Education Performance

Tessa Munt Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Metcalfe]

Absolutely—I agree 100%. I picked on discipline as one aspect of the framework that a head teacher can put in place in a school, but aspiration, energy, drive and ensuring that all staff want to get the maximum out of every pupil they come into contact with are also vital. There are other things, but I wanted to focus particularly on discipline.

Unfortunately, a good teacher does not always make a good head teacher, because the two roles require very different skills. I therefore want to ask the Government to examine a system that would allow for greater movement across the senior management team. I am aware of senior managers—members of a school’s top team—who may have had excellent pastoral skills and data manipulation skills, but who have been promoted to the role of head only to find that they did not have the entire skill set to do the job.

Unfortunately, the school and the individual are then left with few options. There is always the nuclear option of going down the competency route, but that is a painful experience for the individual and the school, and it normally results in someone who was a highly skilled professional leaving the service, which means that we have lost a good teacher, their skills and their commitment. Just because someone cannot be a good leader and a head in a school, that does not make them a bad teacher. I would therefore very much like to find a flexible system that would allow someone to recognise that they are perhaps in the wrong role.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that in Australia, after someone has been in a job for 10 or so years, they are entitled to a year or six months off? I think that that is true in most walks of life. It is certainly true in most professions, including teaching. The state provides for that by taking a section of salary to ensure that the person is paid throughout the period. The benefits to a teacher are that they have a break and an opportunity to go elsewhere, perhaps into industry or whatever, and they come back refreshed. It also means that everybody is in a position to act up in another position to gain experience of being a head teacher or head of department, which is fantastically valuable.

[Andrew Rosindell (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind the hon. Lady that interventions should be brief. She is not on my list to speak. I would have considered putting her on my list if she had asked me to do so, but a long speech should not be dressed up as an intervention.

[Tessa Munt]

Forgive me.

[Andrew Rosindell (in the Chair)]

You are forgiven.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

I want to touch on some of the points that may help. I know that the Minister is already familiar with much of what I will say, but I will make my points none the less.

I have a particular passion for ensuring that children have a smooth progression and that we get the best out of them, and it will be no surprise to hear me mention middle schools. I am a big fan of middle schools because they provide an opportunity, particularly in rural areas where we have very small schools, for children to move from being a big fish in a small pool to being a medium fish in a medium pool. In view of the vast number of students in upper and secondary schools, we should think about how children fare when they move at the age of 11 from a school of perhaps 100 or 150 pupils to one of 300 or 350 in a year. We should consider what happens to their performance at age 11.

My second point is about teacher training. I hope that the colleges have been listening, and are aware of the evidence. So often, we have heard from teachers, the unions and others that little time is spent during teacher training on learning about behaviour and how to cope with it. I am sure that we could do something to help newly qualified teachers, because it can be traumatic for some of them when they are faced with situations that they are unable to cope with.

I mentioned during an intervention the Australian long-leave system, and I cannot emphasise enough what a good thing that is, because it provides teachers with a career break with the security of knowing that they can return to teaching. It allows them to broaden their experience by going into business or another area, or perhaps by following a personal interest for six months or a year. That must mean that they come back with a fresh look and a fresh start, ready to take on the next 10 years. It also provides the opportunity for teachers to try all levels of management. Comments have been made about whether some people are well suited to being heads. If they have a test run for six months, they may find that it is not their bag and may choose to take a different route.

It might be helpful if we made it possible—and perhaps even recommended—that newly qualified teachers should spend a period in a special school so that they become familiar with the difficulties of communication and of social and life skills that face young people who go into the special school system. That would be helpful, because it would allow people to build knowledge and have strategies to identify early and support children who may be in the mainstream system, but need a little extra help.

When Martin Narey was chief executive officer of Barnardo’s, he made it clear that people who naturally surround young children—nursery teachers, health visitors and so on—can spot difficulties coming when children are two and three. If we ensure that all teachers can spot difficulties as they occur, we may be able to interrupt what need not necessarily be an inevitable downward process. We should concentrate on that, and ensure that people have the opportunity to gain the skills that they may need.

They may not always be right, but there are stats for dyslexia, for example, suggesting that we may not always be able to identify children, particularly boys, who develop dyslexia at the ages of seven and eight—rather than six, when the Government are considering doing a screening test for reading and understanding skills. Ensuring that teachers have that extra ability and experience will help them.

I have spoken at length elsewhere about the fact that I am completely enthused about measuring students’ performance and progress, instead of spending the whole time looking at achievement and league tables. We have seen what happens, and it has been explained this afternoon. I have shown the Minister a 16-year-old boy’s report. It clearly shows the effort that he put in was generally marked as A in all subjects, with one or two exceptions, and attainment was generally marked at A, with one or two exceptions. However, the target grades were C, C, C, C. It is ludicrous to give such a report to any child because it will smash any chance of personal aspiration and desire to achieve. It is barmy for someone who is trotting along with As in a subject to be told to aim for Cs.

I have visited many different schools, and have spoken at length about the fact that primary school teachers are completely tuned into measuring progress. They may not do so formally, but they are used to the idea. They know every child in the class, their rate of progress, where the blocks are and where there may be problems. We must develop a system so that we do exactly the same in middle schools, senior schools, upper schools and so on. That will deal with those quintiles, and children who are achieving will be pushed a bit further so that we get to the point where every local school is a good school and measures the performance of all students.

Again, I have discussed this with the Minister, but I want to place on the record my dismay—this may be another aspect of what I have just said—at the examination system and the obsession with resitting and multiple attempts. We must stop that. We need a balance. I do not mean that no one should resit an exam, but there should not be automatic resits. A 16-year-old lad who had 102 questions right out of 106 in his GCSE maths was automatically put in for a resit. That just says, “Sorry, you’re not good enough”, but four marks off perfect is not so bad, is it? We should concentrate on extending such a child into a different sort of exam at the next level up, or whatever—it does not matter. But resitting the same exam is a disincentive.

I have two minutes left, and I apologise for taking up all this time, but I want to consider the impact—for me, it is a positive impact—of “Jamie’s Dream School” on the debate. When I visit my local pubs, schools and so on, people talk about education in a different way having seen the programme. Opportunity, inspirational teaching and genuine care clearly change outcomes. The other factor that is absolutely clear is that parents’ involvement is needed—they had to sign up to allow their young people to be involved in Jamie’s dream school—and that is the one parallel that I would draw with the independent sector, where parents’ involvement is absolute because they write the cheques.