I inform the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

I beg to move,

That this House
notes that the vast majority of pupils are well behaved and eager to learn but is concerned that their ability to do so is increasingly undermined by a disruptive minority;
regrets the fact that an assault takes place on a teacher every seven minutes, as reported by teaching unions;
further notes that incidents involving poor behaviour, intimidation, violence, guns and drugs in schools are all increasing;
deplores the announcement by the Government that it will force every state school, irrespective of the wishes of its head teacher, to take a share of pupils with disruptive or even violent backgrounds;
believes that head teachers should be given, unequivocally, the final say on expulsions by abolishing independent appeals panels;
calls for a six fold increase in the number of places to be provided for high quality, intensive but separate education of those whose behavioural difficulties make them unsuitable for inclusion in mainstream schools;
is confident that the ability of teachers to exercise discipline would be greatly enhanced by protecting them from the fear of false allegations of abuse, and urges swift legislation to guarantee anonymity for teachers facing accusations at least up to the point where a formal criminal charge is brought;
recognises that teachers, parents and pupils all, overwhelmingly, want to see stronger action on discipline and have the right to expect it;
and consequently, further believes that it is time for the rights of the majority of pupils, parents and teachers to be given greater weight.

There can be few more important subjects than the topic before the House today, and therefore I should like to add my expression of sorrow to those that have already been voiced at the absence of the Secretary of State today.

What is the essential pre-requisite for high-quality education? Getting resources, teachers, training, the curriculum, buildings and facilities right are all vital, but none can have effect unless learning can take place in a disciplined environment. As the Opposition motion makes clear, the vast majority of pupils are well behaved and eager to learn. Many schools have few, if any, serious discipline problems. Unfortunately, however, there are plenty that do.

The Guardian reported last year that 31 per cent. of teachers leaving the profession cite poor pupil behaviour as the reason. The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers reports that a teacher is assaulted every seven minutes in one of our schools. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner has recommended that metal detectors should be installed outside schools, a suggestion that it is predicted the Home Secretary will adopt on Wednesday. What was once a symbol of social decay confined to the worst excesses of inner-city America could soon become a daily part of life for many children in this country.

The Times Educational Supplement in August this year reported that the first termly exclusions survey of local education authorities by the Office for National Statistics showed that in just one term in 2003 no fewer than 17,424 pupils were suspended for violent behaviour. Sometimes these acts of violence can be genuinely horrific.

We think of Luke Walmsley, the 14-year-old stabbed to death in one of our schools a year ago, whose parents, with great courage, have come to London today to lobby for changes in the laws concerning knives. We think of the 15-year-old who died at school only last month, apparently after a fight with a pupil; of the 13-year-old left drenched in blood after being stabbed at her desk at school, also last month; of the pupil who was shot in the head at school in October; of the 12-year-old rushed to hospital after being stabbed on a flight of stairs at a school in September. Those may be the most extreme and shocking cases, but they are by no means entirely unrepresentative.

The ONS survey showed that in just one term in 2003, there were 288 permanent exclusions and 4,000 temporary ones for physical assaults on an adult, with a further 336 permanent and 12,800 temporary exclusions for assaults on fellow pupils.

My hon. Friend has mentioned a number of cases at one end of the scale, but would he also agree that at the other end of the scale pupils bullying pupils should also be taken extremely seriously, and where it is deemed sufficiently serious, pupils should also be excluded if they persist in bullying other pupils?

I agree with my hon. Friend, who has raised a serious problem. He is right to say that head teachers must have the unlimited right to exclude pupils and that they should be encouraged to exclude pupils who engage in organised, systematic bullying.

The hon. Gentleman has just said that head teachers should be given absolute authority to exclude pupils. If one head teacher has a low threshold for exclusion and is allowed to exercise that right untrammelled, they can offload every child who exhibits any problems on to other secondary schools in the area.

The hon. Lady has come to the heart of one of the profound differences between her party and mine. Her comment evidences a lack of trust in the professionals. We believe that if head teachers are allowed to take those decisions, they will not abuse that right and will use exclusion as a last resort, not a first resort. We have many of the problems that face us today precisely because the Government do not trust head teachers to take those decisions.

The hon. Gentleman has put his name to the motion, which states that

"head teachers should be given, unequivocally, the final say on expulsions by abolishing independent appeals panels".

When we discussed changes to asylum and immigration policy, the Conservative party rightly opposed getting rid of all the levels of appeal, so why is he suggesting getting rid of a level of appeal for schools? Under that policy, such matters would end up in the courts rather than with the local education authority, which would make the situation worse.

I invite the hon. Gentleman to consider whether the independent judgment of head teachers should be trusted in a way in which employees of the present Home Office should not.

The Times Educational Supplement reported that teaching unions thought that the figures might be underestimates, since schools may have failed to report the full figures for fear of being labelled "failing". In other words, the numbers involved in acts of violence may be greater than the statistics that I quoted earlier. The Government may say that they have set a target to reduce permanent exclusions, which have been reduced by some 3,000 since 1997. However, given the steady rise in incidents of violence and indiscipline in schools and the number of teachers who cite poor behaviour as a major contributor to their stress, it cannot be argued that exclusions are falling because behaviour is improving. On the contrary, the Government have introduced a target to reduce the number of punishments handed out, rather than the number of offences committed. It is like the Home Office aiming to reduce the number of arrests rather than the number of crimes.

That is simply the wrong way to go about things. The Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and many senior members of the Government have rightly discussed the need to implement zero-tolerance policies to tackle yobbishness among young people. They have spoken persuasively about the way in which small acts of rule infringement escalate into far more serious issues if society sends out the message that it either does not care about those rules or is incapable of enforcing them, and they are entirely right. What is strange, however, is to take the view that zero tolerance is the right approach towards young people out on the street, but the wrong approach when they are in school. Indeed, zero tolerance is arguably more important in schools, given that by definition those who are shaped by the prevailing attitude towards rules are at the most impressionable stages of their lives.

The first part of the distinctive Conservative approach towards restoring discipline is to restore to heads the absolute and final authority to expel pupils whose poor behaviour makes them unfit to be part of that community. There should be no targets for the number of exclusions and no pressure, implicit or explicit, to go for a softer option. We do not believe that heads would use expulsion as anything other than a last resort, but if they need to use it, they must be able to use it without fear or favour.

If the hon. Gentleman's proposal were to come to pass, would the number of exclusions in England increase or decrease, and by how much?

Certainly in the short term, I would expect the number of exclusions to increase, which is why—I shall come on to this point later in my remarks—we have allocated significant public spending to multiply by six the number of places in what the Government currently call pupil referral units, which we would call "turnaround schools". We take the view that the subject is serious and that head teachers should be given greater freedom. If that means that more are excluded, more provision needs to be made for them.

A recent poll showed that 74 per cent. of the public—

Will my hon. Friend give way?

If I may just finish this point, I will by all means give way. My hon. Friend may be anticipating me, but I shall explain why he and I should be confident that we have the public on our side on this.

A recent poll shows that 74 per cent. of the public and 79 per cent. of teachers agree with us that independent appeals panels should be abolished and should lose the powers granted them by the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 to overrule heads and force them to take back disruptive pupils.

My hon. Friend referred to the expectation that exclusions may increase in the short term once this policy has been put into effect. Does not he agree that although that may be the case in the short term, in the longer term parents and pupils will be given the message that if children do not behave, they will be removed from school, which will mean that fewer people are referred to turnaround schools?

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend, who is, after all, making precisely the point that the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and others make when they advocate zero tolerance in other contexts—namely, that securing more arrests, more convictions and possibly more people being sent to prison in the short term sends a clear signal that society will take rule-breaking and lawbreaking seriously, which results in better behaviour and less crime in the long term. In the context of schools, the zero-tolerance approach would mean that in the medium to long term there would be fewer disciplinary offences. As my hon. Friend will agree, one cannot take the view that there are an acceptable number of people breaking the rules. We will deal with those people severely to ensure that we reduce the incidence of indiscipline over the medium to long term.

Several of us were intrigued by various parts of the Government's amendment, particularly the section—for which, no doubt, Labour Members will be invited to vote this evening—that says that the House supports

"the Government's reform of exclusions to strengthen the power of headteachers".

That is an interesting interpretation of the Government's record since 1997, given that it was they who introduced the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, which gave independent appeals panels the power to overrule head teachers and to force them to take back disruptive pupils. That did not strengthen the power of head teachers—it removed and undermined it. Indeed, there has been at least one case in which an appeals panel forced a school to take back a pupil who had violently attacked a teacher. It is impossible to imagine a scenario that is more likely to demonstrate the impotence of authority or to lead to further, ever more severe, acts of indiscipline. Conservatives will therefore scrap those panels outright; I do not believe that many teachers will mourn their passing.

The Government amendment goes on to say that the House

"deplores attempts to destroy that system, which would expose headteachers to litigation".

If the independent appeals panels were abolished, head teachers would face being taken to court under judicial review. That is the very power that his party rightly said should not be removed in asylum and immigration cases, and I am glad to say that the Government backed off on that. Is he saying unequivocally, to use the word in his motion, that judicial review would not even be allowed in these cases and that the decision of the head teacher would be final, with no legal redress whatsoever?

Of course, there is a theoretical possibility of judicial review, in common with all other decisions taken by public bodies. However, we intend to take steps that will make it extremely unlikely that parents will choose to take that route. Parents who choose to sue schools will not have access to legal aid or to no win, no fee arrangements. It will take only one or two cases to go against parents, so that they have to face the entirety of the costs—not only their own but of the school in defending itself—for them to realise that they do not wish to follow that procedure. That will give heads an enormously strengthened role.

Of course, our approach of giving head teachers the final say and encouraging zero-tolerance policies is in even starker contrast with the latest evolution in Government policy. The Secretary of State announced last month that he intends to require every state school, irrespective of the wishes of its head or governors, to take its share of pupils with a disruptive, or even violent past. That means that even schools that were oases of calm and good order until now might not be so in future.

We believe that we are considering a fundamental issue of principle: do we take the view that violence and disruptive behaviour is such an ingrained and unshakeable factor in school life that it is only fair to spread the misery around evenly; or do we believe that it is not inevitable, acceptable or tolerable, and that heads who are determined to stamp it out completely in their schools deserve not to be undermined or second-guessed but given full backing?

Of course, a strategy of exclusion alone cannot be the be-all and end-all of enforcing discipline. At least two other elements are needed. First, early intervention to help where possible avoids problems later in life. That will not work in every case but it is important to try, and the Government are to be commended for their commitment to early-years education. Conservatives will shortly set out how we hope to build on that.

Secondly, those who are excluded cannot simply be left to their own devices. Half of those sent to pupil referral units spend less than 20 hours a week there. Both the quantity and quality of the provision need to improve. The number of places at PRUs is insufficient and, therefore, the Leader of the Opposition and I recently announced that the next Conservative Government will make spending on separate specialist centres for excluded pupils—turn-around schools—our top spending priority. We will allocate at least £200 million extra a year to it. That sum could fund a sixfold increase in the number of places, or a smaller increase in the number of places but more investment per pupil.

It is in the interests of everyone who is involved in education—teachers, parents and pupils alike—for the issue of disruptive pupils to be tackled vigorously and for the rights of the 29 pupils out of 30 who wish to learn to be given higher priority than the one in the 30 who wishes to disrupt.

The hon. Gentleman repeats the motion's words about a sixfold increase in the number of places. There are currently 13,000 places in pupil referral units. Does the Conservative party propose that we should have 78,000 places in such units instead? If so, the cost would be considerably higher than £200 million. It would be at least £500 million and probably more.

The Under-Secretary cites a different figure from that previously published by the Government, on which we based our calculation of an increase from 4,000 to 24,000 pupils. The figure of £200 million is the sum that we have available for spending. Even on the figures that the Under-Secretary cited, it would provide for a substantial increase in places. We will review the figure, for which I have received the agreement of the shadow Chancellor. It could be reviewed upwards, but not downwards in school spending. It would be a substantial increase on any basis.

If the hon. Gentleman wants an increase in specialist schools for those who are having difficulties emotionally and behaviourally, why is the Tory county council in Dorset currently planning to close Penwithen school, which it had previously described as a centre of excellence?

It is always amusing to be challenged by a Liberal Democrat about consistency and policy. I shall not go further.

I have one other important policy matter, which is directly relevant to discipline, to discuss this afternoon. It is the sensitive issue of how best to balance the competing rights and interests of those involved when an allegation is made that a teacher has abused a pupil in his or her care.

The issue was brought to life for me when a constituent, who has given permission for me to raise his case today, came to see me at an advice surgery. David Sowerbutts is a retired head teacher. He had a blemish-free 28-year career. His life was shattered after a woman, now in her 30s, claimed that he had assaulted her when he was a deputy head teacher in the 1970s.

When the case came to court, clear evidence was brought forward to clear Mr Sowerbutts, and the case was comprehensively thrown out. However, in the meantime, my constituent was branded a paedophile, spat at in the street, had his home vandalised and, worst of all, received a series of terrifying death threat calls telling him every day for a week to kill himself or get ready to be murdered.

My constituent is now trying to put his life back together. Sadly, however, that option is not open to the family of Alastair Wilbee, a head teacher on the Isle of Wight who hanged himself after being accused of sexually abusing a boy. The coroner in that case called for legislation to grant the same statutory right to anonymity for teachers accused of abuse that the law already gives to children making such an accusation.

The same call was made as recently as last Friday by Christopher Ifould, a former deputy head, who was cleared unanimously by a jury after being tried on a charge of sexually assaulting a pupil. I shall quote his words, which appeared in last Saturday's Daily Mail, and other papers. He said:

"Nobody should have to go through what I and my family, friends and colleagues have endured. Teachers are increasingly vulnerable to false and malicious allegations. It is all too easy for disgruntled pupils, and those in pursuit of compensation, to make false allegations. The scales have tipped too far in favour of complainants."

He went on:

"More must be done to protect the reputations of good teachers. In particular, I call upon the Government to protect the anonymity of teachers accused of abuse".

I could quote many more such examples.

The hon. Gentleman is making an important point. I happen to believe that a similar argument could be made in regard to the youth service, in which exactly the same problems can arise in relation to informal teaching arrangements. However, everyone in a community such as the one that I represent would know that an allegation had been made, whether or not it had appeared in the newspapers, because that is the nature of our community. How would the hon. Gentleman deal with that problem?

Of course, the hon. Gentleman is right to suggest that no law can deliver perfection, but a law of this nature could make matters better than they are at the moment. Teachers and their union representatives are emphatic that legislation would help. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that it would not solve every aspect of the problem; no law ever can. But it would make things better, and, for that reason, it is legitimate for the House to consider the wishes of teachers on this matter.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on demonstrating—if demonstration were needed—that we are committed to the reintroduction into education not of the three R's, but of the six R's: reading, writing, arithmetic, right, wrong, and respect for legitimate authority in the classroom. Does he agree, however, that if we are to ensure that such measures are practically effective and not weakened or thwarted in Government, it will be necessary to act against that consistent and inveterate clique of left-wing officials in the Department for Education and Skills whose activities have done too much damage to the life chances of too many state school pupils for far too long?

I can certainly tell my hon. Friend that it is the intention of the next Conservative Government to free our schools from political interference, from left or right, by making it possible for them to take many more decisions for themselves and not be subject to interference from officials of whatever political orientation.

I could have quoted many more examples of the difficulties being experienced by teachers facing accusations of abuse. Ninety per cent. of those accused are never formally charged with an offence, and most of those who are so charged are subsequently acquitted. Indeed, according to figures from the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, only 69 of the 1,782 accusations of abuse made against members of that union in the past decade resulted in a conviction. In the meantime, however, many such teachers go through what they describe as a period of pure personal and professional hell so traumatic that many who are accused never go back to teaching, even though their name is subsequently entirely cleared. That is why the teaching unions have called for a statutory right of anonymity for teachers. The Conservatives believe that that call is reasonable, and we back it.

The link to discipline is also clear. As one teacher put it to me, "How can I enforce discipline in a classroom if I know that if I antagonise any one of the pupils, and they choose to use the word 'abuse', my entire personal and professional life could be over?" That is why anonymity is important.

Let us be clear about what this does and does not involve. No one is calling for a return to the past, when allegations of abuse were simply ignored or brushed aside. Teachers are not asking for immunity from prosecution or investigation, or even that they should not be suspended if a credible allegation is made. On the contrary, all such claims should be thoroughly investigated. However, teachers are very understandably of the view that they are treated now as though they are guilty until proven innocent, when it should be the reverse. The pendulum has swung too far. No doubt in past children's complaints were not given sufficient weight. Today, it is the right of teachers to basic justice, protection from false or malicious allegations and the presumption of innocence that needs to be given more weight.

In fairness, the Government have said that they recognise that there is a real problem with the current situation. Indeed, they spent several months earlier this year consulting and considering what to do. Unfortunately, their final conclusions have been greeted with some disappointment. I accept that the Government will seek to speed up the time scale for investigations and trials and that they have secured guidelines from the Association of Chief Police Officers, and reached a voluntary agreement with the media, to limit the publication of the names of teachers in such circumstances. Those measures will undoubtedly improve matters and thus are welcome, but the police are already not supposed to provide such names during an investigation and the press have long undertaken to be responsible, yet names of teachers still keep being reported.

Those measures do not add up to what is being sought—the same legal right to anonymity for the accused teacher as for his or her accuser. So, let me make this offer across the Dispatch Box: should the Government choose to introduce a short Bill—it would need to be of no more than one or two clauses—simply to cover this point, the Opposition undertake to help to give it swift passage through both Houses of Parliament. Even in the short period before the expected election, such a Bill would have time to get on to the statute book. However, should Ministers choose to decline this offer, Conservatives undertake to include such a measure in the teacher protection Bill, which we are pledged to introduce in our first Queen's Speech.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I have given way twice to the hon. Gentleman, so, if he will forgive me, I shall make progress.

This morning, on Radio 4's "Today" programme, a teacher named Richard Anderson appeared. He is the teacher whose case has been widely publicised after huge numbers of present and past pupils backed him when he was suspended after a bag he threw towards a disruptive pupil hit that child. Mr. Anderson said this morning:

"There is a detailed and specific child protection act but there is nothing in place for teachers. The teachers do need a charter of their own . . . that protects teachers just as much as children.

There are increased pressures on teachers and they are finding it very difficult to survive with so few sanctions at their disposal."

That teacher is right. Teaching unions are right. Discipline matters, so protecting teachers matters. If the Government will not take action to do that before the election, Conservatives in office will do so after it.

I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:

"welcomes the high priority the Government gives to improving behaviour and discipline in schools;
supports Government measures to promote positive behaviour by empowering headteachers to deal with badly behaved pupils;
celebrates the success that is evident, including attendance being at its highest ever level and Ofsted reporting behaviour satisfactory or better in 99 per cent, of primary schools and 95 per cent, of secondary schools;
affirms the Government's commitment to tackle problems that remain;
further supports the Government's reform of exclusions to strengthen the power of headteachers;
deplores attempts to destroy that system, which would expose headteachers to litigation;
welcomes the fact that headteachers, local education authorities and staff are endorsing Government plans for Foundation Partnerships which help schools co-operate to put pupils back on the right track;
notes that capacity of pupil referral units has almost doubled under this Government to 13,000 places;
considers that to multiply this capacity by six would not represent cost-effective spending on behaviour;
deplores the suggestion that privatised borstals are the answer to every problem;
endorses the action that the Government is taking to keep drugs and knives out of schools;
further endorses the Government's drive to ensure that parents play their part in ensuring that children attend school regularly and behave well;
further supports the Government's reforms for dealing with allegations against teachers swiftly and fairly;
and agrees with the Government that no pupil has the right to disrupt the education of others and that every pupil, not just the few, should have the opportunity to succeed in life and to contribute."

We take the issue of behaviour and discipline in schools extremely seriously. For that reason, I very much welcome today's opportunity to set out the progress that we are making and the challenges that we continue to face. Discipline in schools matters for many of the reasons that Mr. Collins set out. It matters for obvious educational reasons in the school; it matters because ill-discipline and bullying can affect the confidence and self-esteem of children, and their safety; and it matters because improving behaviour and tackling ill-discipline in schools will reduce criminal and antisocial behaviour later on, with a wide community benefit.

That is why we have invested significantly in improving behaviour, with a programme over the last three years of £470 million to improve behaviour both universally and through targeted support for schools, where the challenges are at their greatest. It is why we believe that every child has the right to the best possible education, the right to enjoy their learning in a positive environment, the right to achieve, and the right to make the very best of their life—every child, not just the few.

I shall address the points raised in the motion in turn. In a sense, the motion starts with the areas of consensus:

"That this House notes that the vast majority of pupils are well-behaved and eager to learn but is concerned that their ability to do so is increasingly undermined by a disruptive minority".

Of course I agree that the vast majority of pupils are well behaved and eager to learn. The vast majority of learners behave well almost all the time. They benefit from engaging teaching, and from the encouragement and support that they get from teachers and other members of our staff. They also benefit from this Government's massive investment in support for positive behaviour.

When I go to schools and meet pupils, I am impressed with what I see, as, I am sure, are Members in all parts of the House. Last month, I had the opportunity to attend the Diana awards, at which I met a young woman who had set up a bereavement counselling service in her school, and a young man who is leading the anti-bullying peer support network in his school. More recently, I went to Deptford Green school in south London, where I met pupils involved in the school council, which is ensuring that the voice of pupils is properly heard at all levels within the school.

Does my hon. Friend accept that children are often led to become disruptive because they are having extreme difficulty in coping with the teaching in the classroom? In those circumstances, investment in classroom assistants or support mechanisms for those children is a more useful tactic than immediately excluding them from school and further disrupting their education before they are allocated to another school.

I thank my hon. Friend. She is absolutely right. The investment in classroom assistants and other adults working in schools—I shall refer later to the role of learning mentors—plays a vital part in enabling schools to promote the very best behaviour.

We must, however, accept that there is a disruptive minority, as the motion correctly states. A central plank of our policy is to tackle disruption and to promote good behaviour. Contrary to what the motion says, there are some signs that behaviour overall is improving: the 25 per cent. reduction in exclusions since 1997 is something to be proud of. If we examine the evidence from Ofsted, we see that behaviour is regarded as satisfactory or better in well over 90 per cent. of schools inspected. Of course, we all know that good attendance reflects an improving climate of good discipline in schools.

Truancy is a big challenge. We were disappointed by a small increase in unauthorised absence in the past year, but that was combined with a larger decrease in authorised absence. As a result, school attendance is at its highest since records began. When we came to power in 1997, school attendance stood at 92.77 per cent. The latest figures, published provisionally in September, showed an increase to 93.43 per cent.—

Revolutionary.

Expressed in percentage terms, it does not sound dramatic, but when expressed in terms of the number of pupils, I am sure that even Mr. Bercow would accept that an additional 17,000 pupils in school each day this year, compared with the previous year, is to be celebrated. The fact that there are over 40,000 more pupils each day in school, compared with 1996–97, is real evidence of improvement, which I would hope that all parts of the House would celebrate.

Is the Minister using the aggregate figures for authorised and unauthorised absence, or merely those for unauthorised absence?

I am using the aggregate figure for authorised and/or unauthorised absence. At the beginning, I acknowledged the weakness in my case by saying that, in the past year, unauthorised absence had marginally increased, although authorised absence had fallen much more dramatically than the overall figure showed. That resulted, as I said, in school attendance being the highest on record. Part of the reason for that shift is the fact that schools are increasingly reluctant to authorise certain forms of absence that they authorised in the past—for example, term-time holidays. We still have a long way to go on truancy, and I do not underestimate the challenge, but I think we can be positive about a 25 per cent. fall in exclusions, behaviour said to be satisfactory or better in well over 95 per cent. of schools inspected by Ofsted, and school attendance at its highest-ever level.

The Minister obviously visits a number of schools. Indeed, we all do so, in our role as constituency Members. I have never yet met a head teacher who made the decision to exclude a pupil lightly, but I am sure the Minister would agree that a disruptive pupil takes up a disproportionate amount of the time of both classroom teacher and head. When will the Government start thinking about the 29 children in the class who suffer because of a disruptive pupil, instead of always seeking to defend the disruptive pupil to the disbenefit of all the well-behaved children?

With respect, this Government think about all 30 pupils, but it is vital that we address the needs of those 29. I shall say something shortly about measures that we have taken and are taking, some of which are criticised in the Opposition motion.

We are the first Government to operate national truancy sweeps. A record 146 local education authorities—almost all of them—recently participated in the latest round of sweeps, which ended on 3 December. Earlier sweeps have stopped more than 25,000 truants. In particular, truancy has been tackled successfully in schools supported by the behaviour improvement programme. The amount of time lost to truancy in those schools has fallen by an average of 63 days for each school. They are bucking the trend in that there has been both a fall in their authorised absence figures, matching what is happening in the country as a whole, and a fall—including in the past year—in their unauthorised absence figures.

I believe that our drive to improve behaviour is earning respect. For example, we conduct regular stakeholder surveys. In the most recent, head teachers were asked to describe the pattern of behaviour: was it improving, worsening or staying about the same? The result showed a significant improvement in the optimism of head teachers, 41 per cent. of whom said that behaviour was improving. Three years ago the figure was 34 per cent. The number saying that behaviour was getting worse fell, albeit slightly, from 15 per cent. to 13 per cent. Although it is clearly not acceptable for 13 per cent. of heads to regard behaviour as worsening, I believe that, seen in the round, the figures show that the terms used in the motion cannot be justified.

In the real world, how many head teachers does the Minister think would be willing to admit in a questionnaire that behaviour was getting worse at their own schools?

In my experience of working with head teachers, they are never reluctant to talk about the challenging as well as the positive aspects—and quite right too. That is reflected in the response from the 13 per cent., and borne out by other surveys of head teachers.

Many behaviour problems in schools have their origins in incidents of bullying. The Government have led an unprecedented drive against bullying. I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, who has taken personal charge of the programme—including the establishment of the anti-bullying alliance and the anti-bullying charter, which has been endorsed by all the professional associations and by key voluntary sector organisations and children's charities. We believe that the recent anti-bullying week and the wider work of the alliance are critical to providing a real, concerted drive to give support and confidence to those who face bullying in our schools.

I apologise to the Minister and to the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman, Mr. Collins, for not being here for the beginning of the debate.

We support what the Minister is doing on bullying and we commend the Government for that, but Bullying Online, which for a decade has been at the vanguard of dealing with bullying in schools and is the most respected group in the country, is being denied access to the alliance because it will not sign a code of conduct that says that it must not criticise Government officials. Surely that is unacceptable. There should not be a gagging order on any organisation, certainly not a well respected organisation such as Bullying Online. That is bullying.

I am happy to look into the hon. Gentleman's specific suggestion. I am acutely aware of Bullying Online's concern because I have received a considerable number of letters from colleagues on both sides of the House about it. We are putting substantial additional resources into supporting anti-bullying work, including that by a wide range of respected voluntary organisations. I am happy to look into his specific suggestion and to respond to him.

It is always a pleasure to joust with the Minister. If he will escape just for a moment from his statistical snowstorm, will he tell the House what objection ethically or intellectually he has to the idea that the ultimate arbiter of whether a child stays in the school or not should be the head teacher of that school?

The hon. Gentleman anticipates the part of my speech that I will come to in a moment. I decided to structure my speech around the motion. The ultimate arbiter is the head teacher, but any system beyond that will have some right of appeal. My hon. Friend Rob Marris emphasised the fact that, without an appeal panel system in place, there is the danger of an increase in litigation, with parents going to the courts. I will come to that when I address that part of the motion.

Does the Minister accept that, although many of us, as constituency MPs, would wish for the most part to support the head teachers of our various schools, parents in my constituency have approached me—not all of them had children in the state sector; one in particular complained about the private sector—because, apparently, head teachers have acted arbitrarily and the rights of pupils and their parents have been compromised. It is essential that we strike a balance. Although head teachers for the most part make the correct judgment, they are not infallible. They are not God.

Some of us were.

My hon. Friend makes her point powerfully. She is right. I will not enter into a debate about the God-like qualities of Mr. Willis. I shall move instead to the second part of the motion, which

"regrets the fact that an assault takes place on a teacher every seven minutes, as reported by teaching unions".

Clearly, any assault on a teacher is unacceptable and everything must be done to prevent that from happening and to ensure appropriate punishment if it does happen. The allegation is based on a 2002 survey by the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers. Of the 287 members who took part, 212 reported verbal abuse. Of course, no member of staff should be expected to suffer verbal abuse, but all of us in the House would accept that verbal abuse is not the same as physical assault. Indeed, Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, said in response to the tragic death of David Sandham:

"It must be remembered that schools place a high priority on maintaining high standards of pupil behaviour and that compared with the growing incidence of violence on the streets, they remain relatively safe havens of peace and security."

It is incumbent on all of us to remind ourselves of that fact, which in no way lessens the tragedy if there is an assault on a teacher, be it physical or verbal. We must not be complacent.

The Minister is right to say that it is important to give an accurate and balanced sense of what is going on, but he said that the NASUWT figures related to only 60 or 70 assaults on teachers—I think that that is what he implied—so would he not also put that in the context of the more recent statistics from the Office for National Statistics showing that in a single term in 2003 more than 4,000 pupils were excluded either temporarily or permanently for violent assaults on adults, almost all of them teachers? It is important to stress that side of it, too.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. It is a serious challenge that we must face together. I referred to the survey for the sole reason that it is the one that he has chosen to refer to in the motion. In no sense was I seeking to suggest that there is not a big challenge here. We must work both to ensure that schools and their head teachers are in a position to deal with these incidents when they happen and, more optimistically, to bring about a position in which they do not happen in the first place.

That is one of the reasons why we have established the behaviour improvement programme, focusing on some of the schools that face the severest challenges, schools that are now often achieving against serious odds. I will not go into detail about some of the programme's provisions—extra learning mentors, learning support units, behaviour and education support teams, and police in schools—benefiting about 1,500 schools that face especially serious behaviour challenges and being extended to a further 500 next year.

Does the Minister acknowledge that where schools learn from best practice the need for exclusions goes dramatically down?

Absolutely. That is the emerging evidence from the behaviour improvement programme, which is resulting not only in improved attendance but in a reduction in exclusions.

The National Union of Teachers—we are all fond of quoting the teaching unions—says:

"The biggest problem in schools is low level disruption and cheek, not physical violence."

That is in some ways a more difficult challenge, which we seek to deal with through the behaviour improvement programme. In secondary schools and now in some primary schools we are offering materials and extra expert support to tackle the behaviour issues that schools themselves tell us are their top priority.

Schools can deal with the great majority of behaviour and attendance problems themselves, through good teaching, good policies and procedures, and creating a positive ethos. Our key stage 3 and primary strategies are giving schools the tools to improve all those.

The next part of the motion says that the House

"further notes that incidents involving poor behaviour, intimidation, violence, guns and drugs in schools are all increasing".

That is a sweeping statement, and the reality is more complex. I certainly recognise that there are some serious challenges and too many problems, and we need to take a very strong line on drugs, guns and knives in our schools, and of course heads need the powers to tackle them.

The Offensive Weapons Act 1996 makes it a criminal offence to carry offensive weapons on school premises. It is a crime to carry an illegal knife, or any other offensive weapon, in a public place, including in a school. Any pupil can be arrested if found with an illegal knife in school. Police have powers to enter and search on reasonable suspicion. The Secretary of State in his speech last month to head teachers said that we are supporting the Home Office in its review of the age at which knives can be legally purchased.

We are also working with the head teacher associations and others on the powers that heads have to undertake searches. We are encouraging local partnerships of heads, police and crime reduction partners to deal with issues about knives in their local area. We have proposed a new power for head teachers to search pupils who refuse to turn out their pockets, where the head suspects that a knife is being carried.

Any tragedy reminds us that schools need support to avoid such tragedies happening again. International research indicates that the most effective way of reducing the risk of such tragedies is to increase school security, and to help ensure a climate in schools in which pupils share information and act on it to prevent possible incidents of violence.

We need to support schools with, for example, additional funds for security improvements. We are committed to backing the authority of head teachers when pupils' behaviour warrants exclusion. We have made it clear that heads can permanently exclude pupils who are very disruptive or violent, even where this is a first or "one-off" offence. The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale referred to the wording of our amendment, which mentions the strengthening of guidance. We have changed the guidance for exclusion appeal panels to make it clear that an exclusion should not normally be overturned in a range of circumstances, including where there has been violence or the threat of violence. For less extreme offences, head teachers may exclude pupils for a fixed period or impose detention. We expect head teachers to follow the best available practice in promoting good behaviour.

Is the Minister therefore saying that the Government should be given credit for amending regulations that they themselves introduced and subsequently found to be unworkable?

Absolutely. I am always in favour of learning from our mistakes. If the Conservatives had done so once or twice when in government, they might be in a stronger position today.

On violence, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale cited certain research referred to in the motion and I cited other research. A range of information is available on violence, particularly that suffered by teachers. Unfortunately, we do not have data covering the number of assaults on teachers and other staff, but we do have the Health and Safety Executive's figures on serious injuries to primary and secondary teachers in Great Britain caused by physical violence. In 1997–98, there were 119 such injuries. In 2000–01, that figure rose to 135, and it fell to 110 in 2001–02, the latest year for which we have fully verified HSE figures. That demonstrates that the number of such injuries is not necessarily increasing; however, we do face a very significant problem and challenge in this regard.

In partnership with the teacher unions, the Department is running a project to identify best practice in schools on violence avoidance and conflict resolution. As my colleagues will know, we are also working with the Home Office in support of the safer schools partnerships programme, which has led to the basing of more than 400 police officers in schools to reduce criminality and victimisation, and to improve the safety of staff and pupils. We are also supporting Skillsforce, an increase in the funding for which I was delighted to announce last week. There is powerful evidence that it has made a real difference by increasing the motivation of children and young people, and by reducing exclusion in those schools that form part of this programme.

The motion

"deplores the announcement by the Government that it will force every state school, irrespective of the wishes of its head teacher, to take a share of pupils with disruptive or even violent backgrounds".

However, this announcement is not about forcing head teachers to take disruptive pupils; it is about ensuring that when previously excluded pupils are ready to be re-integrated in schools, they are not sent to just one or two schools in a given locality. Both head teachers and school staff fully support the Government's proposal, which will help schools to co-operate in putting pupils back on the right track.

I shall follow the practice of the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale and quote from the various organisations involved. On the day that we announced this package, a representative of the Secondary Heads Association said:

"I welcome today's package of measures, which demonstrates strong government support for head teachers in dealing with discipline problems."

The National Association of Head Teachers said:

"We endorse the need for limits to be placed on the number of excluded pupils who are dumped on schools because they have spare places. Too often this has a bad impact on a small number of schools in each local education authority. Schools around the country are already working together . . . There is absolutely no reason why this co-operation should not apply nationwide."

Does the Minister agree that, with the odd exception, most children show signs of increasingly poor and violent behaviour before the point at which they need to be excluded? Does he further agree that if we are to deal with that problem, we need a system of managed transfer between organisations so that kids do not drop off the end of the cliff, then needing massive intervention? Is it not the Government's own policy, particularly in the five-year plan, to create more stand-alone, autonomous, state-funded private schools, which goes against the grain of getting schools to co-operate in order to deal with the problem?

I agree with the hon. Gentleman on the first point and, not surprisingly, disagree with him on the second. A range of measures is available in respect of managed moves and schools working together. What the five-year strategy says is that we want schools to have their own identity, ethos and autonomy, while at the same time we want schools to work together to promote solutions to precisely some of the challenges that we are addressing in today's debate—foundation partnerships, for example. In a few moments I shall refer briefly to a specific example.

The Minister quoted the National Association of Head Teachers, but he quoted only its applause for the good bit of the Government's promise—that bad pupils should not be poured into part-empty schools. However, I did not hear him quote anything about the bad bit of the Government's threat—that bad pupils would be put into good schools even though they were full. Can the Minister confirm that it is not his policy that a child who has been excluded from one school can be forced into another full school against the wishes of the head teacher?

Let me be absolutely clear: we cannot have it both ways. We need a position under which there is justice for the whole system. In fact, both the National Association of Head Teachers and the Secondary Heads Association worked closely together with us on this policy. We have not dreamt it up either on our own or with those two organisations. It is based on existing examples of good practice in many parts of the country. We are not saying that schools should be forced to take pupils who are clearly unsuitable for mainstream school education and we are not saying that grammar schools should have to take pupils who do not demonstrate the necessary academic aptitude. The guidance issued is based on best practice that already exists in a number of areas, including Stoke, Surrey and Kent, where the heads already share the admissions of pupils who are ready to return to mainstream schooling. They strongly support this approach. I am very disappointed to see the Conservatives condemn in their motion today a policy that is already working well in Conservative-run local education authorities such as Kent and Surrey, and is supported by both head teacher associations. I believe that our policy is based on common sense and clear evidence.

Is the Minister as disturbed as I am by the nomenclature used by Mr. Turner when he referred to pupils who had been excluded but were deemed to be sufficiently rehabilitated as to be able to return to mainstream schooling as "bad pupils"? Is the Minister disturbed by the implication that such pupils cannot be rehabilitated and are therefore irredeemably damned as "bad pupils" who should presumably be excluded from the system for ever?

I think that we all have to be careful about the language we use in these discussions because we are talking about the lives of children and the important impact that these decisions have on school communities.

I shall now move on to that part of the motion whereby the House is said to believe

"that head teachers should be given, unequivocally, the final say on expulsions by abolishing independent appeals panels".

Some of the issues have already been rehearsed in interventions on the opening speech of the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale and earlier in my speech. We are seeking to ensure that heads have the powers they need to exclude when necessary, but without killing off the appeals system, which provides safeguards to protect schools from needless and time-consuming litigation, as well as ensuring that fairness is transparent.

It is well known that the previous Conservative Government introduced appeal panels in the first place. We have passed a number of reforms to the way in which those panels operate and I believe that they are a necessary safeguard for pupils and parents, that they conform to the interests of natural justice and comply with human rights legislation. Abolishing them would inevitably lead to a sharp increase in legal action by parents against schools. That would mean head teachers spending time in court, and it would be costly, both in time and money.

Does the Minister agree that under the Conservative policy, legal aid would not be available and only the rich could take action, so there would not be much legal action from parents of poor children?

There are things that can be said in opposition that are unlikely to become practice in the unlikely event of the Opposition coming to power in the immediate future.

I shall share with the House the statistics for independent appeal panels. In 2002–03, the latest year for which figures are available, independent appeal panels reinstated 149 out of 9,290 permanently excluded pupils, or less than 2 per cent. It cannot therefore be seriously argued that the abolition of independent appeal panels will make a big difference to the numbers of pupils excluded from school.

We have heard a call for a sixfold increase in the number of places to be provided for high-quality, intensive but separate education of those whose behavioural difficulties make them unsuitable for inclusion in mainstream schools. We heard clarification from the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale that that increase was based on a previous figure, so the sixfold increase would not take us from the 13,000 places that are available now to 78,000, which would cost around £650 million, but would mean an increase to 24,000, which is a more modest increase than that set out in the motion today.

I would argue that preventive work by schools to improve behaviour is the better solution for the vast majority of pupils rather than taking them away from their schools.

Does my hon. Friend share my bemusement at the Conservatives' proposals for turnaround academies or schools? In my constituency, we have the funding and the land set aside for a skateboard park, but we cannot get community agreement because of the worries about young people gathering. How on earth will the Opposition be able to propose that a turnaround school be built in any neighbourhood without provoking huge opposition? Or will we have another fantasy island for those pupils?

Perhaps they want an island for the bad pupils. My hon. Friend raises a serious point. The estimated cost of the proposals is based simply on the revenue costs of pupil referral units. However, what would be the capital costs for turnaround schools? Is it suggested that the turnaround schools would be in new buildings, which would be hugely contentious, or would an existing school in each community be turned into a turnaround school? The policy that we have been pursuing is seeking to improve all schools so that we do not have sink schools. Do the Tories propose a sink school in every neighbourhood as a priority for Government policy?

I do not know where the Opposition have got the 24,000 figure from, but we have been able to increase the capacity of pupil referral units. Indeed, we have almost doubled the number of places to 13,000, but we recognise that alternative provision is not simply confined to those units. For many children, work-based training or further education colleges—and some of the work done by the voluntary sector, such as the Prince's Trust and Skillsforce—can provide more appropriate ways to improve behaviour and therefore discipline. I am not persuaded that we need a further large expansion in pupil referral units. Indeed, the Ofsted report that was published last week raised some serious issues, but they were primarily issues of quality and were connected to the running of the system, not the number of places available.

Pupil referral units are important, but they are only one part of the solution. We need to support schools in preventing exclusion through the use of learning support units within schools. There are now more than 1,000 of those units. They are typically based in schools and provide short-term teaching and support programmes for pupils who are disaffected, at risk of exclusion, or vulnerable for other reasons. The programmes are tailored to the needs of each pupil. The aim is to keep pupils in school and working while their problems are addressed, but to prevent them from disrupting the education of other children in the classroom. LSUs support whole-school approaches to behaviour and learning and teaching, and are a source of expertise in strategies for promoting positive behaviour.

I welcome the report issued by Ofsted last Friday. Next month, we shall issue guidance on the quality of alternative provision to make it clear that the needs of each pupil have to be assessed and addressed. That will mean a range of approaches; yes, pupil referral units, but also the voluntary sector, Skillsforce, further education and work-based learning, depending on the needs of the particular child or young person.

I want to turn to an important issue: the ability of teachers to exercise discipline and protection for them from the fear of false allegations of abuse. The motion urges swift legislation, as the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale set out in his speech. We share the belief in all parts of the House that someone who is under investigation by the police, but who has not been charged with a criminal offence, should not be identified in the press, and I pay tribute to the considered way in which the hon. Gentleman has raised that issue, both in this debate and at Education and Skills questions last month. As he knows, we are not persuaded that new legislation is required to achieve those aims. My hon. Friend Chris Bryant set out some of the challenges that we should face if we legislated in the way that has been suggested.

We were all moved by the examples given by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale and by some of the other examples that have appeared in reports today and over recent years. We have a system of press self-regulation, overseen by the Press Complaints Commission, which provides safeguards against the publication of inaccurate or misleading information. As the hon. Gentleman rightly said, the PCC has issued further guidance about identifying people accused of crime, and the Association of Chief Police Officers' advice to police forces makes it clear that anyone under investigation, who has not been charged, should not be named, and their details should not be provided to the press. We have to balance a number of competing rights and pressures: the protection of teachers and staff, and of the child, quite rightly; as well as the right to privacy of people who are accused but not charged versus the freedom of the press. My sense is that there is much justice in what the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale said, but that many of his arguments would apply equally well to other public service professionals, such as the youth service workers in the example given by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda, social workers or people working in residential care homes. That highlights some of the practical difficulties that might occur in legislating as the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale proposed.

In many care homes, one of the advantages of some publicity when a case comes to court is that other people who have been seriously abused in the past can come forward and find justice and retribution. Does my hon. Friend think that there is a way in which that could be achieved without legislation?

In a sense, that is what we are all grappling with in the debate—whether legislation is required, or whether the various existing codes, advice and guidance from both the PCC and ACPO are sufficient. We all need to watch the matter closely, but the Government are not persuaded, at this point, of the case for legislation. As the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale rightly accepted, we have recognised that part of the problem is to do with the delays that often exist in the system. Not only may teachers face an allegation that turns out to be false, but the system itself is ill-equipped and ill-prepared to deal with that allegation efficiently. We have analysed about 1,600 cases over the past year. Most of them were resolved quite quickly but an unacceptably high number—although not quite as high as the number I quoted on the "Today" programme—take longer: 22 per cent. take up to three months, while about one in 10 takes as long as a year. We are currently consulting teacher unions and others about how we can put in place an effective system so that if an allegation is made, it is dealt with speedily and efficiently, which is in the best interests of the accused and the accuser.

To conclude, the motion says that

"it is time for the rights of the majority of pupils, parents and teachers to be given greater weight."

Of course, all pupils have rights as well as responsibilities. They have a responsibility to behave well, both for their own sake and for the sake of others in the school; to respect other pupils and authority, which is why we are investing in 10,000 learning mentors and, as I have said, doubled the capacity of pupil referral units. However, we do not want to abandon anyone, because that blights their future and creates problems for the communities in which they live. I do not believe that costly privatised borstals are the answer to any or every problem. It is far better to support collaboration among schools to offer any learner a second chance once their behaviour problems have been dealt with.

Parents play a crucial role in children's learning and behaviour. They have rights, as the motion says, but they also have duties. Local education authorities and schools employ a range of informal and supportive strategies to help parents tackle their children's behaviour. A small minority of parents, however, are unwilling do so, which is why we have introduced a number of measures, including parenting orders and the new penalty notice scheme, to reduce truancy. We take behaviour and discipline seriously, which is why we have put significant resources into that programme. We have invested in this area in a way that no Government have done before. The real challenge for all of us is to promote respect and discipline—respect for one another but also respect for authority, as the hon. Member for Buckingham rightly said when he talked about the six R's. We want every child to have the very best chance. Good progress has been made, but many challenges remain.

I do not want to destroy my hon. Friend's momentum, but will he advert briefly to the curriculum, as it affects pupil behaviour? The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, my hon. Friend Mr. Lewis has talked about things that 14-year-olds might study within a school context but not necessarily at school. We should be talking about prevention as well as cure, and the curriculum has a role to play in prevention.

My hon. Friend is right, and I am confident that the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills my hon. Friend Mr. Lewis will respond to that point in his winding-up speech.

The Opposition's proposals are ill-considered and costly, and would undermine the progress that has been made. For those reasons, I urge the House to reject the motion and support the Government amendment.

This is a timely debate, because across the land schools are about to reach the end of the longest term of the year. Teachers are tired, and are clinging to the ropes. Pupils are more fractious, and problems are more evident. Everyone is focused on the last day of term and Christmas, and I am sure that we can all empathise with an experience that has been part of the natural history of British schooling for at least a century. However, there is a new phenomenon—blaming the Government for the problem of indiscipline. What people see of Parliament, especially Prime Minister's questions, on television does not encourage them to believe that we have a natural answer to unruly behaviour.

Historically, bad behaviour has been considered the fault of pupils and, if not controlled effectively, schools. However, if it is true that we live in a nanny state, we have probably reached the point where nanny is held responsible for the behaviour of all her charges, especially when the Government try to micro-manage the entire educational process. However, in the Government's defence, it is worth making the point that such indiscipline as there is may in part be a product of complex cultural changes for which the Government cannot be held entirely responsible and which, in a democratic society, they are not completely empowered to address.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one issue that has not been addressed so far this afternoon is the extent to which parents provide parameters for their children? One of the difficulties is that however much discipline may be enforced in a school and a disciplined environment achieved in which children may learn, it is difficult to maintain that the next day if no parameters are set for them when they go home.

It is an axiom in educational circles that, for good behaviour and good performance in school, parental support is crucial.

Indiscipline comes in two variants: the general indiscipline of whole classes and, at times, whole schools; and the seriously disturbed and disturbing behaviour of a small minority of damaged young people, often with a dysfunctional family life behind them. Both problems need addressing; although both can occur together, they are different. General indiscipline in a school is treatable, in part, as the Minister said, by spreading good practice. That can work anywhere and there is a known recipe. We all know schools in our own constituencies that had problems, the problems were dealt with and discipline is now good.

Counteracting indiscipline is not rocket science. It involves a range of specific actions: setting high standards; consistent and fair enforcement of those standards; and stamping out minor offences so that the major ones that lead to expulsion do not occur. I have taught in a secondary modern school, a dockland comprehensive and an independent school, and I found in all of them the recognition that clarity and consistency about educational standards and sensible enforcement is the secret. It is the main factor in good discipline in any school at any time and in any place.

The recipe for good discipline involves other factors, such as mutual respect between pupils and staff. In my experience, pupils will forgive many things, but never neglect and disdain. The recipe also requires a relevant and challenging curriculum. Everyone agrees that an inflexible, inappropriate curriculum causes trouble for the underachieving and sometimes for the exceptional child. The Government seem to be addressing the problems of those who find an overly academic curriculum too tough, by adopting a more flexible approach towards the 14-to-16 curriculum.

As a small footnote, it is worth pointing out that in the history of education, a number of exceptional people met difficulties at their schools. Mr. Howard wrote in a recent statement:

"If bright pupils are not intellectually challenged in the classroom, is it any wonder that they get bored and cause trouble?"

Many exceptional people had problems. The best example is Einstein, who was expelled, as were numerous poets including Baudelaire, Robert Frost for daydreaming, and Robert Southey, the lakeland poet, apparently for writing an essay at Westminster school condemning flogging. I looked into the question of whether any politicians of note were expelled, but the only one I came across was Mussolini, who was expelled for stabbing a pupil, an event which, strangely enough, did not stop him becoming a primary school teacher later in his career.

Best practice requires an emphasis on community and responsibility. That must be instilled through the whole curriculum and reinforced by giving pupils responsibility in extracurricular activity. More than lip service must be paid to the citizenship agenda. Equally crucial, as has been mentioned, are support from, co-operation with and help for parents, where necessary encouraged by home-school contracts. What is needed, and what may be lacking from the Government's agenda, is monitoring and active support from local education authorities, reacting early to difficulties and to parental dissatisfaction. A further factor, as my hon. Friend Mr. Willis mentioned, is the construction of a system that does not create sink schools but gives special help to schools in difficult circumstances.

Creating the conditions for good discipline is, I repeat, not rocket science, but it is not helped by emasculating LEAs or by intervening only when a school gets past the point of no return and is classified as a failing school. It is not helped by encouraging competition at the expense of co-operation between schools, or by using league tables as a sole and crude basis for estimating how well schools are doing. It is certainly not helped by overburdening schools and teachers with bureaucracy or squeezing out extra-curricular activities.

Liberal Democrats believe that every parent should be guaranteed undisrupted education for their child, whichever school they attend, and a school life free from bullying. It is a guarantee that I believe the professionals are capable of delivering, with very few exceptions, so long as we spread good practice and the Government provide the framework for it to happen.

The second aspect of the problem is damaged and destructive children, who can wreak havoc in any institution. They are from families and communities that have broken down and they are increasing in number—I think that that is a documented fact; we can see it in the primary schools. They are unloved, resentful and lacking in self-esteem, but I do not share Rousseau's belief that all we need to do is present them with an interesting education and they will go for it. They will not give education a chance and after a while they cannot give education a chance. They must be sorted out or they will simply fester in society, destined for a genuinely miserable life at odds with society. They are what used to be referred to as "bad pupils", but they are also pupils for whom there is no real hope at the moment.

Although pupil referral units were built for such pupils, they also need some genuinely creative solutions. Voluntary bodies such as Rathbone Training, the social commitments of which go back to 19th century Liverpool and which was started by a Liberal MP, have designed pioneering programmes.

Effective, imaginative treatment and family support—and, where family support is required to be extended, parenting orders—can genuinely lead to a rapid turn round, provided that they are coupled with a strategy of early intervention, rather than masked, as they sometimes are in the early stages of primary schools. The rise in primary exclusions shows how early severely challenging behaviour can occur. We remain optimistic that, even here, there is evidence that there are solutions. There are currently 380 PRUs and various home tuition schemes, costing in excess of £200 million and not always providing the full curriculum, with a cost per pupil place similar to the most exclusive independent schools in the land. Those millions come from school budgets and are essentially money not spent on the education of the well behaved.

I have some sympathy with the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe, who, on 29 November, said:

"good discipline should not cost an extra penny".

Strangely, he went on to promise to spend a further £200 million on the unruly, increasing sixfold the places for the uncontrollable.

I would not encourage the hon. Gentleman to become too worried about the arithmetic of Mr. Howard—he might get into troublesome areas. The hon. Gentleman is talking about the cost of this work. Much evidence shows that the youth service is an equally effective but much cheaper way of intervening in many young people's lives. How does he think the youth service can work effectively with the education system to improve the lot of some of those young people?

There is a crying need for outreach youth work right across the land, and the youth service is certainly as creative as anyone in coming up with solutions for children whose behaviour is fundamentally antisocial and needs correcting and directing in a different and better direction.

I have to go back to the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe, because his solution reminds me of Lord Whitelaw's detention centres, which were intended to deliver short, sharp shocks and solve the whole problem of crime, but which, in effect, did an enormous amount to improve the fitness level of burglars. Unlike the detention centres though, it is anticipated that the stay in turnaround schools, if we can call them that, will not be short. The whole approach smacks of the darkest pessimism, as does the figure of 24,000 places—twice the number of currently excluded pupils, on any estimation. Clearly, it is anticipated that indiscipline will get substantially worse under any future Tory Government.

I shall pass over the problems already mentioned of capital cost, planning difficulties and so on, and conclude by saying that throwing £500 million or more—we are talking about adding to the cost of existing PRUs—at those who cannot or will not behave themselves is an expensive philosophy of despair.

If we do not provide special support to improve behaviour among that group of people, the cost will be borne not in our schools, but in our criminal justice system and communities, when those children go on to cause greater social problems later in life. We must improve their behaviour at school, where we have a chance, rather than leaving the criminal justice system to take its toll.

We need a system that does not result in 24,000 exclusions—a system with 24,000 exclusions is failing. In a modern democracy and civilised society, 24,000 exclusions are unacceptable.

The Minister admitted that 10 per cent. of pupils are educated in schools in which Ofsted feels that discipline is inadequate—he said that Ofsted feels that discipline is adequate in 90 per cent. of schools, and the reverse must therefore be true. He also said that 13 per cent. of head teachers believe that discipline is declining. Is it not the case that it is better to provide places for those who are not excluded at the moment, but who would be, were the places available?

May I respond from a professional perspective? If the only remedy for the poor discipline of pupils in a school is to expel them and they can be corrected in no other way, either the system is failing or the pupils are very difficult. I do not think that the system contains 24,000 unmanageable pupils, if good practice and good standards are upheld.

A cheaper solution than that offered by the Conservative party is available. I shall use the example of the LEA of Mr. Collins, which I took off the Department for Education and Skills website. Cumbria LEA has introduced school re-integration officers. As far as Conservative Members are concerned, "re-integration" is a bad word, but employing those people reduced exclusions and decreased the cost of prolonged replacements by nine tenths, with no obvious downside. The Conservative policy would cost a lot of money and is an uneconomical solution to a serious problem. Early intervention would save a great deal of money. Early intervention and the spreading of good practice have been proved to work. Throwing people in a sin bin for a long time is expensive, and one must believe that it is the right solution before one uses it.

Wales will be spared the Conservative policy of turnaround schools, because education is a devolved matter. How would turnaround schools function in rural areas, where children would have to travel for many miles, which would take them out of their community and the support that it provides?

My hon. Friend has made an acute point. Later this week, we will debate the School Transport Bill, and the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale will have to come clean and admit that his policy would add appreciably to the cost of school transport, which would be required in order to get pupils to turnaround schools.

Finally, Liberal Democrat Members take a different view on accused teachers from that of the Government. The issue of anonymity has been a leading story on the BBC—I heard the Minister on the "Today" programme this morning, and I have seen the press release from the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale. The story is not new—the Minister and I discussed it at the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers conference almost 12 months ago, and the Minister has followed a fairly consistent line on it—but it is serious.

I was not convinced by the Minister's response on the radio this morning. He can correct me if I am wrong, but he seemed to say that malicious accusations could be dealt with by relying on press protocols and attempting to speed up the inquiry process rapidly to dispose of groundless complaints. I support press protocols and speeding up the inquiry process, which is a sensible reaction, but it is a fair objection that there has never been a press protocol that has not been breached on occasions. However fast the inquiry process goes, it is never as fast as the publication of tomorrow's newspaper, and one ill-directed headline can ruin a teacher's professional and personal life. Given that fact, there needs to be a substantive legal reason for opposing the suggestion, and it is not clear that there is one.

The hon. Gentleman expresses concerns that all hon. Members would share. Clearly, press protocols do not in practice prevent such cases from going forward as they have in the past—that is why those protocols have been strengthened. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that although there is a strong argument for teachers, there is an equally strong argument for youth workers, residential care home workers and social workers, and that it would be difficult in practice to know where to draw the line?

The Minister makes a valid point. A case has been made for teachers and one could make a parallel case for other groups. The Government need to explore that in the round, because they must face up to the consequences of any legislation that they introduce. I think that the Minister would agree that his arguments do not automatically knock down those advanced by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale or by my hon. Friends. I hope that he will reconsider, because there are good arguments for dealing with this problem for the teaching profession.

As the hon. Gentleman may have gathered, Labour Members have some sympathy for his case. The motion uses the words,

"at least up to the point where a formal criminal charge is brought".

When I practised as a solicitor before I entered the House, I acted for members of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers who were in that position. To echo what my hon. Friend Chris Bryant said about care workers, anonymity, which I would support legislatively, could apply only up to the point of formal criminal charges being brought, because subsequently other victims might come out of the woodwork, and that would assist in the protection of the children, which is what we all want.

I am familiar with that issue, having been approached by care workers in my constituency who have had their careers ruined by wrongful accusations. To some extent, publicity can facilitate further legitimate complaints against the individual, but can in turn encourage other people with malice against that individual to make complaints. We all know the sad history of accusations of trawling by police bodies and the like, which I do not have time to go into today.

It is hard to be completely dogmatic about the efficacy of educational systems, and I am particularly disinclined to be so. In the past two months, I have encountered and conversed with two ex-pupils from my time at a Bootle comprehensive. One was a haggard, toothless drug addict sitting on the floor of Liverpool Central station; the other was an upstanding policeman who now works in this building. I suppose that proves that Liberal Democrats can be all things to all people. Uncannily, both were appreciative of the education that they had received.

There are no simple solutions to the problems of schools, but there are solutions. Zero tolerance can be a reality and need not cost a fortune. It requires early intervention, a sound educational framework, proper support and the will to guarantee undisrupted education for every child.

On a minor point, truancy has been mentioned, and it sets a bad example when, on a Conservative Opposition day, only two Conservative Members who do not have to be in the Chamber are here. I am sure that they are both on the Opposition's A-team and will set the Chamber alight with their speeches, which I look forward to. Nevertheless, there should be more of them here to debate this important issue.

Will turnaround schools be located in existing buildings or in new build and, if the latter, where will they be put? For example, would the shadow Secretary of State support the construction of a new-build turnaround school in his constituency? Would he support that through the planning process, given that somebody would have to? If we reach the stage of new turnaround schools, which will be borstals of a kind, being constructed—I do not think we will, by the way—one can imagine the reaction of Conservative Members for whose constituencies they are proposed. They would run a mile from Opposition policy. They would not want such a school in a million miles of their constituencies.

How would the schools be financed? Would the money come from the public sector? How would the Tory party, if it were ever to return to power, pay for the policy when it promises public spending cuts and tax cuts? Perhaps Mr. Hoban will intervene and put me right. Would the money come from the public sector or would there be a mechanism to allow private sector companies to build or at least run the schools? I suspect that there would be the capacity to allow private sector companies to run them. When we get to the detail, I believe that that would be the solution because the Opposition cannot find a way round financing such schools on the basis of the spending proposals that will appear in their manifesto before the next election.

If the hon. Gentleman pays close attention to such matters, he will realise that the Conservative party has made a commitment to increase spending on schools, including turnaround schools, by £15 billion over the lifetime of the first Conservative Government. That is a significant increase in expenditure. We believe that that will meet the cost of turnaround schools as well as improving school funding throughout the country.

I would be interested to know where that money will come from. If the Conservatives intend to increase spending by £15 billion, where will they find the money when they are committed to cutting taxes?

Is not the truth of the matter that the youth service, which is so useful in dealing with the problem, is one aspect that might lose out in the education budget under a Tory Government?

My hon. Friend is probably right about that. As I have said, when we get down to the detail, the Tories will probably include a proposal in their manifesto to allow private sector companies—perhaps "Group 4 Schools"—to run the schools. Before they do that, they should consider the worrying examples of private sector involvement in schools in America, where they have been allowed simply to take over.

The most notorious example is Baltimore, where the private sector—the company was called Education Alternatives Inc.—took over nine schools. For some time afterwards, results officially went through the roof and everything was going well until the local newspaper, The Sun in Baltimore, exposed what was genuinely happening. It turned out that the private company had fabricated all the results while creaming off public sector money to spend on a new headquarters hundreds of miles away. It had also spent money on a new fleet of limousines to ferry its executives around. I am drifting off the point slightly.

Earlier, a Liberal Democrat Member mentioned Conservative councils that pursued policies that directly contradicted Opposition statements from the Dispatch Box this afternoon. My council is an example of that. It is a Conservative-controlled local authority that, in the face of what we heard this afternoon, tried in the past few months to close a primary school in my constituency. At one point, it put three primary schools under threat but concentrated on one specific school, the R. J. Mitchell primary school. It is named after the designer of the Spitfire because of the history of RAF Hornchurch, the remnants of which are in my constituency.

The R. J. Mitchell primary school was placed under direct threat of closure, which was announced but never followed through because of public pressure. What would have happened if it had closed down? At some point in the next few years, there will be an increase in the number of children of primary school age in the borough of Havering, which I represent. If the closure had happened, houses would probably have been built on the site, the number of school-age children in the area would have increased and there would have been a corresponding increase in the number of children in the classrooms of the remaining schools. That would have made it more difficult to maintain discipline in those schools.

Conservative Members voted against the allocation of the money that has gone into reducing class sizes, especially for five, six and seven-year-olds. I probably visit a school a week, on average, and I would have thought that smaller classes were crucial to maintaining discipline. Ever-burgeoning class sizes would just make that more difficult.

Smaller class sizes are crucial, but the actions of the local authority in this case went directly against that. It was trying to create bigger classes and connived in trying to undermine the school. It announced the closure when it announced the consultation process, which meant that certain parents took flight and placed their children in other schools. The local authority hoped that that would result in a self-fulfilling prophecy and that the school would close almost of its own volition. That did not happen, however. Of course, it then tried to take the credit when it was announced that the school was to stay open.

An important point was raised earlier about the abolition of the appeals panels. I think that my hon. Friend Chris Bryant mentioned judicial review—

It was me.

I am sorry. My hon. Friend Rob Marris made a crucial point in that regard. The shadow Secretary of State made it clear that, under his policies, there would be no legal aid and that the no win, no fee system would not apply in such cases. However, it is not as simple as that. Tory Front Benchers are under the illusion that the parents who get caught up in this process tend to be those without many financial resources, but most parents who decide to fight such decisions have some knowledge and a bit of get up and go, and they certainly have financial resources available to them. They would go to judicial review and, in many cases, they might win.

May I correct my hon. Friend on one point? His recollection of what the Conservative Front-Bench spokesperson said is slightly different from mine. I do not recall Mr. Collins ruling out no win, no fee agreements—conditional fee agreements, to give them their proper title. That could be very difficult in terms of human rights.

My recollection is that the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman did rule out such agreements.

We are therefore talking about people using their own money to go to judicial review. If that were to happen, it would be the parents who had the financial resources to do so who would go to court. That would involve a far longer drawn-out and more expensive process than we have now and local education authorities would incur far greater costs. I can certainly think of one or two families in the borough that I represent who would go to judicial review and end up running up large legal bills, as would the LEA.

The other point about the abolition of appeals panels is that, contrary to what we have heard this afternoon, head teachers are normally the final arbiters. Some cases go to the appeals panels, but I visited a school recently in which a number of pupils had just been expelled, for reasons that I shall not go into. To my knowledge, none of those cases had been to the appeals panel. That is the normal path. In the past 20 or 30 years, the powers of head teachers have grown rather than diminished. Those of us who visit schools regularly—which probably means everyone in the Chamber today—know that the head teacher is in a very powerful position, and that the school reflects that. If a school has a powerful, effective, strong head teacher, it will follow on from that and tend to be a good school. If a head teacher does not have those qualities, the school will start to slip, even if it has hitherto had a good reputation.

Another fantasy that we heard from the Conservatives today was the idea that education is now in the clutches of a group of wild-eyed lefties from the lunatic fringe. Mr. Bercow put forward that idea, but I do not know who he had in mind. Perhaps it was Chris Woodhead. If anyone who has served in education for many years has a specific politicised agenda, it is Woodhead. But it is not a left-wing agenda, as even some Tory Members must be able to spot. He had a very clear right-wing political agenda. It was not just political, however. It was also driven by the fact that he had an ego the size of Western Australia. That played an important part. We were elected on 1 May 1997 and we should have sacked him on 2 May.

Labour reappointed him.

I gathered that. Such is life.

I am interested in the hon. Gentleman's thesis. As he has named someone, perhaps he will explain how that person's agenda was right wing?

From what I remember, that person expressed views that were consistent with the editorial policy of the Daily Mail and the policy of the Conservative party. He was appointed by the Conservative party. His attacks on teachers, which were almost always without foundation, were generally perceived as coming from a right-wing perspective. I think that that is generally accepted across the Chamber, the press and most of those involved in education, but it could be that we are all wrong and the hon. Gentleman is right. I have no idea.

The hon. Gentleman has indulged in guilt by association. Now will he explain why the policies that he has described are right wing?

Let me try to explain this as clearly as I can, so that the hon. Gentleman can understand. Chris Woodhead attacked the teaching profession, the teaching trade unions and what he saw as a lefty, liberal elite controlling teaching. That was generally seen and accepted as coming from a right-wing perspective. That is how most of us saw and analysed it. The idea that there is a liberal, vaguely lefty, wild-eyed revolutionary elite controlling teaching and education is absolute fantasy. It goes back to the days of the William Tyndale school in the 1960s, but things have changed a bit. As a matter of fact, I do not think that the teaching profession has ever been particularly dominated by people who are ideologically driven left wingers, but there we are.

Anonymity for teachers under threat of prosecution is a fair point that was raised by several speakers, including my hon. Friend the Minister, and it is worth looking at. I understand the objections that my hon. Friend made in respect of reviewing the legislation, but teachers are probably more in the firing line than people in any other profession, even carers. When such accusations are made, teachers get it in the neck more than anyone else—it is easier to accuse them than members of any other profession—and it is easy for pupils to make false accusations and make up false evidence against teachers, for whatever reason. It would be a good idea to at least consider the proposal to see whether there is any way in which we can change legislation to give teachers anonymity or at least slightly more protection.

On a general point, which was mentioned from the Liberal Benches by Dr. Pugh, we are, to a large extent, dealing with cultural changes that go back many, many years. We can all see that there has been a rise in individualism. That has been responsible for the behaviour of a certain group of pupils and parents in schools, but only a minority.

Baroness Thatcher said to people:

"There is no such thing as Society."

She was actually saying, "Nobody else matters; just you matter. You only have to care about yourself. You don't have to care about anybody else." In part, the process of growing up and of maturation is the realisation that one person is not the centre of the universe and that other people depend on us and we depend on them. If we say to people that that process does not matter and that they are the centre of the universe, we are giving them a licence to behave as they like.

Since then, and all three parties bear some responsibility for this, the issue of choice—choice itself—has been deified to an extent where consumerism is almost the new religion. When consumerism, individualism, choice and individual gratification are elevated to such a level, we can hardly be surprised that a minority of pupils are encouraged by their parents to think only of themselves and not ever of anybody else. Over the past few years, not enough of us have challenged that and attempted to assert the importance of collective duties and responsibilities—the duties towards the community.

To some extent, what we have been talking about this afternoon is a product of tabloid stories that we all read about how terrible schools are and how pupils cannot communicate, are thick and unable to talk to one another. That is not a picture that I recognise from my visits to schools. Last week, I visited two primary schools in my constituency, St. Alban's and St. Mary's, and I received a visit from Dunningford primary school in Parliament. When I talk to pupils, whether from primary or secondary schools, and when they ask me questions, I see children who are, not entirely but largely, motivated, eager and knowledgeable, and able to articulate ideas to a much greater extent than my generation at school.

The picture that I recognise is that a lot of schools—obviously, I am just talking about my constituency experience—are succeeding, moving ahead and producing children who are bright, able, gifted and articulate. We should not therefore get carried away with the idea that all schools are in a war zone. They are not. A minority of pupils are providing problems, and every teacher and head teacher can recount stories about that, but the vast majority of pupils are just the opposite.

It is a great pleasure, as ever, to follow John Cryer. In response to his jibe about attendance in the House, I would point out only that the number of Opposition Members who have attended this debate has been approximately the same as the number of Government Members, if not greater. Of course, in relation to our representation in Parliament, in percentage terms, more Opposition Members have attended than Government Members.

I cannot promise to entertain the hon. Member for Hornchurch as he requested, but I want to make a number of points, the first of which is about discipline in our schools.

It is generally accepted on both sides of the House that poor discipline is a serious problem and must be addressed. We know that there is a strong correlation between poor discipline in schools and low educational attainment or performance of that school, and between poor discipline and truancy. I think that the Minister suggested that the increase in unauthorised absence was attributable to the way in which it is recorded. I do not know whether that is true, but it is clear that over the past seven years and longer few inroads have been made into the problem of truancy, which we all recognise is a very serious issue.

Equally, the level of exclusions remains stubbornly high, and I share with the Liberal Democrat spokesman the view that any exclusion represents a failure, at many levels, in the community and in that school. There is a strong correlation, of course, between truancy and exclusion, and criminality and subsequent economic failure of the individual. The cost to society of failure of discipline, which in turn leads to exclusion or unauthorised absence, is therefore very high later in the child's life.

As many hon. Members said, poor discipline is not prevalent or chronic across all schools. Most schools have good standards of discipline and highly motivated pupils, and in general there has been some improvement in performance over the past decade or so. Indeed, the Minister mentioned the Ofsted figures, which suggest that standards of behaviour, as recorded by Ofsted, have improved in most schools. That may well be so, although we must cast some doubt over the way in which Ofsted measures behaviour. Clearly, however, failing schools are still failing, and the problem is not with the generality of the school system but with those few schools—perhaps one in 10 or fewer—that have serious discipline problems. Typically, those schools are in areas of social deprivation in our inner cities. Indeed, a recent study by the Institute for Public Policy Research, the Government's favourite think-thank, demonstrates the strong relationship between exclusions, school discipline problems and failure, and inner cities and failing LEAs.

We must therefore recognise the nature of the problem, which is not a general problem but one of selected schools in selected areas—typically, areas of high social deprivation. That is why this is an issue not just of school discipline and leadership but of communities and how we tackle communities that are failing to produce good schools and good education for their children.

I think it is agreed on all sides that the problem starts very early, and that intervention must therefore also start very early. Studies show that it is possible to forecast a high level of exclusion or truancy among children between the ages of three and six. That strongly suggests that if we intervene at that stage, especially in areas where parenting and the general community context are poor, we will achieve value for money. To that extent, the Government's investment in Sure Start and other measures to increase pre-school education are worthwhile and can be supported by us all.

My comparatively well-off constituency contains pockets of social deprivation, some featuring large numbers of single parents who are out of work and whose own educational attainment is poor. I recently visited the Panda pre-school nursery in Sherwood, run by volunteers who concentrate on giving children aged two or three basic social skills such as the ability to sit down and eat a meal with other children. Members may say that that is a substitute for parenting, and perhaps to an extent it is, but it is what is required nevertheless. I am convinced that early investment in such programmes will pay greater dividends than almost any other measure.

Sure Start and other pre-school programmes must emphasise the importance of discipline. Even today, far too many children attend primary school without the basic social skills that should have resulted from investment in pre-school education and nurseries. As I have said, the lack of discipline is partly a problem of social deprivation. All too often we see heroic head teachers doing a magnificent job in very difficult circumstances in relatively deprived areas, but complaining—as nearly all of them do—about a shortage of resources and the sheer intensity of the effort required to lift a school out of its problems.

Schools in deprived areas, with high levels of special educational need and other community problems, need extra resources if they are to impose discipline. Partly because of the high level of selection in Kent, almost all children with special needs or behavioural problems end up at Tunbridge Wells high school in my constituency. As a result, it is a very challenged school. Graham Smith, the headmaster, has made an heroic effort to raise its educational attainment over the last seven years, almost single-handed. He emphasised discipline heavily from the start of the turnaround phase, which led to a large number of exclusions, which created resentment and difficulty in the local school population and were not always greeted enthusiastically by the LEA; but those exclusions were a necessary step towards improving the quality of the school during the turnaround.

Mr. Smith says that because his is a difficult school with a large percentage of challenged or problem pupils, he finds it difficult to attract teachers and has a high turnover rate. Investing in teacher accommodation, and being able to pay more to attract teachers, are important first steps towards the establishment of a disciplined school that performs well. Mr. Smith also says that because of the high proportion of violent kids in his school—whose play and behaviour tend to be more robust than those of others—the physical wear and tear on the school, and the budget that he must allocate to basic maintenance, are possibly greater than in schools not faced with such problems.

The one thing that I think is clear to all of us in the House is that it is critical that we support head teachers who undertake the often thankless task of ensuring that failing schools recover and that discipline is restored. All too often, it is those head teachers who feel relatively under-resourced and under-supported.

The central role of the head teacher as leader of the school and, in a sense, leader of the community brings us on to the difficult question of exclusions. Exclusions have become a curiously totemic issue in the debate. I suspect that there is more consensus on the underlying issues surrounding exclusions than may appear on the surface. One thing is clear: when they happen, exclusions are extremely damaging not just to the children but to the community in which they operate.

The IPPR study to which I referred earlier demonstrates that exclusions are not a major problem across the entire school system—they are a problem in a minority of schools and in a minority of areas that are challenged. Unsurprisingly, those tend to be inner-city areas, which often face other difficulties, perhaps associated with the ethnic mix and failing local education authorities. Often, there are a number of failing schools in those areas, not just one, so pupils get moved from one struggling school to another.

It is clear that turnaround of a failing school is unlikely to be achieved without tough action on discipline. Therefore, our approach to exclusions must be related to the nature of that school and to the challenge that the head teacher and staff face. It is simply not possible to produce blanket conclusions. One area in which the Government have been culpable is in setting targets for exclusions and applying pressure across the board. The problem is not susceptible to across-the-board targeting and pressure; it is situational.

It is important to recognise that any exclusion is likely to be a life-defining experience for the child involved. We should not treat it lightly; nor should we regard an exclusion as something that can be readily accepted or encouraged. All too often, when a child is excluded from school, there is a conspicuous gap before he is found another place in another school. In west Kent, I have met parents of children who have been excluded from school for four or five months before finding an alternative. That gap is extraordinarily damaging not just to their education but to their self-esteem. All too often, during that period, they are on the streets or at home getting up to no good.

As we know, there is a high correlation between the level of exclusions and criminality. According to the Youth Justice Board, 32 per cent. of children caught up in the youth justice system have been excluded. A high proportion of the children excluded from schools end up in criminal difficulty of one sort or another. It is also true that children who have been excluded are more likely to be guilty of serious criminal offences than those who have not. As the Liberal Democrat spokesman, Mr. Willis, said, exclusion should be the last resort and, by that stage, it is a failure.

We need to bear it in mind that, if a child is excluded from school, the replacement school can be miles away. In a high proportion of cases, these are children with a single parent or with no access to transport. Therefore, either it is going to cost the LEA a lot of money to transport that child, or the likelihood is that he will not get to the other school and we end up with a recurring truancy problem.

The number of excluded children who get back into mainstream education successfully and enjoy any sort of educational attainment is woefully low. Again, we need to recognise that, once excluded, we are close to the end of the road and the incidence of successful recovery of excluded kids is pretty low.

For all those reasons, I am cautious about giving head teachers an unfettered right to exclude. I agree that there is a problem with the appeals panel, but that is often as much symbolic as actual, because the head teachers feel that they do not have the authority. In the rare instances in which their decision is overturned, there can be a serious problem with morale for both staff and the other kids, and their authority can be undermined. The practices of head teachers in relation to exclusion vary extremely widely, and given the traumatic effect on the pupils concerned, it is essential to have some due process and an opportunity for the child and the parents to represent their case, perhaps to school governors or others.

I share the view that a great investment in turnaround schools or referral places—whichever term we prefer—is merited. We have to accept that some kids have failed in or been failed by the school system and cannot readily be accommodated in normal schools. I accept it unwillingly, and I do not believe that it has to be the case in the long term, but I am afraid that in today's schools and communities there are such instances, and that is exactly why there has been investment in referral units. We need to take that investment further.

We must recognise, too, however, that that is only a small part of the solution and that we must intervene early. As the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough said, arranging transfers and so on is a much better route than exclusion or a move to a turnaround school. Such schools are likely to be remote from where many of the children referred to them live, so there are practical problems. Transport is not the only problem, because part of turning around or bringing back a child is to do with the parents and the local community.

We must also recognise that there is a risk—I am not saying that it cannot be managed—that turnaround schools will become places where young offenders or children who have fallen into criminal habits will get together, so that we create concentrated pools of criminality instead of effective turnarounds. The schools or units need an intensive, and I must say expensive, strategy of working with the individual child to find a route back to normal education. I say to Front Benchers on either side that it is critical that we do not underestimate the cost and the investment required to bring a child who has been excluded back into normal education.

The hon. Gentleman is making a most thoughtful and considered speech. Does he share the concern that I have about the solution proposed by his party's Front Benchers? They seem to be looking for an institutional, one-size-fits-all solution to what is an incredibly complex problem. He will know from a former life that one of the things that turn around some of our most disillusioned young people is engaging with the world of work: employers can be part of the solution. Turnaround schools, or borstals, or whatever we want to call them, cannot be the only solution. We need to seek a plethora of solutions, including one on one, distance learning, perhaps home tuition, workplace placements and pupil referral units, as well as other schools and institutions.

I agree, and I do so without in any sense demurring from the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale in his opening speech. Turnaround units can of course play an important part, and as I have said, we have to accept that in today's world there are kids for whom such units are probably the only solution. But it is important to recognise that that solution is very intensive and individual and is likely to require a great deal of investment. However, we should not shirk from such investment, because in the long run it will be worth while. That said, I share entirely the view that that solution has to be but one of a variety. We also need to recognise that by the time that we reach that stage, the education system will probably have been failing the child in question for many years.

Of course, we can all get excited about discipline, but we should recognise that it is not an issue in all schools. We have many good schools with good standards of discipline and highly motivated teachers and pupils, and we need to support them. We should also recognise that in general there has been some improvement. I am not so sure that we should entirely believe Ofsted's judgment in this respect, but there has probably been some improvement in many average and better schools in the past few years. Unfortunately, such improvement has not occurred in the failing schools as well; they are still failing, and therein lies the problem.

It is clear that if we can deal with failing schools, which tend to be clustered with other failing schools in failing LEAs in socially deprived areas, the subsequent dividend to society will be great; that is to say nothing, of course, of the value to the pupils in question. That is why this is a very important issue. It requires early investment, increased resources for schools that are trying to achieve some form of turnaround, backing for head teachers and measures to ensure that they feel in a position of complete authority.

The Minister will perhaps agree that we simply have not seen enough improvement in the past seven years in the worst schools—those that are failing their pupils—which tend to be located in the most difficult areas. Members from all parts of the House must accept that this is a very important challenge, and one that the Government have yet to meet. Schools with poor discipline that fail their own children tend to be concentrated in those areas where children do not have the opportunities enjoyed by those living in more affluent areas, such as the benefit of a better start in life or good early years parenting. The priority for all Members must be to bring freedom and opportunity to children who have the poorest start in life. They usually attend the schools with the worst disciplinary records, which is why we need to make this investment.

I begin by echoing what Mr. Willis said about the speech made by my hon. Friend Mr. Norman. It was indeed thoughtful and constructive, and I hope that I can add further to that tendency in this debate.

I support the proposal of my hon. Friend Mr. Collins that teachers should be entitled to anonymity when allegations are made against them, and certainly up to the point at which they are formally charged. I should make it clear that Alastair Wilbee—the former head teacher of Summerfields school, who killed himself following the allegations made against him—was not named in the Isle of Wight County Press until after he had been charged. I have had long discussions about the rights and wrongs of my hon. Friend's proposal with the editor of that publication, and I have also discussed them with Alastair's widow. I also met representatives of other teachers and head teachers in my constituency and I believe that there is a considerable measure of support for the proposal. Other measures could be taken as well to make the trauma of such an allegation less damaging. One such measure that I would like the House to consider is whether it is right for suspension always, or almost always, to take place when such allegations are made.

I recognise that the allegation of abuse covers a wide range of activities, some of which we would all agree should lead to immediate suspension and some of which might be accommodated by a lesser step. I accept, of course, that it is difficult to contemplate a lesser step when a head teacher is concerned. Nevertheless, I would not suggest that a representative of the local education authority should go to the chairman of governors to say that a head teacher should be suspended or that the chairman should feel under pressure to suspend and should decide to do so with the LEA representative present. Simply giving someone 10 minutes to clear his desk and leave is an overreaction to some kinds of allegation. It might be more appropriate for the LEA representative to remain in the school for a while and perhaps for the head—or any teacher, for that matter—not to be allowed to be with a child unaccompanied, particularly not with the child who has made the allegation. Those matters need to be considered carefully and unemotionally.

It is my belief that Mr. Wilbee's trauma arose from the fact that he was unable to speak to any of his staff, to any of the parents or to his professional colleagues to any great extent, with the LEA simply casting him adrift and leaving him for months with the allegations hanging over him before there was any decision to prosecute him. There was a long period between his suspension and the decision to prosecute. I believe that that could happen to other head teachers. I support the proposal advanced by Conservative Front Benchers because I find it extraordinary that, as a society, we are prepared to accept the anonymity of convicted paedophiles, but not to protect that of unconvicted teachers and head teachers.

Other aspects of the motion have been debated at some length, but I should like to add a little to each. On exclusions, it is extraordinary to listen to Government Front Benchers who give the impression not that the history of education began in 1997, but almost that it began in 2001. Perhaps the Home Secretary was right when he said that the Secretary of State for Education and Skills had gone a bit soft. Certainly the Secretary of State and his team appear a great deal more reasonable, at least most of the time, than their predecessors between 1997 and 2001. It was those predecessors who said that too many pupils were being excluded, who demanded reductions in their number and who suggested that schools should be fined for excluding pupils. Those same predecessors also made the rules much more difficult for head teachers confronted by appeal panels. I see the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Mr. Lewis nodding. He obviously recognises the failure of his predecessors in this matter.

indicated dissent.

Now he is shaking his head, but he was nodding when I suggested the failure earlier. His predecessors made it more difficult for a head teacher to secure the exclusion of a child who should be excluded. In doing so, they were sending out the wrong signals to parents and pupils—that the decisions of teachers and head teachers in disciplinary matters could not be trusted, could routinely be appealed against and, in many cases, overturned. Children, who are not as sophisticated as their parents and teachers, were given the signal that they could get away with bad behaviour. The behaviour of those predecessors when in opposition suggested that schools should not have the power to exclude, that voluntary and grant-maintained schools should not have that power and should be subject to decisions by the local education authority. I am sorry to say that that message in opposition was reinforced by the message they conveyed between 1997 and 2001.

Well, the sinner repenteth, at least slightly, for which I congratulate the Secretary of State. Occasionally, however, he still feels the need to play to the gallery, which he did when he talked about sharing out bad pupils. The gloss that the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Mr. Twigg, provided in response to my earlier intervention was welcome, but it was not a gloss that was widely reported when the Secretary of State's remarks—that all schools should be forced to take their share of badly behaved pupils—first appeared on the BBC website. Of course, the Secretary of State is not responsible for the content of the BBC website, any more than he is responsible for headlines in the Daily Mail, but I am sure that the authors of those articles take a little backstairs briefing from Ministers and their advisers from time to time. They print the headlines that they believe will secure the readers' interest and Ministers frequently create the headlines that will secure their interest by a little careful backstairs briefing.

As I said, the Under-Secretary provided a gloss today. First, the gloss is that the policy works elsewhere—in Surrey and a number of other areas. I accept that. The process of moving one child from a school in which he is failing to one in which he might get a second chance works elsewhere, but that is not what Ministers are proposing. They are proposing to force pupils on to schools even though they may not have the space and the head teacher may be opposed to the admissions.

The second part of the Under-Secretary's gloss was that pupils would be returned only when they were reformed, but if they are reformed, they can be returned to any school, not just those without available places, so how will he secure the return of reformed pupils to schools that are already full?

I am listening with interest to what the hon. Gentleman is saying. I thought that he was going to continue in the same vein as Mr. Norman. The other part of Conservative party policy, which I presume the hon. Gentleman also supports, is to give head teachers and governors control over admissions. Thus one head could send a pupil out on permanent exclusion, while another head would not, under the Conservative proposals on admissions, have to take in any pupils. Where is the consistency in that?

I would have thought that it was entirely consistent to give head teachers control over not only who they exclude from their schools, but who they admit to them. That is entirely consistent. I suppose that the hon. Gentleman is being consistent as well, because he does not support giving head teachers control over either admissions or exclusions. [Interruption.] If reformed pupils are to be returned to schools where there is no space as well as to those where there is, Ministers will have either to overcrowd the schools where there is no space or keep places empty in popular schools in case a reformed pupil turns up. That reformed pupil will then leapfrog over those on the list who want to be admitted to that popular school. That is an absolutely extraordinary proposal. I cannot tell whether Ministers want overcrowded schools or empty spaces in popular schools and a queue of pupils unable to fill them. Perhaps the Minister could clarify that point.

We propose a system of turnaround schools. It must be accepted that pupil referral units—a previous Secretary of State thought that they started in 1997, but I was able to remind her that I taught in a school with a withdrawal unit, which comes to much the same thing, as early as 1980—outside schools, or withdrawal units within schools, cost more money to provide. They need to provide education to the same standard for the most difficult pupils, and teaching and pedagogy to a higher standard perhaps than is available elsewhere in the school or in other schools. It is not surprising that they need smaller class sizes, better qualified teachers and special programmes. We should accept that we sometimes have to pay more to teach children who are difficult to teach.

The problem at the moment is that a reformed pupil who goes back into a school carries with him few if any additional resources, little outside support and, in many cases, the same difficulties that he had before he was excluded. Let us increase the age-weighted pupil unit cost for difficult pupils. If necessary, let us increase that unit cost until a school is willing to admit them. There is no reason why every child of a particular age should carry the same age-weighted pupil unit funding: there is every reason why those pupils who are not welcome in particular schools should be funded to a higher level until schools do welcome them. That would be the introduction of a genuine market in education and it would provide effective education for children who have been excluded. Turnaround schools would help to provide that.

I said earlier that 10 per cent. of schools are recognised by Ofsted as suffering from poor discipline and 13 per cent. are getting worse. That means that too many pupils are being educated alongside difficult and disruptive contemporaries. They suffer bullying. Those who are excluded, sometimes to internal exile and sometimes to a pupil referral unit, far too frequently lose their education as well. The pupils who are well behaved lose their education and so do those who are badly behaved. Too many pupils in internal exile in schools are on a partial curriculum. I know of a particular pupil in my constituency who was excluded from one school and moved to another where he is on a 50 per cent. curriculum. What is he doing for the other 50 per cent. of the time? He is certainly not receiving the entitlement of every child about which the Government boast and that we believe every child deserves.

Turnaround schools have already been established and succeeded. St. Paul's school in Balsall Heath in Birmingham was established in the 1980s, when it was a private sector school. It became a grant-maintained school by the process of opting in and it is now a maintained sector school. It took, largely, pupils who had been excluded from the maintained sector. It obtained for them better GCSE results than most pupil referral units achieved. Turnaround schools could be a success where PRUs are not yet a success, not least because they would provide the capacity to allow pupils who misbehave to be removed from their schools. If John Cryer thinks that I would not want one in my constituency, I can tell him that we already have three prisons. I am not proposing a borstal, but we have a pupil referral unit that could be upgraded to the extent that my hon. Friends on the Front Bench propose.

I shall touch on two more issues and I hope that the Minister will be able to address one of them at least. First, I believe that it needs to be accepted that much disruption in schools is among pupils who have suffered the trauma of family breakdown. It is all very well to treat those pupils late on in the process, but the Minister heard my hon. Friend Alistair Burt give the figures in a debate in Westminster Hall last week. Ministers have said that they are trying to do something about the problem by means of the money invested in pupil behaviour. However, that does not deal with the cause of the problem, which is increasing levels of family breakdown. I hope that the Government can give some hope to future generations that we will not see the level of family breakdown that we have seen recently and that has led to the breakdown of discipline in some schools.

The second issue is Labour's history on this issue. I spoke of what had happened between 1997 and 2001. I now want to go back a little further. Labour's history on this issue is chequered, to the say the least. Labour's support for parents, heads, teachers and police was very chequered. The hon. Member for Hornchurch mentioned William Tyndale school, but I need hardly remind him that that school was run by the Inner London education area in the 1970s and it failed a huge number of pupils—

I was talking about 1968.

If the hon. Gentleman wants me to go back to the 1960s and 1970s, I will although I was confining myself to the 1980s and 1990s. As I said, in many cases Labour subverted the powers and responsibilities of teachers, undermined parents and refused the police access to schools when it was in control of too many local authorities.

In the context of a debate about rights and responsibilities, does the hon. Gentleman accept that 18 years of unbroken rule gives any political party the opportunity to transform a generation? Many of the social problems that we now deal with are not exclusively the responsibility of the Tory party, but for him to describe the 1980s and 1990s as being affected largely by Labour policy—when his party were in government for 18 years—is somewhat galling.

The Minister started listening only halfway through my sentence. I was not describing the consequences of Conservative Government, but of Labour policy as implemented through local education authorities which had unbridled control of education up until 1986. In the 1980s, the Government did not attempt to remove power from local education authorities and Labour exercised power in far too many of them. Several Labour LEAs undermined heads, undermined teachers and prevented the police from entering schools. That is what Labour sowed: it is now reaping the whirlwind. The Labour Govt are trying to do something about it, but it is late for them to do so.

rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haslehurst):

Order. I think that Mr. Turner has completed his speech.

I consider myself very lucky in the context of education because I represent a constituency that forms part of the London borough of Havering, along with my constituency neighbour, John Cryer. The local education authority is excellent and it has a co-operative and cordial relationship with its schools and head teachers. It devolves the maximum amount of funding from the centre to the schools, putting its trust in the schools to manage themselves successfully—and they do. Discipline is not a huge problem in Havering, although, as in most constituencies, a tiny minority of pupils cause problems.

From personal experience of serving on appeals panels on Essex county council and the education committee of the London borough of Havering, I know that, almost without exception, head teachers use exclusion as absolutely the last resort. It is the ultimate disciplinary measure after they have exhausted every other means available in the school. After listening carefully to the case made by the education authority and the head teacher and, often, to submissions from parents and even grandparents, I always supported the head teacher, because I understood that they had reached the point of desperation—where the welfare of the majority of pupils and staff had to transcend the rights and welfare of the difficult pupil. In almost every case, the head teacher felt that to reach that point was an admission of defeat.

I can recall only one occasion when I upheld an appeal. It involved a child in a special school who had been violent to another pupil and had a history of being difficult. After listening to the parents and grandparents who put his case, I weakened and allowed the appeal. Now, I think of it as weakening, although I did not at the time. I regretted it bitterly afterwards when I realised that I had let down the school, whose staff had tried so hard, in every way possible, to adapt the child's behaviour, but had failed.

Most schools in Havering and throughout the country have well-developed pastoral units, with teachers who have special responsibility for difficult pupils. They bend over backwards to make alternative arrangements for children who find it difficult, or sometimes impossible, to accept discipline and to conform at school and in the classroom. Schools make special arrangements for such pupils, providing separate lessons. The school council is often brought in to try to understand why a pupil cannot conform and to try to find a way through their difficulties. Even the primary schools in my constituency have school councils and I am impressed by the way they handle the disciplinary, emotional and bullying problems of other pupils. Thus even at primary level, children are learning co-operation. They learn how to listen to somebody else's argument and how to put their thoughts into words. They are gaining meeting skills.

Those developments are recent, but they will feed through. When those children reach secondary school, their experience of school councils in primary school will be of enormous benefit in approaching difficult children who are unable to conform, accept authority, do as they are told and benefit from the education that is offered them.

I am a governor at two secondary schools in Havering, which have a genuine comprehensive intake. One is a mixed comprehensive, Gaynes school language college, which achieved specialist school status on the third attempt; the other is the Sacred Heart of Mary girls' school, which is a denominational school. Both have their fair share of special needs pupils and are highly successful.

Such success stems largely from a dedicated and inspirational head teacher, who in turn inspires everybody else in the school—not just the other teachers, but everybody from the school caretaker to the teaching assistants and ancillary staff. The whole school family is inspired and, through the example of the head teacher, takes on their commitment.

I visit all the schools in my constituency regularly. In addition to the head teacher and the staff, parents have the greatest single influence on the success of a school. High parental involvement—not just from parents who turn up to parents' night, but from those who belong to the parent teachers association and help in all sorts of ways with the running of the school—has an extremely beneficial effect on the life of the school. The children benefit from knowing that their parents are in and out of school, taking a close interest, making sure that they do their homework and helping them with research, on school trips and in many other ways. School becomes a part of the child's life and is not a separate element; it is part of family life and is discussed at home.

Where exclusion is resorted to, it is the last resort, and I support our policy of allowing head teachers to have the final decision. Such decisions are not taken lightly and head teachers look on exclusion as a failure. It is the last resort when everything else has failed. They come to the point where they have to take into account the welfare of their staff and the other pupils. A disruptive pupil in the classroom prevents other pupils from benefiting from their lessons and from the teaching and learning process. When head teachers resort to exclusion, the Government should support them in that decision.

Even at the point of exclusion, parents often do not accept that their child has any faults. They defend their child's bad behaviour to the last, but they do not benefit the child by doing so. When such children deny their bad behaviour, they can never learn to overcome it; they must be helped to take responsibility for their behaviour. In reception classes, I have heard parents say to their children, on their first day at school, "Don't you let them tell you what to do". Those are exceptional circumstances, but such behaviour can start when a child who is knee-high is warned that they do not have to accept authority—they do not have to do as they are told, sit when they are asked to sit or do as the other children are doing. That is an enormous challenge for a teacher trying to establish a routine with a classroom of new pupils. It needs only one child who has been told that they do not have to conform to double the work load of a reception teacher.

I had some reservations when the Minister for School Standards said that he would help schools to co-operate in accepting excluded pupils. That statement is open to interpretation, but it is quite wrong to force schools to accept excluded pupils if a head teacher feels that it is not to the benefit of the life of the school and its pupils.

Once pupils have been excluded, it is essential that they immediately have full-time alternative provision. My hon. Friend Mr. Norman referred to time lapses of about five months before alternative provision was made available for some pupils. Such children need full-time supervision and education that is appropriate to their needs. If they are no longer able to benefit from full-time mainstream education, they need full-time alternative provision.

There are all sorts of ways to make such provision, but pupil referral units, which currently cater for only a limited number of pupils, need to be extended. Whether or not we call them turnaround schools, they should provide a flexible curriculum so that children who may not be academically able or who cannot engage with the academic curriculum have alternatives—they could take practical subjects, as well as learning the basic essential skills of reading, writing and numeracy. They would then be able to take their place in the adult world and be fit for employment. They also need tough discipline. Such courses should not be regarded as a reward for bad behaviour. If those units provide courses which students regard as more exciting, such as electronics, plumbing, bricklaying and other practical subjects, they appear to offer a reward for behaving badly in mainstream education. A sensitive approach is therefore needed.

My local college of further and higher education caters for secondary school pupils, who go there one or two days a week to take courses such as plumbing. However, supervision is required. If students have been unable to conform in mainstream education, they often lack the personal discipline to adapt to a college environment, where there is less discipline than at school. They must be far more motivated—if they play truant in mainstream education they are equally likely to do so in college, but it is less likely to be picked up. I recently visited a school where a large group of such pupils went to their local college of further and higher education to take advantage of the scheme. Because the group was sizable, the school made a teacher available to escort them and stay with them. However, when individual children go to college, they do so unsupervised, so it is not certain that they will arrive or have the independent skills to move around a large building with a large community and take full advantage of the course that they are supposed to be taking. If parents were willing to help with supervision and ensure that students arrived and participated in the allocated course, that would overcome some of those problems.

The problem of truancy arises from lack of engagement with the curriculum and is part of the spectrum of the discipline. It comes in various shapes and forms. In the primary sector, for example, it is largely condoned by parents. A certain number of pupils in that age group play truant without their parents' knowledge, but are much more likely to do so with parental consent. Some of them play truant on odd days when their parents want to go shopping or visit someone. Others complain about minor ailments, and it is much easier for parents to say, "All right, you can take the day off" than to persuade them to go to school. One of my children had what is euphemistically called school tummy-ache or abdominal migraine every single day in infant school. She hated going to school, and she cried and had a temperature every single day. I dreaded the day that she went to junior school, because I thought that things would get much worse. However, the problem miraculously disappeared. We never identified the cause—it is often difficult to get to the root of why children find going to school difficult, but it is certainly one of the causes of truancy, particularly in primary schoolchildren.

Secondary schoolchildren engage in internal or selective truancy. They absent themselves from certain lessons, or they register for a lesson but then disappear. Because they have more independence to circulate round the building, it is more difficult to keep tabs on them, so there are greater opportunities for truancy, either for part of a day or for a particular lesson. Prolonged truancy results when children are school-phobic and refuse to attend for long periods. They have emotional problems, and the school, the education authority and perhaps even the medical profession must work together to try to overcome them and prevent those children from missing great chunks of their education. When they take exams, we do not want them to have such a gap in their coursework that their chances of success are greatly reduced.

Teachers accused of common assault or sexual assault on pupils should be granted anonymity. There is a fatal flaw in the Government's proposals to speed up the process of investigation, as it gives no protection at all to the teacher. Once their name is in the public domain, even if the investigation takes only a month, that is enough to ruin their reputation. It is therefore important to protect them at least until they are charged. I say so advisedly because, as my hon. Friend Mr. Turner ably explained, if a teacher is found not guilty when a charge is made and a case goes to court, that does them no good. Their reputation is in tatters, and their sense of injustice when waiting for their case to come to court is sometimes sufficient for them to become so depressed and demotivated that they leave the teaching profession altogether.

One of my friends was an experienced teacher of many years' standing when he was accused by a child of sexual assault. The accusation turned out to be malicious, but the case took two years to come to court. During that period, my friend was suspended and lost not only his reputation, but his income and home. When the case came to court, he was found not guilty, but that did him absolutely no good. It was a further two years before the education authority decided that he was a fit person to go back on the list of supply teachers. He started to apply for jobs, but every time that he got work as a supply teacher, after a few weeks, once he had settled in and the head teacher was extremely pleased with the job that he was doing and the relationship that he had formed with the children, the whispering would start at the school gates. Someone would say, "That's the teacher who was accused of assault, and there's no smoke without fire." The head teacher would therefore have to ask him to leave, even though he was innocent of any offence.

After several attempts at working as a supply teacher, my friend decided that it was impossible to continue, so he is now lost to the teaching profession. He was also a lifelong foster parent, and had given many decades of service to the scouting movement. He was therefore lost not only to the teaching profession but to the scouting movement and to fostering. Everything that happened resulted from the accusations of a child who was dropped from the football team for misbehaviour. Some children know which trigger words to use. The word "abuse", for example, starts an investigation and triggers a teacher's suspension. The child may not realise the long-term implications of their action, but once that path has been embarked on, things must run their course. The teacher is the victim, so it is essential that we give as much protection as possible to teachers. We must allow for the possibility that occasionally accusations are genuine, but a high proportion of them are false allegations, so we must give maximum protection to the teaching profession.

I am certainly sympathetic to the hon. Lady's case, and most members of the Education and Skills Committee agree that, when things go wrong, they go very wrong indeed and destroy people's lives. However, are there not mechanisms in place to address the problem without the need for legislation? The Conservative party constantly says that there is too much legislation and red tape, but under its proposals we would end up with much more red tape. A better resolution of the problem is possible without legislation.

If only it could be resolved. We hear about more and more cases in which teachers are subject to false allegations. They lose their reputation and are subsequently lost to the teaching profession, so we must protect them from publicity. There is legislation to protect the child. We must balance that by giving equal protection to teachers. I have reservations about maintaining anonymity up to the point at which the teacher is charged. I wonder whether that is enough. I ask hon. Members to give that serious consideration, in the interests of natural justice.

The debate has been interesting and well informed, although it is disappointing that, given the importance that head teachers, teachers, parents, governors and pupils place on school discipline, only one Labour Back Bencher spoke in the debate, whereas there were three contributions from the Conservative Benches. Those who read the debate carefully will question the emphasis placed on school discipline by Labour Members. I know that Mr. Sheerman and other members of the Select Committee were meeting this afternoon to discuss "Every Child Matters", so that accounts for the absence of some Labour Members, but not all.

This is the second time that an Opposition Day debate has taken place when the Select Committee was meeting. On the first occasion we postponed our meeting, but today we could not. All the inspectors attended and the meeting took a long time to arrange. If the general public were watching the debate on television, they would see that very few hon. Members were present. As this is an Opposition Day, I should have thought that the Conservative Benches ought to be rather fuller than they are.

If the hon. Gentleman had been in the Chamber earlier, he would have heard my hon. Friend Mr. Norman tackling that point very effectively.

The subject is important and I shall deal with some of the points made in the debate. The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Mr. Twigg, spoke about the Government's plan to share the misery among schools by requiring them to take pupils who have been excluded from other schools. In response to an intervention from my hon. Friend Mr. Turner, the Minister provided a gloss that we were not aware of when he said that that referred only to pupils coming out of pupil referral units. In his speech on 18 November, the Secretary of State made no reference to pupils who have come out of pupil referral units. He spoke about in-year admissions being a headache for head teachers and the guidance that should be created. He also said—this demonstrates his method of intervening in the matter—that

"I expect all schools—community schools, church schools, grammar schools, foundation schools, academies—to be part of these protocols and I will if necessary legislate to achieve this."

That reflects the comment of my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight that it is not just about pupils who have been excluded from schools. It is about imposing on schools a system of managed moves.

Dr. Pugh, who spoke on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, supported the concept of anonymity up to the point of being charged for teachers who face allegations. However, for some pupils, best practice in our schools is not enough. There are some pupils who will not respond to the strategies that are in place. For those pupils, we need turnaround schools to help modify their behaviour and raise their attainment.

John Cryer, the only Labour Back Bencher who spoke, also supported anonymity before the point of charge for teachers facing allegations. I welcome his support.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells made a thoughtful speech that captured some of the complexities of school discipline and behaviour. He mentioned a school in his constituency where, in order to turn the school around, the head teacher had to expel more pupils. That caused problems but eventually led to an improvement in standards in the school. We need to recognise that the enforcement of rules and discipline is an important part of raising standards in schools that suffer the most. It is not only areas of deprivation that are affected. From talking to head teachers in schools that might be described as being in good areas, I have noticed that they too, at both primary and secondary level, identify problems of behaviour as a growing issue in their schools.

My hon. Friend made a point that reinforces our plan for 24,000 places in our turnaround schools. He spoke about a delay of four or five months in placing a child who has been excluded in alternative provision. Such a delay is unacceptable. What happens to those children until they are in alternative provision? Are they roaming the streets? Are they being given a proper education? They are outside schools and pupil referral units for too long. Our plans to introduce turnaround schools will close that gap, so that children who are excluded can go quickly into alternative provision that will tackle the causes of their poor behaviour.

My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight, who speaks with great experience of these matters, having been a teacher and involved in education for a number of years, highlighted the issue of suspension from schools. From speaking to the leaders of teachers unions, it is clear that many were concerned about the lack of support for heads and teachers who are suspended. At times, a decision to suspend a teacher is made quickly, without considering the circumstances, leaving the teacher vulnerable and isolated. As part of any package to protect our teachers, we need to examine the rules surrounding suspension, to give them the support that they need.

My hon. Friend Angela Watkinson spoke from experience based on her involvement in education and local government. She was right to say, as did other hon. Members on both sides of the House, that exclusion was a last resort. But she also made a point that is often missing from our debates about school discipline about the vital role that parents play in supporting schools. Too often parents undermine the discipline and rules that are in place in our schools. I talk to head teachers who have spent a disproportionate time trying to deal with parents who question the rules.

We know from our constituency case work and from the statistics that have been quoted throughout the debate that school discipline is a huge problem. A survey of National Union of Teachers members showed that they thought that the highest barrier to effective teaching was effective discipline in our schools. In his opening remarks, the Minister painted a rosy picture, saying that things were getting better. He quoted examples of surveys of the views of head teachers and teachers, yet in a recent survey of public opinion, 72 per cent. of respondents thought that discipline in schools had worsened in recent years. The Association of Teachers and Lecturers believes that the number of assaults is on the increase and that attacks on its members increased fivefold between 1998 and 2002.

We know also that where there is poor discipline in our schools, it has a corrosive effect on the morale of our teachers. In a survey carried out last year, a third of teachers who thought they would leave the profession within the next five years cited poor behaviour as the cause. Poor behaviour affects not just the morale of teachers, but children who cannot learn because of the actions of one disruptive pupil in a class and the life chances of the child who cannot behave.

It is clear that we need to take action to improve discipline in our schools. We have set out three ways to tackle the issue. The first is to restore authority to teachers. As has been reflected in the comments of hon. Members during the debate, schools work well where there is a clear set of rules and guidelines that are enforced. I visited a school this summer that had come out of special measures and spoke to pupils about what had changed in that school. They said that rules that were in place before but not enforced were now being enforced. That was the major factor that they saw as having changed the nature of the school and enabled them to learn.

We need to go one stage further. We need to go beyond the statement of clear expectations to which the Secretary of State referred in his speech of 18 November and have a binding contract between schools, parents and pupils, setting out the clear standards of behaviour that are expected. We should also give head teachers the authority that they need to implement that contract, so that if the rules are breached, it can be a factor in deciding to exclude pupils from school. If parents have signed that binding contract, they should recognise that it is their responsibility not to undermine those rules but support them, both in implementation at school and in the home, so that there is a cycle of virtuous behaviour in school and at home.

We also believe that, if we are to restore authority to teachers we need to scrap the independent appeals panels. Too often they second-guess the decisions of head teachers. Head teachers spend long periods trying to ensure that they have dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's so that an independent appeals panel cannot overturn their decision. It is a lengthy process that harms the morale of the staff who have to teach the pupil to be expelled, diverts senior management time away from their core task of leading the teaching and learning in the school and forces pupils who want to learn to put up with a child who sets out to disrupt every lesson. Scrapping the independent appeals panels would give head teachers control over discipline and the power to enforce the home-school contracts that are in the interests of all our schools.

We also need to ensure that proper provision is in place. The Ofsted report published last week on out-of-school education demonstrated that children are being failed by the current system. The report states:

"Overall, the quality of provision for children and young people out of school, their low attainment, the targeting and monitoring of provision, and the tracking of progress is low."

We cannot allow that to continue. We have talked about the link between exclusion and crime. Part of the reason for that link is that there is insufficient effort in pupil referral units on changing the behaviour of those children to encourage positive behaviour and break that link. We want children at pupil referral units to be expected to be there all the time. The Government say that every child should have 25 hours of education a week in pupil referral units, but the sad fact is that about half the children receive less than 20 hours a week and those children are being failed. There is no requirement on pupil referral units to publish their attendance figures. No data are collected on whether children are attending them. That needs to change. Our turnaround schools will ensure that attendance is monitored. They will ensure that children receive the education that they deserve. They will ensure that there is a real emphasis on attainment, that children will be entered for exams and that the units will be accountable if the children do not achieve. Turnaround schools are not a dead end but a revolving door. They are there to try to change behaviour and, where that improves, pupils will be given a certificate to enable them to be reintegrated in mainstream schools. For them, there is a real chance to succeed.

The other aspect of proper provision that we need to think about is that a child with special educational needs is four times more likely to be excluded from school than a child without such needs. It is clear from talking to organisations such as the human rights action centre on education and the independent panel for special education advice that they see a real problem in many of our schools, where the needs of children with special educational needs are not being met. Whether with regard to behavioural issues or conditions such as dyslexia or speech and language difficulties, often the children's needs are unmet. We need to ensure that the right specialist provision is in place and that requires special schools that offer such support to remain open, rather than being closed, as happens now. If we are to meet special educational needs, we need to ensure that there is good-quality provision.

During the past seven years, the Government have talked tough on discipline. They have spent hundreds of millions of pounds on trying to crack down on truancy and bad behaviour. They have introduced exclusions targets that they had to drop because they added to the disruption in our schools. Truancy targets have not been met. That sums up their policies during the past seven years and it sums up the failure at the heart of the Government: empty promises, poor value for money and meaningless targets.

It is clear to Opposition Members that school discipline is a vital issue for all those involved in education. Without school discipline, we cannot raise educational opportunity. Without school discipline, few can learn. Without school discipline, highly qualified, well-motivated staff will quit the profession. At the next general election, the people of this country will know that only one party is committed to school discipline and that is the Conservative party.

Whatever differences the debate has highlighted, there is clearly a consensus in the House that school discipline is important in defining the kind of society that we want to help shape. Pupil behaviour is central to every school's mission to raise standards. Schools, along with parents, have a duty to teach young people about the responsibilities as well as the rights that go with citizenship in a civilised society and our approach to discipline can have a powerful effect on inter-generational opportunities and aspirations. The pupils of today will be the parents of tomorrow. These issues affect us all. High standards of behaviour matter to the vast majority of young people who go to school every day determined to make the most of their education. Behaviour affects teachers and support staff, who can have their lives made difficult by a small disruptive element in any class or school community.

I have listened carefully to the debate. Head teachers have been described as heroic, and as my brother is a head teacher, I do not want dispute that but I honestly believe that the adjective "heroic" is best applied to classroom teachers, who day in and day out in many difficult schools find their personalities under assault in a way that unless one has experienced it—I speak as an ex-teacher—one cannot empathise with. I am interested in practical measures and a key one is to ensure that parents are involved in everything that a child gets up to. Can we look to a strengthening of the home-school contracts, which are a vital way forward?

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend that the relationship between home and school is essential. We can have the best teachers, curriculum and heads, but the support, involvement and engagement of parents is vital.

It is also true to say that behaviour can shape the destiny of disruptive children whose negative behaviour leads to poor grades and, all too frequently, entry into the criminal justice system. We all know that poor behaviour can eat away at the heart of communities, spilling out of the classroom into the neighbourhood with a small minority engaging in corrosive antisocial behaviour. We all accept the importance of these issues and we have had a range of sensible, mature contributions to today's debate. What has been lacking in quantity has been made up for in quality.

Mr. Hoban cited recent opinion polls in defence of his view that standards of behaviour are in decline. If we use opinion polls as a measure, I am not sure whether Labour is heading for a majority of 120 or 150 at the next general election. He talked about the number of Members who contributed to the debate, but a ratio of 3:1 Opposition and Labour Back Benchers is hardly a ringing endorsement of an Opposition day. My hon. Friends the Members for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) made important interventions, although they did not have the opportunity to make full speeches.

I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman that the question of behaviour and discipline is not exclusively concerned with areas of social deprivation. I also accept that we need to do better in terms of the delays in placing children appropriately when things go wrong at schools. But it is a little rich when he speaks for a party that in government did not insist on any requirement to offer excluded children any quality or quantity of education. Indeed, those were the very children who were roaming the streets, causing havoc, with no sensible Government response.

Dr. Pugh raised the important issue of the need to consider the consequences of dysfunctional families and young people's home lives. He also talked about the exciting flexibilities that are beginning to open up now in terms of the 14 to 16 curriculum. Partnerships between schools and colleges, and between schools, colleges and employers, as Mr. Willis mentioned, are trying to motivate young people and turn them on to education, rather than to turn them off. The White Paper, which we will introduce in January in response to the Tomlinson proposals, will directly address the issue of a flexible, responsive and personalised curriculum.

The hon. Member for Southport and other hon. Members raised the anonymity of teachers, which is clearly an important, delicate and sensitive issue. We have expressed our concern about further legislation, although we are concerned about undue delays. We must not send out the message today that, when children make allegations, the assumption must be that they are not telling the truth. The calibration of the message from this debate is important, because there are many examples of children who have disclosed abuses that turned out to be true. We also know that, throughout history, many children in our society have suffered in silence as a consequence of adult abuse. That does not mean that we should not do everything that we can to be sensitive to those teachers who are subject to allegations that prove to be entirely untrue.

My hon. Friend John Cryer made a powerful contribution, the central element of which was that Conservative policies do not stack up. How can a party say that it will slash taxes and raise public expenditure on education at the same time? Those two policies do not square with each other. If we add to that the Conservative party's record in government and its disinvestment in public services—we are now paying the price in terms of the social problems that the Government are having to deal with—the British people will simply not buy their policies or find them credible.

Mr. Norman made a powerful, well-informed and authoritative speech, which perhaps explains why he is having to leave the House at the next election. He acknowledged the recent improvements, which are largely the result of not only this Government, but head teachers and teachers up and down the country, and did not perpetuate the myth that the situation is getting worse and that behaviour is deteriorating. He rightly raised the questions of low aspirations, poor parenting and community influence over the behaviour of children and young people. We must address those issues through not only the education system, but joined-up policies.

The hon. Gentleman also referred to heroic school leaders. We should pay tribute to the many dynamic heads who deal with children of all abilities, potential and behavioural standards on a day-to-day basis and who make their schools work impressively.

The hon. Gentleman rightly referred to the impact of exclusion. The correlation between exclusion and entry into the criminal justice system is indisputable. We should therefore do everything that we can to minimise the number of children and young people who are excluded from our education system in the first place, while recognising that some will always need to be excluded because their behaviour is unacceptable. The link between young people in the criminal justice system and those who are excluded from school is frightening and should concern us all.

Mr. Turner spoke sensitively about the effect on his constituent of allegations that perhaps turned out not to be true—the consequences were certainly tragic. He also referred to suspension. The difficultly is that suspension, which occurs in all sorts of walks of life and workplaces, is often described as a neutral measure. Its victims do not always feel that the measure is neutral, but people in management and leadership positions must have a way in which to make these difficult choices. I will pass on to the Secretary of State for Education and Skills his powerful defence of his record on behaviour and discipline.

On the fair distribution of challenging pupils, many pupils do not go from school to a pupil referral unit or out of the school system. Sometimes schools feel that they have no option but to place a child elsewhere when things do not work out. In those circumstances, is it not right that every school in an area should take some responsibility for those challenging children who are not placed in a pupil referral unit but placed in a school setting? Some schools are doing their best to come out of special measures and difficult circumstances, and they are doing incredibly well. Is it right to expect them to deal with all the challenging young people and children in any one community? That cannot be fair or equitable.

The hon. Gentleman also referred to this Government's chequered history, which is cheeky coming from a party that had 18 years of unbroken rule in which to transform and challenge some of those difficulties.

Angela Watkinson made a thoughtful and informed contribution. She discussed college-school partnerships and made the point that they should be rooted in clear responsibility and accountability. I was worried when she said that whenever she sits on an appeals panel, she always supports the head teacher because if one were on a jury and admitted that approach, one would be in some difficultly. She described how she weakened on one occasion, and I wish that I had been there to see it.

The hon. Lady rightly pointed to the important contribution that school councils can make. School councils can get young people to discuss behaviour and see the importance of parameters and boundaries. They make a direct difference to standards of behaviour in schools, which is why the Government have said that pupil councils and student councils should be good practice in all our schools. She was also right to emphasise the importance of parental involvement.

We accept that this issue is important, but the differences between us are simple. We differ on the solutions and on the attempt by the Tories to misrepresent the state of the system. This Government were the first to put attendance and discipline at the heart of school standards. Through our early years education and child care revolution, we are offering interventions that can make a long-term difference. We are focusing on school leadership as the key to creating the right ethos and an effective approach to discipline in every school.

This Government are ensuring that every classroom teacher has access to training and support on how to manage discipline. We have introduced a focus on the early years of secondary school, where pupil behaviour frequently deteriorates. We are freeing up the curriculum and rebuilding vocational education—and not only for difficult and challenging young people. We also seek a personalised learning offer to motivate young people, not turn them off, and to engage with voluntary organisations and colleges.

This Government have caused schools to place a much greater priority on school attendance. We have introduced learning support units, learning mentors and police in schools to help manage discipline. We have doubled the number of places in pupil referral units and insisted that permanently excluded pupils should have access to full-time education for the first time. As the hon. Member for Fareham acknowledged, we have reformed exclusion appeal panels to include more people with classroom experience and required those panels to balance the interests of the overall school community with individual pupil's rights. We have introduced a focus on parental responsibility to support schools through parenting contracts and orders and are taking tackling bullying seriously.

Despite the encouraging signs, we are not complacent and will continue to put behaviour at the heart of our school standards agenda. By contrast, the Tories would introduce a network of sink specialist schools that would produce yet another generation of sink children. They would abolish appeals panels, leading to cases ending in the courts mired in a swamp of litigation and legal bills, which is a charter for lawyers, not for improved discipline.

The Tories' cuts to early-years provision would ensure that more children and young people behave badly and are excluded. Their refusal to support fair admission means that some schools would face an unfair share of the responsibility to offer high quality education for all. Their introduction of five-plus and reintroduction of the 11-plus would mean young children labelled as "difficult" spending their entire education outside mainstream education.

A decline in the standards of behaviour, civility and respect should be a source of concern to all those who care about the future of our country. However, politicians who are fit to govern have a duty to present honest solutions that seek to tackle complex, long-term problems in a serious way—solutions that recognise the need for long-term strategies, not short-term headlines. The Conservatives had 18 years of unbroken rule in which they had a unique opportunity to build a different kind of society. Instead, the consequences of their values and policies can be seen all around us. Ill discipline in our schools, antisocial behaviour in our streets and poor parenting are not the sole responsibility of the Conservatives, but the tragedy is that when faced with choices in Government, they turned their back on the big issues that determined the long-term nature and character of this country.

This Government will not shirk from the big issues. We will continue to put the rights and responsibilities of citizens at the heart of our determination to raise standards and rebuild the fabric of entire communities.

Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:—

The House divided: Ayes 134, Noes 290.

Question accordingly negatived.

Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments), and agreed to.

Mr. Deputy Speaker forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House welcomes the high priority the Government gives to improving behaviour and discipline in schools; supports Government measures to promote positive behaviour by empowering headteachers to deal with badly behaved pupils; celebrates the success that is evident, including attendance being at its highest ever level and Ofsted reporting behaviour satisfactory or better in 99 per cent. of primary schools and 95 per cent. of secondary schools; affirms the Government's commitment to tackle problems that remain; further supports the Government's reform of exclusions to strengthen the power of headteachers; deplores attempts to destroy that system, which would expose headteachers to litigation; welcomes the fact that headteachers, local education authorities and staff are endorsing Government plans for Foundation Partnerships which help schools co-operate to put pupils back on the right track; notes that capacity of pupil referral units has almost doubled under this Government to 13,000 places; considers that to multiply this capacity by six would not represent cost-effective spending on behaviour; deplores the suggestion that privatised borstals are the answer to every problem; endorses the action that the Government is taking to keep drugs and knives out of schools; further endorses the Government's drive to ensure that parents play their part in ensuring that children attend school regularly and behave well; further supports the Government's reforms for dealing with allegations against teachers swiftly and fairly; and agrees with the Government that no pupil has the right to disrupt the education of others and that every pupil, not just the few, should have the opportunity to succeed in life and to contribute.