Oral Answers to Questions
Pat Glass Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Laws
My hon. Friend is entirely right to raise this very important issue. It is a concern that the take-up of free school meals varies so much across the country. That is why the Department has now introduced an eligibility checking service to make it easier and quicker to check which families are entitled to free school meals. I can tell my hon. Friend that under-registration for the east of England has actually fallen from 23% to 18% over the past year.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
Children from disadvantaged homes and those with special educational needs are most likely to be hit by the cuts to 18-plus funding. When the Secretary of State met the Education Committee just before Christmas, he told us that he regretted the cut, but that it was the best worst option. These children are the closest to being not in education, employment or training; are they really the ones who should be hit hardest and first?
Mr Laws
The Minister for Skills and Enterprise, who covers this area, has already responded to this point. These are very difficult decisions that we are having to take as a consequence of the budget deficit we inherited from the previous Government. It is a difficult decision, but I believe that the analysis will show that it is justified.
PISA Results
Pat Glass Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Michael Gove
I visited Eastleigh several times in the past 18 months, and I learned a great deal. It is the case, as the hon. Gentleman points out, that in Hampshire there are many excellent schools and sixth-form colleges. It is absolutely right that we should applaud success and excellence in this country as well as abroad.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
Last week, I met Swedish journalists on behalf of the Education Committee, and it is true that they are really worried about their dramatic fall down the international league tables, which they partly blamed on the free school experiment. They told me that their equivalent of Ofsted had closed 20 such schools since September. Does the Secretary of State not agree that it is time to learn from such mistakes and puts schools and pupils before ideology?
Michael Gove
It is absolutely the case that there is a difference between Sweden and this country. Sweden did not have an equivalent of Ofsted until 2008, and it does not have the external system of accountability through testing that we have had in this country. Autonomy works, but only with strong accountability, which is why it is important, and why I hope the hon. Lady will encourage her Front Benchers to support the English baccalaureate.
Qualified Teachers
Pat Glass Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
Over the past week, the Minister for Schools and I have duelled a couple of times on the qualification of teachers and initial teacher training, in the Westminster Hall debate that my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) mentioned and in the Education Committee, so much of what I say today will not be unfamiliar to him.
I do not disagree with the Government and the Secretary of State on all their education policy. I agree with the Secretary of State that we now have in our schools the best quality teaching force this country has ever seen. I also agree that the one single thing that improves standards and outcomes is the quality of teaching; the difference is that I know what it looks like when I see it. I agree with the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for Schools, who last week made it absolutely clear in the Education Committee, that teachers in taxpayer-funded schools should be qualified or working towards a qualification while they are teaching.
I listened carefully to the Deputy Prime Minister when he spoke about this on Sunday just gone. He said he agreed with many policies on academies and free schools but allowing unqualified teachers to teach in state-funded schools was not one of them. That prompts the question as to why he then whipped Liberal Democrat MPs to vote for it in the first place. Is it simply that he has seen the polling and recognises that this piece of Government ideology is not a popular policy with voters and is overwhelmingly rejected by parents?
Simon Hughes
The hon. Lady’s competence is well recognised. Our party, which is a democratic organisation, recently debated this issue, and I can confirm that what the leader said in his speech last week exactly reflected what the party voted for by a very large majority at our conference in March this year.
Pat Glass
I recognise and respect that. I therefore expect to see the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues in the Lobby with us tonight.
When the Deputy Prime Minister spoke at the weekend, he talked about schools being set free to set their own school holidays and the times of day when they open and close. Well, I have got news for him: maintained schools have always had that ability. They do not need to be a free school or an academy to do that, nor to employ unqualified teachers. Maintained schools have always had the ability to bring in non-QTS specialists. The person delivering the lesson at the front of the classroom does not need to be a qualified teacher, but the person who designs, differentiates and manages the curriculum, manages the lesson plans and is responsible for individual pupil assessment does need to be a qualified teacher. On that, I absolutely agree with the Secretary of State.
Pat Glass
I am not going to give way any more because there is so little time.
The history of Labour in office and unqualified teachers shows that in the vast majority of cases, great non-QTS teachers went on to become qualified through the licensed or the classic routes. Government Members say that free schools and academies are now free to employ teachers who have a master’s degree or a doctorate, and is that not a good thing? I am not altogether sure about that. I have a master of science degree, but a working knowledge of maths and statistics does not make me a teacher. Without a bachelor of education degree I would not have the skills and knowledge to understand child development, the science of teaching and learning, how children learn, and classroom management and managing behaviour, or to identify the needs of children with special educational needs and how to meet them. I would not know about differentiation, delivering a programme of study across a range of abilities, or assessment—that is, knowing what a child can and cannot do, and what they need to do next. Important as those things are, I would also not have the credibility and trust of my professional colleagues, of parents, or, more importantly, of young people themselves. Pupils know very quickly who is qualified and who is not, and who is experienced and who is not, and that affects their behaviour and how they learn in the classroom.
The problem with this Government is that they think anybody can teach. I know from experience that as soon as we move away from the classroom it looks really easy, but it is not. Teachers are people who stand up in front of classrooms every day and deliver great lessons. I do not pretend to be a teacher in terms of that definition. Being qualified does not make a great teacher; it takes more than that. [Interruption.] I am glad that Government Members agree with me. As has been said, this is not necessarily about the qualification of teachers. Every teacher does not have to be qualified to deliver a great lesson, but surely good qualification is the basis of a state-run system. [Interruption.] Having anything else leaves our children open to—[Interruption.] Does my hon. Friend want to intervene?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. It is very disruptive to have people shouting across the Chamber, particularly from the Government Benches. Those Members may wish to be called in the debate, and if this behaviour persists, they might find that we run out of time before they get called.
Oral Answers to Questions
Pat Glass Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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The Minister for Skills and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)
We in Government are huge and enthusiastic supporters of small business Saturday, which has cross-party support. I encourage local authorities of all political persuasions to follow the lead of Tamworth and introduce policies that can help to support small businesses across the board, and especially on Saturday 7 December, small business Saturday.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
T5. I was disappointed by the Minister’s response to the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) earlier and surprised at his lack of basic geography, so I am going to give him another opportunity. I understand that we are all just “the desolate north-east” to Government Members, but I remind the Minister that Northumberland college is indeed in south-east Northumberland and up to 50 miles away from parts of north Northumberland. Once again, what will the Minister do to meet the basic needs of young people in north Northumberland?
Matthew Hancock
I know the geography well, not least because I have visited Northumberland college in the last few months—[Interruption.] Hold on. Transport issues are important. If the hon. Lady is saying that we need to ensure that we get basic skills provision into all areas, including rural areas, I entirely agree with her, but if she is saying that the best thing to do is to ignore large rural areas, I disagree. I would have thought that we could work together on this sort of thing.
Teacher Training and Supply
Pat Glass Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. I congratulate my colleague and fellow member of the Select Committee on Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), on securing the debate. It is a pleasure to follow my colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), who, like me, spent several decades of his career before coming into this place teaching and working in the education sector.
Until recently, the system of initial teacher training in this country was relatively simple and worked relatively well. I am the first to accept that schools have complained to me for decades that students coming out of university have to be taught how to teach, but when I have pressed them on the matter, they will accept—reluctantly, sometimes—that things have improved, that HE providers work well with schools, and that student teachers spend most of their final training year in classrooms teaching.
Until 2010, it was the job of the Department for Education, through the various reincarnations of the Teacher Training Agency, to decide each year how many teachers were needed and in what subjects. It was the job of the university-led teacher training institutions and schools, working together, to make sure that teachers in training had the right skills, knowledge and professionalism to work in our classrooms. Newly qualified teachers’ satisfaction with their courses was at an all-time high in 2010-11, which is the last year for which data are available. They rated their university courses as good or very good in 90% of cases. The proportion of graduate entrants holding a 2:1 or a first-class degree had been increasing steadily for years, prior to 2010. That is not perfect, and nor is there room for complacency, but it is a reasonably good picture, overall. There is recognition across the profession and, I think, throughout the House that we have a better, more qualified, knowledgeable and skilled teaching work force than at any time in our history. That is down to many things, not least of which is the quality of our ITT, which was recognised nationally and internationally as outstanding.
The Education Committee, on which I serve, looked into and reported on the issue of teacher training in some depth in the spring of 2012 as part of its “Great teachers” inquiry and report. I am sure that the Minister has studied it. We recognised the various and diverse routes into teaching and the role of the higher education institutions as well as school-based providers. It was clear to us that a sharp move from higher education and school-led partnerships to largely school-led provision was highly contentious and fraught with difficulties, not least because the school-led sector was not yet robust enough and did not have the capacity to replace the higher education sector. The Minister will no doubt say that he does not intend to replace the higher education ITT sector with school-led ITT, but that will be the outcome if the higher education-led ITT sector is not sufficiently funded and supported. Universities will simply reduce or withdraw from the market, closing their schools of education. As the Minister knows, that is beginning to happen.
As part of the inquiry the Select Committee visited Finland and Singapore, countries that are recognised as among the best in the world for ITT, and which the Secretary of State regularly cites as jurisdictions from which he wants to learn. They both have university-led teacher training and recognise that a knowledge base in education and child development, with a research-based dissertation through a university, are required to produce the best teaching force. In 2012 the Select Committee cautiously welcomed the extension of School Direct, but it had serious reservations that it wanted the Government to consider.
University-led ITT in England is recognised internationally as outstanding. Ofsted has confirmed that through its own inspection. If we truly believe that we need to learn from what is internationally outstanding, why would we not hesitate before putting the quality of that provision at risk? The Committee welcomed more school involvement in ITT, but we had reservations about whether schools are equipped to deliver the programme on their own and, in many cases, to lead it. We were particularly concerned about the time scale. Change is a fact of life, but to change too swiftly the balance from higher education-led to school-led ITT is to run the risk of damaging what is already a good—even outstanding—system. In the long run it will create a teacher shortage, which is exactly what appears to be happening.
Pat Glass
I entirely agree. If the Government had attended to the warnings of the Select Committee in spring 2012 we would not be facing the crisis that my hon. Friend’s colleague and friend spoke about at the weekend. Since the Committee considered the issues it has been apparent that there is a worrying future for ITT in England, and for the future sufficiency of the teacher work force. The historical context is that every recent Tory Government has left office with a teacher shortage.
Some but not all School Direct places will offer an academic qualification such as the postgraduate certificate in education alongside qualified teacher status. However, accredited providers are accountable and responsible for the conferring of any academic qualification and QTS. In view of that, it is not surprising that students prefer to have an academic qualification including QTS from a university, rather than from a school, albeit one that is linked to a higher education provider. That is, if nothing else, an issue of status. All things being equal, what good maths graduate is going to choose school-based QTS over that awarded by a prestigious university? In that matter, I have some experience.
The problem is that Government policy is shifting funding from universities to school-led provision so quickly that, while universities may not be short of students applying for their teaching courses, they no longer have the funding to deliver courses of the quality and in the numbers that they have in the past. Universities are particularly concerned about the impact of the next round of ITT allocations on their ability to sustain teacher training. That includes the ability to sustain support for school-led routes such as the School Direct programme.
In 2013-14, as we have heard, ITT allocations and acceptances by Government have shifted by 25% to School Direct. More than 90% of postgraduate and undergraduate courses through universities were filled across the country and, in some cases, across subject areas, but only 66% of places allocated to School Direct have been met—well below the target allocation. In addition there has been over-recruitment in subjects including chemistry, history and PE, and that has masked much larger shortfalls in subjects such as maths and physics. Overall recruitment is 43% below target in physics and 22% below target in maths. The shortfall has been made worse because the Government have chosen to reduce allocations to HE institutions and universities, the bit in the system that we know works well and that has already been judged outstanding, while significantly shifting allocations to the School Direct programme, the bit in the system that is new, in many cases experimental and, as we now know, falling well short of targets. I understand that they have refused to shift the under-filled ITT places in School Direct to universities.
Duncan Hames
The hon. Lady mentioned the core allocation provided to higher education institutions. Bath Spa university, which provides ITT for many in my constituency, has outstanding status and therefore still enjoys some core allocation. Does she share its concern that, with changes in the Ofsted regime, the number of higher education institutions with a guaranteed core allocation will decline?
Pat Glass
I agree entirely. I and others in the profession are extremely worried that the next round of ITT allocations will result in some universities cutting back further, or closing their education departments as they become financially unsustainable. If that happens, an even greater burden will fall on school-led provision without the support of the higher education element that everyone recognises as vital to the provision of good teaching.
Like other hon. Members who have spoken, I cannot understand the Government’s insistence on employing unqualified teachers in schools. I have an MSc and I think that, certainly in the past, I was qualified to teach mathematics, but a working knowledge of maths and statistics does not make a teacher. Without the benefit of a Bachelor of Education degree, I would not have had the necessary skills and knowledge of child development. I would not have known how children learn, or about differentiation and delivering a syllabus to a range of abilities. I would not have known about assessment, or understood what each child could or could not do, and what they needed to do next. I would not have been able to manage behaviour in a classroom, or to identify and meet the needs of children with special needs. Probably just as importantly, I would not have had credibility, or the trust of my colleagues, the parents, and the pupils. Pupils know who is or is not experienced, and they can quickly tell who is qualified. Often that will determine not only their willingness to listen and learn, but their classroom behaviour.
The Government need to step back and consider their future allocation for ITT carefully. They run the risk of irreversibly damaging a system that has worked well and served us well, that has provided us with the best teaching force that the country has ever had, and that is internationally recognised as outstanding. To plough ahead regardless is to risk destabilising the whole system, damaging it irreversibly and leaving the country with yet another Tory-made teacher shortage.
Mr Laws
I certainly stand by the comments about Labour’s policy on free schools. However, I will respond to the points made by the hon. Member for Sefton Central on School Direct, and then—I assure the hon. Lady—I will return to the issue of QTS before we finish the debate.
As the hon. Member for Sefton Central knows, the 2010 White Paper, “The Importance of Teaching”, set out our ambition for a schools system that can compete with the best in the world. Improving teacher quality is at the heart of the plan, as he mentioned, in both attracting good applicants and ensuring a good supply of teachers in all subjects over time.
To improve teacher quality, it is vital that the teaching profession can attract and retain the best people. As the hon. Gentleman and some of his colleagues mentioned, top-performing education systems around the world, such as those in Finland and South Korea, draw their teachers from the most academically able candidates who demonstrate the right mix of personal and intellectual qualities. Candidates then go through high-quality training, often led by schools, focusing on the skills and knowledge that they need to become successful teachers.
By making teaching a highly attractive profession, we are seeing high-quality teachers enter and stay in teaching. More top graduates and career changers than ever before are coming into teaching. In spite of the economic upturn that we are now seeing, we expect to hit 96% of our recruitment target this year, after a period of recruiting above the target. There is currently no evidence of teacher vacancy rates rising.
Data published before the Select Committee hearing on 11 September provided an accurate picture of where we were with recruitment at that stage in the cycle. The picture is mixed across subjects, as the hon. Gentleman acknowledged. The data showed that we had exceeded our targets in some subjects: chemistry, where we achieved 110% of the target; English, 114%; and history, 137%. However, they also showed that we were likely to miss targets in subjects such as maths and physics. Final recruitment data will be published at the end of the year.
Importantly, we over-allocated—I will return to that point later—the allocations, particularly in this first year of School Direct, to ensure that we did not lose high-quality people across the board, particularly in physics, maths and computer sciences. The under-recruited areas referred to by a number of hon. Members were those where both higher education institutions themselves and School Direct did not fill up their full quotas; they both had shortages. It would be a far greater concern if HEIs had filled up their quotas but School Direct had come in under target, but they both came in below their allocated numbers.
Mr Laws
I am happy to write to the hon. Lady with the exact figures, which I do not have to hand, but there were considerable undershoots on both, so we have not been suppressing demand for places in higher education institutions, particularly in those shortage subjects. As she will know, maths and physics are subjects that have traditionally been challenging to recruit for, although we recruited a record number of physics trainees last year. We would need 37% of all physics graduates to come into teacher training to meet our target for physics teachers alone.
We recognise that we need to do more to improve recruitment in shortage subjects, and to increase the number of people taking A-levels, which is likely to increase the pool of people who can be drawn into those subjects. That is why we announced last week that we will make more scholarships available and change bursaries to help recruit the most talented graduates in key subjects. Scholarships awarded by respected subject organisations will be made available to the top maths, physics, chemistry and computing trainees, which will build on the existing scholarships that have proved highly popular. Since the Government introduced scholarships in 2011, 425 high-quality graduates in maths, physics, chemistry and computing have been attracted to teaching through the scheme.
GCSEs
Pat Glass Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Michael Gove
I thank my hon. Friend for his generous words and may I say how good it is to see him back in his place in the House? May I also thank him for the fantastic work that his Committee has done in its report on what happened to GCSEs last summer, which is published today? I entirely take on board his endorsement of the Department for Education’s Hegelian approach to policy making of thesis, antithesis and then synthesis. We will make sure that the timetable is kept under review. We have already extended the timetable for A-level implementation to take account of precisely the concerns he has so wisely articulated.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
The Secretary of State deserves an A* for his ability to cherry-pick the parts of the Education Committee report he agrees with while ignoring those parts he disagrees with. On grading, we all agree that there are good reasons for more differentiation at the top end, but surely it is not the top end that is our problem. So what in today’s proposals will support and challenge those 50% of children at the bottom end?
Careers Guidance
Pat Glass Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
Mr Benton, I recall that you chaired the very first Westminster Hall debate I ever took part in, when I first arrived here in 2010 and had absolutely no idea what was going on. It is, therefore, a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, when I hope I know a bit more about what is going on—we will see. It is also a pleasure to follow the Chair of the Education Committee, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), and to welcome him back to Parliament and witness his speedy recovery.
I want to talk today about the Committee’s report, and a little about the Government’s response. In taking evidence from many of those involved in the education of young people, the Committee visited careers services and schools, looking at what good practice was emerging, and identifying where deficiencies were most acute. Most importantly, perhaps, we also spoke to young people themselves about the services they received. The crux of our findings is wrapped up at the start of our report:
“The Government’s decision to transfer responsibility for careers guidance to schools is regrettable.”
We had a lot of discussion in the Committee about using “regrettable”. We could easily have used much stronger language, but we were looking for something that would be helpful to the Government rather than something that would be seen as lecturing.
Secondly, we found that international evidence suggests that a school-based model does not deliver the best provision for young people, and we concluded that the weakness of that model had been compounded by the Government’s failure to transfer any budget to schools with which to support the service. That led, predictably and perhaps inevitably, to a drop in overall provision, with fewer than one in six schools providing anything like a reasonable service.
In its inquiry, the Committee was very realistic about the historical performance of career services and Connexions, and did not see the previous service provided to young people as good or not in need of considerable reform. It was clear to us that the Connexions service had fallen well short of expectations in most areas, with the probable exception of its services for vulnerable children, where I think that the level of provision and service was at least reasonable if not good. It was also clear that the service delivered far from the high expectations that the Government had of it on its creation.
However, the Government’s response has been not to reform the Connexions service but to abolish it altogether, transferring the statutory duty to schools, and not providing any of the £196 million of funding that was previously available for the service. That is leaving schools and pupils high and dry, and it is clear that young people will make less informed decisions and choices about their future education and training as a result. That will have a major, negative and long-term impact on the lives of some young people, and it will be those who do not have access, within their families and family circles, to well-informed professional advice who will be hardest hit and lose out the most.
It is fair to say that we were dismayed by what we found, but we chose our wording carefully. We spent a long time discussing what we wanted from the report. We wanted the Government to recognise that the current situation could not continue, and to take action to improve it. We wanted to agree on language that did not solely focus on the problems or lecture the Government about what was going wrong, but provided an honest analysis of what we found, and offered positive recommendations about how the current situation could be improved. We were particularly disappointed, therefore, by both the tone and content of the Government’s response.
The Government’s response tells us:
“While the Committee’s report does acknowledge the failings of the Connexions service we are disappointed that the Committee describes our decision to transfer responsibility for careers to schools as regrettable.”
We found it regrettable not because of the transfer, or even because it happened against international evidence that suggested it was the model that was least likely to succeed, but because responsibility was transferred with all its limitations but without any funding. It was surely bound to fail, and the failure would be regrettable.
Instead of acknowledging that they might have got it wrong, and considering the Committee’s recommendations for improvement, the Government’s response appears to focus on criticising how the inquiry was carried out, stating that we cited evidence of one survey carried out by the careers sector that suggested a reduction in service. I want to tell the Minister that we based our findings not just on one survey: we listened to a huge amount of evidence from schools, local authorities, careers specialists, employers, sixth-form college representatives, further education colleges, teachers’ representatives and head teachers’ representatives, and we listened to what young people told us about the service they received. If that is not enough, I suggest to the Minister that he look at what is happening in schools now. Careers provision for schoolchildren has largely collapsed.
I was a member of the Education Bill Committee more than two years ago, and we discussed at length what was happening then. The then Minister, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), at least acknowledged that there were problems, recognised what was happening and promised to look at the matter, but I understand that he was subsequently blocked from doing so by the Secretary of State for Education. That is regrettable. If the Minister is not convinced by our report, I suggest he talk to the people we talked to and come back and tell us that the system works well.
The Government’s response also complained that the Committee chose not to highlight examples of good practice. I disagree. We went to places such as Bradford, and looked at where local authorities and schools were working together, pooling resources and delivering a good service. It was clear, however, that even where there was good practice, they were doing it on very little funding, or by borrowing from Peter to pay Paul—taking money from other parts of the education service to deliver the bones of a careers service for young people.
Mr Graham Stuart
Does the hon. Lady recall that in Bradford, where nearly all the schools signed up, money was taken from each of them, but the bulk of it was still provided by the council? Adding all that up, if I recollect correctly, the service provision of careers guidance—in a place such as Bradford, where the council had made it a priority—was still lower on the ground in schools than it had been.
Pat Glass
I welcome that intervention. I absolutely agree that where we saw good practice, it still fell short of what had previously been provided. I understand that the Government have had to make cuts, but that is happening across the country to a greater extent than in Bradford, where we saw what other authorities can only aspire to.
The Government response criticised the Committee for carrying out the inquiry when the new arrangements had been in place for only one term. They felt strongly that greater consideration could have been given to allowing the new arrangements time to bed in before drawing such firm conclusions. The Government’s arrangements may have been in place for only one term, but the funding has been withdrawn for almost three years. We decided to look at the matter now rather than later, because we had strong evidence that the system was collapsing around young people, who were making less than informed decisions that will affect their whole lives.
I want briefly to consider what has since happened. Heather Jackson and Professor Tony Watts have resigned from the National Careers Council, in which the Government have such high hopes, as did we. The reasons they cited for their resignations are concerns regarding the council’s recommendations to the Minister in early May, and its failure to draw attention to the Education Committee’s report, with its strong recommendations on steps to be taken to address the current crisis in schools, including the urgent need for enhanced accountability and quality assurance. The inquiry was carried out at the right time: had we waited, we would now be taking evidence about an even greater crisis in independent careers advice, not an improving situation.
On the disappearing budget, the Government argued:
“While there was no explicit transfer of resources, when we made the decision to stop the Connexions service, by making savings on that and other centrally driven budgets we were able to prioritise and protect expenditure devolved to schools during this Spending Review period.”
I am sorry, but I say to the Minister that that is smoke and mirrors at best, and it insults the intelligence at worst. To transfer a major statutory duty to schools without any funding, at the same time as local authority budgets were being slashed and schools were having to pay for educational support services that they previously received free, either from local or central Government, and to expect them to deliver a proper service from a frozen or shrinking budget is simply disingenuous.
I have a number of questions that I wanted to put to the Minister, but I am conscious that if I go on much longer, other people may not be able to speak. If I write to him, will he be good enough to respond to those detailed questions?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Skills (Matthew Hancock)
indicated assent.
Pat Glass
Finally, I remind the Minister that in an educational system that is becoming increasingly diverse, the need for good-quality, independent careers advice has never been greater. If it is not available, it will not be the young people who have access to good family networks, whose parents work in the professions and who have good contacts who will most lose out; it will be the young people who do not have those things, and who need good-quality advice—about what they do next for courses and where they go next for jobs—that currently is simply not available.
Matthew Hancock
My hon. Friend says I should have tried harder, but it is about balance. We must be aspirational, but realistic and helpful.
The funding issue has been raised many times. Times are, of course, tight for funding, but the central point is that the legal duty to secure independent and impartial advice in schools needs to be delivered from the school budget. Schools have a whole budget to deliver this, not just the £7 million that the Department for Education put into the National Careers Service. Frankly, we must be much more ambitious and look forward not back. I have taken up the mantle that was laid down. We understand what happened. There has been a big change and the question now is how that statutory duty can be properly enforced and put in place as powerfully and effectively as possible.
Of course, autonomy and accountability matter. People say that schools will not do this, but I also heard the evidence that 98% of schools say that it is very important. We must hold schools to account so that they deliver, and that can be done through Ofsted. Michael Wilshaw of Ofsted says that from September it will give priority to inspection of career advice, and the destination data that we are working extremely hard to expand.
AS-levels and A-levels
Pat Glass Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dobbin. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) on securing the debate.
I shall not speak at length—I am sure hon. Members will be pleased. I have concerns about the separation of AS and A-levels, and about the Government’s proposals, but I would refer those issues to the voices of those who know more about those things than I do. I understand that in the recent Government consultation 77% of those who responded were against the proposals. The 24 Russell Group universities, college and school lecturers, and teachers and head teachers are all warning about not only the proposals but the time scale. My concerns are about the changes, but also their implementation in 2015 at the same time as proposed changes to GCSEs and to the school accountability system. That will put pressure not only on exam boards, teachers and colleges, but, most importantly, on young people—the students.
Like other hon. Members, I am concerned about jeopardising fair access and the progress, however limited, that has been made with that, about undermining the progress of the most able students and about risks to the integrity of curriculum development from key stage 2 up to key stages 4 and 5, and beyond. However, in the short remarks that I will make today, I want to draw on the work of the Select Committee on Education. We recently carried out a quite detailed inquiry into what happened with the changes to GCSE English in 2012. I shall not go into the details today, because a report may be published in due course, but I want to take the opportunity to impress on the Minister the importance of learning lessons from what happened.
The hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward) probably made the most useful contribution to the inquiry when he said that we do our young people no favours when we refuse to listen to the voices of warning. Those voices were crying out to us long before the changes in 2012; we simply did not listen. Because they were not what politicians wanted to hear, they were ignored. We therefore reached the awful situation in which hundreds of thousands of young people did exactly what they were told they needed to do to get the qualifications that were so important to them, but failed to gain what was promised to them.
The proposals have been called rushed and incoherent by those whom the Government should listen to. I accept that there is a need for regular change and reform in the education system—I endorse that view. We need constant reform and change, not least because, whatever we put in place, teachers are very clever and will find a way to game it. The Department must constantly move, change and reform. However, we very often hear the Secretary of State telling us that he believes in the changes. He talks about his belief, and no one can deny that he has conviction; but such important changes should be based not on belief but on evidence, and, so far, whether in the debate or in any of the papers that I have looked at, I have found no sound evidence to serve as a basis for the Secretary of State’s proposals.
Kevin Brennan
The hon. Gentleman makes my point for me. Cambridge has been the university that has most used AS-levels to bring about widening access. It can show that it has widened access as a result of them in the past 10 years. If he wants to challenge the admissions tutors on the claim that they have successfully widened access through the use of AS-levels, he is free to do so. They are absolutely clear about it and say that if AS-levels disappear, university entry will become less fair. The Minister must answer that point. So far, Ministers have failed to answer it, or to explain why they are persisting with the policy.
In any case, the Government accept that Cambridge is right, and presumably that the Russell Group, the 1994 Group, Universities UK, the Association of Colleges, the Sixth Form Colleges Association, the National Union of Students, the teachers and head teachers associations and we, God forbid, are right about the usefulness of AS-levels. Nevertheless, the Government will proceed with the damaging and unnecessary divorce of AS-levels from A-levels. Like the EBacc certificates, no one supports the move. The Government quite rightly abandoned their proposals on the EBacc. The Minister might well have had an influence on that decision. Who knows? It happened to coincide with his appointment to the Department. As I said earlier, we will not proceed with the divorce of the AS-level from the A-level, and everyone should be aware of that.
Pat Glass
We have had people with huge expertise coming to us and saying that this is the wrong thing to do. The only other area where we have seen such an overwhelming objection has been to the proposed changes to GCSEs. I hope that the Minister will reflect on that, because the Government ultimately took the right decision in that area.
Kevin Brennan
My hon. Friend is right. The Secretary of State has had to issue a direction to Ofqual in relation to this proposal, because everyone thinks that it is nonsense, and it was confirmed in parliamentary answers to me that he had to issue a direction. On 31 January, I tabled a parliamentary question to ask what assessment Ministers had made of the recent Cambridge university admissions research working party study of AS-level as a predictor, and the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for South West Norfolk, said that she had “reflected on” the study. So, she had reflected on it and she agreed that AS-levels were
“a useful aid for university admissions”.—[Official Report, 31 January 2013; Vol. 557, c. 887W.]
So the Government agree with everybody that AS-levels are a “useful aid” for admissions. They know what the research is, and they have reflected on it.
The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dobbin.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) on securing the debate and on putting her case so clearly and in such a measured way. I am also pleased that we have had useful and helpful contributions from a number of other Members, including members of the Education Committee.
A lot of the contributions have pointed out that some of the proposals that we are discussing are controversial, and clearly they are. We are aware of a lot of the feedback that has come in from different organisations. Sometimes when Governments go out to consultation on particular proposals, they realise that they have made mistakes and they change the proposals. As a number of Members have indicated, we did that on the reforms to GCSEs that we had proposed, but I should say to those Members who have at times today suggested that popularity is the benchmark for introducing policies and the ultimate test that there are many other examples of changes in education and in other Government policy areas where proposals were extremely controversial at the time—I am thinking of key stage 2 national tests, the introduction of Ofsted and sponsored academies—and not welcomed by many in the relevant sector when they were introduced that have proven to be generally very successful and which are now welcomed. The consensus changes.
If we wanted an example of what happens when policy is introduced just on the basis of what is popular with the sector, we have Wales to look at. Wales has introduced, over time, many policies that were extremely popular in the sector, but which have proven, in many cases, to do huge damage to the quality of education in Wales. That is now widely and internationally recognised.
Pat Glass
Does the Minister accept that although those controversial reforms that he mentioned, such as the introduction of Ofsted and key stage 2 tests, may have been unpopular with some people working in education, there was nevertheless a body of evidence to support their introduction? Therefore, although they were perhaps controversial, there was huge evidence behind them, and they have subsequently proven the evidence.
Mr Laws
That was not said by many of the opponents of those proposals at the time. Actually, many opponents, including to sponsored academies, continue to maintain today that there is no evidence to show the success of those policies, so I do not agree with the hon. Lady that the issue is as simple as that.
Oral Answers to Questions
Pat Glass Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Matthew Hancock
I agree entirely. That demonstrates the effort that is being made. Indeed, the Secretary of State met the female engineers my hon. Friend talked about. The number of apprentices in engineering and manufacturing has gone up by more than half in the past two and a half years. [Interruption.] The “Oohs” and “Aahs” of Labour Members only reflect their disappointment at being such failures themselves.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
The Minister’s Department found recently that one in five apprentices receives no training whatever. That is worrying for apprentices and damaging to the brand. What action is the Minister taking to address that?
Matthew Hancock
The gathering of that evidence started in 2008. It is shocking that that happened under the previous Administration, and we have stopped it.
Examination Reform
Pat Glass Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
The Education Select Committee, of which I am a member, has held detailed discussions with the Secretary of State, with curriculum and assessment experts and with others in the field, including representatives of universities, other learned bodies and employers, on the Government’s proposals to change examinations at 16. I know that many Members want to express their concern that the proposed Ebacc will restrict and limit qualifications, particularly in religious education, music, information technology and art. I have spoken about that many times in the House, and I do not propose to focus on it again today, but I want to repeat that subjects such as RE and music have a huge role to play in underpinning other vital subjects—philosophy, ethics, mathematics, even medicine—in later and higher learning. I find it strange to hear the Minister say that he is not downgrading these subjects. How can some subjects not be downgraded if other subjects are being upgraded? That simply does not make sense.
As I understand it, the Secretary of State proposes to introduce the EBacc qualification as a replacement or as a higher-value qualification for GCSEs in 2017. Perhaps he will clarify that for me in his summing-up speech. He proposes to change the way all examinations are administered, yet we saw the chaos created in the system in 2012, when the administration of just one subject—English language—was changed. At the same time, the Secretary of State proposes to franchise examinations and to open them up to wider competition. Although there are, in my view, dangers in each of those proposals, collectively the impact will be a recipe for chaos and disaster in the system. That is why I want to ask about the cumulative impact of all these changes.
What is so important about GCSEs is that they are examinations for all pupils of all abilities. They were initially introduced by a Conservative Government in 1988 in response to huge unhappiness, largely among parents, many of whom were middle class and whose children had been pushed down the CSE route. The Secretary of State at the time built a huge consensus around GCSEs. There was cross-party support for their introduction in this House, supported by teachers, head teachers, universities and learned bodies, parents and employers. I fail to see any such consensus on the introduction of a replacement for GCSEs. My understanding is that many of the people in the groups I mentioned have not been spoken to at all and that the independent body, Ofqual, has expressed real concerns about this change. The Secretary of State told us in the Education Committee that he intended to talk to the winner of the Turner prize—so that should help.
Will the Secretary of State clarify whether he intends to introduce this new examination in 2017 as a replacement for GCSEs or to create a two-tier system with GCSEs as the lower qualification? There is a lack of clarity about that.
The evidence presented to the Education Committee has demonstrated that while reform of GCSEs is required—indeed, periodic reform of any qualification is required—the brand is not broken and that it is the Secretary of State himself through his language and actions who is intentionally trying to damage the brand beyond repair for his own ends. Everyone who has spoken to him—and I mean everyone—has said that GCSEs deliver what we ask them to do, and that issues such as modularity versus linear or grade creep can be repaired, changed and improved within the GCSE brand.
Let me move on to the way in which we deliver examinations. We on the Select Committee have looked at that, too, and we agree that there is a conflict of interest where examination boards are both designing the syllabus and setting the examinations. We saw the remedy in separating that out, without necessarily opening the whole thing up to competition. The Secretary of State has told us about his plan to move towards “relationships” rather than contracts as a way of getting round EU contract law. Good luck with that! I do not think that will fool anybody, least of all the courts. My worry is that the current expertise in Guildford, Oxford and Cambridge will exist in future years in multinational companies in New York, Berlin and Frankfurt, without any involvement of our universities and learned bodies. We look as if we are doing for examinations what has been done in rail and energy, which has not exactly been a huge success. I ask the Secretary of State to think carefully about that.
Each of these proposed reforms has dangers, but I am mostly concerned about the cumulative impact of doing all this at the same time. One insider in the system recently told me confidentially, “When the blood bath happens, I expect this Secretary of State will be long gone.”
Important though they are, we are not talking about trains, electricity lines or reservoirs; we are talking about our children and their futures. There is real danger in what the Government are proposing—in the timing but, most importantly of all, in the cumulative impact of these proposals. I ask the Secretary of State to think again about them, especially about the aim to deliver everything at the same time. The risks are huge and the potential for chaos is massive.