Teaching Standards Westminster Hall Debates

Speech by Annette Brooke on Tue 7th Jul 2009

Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

I also start by congratulating Mr. Stuart. He expressed some very interesting ideas, many of which I agree with. There are probably other areas that he talked about where I would place a slightly different emphasis. None the less, the important thing that we will agree on in this debate is that we need not only an adequate supply but a full supply of highly qualified entrants into the teaching profession. It is how we attack that issue that we need to debate today.

I started thinking about this debate by focusing on the quote that the hon. Gentleman used, when he said that

"the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers".

That must be fundamentally true. Starting at the top, the quality of leadership is of prime importance in any school setting.

The Ofsted figures for 2008-09 quoted in the debate pack, which are about the effectiveness of teaching and learning in meeting the full range of learners' needs, show that 29.1 per cent. of primary schools were judged to be satisfactory and 1.8 per cent. were judged inadequate, while 32.1 per cent. of secondary schools were judged satisfactory and 1.8 per cent. were judged inadequate.

We can look at the downside and say that roughly a third of schools are judged to be either satisfactory or inadequate. Alternatively, we can look at the upside and say that two thirds of schools are good or outstanding. We must celebrate the excellent teaching that exists and the progress that has been made. However, if I was writing a report on teaching standards, I think that I would conclude that we can and must do much better.

The recent Ofsted report on standards of English in schools states:

"There is a significant gap between the most effective schools and the rest. The most effective provide a dynamic and productive English curriculum. However, too much English teaching is no better than satisfactory and too many pupils are not able to make the progress they need to catch up."

In other words, it is particularly the most disadvantaged pupils who are suffering.

We know that about 20 per cent. of children are leaving primary school with inadequate literacy and numeracy. Only half of pupils leave secondary school with five good GCSEs, including English and maths, while 85 per cent. of poor white boys fail to achieve that benchmark. Furthermore, 55 per cent. of schools in the poorest areas fail to achieve the Government benchmark of 30 per cent. of their children obtaining five A to C GCSE grades.

Ofsted's annual report for 2007-08 says that too many children and young people are receiving services that are "patently inadequate", especially those who are from disadvantaged backgrounds. That is despite the fact that there have been broad improvements across schools, children's services and further education.

The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness touched on the issue of how we can get rid of teachers who are less than satisfactory. I think that the Government have probably taken a step in the right direction with the proposal for a teacher registration system. Of course there are poor teachers and the renewal of a licence to teach-a system similar to those that already exist in other professions and even, in a sense, for MPs-would help to eradicate those teachers who should not be in schools. However, I always have fears about Government initiatives. In principle, the teacher registration scheme is a good idea, but will it turn into a bureaucratic nightmare that takes up head teachers' time and ends up proving to be very costly? It needs to be done properly, and we need to focus on raising the status of the profession.

We need to look at the context in which individual teachers find themselves, as well as the overall picture. We are right to focus on entrance to the profession, because we are suffering from a long-term problem that has not been tackled satisfactorily. It is true that we have all kinds of initiatives which probably do not amount to much over time, but, if one looks at the statistics, it appears that the old Teacher Training Agency-now the Training and Development Agency for Schools-did not meet the Government's targets for filling places.

Only since April this year have predictions changed. For obvious reasons-the extra supply of graduates-all places in all subjects will be filled. Even then, there probably will not be enough physicists and chemists to meet the demand because too many biologists have been recruited. We have seen a rise in the level of qualifications held by applicants, and that is to be welcomed.

There are alternative routes into teaching. Most people think that the Teach First scheme is impressive. It has raised the status of the teaching profession, and I agree that the entry, even for a relatively short time, still can make a great contribution. Unfortunately, in the scale of things, the number involved is very small.

Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight, Conservative)

Before the hon. Lady moves on to another subject, what would she do about physicists and chemists, who appear not to be necessary because of the biologists? How can we include more physicists and chemists, who need to be included in the group?

Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

Again, we have to go right back to basics. We have a problem, in that there are so few schools that offer the three sciences separately. We have to go back to that before we can bring forward an adequate supply of good science teachers. Obviously, many things can be done with continuous professional development. Training can be topped up. When I was teaching, I did not necessarily always teach my first subject, and I can see that I could easily have been retrained as a full-blown mathematics teacher. There are options around, and we need to grasp them. However, it is a difficult problem, made worse because we sat on it for so long without doing enough.

Graham Stuart (Beverley & Holderness, Conservative)

Will the hon. Lady give way?

Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

I am a bit anxious about the time. I shall take one more intervention, but then I must move on.

Graham Stuart (Beverley & Holderness, Conservative)

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. Perhaps I misunderstood the time pressures.

Is it the policy of the hon. Lady's party that it is necessary to get rid of national pay agreements so that disadvantaged schools can pay more-the point I made in my speech-but also so that pay can be higher for those who teach the disciplines for which it is hardest to recruit?

Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. In our recent schools paper, which was passed at our last party conference, we make the point that individual schools should have more power, including the ability to offer higher pay to those who teach shortage subjects. We need to look at pay and conditions.

Moving on quickly, I often feel that there is patchy support for newly qualified teachers in this country. Some teachers experience good induction. On a recent visit to Canada with the Children, Schools and Families Committee, I learned that newly qualified teachers receive two years of support, which is much more than we offer.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families secondary school curriculum and staffing survey for 2007 shows that only 56 per cent. of pupils in secondary modern schools were taught maths by a teacher with an appropriate post A-level qualification, compared with 73 per cent. in 11-to-16 comprehensives and 88 per cent. in grammar schools. For English, the figures were 66, 74 and 94 per cent. It is a real problem that many young people are not being taught by people with specialist qualifications, and the situation is worse in the most deprived areas.

The survey reveals that children in the poorest areas of the country are least likely to be taught by well-qualified teachers, which indicates not only that there is a need for more highly-qualified teachers, but that there is a particular shortage in the toughest schools. In response to comments made earlier in the debate, I would like to point out that training is needed to deal with challenging behaviour. It is not quite as easy as walking into a job. I am a former teacher, and I have taught in both the state and independent sectors.

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister, Children, Schools and Families; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

Can the hon. Lady recollect from her teacher training days what training she was given in behaviour management in the classroom?

Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

I would not recommend to anyone the training that I had at, I have to say, a prominent university. It was a one-year postgraduate certificate in education. Training in behaviour management is incredibly important, but, as my subject was economics, I would not necessarily have expected to receive it in my training.

We have a problem. Is the market working? Is it the Government's fault for failing to recruit sufficient entrants, or is it the parents' fault for not complaining loudly enough? It is all too easy just to look at the problem. The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness is right to say that we have to come up with some better solutions.

There is a great deal of evidence that the situation is even worse in primary schools. In its state of the nation report, the Royal Society gave staggering figures showing that the number of primary school teachers qualified in stem subjects was falling. In his review of the teaching of mathematics in English primary schools, Sir Peter Williams considered that only 3,000 teachers currently had sufficient knowledge to qualify as mathematics teachers. The Government accepted all of his recommendations, and I am interested to know what progress has been made in improving the number of qualified mathematics teachers in primary schools.

Graham Stuart (Beverley & Holderness, Conservative)

Will the hon. Lady give way?

Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

I will continue with my speech so that other people have an opportunity to make theirs.

A parliamentary question last year revealed that an increasing number of training teachers are having to re-sit basic maths tests. This reinforces some of the points that were made earlier. Since 2001, trainee teachers made 20,000 failed attempts at numeracy tests, and the average number of attempts needed to pass the literacy test has increased by 16 per cent. We all subscribe to raising standards, but, unless the Government play their full part in ensuring good quality entrants to the profession in the first place, some schools and pupils will be disadvantaged.

I wonder why the Government's new £10,000 golden handcuff for teachers applies only to secondary schools. Do we not need to attract the best applicants into primary schools in challenging areas, given the importance of basic literacy at the very start?

Far more could be done with continuous professional development, and I hope that the new licence to teach will address that, albeit rather belatedly. Since the 2007 survey that I referred to, the problem has not gone away. As Professor John Howson of Education Data Surveys wrote only last week in his most recent assessment of the labour market for teachers, English and art remain two of the more perplexing subjects, with high vacancy numbers compared with the number of trainees. For English, the estimate is that fewer than 1,800 trainees may be competing for more than 2,400 vacancies. It is staggering that we have that shortage, given current market conditions.

On lack of training, the Government have followed rather than led. The inclusion agenda, which I am fundamentally in favour of, has been promoted ruthlessly since 1997, but the basic training for teachers has only now been introduced. Teachers coming through the teacher training programme before 2011 will not have received that extra training.

[John Cummings in the Chair]

On standards in general, we need to untangle what real progress has been made from people's lack of confidence that standards have remained constant. We really need Ofqual to be independent. We Liberal Democrats are seriously concerned about whether Ofqual will be genuinely independent and accountable to Parliament, rather than just to the Secretary of State. We have a number of proposals for an educational standards authority, which would guarantee that genuine independence.

In conclusion, although I take on board the point about teaching standards, we need to look at a range of barriers that stop children succeeding. Although a lot of progress has been made in respect of the failure to identify and resolve educational problems in early years, the standard of teaching at that stage still has to be developed much further. For example, one in five teachers in the early years foundation stage have only a level 2 qualification. In other words, we have got the most important part-the starting point-topsy-turvy and not everybody is able to access higher-level qualifications. On inadequate and inconsistent funding for schools and college with high levels of educational disadvantage, we advocate a pupil premium that would enable money to be found to pay staff higher salaries, if the head teacher and the governors chose to do so.

Infant class sizes are too large. The failure to plan properly this year has resulted in 10,000 pupils being in classes with more than 30 pupils. On class size, the Government made a commitment to fund state schools at the same levels as independent schools. What happened to that?

In too many schools, leadership and governance is not effective enough. Government targets and micromanagement distort priorities. Teachers are undermined by this centralised approach. The Education and Skills Bill gave Ministers more than 150 new powers. I agree with the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness that all our schools and colleges must have the freedom to innovate.

The inappropriate offering of the curriculum, leading to pupils' needs not being met, has made teaching difficult. Teacher training to the national curriculum means that teachers have lost the confidence to be innovative. So we are in a vicious circle at the moment that we need to break out of, because, as hon. Members have said, people remember an inspirational teacher throughout their lives, and we must ensure that we have many more inspirational teachers for children from all backgrounds.