Secondary Schools (Accountability)

Debate between Christopher Pincher and David Laws

Monday 14th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I believe that today’s announcement has so far been warmly welcomed by teachers’ organisations and others. It will allow a good measure of accountability—an intelligent accountability that drives the right results and the right behaviours at all schools.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

I welcome the statement. Pursuant to the point about key stage 2 raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore), may we use this opportunity to encourage greater integration between secondary and primary schools? All too many students go to secondary school at the age of 11 with a reading age of 7, and many of them are condemned to fail at GCSE the moment they walk through the door of their secondary school. We need to see greater linkage between secondaries and primaries, so that those secondaries are able to identify potential challenges in their future cohorts as early as possible.

[Mr Laws]

I agree with my hon. Friend, who makes an extremely important point. He will know that as part of our proposals on primary accountability, we are significantly increasing the bar for what success looks like at the end of primary school. We are doing that because pupils at the end of primary school who achieve only the level of attainment set as a measure of achievement by the previous Government overwhelmingly go on to fail even the existing five good GCSE measure. We cannot possibly allow a level of success at the end of primary school that prepares students for failure rather than success in secondary school.