Education Bill

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The right hon. Gentleman is typically astute. The Bill is the best that I can make it. I am sure that it is not perfect—we have a Committee stage so that the right hon. Gentleman and others can propose amendments, which I hope happens in a suitably constructive spirit. However, we cannot move to that stage and ensure that we have proper legislation, and we cannot protect teachers from indiscipline and poor behaviour or invest in the early years, unless the Bill receives the support of the House tonight. That is the challenge for Opposition Members.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

rose—

[Michael Gove]

I shall try to make a little progress.

There is a related challenge. Do hon. Members want to remove bureaucracy? Do we want to lift the burden of duties that our teachers and head teachers currently have to shoulder? Do we want to ensure that a number of non-departmental public bodies—quangos, in plain phrases—are allowed to continue to exist and to drain resources from the front line, or do we want to see every penny that the taxpayer gives to the Exchequer for their children’s education sent into the classroom? Do we want to keep the Training and Development Agency for Schools, the General Teaching Council, the School Support Staff Negotiating Body, the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency, Becta and the Children’s Workforce Development Council in their current forms, or do we want the money that is spent on them spent on our teachers?

Let us take the QCDA—just one of those organisations —which has 393 employees. Can any Member of the House tell me how many of those work in the QCDA communications department? [Interruption.] There are a variety of guesses, but not even the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), can tell me. The answer is 76 of the 393. How can it possibly be an effective use of public money to have 76 people involved in communications at a curriculum quango, when that quango has been responsible for a secondary curriculum that mentions not a single figure in world history apart from William Wilberforce and Olaudah Equiano? How can it be right that we have spent money—so much money—on that curriculum authority, when its geography curriculum mentions not a single country other than the UK, and not a single river, ocean, mountain or city, but finds time to mention the European Union? How can it be right that we can find money to employ 76 people in communications—76 spin doctors—when our music curriculum does not mention a single composer, a single musician, a single conductor or a single piece of music? How can any hon. Member justify this unreformed status quo? The Bill gives every Member the chance to vote not just for money going into the classroom but for a reformed, 21st-century curriculum.

We will also remove bureaucracy by tackling Ofsted. I am delighted to inform the House that Ofsted has a new chair, Baroness Morgan of Huyton—formerly Sally Morgan and political secretary to Tony Blair when he was Prime Minister. I am delighted that someone who has direct experience as a teacher and in government at the highest level is helping Her Majesty’s Government in their work of improving educational standards. She joins Ofsted at a crucial moment—at a time when we are refocusing its inspection on what really counts. We are getting rid of the tick-box mentality, which has meant that far too much time has been taken up by pointless bureaucracy and political correctness. Instead, we are telling Ofsted to concentrate on four areas: the quality of behaviour and discipline in our schools; the quality of leadership, because nothing matters more than having great leaders; the quality of teaching, because every moment in the classroom is precious; and the quality of attainment and achievement, including the progression of the poorest pupils. This relentless focus on what counts and this stripping away of bureaucracy are at the heart of the Bill, and I hope that these measures will commend themselves to every Member.

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[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

With so much in the Bill, it is difficult to know where to start. Some of it, such as the intention to give anonymity to teachers accused by pupils, is welcome. There are too many cases in which innocent teachers have had their careers and, sometimes, their lives ruined or, even worse, lost their lives, because of false accusations and malicious gossip, but such anonymity should be extended to support staff and to teachers and support staff in colleges, because they are equally vulnerable to accusations. I hope that the Bill will be amended to include them.

Much of the Bill is, however, unwelcome. The abolition of the school support staff negotiating body is a real step backwards for the professionalisation of school support staff, making those workers—predominantly women—vulnerable to a return to poor wages and poor terms and conditions. Setting a core contract and developing a qualification framework has been fundamental in making support staff an integral part of our school landscape, but the Bill will reverse that progress, and is it the thin end of the wedge? Academies are being actively dissuaded from signing up to national terms and conditions for teachers, so will teachers become the next group to be thrown to the market?

So much of the Bill seems to roll back the progress that has been made. It represents a view of education that does not match today’s reality. In most parts of the country, we no longer separate children at 11 years old, creaming off just a few for grammar school education while giving the rest a shorter, cheaper education. Now, we have a more equal education system, in which we try to enable all young people to fulfil their potential. We said that we need 50% of our children to be educated to degree level, but what about the other 50%?

We have very few low-skilled jobs left in our economy, and we need young people to be educated so that they are ready for the higher-skilled jobs that we do have. I therefore really do not understand why the Government are proposing a very narrow English baccalaureate and abandoning diplomas. Where is the research and evidence that those are the subjects that society and employers need? Why those narrow subjects? Should not education develop skills in investigation, analysis and comprehension? Is it not more important, therefore, that we have a range of equivalent subjects rather than a narrow definition?

As a scientist, I stopped doing history and geography in year 8. Is the Secretary of State saying that those subjects are better than the physics and chemistry that I did? Young people need a broad and balanced curriculum, not one based on the narrow views of a few individuals. We also need to recognise that different children and young people learn differently. Some are perfectly happy to listen and absorb information, but others need to learn by doing. The diplomas would have opened up different routes for young people to learn—and to learn things that employers want.

I met a group of apprentices in Parliament yesterday from my constituency. They work for MBDA, a company that manufactures missiles. It is clearly very high-tech engineering, and the company has a fantastic apprenticeship programme. Those apprentices will all do ONDs, HNDs and NVQs, which the company very much values, because they judge what the apprentice can actually do, not just what they can write on paper.

Many will also do a degree as part of their apprenticeship. I asked them why they decided to go down the apprenticeship route, and part of the reason was the fear that, if they went to university, they would just be hugely in debt and then possibly unable to get a job. They also did so because they preferred to learn by doing and to put theory into practice on a daily basis. I asked their training officer and their managing director what subjects they needed young people to learn in schools. They said they wanted maths, English and science, but they also believed that technology was essential. Why will the Secretary of State not listen to employers, such as MBDA, which are the highly technical, high-value manufacturers that our economy needs?

Moving on, I am as confused as the Bill appears to be about the future of careers guidance. As we speak, Connexions personal advisers all over the country are getting their redundancy notices. Of course, Connexions is more than careers guidance. It is also about working with young people who are either not in employment, education or training, or at risk of becoming a NEET, to help them to reach their full potential; and it is about working in partnership with schools and other agencies.

The Bill states that schools have to provide independent careers guidance, but that the school does not have to pass on information about the pupil to the adviser. The Department has announced the introduction of an all-age careers service later in the year, but as yet we have no details about it, and local authorities currently have a duty to provide the Connexions service. That part of the Bill appears to be an ill-thought-out mess. Surely the sensible thing to do is to fund Connexions until its staff can be transferred to the new all-age service, keeping intact all those years of experience and the expertise of careers advisers, with the service then having a duty to provide careers advice in schools and continuing to provide a much-needed service to young people. As one of the young female engineering apprentices said yesterday, “How will young people like me know about the option for apprenticeships like this if they don’t get good careers advice?”

Finally, I have concerns about education funding. Whether the schools budget is being cut or growing is for somebody else to argue, because there is no question but that funding for other parts of education has been slashed. All other funding streams have been put into the early intervention grant, covering such things as Sure Start, Connexions, teenage pregnancy, substance misuse and youth services—a much reduced pot of money compared with the original funding. The Government state that they are

“freeing local authorities to focus on essential frontline services”.

The reality is that, instead of devolving power, they are devolving cuts.

What we are seeing nationally is the utter destruction of youth work, both in maintained youth services and in the voluntary sector. The Education and Inspections Act 2006 gave statutory responsibility to local authorities to provide positive activities for young people, and to consult them about the services that should be delivered. The Bill appears to be silent on youth services, but surely there is a responsibility to ensure that youth services are delivered and young people consulted.

This Saturday, 30 national organisations and 1,000 young people representing hundreds of thousands of users of youth services will meet in Solihull to discuss the demise of the youth service. Some local authorities have shut their youth services altogether; many face 50% to 80% cuts. Unless the Government act, many parts of the country will have no youth service, nowhere for young people to go, nothing for them to do and, even more importantly, no one providing the informal education and support that is so vital to young people’s development. I beg the Minister to intervene to save the youth service.