Education Performance

Debate between Mel Stride and Stephen Twigg

Thursday 12th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I apologise for being late for this important debate and I congratulate the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss)on initiating it. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), who I assume went to St Eddie’s in my constituency, and the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe).

The starting point of my contribution is the importance of us all taking seriously the available evidence and data about education performance. It may be legitimate self-criticism for all of us, wherever we stand in terms of our parties or on the issues discussed today, to say that we all have instincts and prejudices. We all went to school, many of us have children at school and we all have schools in our constituencies. Understandably, those things, as well as our political philosophies, inform our outlook on school policy, but we need to supplement those instincts and prejudices by looking at the data and evidence.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman rightly points to the importance of evidence when comparing countries, so is he a little concerned that we were not listed in the 2003 PISA results because schools did not provide the requisite amount of information? Does he welcome the fact that this Government will make it mandatory for schools to provide such information?

[Stephen Twigg]

The hon. Gentleman anticipates the next part of my speech. I absolutely share his concern. In fact, I was Schools Minister at the time—I do not know whether he intervened on me with that knowledge—and I remember the difficult conversations we had to have. The subsequent judgment was that the figures, for both 2000 and 2003 I think, were invalid because there were not sufficient schools. All we have to compare is 2006 with 2009.

The hon. Member for South West Norfolk spoke about PISA before I came into the Chamber. I apologise for missing what she said. The Secretary of State has spoken about the PISA outcomes on a number of occasions. Clearly, we must all share his concern about how low down the PISA league table we are for maths, science and reading. There are issues about its methodology and about the new entrants that were not in previous studies, but I will not dwell on them. I share the concern of the hon. Lady and others that we clearly still face a very big challenge.

The hon. Lady referred to Shanghai, which is a part of China that was not in the previous PISA table in 2009 and that went straight in to the current table at No. 1, which is what they used to say on the top 40. It is now top of the PISA league table for maths, science and reading. Clearly, there are lessons that we need to learn from that part of the world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mel Stride]

rose—

[Stephen Twigg]

Allow me to respond to the hon. Lady and then I will give way to the hon. Gentleman if he still wishes to intervene.

From the information that I have in front of me, I can see that the hon. Lady is correct in what she said about Germany and France. As for Japan, we performed better in science and mathematics in year 3-4 and year 8. I accept her point about the validity of different forms of comparative research. None the less, on TIMSS, we were ahead of Japan and the United States. I know what she will say to that. What I am measuring is the improvement on the absolute score. After the improvement, we are still slightly behind Japan, but in that period we improved faster than Japan, although from a lower base.

[Mel Stride]

Is it not the case that our apparent improvements in the TIMSS can to some degree be attributed to the fact that the cohort of countries that we are looking at in each year has changed and that a number of non-OECD African and Asian countries have entered in more recent times, thus slightly flattering our figures?

[Stephen Twigg]

I do not believe so. I am relying on the particular table in front of me. In each case, it examines a country that was in the 1995 cohort and the 2007 cohort. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman’s criticism is valid. The hon. Lady’s implied criticism is a fairer one because I was relying on the improvement. She is right to say that, if we look at the absolute score for Japan, it is, in every case, slightly better than ours, but we have made a greater improvement in that period. Interestingly, the United States is behind us on not just improvement but the absolute score in every case.