Vocational Qualifications
Nic Dakin Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Matthew Hancock
I am always vigilant to making it easier for employers to take on apprentices. That is a very important part of the programme. We have introduced a simple three-step process for employers to take on an apprentice. It appears to be working, because more than half of apprentices are in small and medium-sized enterprises. I am absolutely sure that there is more that we can do to simplify the process and make it as easy as possible.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
As we celebrate national apprenticeship week in its seventh year, will the Minister steal Labour’s plans to make companies employ apprentices as part of the procurement process, which is another positive suggestion?
Matthew Hancock
Crossrail, which is the biggest construction project in Europe and is happening under this Government, has a rule on the number of apprentices involved in procurement. That has had a very positive impact and we are building the FE college that will ensure that we provide such apprenticeships for HS2 as well.
Oral Answers to Questions
Nic Dakin Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Matthew Hancock
Sixth-form colleges are funded on the same per pupil formula as every other school. They do pay VAT, and in return for that they have much more flexibility in their own borrowing. I recognise the campaign. Putting this anomaly right would cost £150 million, money that we do not have because of the enormous deficit left by Labour. I recognise the argument, but at present there is no money.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
Given that money is short, why are the Government spending £63 million on around 1,500 students in nine 16 to 18 free schools—£40,000 per student—while cutting the money going to the 156,000 students in sixth-form colleges?
Matthew Hancock
The resource spending that supports sixth-formers is exactly the same per student in free schools, sixth-form colleges and school sixth forms. We have a national funding formula. Before this Government came to office, we did not have a national funding formula; we had different funding for different pupils. We think it is fairer to have the same funding per pupil for all students, and that is what we are doing.
Michael Gove
As ever, my hon. Friend makes a very acute point. One of the flexibilities we have given—not least to academies and free schools—is the ability to vary school holidays in order to make sure that holidays can be cheaper and parents can take them off-peak. That is another school freedom that, for ideological reasons, I am afraid Labour Front Benchers would deny. I do not understand why they are so keen to make holidays more expensive for hard-working families.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
I am rather perplexed. Are Government Front Benchers able to help me? A written answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) said that there was no idea how much it cost to create 138 new sixth forms in schools. Given that we want value for money, I found that very difficult to understand.
Matthew Hancock
The point I was making is that the amount of resource spending for each pupil aged 16 to 19 is the same, with an additional amount for those from disadvantaged backgrounds and those studying more high-cost programmes like engineering, our support for which is vital for our national economy.
Teaching Quality
Nic Dakin Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Michael Gove
Not for the first time and I am sure not for the last time, my hon. Friend hits the nail squarely on the head. It has now been the case for some time that schools can advertise for and employ instructors, trainees or others.
Michael Gove
We will come to that.
It is important to recognise that situation, because that is exactly what has happened in the school referred to several times in this Chamber and elsewhere by the shadow Secretary of State—the South Leeds academy. When he first raised the issue, I was genuinely concerned, because he said that unqualified teachers might have been hired with just a few GCSEs. If such people were teachers in the classroom, that would be a genuine cause for concern. He alleged that the academy could do that only because of our changes in policy. [Interruption.] No, absolutely not. The South Leeds academy does not have the power in its funding agreement to hire unqualified teachers, because its funding agreement was constructed, written and agreed before the change in policy. The South Leeds academy has advertised for trainees under a policy that has been in place since at least 1982.
I made that point in this House, and I invited the hon. Gentleman to acknowledge that he had made a mistake. I did so as graciously as I could. [Interruption.] No. I hoped that he would take the trouble to check his facts, but he did not. I have received a letter from the chief executive officer and director of Schools Partnership Trust Academies, which is responsible for the school. Of the specific case of South Leeds academy, he said: “The post advertised was for the appointment of trainees to support the teaching of mathematics. This was not made clear in the advert, which was placed in error. Once I became aware of the issue, the advert was withdrawn. A statement was placed on our website to clarify the matter.”
Moreover, I drew that matter to the attention of the shadow Secretary of State in the House. I told him that he was persisting in error, and I gave him an opportunity to retract. He chose not to do so. Will he now take the opportunity to apologise to the South Leeds academy and to the House for getting his facts wrong?
I note that he had the opportunity then to apologise.
Michael Gove
That is a very well made point.—[Interruption.] I should say to the shadow schools Minister, the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), that the credibility with which he speaks on education is undermined by what is happening in his jurisdiction. One reason why Sir Michael Wilshaw and others recognise that it can often be a good idea to employ people who do not at that time have qualified teacher status, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) pointed out, is that there are many teachers in the independent sector who are doing an outstanding job and whom we would want to have in our schools.
One of the direct consequences of the policy that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central spelled out would be that any teacher in the private sector who did not have qualified teacher status would not be able to help the state sector. Where would that leave Liverpool college? Its head teacher does not have QTS, yet it is an outstanding independent school that has been taken into the state sector under our free school programme. Would the hon. Gentleman sack the head teacher and say that decades of outstanding academic achievement are worthless because he knows more about education than the head teacher of Liverpool college?
If the hon. Gentleman thinks that, would he say the same thing to the head teacher of Brighton college, Richard Cairns, who was voted the most outstanding head teacher in the independent sector and was responsible for setting up the London Academy of Excellence? That is another free school that was set up under our programme, and it has just taken children from working-class backgrounds in the east of London, represented by the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), who is no longer in her place, and guaranteed their accession to our best universities. Richard Cairns does not have QTS, yet he has run an outstanding independent school and an outstanding state school. According to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central, he does not know his own job. Who is better qualified to lead schools, the hon. Gentleman or Richard Cairns and the headmaster of Liverpool college? Should we erect barriers to prevent the excellence that is available in the independent sector from being made available in the state sector? I had thought that the role of progressives was to spread excellence rather than ration it, but it appears to me that the Labour party has abandoned progressivism.
Michael Gove
It might, or it might not, but the point is that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central said in his speech that teachers in the independent sector who did not have QTS would have to acquire it to work in the state sector. That means that state schools could not poach great teachers from independent schools, there could be no effective collaboration between them and we would not be able to lift standards in all state schools by using the expertise that others pay for.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
The best teachers want to be better teachers. What is changing fastest is the young people themselves and the world that they are being prepared for, both as young people and in the future as citizens and workers. Today, very young children are adept at using a tablet computer, and anyone who goes into a primary school will see electronic devices being used to access information, to draft written text creatively or to make video clips or other inventive things. The world is changing rapidly and teachers need to change too. Pedagogy needs to move with the times. The best teachers have always wanted to be better teachers. That is why in my 30-plus years of what was the chalkface and is now the technology interface, I have always seen teachers talking to each other, keen to share and develop, and keen to learn in the interests of their learners.
Politicians, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) said in a quite brilliant speech, need to be careful in the way they talk about these matters. They need to talk about the real world, not the world of fantasy classrooms, and about what is actually going on out there. Politicians would do well to start by understanding and celebrating what is going on in teacher education and ongoing teacher development. It is worth understanding how important high quality initial teacher training is in getting recruitment right. We have debated this before, and the Government’s obsession with School Direct is imperilling effective teacher recruitment and induction. It may well be that one of the Government’s achievements is to preside over not only a school places crisis, but a teacher supply crisis as well, while continuing with expensive, unproven pet projects.
There is a huge amount of excellent practice in schools and colleges, which any consultation on ongoing teacher development should capture, recognise and build on. Every hon. Member who has spoken has paid tribute to the work of teachers throughout the land, and I add my tributes, but it is important to understand the role of induction and support in teachers’ early years. When I was a principal, I always said to staff that supporting a new teacher effectively was one of the most important jobs they did. Get it right and the benefits are huge. Get it wrong and the problems are massive. We need to recognise how appraisal works at the moment, how the process to support staff going through the threshold works and how the ongoing process of keeping evidence of personal development that is commonplace in our schools and colleges works. Anything new needs to build on this. The hon. Member for Norwich South (Simon Wright) was right: we need to build on what is there to avoid unnecessary bureaucratic problems.
People do not want unqualified doctors to operate on them, so it is hardly surprising that parents do not want unqualified teachers teaching their children. It is about professionalism. Some Government Members seek to suggest that by giving someone qualified status the problem has been solved, but that clearly is not the case. This is about recognising the role of professionalism and professionalising the future in a way that secures the future.
The things that are important in terms of ongoing teacher education are subject knowledge—I have never come across a teacher who does not want to improve their subject knowledge—pedagogy; which is challenging and moves rapidly, particularly at the moment; assessment; and leadership, because many teachers will have leadership roles. Unless school and college leaders are committed to teacher improvement, it will not happen.
Michael Gove
I always enjoy listening to the hon. Gentleman, who is a distinguished figure in further education. Does he agree with me, with the shadow Secretary of State and with Amanda Phillips, the head teacher of a school in Tower Hamlets who recently wrote so passionately about the subject in The Sun, that we need performance-related pay for teachers in order to ensure that we have more effective continuous professional development?
Nic Dakin
My personal view is that performance-related pay rarely works in any sphere of life; all it tends to do is push up the cost of pay without tackling the real issues. I think that separating pay and performance is helpful, because we need to focus on getting performance right. If teachers are not up to scratch, we need to tackle that as a separate issue. I have dealt with that myself. Any good school or college leader will do that day in, day out—it is not easy, but it is done. The link between pay and performance, in my experience, is unhelpful more often than not.
My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby listed the pioneers. I could add to that list, but time is short. I merely draw attention to the strength of his argument, which needs to be listened to.
Education Funding for 18-year-olds
Nic Dakin Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Williams. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) on securing this debate. The attendance demonstrates how important this debate is inside this building and—more importantly—outside.
The fact is that students at colleges are 22% less funded per student than in the 5 to 16 sector, so this sector is already under serious pressure, financially. Frankly, the Government are cutting this sector because they have chosen to protect 5 to 16-year-old funding and they have nowhere else to go to cut the funding further. However, at the same time there are political choices, because the Government have created nine new 16 to 19 free schools at a cost of £62 million. The answer to my written question shows that students in those schools are funded at £5,500 per student, compared with £4,000 per student in other colleges.
Nic Dakin
No. I have to allow other hon. Members to get in.
Political choices are being made, which is why these colleges, and these youngsters, are being hit again.
Essentially, post-16 there are two types of institution: widening participation institutions, which include further education colleges and about half of sixth-form colleges, and selective institutions, including most schools and some sixth-form colleges. Essentially, the measure will hit widening participation colleges, which take a gamble, or work to invest, in students who are highest-risk in respect of Ofsted outcomes and in terms of needing the most work in them while they are there; and now they are the highest-risk in terms of cash. Hon. Members are right to say that the result will be perverse outcomes, in terms of behaviours of people in various areas.
Three types of students are affected: first, those who have not achieved their five A* to C grades at the end of compulsory education, coming to 16, and need an extra year to do their intermediate level, before going on; secondly, those who change course during their level 3 provision, often for good reasons, and take three years to do their level 3; and thirdly, students who have to take a year out to care for somebody or to have a baby, or for other crises that happen. These are the hardest students to support and they are the biggest risk, and now they bring in the least money. So the measure is damaging in that regard. It also contradicts the Government’s framework. To raise the participation age, for example, there should be rewards, not penalties, for taking these students forward. There is a desire to close the achievement gap and these are the very students to whom that applies. There is a desire to invest in vocational education and the Government’s own impact assessment demonstrates that this is hitting vocational education worst of all. Everybody recognises that the forgotten 50% need further investment and these students are the forgotten 50% who need it, to be able to deliver.
There is a danger. Let me quote Paul Wilson, principal at Regent college, who said that, in the area of Leicester in which his inclusive college operates, his is the institution in the partnership that is delivering for these students. If there are disincentives for him to do that, he might start to say, “Thank you, goodbye” to these students, and then where do they go? We will have a rising issue with people not in education, employment and training at 17 and 18, as well as beforehand.
It is really dreadful. I know, from my experience as a college principal, that schools would at the end of the first year send students with Ds at AS-levels to us, up the road, because they no longer wanted to deal with them, because they were too high-risk. This means that other students will be too high-risk. There is a danger that we will let down a generation—this forgotten 50%—yet again. There will be an impact on colleges, such as John Leggott college and North Lindsey college, which do an excellent job for students in my constituency.
The Minister for Skills and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)
It is a great pleasure, Mr Williams, to respond, under your chairmanship, to a forthright debate. I am grateful for the opportunity to set out the context and some of the issues surrounding our decision, which was not an easy one to take. Many of the points raised were not quite accurate, so I hope to provide some reassurance on them, and on how we will deal with the impact on individual colleges, not least because several hon. Members raised the concerns of colleges that are particularly hard hit; I am looking at the hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed). At the moment, we are confirming with colleges the individual allocations.
Before we get to the meat of the debate, let me say that the process for making the decision was completely in line with the process for making such funding decisions under this Government and the previous Government. Say that following the overall allocation in a spending round, it becomes clear that savings have to be made in the Department for Education, outside the ring fence for education for 5 to 16-year-olds; the overall funding policy for the following academic year should be set out before Christmas, in December, in a letter from the Education Funding Agency. That is the normal way of doing things. Someone implied a criticism of the EFA, but there should be absolutely no criticism of the EFA over this, because such decisions rightly rest with Ministers. In February, normally, we come up with the allocations for individual colleges. That is the process we are going through: we are looking at the impact on colleges. We have estimates of those impacts, but we need confirmation from each college. That is the normal process, followed by the previous Government as well as this one. There has not been a problem in the process, but we can go into the individual decisions.
Nic Dakin
First, earlier information about a cut would have been helpful and welcomed by colleges. Secondly, although the process described by the Minister is accurate, for the first time that I can remember, a decision will affect people already enrolled on courses. If they are on a two-year course, the cut will impact on them and, because of the lagged funding, that is particularly difficult.
Matthew Hancock
I will certainly respond to that point. The irony for those already in education who are affected by this decision is that the funding is being returned to the 2012-13 level that it was at when they enrolled. An important piece of context has not yet been mentioned: the decision, which regrettably had to be made because of pressures on the public finances, changes funding for 18-year-olds back to the 2012-13 level. I understand and appreciate the pressures on the budgets of FE colleges, but in 2012-13, pupils were funded for 450 hours, and we raised that to 540 hours—an increase of 16 and two thirds per cent.—and we are now debating a cut of 17.5%, which is of almost exactly the same order of magnitude. The discussion about the impact on colleges and the conversations with college principals need to happen in the context of the fact that this changes the funding rate per pupil for 18-year-olds back to 2012-13 levels, which was only last year.
Oral Answers to Questions
Nic Dakin Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
Is the Minister really satisfied that the cut in 18-plus funding, which will hit youngsters from the least affluent backgrounds, is the best he can do for those young people?
Cost of Child Care
Nic Dakin Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
May I apologise, Mr Hood, for not being here at the beginning of the debate as I was in a delegated legislation Committee? I am sure, however, that my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) gave an excellent speech and I congratulate her on securing the debate. Such debates are little like buses: we do not have a debate on child care and then two come along at once. The quality of debate both yesterday and today reflects the quality of debate in the country. The issue is important and central to families up and down the land, both in the constituencies represented in the debates and in those not represented.
I want to begin with a statistic to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) has already alluded. It is the thing that has affected me the most over the past month. Ofsted has stated that five-year-olds from the least affluent backgrounds are 19 months behind five-year-olds from the most affluent backgrounds in development terms. That is a shocking statistic, and it alone should be a call to arms for all of us to roll up our sleeves and to put child care centre stage. The costs of child care should not be a barrier to addressing that inequality.
If I had a penny for every time I have heard Members of Parliament on both sides of the House refer to the need to close the inequality gap, I would be a very rich person. There is a theoretical commitment to doing something, but we need to turn that belief in principle into a belief in practice. Only through practical effects can we change the situation for those five-year-olds who become tomorrow’s adults and leaders. The hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), for whom I have a lot of respect, appeared to say that we perhaps cannot afford to do the right thing, but the Ofsted statistic tells us that we cannot afford not to do the right thing. We need to find the finance, whatever the situation, to address the issue. It is absolutely crucial.
I have visited many nursery settings in my Scunthorpe constituency over the past month, and I was struck by the vast variety and diversity of those settings. As the Minister mentioned, many of them are nurseries attached to schools, which provide a very important part of that landscape. I visited Messingham farm nursery, which is a new business in my constituency that meets the needs of a particular community and does a fantastic job. As the name suggests, it is about not only child care, but also using animal care to provide a particular experience for young people. I also visited the Ark family centre, which is run in partnership with the Baptist Church and delivers very good nursery care. Finally, last week, I took advantage of what was laughingly called a “mini-recess” to go to the Ashby Sure Start children’s centre, which is a fantastic facility that was created as a result of the previous Government’s Sure Start initiative. It is transforming the lives of the children in an area of my constituency where such a service is most needed.
I am always impressed by the quality, professionalism and commitment of the people working with children in such settings and by the way in which they divide up their time based on specific skill sets to address the needs of children at different stages of development. At the Ashby children’s centre last week, I was shown the files in which each child’s progress is carefully measured. Interestingly, I was told that schools are now more interested in receiving that information and building on it. The transition to the next stage of education should therefore be more secure, which was perhaps not the case a few years ago. We can see how the investment in nursery education is making a real difference.
I want to refer to the recent concerns of the Children’s Society about tax-free child care replacing the employer-supported child care vouchers. The Minister will hopefully take this opportunity to address the society’s concerns, because it is clearly focused on children’s well-being. Parents on universal credit will not be eligible to receive tax-free child care. Instead, they will receive a component of universal credit up to 85% of child care costs. Working parents on the lowest incomes will receive help with up to 70% of costs. It seems odd to me and to the Children’s Society that working parents on the lowest incomes will get the lowest level of support. If its concern is accurate, I hope the Minister will address that point.
The Children’s Society is also concerned that the complexity of having two systems of child care support for working parents and issues around the threshold may cause the same sort of difficulties that many of us experienced in relation to the Child Support Agency. If the Government provide help with only 70% of child care costs to those on the lowest incomes, can they still guarantee that every hour of work will pay for those on universal credit if there is an increase in the tax threshold? There may be an unforeseen consequence that we would all want to avoid. Children’s charities, including the Children’s Society, have asked for 85% support for those on universal credit, and I hope that the Government will examine that and ensure that that is the case for all parents on universal credit.
I will end with some points of concern. The cost of nursery places has risen by 30% since the last general election, which is five times faster than pay. At the same time, the same families are seeing their budgets squeezed by the rise in energy prices and transport costs and by general inflation. The average bill for a part-time nursery place of 25 hours a week has gone up to £107, and parents working part-time on average wages would have to work from Monday to Thursday before they paid off their weekly child care costs.
There are 576 fewer Sure Start centres, with three being lost on average every week. The Minister and I might disagree about the numbers, but I think we agree that Sure Start centres have been closed and have had their functions changed, which is clearly evidenced by what people across the country tell us. There are 35,000 fewer child care places than at the time of the last election.
The Government’s initiative of offering places to disadvantaged two-year-olds is positive. It did have teething problems when it was initially rolled out due to a qualification around Ofsted reports, which are often five or six years old. Fortunately, in my area that problem has been overcome. However, I am sure the shadow Minister and the Minister will wish to address those issues of practicality to ensure that together we take the opportunity to do something about the 19-month difference, before it is too late.
Oral Answers to Questions
Nic Dakin Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Matthew Hancock
It is undoubtedly true that the two most important vocational subjects are English and maths and that the best insurance against unemployment as a young person is to study more English and maths. I will, however, take my hon. Friend slightly to task. Many people were mentored by those who inspired them and from whom they learned a lot. Ensuring that all children have such relationships with people in the sort of careers that they want to enter is an important part of strengthening social mobility.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
Ofsted reports that three quarters of the schools that it visited were not carrying out the duty to give impartial careers advice. That confirms what everybody out there knows: careers advice, information and guidance are in a state on this Government’s watch. When will they do something about it and protect our young people for the future?
Matthew Hancock
Yes, indeed, we are acting, having inherited a complete failure in careers advice. The Connexions service that the Labour party keeps talking about was well known to be a failing institution, and when it was taken apart, it was agreed across the House that that was the right thing to do because it was not delivering. Instead, we have put in place the sort of guidance and inspiration that will help and support people all the way through and into their careers. Ofsted will hold schools to account, and that is the right way to proceed.
Qualified Teachers
Nic Dakin Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
Having been a college principal only three years ago, I bring the perspective of the head teacher to the debate. In the college I led, the sixth-formers would have expected debaters to refer to the motion. I think that they would have found that much of the Secretary of State’s 30-minute speech related not to the motion, but to peripheral issues concerning free schools and the question of regulation. Those are valid areas of debate, but if he had taken the trouble to read the motion, which I think would have been helpful—it is what I would have advised my sixth-formers to do—he would have seen that it states:
“That this House endorses the view that in state funded schools teachers should be qualified or working towards qualified teacher status while they are teaching.”
Having listened to the contributions from Government Members so far, one might be forgiven for forgetting the important phrase
“working towards qualified teacher status”.
When I appointed teachers, as I did frequently in my 28-year career in education, they either would have teaching qualifications or would be put in a framework in which they could gain them. That was for their benefit and that of their students, and there is a lot of evidence to demonstrate that. I think that any Member who intends to go through the Lobbies tonight ought to look carefully at the motion. If they vote against it, they need to understand what they are doing.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for drawing us back to the motion. If it became Government policy, will he explain what would happen to those teachers currently employed who did not work towards qualified teacher status? Would he want them to be sacked?
Nic Dakin
As a practical person and a head teacher, I would give the people employed in my college a framework in which they could get those qualifications, and we could have accreditation of prior learning, assessments and so on. Those people who have not done the job I did will have theoretical views on this, but I know how it is done, because I have done it day in, day out. The people out there know how they are running their schools and colleges, and the people who work in them know what they are doing as well. We trust them, but they need to be in a framework that delivers. We also need to listen to what parents are saying. In a recent YouGov poll, 78% of parents said that they want the teachers teaching their kids to be qualified.
I have just left a symposium in Portcullis House on the Finnish teaching system. I was reminded that not only do Finnish teachers need a master’s degree in their subject knowledge, but the degree has to deal with pedagogy. That is what teachers need: the knowledge and the pedagogy. That is what I needed when I had teachers standing in front of the kids in my college who I had a responsibility to deliver for. I am sure that is what people up and down the land want.
Nic Dakin
I am afraid that I cannot give way because so many Members wish to speak and the Secretary of State was so greedy in using up the time.
All my experience tells me that essentially there are only two things that really matter in running schools and colleges: the quality of leadership and the quality of teaching and learning. If we get those two things right, all the rest will follow. Of course, just because someone has a piece of paper, whether a postgraduate certificate in education, graduate teacher status or whatever, does not mean that they can necessarily teach, because there needs to be a framework of support in their school to ensure that they learn the skills of the profession.
To be fair to the Secretary of State, he very much echoed what the shadow Secretary of State said in underlining the importance of teaching as a profession. That echoes what the Prime Minister said quite rightly in 2010, which was that teaching should be a profession. Well, a profession has proper structures for training, qualifications and professional development. That is the framework that delivers high-quality individuals. Within that delivery of high-quality individuals, there will always be people who need appropriate support.
The Deputy Prime Minister was right when he made it clear that anybody teaching in our state-funded schools should either have qualified teacher status or be on the way to gaining it. I am really pleased that the Schools Minister, who is in his place, despite struggling a little to make this clear in the Westminster Hall debate, made it extremely clear when he appeared before the Select Committee that he was alongside the Deputy Prime Minister on that. That is why I am confident, because they are people of honour, that the Deputy Prime Minister, the Schools Minister and the rest of the Liberal Democrats will be alongside us when we vote for the motion today.
Teacher Training and Supply
Nic Dakin Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Bill Esterson
I congratulate my hon. Friend on getting an answer from the Department. I know how difficult that sometimes is. It is extraordinary that the Government do not know the details of what goes on in schools over which they have direct control. I can only imagine what their comments would be if information about what goes on in local authority schools were not available. Perhaps the Minister will respond to that. On qualified and unqualified teachers—who knows?—we may find out today just what Lib Dem policy is on the importance of having high-quality teachers.
Under the Department for Education’s School Direct programme, 9,000 teacher training places were transferred from universities to schools in 2012-13, with the expectation that schools would recruit trainee teachers who would commence training in September 2013. School Direct is led by schools, but is delivered in partnership with universities. According to the Department:
“School Direct is an exciting new training route for top graduates. Your school will have a job in mind just for you when you finish your training.”
Yet figures published in September suggest that the final numbers to be released in November will reveal a reduction in the number of new entrants to teaching. School Direct places have been going unfilled, with just 6,730 acceptances against an allocation of 9,580, unless the Minister has new figures for us today. In addition, the number being trained through the university route is down due to the lack of places being given to the institutions by the Department for Education as a result of the move towards School Direct.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important and timely debate. Does he agree not only that the figures he gave are worrying, but that the problem is exacerbated by the fact that the National College for Teaching and Leadership seemed reluctant to transfer those unfilled places from School Direct to universities, so there is a shortage of people being trained in subjects such as maths and physics, instead of them being up to complement?
Bill Esterson
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Evidence to the Select Committee in its follow-up session was that that is exactly what has happened. Places that were not filled by School Direct were not transferred. In fact, some of the witnesses requested that that should happen, and that there should be virement between the different routes. Perhaps the Minister will respond to that.
When the application system for School Direct opened last November, the Government said there was overwhelming interest from prospective teachers, so what happened in between, given the gap between the number of places and the number of enrolments? Other hon. Members will want to address that question—so do I—but first let us look at some of the background.
In his report for McKinsey in 2007, Sir Michael Barber found that while high-performing systems such as those in Finland, Japan, Singapore and Korea had very different approaches to the curriculum, teaching methods and school structures, they all made the quality of teaching their top priority. Sir Michael concluded that the top two priorities for raising school standards are getting the right people to become teachers and developing them into effective instructors. In 2010, McKinsey published a follow-up that showed that
“building the instructional skills of teachers and management skills of principals”
is a common factor in improving school systems everywhere in the world. So far, so good; that ties in with what the Government are saying.
The Institute of Education also quotes research that shows the dramatic impact that different teachers have on pupil progress. It shows that pupils who are taught by the best teacher in a group of 50 will learn twice as fast as average, while those taught by the worst teacher make only half the average progress. The Government’s 2010 White Paper looked abroad for inspiration, noting admiringly that South Korea recruits teacher trainees from the top 5% and Finland from the top 10% of their school leavers. That brings us back to the question: how did we end up with School Direct and such a shortage of applicants?
To begin to answer that question, I go back to what the Secretary of State said: that teaching is a “craft”, best learned on the job. That statement perhaps gives a clue as to why there has been such an acceleration in the scale of School Direct this year. That in turn may explain the problems being identified by so many of those involved in teacher training. As a result of the Secretary of State’s view, the Government decided to shift teacher training from the universities into schools, creating teaching schools on the model of teaching hospitals. That all sounds very plausible.
In April 2012, the Education Committee published its report, “Great teachers: attracting, training and retaining the best”, and held a follow-up evidence session last month. Evidence to the original inquiry looked at existing good practice in the UK. The Committee found that
“the partnership between schools and universities was often the recipe for successful provision, with a balance of theoretical and practical training vital for any teacher”.
In other words, the existing arrangements were working well, and more than one witness at the Committee advised the Government to take great care not to throw out the baby with the bathwater when they set up School Direct.
Those giving evidence to the inquiry were clear that the partnership needed to remain a key part of the training system. At the time, it was clear that employment-based initial teacher training providers—EBITTs—delivered significant portions of their training through other partners, including universities. In other words, the role of universities is crucial in teacher training. Theoretical as well as practical training are important—is important; it is important to get the grammar right in an education debate, Mr Caton.
The Committee noted in its report that
“the best systems internationally—such as Singapore and Finland…have universities heavily involved in or leading the training of teachers.”
However, in evidence to the Committee, the Government made clear their intention to see a significant increase in school-led teacher training, and the Minister for Schools has confirmed that School Direct could mean a move to a schools-based commissioning approach.
To be clear, there is strong support for school involvement in initial teacher training; after all, how else can trainees learn the practical skills that they need to become great teachers? However, warnings were given about the possible downside of unbalancing the partnership arrangements. Keele university argued that
“there is little or no evidence that schools have either the appetite or the capacity to take over the responsibility for the recruitment and training of teachers”.
Remember the Government’s comment about “overwhelming” interest from prospective teachers? Well, maybe that was not quite matched by the attitude of schools.
The Committee was also told that
“the balance is fairly good at the moment”
between schools and universities, and as one secondary head told the Committee, if the landscape
“swung all the way to school-based training…a lot would be lost.”
Martin Thompson, president of the National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers, said the sector was not
“looking for a great change”
and that there were “dangers in a lurch”. However, the then Schools Minister, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb),
“said the policy”—
the School Direct policy—
“had met with such demand that nearly double as many places as envisaged will be offered initially.”
I have my doubts about the grammar of that statement, but that was a quote. We have to wonder what happened between that apparently high demand and the massive under-recruitment in key subjects, and why the Government did not take more account of the warnings that were given.
The Committee agreed that School Direct could provide a valuable opportunity for those schools that have the capacity and appetite to offer teacher training, although I would argue that that was not the same as calling for a rapid expansion of the programme. The Committee also warned that a diminution of the universities’ role in teacher training could bring considerable demerits, and that it would caution against it. It concluded that
“partnership between schools and universities is likely to provide the highest-quality initial teacher education, the content of which will involve significant school experience but include theoretical and research elements as well, as in the best systems internationally and in much provision”
in this country.
In the follow-up session last month, the Committee was given some idea of why School Direct has under-recruited overall. Martin Thompson from NASBTT said that
“our experience, working with head teachers who have been doing recruitment and selection with us as a school-based provider for something like 10 years, is that they are finding that those schools that do not have the experience are looking for teachers and not trainees. They are not selecting, and we are getting returned to us people who we would probably have put on the course but they do not, because they clearly do not represent the finished article. If schools have not had significant experience in ITT recruitment as opposed to teacher recruitment, they tend to miss some of the opportunities that are presented to them”.
I hope that the Minister has taken full account of that—I know he was at the session and heard that statement at the time.
Mr Thompson made the point that head teachers who are used to recruiting trainees make the distinction between recruiting a trainee who has potential and finding the finished article before they have started training. Chris Husbands from the Institute of Education told the Committee that some schools are considering people whom they think would be good but who do not have the minimum entry requirements, such as GCSEs in English, maths and science at grade C or better. As the Chair of the Committee, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), pointed out, academies and free schools are already free to do just that by employing unqualified teachers. The Minister will need to address the point about unqualified teachers, not least given the remarks of the Deputy Prime Minister.
It is perhaps not surprising that some maintained schools look at so-called academy freedoms and wonder why they, too, cannot recruit unqualified teachers. That evidence, again, came to the Committee. The Minister really needs to explain how he can say that he supports the highest possible standards in teacher training on the one hand, while encouraging the employment of unqualified teachers on the other.
I come back to concerns about the role of universities. It is clear that any threat to the ongoing involvement of universities is a major concern, given the implications for the quality of training that follow from the evidence I quoted earlier, when it comes to the importance of having equal partnerships with universities, and of theoretical, reflective learning, not to mention academic study in continuing professional development. Potentially, a key part of teacher training is under strain, according to what university teacher training departments are saying.
Returning to the setting-up of School Direct, evidence to the Committee suggested that planning for the set-up was inadequate. That included a lack of communication with universities, which made administration very difficult, and a lack of thought about how a school-based system would operate and about how schools would work with universities. As a result, universities were left with a lack of certainty, which makes planning impossible and means that they do not know whether they will be viable next year.
Chris Husbands told the Committee that schools cannot plan school places and therefore cannot plan teacher supply. In his view, School Direct has so far struck the wrong balance between schools and universities, which could lead to a shortage of teachers. James Noble-Rogers from the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers confirmed that the way that School Direct had been set up could destabilise existing high-quality provision. That would be the result of the transfer of places to School Direct from postgraduate certificates in education. According to Mr Noble-Rogers, the implication of the way School Direct has been set up is that it will become the only way into initial teacher training.
Given evidence that schools cannot plan the number of teaching places, the very real danger is that we will end up with a shortage of teachers year after year in certain subjects. Instead of raising standards, the Government could suppress them because of the way that School Direct has been set up. Some will say that universities and other teacher training providers have a vested interest in opposing change. The Minister may even say that—he is smiling at me; I wonder what that means. Chris Husbands’ reply to that point in the Committee suggested otherwise:
“I run an organisation of which initial teacher training is part of the core business. It makes up about 18% of my turnover. I think we do it well, and we do it because we are committed to high quality and standards. If someone comes along and says, ‘Here is a better and more effective way of doing it,’ I am prepared to accept that. What makes me feel uncomfortable is that we are being offered something to replace something that we know is broadly effective. The vast majority of provision in universities is good or outstanding, and we are being asked to replace that with an unknown quantity, but being told that that is becoming de facto.
I am not sure whether that is self-interest. It does not feel like self-interest to me. This is, ‘We cannot carry on; we are doing something else instead.’ But the basis on which I think it is being developed quickly does not to me make sense.”
said:
“We cannot carry on; we are doing something else instead”.
I think he was paraphrasing what the Government might have been saying.
The panel at the Committee’s follow-up session debated how School Direct had improved on existing school-led initial teacher training. I am afraid that the panel’s response will have disappointed the Minister. Its members suggested that there was nothing new. In fact, the view expressed was that the involvement of schools in the existing system was already strong enough. That prompts the question, why was that view not considered before the system was set up?
The Government say that they believe that having the best teachers is the single most important factor in ensuring high standards and good results. They also believe that we need to learn from other countries, where teachers invariably come from the ranks of the best-qualified graduates. That suggests that teaching should be one of the most desirable professions for graduates. International comparisons show that university involvement in teacher training is of the highest importance. However, serious concerns are being expressed about the viability of university teacher training departments as a result of changes made by the Government.
This year, in maths and physics—two subjects that are crucial to our economic success—we see that there is a chronic shortage of applicants. There are also shortages in other vital subjects, including computer science. Those shortages are occurring at the same time that significant changes have taken place in teacher training. They also indicate that the graduates with the best results are not applying to become teachers, including in subjects in which young people need the very best.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
I again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) on securing the debate. It is good to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Caton.
All my 30-plus years in education tell me that well-trained teachers improve the quality of teaching and learning and the outcomes for young people. My hon. Friend demonstrated that the evidence collected by the Education Committee confirms that judgment. It would be laughable for someone who had studied biology and physiology at a high level to be deemed qualified to practice medicine with no medical training, yet the Government seem happy for people to teach with no teacher training. The clear message is that anybody can teach and there is no skill involved. I can tell the Minister that there is a lot of skill: it is taught and it is learnt. Interestingly, while the Government squabble with their schizophrenic self, parents are clear about what they want: qualified teachers teaching their kids.
I bumped into a local head teacher at the weekend and mentioned today’s debate, saying that I was concerned that teacher education and supply would be undermined if the Government did not act to put right some of the things they have got wrong.
Bill Esterson
Given his 30 years’ experience, would my hon. Friend care to comment on the importance of continuing professional development and the impact of the reforms on it, as universities have raised concerns over the viability of their teacher training departments?
Nic Dakin
My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the overall ecology of support for teacher education and development. Other professionals work in the education industry and it is necessity for universities to provide part of the infrastructure. If the Government pull at one part of the infrastructure, other things will happen.
I told my head teacher friend whom I bumped into at the weekend that I thought things were in a spot of bother and might get worse. To my surprise, he said that teacher education and supply were already in chaos—that is from someone on the front line—adding that he did not understand why the effective graduate teacher programme had been scrapped. With a bit more digging—speaking to north Lincolnshire’s excellent lead for teacher induction, Kim Francis—I discovered that the restructuring and the reduction in staffing, with the responsibilities passed to the National College for Teaching and Leadership, coupled with systemic change in initial teacher training have resulted in widespread frustration for providers of initial teacher education. Lines of communication have become fractured and unreliable.
The Government’s single driver for policy implementation appears to be focused on School Direct, but given that schools need to be linked to accredited providers, serious confusion has reigned. Many schools are bewildered and question whether they have the capacity to implement and quality-assure initial teacher training. Locally, schools are ambivalent and lukewarm about taking on the responsibility.
Mrs Hodgson
Does my hon. Friend agree that serious confusion seems to reign not only in the Department for Education, but in the Government, between the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister?
Kevin Brennan
Does my hon. Friend welcome the clarity with which the Secretaries of State for Energy and Climate Change and for Business, Innovation and Skills declared their agreement with the Deputy Prime Minister on the need for qualified teacher status in all taxpayer-funded schools? Does he look forward to the same clarity from the Minister today?
Nic Dakin
I welcome the interventions by the Deputy Prime Minister and his senior colleagues, which made it clear that they are with us, and with parents, schools, universities and everybody who proffers an opinion, apart from the Secretary of State for Education. I am sure that that puts the Minister in a slightly difficult position, but I note that the Deputy Prime Minister’s representative on earth, the hon. Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames), is here, so I am sure he will come down on the right side of the debate.
The new UCAS single portal for all initial teacher education applications was due to open on 1 November. All School Direct lead schools as well as all accredited providers will be listed—hundreds of organisations. North Lincolnshire has been trying to secure its registration since July. The NCTL appears to have been the problem in that it has not passed on the new school-centred initial teacher training details to UCAS. Last Friday, it was announced that the UCAS site will not open until 21 November, due to the backlog in registering organisations, thus further delaying the recruitment cycle for 2014-15. The announcement caused understandable consternation for providers, who made plans based on the 1 November date. That illustrates the chaos in the system.
In addition, the retrospective application of the new skills test, based on “three strikes and you’re out”, has made potential applicants more wary of enrolling for teacher training. The stakes for them are much higher than before. Although the rhetoric around standards is attractive, it may well have the opposite effect, because the detailed questions that should have been thought through have not been. Kim Francis comments:
“Everybody I speak with in ITE is frustrated and dismayed about the chaos that has been created—a common reaction being ‘you couldn’t make it up!’”.
That is the world of this Government at this time. A colleague working elsewhere in teacher education noted that the NCTL
“has neither the staff levels nor I would guess expertise, given the lack of background knowledge, to get out of this mess in any kind of hurry.”
Why on earth are the Government dismantling effective teacher education? If they are looking at international comparators, as my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) pointed out, they might consider Finland, where it is universally recognised that children do well. Its teacher education has universities at its heart, is pitched at master’s level and involves longer periods of study and shorter classes. Instead, the Government chose to focus only on the idea of teaching schools, adapting it so as to be unrecognisable when compared with the Finnish model. They should go back to the start.
We could look at Canada, which is sixth for literacy in the programme for international student assessment tables—PISA. Universities are right at the heart of its teacher education. Students spend two years training and cover a wide range of educational theory, which they value. They spend much less time in the classroom, even over two years, than ours do. Teacher education is more than learning on the job. It is more than “Sitting next to Nellie”. Professor Christine Jarvis, dean of education at Huddersfield university, explains it well:
“Firstly, the obvious—teachers need to learn properly (not in the form of a few handy hints) about the psychology of learning, about the implications of social deprivation and context and not just about the specific government strategies and practices in force at any one time. They must have some in-depth knowledge. Second, they need time to reflect, critically, and with support away from the school in which they are working—the school whose practices they may wish to question. Third, teachers need to think about themselves as researchers, developing the ability to create knowledge about teaching—they need to learn research skills and methodologies. Finally, I think teachers are more than classroom practitioners. They are education professionals and should have a right to understand the job they are doing in a wider context, to take a place in wider society as people who can contribute to debate about what education should be, what schools should be.”
How profound and insightful that observation is.
The partnership between schools and higher education has been crucial to the success of teacher education. Universities are reporting requests for support from schools, but an unwillingness by schools to pay for such support. That is leading university vice-chancellors to question whether they can afford to be involved in this work. Schools are told by the NCTL that they must lead. They keep most of the income, design the curriculum and do most of the training, but because the university is the accredited provider, the university gets inspected by Ofsted. The university has little control and no power over the quality, but it will get the poor rating, while the school’s Ofsted grade will remain unaffected even if it messes up. It is not surprising, given the comparatively poor record of school-led teacher training in the past according to Ofsted judgments, that universities are worried about their reputations under the new arrangements. It is not surprising, therefore, that they are already beginning to cut their losses and pull out of teacher education.
The Government are presiding over a crisis in teacher education and supply that will get worse unless they act quickly. The limited opportunity to transfer allocations between different routes, which my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central has highlighted, has exacerbated the problem, impacting significantly on key subjects such as physics, mathematics and modern foreign languages. Overall, recruitment is 43% down in physics and 22% down in mathematics. Absurdly, the NCTL would not transfer unfilled School Direct places to universities, which consequently had to turn away good physics, maths and modern foreign languages candidates.
The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
I do not want to abuse my position, but surely the hon. Gentleman is aware that because of the allocations that we gave to higher education institutes and to School Direct, higher education institutes were not turning away physics and maths graduates; they had unused space.
Nic Dakin
That is not what higher education establishments are saying. Only last week, I met Universities UK, which made it very clear that according to surveys of the universities that are part of its ambit, many universities had to turn people down. Universities had asked for School Direct places to be reallocated to them, but that did not happen. That demonstrates some of the confusion in the system. The Minister may be right, or Universities UK may be right; I am not sure. I am just listening to the noise.
Universities UK is calling for the Government to ensure that sufficient core allocation is granted to universities to enable them to sustain provision, including the support that they can offer School Direct partnerships. My hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West drew on the experience and testimony of Baroness Morris to illustrate how necessary that is for the stability of the system. Any rapid movement away from the current ratio of HE-led training and School Direct-led training will imperil that.
Confidence about future allocations is equally necessary for all proven initial teacher training partnerships, such as that in north Lincolnshire. As one school-centred initial teacher training programme manager recently said in exasperation,
“we still await confirmation of final allocations for both Core and School Direct places. Details of bursaries and scholarships were announced after the requests for places were submitted! Securing timely responses to our many and frequent enquiries to UCAS, Student Loans Company and NCTL is proving very difficult and making life extremely challenging and stressful for colleagues.”
Here are some questions for the Minister to focus on if he wants to turn the tide against this self-created crisis. In the light of current difficulties, will he resist the ideological temptation to increase School Direct allocations, and instead allow the system to stabilise? Will the Government provide greater certainty about the core allocation over the next few years to enable providers to plan and invest? Will the Government make it easier to transfer unfilled allocation between different routes to ensure that good candidates are not turned away? I note from the Minister’s intervention that he is, properly, concerned that that should be happening, and I hope that he is right about that. Will the Government take positive action to make HE equal partners in teaching schools by making it clear that HE partners should be invited to NCTL meetings and included in any correspondence about the teaching schools where they are partners? Will the Government look at getting Ofsted to inspect the lead organisation, whichever that may be, thereby better assuring future quality and putting accountability in the right place?
It is not too late to put the situation right, but teacher education is hurtling towards a shipwreck. If the Minister agrees with his party leader, the Deputy Prime Minister, that every child in a publicly funded school should have the right to be taught by a qualified teacher, he needs to say so today. He needs to take the necessary action to guarantee the quality of teacher education and secure future teacher supply. I am more optimistic—I am naturally optimistic—than the head teacher I bumped into at the weekend, but I do not have to run a school any more. I do not have to recruit the staff and secure the students’ future. I look to the Minister to act on those students’ behalf and take the actions that are clearly needed to avoid the rocks.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. I congratulate my colleague and fellow member of the Select Committee on Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), on securing the debate. It is a pleasure to follow my colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), who, like me, spent several decades of his career before coming into this place teaching and working in the education sector.
Until recently, the system of initial teacher training in this country was relatively simple and worked relatively well. I am the first to accept that schools have complained to me for decades that students coming out of university have to be taught how to teach, but when I have pressed them on the matter, they will accept—reluctantly, sometimes—that things have improved, that HE providers work well with schools, and that student teachers spend most of their final training year in classrooms teaching.
Until 2010, it was the job of the Department for Education, through the various reincarnations of the Teacher Training Agency, to decide each year how many teachers were needed and in what subjects. It was the job of the university-led teacher training institutions and schools, working together, to make sure that teachers in training had the right skills, knowledge and professionalism to work in our classrooms. Newly qualified teachers’ satisfaction with their courses was at an all-time high in 2010-11, which is the last year for which data are available. They rated their university courses as good or very good in 90% of cases. The proportion of graduate entrants holding a 2:1 or a first-class degree had been increasing steadily for years, prior to 2010. That is not perfect, and nor is there room for complacency, but it is a reasonably good picture, overall. There is recognition across the profession and, I think, throughout the House that we have a better, more qualified, knowledgeable and skilled teaching work force than at any time in our history. That is down to many things, not least of which is the quality of our ITT, which was recognised nationally and internationally as outstanding.
The Education Committee, on which I serve, looked into and reported on the issue of teacher training in some depth in the spring of 2012 as part of its “Great teachers” inquiry and report. I am sure that the Minister has studied it. We recognised the various and diverse routes into teaching and the role of the higher education institutions as well as school-based providers. It was clear to us that a sharp move from higher education and school-led partnerships to largely school-led provision was highly contentious and fraught with difficulties, not least because the school-led sector was not yet robust enough and did not have the capacity to replace the higher education sector. The Minister will no doubt say that he does not intend to replace the higher education ITT sector with school-led ITT, but that will be the outcome if the higher education-led ITT sector is not sufficiently funded and supported. Universities will simply reduce or withdraw from the market, closing their schools of education. As the Minister knows, that is beginning to happen.
As part of the inquiry the Select Committee visited Finland and Singapore, countries that are recognised as among the best in the world for ITT, and which the Secretary of State regularly cites as jurisdictions from which he wants to learn. They both have university-led teacher training and recognise that a knowledge base in education and child development, with a research-based dissertation through a university, are required to produce the best teaching force. In 2012 the Select Committee cautiously welcomed the extension of School Direct, but it had serious reservations that it wanted the Government to consider.
University-led ITT in England is recognised internationally as outstanding. Ofsted has confirmed that through its own inspection. If we truly believe that we need to learn from what is internationally outstanding, why would we not hesitate before putting the quality of that provision at risk? The Committee welcomed more school involvement in ITT, but we had reservations about whether schools are equipped to deliver the programme on their own and, in many cases, to lead it. We were particularly concerned about the time scale. Change is a fact of life, but to change too swiftly the balance from higher education-led to school-led ITT is to run the risk of damaging what is already a good—even outstanding—system. In the long run it will create a teacher shortage, which is exactly what appears to be happening.
Pat Glass
I entirely agree. If the Government had attended to the warnings of the Select Committee in spring 2012 we would not be facing the crisis that my hon. Friend’s colleague and friend spoke about at the weekend. Since the Committee considered the issues it has been apparent that there is a worrying future for ITT in England, and for the future sufficiency of the teacher work force. The historical context is that every recent Tory Government has left office with a teacher shortage.
Some but not all School Direct places will offer an academic qualification such as the postgraduate certificate in education alongside qualified teacher status. However, accredited providers are accountable and responsible for the conferring of any academic qualification and QTS. In view of that, it is not surprising that students prefer to have an academic qualification including QTS from a university, rather than from a school, albeit one that is linked to a higher education provider. That is, if nothing else, an issue of status. All things being equal, what good maths graduate is going to choose school-based QTS over that awarded by a prestigious university? In that matter, I have some experience.
The problem is that Government policy is shifting funding from universities to school-led provision so quickly that, while universities may not be short of students applying for their teaching courses, they no longer have the funding to deliver courses of the quality and in the numbers that they have in the past. Universities are particularly concerned about the impact of the next round of ITT allocations on their ability to sustain teacher training. That includes the ability to sustain support for school-led routes such as the School Direct programme.
In 2013-14, as we have heard, ITT allocations and acceptances by Government have shifted by 25% to School Direct. More than 90% of postgraduate and undergraduate courses through universities were filled across the country and, in some cases, across subject areas, but only 66% of places allocated to School Direct have been met—well below the target allocation. In addition there has been over-recruitment in subjects including chemistry, history and PE, and that has masked much larger shortfalls in subjects such as maths and physics. Overall recruitment is 43% below target in physics and 22% below target in maths. The shortfall has been made worse because the Government have chosen to reduce allocations to HE institutions and universities, the bit in the system that we know works well and that has already been judged outstanding, while significantly shifting allocations to the School Direct programme, the bit in the system that is new, in many cases experimental and, as we now know, falling well short of targets. I understand that they have refused to shift the under-filled ITT places in School Direct to universities.
Kevin Brennan
I have six. It will only take a second to say yes.
I want to help the Schools Minister out of his painful position. I have here the coalition agreement. It is a much spoken-about but rarely read document. I have performed a careful textual exegesis of the document, which says many things about teaching and schools. I accept that the Minister’s party is pledged to support what the agreement says about teaching; it signed up to the agreement, after all. I know, having been involved a little bit many years ago in helping to set up a coalition with the Liberal Democrats in the National Assembly for Wales, that they will want to try to stick to what they have agreed in the agreement. However, unless the Minister intervenes on me to tell me that I am wrong, I cannot find any mention at all of a commitment to allow free schools and academies to employ teachers without a teaching qualification or a pathway to one.
The Minister is not twitching to intervene to tell me that I am wrong. I am sure that he will refer to the coalition agreement in his speech on whether the commitment is in there, but as far as I can see, it is not.
Kevin Brennan
Indeed. The agreement says:
“We will support Teach First, create Teach Now to build on the Graduate Teacher Programme, and seek other ways to improve the quality of the teaching profession”
et al., but I cannot see the policy anywhere in there. I am sure that the Minister will tell me I am wrong, because I cannot believe that he would support the policy unless it was in the agreement, because it seems to go against all previous Lib Dem pronouncements and is something with which the Deputy Prime Minister does not agree.
The Minister and his colleagues could have joined us when we tabled an amendment against the policy. Clearly, from what the Deputy Prime Minister has said, when the Lib Dems supported the Tories on the policy in the vote, it was not because they believed in the policy; it must have been because they believed that it was in the coalition agreement, and therefore they had to support it. However, the policy is not in the agreement, so they do not have to support it.
The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. May I say how delighted I am to have a debate today on teacher training and supply? I congratulate the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) on securing this debate on an important and topical issue, and on putting his case and concerns in a measured and informed way. I also pay tribute to other hon. Members who have contributed and commented on the important issues.
I will focus my comments primarily on School Direct, which is what the hon. Member for Sefton Central talked about. However, I will not disappoint the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), and I promise him that, before the end of my comments, I will have answered directly his questions on qualified teacher status.
Before I begin the main part of my speech, I ask hon. Members to put in a little context the important changes that we have been talking about today, particularly those on School Direct. If I understood the hon. Gentleman rightly, the Labour party supports School Direct and would not end it—he was challenging the method of allocation, not the policy direction.
One would get the impression from some of the debate that there has been a vast lurch away from a university-led or university-involved system, but the reality is that higher education institutions deliver 86% of all teacher training places. In absolute terms, HEIs will deliver more places in 2013-14 than in 2012-13. Obviously, many School Direct places are in partnership with HEIs; they are not stand-alone organisations. One good thing about School Direct is that schools often have a more constructive dialogue with HEIs, rather than getting whatever they are given.
Al-Madinah Free School
Nic Dakin Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Laws
I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. The speed with which the shadow Secretary of State has stood on his head regarding Labour policy on free schools will unnerve many free schools across the country and undermine the confidence of the many free schools that are doing a fantastic and innovative job. I just draw attention to the fact that the proportion of free schools that are outstanding and good is higher than in the rest of the school population, even though many of them have only been in existence for two years.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
The Minister reports that his Department had concerns about this school. Which other free schools does his Department have concerns about?