Education and Inspections Bill

I wrote to head teachers, talked to parents and parent groups and met local education authority officers. I must now try to summarise in three minutes the mass of information that they gave me. I shall do my best to do them justice. Most people to whom I spoke believed the Bill to be about structures and they hoped that it would be about rising standards. They said that they wanted help with standards and that they needed some action on several matters. I hope that we can amend the measure in Committee to help them achieve their objective. They want us to stop messing about with structures. They fear that education is a political football and say that it is time that it stopped being so. Although the Bill goes some way in that direction, it could have gone much further. Sadly, the Government withdrew from that position and that disappoints many of the people to whom I spoke. Those people told me that we need more setting in schools and that they need more help to set properly. They believe that one of the major ways in which to improve standards is to understand that children learn best in groups with others of similar ability. We need to direct proper resources to those groups to get the best out of everybody who attends our schools. The people to whom I spoke said that we should leave decision making to the professionals in our schools and they fear that we interfere too much. Two people told us that if we simply backed off, shut up and allowed teachers to get on with it, we would have better standards of education in all our schools. I believe that—we should trust professionals. We, as politicians, do not do that enough. The people to whom I spoke believed that there should be a limited LEA model but that it should be mostly concerned with stepping in quickly when schools begin to fail. They also said that national league tables should be abolished. Everyone who talked to me told me that they were corrupt and open to manipulation. It is time we listened to that. Equivalence is a disgrace and I hope that the Minister for Schools tackles that point. In a short time, I have tried to sum up some of the things that the people to whom I spoke told me. They want us to help them raise standards and to get off their backs so that they can do that. I hope that the Bill can be amended and we can give them what they want so that children can benefit.