Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Gibb and John Howell(5 years, 11 months ago)
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John Howell (Henley) (Con)
The Europa School in my constituency teaches languages by teaching other subjects in foreign languages. Does my right hon. Friend accept that that is proving popular with parents of all types, including from the UK, and that it is a good model to follow?
GCSE English Literature Exams
Debate between Nick Gibb and John Howell(6 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)
It is a pleasure to serve, for what I think is the first time, under your chairmanship of one of these debates in Westminster Hall, Mr Sharma. I congratulate the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) on arranging the debate and on opening it with such articulate and strong content.
This Government came to office determined to raise standards in our schools. That has been the driving force behind all our educational reforms. We want to close the attainment gap between those from disadvantaged backgrounds and their more advantaged peers, and our reforms are beginning to show results. More schools are rated good or outstanding by Ofsted. Some 1.9 million more pupils are now in those schools, benefiting from a higher quality of education than they would have done in 2010. Thanks to our phonics reforms, we are rising up the international league tables for the reading ability of nine and 10-year-olds. We have risen from joint 10th to joint eighth in the progress in international reading literacy survey. The attainment gap between children from disadvantaged backgrounds and their more affluent peers has closed by 10% in primary and secondary schools.
However, many if not most of our reforms were opposed by the Labour party, and today’s debate is just one more example of that opposition. When we came into office in 2010, we began the process of reforming the national curriculum and GCSEs and A-levels in response to concerns about grade inflation in our public exams and concerns from employers, colleges and universities about academic standards in our schools. We went through a long process. We appointed an expert panel. We worked with the exam boards in drafting subject content, and we consulted widely on that content. The exam boards went through the process of providing exam specifications. The first exams in English and maths were ready for teaching in September 2015, more than five years after the reform process began. Our determination was to ensure that our public exams were on a par with qualifications in the countries with the best performing education systems in the world. We changed the objectives of Ofqual in the Education Act 2011 to ensure that.
By ensuring that all pupils receive a rigorous core academic education up to the age of 16, we are preparing them for education and employment later in life. Whether pupils choose to take A-levels, the new T-levels when they are ready, or an apprenticeship, we know that a broad core academic education pre-16 is the best preparation. That is why we overhauled a curriculum that was denying pupils that core academic knowledge, and why we reformed the examination system, restoring rigour and confidence to our national qualifications. That included introducing revised subject content; replacing modules with end-of-course examinations; using non-exam assessment only where knowledge and skills cannot be tested validly in an exam, such as for art; and using tiering only when a single exam cannot assess pupils across the full ability range.
The reformed GCSEs consistently assess the knowledge and skills acquired by pupils during key stage 4. In English, that reform means a wider range of challenging texts, with no tiering or controlled assessment. It also means answering questions in the exam on some unseen texts. Many more pupils took English language and literature GCSEs in 2017. More schools entered pupils for the exam, and schools on average entered a higher number of pupils. That arose from a combination of changes to the performance measure progress 8 and the withdrawal of the combined English language and literature GCSE. Crucially, attainment in the English literature GCSE last summer was broadly stable across the grade range, and any small changes can be explained by changes to the cohort taking the qualification, which was significantly larger.
Pupils responded well to the demands of the new, more challenging qualification and scored highly in the new exams. For the largest exam board in the subject, AQA, pupils needed to score 88% for a grade 9 and 40% for a grade 4. We want all young people to develop a love of literature by reading widely for enjoyment. [Interruption.] Does my hon. Friend want to intervene?
John Howell
I wanted to intervene simply because I did not study English literature; I studied Latin and Greek, but there are some similarities because they are textually based. We did not have texts in the exam hall. We were not encouraged to quote extensively from the texts, although the fact that I can remember so much of Catullus probably owes a lot to the erotic content, rather than anything else. Are we getting confused over the issue of having to quote large quantities of text? I do not think that is part of the exam.
Nick Gibb
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will come on to the specifics of that later.
Through reading, pupils develop cultural literacy— my hon. Friend is an example of someone with great cultural literacy—and the shared knowledge that connects our society. Reading also helps to create shared bonds. From understanding references to a Catch-22 situation to sharing knowledge of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”, literature contributes much to the underpinning ties that hold us together.
It is important that pupils have the opportunity to study a range of high-quality, intellectually challenging and substantial texts from our literary heritage. The new and more rigorous GCSE in English literature requires pupils to read and understand a wide range of important texts across many eras. Under the old GCSE, pupils were examined on four texts at most. Some were examined on only three: two texts and a poetry anthology or anthologies. There was no requirement for pupils to be asked questions on texts they had not previously studied —unseen texts—although exam boards could use them if they wished. The remaining texts were covered through controlled assessment, which is a form of coursework. Ofqual decided that new GCSEs in the subject would be assessed entirely by exam, as that is a more reliable and fairer method.
The new English literature GCSE requires pupils to study a range of high-quality, challenging and substantial texts, including at least one Shakespeare play; one 19th-century novel; a selection of poetry since 1789, including representative Romantic poetry; and fiction or drama from the British Isles since 1914. The requirements for poetry and a novel from the 1800s are new and add more breadth and rigour to the qualification. There is also a requirement for pupils to study no fewer than 15 poems by at least five different poets with a minimum of 300 lines of poetry in total. That element is designed to ensure that pupils gain a deep understanding of literature and read widely throughout the course. As my hon. Friend said, pupils are not required to learn the poems by heart. Instead, the purpose of studying a wide range of poetry is to develop an appreciation of the form and to support pupils to understand the importance of literature across the ages.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Gibb and John Howell(7 years ago)
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Nick Gibb
Maths and English are key skills that young people need if they are to get on in life. There is a direct correlation between the income young people and adults earn if they have those GCSEs and if they do not have those GCSEs. The rules say that those with a D or grade 3 in those GCSEs are expected to continue studying them. Those with lower grades can take stepping-stone qualifications in English and maths at further-education college. That is the best preparation for a long-term, successful career.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
Children and Social Work Bill [Lords]
Debate between Nick Gibb and John HowellMonday 5th December 2016
(7 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Children and Social Work Act 2017 View all Children and Social Work Act 2017 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 69-I Marshalled list for Third Reading (PDF, 80KB) - (22 Nov 2016)
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
In Oxfordshire we have had a situation where children in care have been abused, and that has led to Operation Bullfinch. How will what the Minister has set out make that situation better?
Mr Gibb
The local safeguarding arrangements set out in the Bill will provide a strong statutory framework that puts responsibility on the police, the NHS—through the clinical commissioning group—and the local authority to ensure that a robust safeguarding system is in place, but with greater local flexibility than we have at the moment, so that the arrangements are as effective as possible in meeting local needs. I also believe that the combination of improved national arrangements for analysing serious cases, which I will come on to, including child sexual abuse and exploitation, and for learning from them in a more systematic way, including higher standards for social workers, as set out in the Bill, will enable Oxfordshire and other counties across the country to keep children safer than is currently the case.
Chapter 2 of part 1 of the Bill focuses largely on arrangements for the safeguarding and protection of children. Earlier this year, Alan Wood, the former director of children’s services in Hackney who is president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, carried out a review for the Government on the role and functions of local safeguarding children boards. His report, which was published in May, found that local arrangements were patchy. Less than half of LSCBs were judged by Ofsted to be good or better, and he reported that there was a clear consensus in favour of reform. Strong partnership is, as we know from serious case reviews, key to keeping children safe.
Clauses 12 to 15 will establish a new child safeguarding practice review panel to review serious child safeguarding cases that are complex or of national importance. The purpose of the panel will be to improve the way in which we learn from cases where a child has died or been seriously harmed and neglect or abuse of the child was known or suspected.
Clauses 16 to 30 will introduce a stronger statutory framework for child safeguarding and protection at local level. The focus will shift away from wide-ranging local partnerships and will place a duty on the three key agencies involved in safeguarding children—namely local authorities, the police and the health service—to work together, and with any relevant agencies, to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Gibb and John Howell(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Gibb
This seems like an upside-down House: the Labour Front Benchers are on the Back Benches, and its Back Benchers are on the Front Bench. We intend to increase academy engagement with parents by creating an expectation that every academy will put in place arrangements for meaningful engagement with parents and for listening to their views and feedback.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
23. Will the Minister use this occasion to reassure parents of pupils at the Europa School in my constituency that they will still be able to play a part in the running of their school?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Gibb and John Howell(12 years, 10 months ago)
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John Howell (Henley) (Con)
11. What steps he plans to improve the quality of teaching in schools.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)
Nothing has more impact on a child’s achievement than the quality of teaching that they receive. We are raising the bar for new entrants to the teaching profession, supporting existing teachers to improve and, where teachers cannot meet the required standards, making it easier for head teachers to tackle under- performance.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Will he confirm what he is doing to allow heads to remove bad teachers and to check on the performance of new recruits, given that teaching in four in 10 schools assessed by Ofsted is rated only as “satisfactory” at best?
Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. All the evidence points to the importance of teacher quality in a pupil’s education. The Sutton Trust, for example, showed that, during one year with a very effective maths or English teacher, pupils gained 40% more in their education, compared with having a poor-quality teacher. That is why my hon. Friend is right that from September there will be new arrangements to help schools manage teacher performance and new streamlined procedures for heads to tackle teachers about whose performance they continue to have concerns.