Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Phillips Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Gentleman knows full well that, if his Government had left any money in the kitty, none of those funding assessments would be necessary. The truth is that schools funding, above many other things, has been protected, with an extra £3.6 billion in cash terms by the end of the comprehensive spending review period. In addition, pupil premium money will be focused on those pupils most in need—those who were most neglected by his Government.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

11. What steps his Department is taking to increase the ranking of schools in England in international league tables of educational attainment.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

The OECD’s programme for international student assessment—PISA—report, published on 7 December, shows that this country fell from fourth to 16th in science, from seventh to 25th in reading and from eighth to 28th in maths. The lessons from PISA on the hallmarks of high-performing systems are clear, and they are reflected in the direction of policy in our White Paper, “The Importance of Teaching.”

[Stephen Phillips]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that answer. According to the OECD report that he mentions, UK teenagers in full-time education were outscored by their peers from, among other countries, Estonia, Liechtenstein and Slovenia. Does he agree that, if the previous Government’s watchword was supposed to be education, education, education, the record that they left for this Government and for far too many of our young people was one of failure, failure, failure?

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend raises a very good point. However one wants to describe the previous Labour Government’s record, it is clear that we have fallen in the international educational attainment rankings, and that is why our White Paper focuses on reducing the bureaucracy that confronts our schools. We want to trust professionals and to increase the autonomy of schools. In our White Paper, we have a real focus on behaviour, on raising standards of reading, on raising the quality of the curriculum and on reviewing the national curriculum—should I go on Mr Speaker?—in all the policy areas that we intend to implement over the coming years in order to improve the quality of education in this country and to see a rise in our international rankings.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)]

That is a very good question, actually—much better than any of those from the Labour Front Bench. Unfortunately, the evidence does not stack up. The IFS actually pointed out that there had been no increase in participation and only a modest increase in attainment, and the National Foundation for Educational Research pointed out that the dead-weight cost was roughly 88%, so only 12% of students were participating who would not otherwise have participated. Clearly we can have more effective targeting. Just because many policies carry a dead weight, that does not mean that all policies should. Neither, indeed, should all Front Benches carry dead weight.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

T3. My right hon. and hon. Friends will be aware of Operation Golf, the Metropolitan police’s operation in London that has identified several hundred trafficked children on the streets of the capital, mostly from eastern Europe. What consideration have they given to ensuring that those children receive a decent education while they remain in the United Kingdom?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I recently had a meeting with the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), who takes the lead on trafficking. We want to ensure not only that those children are picked up at the border whenever possible and that we can track their whereabouts in this country, but that when we do know their whereabouts we work with local education authorities to ensure that they get the education to which they are entitled and which they desperately need. We must help them to shake off the people who have trafficked them, in many cases under the most gruesome circumstances.