Pupil Premium

Stephen Twigg Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Minister of State for advance notice of his statement.

When Labour came to power in 1997 we inherited a sorry state in the education system. From day one we gave priority to primary education. In 1997 only 59% of 11-year-olds reached the expected level of attainment in maths and 65% in English. By 2010 these figures had risen to 79% and 80% respectively. That was huge progress, but I agree that we need to build on this success. I take the opportunity to pay tribute to the hard work of heads, teachers and support staff in primary schools across the country.

It is right that we have high expectation for all children in all schools, raising aspiration and unleashing potential. We will engage constructively with this consultation. We know from outstanding primary schools such as Cuckoo Hall primary in Enfield and Westfield community primary school in Wigan that all children can realise their true ability when they receive an excellent education. On leaving primary school, children need to be prepared with the knowledge, the skills and the resilience to take on the secondary curriculum. Despite massive progress, there are still too many children who are ill-equipped when they begin their secondary education.

Ensuring that all children reach at least the expected levels in maths and English is crucial. High standards of numeracy and literacy are vital; so, too, is a broad and rich curriculum that promotes creativity, enrichment, citizenship and resilience. I worry that the Government’s approach to the curriculum is too narrow and risks selling children short. What assurances can the Minister give that the Government’s changes to the accountability system will promote breadth and depth of learning, as well as literacy and numeracy? He has set out a new floor target of 85%, but that target is for an assessment that the Government have yet to define. Surely that is putting the cart before the horse. Would it not make for better policy to define the learning outcomes first? My worry is that this is another classic case of policy making on the hoof.

Similarly, the plan for ranking 11-year-olds has all the hallmarks of such an approach. To rank 11-year-olds runs the risk of removing year-on-year consistency, because children will be benchmarked against their peers in their current year, rather than against a common standard. Does the Minister agree that this risks damaging standards by not ensuring consistency over time?

The Government have sent out confused signals about attainment and progress. On the one hand they are scrapping level descriptors, which heads and teachers tell me are crucial for monitoring progress between assessments, yet on the other hand, the Minister is rightly emphasising progress measures today. That is very confusing. I ask the Government to think again about the abolition of level descriptors.

On the baseline measure for five-year-olds, there is sense in developing policy about how best to establish prior attainment to provide both teachers and parents with a clear indicator at the start of primary school. The devil will be in the detail, so it is vital that there is full consultation on that.

Finally, on the pupil premium, additional funding to support the progress of disadvantaged children is welcome. I have seen many schools that have made excellent use of the pupil premium. In his statement, though, the Minister said, “Early intervention is crucial”, and I agree with him. However, how does that sit with the fact that the biggest cuts in spending in his Department have been in early intervention funding? Can the Minister assure the House that additional funding really does mean additional funding?

I worry that the Minister may—to coin a phrase—be robbing Paul to pay Paul. The Chancellor announced in the spending review that the Government are moving to a national funding formula. The independent Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned that this move could hit schools with large deprived intakes. Can he reassure the House that this really is new money and not simply giving money to schools with a lot of disadvantaged kids today, which is welcome, but taking it away in a couple of years when the national funding formula comes in?

[Mr Laws]

It certainly is new money—I will comment on that in greater detail in a moment.

I welcome the sensible and constructive approach that the hon. Gentleman has taken. I particularly welcome the fact that he has said that he is prepared to engage with us in dealing with some serious and important issues, such as the baseline for measuring progress. It encourages me that we can have a sensible consultation process that genuinely listens and designs a system that will be better and will last for the long term.

Let me respond briefly to five points that the hon. Gentleman made in his response. First, on the Government’s inheritance, I accept that progress was made under the previous Government, particularly in some parts of the country such as London. However, our inheritance of aspirations at the end of primary level was, frankly, hopelessly low. Even today, we allow schools potentially to pass their floor targets when one third of their pupils or more fail to achieve a basic level of English and maths. Worse still, our very measure of achievement—the 4C measure—leads to more than half the youngsters who achieve just that level failing to get five good GCSEs. In other words, we have been sending out a message about what success looks like at the end of primary school which is totally wrong. Indeed, some of the best schools in the country—including St Joseph’s primary school in Camden, which the Deputy Prime Minister and I visited this morning—have already moved well beyond 4C and in many cases are aiming at much higher levels, such as 4A, 5C and so forth. The Government need to catch up with those schools, which are leading the debate in education.

The second point was about the broadness and richness of the experience in schools. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that, although the concentration on English and maths is important, we do not want that to lead to a dramatic narrowing of the curriculum. The other subjects that people take, both academic and vocational—arts, music and sport—are incredibly important. However, no one can succeed in secondary education if they cannot read and add up. No one can enjoy the opportunities in all the other subjects if they are not equipped with those basic skills. I would also refer the hon. Gentleman to the changes we have already announced in the secondary measures of accountability. We will be incentivising schools to take not just five but eight GCSEs, and we will allow that to include vocational as well as academic subjects.

The third point that the hon. Gentleman made was about whether 85% was the right level and whether we were right to set such an ambitious target now, in advance of the precise measures being introduced in 2016. I think we are right to set out those principles now. The schools that he and I are familiar with, from inner London and elsewhere, are already setting levels of aspiration of 85%, 90% or 95%, at an even higher level than 4B, which I talked about in a speech a couple of months ago, so I think that we are right to raise expectations now. For too long we have had expectations set by very low levels, which are more about the levels set for school intervention than about reasonable aspirations for all schools.

On the ranking of 11-year-olds, let me make it absolutely clear that we are not talking about publishing information about individual students at a national level. That would of course be totally wrong. What we are talking about is something that I think virtually every parent in the country will welcome, which is more information—and more meaningful information—about how their children are doing. At the moment, apart from a few people in the Department for Education and around the House, level descriptors frankly mean nothing to the average parent. Having a mark, a measure of progress and a clear sense of where their pupil is versus the rest of the cohort is only sensible. Parents could do that at the moment through the levels process, if they could actually understand that process, which is so complicated. What we are doing will help parents, but we will listen to the messages that come back in the consultation.

Finally, let me turn to the hon. Gentleman’s point about money and early intervention. What we are announcing is about doing a lot more through early intervention. The additional money for the pupil premium that the Government have delivered, even in these times of austerity, is something of which the coalition can feel incredibly proud. The levels we are setting today will mean that the additional money going to pupils from the pupil premium from their time in primary school will be £8,000 or £9,000 per pupil. That is a massive amount to help schools across the country, particularly in disadvantaged areas, to bring children up to a reasonable standard.

As for early years, the Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), who leads on early years and child care, and the Deputy Prime Minister have announced a two-year offer, which extends early-years support to the most disadvantaged two-year-olds, going way beyond anything the previous Government were able to deliver. This Government have a huge amount to be proud of, in offering schools this money to support such ambitious aspirations.