David Chaytor (Bury North, Labour)

I beg to move amendment No. 96, in clause 1, page 1, line 7, leave out from ‘are’ to second ‘exercised’ in line 8.

Frank Cook (Stockton North, Labour)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 2, in clause 1, page 1, line 10, after ‘standards’, insert ‘of educational attainment’.

No. 58, in clause 1, page 1, line 10, after ‘standards,’, insert—

‘(b)promoting emotional well-being,’.

No. 95, in clause 1, page 1, leave out lines 11 and 12 and insert—

‘(b)enabling each child concerned to have access to such teaching and learning support as may be appropriate to his needs and so as to promote the fulfilment of his educational potential.’.

No. 186, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, leave out ‘educational’.

No. 3, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, at end insert

‘and

No. 4, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, at end insert

‘and

No. 86, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, at end insert

‘and

No. 87, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, at end insert—

‘(1A)In subsection (1)(c) “well-being”, in relation to children and young people, is a reference to their well-being having regard to the matters mentioned in section 10(2) of the Children Act 2004.’.

David Chaytor (Bury North, Labour)

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Cook. It is a pleasure to be here under your chairmanship this morning.

It is a privilege to move the first amendment of our deliberations. I want to speak in particular to amendments Nos. 96, 95 and 186.

The Bill contains many admirable provisions and excellent and interesting clauses that will, without question, strengthen the provision of education for children in years to come. We know that some aspects of the Bill are more controversial than others, but I do not believe that clause 1, which deals with high standards and the fulfilment of potential and clearly specifies the local authorities’ role, is controversial. Nevertheless it contains some points of detail that need further consideration, the first of which is referred to in amendment No. 96.

Amendment No. 96 would delete from new section 13A(1) the phrase

“so far as they are capable of being so exercised”.

Although it may seem a slight amendment, which may be simply a technicality or slight emphasis in the wording, I am curious to know why the phrase should have been inserted in the first place. I should have thought that most members of the Committee would consider that a local authority’s functions could be exercised only to the limits of its capability. I do not recall seeing this kind of qualification of a body’s capabilities in respect of the exercise of its functions before. It seems at best unnecessary and at worst perhaps tautologous.

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

It is not just local authorities but all sorts of outside bodies that will now have a duty to provide education. I had understood that the amendment was intended to remove the words in parentheses because the hon. Gentleman disapproves of bodies other than local authorities having a role in providing education to children in this country.

David Chaytor (Bury North, Labour)

That is an important point that goes to the heart of my remarks. We understand that in their original White Paper, the Government made a case for separating the commissioning and providing functions. Personally, I think that a powerful case can be made for that separation with respect to secondary schools. The question, though, is what are the implications of the phrase in clause 1? Are we saying that it is envisaged that, at some point in the future, the provision of education by local authorities will be withdrawn completely? The rest of the Bill does not spell that out. It takes steps towards opening up the provision of education to a range of different providers, but does not argue unequivocally that commissioning and providing should be absolutely separate functions. It is worth drawing attention to that, so that the Minister may clarify her vision of the future role of local authorities in education provision.

Robert Wilson (Reading East, Conservative)

The point is just about recognising that local authorities have limits on their powers, is it not? That was the whole purpose of the White Paper and the Bill itself.

David Chaytor (Bury North, Labour)

I think that it is about recognising those limits, but it must be self-evident that it is not possible to exercise functions beyond the level at which they are capable of being exercised. That is why I do not see that the particular phrase is necessary.

The second amendment to which I want to draw attention is amendment No. 95. It would delete the word “educational” in subsection (1)(b), which would then refer to

“promoting the fulfilment by every child concerned of his potential.”

The issue is to what extent the letter and the spirit of the Bill entirely match the letter and the spirit of the Children Act 2004, and of what is generally referred to as the “Every Child Matters” agenda. The whole thrust of the sentiments behind that agenda is that education cannot be separated from other public services that are essential in developing the overall well-being of children. If we focus specifically on educational potential, we will miss out on other elements of the “Every Child Matters” agenda, and we will not pay sufficient attention to health, general well-being and other aspects. I think that there is a case, therefore, for withdrawing the word “educational”, and focusing more generally on potential.

When I get the right piece of paper I shall talk about amendment No. 186. I apologise, Mr. Cook, because I have confused the numbers. I have just spoken to amendment No. 186 and I shall now speak on amendment No. 95.

Amendment No. 95 is perhaps more substantial: it links the promotion of the potential of every child with the whole issue of personalised learning. In both the White Paper and the Bill the Government give the highest priority to a major shift to a more personalised approach in the organisation of teaching in our schools. Last year, and again in last week’s Budget, they announced significant sums to enable a more flexible curriculum and more generous staff-student ratios in our schools, in order to enable the personalised learning programme to develop.

In the opening clause, and in the opening statement about the local authority’s functions, it would be useful to spell out in a little more detail the significance of the personalised learning agenda. That is the purpose of amendment No. 95, which refers to

“enabling each child concerned to have access to such teaching and learning support as may be appropriate to his needs and so as to promote the fulfilment of his educational potential.”

To bring my opening remarks to a close, in clause 1 it is important that we spell out exactly what the functions of local authorities should be in the new educational landscape that the Bill describes. I question whether we need to insert the phrase about the extent to which local education authority functions

“are capable of being ... exercised”,

and whether in paragraph (b) we need to be so specific about “educational potential”. Perhaps it would be more consistent with other aspects of Government policy if we concentrated on potential as a whole, or if we went even further and spelled out, at this point, the five “Every Child Matters” objectives for the development of children. Also, it would be useful if we could spell out at this early stage the critical importance of promoting a kind of education and a more flexible curriculum that is absolutely matched to the individual needs of every child.

Frank Cook (Stockton North, Labour)

I am anxious to preserve the comfort and ease of exchange in Committee, so if Members wish to divest themselves of the their upper, outer garments, that will be permitted.

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

I start by agreeing with the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) on one point—this may be the last time that I agree with him. The “Every Child Matters” duties should be incorporated into the Bill, and later we will come to amendments, proposed by Opposition Members, that do precisely that. However, I am not sure whether it is correct to put them in the place which he opts for in his amendments. By seeking to leave “education” out of clause 1, he is almost downplaying the education aspect of the Bill. Amendment No. 186 would take “educational” out of line 12 in clause 1, so that the duty on local authorities becomes a duty to promote the fulfilment by every child of his potential.

By contrast, our amendment No. 2 seeks to emphasise the importance of education by making it absolutely clear that the duty on the local authority to promote high standards relates to high standards of educational attainment. Without wishing to be too provocative at this stage of Committee proceedings, the hon. Members for Bury, North and for City of Durham (Dr. Blackman-Woods) are defending a strand of 1960s progressivism that downplays the need for children to be highly educated and that suggests that other priorities are more important. That strand of opinion is still dominant in the education establishment today.

I would like to think, and I certainly hope, that there is growing consensus between mainstream Labour Members and Conservative Members about the need for education reform and the need to resist the approach to education that has dominated policy for 30 or 40 years. There is also a growing consensus about how to reform education. Amendment No. 3 provides an opportunity to include in the Bill an approach that has widespread support, certainly among parents and the public.

In the last 20 years, a polarity has developed. The last Conservative Government believed that all the problems in education could be cured by the structural approach of grant-maintained schools, the internal market, local management of schools and money following the pupil, forcing poorer schools to improve in order to compete for pupils and money. By contrast, in that period Labour believed that the problem with education was the lack of cash and that all the country’s educational problems could be solved by a massive injection of taxpayers’ money. Indeed, in its 1997 manifesto Labour criticised the structural-base approach of the previous Conservative Government.

I believe that both positions are right and that both underestimate the problem. It is right that structural change has an important role. Competitive forces between schools have a positive effect in pushing up standards—to an extent. It is also important to look at   models that give schools autonomy and independence to motivate head teachers and encourage the pursuit of excellence.

There is no doubt that more money was, and still is, needed in the education system but neither of the two approaches is the whole story. There is something else. It is not the third way but a third thing—I am marvellous at coining these new phrases—which is reform. I mean not just any old reform but a specific reform to tackle a particular problem that has afflicted the education system over the last 40 years. There is growing agreement between Labour and Conservative Members of Parliament on that issue. I hope that in time the Liberal Democrats will join that consensus.

The amendment would add to the list of duties that a local education authority has in relation to education

“promoting the transfer of knowledge from the current generation to the next.”

We propose the amendment, obvious though it may seem, because that view of the objective of education is not the established view in education circles today. It is the view of many good teachers but it is absolutely not the view of the educationists in our universities. It is the view of parents and, I believe, that of most Labour and Conservative Members of Parliament. It is not the view of John MacBeath, for example, a professor of education at Cambridge university, who is quoted in Chris Woodhead’s book, “Class Wars”, which states that he

“dismisses out of hand the arguments of ‘one [Paul] Hirst who wrote that teaching was about transmitting essential knowledge from one generation to the next.’ MacBeath knows better. ‘We now know,’ he writes, ‘that learning does not work like that ... Far from thinking coming after knowledge, knowledge comes on the coat tails of thinking ... therefore, instead of knowledge-centred schools we need thinking-centred schools.’”

It is that approach to education, which believes that knowledge hinders thought, that lies at the root of the underperformance of the English education system.

Angela Smith (PPS (Yvette Cooper, Minister of State), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Sheffield, Hillsborough, Labour)

Is not the transfer of knowledge far more complicated than the hon. Gentleman suggests? To prove that point, is it not true that our children’s generation can actually teach us knowledge of new areas of expertise such as ICT? Is it not that straightforward?

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

The hon. Lady is right. Young people are better equipped to deal with computers than our generation and older generations were, but that does not mean that we should not be teaching them the knowledge that previous generations have acquired. We let our children down by not giving them that information. The hon. Lady confirms many of the issues that I want to draw out in my remarks about amendment No. 3.

I remember visiting a school in Rotherham during the by-election there in 1994 when I was the candidate. The head teacher said that it was not her role to prepare children to do well at “Trivial Pursuit” quizzes. I believe that her comment shows a jaundiced view of education. Of course, it is not the role of schools to prepare children for a television quiz or board game, but what she said reflects a view that knowledge is not an important aspect of education,   which, in the words of Melanie Phillips, in her excellent book, “All Must Have Prizes”, has led to the “de-education” of Britain. Chris Woodhead quotes Tim Brighouse in an article in The Times Educational Supplement and basically points out the same thing: such people need an alternative approach to education that does not involve the transfer of knowledge.

The essence of the issue is best summed up by Michele Paule, in her contribution to the Campaign for Learning, which is also quoted by Chris Woodhead. She says that

“the sheer weight of content in the curriculum model inhibits learning by restricting the range of creativity of classroom experiences, leaving too many students engaged in accumulating information which they cannot see the use of beyond school.”

She wants to discover

“a much more coherent approach to developing meta-cognitive processes.”

The Campaign for Learning says that the task of the teacher, or “learning manager”, in the 21st century is to “equip” young people with

“the basic skill of ‘learnacy’, or learning to learn”.

Pupils will learn how to learn if there is

“an explicit focus on the skill of learning to learn”,

so that they have

“structured opportunities to explore the cognitive processes involved in learning”

and are helped

“to understand their particular blend of intelligence and learning styles and how they should develop these.”

The learning-how-to-learn approach is one of the dogmas of the current education orthodoxy that lies at the root of our underperformance. Surely, the best way to learn how to learn is actually to learn and acquire knowledge—lots of it—while young and able to absorb it. Thinking is about processing information and knowledge. Creative thinking is about people discovering new thoughts and concepts from the knowledge that they have. Thinking in a vacuum is just vacuous. As one writer has said:

“We tell our children less and less and expect them to think more and more.”

Perhaps the hon. Lady’s approach to education is right, but let us debate these things in public, rather than among educationists in specialised conferences that rarely receive any media attention. Let us talk about it in public and, if there is a general dispute between one form of education and another, let us ultimately put it to the public to decide.

We might ask, “Who are we, mere elected MPs, with no track record on education”—I speak as a former chartered accountant—“to gainsay a whole industry of education experts who have created this orthodoxy? They are the experts. Surely they know best.” Like all expertocracies, it may be dominant, but that does not make it right, nor does it make it representative of the views of the profession as a whole. The problem with experts in a given field is that they are intolerant of opposing views. That is particularly so in education.

Over the past 40 years, those with an alternative approach have simply been driven out, with no promotion, job, research funding or tenure, but there are opposing views.

Mary Creagh (Wakefield, Labour)

The problem with experts, particularly in education, is that they tend to know more than we do, having spent time conducting study, research and analysis.

The hon. Gentleman is so eager that we should acquire knowledge, but is he not setting up a false dichotomy between knowledge and learning? Hon. Members who have come from an education background—I taught for seven years in a school of management before coming to the House—would say that it is about equipping children with the knowledge, skills and attitude for adult life, all of which are important for a child to be able to learn. The hon. Gentleman is ignoring a key point, which is that people learn in different ways.

Frank Cook (Stockton North, Labour)

Order. Interventions must be reasonably brief. In Committee, we can be rather more tolerant than one would be in the Chamber, but that was turning into a speech.

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention. I see that she represents Wakefield. I went to school in Wakefield, and of the seven schools that I went to—

Mary Creagh (Wakefield, Labour)

Was it QUEGS?

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

No, I did not go to QUEGS. As I was saying, of the seven schools that I went to, the most disappointing was Thornes House grammar school. I did relatively well, but the school let down huge numbers of bright children because it did not deliver the education that we would want. That school was closed, which is why the hon. Lady may not have heard of it. We need to see the end of schools such as Thornes House, so that we have rigour in education.

The hon. Lady made some important and valid points, but there is a dichotomy. Some education academics do not take the hon. Lady’s balanced view. They take an ideological view that knowledge is not necessary in the teaching of children and that skills and learning how to learn should be dominant. This view is a huge mistake and will not be shared by the public. Of course, the academics have expert knowledge, but experts have certain philosophies and approaches, not just in education, but in spheres such as science and medical research, and often a dominant theory will drive out other philosophies and approaches because the experts simply will not promote those people who do not share their views.

Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)

I find that the most experienced people in education tend to be parents whose children have gone through the system. I have met many teachers who do not have a clue how to teach or relate to children. Sometimes, those who have been at the sharp end of education know more about it.

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

Some of the best educationists remain in teaching, and some of the weaker educationists leave teaching rapidly and enter academia to teach others how to teach. They say that those who cannot teach teach others how to teach. That can often be the problem. It is worse than a level of competence. It is  also an approach and a philosophy, and there are opposing views among the most successful teachers in this country.

Annette Brooke (Children & the Family, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that although a balanced approach is needed, it is more important to acquire thoroughly the basic skills of life rather than, by itself, a huge bank of knowledge?

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

The hon. Lady is confusing two things. Basic skills and the skills being debated today are different. The Government would argue that you do not need to teach the rudiments of reading using synthetic phonics—I did not intend to mention synthetic phonics in the first half hour of this debate. The Government are concentrating on learning how to learn. They do not mean teaching children how to read properly during the first 16 weeks of infant school. They mean something much more ethereal, and I would equate the basic skills that the hon. Lady mentioned with knowledge. If someone is to understand all 44 sounds of the alphabet and how to blend them, they need knowledge.

There are opposing views among the most successful teachers in the land. There are those who have persevered while pursuing what they know to be right and merely paying lip service to the orthodoxies. Examples are the teacher in the 1980s, who taught multiplication tables by rote, and had one eye on the classroom door in case the head teacher came in, and the teachers in the 1970s and 1980s, who used phonics to teach children how to read, while using look-and-say reading books.

It is interesting that the House has formed a clear consensus that the synthetic phonics system is the best way to teach our children to read. Members of the Labour and Conservative Benches are challenging the 30-year-old orthodoxy of using either whole-word methods or the look-and-say approach, where children are taught to guess a word from its context in a story or from the grammar or even an accompanying picture. Whole language teaching reached its peak in the mid 1980s. I do not remember whole language teaching being a major plank of the 1979 or 1983 Conservative manifestos. I stand to be corrected if any of my hon. Friends remember otherwise. These issues were going on beneath the radar. They were regarded then, and are even now to an extent, as matters for the profession.

However, as a consequence, as reported in “All Must Have Prizes”, which was published in 1996, standards of reading, spelling, comprehension and literacy fell continuously between 1991 and 1994. Melanie Phillips quotes John Dunford as saying in 1995:

“It’s clear that literacy standards in primary schools are falling”.

Some people blame the national curriculum for that, but those words predate it. Melanie Phillips quotes Kath Brooke, the head teacher of Garth Hill comprehensive in Berkshire, as saying:

“Our verbal reasoning score has dropped over the past 10 years from 104 to 93. The decline started long before the National Curriculum was introduced.”

We know that today, even with some improvements as a result of the national literacy strategy, significant problems still exist. One in five 11-year-olds still leave primary school unable to read and write properly and only 44 per cent. of 11-year-olds are achieving level 4 in reading, writing and maths combined. I do not accept that it is all to do with the socio-economic background of a school’s intake. I believe that it goes wider.

Anne Snelgrove (PPS (Lord Warner, Minister of State), Department of Health; South Swindon, Labour)

The hon. Gentleman quotes Kath Brooke, who was a head teacher in Berkshire. He may not be aware that I was a county councillor in Bracknell. It is not solely a question of the teaching methods that were in use at the time. As a county councillor and vice-chair of Berkshire’s education committee, I was aware of the enormous problems that we had under the Conservative Government in starting nursery schools and improving children’s education. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that his party is in part to blame, because of the poor funding of schools and the large class sizes 10 or more years ago, which we were struggling with and which are now a myth?

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

I do not accept that point, although I agree that more money is needed. When the Conservatives were elected in 1979 there was a financial crisis in this country and spending cuts had to be made in the public services for the country to survive. Leaving aside the nursery schools that the hon. Lady wanted to establish and all those issues, there were still high reading standards before the whole language method of teaching children to read was introduced, without the facilities that she seeks to develop later. Therefore, these are separate from the other problems of that era, which she rightly points out.

We must be honest. If we are to have a consensus and try to tackle standards, we must get away from those old partisan points such as “Things were like that in your era”. I have been citing evidence from the mid to late-1990s, fully aware that there was a Conservative Government in that period, because I want members of the Committee, and the House, to get to the root causes of some of the standards. I accept that money is part of the problem, as are structures, but there is a third thing that we must also approach, and I hope that we can do so in a non-partisan way so that we can deliver a higher standard of education.

I do not believe that the problems are all connected with a school’s socio-economic intake; they go to the roots of the objects of education, which is what the amendment seeks to flush out. As part of my job I have taken it upon myself to visit all 50 best-performing primary schools and all 50 best-performing secondary schools in the country, and I am visiting some not so good schools as well. When one does that, one sees the  contrasts between schools with very similar intakes. A school in Wolverhampton that I saw recently achieved 100 per cent. at key stage 2 in level 4 in English, maths and science and a staggering 85 per cent. at level 5. The head of that school wants a level 6 test at key stage 2 to provide a greater challenge for many of the pupils, which is why I tabled a question to the Minister about that.

I have been to schools with a similar intake to the one in Wolverhampton which achieve just 67 per cent. at level 4 in English and maths, and the difference between the two schools is the pedagogy and the approach to education. In one, synthetic phonics started even before reception and, in the other, phonics was one of a range of strategies. Similar problems occur with maths. There is now an abhorrence of teaching a formula-based approach to maths. It was recently reported that David Beckham was unable to help his son with his maths homework, as though that were somehow David Beckham’s fault. Parents make the widespread complaint that the maths taught today in primary schools is totally different from the maths that they learned at school, which means that they cannot help their children with homework. That would be fine if the new method were a better method of teaching children maths, but it is not—far from it.

Melanie Phillips said in the mid-1990s:

“Maths teaching in Britain has effectively been deconstructed. A fundamental shift in emphasis away from knowledge transmitted by the teacher to skills and process ‘discovered’ by the child has undermined the fundamental premises of mathematics itself.”

She cites a 1995 report from the London Mathematical Society, which said that

“emphasis on the practical application of maths and the obsession with presenting problems ‘in context’—i.e. relating them to real life situations—had denigrated the primary importance of maths as a training for the mind ... Schools had shifted from teaching core techniques to time-consuming activities such as investigations, problem-solving and data surveys.”

That situation is still dominant in our primary schools. I have met various experts on maths teaching who are very concerned about what is happening in our primary schools. I do not blame the Minister or the Labour Government. Such things are beyond politics. They occur beneath the radar.

I recently visited a primary school while a lesson in problem solving was taking place. In the problem, Jenny had a blue tube, a red tube and a black tube and Jimmy had a yellow tube, a purple tube and a white tube, and they were asked to make trains out of the two sets of tubes. The question was which train was longer, Jenny’s or Jimmy’s. Basically, there was simply not enough information to answer the question—that was the answer to the problem. The children in that school spent half an hour drawing the tubes with their rulers and their coloured pens, trying to work out which was the longest. They spent half an hour struggling with what was essentially a trick question, simply to be told at the end that they did not have enough information.

That scheme came from New Zealand and was given to the school on the advice of the education adviser at the county council. I do not think that asking children to do that kind of thing is a good use of half an hour in the maths curriculum. I found a similar problem in  the other class: Jimmy bought a clock for 50p that gained one hour every day. When he bought it, it was 12 o’clock. When would it next tell the correct time? Such problems are intelligence or problem-solving tests, but they do not teach children anything about mathematical formulae or how to do the calculations that the problems require them to do.

Angela Smith (PPS (Yvette Cooper, Minister of State), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Sheffield, Hillsborough, Labour)

The hon. Gentleman is generous with his time. There must be evidence other than a few books by Melanie Phillips and a few visits to schools to suggest that the “learn how to learn” approach that he describes is prevalent in our schools and is damaging our children’s life chances. Would he share that evidence with us?

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

There is a lot of evidence. I could bring the book and read out huge chunks of it. I might be wrong about all of it, but the point is that we should get the whole thing out in the open. We should get the education academics to say what they are doing—to say in public what their approach to education is—and let the public decide what approach they want.

I have seen a lot of that kind of stuff while visiting schools. I have talked to maths experts from a company called Making Maths Make Sense and a private tuition company called AE Tuition. They say that there are severe problems in how maths is taught in this country—problems that they can solve with private tuition within a few weeks of coming to those classes. We must be honest about what is happening in our schools.

Mary Creagh (Wakefield, Labour)

I wish to take up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Ms Smith) on the issue of using anecdotes as evidence. The evidence shows that in all measures of numeracy and literacy and in science tests, we have improved massively in the international league tables.

May I give the hon. Gentleman a word of warning? I note that he said he was a chartered accountant, and chartered accountants can solve complex financial and mathematical problems for their clients, but relying on the private sector to come up with the latest wonder bullet to teach all our children exactly the same things is not necessarily the answer. I do not see how that will help them to succeed and develop new products, skills and innovations in the future.

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

The companies do not use new wonder products in teaching maths. They use tried and tested methods, which work. The universities and employers have a huge complaint about school leavers’ acquisition of basic skills in maths. That has become a serious problem in this country, if we want to compete and be innovative in the world. It is not possible to be innovative by thinking in a vacuum. It is necessary to have the knowledge that has been accumulated to date by preceding generations. Without that knowledge one cannot innovate. We are expecting our children to be creative without knowing anything.

One in three new jobs in the United States is in the creative industries, and people must be highly educated to get those jobs. Our children are competing  today in a world jobs market against children and young people educated by methods uncontaminated by the approach to education that I am talking about. They are far better educated than many of our young people today. University professors will tell you—and this is anecdotal, but there is evidence to back it up—that some overseas students in universities, who speak English as their second language, sometimes have a better grasp of English and English grammar than some of our home-grown students in this country, because we were never taught grammar in our schools.

Some of the international evidence, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment study of 2000, which may be what the hon. Lady alludes to, are flawed. Academics at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research will say that the PISA 2000 study is flawed; we know that it is flawed because in the 2003 study the British results were excluded from the tables because of the low participation rate of English schools. We must look at all the evidence very carefully when assessing what has happened.

Again, it is not only the past eight years that we should consider. I accept that there has been an improvement in standards in that time, but much more significant improvements are needed, and the problems are not caused or solved by Labour or the Conservatives; these things go much deeper and we need a more serious approach.

Annette Brooke (Children & the Family, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

In some ways I concur; we need continually to scrutinise teaching practices. However, the hon. Gentleman is giving the impression that it is possible to identify a single method that is the best, applicable at all ages, regardless of the level of development. I hear no mention of developing the individual child—a consideration that is a great strength of clause 1.

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

I am not saying that there is one method, or one ethos. I am saying that there is a dominant ethos among educationists in this country, which has, I believe, been very damaging. I may not be right about what the correct ethos is, but I should like an open public debate in which the public can decide the approach that they want for our communally provided education system. I believe that the approach that is taken by many schools, particularly those in the bottom quartile of the value-added league tables, is resulting in a standard that is much too low.

Anne Snelgrove (PPS (Lord Warner, Minister of State), Department of Health; South Swindon, Labour)

Some of the evidence that the hon. Gentleman is giving is anecdotal, but we need to weigh up other evidence. He was talking earlier about extra tuition. It seems to me that the one-to-one relationship with the person giving them tuition is important; it is not just a question of the method. One reason for our wanting to move to better funding for the secondary education system is so that the pupil-teacher ratio can be cut. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is far more important than any educational method, which will be watered down by those pragmatists, the  teachers? It is far more important to get the pupil-teacher ratio down, which is an aspiration of the Government.

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

It is an aspiration of all of us that pupil-teacher ratios should be lower, but it is not the dominant issue. I know of parents who have turned down schools with very small classes in Islington and transferred their children across town to better schools, with much larger classes, because the ethos of those schools is far better. The people who do private tuition will explain that the fact that it is one-to-one is not the only factor; they use a different approach to the teaching of maths to children. They show them how to carry the one, and all the formulae that are not taught in many of our schools today. That is the problem.

Professor Peter Saunders, who is quoted in “All Must Have Prizes”, said in 1995, when he was professor of maths at King’s college London:

“I don’t see how you can teach skills and operations without facts and techniques. How can you operate with nothing to operate on? How can you teach any mathematics when the students lack the fluency in technique and the knowledge of the previous levels to follow what you are saying? It’s hard to learn fractions if you aren’t confident with arithmetic, it’s hard to learn algebra if you aren’t good at fractions and it’s hard to learn calculus if you are still uncomfortable with algebra.”

The multiplication of fractions was left out of the maths framework at key stage 2 for a significant period before it was put back in. I am not blaming Labour—this is not a partisan point. However, some educationists espouse the things that I am talking about, which is why eminent professors such as Peter Saunders say that kind of thing—not as a chartered accountant and a consumer of education services, but as a producer and an expert. There are a lot of people like him saying that kind of thing.

Anne Snelgrove (PPS (Lord Warner, Minister of State), Department of Health; South Swindon, Labour)

Professor Saunders is an education expert, but teachers are not necessarily teaching to such methods. As I said earlier, teachers are great pragmatists, and the hon. Gentleman does them a great disservice if he gives to the outside world the impression that those ideological ways of teaching are happening in schools. I do not believe that that is happening in my schools in Swindon.

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

The hon. Lady makes a very good point, and I am not criticising teachers. Thank goodness that not all teachers slavishly follow that approach because otherwise standards in this country would be significantly lower than they are. I made the point at the beginning of my contribution that some teachers in the mid ’80s taught multiplication tables with one eye on the classroom door in case the head teacher came in and criticised that method of teaching.

We must accept that in the educationists’ world—among academics and professors of education in our universities and teacher training colleges—there is a different ethos and approach to education from the one that parents and, apparently, the hon. Lady would support in real life.

Anne Snelgrove (PPS (Lord Warner, Minister of State), Department of Health; South Swindon, Labour)

I have not been supporting that method. I am saying that I am deeply sceptical about whether that is happening. As somebody who worked in schools in the 1980s and now visits them—more than 50 times in my constituency since last year—I am deeply sceptical about whether the pure form that the hon. Gentleman is espousing actually happens. I know that some academics push that forward, but I do not know of any teachers who take it on board unquestioningly, and I did not know of any in the 1980s.

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

I do not know on which side of the debate the hon. Lady is. If she is against the approach that I have been explaining, which is the dominant view of educationists, fine, but she cannot have it both ways. If she agrees with me that those things are wrong, we can discuss how prevalent in schools they are. I hope that teachers do not take those methods on board, but it is difficult for a conscientious teacher not to be swayed by the dominant view in education circles, particularly if they are leaning also on advice from the local education authorities, which, again, are influenced by education academics.

For example, the problem solving based on tubes, which I cited, was based on advice from a local education authority adviser, which was based on a scheme developed in New Zealand. The problem that the current education orthodoxy has with maths is the horror that many educationists have at rote learning—repetition and memory work—which is essential for a real grasp and understanding of maths.

There are similar issues with teaching foreign languages. Children are not expected to learn lists of vocabulary. English grammar is not taught in many schools. [Interruption.] Well, it was not taught to me, I can tell you that. That was my experience of education, and it is what I wrote in my speech. Fortunately, we did study Latin at my comprehensive school, and grammar was a key feature of the way that that was taught. Having said that, my English sometimes reflects Latin or French grammar rules, rather than English. If I were to use the subjunctive, it would be more by chance than through a real understanding of the rules.

I am aware that I have spoken at some length. I do not intend to do so on most of the other amendments and clauses, but the issue before us is fundamental if we are to tackle many of the root problems in our education system, so I felt that it needed a bit of an exposition. I have hardly scratched the surface of what is involved. Clearly, there are different philosophies of education, such as the George Steiner school, the Montessori approach to education and the approach that I have been discussing and which dominates our education system today. As a nation, we must decide how to have a communal education system, which I support. I also support private education, but 93 per cent. of children attend state schools. What education philosophy should drive our communal education system? That question has been answered not by politicians representing their constituents, but by educationists who are accountable neither to the  marketplace nor to Parliament and the electorate. Politicians of all parties have neglected the debate and have focused instead on structure or cash.

If we are genuinely worried about the quality of education of all children, from whatever background they come, we should be focusing on pedagogical and curriculum issues. That does not mean that the Minister for Schools should sit down to devise a history curriculum, but that history experts should be appointed to devise a curriculum that is in tune with what she knows to be the wishes of parents in this country. The amendment would incorporate that approach into the Bill.

Amendment No. 4 would include in the objectives for an education authority that of raising the educational attainment of the most disadvantaged. It is in that area that our historical system performs least well. In many respects, the programme for international student assessment study of 2000 was flawed. It pointed out that the United Kingdom has a longer tail of underachievement than most countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. That translates into the fact that one in five 11-year-olds leaves primary school unable to read and write properly and 44 per cent. leave primary schools not having mastered each of the three Rs.

A similar, but slightly higher, figure of 56 per cent. is the proportion of 15-year-olds who fail to achieve five or more GCSEs, grades A* to C, including English and maths. Some 44 per cent. manage that, which is why 43.5 per cent. go on to higher education. It is no coincidence that the figures are similar. The fundamental problem is at the primary level. Once we have tackled successfully poor reading skills through the roll-out of synthetic phonics, we shall continue to see problems with maths and at secondary school.

The amendment is aimed especially at primary schools. If a primary school focuses on 100 per cent. of its pupils, including the 25 per cent. who currently fail to grasp reading and writing at the appropriate level, it will have to adopt pedagogical methods and a thoroughness of approach that does not let any child slip through the system for six years without having grasped the essentials of effortlessly decoding a word.

The other focus of the amendment is on ensuring that, at secondary school, the classes are set by ability with the groups for the lowest attaining pupils being smaller in size than the higher attaining groups, and with the best teachers allocated to those groups. Jim Kulik of Michigan university has undertaken studies of setting and has shown that the self-esteem of those in the lower attaining groups counter-intuitively rises when they are set by ability compared with a mixed ability class. We can see why. The children learn at a pace that enables them to understand and learn the things that they are being taught. No brighter kids then humiliate them. Instead of being bored and frustrated by not being able to follow what is going on, the pupils in the lower sets actually learn and develop, and often move up to higher sets as their confidence in the subject grows.

Amendments Nos. 86 and 87, along with amendment No. 58 tabled by the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather), would incorporate into the Bill the duty on local authorities under the Children Act 2004 to make arrangements to promote co-operation between agencies to improve children’s well-being, which, as the hon. Member for Bury, North knows, is defined as

“healthy, staying safe, enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution and achieving economic well-being”.

The Catholic Education Service sent members of the Committee a brief on this part of the Bill, and it makes a point that I want to bring to the Committee’s attention. The brief states:

“We recognise that there may be merit in drawing together the Every Child Matters principles in the Children Act 2004 and behind this legislation. However, we would like to remind you that section 10(2) of the Children Act omitted to make reference to spiritual well-being. We believe this was a fundamental omission and one which is out of step with both education legislation elsewhere and the reality of the lives of children and young people.”

Amendments Nos. 86 and 87 seek to address the concern of many critics of the Bill that the independence and autonomy that the Bill will give to schools, and which Conservative Members welcome, appears to contradict the drive behind the Children Act, which was to foster co-operation between agencies to prevent appalling tragedies such as that of Victoria Climbié being repeated.

The amendments effectively deal with that criticism. In the spirit of the consensus that we are trying to create, I hope that the Government will be able to accept them. The amendments have the support of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which stated that

“under the legislation schools will have increased autonomy and there is risk that their relationships with other bodies with responsibility for children’s welfare will be weakened.”

I have spoken for some time, but the amendments are important. I hope that we will have a serious and considered response from the Minister.

Sarah Teather (Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Education & Skills; Brent East, Liberal Democrat)

I shall be as brief as I can in following the contribution of the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb). I shall touch on amendments Nos. 58, 86 and 87, which the hon. Gentleman dealt with, and on some of the points that were raised in respect of amendments Nos. 96, 186 and 3.

Amendments Nos. 58, 86 and 87 seek to put back into the Bill the notion of well-being, which the Government’s amendment to the Education Act 1996 explicitly removes. It is important. The Government have done well at stressing the importance of dealing with children’s whole well-being, and, as the hon. Member for Bury, North said, schools are about much more than just educational attainment.

There is great danger in drawing on one’s experience when dealing with education—apart from anything else, it is probably 20 years since most of us were taught in school, and education has changed a great deal—but my presence here is testament to the fact that one   can achieve educationally without going to school. However, other aspects of school are also important. I missed most of my schooling during my teenage years but still achieved A grades at A-level to go to Cambridge, but I knew very well when I arrived there that I had missed many of the other important aspects of schooling.

I strongly believe that the Bill must state clearly in the first clause that schools are about preparing well-rounded young people for life, and ensuring that all the aspects covered in “Every Child Matters” and in the 2004 Act are paramount. Those who run schools must have those thoughts at the front of their mind, and local authorities must take on those duties when they are working with schools and commissioning education.

As the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton stated, the Bill is moving towards autonomous schools. If we are to go in that direction, which the Government have decided is the direction that we must take, we must make it explicit from the beginning that co-operation is essential and that it is important to deal with the child as a whole.

The hon. Member for Bury, North made a good point on amendment No. 96, and I shall be interested in the Minister’s response to it. What are the Government’s intentions in putting in those words, and do they intend to move to a stage at which commissioning will be withdrawn? I suspect that that is not their intention, so I should be interested to hear why they have chosen to add those words.

On amendment No. 186, I have no problem with leaving in the word “educational”. Schools are about much more than just education, but they are also about education. Therefore, it is important to leave the word in the clause.

On amendment No. 3, we had an interesting academic, philosophical discussion about the nature of knowledge, but it is common sense that education must be about teaching young people to think, and teaching them facts and skills. We could have a lengthy discussion about the semantics of knowledge, but putting that explicitly in the Bill would be walking into the trap that the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton asked us not to walk into—going down one track of learning at the expense of all others.

It was fascinating to hear the hon. Gentleman’s rather prescriptive approach today. I listened to the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) speak in the Chamber yesterday about the need to trust teachers and head teachers, yet we are here prescribing a particular form of learning, or at least attempting to remove other forms of learning in the school curriculum. Of course, it is common sense that education has changed since even the youngest of us were at school. It has changed considerably because knowledge moves on—for example, the science curriculum that was taught at degree or postgraduate level is now taught at GCSE or a lower level in schools because knowledge has moved on. Pupils in schools need to learn different things at different paces. That is inevitable and it is not entirely surprising that some   people find it difficult to help their children with their homework. That may not mean that they failed to achieve at school. It may mean simply that educational knowledge, information and thought have moved on.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Durham, City of, Labour)

May I add my voice to those that have welcomed you to the Chair, Mr. Cook?

I shall speak briefly to amendments Nos. 96, 95 and 186. As the Minister is aware, they are essentially probing amendments to obtain clarification. Amendment No. 96 would clarify the role of local authorities and ensure that they continue to provide services to schools, particularly a range of support services.

Until the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton spoke, I thought we had all signed up to the personalised learning agenda, but I am not so sure now. Amendment No. 95 is about ensuring that resources are available to back up the personalised learning agenda and that schools will be able to deliver so that children have access to it.

Amendment No. 186 is not about downgrading educational achievement and does not in any way suggest that that is not what schools should primarily be about. Its purpose is to ask whether the Bill acknowledges that schools have a much wider role in, for example, children’s social and cultural development and whether that should be reflected in the Bill.

John Hayes (Shadow Minister (Vocational Education), Education; South Holland & The Deepings, Conservative)

What a delight it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Cook. I anticipate your benevolence and indulgence in the coming days and weeks.

Before I speak to amendments Nos. 3 and 4, it is perhaps worth saying something about the context of the Bill. Much has been made of it and many claims have been made for it, but it is the common habit of politicians to oversell their product—we are all guilty of that at one time or another—so let us be clear. The Bill is not a landmark Bill. In terms of education reform, this is not 1876 or 1944, nor even 1988. However, the Bill contains some important provisions, some good and some less so, and we shall explore those during the coming weeks.

I welcome the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, who started the Committee off in precisely the right way by looking at the fundamental aspects of the Bill; how it responds to the educational imperatives facing us and how we got to where we are. We have had a lengthy discussion about the nature of education and, in particular, the nature of knowledge. It is indisputable that transmission of a body of knowledge is a necessary part of the education process. So much would have been taken as read until relatively recently—certainly in my lifetime. I know it is hard to believe, but I am 47. Committee members may ask, “How can that possibly be true? How can that callow youth standing before us possibly be 47?” Well, I am—I plead guilty to that at least. In those years, there emerged a different view of education, which my hon.   Friend began to articulate, and as a result the assumption that a body of knowledge should be transmitted from one generation to another has been challenged. Of course, education is not only about that; it is also about the acquisition of skills and, as the hon. Member for Brent, East said, about values and attitudes. There is no dichotomy.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Durham, City of, Labour)

If education is about transferring knowledge from one generation to another, how do we accommodate new knowledge?

John Hayes (Shadow Minister (Vocational Education), Education; South Holland & The Deepings, Conservative)

Incrementally. I did not anticipate needing to teach the hon. Lady a lesson so early in our consideration, but I am happy to do so. The collective wisdom of the ages, which is transmitted across the generations, added to, of course, by each of those generations and vested in our institutions, both small and large, is of primary importance and is bound up with the very nature of civilised society. It would be wrong to ignore that in the education system and so to assume that one can be educated and accomplished without acquiring elements of that historical knowledge and the new knowledge that comes with each new generation, each new discovery and each reinterpretation of what we know, such things being not static, but dynamic. That is a fundamental part of the education process, but education is not about that alone.

Mary Creagh (Wakefield, Labour)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

John Hayes (Shadow Minister (Vocational Education), Education; South Holland & The Deepings, Conservative)

I can see that this is going to be a lively exchange.

Mary Creagh (Wakefield, Labour)

Would the hon. Gentleman describe the discoveries of Archimedes, Isaac Newton or even Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the internet, as incremental increases in knowledge or great leaps forward? If they are great leaps forward, how can they be learned in tiny ways? They are examples of great leaps, and we need to teach people to take great leaps, as well as just learn what has gone before.

John Hayes (Shadow Minister (Vocational Education), Education; South Holland & The Deepings, Conservative)

Yes, but people take great leaps only because of what has gone before. Einstein, for example, would not have been able to make his contribution to science and to our lives without Newton; similarly, Newton would not have been able to come to his conclusions without studying the ancients. Of course, there are great leaps forward in all kinds of fields, but they build on what has gone before, and any academic or scientist who is involved in such great leaps forward acknowledges their debt to those who have gone before them. All I am saying is that knowledge grows and that that growth in knowledge needs to be transmitted to children as part of the education system.

Angela Smith (PPS (Yvette Cooper, Minister of State), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Sheffield, Hillsborough, Labour)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

John Hayes (Shadow Minister (Vocational Education), Education; South Holland & The Deepings, Conservative)

I am moving on to skills, but I am happy to stay with knowledge for a while.

Angela Smith (PPS (Yvette Cooper, Minister of State), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Sheffield, Hillsborough, Labour)

Is it not true that the great leaps forward in thinking are due to the fact that great scientists and great inventors do not just accept the knowledge that has been transferred to them, but learn how to think and challenge?

John Hayes (Shadow Minister (Vocational Education), Education; South Holland & The Deepings, Conservative)

They do not accept that such things are static—as I said, they are dynamic. Inevitably, if one is to make new discoveries and develop one’s thinking, one must be sufficiently flexible to accept that things are dynamic. However, that does not mean that we should forget all that has gone before. The idea that we should learn in a vacuum, detached from that body of knowledge, is surely nonsense and no one on the Committee or more widely would make that case. Yet, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton said, a view grew up in the 1960s and particularly the 1970s among those who one might argue should have known better that the body of knowledge that my hon. Friend discussed at length was much less important than it really is.

My hon. Friend quoted Mr. Woodhead, and I had the book to which he referred close to hand, which was lucky because I did not know that he was going to quote from it. In that book, Woodhead deconstructs constructivism. He talks about his experience of teaching in the 1960s and says:

“Children had to ‘make their own meanings’ and ‘construct their own version of reality’. I did not want them to write down what I told them”

because

“The factual information that I could transmit was irrelevant to the emotional engagement that had to be at the heart of every authentic literary encounter, and the more I told them what to think and feel the more inauthentic that encounter would become. My role was to help my pupils to feel their way into the text, to relate it to their own experiences and inner life, and to come, as independently as they could, to their own judgements and understanding.”

One of the effects of that kind of orthodoxy was to demote the role of the teacher. We heard during an earlier, very good contribution, that the relationship between the teacher and taught—the ability of the teacher to inspire—was critical to the process of education. I have no doubt that each of us in this Committee was inspired during our education by a particular educator. But educators were demoted by the child-centred approach. The further we move away from the idea that teachers have the capacity to inspire because they transmit a body of knowledge and range of skills—allowing, of course, children’s own understanding to emerge and accepting that each child grows organically through that process—the more we undermine the important status and role of the teacher.

I do not claim that education is just about knowledge. That is the mistake made by critics of the kind of argument advanced by my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton. They assume that because one is making such a case, one cannot also believe that education is about values, attitudes and the acquisition of skills. That is a false dichotomy, which is well illustrated by an essay in an extremely good review of essays published by the National Union of Teachers—one in a regular series of   collections of essays on education that it publishes. In his essay John White, emeritus professor of the philosophy of education at the institute of education at the university of London, sets up a dichotomy between education that is essentially about academic learning and education that is about personal well-being. To my way of thinking, however, the acquisition of understanding, the capacity to take on board a body of knowledge and the discovery of ways of learning. New skills are critical to people’s sense of well-being because they inform and inspire their sense of self-worth. Well-being and self-worth are inseparable, so I do not buy the idea that personal well-being is in some way contradicted by the idea of acquiring a body of knowledge.

Angela Smith (PPS (Yvette Cooper, Minister of State), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Sheffield, Hillsborough, Labour)

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman giving way a second time. Is it not true that self-esteem is very important to enable a child to learn in the first place? Is there not a history of failure and underperformance among children who lack self-esteem and confidence and who come from backgrounds where they are not supported or encouraged to believe that they can actually learn?

John Hayes (Shadow Minister (Vocational Education), Education; South Holland & The Deepings, Conservative)

That is where Professor White gets it right. He goes on to say in his essay, as I was about to mention, that if the only education offered to children is academic and we assume that all education is essentially literary, we fall into a trap where we disillusion and diminish those children to whom that sort of curriculum and educational experience are not best suited. That is why the Government are right, in my judgment, to put an appropriate emphasis on vocational education. I have heard the shadow Minister speak in much the same terms.

We need to understand that to be educated is not necessarily a literary matter. Some 300 or 400 years ago, most people were illiterate but they certainly were not uneducated. Education is about the skill of one’s hands as well as many other things. The people who carved the wood on the panels in this room, those who designed and printed the wallpaper and those who built this Palace were not necessarily literary people, but they were certainly educated. Re-evaluating our understanding of education is part of the process of delivering self-worth to a whole range of different types of person with different pre-occupations and talents and so different things to offer. I agree with the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough and I agree with Professor White about that. However, it would be a mistake to underestimate or, worse still, to undermine the argument in favour of that vital body of knowledge, that collective wisdom of ages, support for which is embodied in the argument that my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton made and in our amendment No. 3, which would be a happy and useful addition to the Bill.

It is perhaps worth adding that there will no doubt be a debate in the Committee about methodology and the different ways of teaching different things. To some extent we have had that debate this morning. I gather from hon. Members who have already contributed   that it is necessary to lay before the Committee one’s credentials to comment on such matters. I make little of the fact that I was a member of an LEA in Nottinghamshire for many years, as shadow spokesman on education, and even less of the fact that I trained as a teacher. My principal qualification to speak on such matters is that I am the father of William and Edward—I have a photo that I shall pass round for hon. Members who are interested. Having two young sons, I spend a great deal of my leisure time dealing with the very business of teaching children to read, write, count and reason. Based on that experience, I have come to the conclusions that phonics are critical, although I do not entirely share my hon. Friend’s view about the real books method. My son is learning by a mix of the two. Although I learned to read, write and spell by a traditional means—in a golden past, in an idyllically happy childhood—my son is learning by a slightly different, mixed approach, which is proving effective. I believe in traditional methods, but I do not want to be hidebound by them. I am open-minded about methodology: different children learn in different ways.

Children certainly need the basics, however, and my hon. Friend is right to say that for too long those basics were neglected. A child who cannot sound the alphabet cannot make much use of the real books method. I first became politically involved in education in the mid-1980s, when the real books movement really got under way, and we were told that those basic things were not necessary. I entirely support the idea that phonics is a critical part of learning to read and write. The Government have also taken that on board, which is a negation of the views that were prevalent for too long. I am prepared to base my judgment on such matters on real life experience and to keep an open mind about methodology. I am sure that we shall talk much more about skills, attitudes and values, and knowledge as the days and weeks go by.

Amendment No. 4 proposes that we should raise

“the educational attainment of the most disadvantaged”.

That goes to the very heart of our conservatism. The Conservative party has a noble history of standing for the most disadvantaged. We are, after all, the party of Wilberforce, Shaftesbury and Disraeli. Over many years in this place, the Conservative party championed the cause of the disadvantaged against bitter opposition from Liberals and other reactionaries, and we do no less today. That is the reason for amendment No. 4. [Interruption.] I see that I have caused some hilarity among Government Members; I find that hard to understand, but no doubt they will share the joke with us later.

Perhaps it is worth quoting Rab Butler, who said of his great Education Act of 1944:

“Educationally ... Britain had to be one nation not two. So there must be an education system providing a training best suited to the talents of every individual”.

Our education system too often fails the most disadvantaged in our society. That is freely acknowledged by Members on both sides of the House. Indeed, when the Secretary of State introduced   the Bill on Second Reading, she made it clear that there was still a long way to go in improving the quality of the education experience for the most disadvantaged children in society, although she of course advertised the claims of progress that the Government frequently make.

To state the position in graphic terms, in January 2005, 29 per cent. of all schools with special measures were located in the 20 per cent. most deprived communities. That statistic is drawn from the National Audit Office report published just a month or so ago. Nearly a million children—13 per cent. of the school population—are attending poorly performing schools, which means that there are 1,557 poorly performing schools in England, and that recent NAO study made it clear that those poorly performing schools were staying in difficulties for too long. The problem is not simply the number of schools in difficulties, but the time that the schools spend in less-than-ideal circumstances. They perform poorly for too long and take too long to react. As we heard again in the Budget debate yesterday, according to the Department’s own figures, almost half—44 per cent.—of all 11-year-olds leave primary school without mastering the three R’s. Less than half of school leavers—44 per cent.—attain five or more good GCSE grades, including English and maths.

If, as Chesterton remarked, education is the soul of society as it passes from one generation to another—I am reminded of earlier discussion in Committee—we must loosen the grip of the soullessness that besets our great cities and towns, and we must ensure that the wisdom of generations is passed down to all our children, not just the fortunate few. That is why, over generations, there has been debate about methodology and teaching and learning strategies. It is the kind of debate that we began this morning—one in which we consider the relationship between teacher and taught and how to elevate expectations. We engage in such debates in an effort to ensure that children aim for a more distant horizon, particularly those children who start with low self-esteem. That is also why we debate education structure.

It is legitimate to consider how far structure has inhibited the useful debate about methodology and how far it has facilitated a useful consideration of how to deal with disadvantage. To be frank, the jury is out. There is a case—my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton began to make it—for saying that the predominance of debate about structure in education has been unhelpful in addressing the more fundamental problems, which have tended to continue regardless of the structural changes made. Having said that, the Bill is in large measure about structure. We need to consider that in relation to the amendments, because if we are to talk about structure, we should not do so outside of considerations about the most disadvantaged pupils and the most poorly performing schools.

It is because of successive Governments’ determination to change the structure of education in order to raise standards that the Education Act 1944 was introduced. You, Mr. Cook, and the Committee   will be relieved to know that I do not intend to speak about that in any great detail—not that you would permit me to do so. More especially, that is why the Education Reform Act 1988 was introduced. That is relevant, of course, because it has been said that the 1988 Act was a forerunner of the Bill in terms of the independence that the Act gave schools. The arguments that ran throughout the 80s were fierce; I was involved in them and I remember the 1988 Act as an active member of an LEA at the time. The debates were about whether by giving schools greater freedom and competence over their affairs, we could raise standards.

The debates have raged and been waged for 20 years since, and as my hon. Friend rightly said, a consensus has been emerging and is embodied in the Bill. By giving schools greater flexibility in what they do and thus greater freedom to prioritise, we might be able to raise educational standards and improve the quality of education offered to our children. Broadly speaking, I support that view. If we are to raise standards and improve the quality of education, we must give schools more freedom to develop in the way that best suited to the needs of their locality and most sensitive to the requirements of their children. We must allow schools to explore the capacity of their leaders, governors, heads and teachers to innovate. That is why we supported the Bill on Second Reading and broadly approve of it in essence.

Even so, there is a worry that some schools will continue to struggle. There is concern about children in the most difficult areas and schools with the most difficult cohorts, who are perhaps bound to fail. I am not prepared in Committee to accept that as the status quo. I, like Members throughout the Committee, want to ensure that every child has the chance to fulfil their potential—the chance that I guess we have all had. To that end, I urge the Committee to accept amendment No. 4 and add the emphasis on disadvantage to the Bill. Amendments Nos. 3 and 4 and others tabled by my hon. Friends would be constructive, consensual and intelligent additions to the Bill. They are designed not to frustrate its intent, but to improve the legislation that we hope will emanate from our considerations during the next few weeks. In that spirit, I urge my hon. Friends and other hon. Members throughout the Committee, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton did, to support the amendments tabled in our names.

Anne Snelgrove (PPS (Lord Warner, Minister of State), Department of Health; South Swindon, Labour)

I, too, welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Cook. The amendment is not necessary, because the whole Bill looks at promoting the education of the most disadvantaged.

Robert Wilson (Reading East, Conservative)

One of the problems that although the measures for the disadvantaged have received a lot of window dressing, the Bill does not focus on them much. It is more about keeping the middle classes in the education system, as Downing street advisers have said, rather than helping poor children to attain their best in schools.

Anne Snelgrove (PPS (Lord Warner, Minister of State), Department of Health; South Swindon, Labour)

I cannot accept what the hon. Gentleman says. This is not a Bill just for the middle classes—a Bill to keep the middle classes in the education system. It is a Bill for all children, and it will help in particular the most disadvantaged in my constituency. However, we are introducing the Bill to ensure that all schools can promote the education of all their children.

I, too, remember the Education Reform Act 1988 very well. I was working in education at that time, and my issue with the legislation was that it set school against school. It did not promote collaboration among groups of schools—indeed, it destroyed much of the work that the Conservative Government had funded to promote schools working together under the technical and vocational education initiative. The Government missed the opportunity to continue skills education and collaborative education among the education community. That Act made the divide between good and poor schools even greater, which was a great pity.

Since 1997, we have been putting the emphasis on people working collaboratively in education, and we brought the grant-maintained schools back into the family of local education authority schools, which is where they remain.

Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)

The hon. Lady has mentioned a number of times things that were done by a previous Conservative Government. We can all hark back to the past. I note, however, that the hon. Lady did not mention the Education Act 1996, which gave all children, particularly those with special needs, full access to education. If she wants to hark back to the past, perhaps she would do so accurately.

Anne Snelgrove (PPS (Lord Warner, Minister of State), Department of Health; South Swindon, Labour)

I am harking back accurately; I remember it well. My purpose in mentioning the 1988 Act was not completely to castigate the former Tory Administration but to say that it worked against the implementation of provisions that had been introduced previously by Keith Joseph. Perhaps the hon. Lady should consider the activities of Keith Joseph—and the actions of subsequent Conservative Education Ministers, who destroyed some of that work.

Mr. Evennettrose—

Anne Snelgrove (PPS (Lord Warner, Minister of State), Department of Health; South Swindon, Labour)

I want to make some progress.

Mr. Evennettrose—

Anne Snelgrove (PPS (Lord Warner, Minister of State), Department of Health; South Swindon, Labour)

If the hon. Gentleman is going to be so insistent, then I shall give way.

David Evennett (Whip, Whips; Bexleyheath & Crayford, Conservative)

I always like to listen to the hon. Lady, because she is always educational. She said that the Bill would certainly help the most disadvantaged. How?

Anne Snelgrove (PPS (Lord Warner, Minister of State), Department of Health; South Swindon, Labour)

It will do so by enabling schools to undertake trust status, to work together if they wish and to formalise many of the collaborative arrangements that are already in use in my   constituency. For instance, the excellence cluster is making some improvements for the most disadvantaged children; however, it could work much better with the university of Bath. In addition, most disadvantaged children will be helped, particularly through the personalisation of the curriculum and, at last, the formalisation of powers for teachers to deal with disruptive children.

Angela Smith (PPS (Yvette Cooper, Minister of State), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Sheffield, Hillsborough, Labour)

Is it not also true that the greater powers that the Bill will give to local authorities to intervene when schools are failing to deliver will make it much more likely that levels of attainment among such children will be raised?

Anne Snelgrove (PPS (Lord Warner, Minister of State), Department of Health; South Swindon, Labour)

I agree with my hon. Friend. The provisions that I have described will also give my local authority, a small unitary authority, a greater opportunity to work with schools strategically, rather than having to be direct providers. Parts of the Bill will really help small authorities.

David Evennett (Whip, Whips; Bexleyheath & Crayford, Conservative)

We are really looking at the most disadvantaged children, and we all passionately want to help them. Many existing powers are not being used. Why not?

Anne Snelgrove (PPS (Lord Warner, Minister of State), Department of Health; South Swindon, Labour)

Many powers have already been made available, but we are not complacent. We must not stand still.

I draw hon. Members’ attention to the National Audit Office report, published in January, which stated that we had gone a long way to helping the most disadvantaged children. It said that the number of failing schools had halved between 1998 and 2005, and that the number of low achieving secondary schools had fallen by 75 per cent. Many schools in my constituency are among those improving secondary schools, but they are still not improving enough—and they would the first to acknowledge the fact. I have spoken to some head teachers in my constituency about this, and they say that the Bill will give them powers over and above those that they already have.

John Hayes (Shadow Minister (Vocational Education), Education; South Holland & The Deepings, Conservative)

The hon. Lady is right about the National Audit Office report, but as I pointed out it also says that the problems of the most disadvantaged schools, which stay on special measures or perform poorly for the longest period, seem to be intractable. What extra do we need to do to improve the performance of such schools, which are often in the most disadvantaged areas, serve the most disadvantaged communities and have the most intractable problems?

Anne Snelgrove (PPS (Lord Warner, Minister of State), Department of Health; South Swindon, Labour)

The hon. Gentleman is right to raise that point, and I thank him for doing so. There are two examples that I can mention: first, the earlier intervention by local authorities, particularly in the case of Church schools. In the past, local authorities have had to stand on the sidelines and watch such schools fail. Secondly, there will be an opportunity for head teachers who have proven their leadership skills to take over one or two other schools and look at the leadership that they could give to that group of schools. Some successful head teachers are concerned   about that and say, “What about the school that I am already in? Will it be disadvantaged?” Once a school is successful and has the right staff, the head teacher can move on to a new challenge while keeping an eye on the school that they have already made a success of. We do not have enough excellent leaders in education for all failing schools to have one of them. The scheme is therefore a way of making creative use of the expertise available.

John Hayes (Shadow Minister (Vocational Education), Education; South Holland & The Deepings, Conservative)

I endorse that view. Mentoring is an important part of the process, and I think that the hon. Lady makes a powerful case for it. Will she extend that case to the private sector? I was lucky enough to speak at the independent schools conference a few days ago, and I invited the private sector to use its skills, resources and expertise to mentor schools in the circumstances that she described. Does she welcome that approach?

Anne Snelgrove (PPS (Lord Warner, Minister of State), Department of Health; South Swindon, Labour)

I have always had an open mind on such matters, and I think that there should be a two-way process. We have failing private schools as well as failing state schools, and I want to see the barriers between the private and state sectors broken down. I welcome the fact that some private schools are coming into the body of local education authority schools.

This has been an excellent debate, and I thank you, Mr. Cook, and others for it.

Annette Brooke (Children & the Family, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

I welcome you to the Committee, Mr. Cook.

Frank Cook (Stockton North, Labour)

Order. I have been waiting for some time for a hearing device. In common with the rest of the community, I have to wait my turn. I have been fitted for it, but it has yet to be delivered. I ask everyone to speak up so that I can hear and so that I might be able to understand. I am the only person in the Committee who is not allowed to fall asleep.

Annette Brooke (Children & the Family, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

Thank you, Mr. Cook. I am looking forward to serving under your chairmanship again. We should also cut out conversations so that our voices reach you clearly.

I had a faint vision from the Opposition speeches that we may be steered back towards rote learning, and I hope that there is not a new consensus in that direction. In a way, one welcomes the Conservatives now saying that they want to flag up the attainment of the most disadvantaged. I suspect that, admirably, the Minister will say that that important matter is covered in the Bill, but the schools that acquired grant-maintained status in my constituency were in the most advantaged areas. That deprived our most disadvantaged school of resources and facilities and was incredibly divisive. It showed the need to maintain a local authority that can put in as much support as possible, but the withdrawal of funds from the local authority made that difficult. I welcome the fact that we are now talking about the most disadvantaged children.

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

I just want to pick up on the hon. Lady’s point about rote learning. Does she believe that children in primary schools should learn by rote the multiplication tables?

Annette Brooke (Children & the Family, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

Hon. Members will hear me express throughout our debates the view that it is most important to have strategies for particular children, and that a single approach of rote learning of multiplication tables is a meaningless exercise.

Let me address amendments Nos. 86 and 87, on which my hon. Friends and I are in agreement with the Conservative Opposition. “Every Child Matters” and the agenda associated with it were a big step forward. We began to take a broader view of child development, and focused on the outcomes of all children. We believe that there should be a link in the Bill to the Children Act 2004, particularly to section 12. It could be argued that what is in that Act does not need to be in this one, but that might not be sufficient to draw attention to the importance of co-operation between local authorities, schools and the many other bodies involved in the general welfare of the child.

It concerned us greatly when I served on the Committee that considered the Children Bill that schools were not identified as a separate body—academies and independent schools were left out of the loop, and that was a serious matter. This Bill takes us further along the route of giving more autonomy to schools. We need to be absolutely sure that our most vulnerable children are protected. It is right that we should place great emphasis on standards, but at the same time we must recognise that vulnerable children have to be supported by a wide range of different agencies, and their needs have to be identified. There is a danger that we will overlook their needs.

On amendment No. 58, as well as the “Every Child Matters” agenda, there is an additional strand—the promotion of emotional well-being. Clearly, the other two objectives of this section cannot be achieved unless the children have emotional well-being. We know that emotionally disturbed children—for example, those with low self-esteem—have great problems with learning. Emotional well-being underpins the promotion of high standards and the “fulfilment by every child”. It would be a positive move to highlight that by making that addition to the clause.

Of course, the clause is not about particular subjects or courses of work, but I should like to mention an important programme for the social and emotional aspects of learning—SEAL. I do not say that it is a strand that should be highlighted by itself, but its importance, and the way in which the Government have promoted it, should be reflected. I have taught in a high-performing school, and when one is on the bandwagon of aiming for high standards, less time is left for other matters that are very important for a large number of our children.

John Hayes (Shadow Minister (Vocational Education), Education; South Holland & The Deepings, Conservative)

Will the hon. Lady give way?

Annette Brooke (Children & the Family, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

I wanted to be brief.

John Hayes (Shadow Minister (Vocational Education), Education; South Holland & The Deepings, Conservative)

I defer, of course, to the hon. Lady’s immense experience as a practitioner, but good teachers have always understood the importance of the emotional well-being of children. The relationship between the teacher and the taught is founded on the trusting bond, which includes a proper consideration of emotional well-being. Is the issue not the quality of teaching and the value that is placed on teachers?

Annette Brooke (Children & the Family, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

It may be about the quality of the teaching, but that might be less appropriate if we look at the ethos of the school. If a school’s ethos is to concentrate on the high-fliers, it sometimes finds it easier to ask children to leave than to address their problems.

Still on that matter, there is a significant difference between the clause that we are considering and the clause that it replaces in the Education Act 1996. That specifically mentions community, and that will be an important issue as we progress through the Bill. If we give greater autonomy to schools, what will be their contribution to the wider community and to all aspects of children’s development? The particular clause that has been replaced mentioned spiritual, moral, mental and physical development. Through the way it was expressed, it focused on a collaborative model in the community, and I rather think that with the new provision we lose those values. Nevertheless, its great strength is in speaking about the fulfilment of every child. That is something on which we should really focus.

Edward Leigh (Gainsborough, Conservative)

I hesitate to take part, because I am not an educationist and I have never taught in schools or in a university or college; I am simply a parent. I apologise for the fact that I do not have a photograph of my children in my wallet.

John Hayes (Shadow Minister (Vocational Education), Education; South Holland & The Deepings, Conservative)

It would have to be a big photograph.

Edward Leigh (Gainsborough, Conservative)

It would indeed. I do know a lot about children, however, and about being a parent. Only last night, my son, who is in year six in primary school, asked me what a past participle was, and I had absolutely no idea. So clearly they are doing grammar in some primary schools nowadays. Forty years ago, when I was at school, I was doing a lot of thinking, but I suspect not much learning.

Despite confessing that I am not an educationist, I much enjoyed the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton. It was a wonderful performance and very interesting—one of the best speeches I have heard in this place. I never read Chris Woodhead or Melanie Phillips, and on that I am probably in tune with 99 per cent. of people. Equally, I have not read all those very dangerous left-wing professors who teach at other universities. Intellectually, I am a completely virgin field in the matter.

Anne Snelgrove (PPS (Lord Warner, Minister of State), Department of Health; South Swindon, Labour)

I would advise the hon. Gentleman to stay as he is, and to remember what Oscar Wilde said about ignorance being like a delicate, exotic fruit—touch it and the bloom is gone.

Edward Leigh (Gainsborough, Conservative)

That is right; I do not deny it. I have, however, read Chesterton, and I pay tribute to the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings. I think that people like Chesterton probably had a great deal of wisdom, which can illuminate our debates now.

Talking of the past, I have been serving on these Committees for many years and I served on Committees which considered education Bills in the late 1980s, which may make me a villain to Labour Members. I sat behind Lord Forsyth, who was introducing grant-maintained schools to Scotland when he produced a paper that had been set for a board school in the western isles in the 1890s for 11-year-olds. The questions on English, mathematics and history were so difficult that not a single member of the Committee could give the right answers. That shows that standards in education in many areas have been declining for many years, in terms of the rigid understanding of fundamental concepts. My hon. Friend made the point that Einstein and many great thinkers had that foundation, which has been lost in many schools.

I do not know whether synthetic phonics are the right answer, or—what it is it called?

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

The whole-language approach.

Edward Leigh (Gainsborough, Conservative)

Whole language. These things are never talked about to parents. I have been a parent at primary schools for many years and teachers do not come and talk about such things—they get on with the job. So much of the debate is completely unreal in relation to what is going on.

In a moment, the Minister will come up with a well-prepared speech, and no doubt she will say that amendments Nos. 3 and 4 are not entirely necessary because part 1 of the Bill already provides that schools must promote high standards and the fulfilment of every child. No doubt she will say that it is not necessary to promote the transfer of knowledge. These debates go on.

Jacqui Smith (Minister of State (Schools and 14-19 Learners), Department for Education and Skills; Redditch, Labour)

It does not say that.

Edward Leigh (Gainsborough, Conservative)

Well, the Minister will say what she likes, of course. I am just assuming that Ministers always oppose all amendments produced by the Opposition. Maybe we are in a new enlightened age, with a new leader of the Opposition, and apparently we do not talk about party politics any more. Perhaps Ministers will start accepting amendments proposed by the Opposition, which would be a wonderful way to proceed, and these Committees might mean something, but I suspect that will not happen.

Will it actually matter what is in the Bill? Will teachers not get on with what they know best?

John Hayes (Shadow Minister (Vocational Education), Education; South Holland & The Deepings, Conservative)

I am delighted that my hon. Friend has given way and I thank him for it. I think that he underestimates these Ministers and that he is doing them a disservice, because I have noticed them hanging on every word issuing from the lips of my hon. Friend, and my own humble effort was also listened to attentively. Therefore, I believe that, during our proceedings, the Ministers will accept a number of the Opposition amendments, if they are put in the balanced way that we have put them today and are argued in the best possible spirit of what is already turning into an excellent Committee.

Edward Leigh (Gainsborough, Conservative)

Well, we live in hope. I suppose that if one is nice enough to Ministers, they might respond, but in my experience that does not work, with either Conservative or Labour Ministers. However, we will see what happens.

The simple point that I want to make is that, whatever we decide in the Committee this morning—it is a crucial issue and it has been a very interesting debate—whether we accept the amendments or not, most teachers will simply get on with what they want to do, which is teaching. Ultimately, we must give freedom to teachers to teach. The whole philosophy of what we have been talking about in the 23 years that I have been in the House, with education Bills every year, the national curriculum, an obsession with structures, trying to change things and throwing everything up in the air every year, is completely irrelevant. We need an Education Bill that gives as much freedom as possible to teachers to do what they do best.

I have a great deal of respect for my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, but I know that he thinks that teachers are corrupted by educational fashion and that we cannot trust many of them. There may be something in that, because some of them are infected with what he would consider to be dangerous, progressive ideas. Some are; some are not. There are good primary schools and bad primary schools.

Mr. Gibbrose—

Edward Leigh (Gainsborough, Conservative)

I am not making any point against my hon. Friend, because I have enormous respect for him. The very fact that he is taking his job so seriously that he is visiting both the 50 best-performing schools and the 50 worst-performing schools shows that he has a real commitment to what he believes in. However, there is one thing wrong with his analysis, which I suspect is the one thing wrong with many of the views put forward in the Committee. That is that somehow the centre can decide; that the man in Whitehall knows best. I assure the Committee that, having spent 23 years in this building under both Conservative and Labour Governments, the man in Whitehall does not know best. We do not know best. The parent and the teacher know best.

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

I just wanted to put the record straight on one point that my hon. Friend made about not trusting teachers. I do trust teachers. We owe them a huge debt   of gratitude and they are very able people, but many teachers have to rely on the advice that they are given by local education authority advisers and by academics in the universities. Any conscientious teacher would. That is what I am concerned about. I want to ensure that that advice is the advice that parents want those who teach their children to be given. It is not a question of whether I or anybody else trusts teachers. I certainly do trust teachers and their professionalism.

Edward Leigh (Gainsborough, Conservative)

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I visited a primary school in my constituency recently and was asking about synthetic phonics, as it has come into public debate recently. I said to the teacher, “Surely there were all these educational fashions and all those circulars coming from the Department.” She said, “I ignored all that. I just got on with my job. I have carried on with synthetic phonics all these years, when it was out of fashion.” That is the point that I am making.

I say that we should trust teachers, but that trust must be tempered by parent power. That is why I am strongly in favour of schools being given maximum freedom from the centre to teach what they want to teach. Some people want progressive schools, some may want Montessori principles, some may want faith schools, some may want traditional teaching, some may want uniforms, some do not. Let the parents decide, and ultimately schools will find their own level. I believe passionately—that is an over-used word in this building, but it is why I volunteered to serve on the Committee—that, as a parent, I know best and I know what is best for my children. I know the sort of school that I want my child to go to. I want that choice and I want a chance to get them into that school.

The point that I was making on Second Reading is that, in London, although not so much in Lincolnshire, there are many frustrated parents who cannot get into excellent primary or secondary schools. They are not necessarily schools in the best catchment areas or schools with the most money, but they provide the ethos that the parent seeks. As a result of the Bill, I want those schools and schools such as them to have a chance to expand.

There has been a lot of talk about the National Audit Office. I know a lot about the National Audit Office. One can read anything one likes into its reports. They are not written by politicians. There are good and bad aspects of education. Some schools have improved; others have not. Still too many children are, I believe, stuck in failing schools. Whatever circulars the Department issues, we will not make a difference until we allow good schools to expand, new groups to set up schools that cater for what people want and bad schools ultimately to close.

Meg Hillier (Hackney South & Shoreditch, Labour)

The hon. Gentleman talks with some passion about parental choice. Can he explain how he equates that parental choice with the continuation of grammar schools in Lincolnshire?

Frank Cook (Stockton North, Labour)

Order. I do not detect any reference to parental choice in the group of amendments. Can we leave that discussion until the appropriate moment?

Edward Leigh (Gainsborough, Conservative)

Of course, grammar schools survive in Lincolnshire. People want them to survive and they are popular. We can come to grammar schools at another time.

I have made my point. We have to be realistic. It has been a good debate. Some people in the Committee clearly have a more traditional idea of education and want to return to more traditional forms, some think that multiplication tables can be learnt only by rote, and others think that they cannot. I suspect that one can learn them only by rote, but I do not know for certain. I am not an education specialist.

Such arguments are not central to what is important for our children’s education. What is important is what is going on in schools. Schools will improve if they are allowed to respond to what parents want. Parents will see what is going on in schools and the results at the end of the process, at key stage 6 or wherever, and they will make their choice. If we have confidence in what parents want, we can start significantly to change education for the better.

Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)

The debate so far has been particularly wide ranging. I shall certainly not be bringing the names of my children forward. They are now teenagers and certainly would not welcome it. I would be in huge trouble. I, too, come here as a parent and not as an educationalist with any particular expertise in education. I have three children. One is at university and the other two are in local comprehensive schools. They have been through the system and through a number of schools.

I want to speak not only about amendments Nos. 3, 86 and, in particular, 4, but about clause 1 in general, which concerns the fulfilment of potential. That is a broad term, and it depends on what group we are talking about, how we define its potential and the fulfilment of that potential. I have looked at three diverse examples of education recently.

Since I became a Member of the House, I have been surprised at how fiercely partisan it can be. I have never read Melanie Phillips, on principle. Nor do I read Chris Woodhead much, for the same reason. However, I sometimes find the level of partisan involvement quite difficult.

I am here as a mother, as well as an MP, and I will not make any adverse political points, or lob any grenades about what happened under previous Labour Governments. I could say, “In the Labour Government of 1979”, or whatever, but I will not. That is not in keeping with the essence of the Bill and will not get the best out of the Committee, or the debate. I hope that Labour Members will realise that any point that I make is for my children and everyone else’s and not because I am being partisan.

I want to consider the three aspects of education that I have looked at, and particularly to discuss amendment No. 4, which I will come to in a moment. On Friday, I visited a Roman Catholic school. It is competitive and has a waiting list. In fact, I think that a letter from the Pope is needed to get in, it is so popular and competitive. I spoke to the headmaster about the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next and the type of teaching in that school. He is retiring this year. He has been teaching in that school for 40 years, and worked his way up from a young teacher to headmaster.

We talked at length about the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next, and he gave me an example of what happens in his school. It was quite scary, in a way. The headmaster spoke about the children aged four who came into the reception class last September. They arrived knowing how to read and write—not all of them, but there is a good level of knowledge. He said that that did not happen 40 years ago. He was shocked at how competitive parents have become and how few social skills the children have now. They can read, but they cannot mix with the other kids in the playground. They are starting to write, but they do not know how to share. He has noticed a huge difference during 40 years of teaching. Forty years ago, children arriving might know how to care for younger siblings but not how to read and write. They knew how to care for other children and how to play and mix.

The headmaster felt that the transfer of knowledge from generation to generation and the way in which we teach have deteriorated and are almost on the point of disappearing. One of the reasons that he gave was the lack of moral and Christian teaching that takes place in school. I do not mean that every school should be Christian—by Christian I mean religious, because the basis of every religion is teaching morals and transferring knowledge. Being a Christian, I know really only about my own religion, including instructions such as “love thy neighbour” and lots of other lessons that come from the Bible, such as the feeding of the 5,000, which is about sharing.

I have to agree with that headmaster’s comments. Having visited a lot of schools recently, I have attended a lot of assemblies in which I have noticed that almost no moral teaching—no handing down of moral knowledge—takes place.

Angela Smith (PPS (Yvette Cooper, Minister of State), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Sheffield, Hillsborough, Labour)

Is it not the case that we have a fully developed citizenship curriculum in our schools, which caters to the kind of educational attainments that the hon. Lady is talking about? Religious education is still compulsory, but citizenship is flourishing in our schools, producing some of the most well rounded young people that I have ever met.

Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)

It is incorrect to say that citizenship is flourishing. It is not. As the hon. Member for City of Durham said—we have taken evidence on the matter in the education Select Committee—it is not flourishing. It is embryonic. There is no training for   teachers; the subject takes up one hour of their entire teacher training. Citizenship is not flourishing. It might be in some areas and some schools, but we have heard evidence that it is not. Citizenship teaching is not the same as passing on gathered information from one generation to the next. It is not about passing on moral values or religious teaching.

Angela Smith (PPS (Yvette Cooper, Minister of State), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Sheffield, Hillsborough, Labour)

It is.

Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)

I am afraid that it is not. I have looked at the citizenship curriculum. It is not about passing on the knowledge that has been gained by one generation to the next.

To return to my speech, I suppose that the school headmaster I talked to on Friday would say that we would be much better off if we could consider the fulfilment of the child’s potential and move back to taking an holistic look at the whole child, not just at educational, moral or any other attainments. We should look at what makes a child into a good citizen who contributes to society and what enables that child to think and to learn.

Although I absolutely support the Bill—I voted for it, and I will do so again—one of its problems is that it is quite broad. I hope that I will vote for it again, if it has not changed too much by Third Reading. [Interruption.] I do not want to become partisan, as I said. Having spoken to that headmaster, a very wise gentleman with 40 years’ experience, I agree with him that transferring knowledge is important.

Amendment No. 4 refers to “the most disadvantaged”. Before I became a Member of Parliament, I had the pleasure of working for my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin). When he was shadow Home Secretary, I spent some time working in an organisation in London called Kids Company, which I am sure many hon. Members have heard of. Kids Company deals with what are probably the most disadvantaged children whom one will ever see in society. When Camilla, who runs Kids Company and whom I am sure many hon. Members know, opens the gate at 8 am, children drift in from various parts of south London. Those children are underneath the radar of society. Education and society have failed them, and they have very little in their lives, but Camilla does an amazing job in trying to educate them.

One eight-year-old girl whom I witnessed being counselled had seen her mother thrown off the balcony of their maisonette flat by drug dealers. We cannot readily imagine the lives of such children. One little boy who came in with someone else was six. He lives in a flat that has no furniture or bedding—that has all gone to drug dealers. There is no electricity in the property; no bills have been paid. The parents are not often there, and the siblings look after each other. That is in a part of Camberwell.

It is hard to imagine the lives of such children, who are the most disadvantaged in society. They are under the radar of education, and it is hard to see how the Bill addresses them. Sometimes when we talk about the most disadvantaged children, we might be talking about children who go to my daughter’s   comprehensive school who perhaps come from lower socio-economic backgrounds and may not have the advantages that many of our children have. However, the children that I am talking about today really are the most disadvantaged ones. They are still in the poverty trap, and I have yet to see how the Bill will help to raise them out of that situation, because they are outside education and the other normal structures that we know.

Mary Creagh (Wakefield, Labour)

Does not the insertion of clause 1, which places a duty on local authorities not to ignore such children any longer, mean that the Bill will force authorities to take seriously the children who have been excluded from school and who do not attend pupil referral units? It will deal with the problem that the hon. Lady is describing. Does she not see that?

Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)

I understand the point that the hon. Lady makes, but she is wrong. I was not going to bring this up because I did not want to be partisan—[Hon. Members: “Oh go on!”]—but as she has brought the issue up, I will have to say it. One of the problems for Kids Company was that the local authorities were trying to close it down. That would not have helped; it would have meant that the children were abandoned to the four winds, but let us not harp on that.

John Hayes (Shadow Minister (Vocational Education), Education; South Holland & The Deepings, Conservative)

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way—

Frank Cook (Stockton North, Labour)

Order. The hon. Gentleman has maintained a perfect level of projection. Perhaps he would be kind enough to do that in my direction.

John Hayes (Shadow Minister (Vocational Education), Education; South Holland & The Deepings, Conservative)

Sharing your hearing impairment, Mr. Cook, I fully appreciate the need to project as forcefully as possible. I only wish that I could make as much sense as the force of my projection might lead you to believe I am making.

In her intervention, the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) suggested that clause 1 would implicitly do the things that my hon. Friend recommended should be done for the most disadvantaged children. I therefore find it hard to understand why the hon. Lady and other hon. Members might, as I anticipate, resist our amendments Nos. 4 and 86, which precisely reinforce the comments that my hon. Friend has made about disadvantage and well-being.

Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)

Having spoken about two types of education, I should like to talk about a third. I want to talk about a particular school that I think provides almost a perfect model of education. As a Christian, I find it difficult when I talk about education not to consider those areas that I think are very much lacking in education today. There is a school called Ampleforth in Yorkshire that teaches children on the rule of St. Benedict, which is about enabling every child to reach their full potential, whatever it might be.

Ampleforth is an expensive, exclusive, non-selective boarding school, but having visited it—one of my children went there for two years—I can see nothing   that is taught there that could not be taught in any state school in the UK. We do not need grand buildings. The school teaches the national curriculum, as do all independent schools in the UK, and there is nothing that is taught there that could not be taught, taken or produced anywhere else.

Angela Smith (PPS (Yvette Cooper, Minister of State), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Sheffield, Hillsborough, Labour)

Is the hon. Lady suggesting that the curriculum, methodology and pedagogy used at Ampleforth should be imposed on all state schools?

Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)

Absolutely not. I am saying that it is an excellent example of teaching and practice. Should not we look at all available models of teaching and practice and use the best of them? The way in which children are taught at Ampleforth and the principles that they are taught help children to reach their full potential, whatever it might be. The experience of hundreds of years of teaching under the rule of St. Benedict has enabled teachers to look at the potential of any child. They are quite specific. The Bill refers to personalised learning: that is what Ampleforth specialises in—personalised learning and helping each child to reach their full potential. We need to investigate that far more.

Mary Creagh (Wakefield, Labour)

I do not know whether the hon. Lady has read the papers lately, but I feel that I must bring to the Committee’s attention the fact that a priest has recently been jailed for what I believe—

Frank Cook (Stockton North, Labour)

Order. I have been concerned for some moments about the meandering rambling and lack of focus. Can we return to the amendments please?

Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)

If I were the hon. Lady, I would be quite careful. We should not believe everything that we read in the newspapers. There are libel issues around that, so she should be careful.

I conclude by saying that helping a child to reach his full potential is about identifying the purpose of education and how it is imposed, and how the best is drawn out of the child. As we go through the amendments in this Committee, it might be of value for us all to bring examples of educational best practice so that we can best discuss the amendments and the Bill.

Jacqui Smith (Minister of State (Schools and 14-19 Learners), Department for Education and Skills; Redditch, Labour)

Well, haven’t we made a good start, Mr. Cook? The debate on clause 1 has been interesting and generally well-informed. That is appropriate, because the clause establishes a fundamental duty on local authorities to promote the fulfilment of every child’s educational potential. It bears on the discharge of all local authorities’ educational functions, and stands alongside their existing duty to promote high standards.

The clause and the duty represent the fundamental expression in legislation of the Government’s undertaking in last year’s White Paper to ensure that we will continue to create opportunities to achieve the highest standards in our schools. We also undertook that in doing that, we would pursue the principles of equity and ensure that those standards are made available to every child through a real, new and   invigorated approach to personalised learning in planning, organising and securing education that contributes to the spiritual, moral, mental and physical development of the community.

The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), who is not in her place at the moment, suggested that clause 1 would replace the wording in section 13 of the Education Act 1996, with its statement about contributing to the spiritual, moral, mental and physical development of the community. It would not; it would be additional to that provision. It would in fact replace a previous provision, which identified only the need to promote high standards, and put the fulfilment of educational potential alongside high standards. I hope that that reassures the hon. Lady somewhat.

Under clause 1, local authorities will have as their touchstone the twin duties of high standards and the fulfilment of individual potential. The clause establishes local authorities’ responsibility to promote every child’s achievement and to deal with the factors that stand in the way of that achievement. In taking account of the duty, local authorities will have as the test of their strategic policies and practices their capacity to draw out the abilities of children and young people according to their potential, rather than their background or circumstances. The duty will bear on functions as diverse as deciding where to establish new schools, providing support for educational achievement among particular groups in the community and, for example, consideration of the effects of the local funding formula in encouraging the personalised curriculum. I shall return later to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham made about the resources for personalised learning.

John Hayes (Shadow Minister (Vocational Education), Education; South Holland & The Deepings, Conservative)

On the point about assessing and acting on the potential of each child, on which I think we are in broad agreement, does the Minister anticipate any further measures by way of prior attainment tests to determine that potential? Some mechanisms are already in place, but what further measures does the right hon. Lady anticipate might be established to enable better conclusions to be reached about the potential of each child at an early stage?

Jacqui Smith (Minister of State (Schools and 14-19 Learners), Department for Education and Skills; Redditch, Labour)

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that we have already made considerable progress, not least in introducing the foundation stage with its opportunity to consider, at an early stage, younger children’s abilities and areas of development. We already have the ability to assess progress, and are developing that all the time. In particular there is increased emphasis on teachers’ ability to use continuing assessment to inform what happens in the classroom. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that those are important matters, although they are not within the remit of the clause.

Debate on the amendments has broken down into two areas. First, there has been an understandable challenge about what we are doing being in line with the strong emphasis that the Government have put on the “Every Child Matters” work, and recognition that all the needs of children and young people are important to their ability to learn. On that aspect of the matter, I should like to make some remarks on amendments Nos. 186, 58, 86 and 87, which bear on the issue of children’s potential and on the wide issues affecting that and their well-being.

Amendment No. 186, tabled by my hon. Friends the Members for Bury, North and City of Durham, would make it a duty on local authorities, under clause 1, to promote the fulfilment by every child of his potential, rather than specifically his educational potential. I understand and strongly agree with my hon. Friends’ intentions, particularly as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North described them. We believe in improving all aspects of children’s lives, to improve their life chances. However, clause 1 relates to the local authorities’ education functions, and it makes sense, therefore, to retain the direct link in the clause to the fulfilment of educational potential. Educational potential is an important element that does not feature in a duty elsewhere in legislation, and I think that it deserves its specific mention in the clause.

I am not resisting the removal of the word “educational” because I disapprove of the principles expressed by my hon. Friends, but because it is right to place an emphasis on educational potential and, as I shall expand in relation to the other amendments, because the effects that the amendment seeks are already covered in the Bill and existing legislation, particularly the Children Act 2004, which I should like to explore a little further in relation to amendments Nos. 58, 86 and 87.

Amendment No. 58, as we have heard, would replace the duty of the fulfilment of educational potential with a general duty on the promotion of well-being. Amendment No. 86 seeks to ensure that the local education authority is placed under a duty to contribute to the well-being of children, and Amendment No. 87 defines that in relation to section 10(2) of the 2004 Act.

Sarah Teather (Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Education & Skills; Brent East, Liberal Democrat)

If I may just correct the Minister. With amendment No. 68, we were seeking to add “well-being”, not substitute it.

Jacqui Smith (Minister of State (Schools and 14-19 Learners), Department for Education and Skills; Redditch, Labour)

I accept what the hon. Lady says. I will deal with that aspiration as well as the substitution.

Amendments Nos. 86 and 87 play back the words of the 2004 Act, particularly in defining “well-being” with respect to the five positive outcomes for children that we identified in the “Every Child Matters” work and programme and appear in the Act as follows:

“physical and mental health and emotional well-being ... protection from harm and neglect ... education, training and recreation ... the contribution made by them to society ... social and economic well-being.”

That is clearly a principle with which we in the Government agree. Having said that, and recognising the principles behind the amendments, there are two important reasons why, despite the spirit of consensus and general well-being engendered in the Committee this morning, I am not willing to accept them as they stand.

First, they are not necessary, for the reason that I have begun to identify. Section 10 of the 2004 Act already places a duty on local authorities that is far more powerful than the one proposed in the amendments. Every local authority that has education and social services functions—called the “children’s services authority” in the Act—is required to promote co-operation between the authority, its “relevant partners” and

“such other persons or bodies as the authority consider appropriate”

to improve well-being. Not only is the local authority already required to contribute to children’s well-being, it is also required to engage the co-operation of other key partners to ensure the cross-agency, child-centred approach to the holistic needs of children to make sure that the way in which services are delivered contributes to their well-being.

Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)

Will the Minister give us an example of how that happens on the ground? It is difficult to see how that happens in a school.

Jacqui Smith (Minister of State (Schools and 14-19 Learners), Department for Education and Skills; Redditch, Labour)

One of the ways in which it is happening in many schools now is through the development of the extended school programme, children’s trusts and other arrangements in local authorities. Multi-agency teams are now working with schools, so that some of the services that were needed for children with particular health or care needs, which had previously been operating, are much better co-ordinated with schools. We need to do much more to ensure that that happens, but that is one example of how the new arrangements and emphasis on the “Every Child Matters” five outcomes are making a practical difference in schools throughout the country.

David Chaytor (Bury North, Labour)

In exploring the responsibilities of local authorities for education and wider functions in respect of children, will my right hon. Friend comment on the provisions in clause 147 that give the Secretary of State the power to repeal references to “local education authorities”? I am not clear about their significance, but I am certain that they are relevant at this point. For example, would those provisions mean that local education authorities as such would be abolished, and that all future legislation would refer simply to “local authorities”? How would all that tie together? I think my right hon. Friend would agree that there is some confusion. We now have three sets of terminology: children’s services authorities, local authorities and local education authorities. Does the Minister agree that it is essential that we clarify this?

Jacqui Smith (Minister of State (Schools and 14-19 Learners), Department for Education and Skills; Redditch, Labour)

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is one thing to ensure clarity of language, but he identifies a more fundamental issue. We are proposing to do away with the terminology “local education authority” and “children’s services authority” so that when we use the phrase “local authorities”, we can be clear about the cross-cutting, integrated role that only they can play in a local area to bring together the education and other functions that they need to pursue to deliver the five “Every Child Matters” outcomes.

David Chaytor (Bury North, Labour)

In that case, why does clause 1 still refer to a “local education authority”?

Jacqui Smith (Minister of State (Schools and 14-19 Learners), Department for Education and Skills; Redditch, Labour)

We have not yet passed this legislation, although I am sure that we will. Until the Bill has passed through all the parliamentary stages, we will not be able to call local education authorities “local authorities”. My understanding is that when clause 147 comes into force, it will work back and change such references.

In proposing, in clause 1, the duty on local authorities to exercise their functions with a view to promoting the fulfilment of the educational potential of every child, we wanted to ensure that local authorities take an holistic and rounded view of children’s needs, as is envisaged by the amendment. Local authorities will scrutinise performance in respect of both educational potential and high standards. Under that new and inclusive duty, they will act to reduce barriers to learning and promote achievement among all groups of children, regardless of their backgrounds or circumstances.

We have heard some examples of what, in addition to a strong focus on higher educational standards, might contribute to ensuring that such barriers are reduced. The hon. Members for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mrs. Dorries) and for Mid-Dorset and North Poole were right to identify the importance of emotional well-being and the social behaviour skills that are a crucial part of a child’s education. Parents have a central role in developing those, but schools have an important role as well.

Primary school teachers know that a lack of social, emotional and behavioural skills can be a barrier to learning; that is why, as the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole identified, we are investing in the roll-out of the SEAL materials across all primary schools and developing that work into secondary schools. Having social and emotional skills and knowing how to behave are a prerequisite for children’s being able to learn properly, and we have identified such skills as an important priority.

Another priority is promoting positive mental health and emotional well-being, and we are doing that through the national healthy schools programme. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough identified the contribution of personal, social and health education and citizenship education, and that   of the development of extended schools provision, not only in helping to address some of the wider issues that might affect children’s learning but in contributing to the ability to have new, personalised opportunities for learning and experiencing.

My concern with the amendments is not that I disagree with the intention behind them, but that they would, if anything, weaken the current position—not   only the position under the legislation, but the one increasingly being developed by local authorities and schools.