Improving Education Standards

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Luke Graham

Thursday 29th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Neil O'Brien]

That was an important intervention from the hon. Lady. I do not agree that those subjects were chosen on ideological grounds. Funnily enough, when we look at the longitudinal earnings and outcomes data, those kind of hard sciences and subjects are the ones that are important gateways to the professions, which will lead to higher earnings. On her point about design and technology, if we were to look again at the subjects and include something else, that would be one of the first things that I would consider.

[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a comprehensive speech. He seems to be focusing a lot on England though. Obviously, this is the United Kingdom Parliament and improving educational standards is especially important in Scotland, where our international standards, particularly in maths and science, are falling. We are falling in the international tables, whereas other parts of the UK are rising. It would be interesting to hear—perhaps he will come on to this shortly—why he thinks that is and why Scotland is being left behind, while the rest of the UK is taking a step forward.

[Neil O'Brien]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important intervention. I was going to come on to that, but I will deal with it now. Education, and the quality of Scotland’s education system, was Scotland’s pride and joy. This is one of the important things that everyone in the country feels very strongly about. I am from Huddersfield, and all of the rest of my family are from Glasgow, so it is something that we all care about. Not having some of new Labour’s reform agenda in Scotland is one reason why school standards in Scotland have gone off the boil. The other problem, of course, is that because of the decisions on higher education funding of the Scottish National party Government—unfortunately there is no one here from the SNP to represent them—pupils from more deprived areas are now twice as likely to go to university if they are in England than if they are in Scotland. That is a radical unfairness in our country caused by the policies of the SNP Government.

Let me just finish the point about rigour. I will say something which Labour Members may agree with. We can restore rigour—we have done that and it is an important move—without having to have terminal exams. I am quite a supporter of modular exams. Young people’s mental health is an increasingly important issue. Many young people I meet in schools feel strongly about it. There is not necessarily a connection between high standards in exams and terminal exams. I understand that there are pedagogical arguments for terminal exams, but there are also good arguments for modular ones as well.

One important reform—this is important in the context of improving teacher recruitment and teacher numbers; I am glad that there are 10,000 more teachers than there were in 2010—is to stop Ofsted being excessively overbearing. When I was the chair of governors at a London primary school, I was struck by the way in which everybody was being socialised into jumping every time Ofsted changed some tick box and we were all chasing around after Ofsted. There was a complaint from the Labour Front Bench earlier about some schools not being inspected particularly often by Ofsted. That is part of an approach that focuses on places where there are problems and does not hassle teachers unnecessarily with inspections that do not need to happen. I agree with the Government’s move towards assessing school improvement on progress, data and outcomes, rather than trying to reach into schools with occasional inspections every three years, as if that were the way to drive school improvement. The way towards school improvement is to have high-performing, multi-academy trusts; I will return to that point soon.

I disagree with Opposition Front Benchers about free schools. According to recent data, they are our highest-performing schools on the Progress 8 measure, phonics and key stage 1. One of the important things about free schools is that they allow innovation into our system, and those innovations can be quite different and from different pedagogies. For example, School 21—set up by new Labour adviser Peter Hyman—has a huge focus on oracy, which the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) mentioned earlier. That is an interesting innovation. It is a high-performing school from one angle. Michaela Community School, set up by Katharine Birbalsingh, is also a brilliantly high-performing free school that is bringing new ideas into the education agenda, with a strong emphasis on order and discipline. This shows that we can achieve high results in different ways. Free schools have let lots of new ideas into the system that can then percolate through to other schools.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O'Brien]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman; he held the door open for me earlier this week, and has done so again verbally today.

Kevin Conway was a guy who turned around Greenhead College—the college I attended—in Huddersfield, which had been rather underperforming. He was a great and totally uncompromising individual who achieved amazing things in my sixth-form college and transformed the lives of generations of people who grew up in Huddersfield.

[Luke Graham]

My hon. Friend is making a fantastic point about great thinkers in education. Earlier this week, I went to a YouTube event where I was able to see the rapping teacher, who is now getting about 4 million hits a week on some of his online content, which is helping students across the United Kingdom and internationally to make progress and improve their grade results—something that I am sure my hon. Friend would welcome.

[Neil O'Brien]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for intervening in such a friendly way. The rapping teacher is clearly able to speak in whole finished paragraphs, while I am barely able to articulate a sentence.

I really just wanted to say that Kevin Conway was an inspiration to me and really did amazing things for the town of Huddersfield—the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) was briefly here a moment ago, but has had to go—through his uncompromising approach. He did not have an ideological approach; it was just an insistence on very high standards. Through that great work, he really did change the lives of a lot of people.

Let us move on from the debacle of my attempt to pay tribute to my old principal to a point of policy and boring stuff that I can talk about without welling up. When one visits technical colleges, one always sees the potential. I was in South Leicestershire College just the other day visiting the public services class—the wonderful young people who are going to go off and become firefighters and police officers.

The Government should look again at the whole issue of GCSE resits in FE colleges, because the move to FE and a more work-like environment—I particularly like apprenticeships, but FE is also an important part of the mix—is such an important part of the process for young people who perhaps did not get on with school. These people may have felt like it was not for them and that they were not achieving. The thought behind it was right—that everyone needs a basic grounding in English and maths—but I increasingly think that the GCSE is just not the right thing. Almost everybody who fails it a first time goes on to fail it a second time, and that is very discouraging for young people. It is not the right qualification to ask them to do. Instead, we should look at offering some kind of “maths and English for the citizen” type of qualification.

Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Luke Graham

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 26th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Luke Graham]

Does my hon. Friend’s argument not surely mean that civil partnerships are a step in the right direction, because they allow couples to formalise their cohabitation and make a formal commitment to each other? Does he not agree that we in the Conservative party are champions of individual freedom and we should be providing people with the opportunity to make their choices? This issue is before this House and out for consultation in Scotland. Does he not think this House should lead so that the rest of the UK can follow?

[Neil O'Brien]

I hear the argument my hon. Friend makes and I say, “Of course”, but the thing I gently point out is that a lot of other Members have made the case for civil partnerships as a final status for people who do not want to get married and said that we should deliberately create a halfway house, not as something that people can be in a for a time but for something that they—