Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Gibb and Fiona Mactaggart(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Gibb
The apprenticeship levy is an important policy, as my hon. Friend will know. It is designed to ensure that we have the skills that are needed for our economy. The levy can be used to fund training and professional development in schools, and we will provide schools with detailed information on how the levy will work for them and how they can make the most of available apprenticeships.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
Does the help in funding for rural schools not represent the opposite of addressing the need that I raised in a recent debate—disappointingly, the Minister did not even mention it when summing up the debate—for areas that have a high influx of additional pupils during the school year? I estimate that next year something like 600 school places in Slough will get zero funding, because, despite his talking about up-to-date deprivation numbers, he is not working his funding formula on up-to-date pupil numbers.
Mr Gibb
The formula does contain an element for growth. We also responded to the representations on mobility made by the right hon. Lady’s colleague, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms). When pupils join a school part way through the year, that will be factored in. I would have expected her to welcome both those changes to the funding formula.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Gibb and Fiona Mactaggart(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
Headteachers in Slough schools were very grateful to the Minister for School Standards when he met them to discuss teacher shortages. Unfortunately—I am sorry to bring this to the Chamber—I have reminded him twice since then that they have not received the letter that he promised them at that meeting. Can I expect it to be sent before Christmas?
Mr Gibb
I will do my utmost to ensure that they receive a letter. I enjoyed meeting them and they raised some very important points, but we are ensuring that we are filling teacher training places. There are more teachers in our initial teacher training system now than there were last year.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Gibb and Fiona Mactaggart(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
The Minister will recall from the meeting he held with me and some excellent headteachers in Slough to discuss our teacher shortage problem that two outstanding grammar schools with excellent GCSE and A-level results are not meeting his demands on EBacc levels because they have chosen, confidently, to provide subjects—such as design and technology, art and design, and drama—they felt their students would benefit from and needed. Why cannot schools without such confidence make choices for the future of their pupils, rather than to satisfy the Minister?
Mr Gibb
It is not to satisfy the Minister; it is to ensure that young people have the widest possible opportunities available to them. We kept the EBacc combination of core academic GCSEs small enough, at either seven or eight, to allow sufficient time in the curriculum for pupils to study those subjects that interest them. That is why I have resisted calls for more subjects to be added to the EBacc.
Teachers Strike
Debate between Nick Gibb and Fiona Mactaggart(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Gibb
We want to make sure that the education of those children in particular, and that of all vulnerable children, is protected. One of the reasons we introduced the pupil premium, which provides £2.5 billion a year, was to make sure that funding goes to the most vulnerable children in our school system. We are consulting on the national funding formula and on the high needs funding formula. That consultation has closed and we will respond to it shortly.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
My impression is that the Minister is prepared to hand out blame but not to accept it. He says that this action is damaging children’s education and disrupting parents, but his Government’s decision to impose on primary teachers of key stage 2 a new four-year curriculum that they had only two years to deliver led to a chaotic series of results, which were published today. The results have upset parents and they are much worse than the Secretary of State predicted. Does that not harm children’s education more than the antics of the NUT today?
Mr Gibb
No, it does not. The new curriculum is essential if we are to prepare young people for life in modern Britain and equip them to do well at secondary school. The previous levels did not ensure that children, including those reaching level 4 at the end of key stage 2, went on to get at least five good GCSEs. This curriculum is much more rigorous and it has been designed to be on a par with the best education jurisdictions in the world. Some 66% of pupils are already meeting the new expected standard in reading, while 70% are meeting it in maths and 72% in grammar, punctuation and spelling. I think that teachers have done a great job in preparing pupils for this new, more demanding curriculum.
EBacc: Expressive Arts Subjects
Debate between Nick Gibb and Fiona Mactaggart(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck. I apologise to the Minister for not being able to stay to the end of the debate because I am committed to celebrating youth theatre at the National Theatre’s Connections festival this evening.
At the Barbican last week, I saw the first performance of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s last opera, “The Hogboon”. Like many of Max’s works, it used the talents of professional and amateur artists, and involved children as performers. Seeing a chorus of London schoolkids perform the role of the monster, Nuckelavee, was an artistic triumph and for the children also a great personal achievement. What did they learn? Not just singing, but self-confidence, teamwork, timing, communication with an audience and the value of practising, rehearsal and listening to others. That is what performance can bring to anyone’s life.
I will never forget a prisoner who had just been in a performance of “Chicago” at Bronzefield prison. He grabbed my collar and said: “I’ve been a thief for years, but doing this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I see how I can change now. Every prisoner should get a chance to do this.”
George Kirkham, who runs the Creative Academy in Slough, described to me a conversation he had had with a recruiter from one of the biggest national recruitment agencies who told him that they would rather employ a young person with a performing arts degree than with an economics degree because they know that performing arts students have transferable skills. Thirty-five years ago, Brigid Beattie, who took over failing secondary schools in Wandsworth that had just merged and that had a very poor reputation, told me: “Fiona, I will make this an excellent school and I will do it through the medium of drama.” At the time, I was sceptical, but within a very short time it had become a beacon school with outstanding results.
I started my remarks with these anecdotes to show what expressive arts education can instrumentally bring to a young person’s education. We are in an era when claiming that experiencing creative arts subjects is valuable for its own sake, as the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton) rightly did, risks implying that absolute rigour and high standards of learning are not expected. Well, I do expect that. I was a teacher and I know that ensuring that young people experience creating and making things, as well as learning about what other people have made and developing skills such as numeracy, is vital to their emotional and intellectual development.
The problem at the heart of this debate is that we all know that what counts in public policy is what is measured and if what is measured is only EBacc subjects, only they will count. That is why, if we have a mandatory EBacc, we will betray the young people of Britain if it excludes all the expressive and creative arts.
Britain outperforms most countries in the number of Nobel prizes we have achieved. I am certain that is because our education system has traditionally included an emphasis on both science and creative subjects. If we abandon that combination, we will go backwards. It is disingenuous to claim, as the Secretary of State did in a recent speech, that the arts are
“the birthright of every child”
and that
“a young person’s education cannot be complete unless it includes the arts.”
She assured the arts sector that there is nothing to fear from the English Baccalaureate. I am sure that was her hope, but the evidence shows that she is mistaken.
The introduction of the EBacc coincided with a relative fall in the number of qualified teachers employed in schools to teach such subjects and the number of teaching hours devoted to them. According to a survey by the National Society for Education in Art and Design, 44% of secondary teachers said less time was allocated to art in key stage 3 and 34% of those working with post-16s said that courses had been cut. We have heard from my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) about the decline in the number of students taking GCSE subjects in art and design, media, music and so on. That fall coincides with a rise in the number of young people studying EBacc subjects. It is not an overall fall in GCSEs. The total number of GCSE entries in all subjects has increased this year by 0.3%, but over the same period the number of exam entries for arts subjects has fallen by 8%. The falling take-up of arts GCSEs is already spilling over into A-levels. There were 4,300 fewer candidates for A-level arts subjects this year—a decline three times bigger than the 1,500 recorded in 2015.
If the Government are determined to continue with an EBacc measure, it would be easy to fix the problem without in any way watering down the emphasis on the other subjects by simply requiring one creative arts subject within the EBacc portfolio. The qualities that almost all these creative subjects nurture are the qualities that companies know they need. The Government’s emphasis on so-called hard subjects, on factual learning, is old-fashioned and fails to recognise or nurture one of the traditional strengths of British education—that creativity has always been at its core. That is a reason why we are a world leader in creative industries, yet the Government’s approach to school education is putting that at risk.
John Kampfner, who leads the Creative Industries Federation, called the decline in students taking GCSEs in creative subjects “alarming” and said that it
“further confirms a longstanding trend that EBacc is clearly exacerbating...The impact will not only be felt by the creative economy but also by other sectors, such as engineering, that desperately need some of the same skills. Although it is possible to take up jobs in our sector without exam results in creative subjects, it is much harder and potentially more expensive…which obviously further diminishes the chances for young people from more disadvantaged backgrounds.”
He went further than that, but I want to deal with the point about disadvantaged backgrounds, because it is those young people who are losing out most. It is in their schools that there has been the fastest decline in qualified teacher numbers, while schools such as Eton, on the border of my constituency, still celebrate and develop excellent teaching in music, drama and art, as Tom Hiddleston, Harry Lloyd, Eddie Redmayne, Henry Faber, Harry Hadden-Paton, Dominic West, Damian Lewis and Hugh Laurie can all attest.
Fiona Mactaggart
My point is not that young people should study these creative subjects instead of the EBacc, but that they should be part of the mandatory experience of young people, which is the case at Eton. Eton has brilliant drama, music and art education. The facilities are extraordinarily wonderful.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Gibb and Fiona Mactaggart(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
Is the Minister of State surprised to learn that when I shared his latest response to my correspondence about teacher shortages in Slough with our local headteachers, they found it cynical and said that it failed to address the real recruitment and retention problems that they face? Will he meet me and those headteachers to discuss a practical arrangement to deal with the teacher shortages in our town?
Mr Gibb
Of course I will meet the right hon. Lady and the teachers from her constituency to discuss this issue, which we take very seriously. We are competing for graduates in a strong economy, and we have recruited 15,000 more teachers since 2010. There are 456,000 teachers in the teaching profession, and 14,000 more teachers returned to teaching last year. That is a higher figure than in previous years. Teaching is still a popular profession, but we are dealing with the challenge of a very strong economy and competing in the same pool for graduates. We take this issue seriously, which is why we have very generous bursaries to attract the best graduates to teaching.
Key Stage 2 Tests
Debate between Nick Gibb and Fiona Mactaggart(8 years, 6 months ago)
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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.
Recruitment and Retention of Teachers
Debate between Nick Gibb and Fiona Mactaggart(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Gibb
On the contrary, Teach First has been a huge success. The purpose of Teach First is to attract people who might not otherwise consider entering teaching and ask them to commit to two years, so there has always been the expectation that a considerable number of the graduates who come into Teach First will leave and go into other careers in the City or elsewhere. The overall retention rate of more than 50% is actually staggeringly successful and reflects just how successful Teach First has been in recruiting high-calibre graduates into teaching.
The strong recruitment and retention figures have not been achieved by lowering our expectations for the quality of those joining the teaching profession. Almost three quarters of teachers now have an upper second or first-class degree, 10% higher than in 2010. A record proportion of teacher trainees—17%—have first-class degrees, and for several years running teaching has remained the most popular career destination for graduates of Oxford University. Teach First has played a huge part in that.
In spite of those successes, we recognise that there are still challenges. As the economy improves and the labour market strengthens, high-performing graduates are being tempted by opportunities in other sectors. Our task is to continue to champion teaching as a career choice for the brightest and the best, and not only to attract those people into our classrooms but to keep them there once they have joined the profession.
Fiona Mactaggart
I thank the Minister. He talks about the 1% vacancy figure with what headteachers in Slough might feel is a degree of complacency. At what point would he think the level of vacancies was unacceptable?
Mr Gibb
It would be a figure considerably higher than 1%. If I may cite another figure, UCAS publishes statistics every month, and they show that acceptances are down by 2% compared with the corresponding period last year. That is an improvement on last month’s figures. We are not complacent, and we understand the challenges that exist, particularly with the strong economy that we have, but being 2% down does not represent the crisis that Opposition Members are intimating.
The Government are responding to the challenges. We have funded the geographical expansion of Teach First into every region of England, and the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley’s home city currently has 28 participants completing the two-year programme. A further 21 teachers who have already completed the programme are still teaching in Sheffield schools. The expansion will give Teach First the scope to reach 90% of eligible schools by 2016. That will strengthen the Government’s commitment to recruit more top teachers throughout the country, including in rural, coastal and disadvantaged areas.
Examination Reform
Debate between Nick Gibb and Fiona Mactaggart(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the soliloquy of the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), although I should point out that the EBacc combination of GCSEs will not drive out subjects such as ICT and business studies, or, indeed, art and music. When English, maths, science, history or geography and a modern language are taken into account, 30% of the curriculum time will still be available, so there is no need for those subjects to be excluded.
I understand what was meant by my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), the Chairman of the Select Committee, when he described the reforms as “the driver” of higher standards, but they are not “the driver”, and were not intended to be. They are “a driver” when combined with the other reforms that the Government have introduced and are introducing in, for instance, improving initial teacher training, raising the bar for entry to the profession, making changes in the curriculum, and changing standards of behaviour in schools. I believe that, taken together, those changes will bring about significant improvements in standards in our schools.
Fiona Mactaggart
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that pupils are not required to drop creative subjects, but that has been the result. He has referred to improvements in behaviour and achievement. Interestingly, all the studies of creative education, creative partnerships and so on concluded that they improved the attendance, attainment, behaviour and achievement of children.
Mr Gibb
I do not disagree with that at all. Creative education and partnerships can be motivational for young people. The creative subjects are very important for all students in all schools, and vocational subjects can be very important motivators for some students. However, I think that we should take a reality check when talking about the EBacc. It includes English, maths and science—all of which are already compulsory for students aged up to 16, as they were under the last Labour Government—and languages, which were compulsory for students aged up to 16 until the disastrous decision in 2004 to make them compulsory only for those aged up to 14. So we are only talking about a humanity, namely history or geography, and one subject cannot drive out all the other optional subjects that young people can study up to the age of 16. I think that those on the other side of the debate are exaggerating the consequences. I also think that it is important to reverse the decline in the number of students taking history and geography, and very important to reverse the decline in the number of those taking modern languages.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Gibb and Fiona Mactaggart(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Gibb
There is evidence that teacher subject knowledge has a direct bearing on the attainment of pupils. There is also a correlation between the degree classification and the propensity of trainees to finish their course. There is also evidence from around the world that the highest performing education jurisdictions are those that take their trainees from the top 10% or top quarter of graduates.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
The Minister will have read the OECD’s recent report showing that teacher status, pay and professional autonomy are key to teacher success and the learning of pupils. The Prime Minister tells us that we should follow the lead of countries with excellent records in this regard, such as Finland and South Korea. What is the Minister doing to increase teacher pay and professional autonomy?
Mr Gibb
The entire academies programme is built on the autonomy of the teaching profession; that is the essence of the programme. We want a well-rewarded teaching profession in order to attract and retain the best people, and we are determined to achieve that. Of course, because of the legacy left behind by the last Government, which the hon. Lady supported, we are having to take some very tough decisions right across the public sector. Despite all the problems left by the previous Government, however, in education we have maintained spending on schools at flat cash per pupil, and in addition to that we have the pupil premium, which amounts to a significant sum of money.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Gibb and Fiona Mactaggart(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend is right to say that these are important issues. Children need to have good-quality PSHE at schools, and that is precisely what the review will cover. We are taking our time setting up the review to ensure that its remit is correctly drafted and that the quality of the review gives rise to a high-quality improvement in the teaching of PSHE in those subjects in our schools.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
But will he ensure that the need for schools to help to prevent domestic violence and violence between boys and girls is made a priority in the review? Every relevant Committee of this House, including the most recent Select Committee on Home Affairs, has identified that although in Britain we are relatively good at dealing with the policing of domestic violence, we are very bad at preventing it. Schools have more of a role to play; will the Minister ensure that they do that?
Mr Gibb
Yes. We are determined to play a strong part in the cross-government action plan on ending violence, particularly against women and girls, that is led by the Home Office. We are providing support to families with multiple problems, funded by the early intervention grant, and we are taking forward the recommendations of the Reg Bailey review. The PSHE review will consider sexual consent, which is an important issue to cover, and we are raising standards of behaviour in our schools, with a particular focus on anti-bullying.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Gibb and Fiona Mactaggart(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend is right. Citizenship is an important subject, and schools have an important role to play in encouraging young people to become responsible citizens and active members of society. I welcome what she says about her school. The Government are fully committed to empowering young people to become active citizens. That is the intention behind the launch of the national citizenship service programme last year.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
The Minister will be aware of his own Government’s violence against women and girls strategy and the excellent report from the Select Committee on Home Affairs, both of which have highlighted the importance of education in schools in preventing violence against women and girls. What steps is he taking to make sure that that plan is delivered in our schools?
Mr Gibb
This is one issue that will be addressed in the national curriculum review. The issues that the hon. Lady raises are very important and have been given a very high priority by this Government. We share her concerns and we agree with the importance of raising these issues at school level. That is precisely what the national curriculum review will examine.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Gibb and Fiona Mactaggart(14 years ago)
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Mr Gibb
It is important for primary and secondary schools to work closely together, particularly at that transition point. Getting the fundamentals right is crucial to a child’s success in secondary education and throughout their adult life. The Government are committed to getting all children reading and writing to a high standard, which is why we are promoting the use of systematic synthetic phonics in primary schools and introducing a short reading test for six-year-olds, so that we can identify those who need extra help. We will say more about the age six reading test shortly.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
If the Minister is committed to increasing attainment, does he agree that children in secondary schools learn from each other, as well as from their teachers? If so, why will children in places such as Wokingham receive around twice as much pupil premium as children in places such as Slough?
Mr Gibb
Of course, we are still consulting on how the pupil premium will be allocated, but a problem with the current system is that 50% of funding that is allocated on the basis of need does not reach the school. The advantage of the proposed pupil premium—it will be £2.5 billion a year by the final year of the spending review period—is that every penny will reach the schools attended by those pupils.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Gibb and Fiona Mactaggart(14 years, 5 months ago)
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Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
9. How much funding he plans to allocate to (a) Slough borough council and (b) other local authorities where there are insufficient primary school places in order to increase the number of such places available in the current financial year; and if he will make a statement.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)
School capital allocations announced in 2007 for the current spending period include £1.5 billion for new pupil places. Additionally, around £1.9 billion is allocated for primary school modernisation, some of which will fund new places. The capital support for Slough and its schools this year is some £25 million, including nearly £9 million specifically for new primary school places.
Fiona Mactaggart
I am glad to hear that that £9 million is confirmed. It was given by the previous Government to increase the number of our primary places. We still have 60 reception and year 1 children who do not have places for next year and those funds are essential to provide them, but a note from the Library advised me that £32 million of Slough’s external finance, which includes a number of grants in relation to education, is at risk. As we have not had a detailed breakdown of what funds to local authorities have been protected by the Government, can the Minister assure me that £1 in £6 going from the Government to Slough borough council will not be cut by the coalition Government?