Mr Robin Squire: indicated assent.
Mr Robin Squire: Today's debate is slightly unusual—
Mr Robin Squire: It may be unusual for other reasons that the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) has yet to tell us, but I anticipate that will be unusual as it will concentrate overwhelmingly on standards rather than funding in schools. Those of us involved in education—there are some familiar faces in the Chamber—will know that such debates tend to be dominated by funding. The reason why the...
Mr Robin Squire: I shall willingly give way to my hon. Friend, who has wide experience in these matters.
Mr Robin Squire: My hon. Friend is right. The Teacher Training Agency has responded seriously to our request that it should consider the likely flow of teachers in and out over the next few years. My hon. Friend has identified one area in which there is a clear need for greater recruitment. We shall continue to examine further any possible measures to stimulate interest in subjects such as mathematics and...
Mr Robin Squire: I suppose that we were bound to get to the bottom of it sooner or later, if hon. Members will pardon the expression. We have clearly got in there early. Hansard will show that I voted to retain corporal punishment in 1986. I was on the losing side. I speak with the additional benefit of being married to a teacher of many years experience who also believes that, as a last resort, it was a...
Mr Robin Squire: From his experience as a former senior teacher, my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) speaks with considerable authority. In the two years that I have been involved as a Minister in discussions with every teacher association and governors group, as well as other interested bodies, none of those groups has asked for the return of corporal punishment as part of a package of...
Mr Robin Squire: I shall willingly give way in a moment. The measures announced this week in the new Education Bill clearly reflect the views put to us by many teacher groups. If teacher groups said that, in addition to the measures that we are introducing in the light of their representations, they also wanted us to consider the return of corporal punishment, we would do so. However, there has been no such...
Mr Robin Squire: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I appreciate that the new measures will not have quite the headline-striking capacity as the subject on which we have exchanged views in the past couple of minutes. However, in truth, those measures which my hon. Friend correctly identifies are the result of negotiations and discussions, and represent what teacher representatives say they wish to have.
Mr Robin Squire: Everything that my hon. Friend says is correct, although he will accept in turn, I think, that there are other aspects to the matter. Those aspects have no doubt influenced not just all the teacher associations I mentioned, but many others. Before that interesting small divertissement, we were talking about the improving schools programme, and I said that I would not be talking much about...
Mr Robin Squire: The hon. Gentleman properly invites me into one of our two causes célèbres—that is the second French phrase this morning for the hon. Member for Walton. I hesitate to go into the matter, and if I do go in, I hesitate to go in through the door through which the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) invites me. I do not believe that, at heart, what is going on at Manton is summed up...
Mr Robin Squire: I have learnt to treat with some reserve reports of extracts of speeches. I make that point from practical experience. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has had a similar experience of selective quotation being used against him—not by Conservative Members, of course! The serious point, to which I shall come in a moment, is that not only Her Majesty's inspectors, but all Ministers regularly...
Mr Robin Squire: As soon as I have answered immediate points, I intend to turn to the whole question of inspections and to mention the chief inspector's annual report. If the hon. Gentleman can contain himself for a moment, I shall seek to cover the points he has made.
Mr Robin Squire: My hon. Friend makes some very valid points. I especially endorse his earlier comments about the overall value and excellence of teachers. One keeps saying that, and that is why comments that are sometimes attributed to either Ministers, chief inspectors or whomsoever, are usually taken out of context. We invariably stress that we are talking about a minority. Many years ago, when I still...
Mr Robin Squire: The hon. Gentleman is on the ball this morning. I hope that we can move just a little towards an intelligent, mature discussion of such matters and recognise, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Clifton-Brown) rightly said, that we need to make improvements in the initial selection of teachers and the way in which they are reviewed during their work; and, yes,...
Mr Robin Squire: The hon. Gentleman scoffs, but the reality is that inspection reports available in the old system were discussed in private among consenting adults in the Inner London education authority. Nobody ever got to know about them, rarely did reforms occur, and standards continued at an appallingly low level. Where a school fails to make progress, we will transfer it to the control of an education...
Mr Robin Squire: My hon. Friend refers to the tragedy of Hackney Downs school. Those a little older than myself will remember it in its heyday. The lessons to be learned—there are many to be drawn from Hackney Downs—including the near-irrelevance of high funding and low class sizes when faced with a collapse of authority, and an education authority's inability or unwillingness to step in and turn a school...
Mr Robin Squire: I was confident that our other cause célèbre would come up this morning. I am happy on most occasions to debate what I submit is a multi-faceted problem, but I certainly reject outright the hon. Gentleman's implication that amalgamating two schools-even two schools with problems-necessarily and inevitably produced a new school that could not or would not cope. That is not true, and, as the...
Mr Robin Squire: I have given way a lot, and I am anxious to make progress. It is only because the Government have introduced measures aimed at raising standards in schools that we are now able to have an informed debate. We will no doubt hear shortly from the hon. Member for Walton that new Labour has discovered a new-found enthusiasm for raising standards in schools, but what new Labour says now is...
Mr Robin Squire: I am reaching my concluding comments, but I shall give way for the last time to my hon. Friend.
