What assessment she has made of the 2004–05 GCSE results.

What assessment she has made of the 2004–05 GCSE results.

Provisional results for 2005 show that 55.7 per cent. of 15-year-olds achieved five or more GCSEs or equivalent at grades A* to C. That is an increase of two percentage points on last year—the biggest year-on-year rise for more than a decade. It means that more than 63,000 more pupils are now achieving five good GCSEs or equivalent than did so in 1997. I congratulate pupils, teachers and their schools on that tremendous achievement.

Although GCSE results have improved across Bristol, we know that there is still some way to go. The same could be said of staying-on rates in full-time education for 16 and 17-year-olds, which stand at 74 per cent. and 58 per cent. respectively. Will the Secretary of State comment on how the proposals in the white paper will help to address that situation?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to the scandalously low staying-on rates in this country. Britain has one of the lowest staying-on rates in the entire industrialised world, and Bristol has one of the lowest staying-on rates in Britain. We have to transform that. We have a target for improving staying-on rates from an average of 75 per cent. to 90 per cent. over the next 10 years. We will do that by introducing specialised diplomas that mix vocational and academic education and allow people to study subjects that interest them in the places that interest them in the ways that interest them.

Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating College high school in my Constituency? This year, its GCSE results improved by a phenomenal 200 per cent. to 34 per cent. good passes from a disastrous 11 per cent. last year. Will my right hon. Friend reflect on the fact that the school is now finally fully staffed, successfully federated and making massive strides mainly because it has its third head in little more than two years? Schools should not trundle along in special measures while another generation of working-class kids gets written off. A failing school is not only a tragedy but an emergency. We cannot all go to Eton, can we?

I send my personal congratulations to all the pupils and teachers at the school in my hon. Friend's Constituency. It is a tremendous achievement, although I hope that it is only the first step on a long journey to securing even better results. My hon. Friend is right: in rare but nevertheless too many cases schools have languished in special measures, not only for one or two years but sometimes for five or six. That must come to an end. That is why I proposed in the education white paper that if a school had not made rapid progress within a year of being put into special measures, something radical should be considered, including federating with a more successful school, which my hon. Friend gave as an example.

Does the Secretary of State share my concern that many of those who attain five GCSEs do not study languages? Will she give an undertaking to review the languages that are taught in our schools? In the context of global competition, will she consider adding Chinese and Urdu to the curriculum? Let me stress that there are some working-class kids on the Conservative Benches, too.

The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the need to promote modern foreign language teaching in our schools. Chinese is one of the fastest-growing modern languages in schools, with more and more opting to teach it as a specialism. Perhaps the best way to make our children enthusiastic about modern foreign languages is to teach them at primary school. That is why we have made a commitment that, by 2010, every child over the age of seven should learn at least one foreign language at primary school.

Does the Secretary of State accept that her first duty is to protect the integrity of the GCSE examinations? Does she further accept that results should never be massaged so that schools appear to be doing better than they are? That does a huge disservice to the pupils.

I completely agree with the right hon. Gentleman that we should preserve the integrity of GCSEs. Recently, the director of education at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reviewed our system for preserving the integrity of GCSEs and said that he knew of no more robust system in the world.

Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating Churchfields school in my Constituency, of which I am a governor? It almost doubled its GCSE results from 26 per cent. in 2004–05 to just under 50 per cent. this year. Will she reassure me and my constituents that the Government will continue to support and promote with employers and parents vocational GCSEs as an equal alternative to traditional GCSE courses? That is what they want and value.

I certainly send congratulations to Churchfields school on its remarkable success in improving its GCSE results. My hon. Friend is right; vocational qualifications are hugely important and they have been undervalued in this country for generations. We need to start taking them seriously. That is why, later this autumn, I shall publish a delivery plan for implementing our 14 to 19-year-old specialised diplomas. They will, for the first time, give our young people genuine chances to study vocational qualifications of a high quality, which lead on to the next qualification and can even take students into higher education.

Does the Secretary of State agree with last week's BBC research, which showed that not enough young people in our most improving schools were achieving A* to C grades in English and maths? Does she accept that the foundations of numeracy and literacy are laid at primary school, yet 44 per cent. of children leaving primary school are unable to read, write or count to the desired standard?

The hon. Gentleman should study the record a bit more closely. Fifty-seven per cent. of our young people achieve the expected standard in reading, writing and arithmetic by the time they leave primary school. If we turn the clock back eight years, we find that figure reversed to 43 per cent. That achievement has been made after 50 years of no progress at all in raising primary school standards. Yes, I agree that we have to go further with English and maths, but I do not accept that schools have been downgrading their emphasis on those subjects because they are promoting vocational qualifications. Of course they must do more with English and maths; that is why we are making the GCSEs harder and why we are changing the league tables to ensure that schools reflect English and maths qualifications in the five GCSE results.

Sadly, earlier this week the Secretary of State for Education and Skills announced her plans to enfeeble and marginalise local education authorities. While she still has the opportunity, would she care to pay tribute to the county of Leicestershire—which is not Labour controlled—for successively achieving record GCSE results despite persistently being the worst funded shire county authority under both the previous Conservative Administration and our own? Finance and results do not always go together.

I have a lot of respect for my hon. Friend, who I know takes these issues extremely seriously. I pay tribute to the work that has been done in Leicestershire to achieve this year's record results and I hope that the county will move from strength to strength. I should like to reassure my hon. Friend that there is a real role for local authorities in the education white paper. I should also like to cite the view of the Local Government Association, which stated that it welcomes the new strategic role that has been given to local authorities.