Key Stage 2 Tests

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

Whenever I have a platform, I talk about how important it is to go into teaching. I say that it is a very important profession. There are more teachers—450,000—in the profession today than there have been in history. There are 13,000 more teachers today than there were in 2010, and 14,000 returners came into the teaching profession last year, which is more than the 11,000 who came in a few years before that. Of course, we want more professionals to come into teaching as the pupil population increases. That is why we have very effective advertising campaigns and why we are spending £1.3 billion on generous bursaries to attract the best graduates into teaching.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I, too, wish all the children doing their exams good luck. I know what that is like, having had three children who went through a state primary school. Tests are an imperative part of school life because we as parents want to know how to plan for our children’s education, and we want the schools to help us see where the gaps are and how our children are doing. Businesses in Taunton Deane would like our children to have better maths qualifications and better writing skills. Under Labour for all those years, education standards sank. Does the Minister agree that our driving force is better education to raise standards, and that tests are an imperative part of that?

[Mr Gibb]

Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have been declining in the programme for international student assessment tables internationally. We have to continually improve our education system, because other countries are not standing still. They are continually improving their education systems, and unless we do the same, we will fall behind. That is why we reviewed the primary curriculum, why we increased the demands and rigour of mathematics and English, and why we are focusing so much on getting every child to become a fluent reader, who not only masters the mechanics early in their education but becomes a regular reader, reading books for pleasure and developing a lifelong love of reading. We have reformed the secondary curriculum, and we have reformed GCSEs so that they are more on a par with the qualifications in the best education jurisdictions in the world. We have also reformed A-levels, responding to the concerns of employers and universities about the standard of undergraduates and employees.