Education and Inspections Bill

I rise to speak as the proud product of comprehensive education, as both a pupil and a teacher. I want to follow on from where my fellow Derbyshire Member, my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Liz Blackman), left off, by asking, who suffers when the system fails? With only a 56 per cent. GCSE pass rate, we are not delivering for enough children. Who suffers? It is the children from the deprived wards where expectations are lowest, the children whose parents are not well motivated to support them through education, and the children who leave school at 16 to go into low-paid jobs with low skills and to continue the cycle of deprivation. Those are the people whose needs we have to address. It would be a tragedy if the Bill failed tonight, and I welcome any support that it is being given, from wherever it comes. I particularly welcome the statement by the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) that the 18 years of Tory Government had failed to deliver for children in education. I agree with him entirely. I know that it failed. I was a teacher under a Tory Government, and I was a Labour member of an education authority under a Tory Government. I sat there while Derbyshire budgets were cut by 7 per cent. in real terms, and when we had larger primary class sizes, more outdoor toilets and more leaky roofs than anywhere else in the country. That was education under the Tories, and we must not return to it. The Bill is not a panacea. It does not say, ““We know best””. It acknowledges that when schools have made major strides, they have done so by thinking out of the box and by finding new partners—partners with a vested interest in skills, education or children. They have worked in harmony with good LEAs, or despite the lackadaisical LEAs, and they have said ““Every Child Matters.”” The Bill tells us, ““Here are some things that others have found to work. With the right local leadership in our schools, with supportive communities taking an active interest in their schools and with the right partners chosen by schools and encouraged by LEAs, we can create a framework to give better support to schools, children and learning. We can make a difference to the children who most need that difference to be made.”” The Bill opens doors rather than closing them. It does not guarantee higher standards, but it is the toolbox from which schools can select to ensure that they deliver for the children in their catchment areas.