I taught at Salesian high school.

[Kevin Brennan]

I apologise, Mr Dobbin. I obviously did not listen carefully enough to the hon. Gentleman’s philosophical—as always—contribution. In view of his usual intellectual contributions, perhaps he should have taught at St Thomas Aquinas high school.

[John Pugh]

There was indeed a St Thomas Aquinas high school down the road from Salesian high. It was known locally as “Tommy Ackers”.

[Kevin Brennan]

I understand that school could squeeze the pupils into very small spaces.

We also had contributions from the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban), who referred to free schools, and the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), who thought that some critics of Catholic admissions and education were sneering. I congratulate all hon. Members on their contributions and interventions.

Like other hon. Members here, I attended a Catholic school and I am a Roman Catholic. I attended St David’s Roman Catholic school in Cwmbran and St Alban’s Roman Catholic comprehensive school in Pontypool, which, as was said earlier, drew from a wide catchment area in that part of what was first Monmouthshire and then Gwent. It included my home town, Cwmbran, and Pontypool, Blaenavon, Abertillery, Ebbw Vale and other areas of the Gwent valleys.

Given my name, which is Irish, hon. Members may not be surprised that I had a Catholic education, and the names on the school register were diverse. I shared classes with people such as Michael Sczymanski, Endonio Cordero, Maria Bracchi and the usual mixture of people with names such as Mario Evans and so on. There were many Italians, Irish and Poles mingling with the Welsh, and they were a diverse and interesting group of colleagues.

Forced Conversion of Schools to Academies

Debate between Kevin Brennan and John Pugh

Tuesday 12th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[John Pugh]

Yes, that is distressing. The hon. Gentleman is a witness to the fact that we have moved from a situation in which parents were allowed a vote to one in which parents do not have a voice.

I would like to draw attention to the well documented fact that some of the brokers’ behaviour is markedly aggressive. One governor of fairly robust temperament described a broker as “seriously scary”. I find the process appalling. Regardless of what one feels about the academy programme, I find it distressing that people who have the interests of children and their schools at heart feel that they have been put in that situation. It strikes me that it is bullying. The intention is to close the contract and sign it there and then, which is the worst kind of sharp salesmanship, if I can put it like that. It is obviously wide open to corruption; it is about making offers that people cannot refuse, straight out of the Vito Corleone textbook. I see absolutely no reason why we who wish to stop bullying in schools allow the bullying of schools.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Fortunately, we have the Minister with responsibility for bullying here, so she can deal with any accusations of bullying.

Surely the hon. Gentleman is being completely unfair to the Government. Did he read the article by Warwick Mansell in The Guardian yesterday? It quoted Tim Crumpton, a councillor in Dudley, who said that after he made accusations of bullying, he received a letter from the Department saying:

“We carried out a thorough investigation and found no basis in the claims.”

Does that satisfy the hon. Gentleman?

[John Pugh]

I am sure that the Department took the broker’s word for it. What I am describing has been told to me by people I have known for some time, who have no axe to grind and whom I trust.

I feel particularly aggrieved about my area. Under previous regimes, not a single school in Sefton ever opted out. We had two ballots, both of which were lost. There were good reasons. Sefton was one of the first LEAs to give schools true financial independence to pioneer; in fact, I was on the local authority at the time. It has kept its central costs low. It has always prioritised education and schools. It stands favourable comparison with other LEAs. Its schools are good and, better still, there are good relations between the LEA and the schools, which themselves cluster together harmoniously and supportively. There is a genuine communitarian spirit, accompanied by good results. To make things more acutely painful, Sefton has a good record, praised by the Schools Minister, for improving its schools; it is in the top five of LEAs.

Teachers Pay

Debate between Kevin Brennan and John Pugh

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?