Key Stage 2 Tests
Nick Gibb Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
With permission, I will make a statement about key stage 2 tests.
Last night the Department for Education was made aware of an issue involving the key stage 2 English grammar, punctuation and spelling test, which was mistakenly uploaded on to a secure website by Pearson. Pearson is the external marking supplier contracted by the Department to mark the tests.
At this stage, we know that the test was mistakenly uploaded at about 5 o’clock yesterday evening. It was uploaded on to a secure site, which was not accessible to anyone without approval from Pearson. Pearson was informed that the test was on its site by markers during the course of the evening, and removed the material from the site at 9.1 pm. The Department was separately alerted to the situation at about 9.30 pm by the media, and contacted Pearson immediately to establish the facts. Pearson’s records show that during the short period when the materials were live, 93 markers—all with the appropriate clearance—accessed the material.
It is worth emphasising that the only people with access to the site are contracted markers, all of whom are under a contractual obligation not to share sensitive information. I should also point out that it is standard and appropriate practice for key individuals to be given prior access to assessment material in order to ensure that the delivery of tests and marking of papers can occur in a smooth and timely way. Some 23 senior markers had access to the material from 1 April, and 153 team leaders had access to the material from 11 April.
Clearly, in this system, it is essential that people in positions of trust can be relied on to act appropriately. Unfortunately, in this case, it appears that one person could not, and leaked the key stage 2 English grammar, punctuation and spelling test to a journalist. I have spoken to Rod Bristow, the president of Pearson UK, this morning to ask for a full explanation of how this mistake occurred. He has accepted full responsibility for the error and has committed to investigating the matter quickly and fully.
Specifically, I have asked Rod Bristow to look at two issues. First, how did the material come to be uploaded on to the secure site in error? This was clearly a mistake which should not have been possible. Secondly, I have asked that all records be examined and all information interrogated so that the culprit who leaked this sensitive information can be identified. I am satisfied that Pearson understands the seriousness of the issue and the need to take action quickly to provide clear and unequivocal answers to these two questions. Once I have this information, I will consider what action it may be appropriate to take. I will explore the full range of options available to the Department, including looking at contractual and other routes to seek redress.
I would like to reiterate that we have no evidence to suggest that any sensitive information entered the public domain before children started taking the test today, and the tests are going ahead as planned. My officials were monitoring social media and other platforms through the night and found no sign of materials being made available. The journalist in question took the decision not to publish the test papers and I am grateful to him for that. Although this is a serious breach—and I am determined to get to the bottom of how the error occurred—it is clear that the actions of almost every marker involved have been correct and proper, and that the integrity of the tests has not been compromised. Teachers and schools should have confidence in the content of the tests and in the processes underpinning the administration of the tests in schools and the subsequent marking.
I would like to make a few comments about the wider context of primary assessment. I acknowledge that there have been errors in the administration of tests this year. While it is important that we address those errors, they should not detract from the central importance of testing in the life of a school. Tests are an appropriate and essential way for us to understand how well schools are doing, and where more support needs to be targeted so that every child is given the best possible opportunity to succeed throughout their time in school and to get the best preparation for adult life.
We have taken clear action to strengthen the primary curriculum, to ensure that children today are being taught the fundamentals of literacy and numeracy that are vital for their future success. There are some who say that tests are inherently wrong, that we should not test children and that we are creating a regime that is overly stressful. I disagree. Yesterday, ComRes released a poll of 750 10 and 11-year-old pupils for the BBC, in which 62% of pupils responded that they either “don’t mind” or “enjoy” taking the tests. That is far more than those who said that they “don’t like” or “hate” taking the tests. Altogether, more of the polled pupils reported that they “enjoy” taking the tests than “hate” them.
Testing is a vital part of teaching: it is the most accurate way, bar none, that a teacher, school or parent can know whether a pupil has or has not understood vital subject content. What is more, the process of taking a test actually improves pupil knowledge and understanding. As such, testing should be a routine and normalised part of school life. When the time for national curriculum assessments comes around, pupils should be entirely accustomed to the process.
I would like to finish by reiterating that the key stage 2 English grammar, punctuation and spelling test remains valid and is going ahead as planned. Teachers, schools, parents and others should have confidence in the test, and it will remain part of the primary assessment system. I commend this statement to the House.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for giving me advance sight of his statement. The Government have taken their eye off the ball. Ministers have obsessed for months over a plan for forced academisation, a plan which was never about raising standards and which was self-evidently flawed from the start. Parents did not want or need forced academisation. They made that extremely clear and played a key role in forcing the Government into a humiliating policy U-turn last week, which was confirmed by the Secretary of State in her humiliating statement yesterday. What does matter to parents, however, is having an appropriate and supportive assessment regime for their child. They want to know how their child is performing at school, how they can help to close any gaps in their knowledge and how they can support them to do their best.
The Government have let parents down at every step of the way. Today’s debacle is just the latest in a sorry line of chaos in primary assessment. First, with no proper consultation with parents, school leaders or teachers, the Government scrapped the assessment system of levels in schools with no regard to what would replace it, creating significant uncertainty and anxiety among the professionals delivering the primary curriculum. It created confusion for parents, with many schools simply attempting to reintroduce their own watered-down version of levels assessment that failed to adequately articulate exactly how well children were getting on. Ministers were then forced to push back the deadline for primary assessments after failing to deliver the necessary resources for teachers in time.
Following that came the embarrassment of the Government’s failure to introduce baseline assessment. By rushing ahead with the policy without properly involving professionals or parents, the Government failed to spot the fundamental flaw in the design, which was that the tests that they had developed were insufficiently comparable. As a result, they were forced to abandon their approach to baseline tests entirely. Furthermore, just three weeks ago, we learned that the key stage 1 spelling and grammar test had been accidentally published online in December 2015 as a practice paper. Answers to parliamentary questions show that it was downloaded more than 18,000 times before Ministers realised that there was an issue. As a result, the Government were forced to cancel the test, invalidating the work of many children, teachers and parents.
There has been a constant stream of chop and change in primary assessment under this Government. Since September, the Department for Education has updated or clarified on average at least one primary school assessment resource every other working day. The situation has become so ludicrous that the Department is now having to start clarifying its clarifications. Without a doubt, the confusion and chaos created in primary assessment has led to a damaging fall in confidence among parents and teachers about the reliability and validity of assessment in schools.
As 10 and 11-year-olds are sitting down to take the key stage 2 spelling and grammar test this morning, we now learn that the test has already been published online. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose one test may be regarded as a mistake, but to lose both looks like carelessness. It could not be made up. It is a serious breach on top of a series of multiple failures. How on earth can parents have confidence in the assessment regime when the Department for Education has completely lost control of the tests for which it is responsible? How can we be confident that the rest of the test process is secure? Remember, the tests are not only important for individual pupils, but part of the performance data by which schools are judged. We can have no confidence in their being used for that purpose after what we have heard today.
The National Association of Head Teachers is right to say:
“We cannot see how school level results can be published or a national benchmark set on such shaky data.”
Headteachers and parents deserve a firm guarantee from the Minister today that no primary school will be forced to become an academy on the basis of these compromised tests. It is time for him to be honest with then, honest with himself and—[Interruption.] The reality is that parents, school leaders and teachers have lost confidence in this Government’s approach to assessment and exams. It is time for the Minister to be honest with them, honest with himself and honest with us. He needs to hold up his hands, admit that he has got it wrong and stop trying to blame others for his Department’s mistakes. It is time for him to engage properly with parents and teachers to establish an approach to primary assessment that has everybody’s confidence and not just his. He needs to look into the eyes of all those 10 and 11-year-olds who are taking the tests today and say sorry for getting it wrong and sorry for letting them down. After all, that is what we teach children to do: admit their mistakes, apologise for them, learn from them and move on. So will he now learn his lesson and turn his attention away from the misguided obsession with structures at the expense of raising standards in schools? Will he turn his focus and his energy on what really matters to parents, and get this right?
Mr Gibb
I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin)—or should I say the Lady Bracknell from Scunthorpe. I have to say to him that this Government are committed to raising standards in schools. Given the way the Opposition address this issue, I sometimes wonder whether they are as committed to raising standards as we are. In 2011, we conducted a review of the primary curriculum to ensure that it was closer to the curriculums being taught in the most successful education systems in the world. The review was overseen by the national curriculum review panel, which was made up of highly experienced headteachers and teachers in this country. We introduced the phonics check to ensure that six-year-olds were learning to read properly, and as a consequence of that reform 120,000 six-year-olds are reading more effectively today. We reviewed the reading curriculum—the English curriculum—to ensure that children became fluent readers who developed a habit of reading for pleasure. We reformed the maths curriculum so that children learn how to perform long multiplication by year 5 and long division by year 6, and so that they know their multiplication tables—up to 12 by 12—by heart by the end of year 4. Under the last Labour Government, one in three pupils were leaving primary school still unable to read, write and add up properly. Our Government are determined to address those issues.
Let me address some of the issues the hon. Gentleman raised. He talked about the removal of levels, but level descriptors were only ever intended to be used for the end of key stage statutory assessments, and yet over time came to dominate all assessment and teaching practice. That had a damaging impact on teaching and failed to give parents an accurate understanding of how their children were doing at school. The removal of levels allowed classroom assessment to return to its real purpose of helping teachers evaluate pupils’ knowledge and understanding of curriculum content. When we introduced the reception baseline in September last year, we said we would carry out a comparability study to establish whether it was fit for purpose. The study is now complete, and it has shown that the three different assessments being used by schools this year are not sufficiently comparable for us to create a fair starting point from which to measure pupils’ progress. We remain committed to the assessment of pupils in reception, and over the coming months we will be considering options for improving these assessment arrangements for beyond 2016-17. We will engage teachers, school leaders and parents in that work.
The hon. Gentleman brought up the spelling test. The investigation has uncovered further weaknesses in some of the Standards and Testing Agency’s clearance processes. I initiated that investigation, and the STA is now taking appropriate management action with the members of staff involved. We have already reviewed and tightened up the publication clearance processes.
This is a Government who are committed to reviewing the curriculum and to raising academic standards in our schools. This was always going to be a challenging month as schools got used to the new, more demanding curriculum and the new, more demanding assessments that follow that curriculum. I am confident—the Government are confident—that this is the right thing to do to raise academic standards in our schools to prepare young people for life in modern Britain and for an increasingly competitive global economy.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Parents in Kettering, of whom I am one, want their children, when they leave primary school, to be able to write neatly and legibly, spell correctly, read confidently, be able to add up, take away, multiply and divide, know all their times tables by heart, mix well with other children, realise that they in themselves have lots of potential, and have a thirst for knowledge that they can develop in their secondary school career. To what extent are we achieving that in modern Britain?
Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend rightly summarises the issues that we need to address. We need to ensure that we return to a knowledge-based curriculum, and that children become fluent in arithmetic and reading before they leave primary school. I am afraid that, under the previous Labour Government, too many young people left primary school without those skills to equip them for secondary education. I am convinced that our reforms will deliver the objectives that my hon. Friend set out. [Interruption.] The evidence is that 120,000 more six-year-olds are reading more effectively today than they were in 2012, and that 1.4 million more pupils are being taught in good and outstanding schools today than they were in 2010.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Having listened to the Minister today and heard the statement about the U-turn on academies recently, it seems to me that the Department for Education should now be put in special measures. When the Minister cannot even get the basics right in education, what confidence can we have that the Department will get the big issues right?
Mr Gibb
As the hon. Lady will know, this process of testing 600,000 pupils is complex. We use contractors, and, on this occasion, an error was made in uploading that material on to a secure website. We took action swiftly when we discovered that error, as we did when the spelling test was put online three weeks ago. It is how a Government react to these issues that determines their competence, and we acted swiftly on both occasions. This whole approach to testing our six and seven-year-olds and our 10 and 11-year-olds does require an element of trust in those people engaged in the process. We must test and develop the test. A huge number of professionals see the content of these tests many weeks before they go live, and we have to trust those professionals to do their job properly and with integrity. On this occasion, one such professional decided not to act with integrity. I hope that the hon. Lady will take the same view that we do about professionals who act in that inappropriate way.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that testing forms an important and crucial part of our education system. If proof were needed that testing is important, one need look no further than the text of the statement that has been circulated in the Chamber today. It says:
“Although this is a serious breech—”.
Unfortunately, the word “breach” is spelled incorrectly.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
I speak as a former key stage 2 marker, and I support efficient, effective testing of children, but I do not think that the Government understand what testing is for. The Minister’s statement said that it was for the accountability of schools, but it seems to me that what testing should be about is measuring and developing a child’s learning. That is why we should not put so much emphasis on a national test that is about school accountability and leads to this kind of appalling behaviour from one teacher. We should focus on ensuring that children understand what they are learning and that we get appropriate tests for individual children.
Mr Gibb
I do not disagree with the right hon. Lady. It is important that children are tested frequently, which helps with memory and practice. Schools use informal formative testing as part of the learning process. There is also another purpose of testing, as summative testing for public accountability and to hold schools to account. That is why the key stage 2 assessments, or SATs, were introduced nearly 30 years ago: to hold schools to account. In doing so, we can target school improvement resources on those schools that are not delivering the quality of education that we want for our young people. We need to be able to do that. Children have only one chance at an education and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is committed to ensuring that we have educational excellence everywhere, in every part of the country. To be able to identify those areas and schools that need the extra support, we need external assessment of children as they leave primary school.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
As a parent who has a child who will do key stage 1 this year and another doing key stage 2, I find it absolutely outrageous that an individual has put my child’s chances at risk with this leak. Does the Minister agree that it would be better for the Opposition to bear that point in mind rather than playing politics with children’s testing?
Mr Gibb
I agree with my hon. Friend. As I said, the whole system depends on the integrity of professionals. We need our senior markers to have access to this material weeks before it goes live. We need our test developers to have access to individual questions months before the tests go live. We test these tests with a large number of pupils before we are sure that they have the right degree of demand. A range of people have access to this material long before it goes live in the classroom. If people do not have that professional integrity, there will be problems. We will be investigating to identify the individual and to ensure that Pearson’s processes are tightened up so that this cannot happen again.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
The Minister needs to move to the bottom of the class, because he must try harder. This is not the first time that tests have been compromised in this academic year; it is the second time on his watch. Will he sincerely apologise to parents, teachers and those pupils who have taken the test today? Will he also assure them and us that every measure that he needs to take will be taken so that this will not happen on a third occasion?
Mr Gibb
I did apologise for the problem with the key stage 1 spelling test when that material was inadvertently put online. This issue has not damaged the integrity of the grammar, punctuation and spelling test being taken by 600,000 10 and 11-year-olds today. It was put on to a secure website, protected by password and available only to markers, and 93 of those markers examined the material. We have looked on the websites and at social media—officials were doing this work through the night—to see whether there was any compromising of the test. There is no such evidence.
The Standards and Testing Agency is confident that the test has integrity and it will go ahead. This is a complex process of administering these tests for 600,000 pupils every year. This year was always going to be a challenging year, as it is the first to assess the new and more demanding national curriculum that came into force in September 2014 and that schools have had since July 2013. There is therefore an element of controversy to it. We do not apologise for that controversy, because we believe as a Government in raising academic standards in schools. That is what we came into office to achieve.
We are a Government that will achieve and are achieving those high academic standards, but there are some—I assume that there are no such people on the Opposition Benches—who do not necessarily agree with us that it is important to raise academic standards. Somebody decided that their own opinions were more important than their professional integrity, and decided to breach the trust they had been given and the confidentiality contract into which they had entered, and leaked one of those tests to the media.
William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
I begin by wishing the thousands of children undertaking their SATs this week the very best of luck. I am sure they are taking place in classrooms far calmer than our Chamber this morning. If there has indeed been a deliberate leaking of the SATs material, that is very serious. What is my hon. Friend doing to ensure the continued viability of this year’s key stage 2 SATs?
Mr Gibb
Following the problem with the key stage 1 spelling test, we asked the Standards and Testing Agency to go through all the material with a fine-toothed comb to ensure that there were no further problems at either key stage 1 or key stage 2. We have been assured by the chief executive of the Standards and Testing Agency that those tests are safe and secure. Also, I spoke to Rod Bristow, the president of Pearson UK, this morning, and he assures me that Pearson UK is making sure that its processes are secure and tight so that such breaches cannot occur in the future.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Last Wednesday the Prime Minister was not able to tell the House his definition of a modal verb or what the past progressive tense is, or to distinguish a subordinating conjunctive from a co-ordinating conjunctive. I want to give the Minister a second chance. In the sentence “My baby was born in the hospital where my father works”, are the words “where my father works” a preposition phrase, a relative clause, a main clause or a noun phrase?
Amanda Solloway (Derby North) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that it is essential to measure the progress of both the child and the school to identify the gap and how best to fill it?
Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend is right. It is important to measure progress, as well as absolute attainment. One reason why some people regard the assessment this year as challenging is that there are questions in it that previously were not included in the standard test. They were called level 6 tests and were taken separately. We now include those challenging tests within this test so that schools can get credit for the progress of children who start their school with high levels of prior attainment.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
The Secretary of State appeared before the Education Committee on 27 April and told me that the new testing regime for key stage 1 and key stage 2 had not been handled badly. I, and parents and teachers throughout the country, strongly disagree. Does the Minister accept that his Department’s actions are making the working lives of teachers more stressful and more difficult, and explain how he thinks that will help to solve the already very worrying teacher recruitment crisis?
Mr Gibb
Whenever I have a platform, I talk about how important it is to go into teaching. I say that it is a very important profession. There are more teachers—450,000—in the profession today than there have been in history. There are 13,000 more teachers today than there were in 2010, and 14,000 returners came into the teaching profession last year, which is more than the 11,000 who came in a few years before that. Of course, we want more professionals to come into teaching as the pupil population increases. That is why we have very effective advertising campaigns and why we are spending £1.3 billion on generous bursaries to attract the best graduates into teaching.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
I, too, wish all the children doing their exams good luck. I know what that is like, having had three children who went through a state primary school. Tests are an imperative part of school life because we as parents want to know how to plan for our children’s education, and we want the schools to help us see where the gaps are and how our children are doing. Businesses in Taunton Deane would like our children to have better maths qualifications and better writing skills. Under Labour for all those years, education standards sank. Does the Minister agree that our driving force is better education to raise standards, and that tests are an imperative part of that?
Mr Gibb
Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have been declining in the programme for international student assessment tables internationally. We have to continually improve our education system, because other countries are not standing still. They are continually improving their education systems, and unless we do the same, we will fall behind. That is why we reviewed the primary curriculum, why we increased the demands and rigour of mathematics and English, and why we are focusing so much on getting every child to become a fluent reader, who not only masters the mechanics early in their education but becomes a regular reader, reading books for pleasure and developing a lifelong love of reading. We have reformed the secondary curriculum, and we have reformed GCSEs so that they are more on a par with the qualifications in the best education jurisdictions in the world. We have also reformed A-levels, responding to the concerns of employers and universities about the standard of undergraduates and employees.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
Returning to the tests, the Minister cannot do them, the Department cannot organise them and schools cannot understand them. Does the Minister agree with the headmaster of a major primary school in my area, Adrian Antell, who wrote to him saying,
“The primary assessment system in our schools is nothing short of shambolic…Yet again, the professional judgements of experienced educational professionals is ignored by politicians trying to make a short term political gain”?
Mr Gibb
No, the tests were developed by educational professionals—a huge number of such professionals were involved. A large number of professional educators, headteachers and experienced teachers were involved in the review of the curriculum. The tests assess the ability of schools to deliver the new curriculum. That curriculum is more demanding, and we do not resile from that; it was a deliberate decision to raise academic standards in our primary schools and secondary schools as we respond to an increasingly demanding world and to the concerns of employers, universities and others.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
The Government made a big song and dance about testing, which they cannot now deliver. This weekend I was in the Wirral talking to school governors about how to cope with forced academisation, but the Government had already U-turned. The next time the Minister comes to the Dispatch Box with a grand plan to improve education, why should teachers, parents and pupils in the Wirral believe what he has to say?
Mr Gibb
The hon. Lady simply overstates her case. Our plan for reforming the education system was put in place in 2010. We have reviewed the curriculum. That was overseen by a national curriculum review panel of experienced teachers and headteachers. The new curriculum was advised on by a panel of curriculum experts. It was consulted on widely between 2012 and 2013, informally and then formally. It was published in final draft in July 2013, giving schools over a year to prepare for the first teaching of it in September 2014. This has been a carefully planned review and reform of the curriculum. It has been as swift as it can be, because children need the best education possible, as quickly as possible. This is an important reform. This was always going to be a difficult month, as children were assessed for the first time on the new curriculum. However, schools have had a significant amount of material since July 2013, and they are ready—all our surveys have shown that they are confident about teaching the new curriculum.
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
I hope the Minister will agree that stability is key to a child thriving at primary school. As has been said, however, the Department for Education has changed documents and resources almost every other day recently, and that has been compounded by the disgraceful leak of the tests. Government Members are rewriting history—something the UK Statistics Authority told them to stop doing—because the Labour Government improved standards from 1997 to 2010. I will give the Minister another chance to apologise to teachers, parents and pupils, and to allow teachers to get on with teaching and children to thrive. Apologise!
Mr Gibb
Again, I think the hon. Lady overstates her case. The primary curriculum was published in final form in July 2013, sample questions were available as early as March 2014, and there were later sample questions in 2015. In reference to her point about changes being made to materials on-site, the Standards and Testing Agency has responded to telephone queries from teachers about certain aspects of the curriculum and the sample materials. To help teachers, it revised some of that material so that it responded to those concerns. There were other, very minor changes—for example, when, in response to representations from the NAHT, I changed the date on which the STA collected the teacher assessment materials. That decision was taken in response to the concerns expressed. There were real reasons why we wanted the date to be earlier to ensure fairness between the schools that were moderated by the local authority and those that were not. Of course, that required all the documents online to have a date change. The hon. Lady can make a song and dance about these changes, but they were all done for professional reasons by the very experienced professionals of the Standards and Testing Agency, and they were the right thing to do.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
Labour Members are most concerned about the fact that this is the second case in a matter of weeks of major pupil testing errors, and that suggests quite strongly that the Government have taken their eye off the ball. How has their preoccupation with enforced academisation affected their ability to monitor their contractors?
Mr Gibb
We monitor contractors very carefully. The Standards and Testing Agency monitors these issues. This error was made by an individual who put the marking scheme and the test papers for one of the tests—the key stage 2 spelling, punctuation and grammar test—on to a secure site 24 hours before they should have done. As soon as one of the markers alerted them to that fact, they took it down. Ninety-three people had seen that material on-site, but all those 93 people were subject to a confidentiality agreement with Pearson, so this is not some widespread breach. We checked to see whether the individual who leaked this to a journalist had succeeded in spreading the test further. We saw no evidence overnight, through social media or other platforms, that some of that material leaked. The Standards and Testing Agency believes that the test has not been compromised, and we are continuing with it. These are very important assessments and this is a very complex operation. I believe that parents, teachers and the public can have confidence in the tests that have been set this week.
All Saints National Academy, Walsall
Nick Gibb Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) on securing this debate on the building condition of All Saints National Academy in Bloxwich in Walsall. His dedication to the schools in his constituency is well known. We met and spoke about this school earlier in the year, as he has mentioned. He spoke today with the same clarity and passion about the condition of the school as he did during our meeting in February. I recall watching the video that he and teachers from the school presented at the meeting.
The condition of school buildings is vital for our education system. It is not enough for buildings just to be safe; pupils should be educated in smart, well-furbished environments that reflect the value that we, as a society, place on their education. By 2021, the Government will have invested some £23 billion in school buildings, targeting funds where they are needed most.
Our priority is to ensure that the capital maintaining the school estate is delivered with the best value for money possible. To this end, the property data survey completed in 2014 has given us an improved understanding of the condition of school buildings in this country. The survey, the most comprehensive of its type ever undertaken, has provided us with consistent, independently assessed information on the comparative condition of 18,830 schools and colleges. This information can now rigorously inform our allocation of condition funding, ensuring that funding is much better aligned with maintenance needs across the school estate. We are now looking at options for gathering and maintaining usable data about the condition of the school estate over the long term, building on the successes of the property data survey.
Five academies in Walsall have successfully secured funding for their maintenance projects from the condition improvement fund, including Goldsmith Primary Academy in Walsall North, which secured funding for a roof replacement. In addition, Walsall local authority has been allocated over £2.2 million in 2016-17 to improve the condition of its own maintained schools, and almost £700,000 has been allocated to voluntary-aided schools in Walsall.
In 2015-16, we funded a number of projects in the west midlands that have now been successfully completed, such as the Aldridge school, a science college in Aldridge in Walsall. At this school, we funded a project to replace approximately 1,400 square metres of roofing on an existing building to improve the roof coverings, which were failing. That included making roof areas watertight to prevent water ingress into teaching areas, and providing additional roof insulation to improve the thermal efficiency of the building.
At Hamstead Hall Academy in Handsworth Wood in Birmingham, we funded the refurbishment of an existing block, re-roofing the building, replacing existing windows and repairing concrete elements in the façade. The project has enhanced the thermal performance and watertightness of the structure, and it will reduce energy costs and maintenance costs and create an environment conducive to teaching the schoolchildren.
I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s concern about the condition of the All Saints National Academy school building. I was pleased to meet him and school representatives on 1 February, and I would be delighted to accept his invitation to visit the school in the near future so that I can see at first hand what I saw on the video in February.
In December 2015, the school applied to the condition improvement fund. Following an assessment against the published criteria, the application was unsuccessful because there was, as I understand it from officials, insufficient supporting evidence to demonstrate significant condition need.
Mr Winnick
Did the officials actually visit the school? As I understand it, they did not: it was done on the basis of paperwork. If I am right—if not, the Minister will correct me—would it not have been appropriate to have visited the school, bearing in mind the condition outlined in the documentation?
Mr Gibb
Yes, they do visit schools. When I come to that issue in my remarks, I will make some recommendations about what can be done in the future.
The total sum of national funding is, of course, limited—that is the issue we are debating—so the Department has to employ a rigorous prioritisation of funding projects to ensure that all schools are safe and in good working order. For that reason, applications are expected to include independent condition surveys and detailed photographic evidence to demonstrate the urgency and extent of the need for their proposed project, as set out in the guidance to applicants. I recall discussing that at our meeting.
In this instance, the supporting case for investment did not provide enough evidence to allow the bid to be funded, including suitable evidence that a well-developed and deliverable solution is in place, which represents good value for money. Of course, that is disappointing for everyone involved with All Saints National Academy—I understand that it is disappointing for the parents, children and staff—but we need to ensure that all bids are assessed against the same standards. I hope that the feedback will be helpful to the school in preparing a future bid. We expect the bidding round for the next condition improvement fund to open this autumn, for the following financial year.
All applicants from the last round have been provided with feedback on their applications. If All Saints National Academy feels that it would be helpful, an Education Funding Agency adviser can visit the school to provide additional feedback and advice on submitting a bid next time. If the academy considers that due process has not been followed, there is, of course, an appeals process, which will close at 12 noon on 10 May.
Mr Winnick
First, I am pleased that the Minister has accepted the invitation to visit the school. I hope he will be able to do so in the very near future; perhaps he will indicate whether that will be the case. We are now at the end of April, so will he be able to do so by June? Secondly, do I take it that, between now and the submission of bids for the financial year 2017-18, there is no possibility whatever of finance of any kind being given to try to improve the situation?
Mr Gibb
That is my understanding. The funding available for the last bid round has been allocated. It is allocated in a very strict order and in accordance with all the criteria—the hon. Gentleman is aware of those criteria. Failing an appeal over process, that will be the position.
As I said, I am very happy to visit the school. I think I can give the hon. Gentleman a commitment to do so before the end of the summer term, so before the school rises for the summer break.
Mr Gibb
I know the hon. Gentleman said June, and he drives a hard bargain, but I am meeting him halfway. I will commit to visiting the school before it breaks for the summer holidays.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the opportunity to air this debate. He is certainly fulfilling his duty as a conscientious Member in bringing this issue to the House. I am happy to visit the school and to discuss the matter further.
Mr Speaker
The hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) will pursue this matter over and over again, until his school building is refurbished to his satisfaction. This much I think we know.
Question put and agreed to.
Oral Answers to Questions
Nick Gibb Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Julie Cooper (Burnley) (Lab)
16. What recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of teacher recruitment and retention.
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
We have record numbers of teachers in our classrooms, and retention rates have remained broadly stable for the past 20 years. I recognise that recruitment has become more challenging for some schools, which is why our White Paper sets out clear plans to boost teacher recruitment, build on the success of measures we have already put in place, such as the £67 million package to improve recruitment of STEM teachers, and generous training bursaries and scholarships.
Angela Rayner
Excessive workload is the top reason for teachers leaving the profession. Figures released by the National Union of Teachers show that three quarters of teachers say their workload has increased since the Secretary of State launched the 2014 workload challenge, which was supposed to address the concerns about increasing and excessive work. Why has her workload challenge failed to reduce the workload crisis, and will she agree to meet me and my Labour colleagues in Oldham and Tameside about our local challenges?
Mr Gibb
I would be delighted to meet the hon. Lady in her constituency or in Parliament. On the workload challenge, there were 44,000 responses to that survey. The top three issues raised were marking, data management and lesson planning burdens. We set up three working parties, which have now reported with very concrete proposals about how we can reduce the burdens. These are very real proposals that will actually, once implemented, reduce the burdens and workload of teachers.
Julie Cooper
The National Audit Office reports that the number of teachers leaving the profession has increased by over 11% in the past three years, and for the past four consecutive years the Government have failed to hit their own recruitment targets. Does the Minister agree that the plan to force all schools to become academies will do nothing to help this situation and may, in many cases, cause teachers to become more demoralised and more likely to leave the teaching profession?
Mr Gibb
The professional autonomy that comes with academy status does the opposite—it encourages the profession in a way that has not happened in the past. We have the highest number of teachers of all time in our schools—445,000, which is 13,000 more than in 2010. The National Audit Office acknowledged that despite the very large increase in numbers of pupils— 9% in the past few years—the number of teachers has kept pace. In terms of retention, 90% of teachers are still teaching one year after qualifying, 70% are still there after five years, and over half of all teachers are still in teaching 18 years after qualification. These figures are broadly in line with those in other professions.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
One of the very best ideas that the previous Government had was the Troops to Teachers scheme. Given that personnel in Her Majesty’s armed forces are among the very best that Britain has to offer, what success is the Minister achieving in getting personnel from the Royal Air Force, Navy and Army into our schools to teach our pupils?
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
It is clear that teachers are not being listened to with regard to the fiasco over the forthcoming SATs—standard assessment tests—as two excellent teachers communicated to me. They also said that the Department for Education is putting children off learning English and maths properly. When will the Minister listen to teachers, listen to children, and change this approach?
Mr Gibb
We do listen to teachers, and we consulted very widely on the new primary school curriculum that was published in final form in 2013 and came into force in 2014. It is on a par with the best maths curriculums for primary schools from around the world. We have very high expectations and we do not apologise for that. We need to make sure that pupils leaving our schools are able to compete in a modern world—able to survive and thrive in a modern economy such as Britain’s. That is our ambition, and I wish the Liberal party would share it too.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
At Education questions on 7 March I asked the Minister for Schools about the £35,000 income threshold for non-EU nationals and how it would impact on the recruitment and retention of STEM-qualified teachers. He told me that there was an ongoing consultation with the Home Office, but no new announcements appear to have been made on this issue. Will he answer my question today: what steps has he taken to ensure that qualified teachers will be exempt from the £35,000 threshold on earnings?
Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
There is undeniably a crisis in teacher recruitment in schools. I warn the Minister that it is not confined to schools but is starting to affect early years provision too, and hitting it hard because there is no coherent early years career pathway and no set pay scale, with some providers paying wages for only 35 weeks a year. How can the Government possibly hope to improve quality in early years when they are doing their level best to put people off joining the profession?
Mr Gibb
We are not putting people off joining the profession, and we are expanding the early years sector. We acknowledge that when we have a strong economy it is a challenge to recruit highly qualified and highly able people. That is the case in this country, and it is the same in other successful economies around the world. We are doing a huge amount to encourage more professionals to come into the profession. We have a very effective advertising campaign. We have very generous bursaries right across the system; we are spending £1.2 billion on those bursaries. This is working, because we recruited 94% of our target to teacher training last year and we have record numbers of people in teaching. What we do not do, as the hon. Lady and Labour Members are doing, is talk down the profession, because, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, teachers tell us that talk about a recruitment crisis helps to deter people from coming into the profession; it does not encourage them to do so.
Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)
5. What steps her Department is taking to ensure that parents have more influence in the running of their children's schools when those schools become academies.
Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)
15. What steps her Department is taking to support academies through the creation of multi-academy trusts.
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
We expect all schools to be academies, or have plans in place to convert, by 2020 and all schools to be academies by 2022. By setting out our clear expectation for full academisation now, we can give schools, local authorities and dioceses the opportunity to plan effectively for a sustainable future and ensure that no school is left behind. We have set aside funding to support a high-quality, fully academised school system, including over £500 million available this Parliament to build capacity.
Jonathan Reynolds
I support academies where people want them, but there is nothing worse than a top-down reorganisation of a public service for political, rather than sound policy, reasons. In response to a written question from me earlier this month, the Department confirmed that deficits for schools that convert will remain with the local authority. In my borough, over half of our schools will have deficits by 2017. How can the Government justify transferring this burden on to local councils, when it is their own funding of schools that is to blame?
Mr Gibb
I read the hon. Gentleman’s recent letter to the Ofsted lead for the north-west, Chris Russell, and I share his ambition to improve standards of education in Greater Manchester, but it is not a top-down reform; it is devolution in its purest form that gives control of schools to the professionals on the frontline. That is what this is about. He should be supporting the measures because they will raise academic standards right across our schools system.
Mike Kane
This morning, I visited Springfield Primary School, in my constituency, which is run by the most dedicated professionals I have ever known—I had the privilege to teach there myself for the best part of a decade. They tell me that it is more than adequately supported by the Conservative local education authority in Trafford, and in Mike Freeman it has a brilliant LEA Labour councillor and school governor. Will the Minister join me in praising the school for all it does in my constituency and explain to it why its model, which is really good, needs to be changed?
Mr Gibb
We do not want the model under which that school operates to change; we want the school to take the model it uses to raise standards and teach children well, despite the loss of the hon. Gentleman as a teacher, and to spread that excellence to other schools in the area. That is the essence of the academies programme. It is about ensuring that every local school in every part of the country, beyond Trafford, has a good local school. That is the ambition. I hope he shares it.
Andrea Jenkyns
I recently visited Jerry Clay academy, in my constituency, which has seen huge improvements under the leadership of the head, Tracy Swinburne. We should ensure that academies that have benefited from strong leadership are recognised and that they can support other schools through the creation of multi-academy trusts. Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating her and the academy on their success and inform me what steps the Government are taking to ensure that those in leadership positions in trusts are strong and effective?
Mr Gibb
I am pleased that the headteacher of Jerry Clay academy is exploring the possibility of joining a multi-academy trust. The regional schools commissioner has discussed the matter with the school and continues to support it as it considers the opportunity. We are supporting leaders of trusts to succeed in their vital role through programmes such as the successful multi-academy trust chief executive programme and the academy ambassadors programme, which have resulted in over 190 experienced business leaders joining trust boards.
Mr Speaker
We have now exceeded the time available for the Minister’s exam, and we come now to topical questions.
Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)
T2. Digital skills are fundamental to the success of our knowledge economy, but evidence given to the Science and Technology Committee during its inquiry showed that only 35% of ICT teachers have a specialist qualification, and more than half lack confidence when it comes to delivering the new computing curriculum. What steps are the Government taking to train ICT teachers, and to ensure that we are equipping young people with the skills that they need not just for today’s workplace, but for a jobs market that may be unrecognisable in a decade?
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
Digital literacy is, of course, a core part of the national curriculum, and computing is a statutory subject in all four key stages in maintained schools. We are training a cadre of specialists who can cascade the knowledge that teachers require in order to be able to teach that very important subject.
Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)
T8. Charles Dickens Primary School is an outstanding foundation primary school in my constituency, which, along with the London borough of Southwark, rightly has great expectations for all Southwark students. The chair of its governors has been in touch with me to express his concern about the enforced academisation of schools. Why is the Secretary of State ignoring the concerns of staff, governors, parents and pupils? Why is she insisting on dictating a structure that offers no choice, but only the academy approach, which could damage the standard of the education that is currently provided?
Sue Hayman (Workington) (Lab)
T10. Last year I spoke to the Minister about the difficulty of recruiting and retaining teachers in my constituency, which is partly due to its remoteness. He has talked a great deal about the recruitment of teachers, but what specifically is being done to encourage them to come to remote areas such as west Cumbria?
Mr Gibb
The National Teaching Service was established to second high-performing teachers to parts of the country with a history of recruitment problems. When a remote rural school is part of a multi-academy trust, that helps to recruit teachers, because they know that they can move, within the trust, from a rural to an urban school and back again. That makes recruitment and retention far easier.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
T4. According to Ofsted, the best educational settings in the country are maintained nursery schools, of which 58% are “outstanding” and 39% are “good”. Remarkably, they perform just as well in poor areas as they do in less affluent areas. What consideration has the Minister given to allowing them to become academies if they wish to do so, in order to ensure that these great institutions continue their work?
Draft Education (Repeal of Arrangements for Vocational Qualifications Awarded or Authenticated in Northern Ireland) Order 2016
Nick Gibb Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Education (Repeal of Arrangements for Vocational Qualifications Awarded or Authenticated in Northern Ireland) Order 2016.
It is pleasure to appear under your chairmanship again, Mr Streeter. The draft order, which was laid before both Houses on 11 March of this year, repeals the provision that makes Ofqual, the English examinations regulator, the regulator of vocational qualifications for Northern Ireland. Instead, the Northern Ireland Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment, which already regulates GCSEs, A-levels and other non-vocational qualifications, operating as CCEA Regulation will become responsible for regulating all types of qualifications awarded in Northern Ireland. The draft order brings qualifications regulation in Northern Ireland into line with that in Scotland and Wales, where specific regulatory bodies oversee all qualifications awarded in their respective countries.
When Ofqual was established in 2009 and assumed the regulatory functions of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, which regulated vocational qualifications in Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Department for Employment and Learning proposed that Ofqual take on QCA’s responsibilities in Northern Ireland, and that was included in the legislation that established Ofqual. In recognition of the fact that the Northern Ireland Administration committed to keep the arrangements for regulating qualifications under review, the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 made provision for Ofqual’s responsibilities in Northern Ireland to be removed by order. The Northern Ireland Administration now wish to make use of that provision.
The Northern Ireland Department for Employment and Learning reviewed the regulatory arrangements last year and concluded that it would be more appropriate for a single body to be responsible for the regulation of all qualifications in Northern Ireland, including vocational qualifications. The Minister for Education in Northern Ireland, John O'Dowd, endorsed the proposal in December 2015. In January 2016, the Northern Ireland Minister for Employment and Learning, Dr Stephen Farry, wrote to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education requesting the assistance of the Department for Education in amending the 2009 Act to remove the responsibility for regulating vocational qualifications in Northern Ireland from Ofqual to allow CCEA Regulation to perform that duty under article 75 of the Education (Northern Ireland) Order 1998.
The UK Government and Parliament should not take a view on policy decisions made by the Northern Ireland Administration, so in responding to that request we have sought only to ensure that the decision made in Belfast is implemented properly, fairly and efficiently and does not adversely affect people taking these qualifications in England or Ofqual's ability to regulate the qualifications for which it is responsible. These proposals and the practical arrangements that sit alongside them achieve that. The Department for Education here in London has worked with our Northern Ireland counterparts, Ofqual and CCEA Regulation to implement the changes, and I am grateful to all those organisations for their co-operation. The Northern Ireland Office has been informed of the proposed changes.
Since the beginning of the year, CCEA Regulation and Ofqual have communicated with all the awarding organisations affected by the change. The two regulators will continue to work together and with their counterparts in other parts of the United Kingdom to minimise burdens on the awarding organisations that they regulate jointly. Ofqual intends to sign a memorandum of understanding with CCEA Regulation as it takes on its new responsibilities and has recently done the same with the new qualifications regulator in Wales, as many similar qualifications are used in all three jurisdictions.
As a result of this legislative change, Ofqual's small office in Belfast will close. The Northern Ireland Department for Employment and Learning will provide funding for any associated costs and the change will be cost-neutral for Ofqual.
The draft order and the changes are just one example of devolution in action. Each part of the United Kingdom should be able to make arrangements for regulating qualifications that support its objectives and priorities, and to change those arrangements where appropriate. That is what the Northern Ireland Administration are doing, and that is what this order enables for vocational qualifications. I commend it to the Committee.
Mr Gibb
There has been consultation with CCEA Regulation and officials have been working behind the scenes to ensure a smooth transition. There are also memorandums of understanding in place to ensure that the awarding bodies—the exam boards—are not burdened by having two sets of regulators regulating the same type of qualification.
Ofqual is managing the consequences of the change for its three members of staff in Belfast. I asked it particularly to do everything to ensure the best preparation for those staff and to help them in any way possible. Any financial consequences of the closure of the office will be borne by the Department for Employment and Learning in Northern Ireland. I hope the draft order has the support of the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Educational Attainment: Yorkshire and the Humber
Nick Gibb Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
All in eight minutes, Mr Deputy Speaker.
I am delighted to be able to respond to what has been an excellent debate on educational standards in Yorkshire and the Humber. I spent five years of my secondary school education at comprehensive schools in Yorkshire: first at Roundhay School in Leeds and then a sixth form in Wakefield. My mother taught at Talbot Primary School in Roundhay, and my sister and brother both went to Harrogate Grammar School, which, despite its name, is an outstanding comprehensive school in Yorkshire.
I congratulate the hon. Members for Batley and Spen (Jo Cox) and for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) and my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) on securing this debate. May I begin on a note of consensus? I agree entirely with the hon. Member for Batley and Spen that nothing we do in this House is more important than ensuring that no child is left behind.
My hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) cited Eric Hanushek, who wrote the book, “The Knowledge Capital of Nations: Education and the Economics of Growth”, which makes the important point that knowledge is the key to the long-term prosperity of a nation. That is why our education and curriculum reforms are so important.
My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) referred to some very good schools in his constituency, such as Beckfoot School in Bingley, which I visited with him in February. Some 46% of its pupils achieve the gold standard English baccalaureate combination of GCSEs.
In her powerful speech, the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) was right to say that it is unacceptable for any child to start secondary school still struggling to read. Intervention should be put in place before those children leave primary school. Nothing could be more important to me personally than ensuring that we get reading right for all children in primary schools.
I say to the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) that the work of academy trusts such as the David Ross Education Trust, of which I used to be a trustee, has done a huge amount to transform education in Grimsby and to provide greater opportunities for sport and the arts.
The hon. Member for Leeds North West referred to the Social Market Foundation commission on inequality in education. I know that the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg), who launched that commission in January, will continue to champion the cause of reducing educational inequality throughout the country. As for the pupil premium, I refer the hon. Gentleman to the White Paper, which confirms the continuation of the pupil premium. It is, of course, closing the education gap, which the Government are sincerely and absolutely committed to closing.
Greg Mulholland
That is good news, but the question was whether it will have the same level of funding.
Mr Gibb
We have given a commitment both in the White Paper and in our manifesto, and we will come to the details very shortly.
Last month we published our White Paper setting out how we will seek to achieve educational excellence everywhere. As the Secretary of State set out, we must extend opportunity to every child, whatever their background. Access to an academically rigorous education in a well-run and orderly school should be seen not as a luxury, but as a right for every child.
The hon. Member for Batley and Spen raised the issue of the disparity in GCSE attainment between London and Yorkshire and the Humber. There is also, of course, a disparity within Yorkshire and the Humber, with performance ranging from 63.7% of pupils in York achieving five A* to C GCSEs, including English and maths—which is three percentage points higher than London’s 60.9%—down to 45.5% in Bradford, which is 15 percentage points lower than the London average.
In 2015, Yorkshire and the Humber had the lowest proportion of pupils from any English region reaching the expected standard in a year 1 phonics check. Some 74% of pupils reached the expected standard in Yorkshire and the Humber, compared with a national average of 77%, and compared with 83% in London boroughs such as Newham.
Yorkshire and the Humber have the second lowest proportion of pupils entering the EBacc combination of GCSEs: the figure in Yorkshire and the Humber is 35%, compared with 36.2% nationally. There is a similar disparity in terms of achieving the EBacc. Some local authorities in Yorkshire and the Humber, however, achieve above the national average for entering the EBacc, including York with 55.4%, North Yorkshire with 42.1% and Leeds with 40.6%.
We should celebrate the great improvements that have taken place in London, as hon. Members have done during this debate, but we should also acknowledge and celebrate improvements that the hard work of teachers, headteachers and governors has delivered throughout the country. Schools today are better than ever before, with 1.4 million more children in good and outstanding schools than there were in 2010. In Yorkshire and the Humber, compared with 2010 there were 209 more good and outstanding schools in August 2015, meaning that more than 133,000 more pupils attend a good school today than in 2010.
The London Challenge focused on ensuring that there was collaboration between schools. Collaboration is the essence of multi-academy trusts, particularly for the spread of best practice. The argument is sometimes made, as it was by the hon. Member for Batley and Spen, that the Government were wrong not to roll out the London Challenge programme across the whole of England. What we have done instead is to build the most successful aspects of the challenge programme into our reforms. We have continued and expanded the matching of failing schools with strong sponsors. We have increased the number of national leaders of education from around 250 in 2010 to more than 1,000 in 2015, and we have encouraged school partnerships.
A third of schools are now engaged in a teaching school alliance, and we have set out an expectation that most schools will form or join multi-academy trusts, given the benefits that they offer. In Yorkshire and the Humber, there are currently 186 national leaders of education and 58 teaching school alliances, and there is a higher level of participation by schools in such alliances in the region than there is nationally. High- quality sponsors can have a tremendous impact on underperforming schools.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes referred to the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, and I would argue that the most important recommendation in its report was the call for a zero-tolerance approach to schools in terminal failure. That is exactly what we have legislated for in the Education and Adoption Act 2016, which will ensure that regional schools commissioners have the power to commission the turnaround of failing and coasting schools without delay. Through the National Teaching Service, it is our intention that by 2020, 1,500 high-performing teachers and middle leaders will be placed directly into schools in areas of the country that struggle to attract, recruit and retain high-quality teachers. The national roll-out will begin in early 2017.
The hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) mentioned the northern sponsor fund. I am delighted that Sir Nick Weller, the chief executive of the Dixons Academies trust, which has helped to improve results at several schools in Bradford, will be leading a report for the Government on how we can go further and faster to deliver a lasting turnaround in school performance in the north. Sir Nick’s work will, among other things, identify ways in which our current reforms can support improvements in newly identified “achieving excellence” areas across England—those areas of the country where we need to take specific action to raise academic standards. The White Paper identified areas of the country where low school standards are reinforced by a lack of capacity to deliver and sustain improvement. In those areas, we will work with local headteachers to diagnose the underlying problem and target our national programmes to help them to secure sufficient high-quality teachers and system leaders, sponsors and governors.
I have listened carefully to hon. Members and my hon. Friends this evening. As a Government, we are determined that every area and region of the country will have rising academic standards and ever-improving standards of behaviour. The whole objective of the White Paper, “Educational Excellence Everywhere” is to ensure that wherever a child goes to school, they can expect the same high standards. We want, and our reforms are intended to deliver, those same high standards throughout Yorkshire and the Humber, as well as throughout the country.
Schools White Paper
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The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
This has been an excellent debate, with a large number of superb speeches. I apologise if, in the time available, I am not able to respond to them all.
The Government’s education policy is focused on raising academic standards in our schools. Many Governments promise to raise standards; this Government are raising standards. We are raising standards in children’s reading, with 120,000 more six-year-olds this year reading more effectively as a result of our focus on phonics. We are raising standards in maths, with a new primary maths curriculum that is raising expectations and bringing us closer to the expectations in the top-performing education systems of the world. We are raising standards so that pupils leave primary school fluent in arithmetic. The plan is for all pupils to know their times tables by heart, which is why we are introducing a multiplication tables test at the end of primary school. Our policy is resulting in children starting secondary school having learned the rules of grammar and punctuation for the first time in a generation. The Government have eradicated grade inflation in our public exams—the GCSE and the A-level—which are being reformed so that they are on a par with the best qualifications in the world.
What the Government are doing in education is real; that is why it is controversial. It started under the leadership of my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), and it is now entering a bold new phase under the leadership of my right hon. Friend the current Secretary of State.
If real education reform were easy, it would have been done already. However, every step of the way, we have had to fight and take on the vested interests—the self-appointed experts, the professors of education in the universities and the education quangos. We have challenged local authorities where too many schools were languishing in the performance tables year after year. We have transformed many of their schools into academies with a strong sponsor driving up standards—1,300 schools so far since 2010. We have taken powers in the Education and Adoption Act 2016 to automatically turn into an academy every school that Ofsted has put into special measures and to do the same for every coasting school that is not up to the job of raising its game.
Those schools will be supported by outstanding schools that are leading multi-academy trusts, which are formal groupings of academies spreading what works in the best schools to improve pupil behaviour, raise academic standards, promote sport and the arts, and share back-office functions. That means that small schools are more likely to be financially viable. There are now more than 640 multi-academy trusts led by outstanding schools.
Many strong and effective local authorities have seen the educational benefit of giving professionals control of their schools and have encouraged their good and outstanding schools to become academies and spread their winning formula and expertise. For example, in Bournemouth, 87% of all local authority schools, including primary schools, are now academies, as are 83% of schools in Bromley. Nationally, 66% of secondary schools and 19% of primary schools are now academies.
In 2010, there were just 203 academies; now, there are more than 5,600. The direction of travel is clear. Every month, more and more schools are converting to academy status. At some point, we have to draw the line, and that is why the White Paper sets out what we need to do over the next six years as more local authorities reach the levels of academisation in Bournemouth, Bromley and elsewhere.
Local authorities will continue to have an important role to play as the champions of parents and pupils—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. Many people asked questions of the Minister. They want to hear his answers. We must listen to the debate.
Mr Gibb
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. As I was saying, local authorities have a role to play as the champions of parents and pupils with regard to place planning, administering admissions and ensuring that children with special educational needs are properly supported in their education.
May I apologise to the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) for the occasional split infinitive in the White Paper? There were many more split infinitives in the earlier drafts. The Secretary of State and I have done our best to eradicate jargon, and we will redouble our efforts to do so.
Despite those split infinitives, my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) read an excerpt from a letter from a headteacher in her constituency, stating that it is the best White Paper he has ever read. She was right to point out that, in her experience, there is enormous community involvement in the academies in her constituency. We are putting greater expectations on academies to involve parents and to take their views into account.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael), who chairs the Education Committee, made the important point in his excellent contribution that, of course, the academies programme started under Labour—but that was new Labour, not old Labour—and this Government have turbo-charged that programme.
This has been a lively debate about an issue that could not be more important to our country: the education of the next generation. This Government have a clear plan for education reform and it is already raising standards in our schools. By contrast, we hear nothing from Labour about standards, improving the teaching of reading, instilling a love of books, attainment in mathematics, improving our GCSE and A-level exams or improving pupil behaviour in our schools. For Labour, it is all about politics—it is all about cosying up to the vested interests and the NUT.
Our White Paper is an ambitious plan to ensure that our school leavers, wherever they live and whatever their background, are properly educated and equipped for life in modern Britain. It is clear from today’s debate that the Labour party has learned nothing from its defeat. It has no credibility on the economy, no ambition and no plan to raise standards in our schools, and at the first whiff of controversy it runs to attach itself to the vested interests.
The public want a Government who take difficult decisions and who act not in party interests, but in the national interest. I urge the House to reject Labour’s self-serving motion and to support our amendment—
Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab) claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).
Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.
Question agreed to.
Question put accordingly, That the amendment be made.
National Reference Test
Nick Gibb Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
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The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
Today, the Government are publishing their response to their public consultation1 on the introduction of new secondary legislation to require selected schools to take part in the national reference test (NRT).
The NRT is a further step in the Government’s reform agenda, which will deliver robust and rigorous qualifications for England’s students. Before 2010, pupils received successively higher grades at GCSE each year, but in international league tables England’s performance stagnated. Ofqual has halted this grade inflation through the use of comparable outcomes2.
Ofqual is introducing the NRT which will indicate if GCSE results should change from year to year. Over time, this will provide an additional method of measuring real changes in national performance at GCSE which is distinct from the use of international comparisons such as the PISA study.
The National Reference Test
Each year, a different sample of 300 secondary schools, both in the state and independent sectors, will be selected to take part. Random samples of pupils from each selected school will take a test lasting about an hour. About 30 pupils from each school will take the English language test and another 30 will take the mathematics test. Ofqual will publish information about overall test performance each summer when GCSE results are announced. The results will not be used for school accountability purposes and results will not be given to individual pupils. Instead, the NRT will provide Ofqual with additional evidence on year-on-year changes in performance.
Participation in the test will benefit both schools and pupils, as it will help to provide more direct evidence of improving school performance at the national level which can be reflected in the grades that are awarded at GCSE, ensuring higher attaining cohorts are rewarded.
The legislation will apply to maintained schools. It will also apply to most academies and free schools through an existing provision in their funding agreements requiring them to comply with guidance issued by the Secretary of State in relation to assessments. It will not apply to independent schools although pupils at independent schools will also be asked to take the test to ensure that the sample of pupils that take the test is nationally representative.
The consultation
The public consultation, which ran from 30 November 2015 until 22 January 2016 allowed teachers, parents, pupils, and all those with an interest to provide their views, which have been taken into account in preparing the final legislation. Having carefully considered the small number of responses received, the Government have decided to proceed with enacting the proposed secondary legislation. It is important that the sample of pupils taking the test each year is fully representative and therefore it is appropriate that it should be mandatory for selected schools to take part. The legislation will come into force on 1 September 2016 and the first full NRT will take place in March 2017.
1 https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/ national-reference-test-implementation-arrangements
2 For further information, see: https://ofqual.blog.gov.uk/2015/08/05/gcse-marking-and-grading/
[HCWS650]
Three-tier Education
Nick Gibb Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
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The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Sir Roger. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston) on securing this debate on an issue that is clearly of concern to a large number of his constituents. To answer his question straight away, the Department and Ministers have no plans to remove the three-tier education system. Our clear position remains that the organisation of maintained schools is an issue for local authorities and for individual schools, but in close consultation with parents.
Dr Huq
In the Budget just now, we heard about devolution. The Minister says there is a role for local authorities, but if I understood correctly, schools are going to become academies, which seems to contradict the principle of devolution. Perhaps he can help me understand this better.
Mr Gibb
Yes, of course. The announcement today in the Budget—we will be saying more about this tomorrow in the White Paper—is that all schools will become academies, or be in the process of becoming academies, by 2020. Until then, a large number of schools will still be maintained schools, and if the hon. Lady can be a little patient, I will come to the position regarding academies in a moment. None the less, we still need guidance about the position of three-tier systems when a number or some of those schools are maintained schools.
Where organisational change is proposed, we expect the local authority to agree with schools how any changes will be funded. The Department’s role is to hold schools accountable for the quality of education they provide and not to mandate any particular configuration of tiers. Supporting local authorities to create sufficient school places remains one of the Government’s top priorities. Local authorities are responsible for ensuring that there are enough school places for children in their area. We are spending £23 billion on school buildings in this Parliament to create 600,000 new school places— we created nearly 500,000 in the last Parliament—and we intend to open 500 new free schools and to address essential maintenance needs with that money. That delivers on our manifesto commitment to invest a further £7 billion to create new school places between 2015 and 2021.
Through the free schools programme, we are creating greater local choice by allowing existing schools and other groups to be able to establish new schools, in particular where additional high-quality places are needed. Those include not only traditional primary and secondary schools, but 55 university technical colleges, 72 all-through schools and 25 16-19 free schools that are either open or in the pipeline.
The three-tier system—in which school provision is organised into lower, middle and upper schools rather than the primary and secondary model—has been established, as my hon. Friend said, in areas of the country such as Worcestershire for many years. The number of groups operating the three-tier system has reduced in recent times, mainly because local authorities have restructured their provision as need dictates. There are still, however, over 68,000 children currently being educated in middle schools in England.
The Secretary of State only has a role in decisions to change the age range of a school when that is proposed for an academy. She will only make such a decision at the request of an academy trust.
When a local authority decides to move from a three-tier to a two-tier structure, it is important that careful plans are in place to minimise any negative impact on the performance and viability of other schools in the area, which is something that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire expressed concern about. Local authorities proposing such a change must follow the established statutory process set out in schedule 3 of the School Organisation (Prescribed Alterations to Maintained Schools) (England) Regulations 2013. In practice, an authority-wide reorganisation often involves months of informal consultation and research before the formal statutory process is undertaken. That process ensures that such decisions are widely consulted on and the views of stakeholders and others are valued.
There are four separate stages of the statutory process. First, local authorities are required to publish their proposals in a local newspaper and at the school site. Secondly, a period of formal consultation has to take place for at least four weeks. Thirdly, a decision is usually made by the local authority. Only after those three steps have been taken can the proposal be implemented.
Michael Tomlinson
The Minister makes an important point, but for people who live close to the edges of boundaries between local authorities, the catchment areas can be different. I am thinking, in particular, of Dorset, the borders of Poole and Dorset County Council. Within the points that he has made, is there a duty on local education authorities to consult one another—neighbouring authorities—to ensure that there is a fair system for all pupils in an area?
Mr Gibb
The duty is to consult stakeholders, which will include parents. That includes parents who are likely to go beyond the local authority boundary to send their children to a school.
The consultation stage gives people who may be affected by the proposed change, including children, parents and teachers, a chance to express their views. The local authority is under a statutory duty to take into account all objections raised when reaching its final decision. In cases where objections have been raised, the local authority has a two-month window in which to make a final decision. If the process takes longer than two months, the schools adjudicator will take on the role of decision maker. I stress that changing the age range of local authority-maintained schools is a local decision. The Department nationally has no formal role in the process or the final decision. As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire mentioned, we are reviewing our schools organisation guidance to local authorities and maintained schools, and we intend to publish that shortly.
Where an individual academy seeks to change its age range, the process is different, but it still maintains the requirement for effective consultation and adherence to the principles of public law. The relevant regional schools commissioner is the decision maker for applications from academy trusts. They will ensure that any local issues are identified and addressed before a decision can be made and will draw on the advice and knowledge of their headteacher board. The guidance to support that process requires academy trusts to discuss their proposals with the local authority to ensure that the proposed change is aligned with local pupil place plans and will not have a negative impact on education standards at the academy or at other local schools or colleges. If objections are raised locally about a proposed change, the regional schools commissioner will require the trust to provide a full business case, including details of the steps it has taken to address objections raised through consultation.
My hon. Friend asked whether the Department had any strategies in place to prevent issues arising from any transition to a two-tier system. The guidance requires that schools undergoing any reorganisation work together to ensure an appropriate, co-ordinated implementation and that decisions on any individual proposals will be made in that context.
I refer my hon. Friend to “Making significant changes to an existing academy”, the guidance that the Department published this month. The guidance says on page 9:
“Where proposals are likely to have a significant impact on other local provision a full business case will…be required…Where local provision is organised in three tiers and the aim is to move to two tier age range, the department expects schools to work together to ensure an appropriate co-ordinated implementation, and will only approve any individual proposal in that context.”
Unless the proposers can demonstrate that they have engaged in those kinds of co-ordination arrangements and that their proposals will not adversely impact maintained schools, other schools or parents in the area, the regional schools commissioner simply will not approve the proposal.
I hope that my hon. Friend is reassured that the Department is not looking to remove the three-tier school system. The process for reorganisation and changing the age range of local authority maintained schools rests with local authorities, and for academies it rests with trusts and regional schools commissioners.
Question put and agreed to.
Engineering Skills: Design and Technology Education
Nick Gibb Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
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The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey; I think it is the first time I have done so. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan) on securing this important debate during British science week. I pay tribute to her for her work on these issues on the Education Committee and elsewhere. I also congratulate her on the powerful and compelling speech that introduced the debate.
Science, technology, engineering and maths are vital subjects in our modern economy. Our manifesto included a commitment to make this country the best place in the world to study maths and STEM subjects in primary, secondary and further education. There is widespread demand for employees with an in-depth knowledge of STEM subjects, and those working in science and technology careers are paid, on average, 19% more than in other professions. Despite those attractive employment prospects, research from organisations such as the Confederation of British Industry shows that companies still have difficulties in recruiting people with technical and professional STEM backgrounds and qualifications.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst) referred to the importance of careers advice. The Government have established the Careers & Enterprise Company, and we are also taking steps to improve the quality of careers advice through the development of a new careers strategy that will set out our vision for 2020 and the clear lines of accountability, through Ofsted and the new destination measures, for the quality of careers advice in schools.
We have recognised the importance of STEM subjects to young people’s life chances, and we accept the plea of the hon. Member for South Antrim (Danny Kinahan) that we promote science and technology subjects at school. Our ambitious programme of reform is addressing the historical underperformance in STEM education. Our reforms to the curriculum and to qualifications mean that standards in public qualifications will match the expectations of the best education systems in the world.
We are also reforming vocational qualifications to introduce a small number of technical and professional routes, which will support students’ progress from school into employment. Those routes will be valued by employers to ensure that more students progress into higher-level technical occupations in areas such as engineering. As the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) said, high-quality teaching is also essential to tackling the skills shortages, which is why the Government support schools to recruit top graduates into teaching.
Last year, the Prime Minister announced an additional package worth £67 million to recruit and train up to 17,500 maths and physics teachers. The Government run scholarships and offer bursaries to encourage high-quality maths and physics graduates to train as teachers. We also support schools and existing STEM teachers to improve the quality of teaching through Government-funded programmes such as maths hubs and the network of science learning partnerships.
More than 22,000 more young people are taking A-levels in STEM subjects this year compared with 2010, and the number of STEM apprenticeships is increasing. The percentage of apprentices starting in STEM-sector-related subject areas has increased by 64% since 2010, to more than 90,000. Over the same period, the number of women starting STEM-related apprenticeships has more than doubled to 8,000, and the number starting apprenticeships in engineering and manufacturing technologies has more than trebled to 5,100.
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) emphasised the importance of the apprenticeship programme. We are committed to reaching 3 million apprenticeship starts in England by 2020, an ambition that we are helping to fund to the tune of £2.5 billion with the apprenticeship levy. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood highlighted the example of 12 higher-level apprenticeships at the BAE Systems site in Rochester.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) mentioned schools actively discouraging students from looking into the possibility of becoming an apprentice. The Education Act 2011, introduced by the coalition Government, says that schools should secure independent careers advice, and adds explicitly that that must include information on apprenticeships.
Another issue that the Government are tackling is the gender gap in STEM A-levels and careers. We should celebrate the fact that 12,000 more girls entered mathematics and science at A-level in 2015 than in 2010, but total entries in maths and science were still 36% higher for boys than for girls. The Secretary of State recently announced an ambition to tackle that unjustifiable gender gap by increasing the proportion of girls entering maths and science A-levels by 20% by 2020. My hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham referred to the STEMNET programme. There are now 32,000 STEM ambassador volunteers throughout the country who support their local schools with STEM careers advice, and 40% of them are female—a point also made by the hon. Member for Strangford.
My hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham welcomed the reforms made to the design and technology curriculum and associated qualifications. She is right that design and technology is a valuable subject that prepares young people for further technical study, and it remains compulsory in school from key stage 1 to key stage 3—from ages five to 14. The content of the previous design and technology qualifications did not include the knowledge and skills sought by leading engineering employers, so, as my hon. Friend said, we have worked closely with key organisations in the sector—including the Design and Technology Association, the James Dyson Foundation and the Royal Academy of Engineering —to align the qualification with high-tech industry practice. Industry leaders have been very supportive of our reforms.
The hon. Member for Scunthorpe criticised some of our approaches to design and technology. Under the last Labour Government, between 2007-08 and 2010, the numbers entering design and technology GCSE fell from 311,000 to 238,000. I am optimistic that our reforms to the content of the design and technology GCSE and A-level will result in a rise in the number of students who opt to study them. The decline started before we introduced the EBacc or the Progress 8 measure.
We continue to support design and technology teacher recruitment through bursaries of up to £12,000 and marketing campaigns that feature design and technology. Subject knowledge enhancement courses are available for candidates who need to refresh or boost their subject knowledge. We also provide a specific webpage on the “Get Into Teaching” website for potential design and technology trainee teachers.
My hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham expressed concerns about the impact of the recently introduced accountability measures—such as the EBacc and the Progress 8 measure—on the take-up of design and technology. I share her concern at the declining numbers that I just highlighted. In my view, that decline reflects the declining quality and status of the previous qualification. As I said, I am optimistic that we will see the numbers rise.
The EBacc combination of core academic GCSEs is an important performance measure and the Government are determined that every child should leave school fully literate and fluent in maths, with an understanding of the history and geography of the world they inhabit, its workings as revealed by the findings of science, and a grasp of a language other than their own. Biology, chemistry, physics, computer science—there is nothing old-fashioned in emphasising the importance of those subjects, which was the criticism levelled at us by the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan).
I have every hope that the combination of the revised design and technology qualifications and our focus on attracting new specialist teachers will restore the subject’s focus. To give my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham time to respond, I shall finish by saying that I am enormously grateful for her support for this agenda. She has raised some important issues, and I hope she is happy with the steps that the Government are taking to address them. Over the course of the Parliament, we will continue to build on the progress we have made on this issue.
Oral Answers to Questions
Nick Gibb Excerpts(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)
3. What steps her Department is taking to support provision of STEM subjects in schools.
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
The Government are determined to make Britain the best place in the world to study science, technology, engineering and maths. Our reforms to the curriculum and qualifications are designed to raise standards to match the best internationally. Our networks of maths hubs and science learning partnerships are supporting schools with the aim of improving the quality of maths and science teaching, and a £67 million package will train up to 17,500 maths and physics teachers by 2020.
Derek Thomas
In my constituency, there are a number of new skilled and well-paid jobs in engineering, space, renewable energy and other highly skilled, high-tech sectors, including the Navy. What further message can I take back to employers to assure them that schools have the resources and expertise to inspire and prepare our young people for these jobs in west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, and what more can the Department do to ensure that we have the engineers we need as a nation for the future?
Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend, as a member of the Science and Technology Committee, is a keen advocate of the high-tech sector and particularly of the Goonhilly satellite earth station in Cornwall. He is right to share the Government’s determination to improve STEM skills in this country. That is why the Government fund the Cornwall and West Devon maths hub and the Cornwall science learning partnership, which provide support to schools in west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly to improve maths and scientific education. We are also reforming technical and professional education and taking steps to improve the quality of careers advice to young people.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
8. Families for schools does an excellent job arranging for business people to visit schools to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs, including science and technology entrepreneurs. Will the Secretary of State outline plans to engage more business people with more schools to encourage more young people to help build our enterprise economy, particularly in science and technology?
Mr Gibb
That is precisely what is happening. The local enterprise partnerships are working closely with the careers and enterprise companies because we want to ensure that there is a connection between employers and schools so that a generation of young people inspired by technology can get to know what jobs are available in the technology sector, where, incidentally, earnings are on average 19% higher than for those not working in that sector.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Minister agree that no Prime Minister was more passionate about science, technology and mathematics and their power to liberate individuals’ potential than Harold Wilson? Does he further agree that Harold Wilson set up the Open University and all those polytechnics that became our new universities in order to help in that process of changing our culture? Can we not now liberate the universities to do more in partnership with schools to get this culture change that Harold Wilson worked so hard to achieve?
Mr Gibb
The hon. Gentleman seemed to get a bigger cheer for mentioning Harold Wilson than he would have done if he had mentioned the current leader of the Labour party. I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, however, about the importance of inspiring young people. University technical colleges have been established to do precisely that, and we have seen a huge increase in the number of young people taking STEM A-levels, with the number taking maths A-level going up by 18% so that some 82,000 young people are now taking it. It has become the single most popular A-level choice, while both physics and chemistry A-level entries have increased by 15%.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
We currently have a situation in which the income threshold for non-EU workers could be raised to £35,000, which will cause issues for many STEM teachers currently working in UK schools, as well as for teachers that could be recruited from abroad. Will the Minister explain to schools that have gaping holes in STEM teaching positions how he is working with the Home Office to ensure that we can continue to recruit from abroad?
Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)
One of the traditional problems with getting more students to study STEM subjects has been the difficulty of persuading girls to take such subjects up to A-level and beyond. Does the Minister have any evidence to show that policies to encourage more girls to take up these very important subjects are working?
Mr Gibb
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Government recently set out an ambition to see a 20% increase in the number of girls’ entries to science and maths A-levels by 2020. We established, with industry, the Your Life campaign, which is designed to encourage young people, and especially girls, to choose maths and physics. We have seen a huge increase in the number of girls taking A-levels in physics, from 5,800 in 2010 to 6,800 this year, and in maths, from 28,000 in 2010 to 31,000 this year. However, there is still more to do.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
In Stoke-on-Trent, we have decided to do something about the crisis in maths teaching. Will the Minister congratulate inspiring head teachers Roisin Maguire and Mark Stanyer, along with the city council and the Denise Coates Foundation, on establishing the £1 million maths excellence partnership, which was opened by Sir Michael Wilshaw last week to attract maths graduates to Stoke and to support the continuing professional development of current classroom teachers?
Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con)
5. What progress the Careers & Enterprise Company has made on improving careers education and inspiring young people about the world of work.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
12. What assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the schools admissions appeals process.
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
When parents are refused a place for their child at a school of their choice, it is important that they have the opportunity to appeal that decision. A robust system is in place for handling admissions appeals, including complaints about appeal maladministration. We are currently reviewing the admissions systems, including whether changes to the school admission appeals code are necessary. We will conduct a full public consultation on any changes in due course.
Tulip Siddiq
The Secretary of State recently stated her ambition for the Government potentially to ban civil society organisations from raising concerns about the admissions processes of schools. Those organisations perform an important public duty. Constituents have been in touch with me to say that they find the admissions process too complex and too lengthy to deal with by themselves. Does the Minister agree that banning civil society organisations from raising concerns will not only exacerbate the difficulties that parents already face, but further enable breaches of the admissions code?
Mr Gibb
The purpose of that announcement was to enable the chief schools adjudicator to focus on the concerns of parents and not to have the system absorbed by the need to handle multiple objections by campaigning organisations. That was a recommendation of the adjudicator as a consequence of her experiencing those issues in her term of office.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
I think that the Minister is referring to secular organisations that have been trying to clog up faith school application and appeals processes. Will he confirm to the House that the code of practice brought in at the beginning of this year will specifically prevent that sort of thing from occurring?
Mr Gibb
Yes. The announcement made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was to ensure that the school admissions process is fair, that parents—and only parents—can object to admission arrangements in their area if they regard them as unfair, and that it is not used as a campaigning tool.
Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)
13. What steps the Government are taking to improve maths and numeracy standards in primary schools.
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
The Government are committed to raising standards in primary maths. We have introduced an ambitious new national curriculum that places greater focus on written and mental arithmetic. Long multiplication, long division and fractions are now compulsory for all pupils. We have strengthened primary mathematics assessment, removed the use of calculators from key stage 2 tests, and pledged to introduce a multiplication tables check for all pupils at the end of year 6.
Chris Green
I thank the Minister for his reply. Improving the standards of maths and numeracy in primary schools is crucial for children in later life, as they provide the foundation for more advanced learning. What are the Government doing to ensure that more children leave primary school with the expected levels of maths and numeracy?
Mr Gibb
We have launched a network of 35 maths hubs. These school-led centres of excellence are driving the transformation of teaching based on best practice internationally. Hubs have delivered a successful teacher exchange with Shanghai and have introduced high-quality Singapore textbooks to schools. Increasing numbers of primary school teachers are working with hubs to adopt effective south-east-Asian mastery approaches to teaching to ensure that every child leaves primary school with the expected levels of maths and numeracy.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
May I press the Minister a little further? I have experience of teaching statistics to A-level students, and I have observed that some of those students could not do simple arithmetic because they never learned multiplication tables in early primary education. I suspect that that is still a problem today. What are the Government doing to ensure that all our children are required specifically to learn multiplication tables in their early years at primary school?
Mr Gibb
We have introduced into the new primary curriculum a requirement that by the end of year 4 all children will know their multiplication tables to 12 times 12. We will introduce a multiplication check next year to ensure that every child knows their multiplication tables by heart. That is a wonderful achievement. If we can ensure that every child leaves primary school knowing their multiplication tables by heart, it will transform mathematics teaching in this country at secondary school and beyond.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
15. If she will make an assessment of the contribution of faith schools to society.
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
Church and faith schools have made a significant contribution in helping to shape our education system over many years. They are among our best performing schools in the country and parents of all faiths and of none value them for the quality of their education and their strong ethos. We continue to work closely with faith organisations to ensure that the religious character of their schools is maintained and developed.
Sir Edward Leigh
All that is undeniable: faith schools are extraordinarily popular, so why do the Government insist on the cap of 50% on people of a faith attending a new free school? We all know that the Government’s hidden agenda is that they do not want 100% Muslim schools, but the fact is that few Muslim schools are oversubscribed anyway, so all this is doing is preventing the Catholic and Anglican new free schools from coming on stream. Why not abolish the cap and let freedom prevail?
Mr Gibb
The 50% limit on faith admissions to free schools ensures that the new high-quality school places that they provide are available to local children, not just those of a particular faith, and it helps to ensure that those pupils receive an inclusive and broad-based education. We are always happy to hear representations on how best to achieve those goals and I would certainly welcome applications to establish, for example, more Catholic free schools, but I understand why the Catholic Church in particular is reluctant to do so.
Mr Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.
Mr Alan Mak (Havant) (Con)
T4. Archie Hayward, a 15-year-old student from Warblington school in Havant, is the first British teenager to secure work experience at the CERN science laboratory in Switzerland. Will the Minister join me in congratulating Archie and confirm that the Government will continue to support careers in science and technology?
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
I join my hon. Friend in congratulating Archie Hayward on his significant achievement, which I am sure will provide him with the insight and inspiration to continue studying science and mathematics. We want to see more young people studying those subjects, which can lead to so many rewarding and interesting careers in science and engineering, which the Government are supporting through a more challenging curriculum and qualifications, better teaching and improved career advice in schools.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
T3. A headteacher in my constituency showed me the sample paper for this year’s key stage 2 SATs. The paper included questions about the subjunctive form, past progressive, subordinating, conjunction and many other such gems. I am tempted to ask how many Members here could answer questions on those topics, but the more important question is how many children could do so. Does the Minister understand the concerns put to me by head teachers that they want the very highest standards for the children they are looking after, but, far from helping to raise standards, such an approach runs the risk of setting 10 and 11-year-olds up for failure?
Mr Gibb
It is important to understand the scale of the reforms to the primary curriculum. In four or five years every child could be leaving primary school knowing their multiplication tables by heart and being a fluent reader because of our focus on phonics, eliminating illiteracy in this country, and for the first time in several generations primary schools are explicitly teaching English grammar. The hon. Gentleman should welcome these reforms.
Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con)
T6. Virtual school heads are taking great steps in promoting the educational achievements of all children looked after by their local authority. Will the Minister join me in encouraging the progress of virtual school heads such as mine in North Warwickshire and ensure that they help to facilitate the entitlement to a good education for all children and young people in care?
Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)
T9. Will my hon. Friend please join me in recognising the vastly improved design and technology GCSE, which comes into play next year and which will help to inspire the next generation of technical and engineering professionals?
Mr Gibb
Yes, we have made some significant reforms to the D and T GCSE and A-level, working closely with the Design and Technology Association and the James Dyson Foundation to ensure we have high-quality D and T qualifications that lead on to higher education, apprenticeships and high-quality employment in the sector. I hope the qualification itself will lead to more young people taking it.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
T7. Last week I attended an event organised by Positively UK and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in my constituency to celebrate the lives of women living with HIV. Does the Minister agree that not enough is being done to educate children in schools about HIV and the support available to women living with it?
Mr Gibb
The hon. Lady raises a very important issue. It is one of the very few explicitly statutory requirements that young people in secondary school have to be taught about the dangers of HIV. I share her concern. We need to improve the quality of PSHE education throughout our system.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
The Minister will be aware of the huge pressure on school places in the London borough of Havering and in all outer London boroughs at the moment, particularly with the new bulge classes being imposed on primary schools, such as Gidea Park primary school in my constituency. What extra funding and support will the Government give to schools that face such pressures at this time?
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
Last week, Sir Michael Wilshaw warned of a brain drain due to the recruitment and retention crisis in teaching that the Minister is well aware of. I appreciate the Minister’s earlier answer about the use of qualified teachers in classes being up to schools, but does he share my concern that teaching assistants are increasingly being used to teach SEN and low-attaining pupils?
Mr Gibb
I do not accept the comments of Her Majesty’s chief inspector of schools. We are doing everything we can to recruit. Despite increasing pupil numbers, and the challenge of a strong economy and the strengthening graduate jobs market, we are ensuring that there are now record numbers of teachers in our classrooms. There are 13,000 more teachers in our classrooms today than in 2010. Recruitment in teaching is a challenge. I use every platform I have to extol the virtues and rewards of teaching to help raise the status of the teaching profession. What does the hon. Lady do?
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
Will the Minister join me in welcoming the development of high-quality curriculum materials under the banner of Education Destination, which uses the Isle of Wight’s natural environment and attractions to teach outside the classroom?