Birmingham Schools

Debate between Michael Gove and Lord Blunkett

Monday 9th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. The Department for Education has been faster to react to concerns expressed about schools and to deal with failure than many local authorities. The case of Saltley, a local authority maintained school, is shocking, but let me stress that Birmingham city council is now fully seized of the importance of dealing with this problem. Let me pay tribute to Sir Albert Bore, whom I met earlier today, who now understands fully the vital importance of working with central Government to deal with it. Local government has failed in the past. We need to ensure that central and local government work together to deal with this problem.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

May I first welcome the fact that we seem to be moving inexorably towards a national curriculum that is applied nationally? That is progress.

In the spirit of the Secretary of State’s last answer, will he ask his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to delve into the Home Office archives for a research report of 10 years ago—funded by the Government—which examined the cultural isolation of, and the lessons to be learned from, schools in Burnley and adjoining Blackburn? The report was counter-intuitive, but it would now be extremely helpful in going forward.

[Michael Gove]

I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I think that he is referring to the Cantle report, which we have looked at in the past. Certainly, there is a body of work that helps us to understand some of the challenges of separate communities and of how to secure better integration.

On the question of the curriculum, the one thing I would say is that I am confused about Labour’s position on the national curriculum. Labour Members seem to want to extend it to all schools, but the shadow Secretary of State has said that all schools should have the ability to opt out completely from it. I appreciate that the right hon. Gentleman has the benefit of experience and that the shadow Minister does not, but until we get a consensus view from the Labour party I will listen to Sir Michael Wilshaw.

PISA Results

Debate between Michael Gove and Lord Blunkett

Tuesday 3rd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I thank the Chairman of the Select Committee on Education for his wise words. He is absolutely right—there was a significant increase in investment and, as I mentioned in my statement, we have one of the most socially just systems of education funding in the developed world. However, we did not move forward as we should have done. My hon. Friend asks, of course, when we will see the fruits of our reform programme. As Andreas Schleicher of the OECD asked yesterday: is it too early on the basis of these results to judge the coalition reforms? Absolutely, we could not possibly judge the coalition Government on these results, he said. We are “moving from” ideas “to implementation”, and 2015 would be the very earliest.

My hon. Friend makes the vital point that we need to do more to promote mathematics and science. The English baccalaureate does that. The increased emphasis in many academies and free schools that have opened under the Government does that, but there is still more that we can do, and I shall meet representatives from higher education and our best schools just before Christmas to see what we can do to encourage more girls to do even better in mathematics and science.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

I think that our young people deserve slightly better than the regrettable remarks from the Chair of the Select Committee.

In the four years in which I was privileged to serve as Education and Employment Secretary, I tried to persuade the world that it would take time before change achieved results. The world decided that it would hold me to account for the measures that I took. What makes the Secretary of State, after three years and seven months, think that he should not be held to account?

[Michael Gove]

I absolutely do believe that we should be held to account for the changes that we have made, which is why I look forward to Ofsted’s report in a fortnight. It will report on what has changed in the course of the past year, and it will reflect, I believe, improved teaching standards in all our schools. Earlier, I ran through some figures—I know that the right hon. Gentleman took note of them—that recorded the increased number of highly qualified teachers in our classrooms. As I mentioned, Andreas Schleicher pointed out that it would take time for the changes that we have introduced to take effect. Just as members of the Opposition Front Bench want to take account of PISA and the OECD, so they should take account of Andreas Schleicher’s comments, which seem to me to be fair and proportionate, and all of us should draw the right lessons from them.

GCSEs

Debate between Michael Gove and Lord Blunkett

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

Taken together, the three new reports announced today are not as bad as some of us may have feared. May I put it to the Secretary of State, however, that employers and post-16 providers want young people who have learnt how to learn, have been able to demonstrate that they are able to work in teams and are able to speak English as well as to write it? My experience through night school was that the old O-levels, with the final exams, were easy for those of us at the time who had a good memory. What we surely need to be moving to in the continuing consultation is removing the worst of the past and the over-emphasis on a modular approach and assessment, while not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Will he continue to listen?

[Michael Gove]

I am very grateful to be praised with faint damns by the right hon. Gentleman, and I entirely agree with him; it is important that speaking and listening sits alongside the composition, written and analytical skills in English language. That is what we propose to do, by ensuring that speaking and listening, which is inherently more difficult to assess, in what is a benchmark qualification, is assessed alongside the written component of English. I always look forward to hearing from the right hon. Gentleman, who is far, far more often right than wrong.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Michael Gove and Lord Blunkett

Monday 4th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is right. Free schools are making a significant difference in driving up standards in every part of the country from Merseyside to the Mendips. I am absolutely committed to making sure that everyone who is committed philanthropically to supporting state education is given the chance to do so.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

T5. When I give the awards at Longley Park sixth-form college on 21 March, I shall pass on the enthusiasm of the Under-Secretary of State for Skills for sixth-form colleges. The college teaches maths and English to 16 to 19-year-olds, and through its teaching enrichment programme, which continues at over 600 hours per year, it has increased access in a way not seen in generations. Is it not strange, therefore, that £740 per student is going to be cut from its budget by 2016?

Curriculum and Exam Reform

Debate between Michael Gove and Lord Blunkett

Thursday 7th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the fantastic work he did during his time as a Minister to ensure that some of the mistakes made in the past were reversed and that some of the successes achieved in the past were built on. I absolutely agree with him: the curriculum took a wrong turn in 2007. Real improvements were made to the national curriculum and how it was taught when the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) was Education Secretary. Sadly, those improvements were not maintained. I hope we are now back on course in order to ensure that our curriculum ranks with those of the highest-performing jurisdictions in the world.

Copies of the national curriculum, my letter to the exam regulator Ofqual and all the other relevant documents will be placed in the Library.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

Flattery will get the Secretary of State nowhere. I welcome the glimmer of humility, as well as many of the changes announced this morning, not least the range of subject areas that will now count for the value-added tables and for GCSEs. Will he confirm that all these subjects will now be of equal weight and that citizenship will not only remain in the curriculum, but have a national programme of study?

[Michael Gove]

I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman not only for his distinguished tenure of the office of Education Secretary and the reforms he introduced, but for the statesmanlike way in which he has responded, which I am sure others can learn from. I can absolutely and with pleasure confirm that citizenship will remain a programme of study at key stages 3 and 4. I look forward to working with him to ensure that this valuable subject is even better taught in more of our schools.

Exam Reform

Debate between Michael Gove and Lord Blunkett

Monday 17th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words. Let me first take this opportunity to say that, during his two and a half years in the Department for Education, he did more than anyone else to ensure that rigour was injected back into our education system—[Interruption.] I shall ignore the graceless remarks from the Opposition Front Bench.

I want to underline my gratitude to my hon. Friend for doing such an exemplary job, from the introduction of the phonics test at the end of year 1 and the reform of key stage 2 tests to ensure that spelling, punctuation and grammar were properly marked, to the groundwork that he carried out in this examination reform. Future generations of teachers and pupils will be grateful to him. His comments on exam textbooks are very well made, and I believe that the reforms we are making to eliminate the race to the bottom will provide room for education publishers to do just what he hopes they do: to enhance the quality of textbooks.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

I hope that the Secretary of State will stop maligning my former special adviser on these occasions. When I inherited the brief in 1997, my Conservative predecessor involved me in preparing the Dearing inquiry and in setting up the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, which the Secretary of State has abolished. Is it not time to stop the chest banging and belligerence—the sheer, artificial anger about the past—and to agree to collaborate in the interests of parents, pupils, head teachers and teaching staff? That way, we can reach a consensus on a way forward for agreed improvement in rigour and on a qualification fit for the 21st century, rather than adopting the current approach, which is, “We know best, you know nothing; we’re going to do it.”

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his contribution, and I am sure the whole House will note with approval his conversion to a style of politics in which he abjures machismo and chest beating. It is entirely our intention to seek to work with everyone who wants to ensure that our examination system can be better. That is why we are having a consultation process over the next few years—to ensure that we can have an examination system that suits all students.

The right hon. Gentleman was kind enough to refer to his former special adviser, Mr Conor Ryan. Far from maligning Mr Ryan, I wish to embrace him, just as he has embraced these reforms in a spirit of bipartisan consensus and progressivism.

Secondary Education

Debate between Michael Gove and Lord Blunkett

Thursday 21st June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. One of the principal problems with our education system is not only that it has fallen behind other nations, but that it is one of the most inequitable, stratified and segregated. The way in which we tackle that is not by dumbing down on qualifications, but by raising expectations at every level.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

I appeal to the Secretary of State to stop rubbishing everything that happened before he came into office; BG—before Gove—is not a very attractive proposition. Will he tell the House why Margaret Thatcher introduced a common national curriculum and a common examination system in 1988?

[Michael Gove]

I am at pains, I hope, never to rubbish everything that preceded this Government, but I want to tell the truth, and the truth is that, although there were improvements, many as a direct result of the right hon. Gentleman’s stewardship of the Department for Education, wrong turnings were taken, one of which, I am afraid, was to allow a race to the bottom in examinations, which serves no one’s interests.

Education Bill

Debate between Michael Gove and Lord Blunkett

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The total increase as a proportion of the cohort was actually less than 1%, because it was a remarkably low base. The right hon. Gentleman cites a selective statistic, because he chooses only two years from Labour’s record. It is interesting that he chooses only those two years, because, when we look at the broad spectrum of statistics, we see that he cannot gainsay any of them.

If the right hon. Gentleman wants more statistics, why does he not look at the OECD programme for international student assessment—PISA—statistics? He quoted them yesterday, and they tell us what happened on Labour’s watch to every child’s education. We know that the poorest were worst off, but the other set of statistics that he invoked yesterday demonstrates that, actually, all our children were failed by Labour. We moved from fourth to 14th in the world rankings for science, seventh to 17th in literacy and eighth to 24th in mathematics by 2007.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Michael Gove]

Not yet. I shall be delighted to give way in just a second.

By 2010, we had moved from fourth to 16th, from seventh to 25th and from eighth to 28th in those subjects. In mathematics, 15-year-olds in Shanghai are more than two years ahead of 15-year-olds here. The OECD found that, in this country, the number of 15-year-olds who can generalise and creatively use information based on their own investigations and the modelling of complex problem situations is just 1.8%; in Shanghai, it is 25%—more than 10 times better.

[Michael Gove]

In a second.

The only way in which we will generate sustainable economic growth is by reforming our education system so that we can keep pace with our competitors. How can a country that is now 28th in the world for mathematics expect to be the home of the Microsofts, the Googles and the Facebooks of the future? The only way in which we can hope to compete effectively is not just by educating a minority to a high level, but by utilising the innate talent of every child, and that is what the measures in this Education Bill will do.

[Mr Blunkett]

Of course it is true that many countries throughout the world are investing in and driving forward their educational standards in a commendable way. However, the PISA study to which the Secretary of State referred and the changes in tables that he described are affected substantially—are they not?—by the fact that the number of countries taking part doubled, so he was not comparing like with like.

[Michael Gove]

I absolutely was comparing like with like, because the whole point about these tables is that they show us how we are doing relative to our competitors. Much as I admire the right hon. Gentleman, and much as I am grateful to him for embarking on a course of reform which, sadly, was thwarted subsequently, I have to acknowledge, as does he, that the statistics produced by the OECD are ungainsayable. I would love to be able to celebrate a greater level of achievement, but I am afraid that this is the dreadful inheritance that our children face as a result of the Government whom he latterly supported from the Back Benches.

Education Maintenance Allowance

Debate between Michael Gove and Lord Blunkett

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I want to make some progress.

On travel, it is important that we recognise that local authorities are under a statutory duty to support young people aged between 16 and 19, and, up to the age of 24, any young learner with learning difficulties, to get to school or college. It is the law. Local authorities are failing in their statutory duty if they do not provide support. The Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 strengthened that duty. Local authorities must consult young people and their parents, publish an appropriate plan and ensure that there is access.

I appreciate that local authorities, like all of us, are having to deal with the consequences of the desperate financial mess the previous Government bequeathed us, but the best local authorities are showing the way. Oxfordshire provides transport and totally waives the cost for any student whose family is in receipt of income support, housing benefit, free school meals or council tax benefit. Essex waives travel costs for children in receipt of a range of benefits. In Liberal Democrat-controlled Hull, any student in receipt of education maintenance allowance also receives a travel grant to cope with the full cost—

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

They won’t now.

[Michael Gove]

I suspect they won’t if a Labour council takes power, but if people are wise enough to vote Liberal Democrat at the next local election in Hull—[Hon. Members: “Oh.”]—or for the Conservatives in any seat where we are well placed to defeat Labour, they will have a council that is fulfilling its statutory duty. It is no surprise that there are Liberal Democrat and Conservative councils that ensure that all students receive the support they deserve. It is striking that that is in addition to EMA.

Schools White Paper

Debate between Michael Gove and Lord Blunkett

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I thank my hon. Friend, the Chairman of the Select Committee. There is a role for the Select Committee and there is a role for Ofsted. The White Paper specifically states that we want Ofqual, the exams regulator, to benchmark our exams against the world’s best. The more data we have, the better. The White Paper also says that we will ensure that a sufficient number of schools take part in the international comparisons run by the OECD, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study and other organisations. I am open to all ways of ensuring that we rigorously benchmark the performance of our schools and indeed our Schools Ministers.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

May I welcome those aspects of the White Paper that were directly cribbed from initiatives brought in from 1997? How does the Secretary of State justify the contradiction of being against targets but toughening them and introducing new ones, less prescription but more prescription, less central direction but more top-down diktats, and more freedom for some schools but direction and restriction for others? What form of geometry did he learn to square such circles?

[Michael Gove]

I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman not just for his question, but for his achievements as Secretary of State for Education. I have said it before, and I will repeat that he was an outstanding Education Secretary. One reason why he was so good was that he recognised that there is a time for central Government to play a role, and a time for them to let go. When he was Education Secretary, it was vital to tighten things up, particularly at the bottom, but, over time, he recognised that as the education system improved, we needed to let go more and more. We are saying that there should be a relentless focus on underperformance. We need tough standards for schools that are failing, but for those that can help there is, as Joel Klein said, a chance to liberate greatness rather than mandate it.

Education Policy

Debate between Michael Gove and Lord Blunkett

Monday 18th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The Government have consulted on exactly who should receive the pupil premium. That consultation began earlier this year and there are still a couple of hours left should the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) wish to contribute to it—he has not yet done so. We are looking at a variety of measures of poverty and we wish to target the pupil premium most effectively on all children in need. One of the disadvantages of the way in which the previous Government targeted resources on the very poorest was that the premium attached to children who were eligible for free school meals was as low as £22 in some local authority areas.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

In fact, the pupil learning credit was £350 per pupil in the most disadvantaged schools.

Will the Secretary of State tell me what was the impact of the £600 million cut in area-based grant from the Department for Communities and Local Government, which was half the total announced on 22 June, and which cut child and adolescent mental health services, work dealing with teenage pregnancy and youth and careers services across the country, coupled with the £670 million cut in-year from his own Department? If we cut his salary by £40,000 and gave him £20,000 back, would he be better or worse off?

[Michael Gove]

I suspect that the taxpayer would be a lot better off, but I do not do this job for money; I do it because I am convinced that we need to do better to improve children’s education. The right hon. Gentleman was a great Education Secretary, and I wish to take this opportunity to pay tribute to him. During his years as Education Secretary, we were able to see an improvement in performance in primary schools that was not subsequently matched by any of his successors. Yet during his first three years as Education Secretary the amount spent on education in this country actually declined for three years as a proportion of national income, which proves that if the right policies are pursued and we are rigorous about cutting waste, we can ensure that children will perform better—that is what we are doing.

Education and Health

Debate between Michael Gove and Lord Blunkett

Wednesday 2nd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, and I congratulate him. In suggesting that other countries are, to use his words, reducing their sovereign debt, is he not admitting—given that he is the Education Secretary and that he can therefore add up—that the previous Labour Government cannot have been responsible for those countries’ debts? Does he acknowledge that they took action in the same way as our Government did to protect us from a meltdown in the system?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for making the point, as I was arguing, that other countries are taking action now—in this year, even as we speak—to deal with these problems. He stood on a platform, as did the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood, saying that it would be “folly” to take action this year. That view—that action was required this year—was not put forward only by Conservative Members, as it was the view of the Governor of the Bank of England, who backed early action to deal with the deficit. He said that we needed to

“tackle excessive fiscal budget deficits”

and added:

“I am very pleased that there is a very clear and binding commitment to accelerate the reduction in the deficit over the lifetime of the Parliament and to introduce additional measures this fiscal year to demonstrate the importance of getting to grips with that before running the risk of an adverse market reaction.”

How wise were those words and how welcome is such robustness from the Governor of the Bank of England. Indeed, one newspaper columnist has argued:

“That is why Bank of England independence, once a controversial idea, is now accepted across all parties and by both sides of industry.”

The columnist in question is, of course, the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood, writing in the Wakefield Express.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Gove]

I thank my hon. Friend for another constructive contribution. It is true that as I listened to it, the words “On your bike” passed through my head, but I have to say that I agree with him. It is because I believe in community schools and want them to survive that I believe we should work together to ensure that they are saved from the pressure—whatever it is and from whoever it may come—that may lead communities to be robbed of the schools that they love. One of the aspects of the reform programme that we are proposing, which I hope will commend itself to him and to many of my hon. Friends, is our determination to ensure that small schools, urban or rural, can survive where there is strong parental support for them.

The vision that we have for our education and health reforms is driven by the shared values of this partnership Government. We believe in devolving power to the lowest possible level. We believe that the function of the state is to promote equity, not uniformity; to enable, and not to conscript. We also believe that the power of the state should be deployed vigorously to help the vulnerable and the voiceless, those who lack resources and connections, and those who are poor materially and excluded socially.

However, we also believe that those most in need will never be helped to achieve all that they can unless we harness the full power of civil society, the initiative of creative individuals, the imagination of social entrepreneurs, and the idealism of millions of public sector workers. That means reducing bureaucracy, getting rid of misguided political intervention, respecting professional autonomy, and working in genuine partnership with local communities. It is that genuinely liberal, and liberating, vision that unites every Member on this side of the House and gives our reform programme its radical energy, not least in education.

We have—we have been bequeathed—one of the most stratified and segregated school systems in the developed world. The gap in exam performance between private schools and state schools grew under the last Government. That was a reverse for social justice, and an affront against social mobility. In the last year for which we have figures, just 45 of 80,000 young people eligible for free school meals made it to Oxbridge. More students went to Oxbridge from the school attended by the Leader of the Opposition, St Paul’s, than from the entire population of poor boys and girls on benefit.

I know that the consciences of Opposition Members who are motivated by idealism will have been pricked by those figures. No one contemplating that record can be in any doubt that reform is urgent. That is why we are pressing ahead with the sort of changes that will drive improvement across the whole of the state school system. We are cutting spending on the back office to prioritise spending on the front line.

As was pointed out by the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham)—who, sadly, is no longer in the Chamber—we have already saved millions of pounds by taking steps to abolish BECTA and the QCDA—two bureaucratic organisations with their own chairmen, their own chief executives, their own boards, their own communications teams, their own strategies and their own stakeholder groups—so we can ensure that money goes to the classroom. Today I can announce—as the hon. Member for Huddersfield anticipated—that we will take steps to abolish a third quango, the General Teaching Council for England.

The GTCE takes more than £36 from every teacher every year, and many of them have told me that it gives them almost nothing in return. I have listened to representations from teacher organisations—including teaching unions such as the NASUWT—which would prefer that money to be spent in the classroom, and I have been persuaded by them, the professionals. The GTCE does not improve classroom practice, does not help professionals to develop, and does not help children to learn. In short, it does not earn its keep, so it must go.

To those who argue that we need a body to help police the profession, let me say that this Government want to trust professionals, not busybody and patronise them; but when professionals dishonour the vocation of teaching, action needs to be taken. When the GTCE was recently asked to rule on a BNP teacher who had posted poisonous filth on an extremist website, it concluded that his description of immigrants as animals was not racist, and that therefore he could not be struck off. I think that that judgment was quite wrong and that we need new proposals to ensure that extremism has no place in our classrooms, and I also believe that the bodies that have failed to protect us in the past cannot be the answer in the future.

[Mr Blunkett]

There may well be an argument about the role of the GTCE, especially in respect of the example the right hon. Gentleman has just given, but does he agree that it does not behove him as the new Education Secretary to abolish the GTCE on financial grounds, given that the sum of £36 per teacher to which he referred will not be taxed on teachers and therefore will not be money that can be made available to the front line as he stated just a few minutes ago? Is this not the kind of nonsense that got us into having the pledge that £2.5 billion would be saved by doing away with biometric passports, when it turns out that the correct figure is £86 million over four years?

[Michael Gove]

I have great respect for the right hon. Gentleman, but I must point out to him that £36.50 per teacher goes to fund the GTCE, and much of that money actually comes from the Department itself, although some comes from teachers as well. I believe that the money the Department currently spends supporting the GTCE should instead be spent on supporting the front line, because I believe that overall we need to ensure that money that is currently spent on resources such as bodies, institutions, protocols and frameworks that do not raise the quality of teaching and do not improve the experience of children in the classroom should be shifted so that it is spent in the right direction.