Education Bill

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I will be happy to give way in due course, but I want to make a little progress. It is important that I move on to one of the central parts of the Bill, on which I am genuinely worried that the Labour party may be about to put itself on the wrong side of the argument.

If Labour Members vote against the Bill tonight, they will also be voting against the measures that teachers and teaching unions want in order to ensure that teachers are safe in the classroom. We know that the biggest reason why professionals leave teaching, and the biggest barrier to talented graduates entering teaching, is the quality of behaviour and discipline in our classrooms. We know that every day, there are 1,000 exclusions for abuse and assault and that last year, 44 staff were assaulted so severely that they had to be taken to hospital as a result of violence in our schools. We know that two thirds of teachers surveyed say that poor behaviour is driving people out of the classroom.

I believe that the time is now right for the House to send an unambiguous signal to the professionals who work so hard on our behalf in the nation’s classrooms that we back them, and that we will give them the tools they need to keep order. We will ensure that they have the power to search students for items that may cause violence or disorder in the classroom. We believe that it should be easier for teachers to detain pupils who are guilty of disruptive behaviour, and that the authority of head teachers should not be undermined by exclusion decisions being overturned, allowing excluded pupils, many of whom might have been guilty of violent offences, to march back into the classroom. We also believe that teachers deserve the right to enjoy anonymity up until the moment when they are charged with any offence that occurs in school. We believe that those four basic protections are no less than our professionals deserve.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

rose—

[Michael Gove]

I would be very interested to know whether the hon. Gentleman agrees, or whether he intends to vote against those protections.

[Kevin Brennan]

I believe that the Secretary of State will find that there is a good deal of consensus about behaviour issues in Committee. I understand why he wants to portray a vote against the Bill on Second Reading as a vote against every part of it—that is a politically convenient thing to do. If that is his position, however, surely a vote in favour of the Bill is a vote in favour of every part of it. Is he therefore saying to his Liberal Democrat colleagues that if they vote in favour of the Bill on Second Reading, even if they voted against the changes to tuition fees in the autumn, they now support the tuition fee changes and the interest rate increase contained in the Bill?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point and for his personal support on discipline. I know that when he was a Minister in the Department for Children, Schools and Families, he did good work in that area. However, I have to let him know that if he votes against the Bill on Second Reading, he will be voting against the measures that I have described. If he believes that those measures are worth while but has problems with other aspects of the Bill, he is perfectly at liberty to seek to amend parts of it in Committee. We are very fortunate that we will have in Committee, in the person of the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), one of the most reasonable Members of the House. As I said earlier, we will be happy to work in a consensual fashion when the hon. Gentleman or other hon. Members make cases to improve the Bill. I am sure that the Bill can be improved, but it should not be opposed or thwarted for narrow political reasons by politicians who are not prepared to stand with our professionals and say, “You’re doing a fantastic job and you should be defended. Discipline and behaviour are the foundation stones of good learning, and we will ensure that you are backed with one voice by a committed House.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Gove]

In just a second.

We are raising the bar on floor standards; we are showing less tolerance of failure than has ever been shown before; and, where a school is failing, we are taking powers to intervene to ensure that when an academy solution is right, when the local authority can find a superior head teacher and when that school deserves to be federated, then whatever action is required will be taken. I hope that all hon. Members, in every part of the House, will join me in saying that there can be no excuse for failure. The culture that so often prevailed in the past which says, “These children come from such and such a background, or these children have such and such parents, so we cannot expect more of them,” should be consigned to the past, where it belongs. We must ensure that in every part of the country, children have a right to high-quality education. We must also ensure that the absurd bias of the past, which suggested that just because children have working-class parents or come from immigrant backgrounds, they cannot access an academic curriculum, is ditched too.

For anyone who doubts that that is possible, I would ask them to visit some of the superb schools out there, such as Mossbourne in Hackney or Durand in Lambeth, the latter in the constituency of the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey). One of the things that they will find at Durand, for example, is that it has a higher proportion of children who are eligible for free school meals than the Lambeth average, and a higher proportion of children on the special educational needs register, yet every child attains at least level 4, and many get level 5, at key stage 2. In other words, they are performing well above the national average.

Mossbourne community academy is outside local authority control, and it has an inspirational head teacher, Sir Michael Wilshaw. This year, 10 of its children are going to Cambridge. What are their backgrounds? They are from one of the poorest boroughs in London—

[Kevin Brennan]

They did not do the English baccalaureate.

[Michael Gove]

They certainly did! The hon. Gentleman should listen, because he fails to appreciate that schools such as Mossbourne academy have head teachers who recognise that every child deserves an academic education. He can sneer if he likes, but if those 10 children had been in a school where he was the head teacher, they would not have had the opportunity to go to Cambridge. He would have said to them, “I’m terribly sorry, but it’s not for the likes of you.” He would have said of their studying academic subjects, “I’m terribly sorry, you’re not good enough.” It is that culture of “know your place”, of enforced mediocrity and of denying opportunity and aspiration that the Bill directly challenges.

The reason that there is so much discomfort among those on the Labour Front Bench is that they have been rumbled. They pose as meritocrats, but in fact, whenever an educational change comes about that tells people from disadvantaged backgrounds that they can achieve far more than they ever imagined, they say, “Oh no, we don’t want that. We don’t like it. It’s inappropriate.” For that reason, the unrepentant and unreformed socialists who form an increasing part of the representation on the Labour Benches object. It will be interesting to see whether every Labour Member votes against the Bill tonight, or whether some are sufficiently enlightened and reformist to see merit in the proposals and in aspiration, and to join us in supporting it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Charlotte Leslie]

I agree absolutely, and my hon. Friend anticipates my point. The English baccalaureate shines a cold and difficult light of reality on what is going on. I will ask a question that Members might expect to come from the Labour Benches: why is it that, because I went to a private school, I was able to study Latin and a range of academic subjects which friends of mine who did not go to private schools were not able to study? When I applied for difficult and competitive jobs in television, I was told time and again that Latin looked interesting on my CV. Why was I given that opportunity and my friends at state schools were not? I do not think that that is fair. I make no apology for a system that will enable people from less well-off schools to study academic subjects, because it is resetting a balance. It is a case not of having either academic or vocational subjects, but of having both. It is really very simple.

If we look at the other objective measures of what is going on, we see that universities have courses that they value. I have a concern that our schools, in their bid to look good in the league tables, are pushing our children through courses that the universities do not value as much. The statistics show that only 1% of children on free school meals are going on to Russell group universities. That is not because those children are any less able than their counterparts, but because we have got something wrong.

I would like to run through a few scenarios that I have come across to add colour to what I am saying. First, there is a boy in my constituency who went to a school in one of the more deprived wards, and he was prevented from taking physics. He was an incredibly bright chap and wanted to study physics, but he was prevented from doing so, which was awful. Secondly, the head who took over that same school recently said to me how despairing he was that he had bright students who had been told that they would do only vocational courses. Vocational courses are obviously equally important—someone had to build the building we are in now—but that does not mean that academically able children should not be able to pursue their course in life as well.

Thirdly, we do not have the vocational element right. I do not even like the name “vocational”, because a vocation is what one does, so one can have a vocation as a brain surgeon, as a plumber and even as an MP, but “vocational”, which has slipped into the political language, is a euphemism for manual, practical and technical skills and crafts.

[Kevin Brennan]

That is what the Secretary of State said.

[Charlotte Leslie]

Is it? Well, I am pleased to be in agreement with him. It bodes well.

To illustrate that point, I recall talking to a young offender in a young offenders institute. I asked him how he ended up there, expecting him just to be a bad sort, but he said, “I was really interested in electronics. I wanted to be an electrician, but every time I thought I was going to do something practical about electronics, they gave me paper about it.” He said, “I can’t do the paper; I can do the thing.” That is how we have failed—for 13 years and more—a whole generation of people whose skills lie in the practical and technical fields. I could go on about how restoring discipline in our schools will help most those on free school meals, and about how discipline problems are highest in schools in deprived areas, but I will not.

I finish with a plea, because I know that Opposition Members are as concerned as we are about the matter. We cannot any more afford the luxury of well-meaning idealism, and we cannot afford to refuse to face difficult realities, because the reality that we refuse to face is the reality that faces our poorest children throughout the country, every day and for the rest of their lives.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

We have had an excellent debate this evening on the Second Reading of the Bill. If I counted correctly, following the opening speeches there were 34 speeches from the Back Benches—a full class in the state sector, although perhaps not in the sector in which most Government Members were educated.

There are many reasons to oppose the Bill. Indeed, the provision to increase the interest rate on student loans, which has been snuck into the Bill, would be sufficient reason on its own. The Secretary of State accuses us of being against everything in the Bill because we will vote against its Second Reading. In that case, perhaps we should warn the Liberal Democrats that they will be painted as voting in favour of increasing the interest rate on student loans, even if they voted against the student finance measure in the motion before Christmas.

[Dan Rogerson]

rose—

[Kevin Brennan]

In a moment. I am sure that people will, in a “Focus”-like fashion, look at the way Government Members vote this evening.

There are many other reasons to oppose the Bill, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) pointed out in his opening speech. It strips power from pupils, professionals, parents and the public. That is not to say that we do not support some things in the Bill. We have heard about that during the course of the afternoon. On the surface, the Bill tries to make further progress on the excellent progress that we made in government on behaviour, including on the ability to search pupils and confiscate items, clarifying the position on the reasonable use of force by teachers, and allowing teachers to discipline pupils for behaviour beyond the school gate.

Like any reasonable Opposition, we want to scrutinise the detail in Committee. We want to be sure that the Government’s proposals will have a positive impact and not drag schools into further bureaucracy or legal challenge. The proposals should broadly promote the ability of a school to create a quiet, orderly environment for learning. That is the kind of environment that we all agree is not only good for the vast majority of non-disruptive students, but is in the interests of pupils whose behaviour impacts on their own learning and that of others. We will consider the proposals in forensic detail in Committee.

[Dan Rogerson]

rose—

[Kevin Brennan]

In a minute.

In Committee, we will consider the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn) and others to ensure that the proposals are not window dressing, but a genuine enhancement of what we achieved in office. We will consider whether they will cause more problems for teachers and schools. Part 1 of the Bill seeks to build on the revolution in early-years provision that Labour pioneered in office. In particular, we will look closely at the power the Secretary of State is awarding himself to decide who gets early-years teaching, how much and when. We will approach the Bill in Committee in that way.

Overall, we oppose the Bill on Second Reading because, along with a number of other pieces of legislation, it fits in with the ideology of the coalition Government; an ideology that the Lib Dems appear to have been duped into going along with, having been seduced, it seems, by Lady Localism. Well, she is not what she seems in this Bill and I ask the Lib Dems to consider carefully what the Bill does about localism. Localism, for them, used to mean enhancing local democracy. This fits in with the Orwellian use of language that the Government have adopted. Just as for the Home Secretary a curfew has become an “overnight residence requirement”, localism is used to describe a Bill that takes away local democratic power from communities, teachers and parents, and puts the power into the hands of one man—the Secretary of State. The Bill is described, unbelievably, as a decentralising measure, but he is taking more than 50 new powers to himself to control almost every single aspect of the schools system.

[Michael Gove]

List them.

[Kevin Brennan]

I do not have time to list them all, as the Secretary of State knows, but here are a few examples: which subject students should study, how teachers should teach and what types of schools communities should have. He will say that he is just nudging them in that direction, but a nudge with a loaded gun is very different from a gentle steer.

What is it about the Secretary of State, assisted by the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), that makes him so obsessed with grabbing more and more power at the centre?

[Mr Blunkett]

Megalomania.

[Kevin Brennan]

I would not quite go that far, but whether it is the power to close schools or the power to discipline teachers individually, which has been so carefully and consensually put beyond politicians in recent years, we have to ask why the big power grab.

I do not know whether any Members with children have ever seen the TV cartoon “Pinky and the Brain”, but the Minister of State and the Secretary of State rather remind me of it. As the title suggests, there are two characters. Pinky is good-natured, but he is dominated by the Brain, who is self-centred and thinks he is a genius. Every episode, after the opening titles, there is the following piece of dialogue: Pinky says, “Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?”, and the Brain says, “The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world.” That could almost be a transcript of the ministerial meeting at the Department for Education. I know the Secretary of State thinks he is clever, possibly the cleverest boy in the Government, but trying to create an education system in his own image, with all the powers in his own hands, is ultimately a recipe for chaos, not world domination.

The Secretary of State is so intent on making sure that he grabs all the power to himself that he is getting rid of some of the bodies that might get in the way of his scheme not once but twice. Bodies such as the General Teaching Council, which was set up to give teachers the same professional autonomy as other valued professions, are abolished not only in this Bill but in the Public Bodies Bill, presumably just in case abolishing them once is not enough to make absolutely certain that they are absolutely dead. It is in case they suddenly rise up, like the false ending of some schlock horror film. We knew that the Secretary of State had a penchant for drama—we see it every week in the Chamber—although, I hasten to add, not enough of a penchant to include it in the English baccalaureate. However, killing a body twice to make sure it is dead is a bit over the top, even for him.

Why this centralising power grab? It is not just power for power’s sake, it is part of his vision of education. In their mind’s eye, the Secretary of State and the Minister of State see serried ranks of schoolchildren sitting at individual desks, preferably wearing short trousers, chanting after their teacher their conjugated Latin verbs and copying down the dates of the kings and queens of England from the board. [Interruption.] Did I hear a “Hear, hear” from the Conservative Benches? I think I might have done.

If the Secretary of State thinks that is how to raise standards, he is wrong. A curriculum designed to train a few people to run the empire is not a system that will inspire and motivate the next generation to use their talent and creativity to the maximum benefit of themselves and the country. He has made it clear that in his mind a grade C GCSE in an ancient language, a laudable achievement in itself, is more valued than an A* in engineering or information and communications technology. He is, to coin a phrase, creating an analogue curriculum for a digital age.

All pupils need the basic building blocks of literacy and numeracy, but beyond that, corralling pupils into a narrow range of subjects post-16 restricts choice and stifles creativity. Schools up and down the country, having been nudged by the Secretary of State with his loaded gun, are busily rewriting their timetables and pressurising pupils into taking GCSEs that are not necessarily the best ones for them to fulfil their individual talents. We must bear in mind the fact that they will already have studied history, geography, science and a modern language through the national curriculum. The English bac took a bit of a kicking from some Members on his own side of the House today, and he should listen to what they had to say.

Why is the Secretary of State doing all this? Just so that at the end of this Parliament, he can point to a measure that he invented and imposed ex post—that is a bit of Latin, in case anybody did not know—and say, “Look how we’ve improved things. More people are studying the subjects that we have retrospectively said they should have been studying all along.” It is actually pretty hard for people to fail a test when they have set the questions themselves. The provisions in the Bill on PISA tables are fine, but the Secretary of State had better stop misquoting statistics that he knows the OECD has disowned, and he had better stop ignoring evidence, such as that from Hong Kong or Scandinavia, when it does not suit his overall vision.

When the Secretary of State finally gets round to saying something about vocational education, which he seems fundamentally to believe is for people who do not do well academically, he should remember that medicine is a vocational training that he ought to support. His problem is that he sees the English baccalaureate as the premiership and any league table of vocational qualifications as the Beazer Homes league—[Interruption.] I agree that there is nothing wrong with the Beazer Homes league.

Finally, presumably the Secretary of State blames the previous Labour Government for the decline in social mobility in Government Ministers, and believes that it is our fault that the Government Front Bench is dominated by old Etonians, because we did not do enough on social mobility in government. On that point, I shall sit down.