Clause 1 - Duties in relation to high standards and the fulfilment of potential
Education and Inspections Bill
10:30 am
Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis and 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.