Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I am grateful to have caught your eye at the last minute, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I had not intended to participate in this debate, but I have been prompted to do so by the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), who made a powerful argument about the Government's actions and intentions as regards education. The amount of money allocated to the education budget has doubled, but we have to ask whether we are getting value for money. My right hon. Friend has put his finger on the issue. Have there been any improvements to our education system that are worthy of the amount of money that has gone into it? [Interruption.] The Minister says yes, but when we speak to employers, teachers and parents and ask them their views about what has happened to A-levels or GCSEs, they will say, without any prompting, that there has been a degradation in standards, with grade inflation. The Minister shakes his head, but that is what people out there are saying. It therefore defies logic that this Government, so late in the day in their tenure and in this parliamentary season, still refuse to listen to what the public are asking for, employers are calling for, and we are suggesting here today. Let us have a comparison so that we can understand exactly what is happening. We would be happy to stand up and say that we had been proved wrong, but I suspect that we would be proved right in saying that GCSEs and A-levels have suffered. Is it right, in this day and age, that 90 per cent. of people taking GCSEs can pass? There is something fundamentally wrong with that. If someone gets more things wrong than right, they should be heading towards a fail, not a pass, and they should not get a certain number of marks simply for turning up. My right hon. Friend made a valid point: unless we have such a comparison, how can we tell how we are doing in relation to the people against whom we are competing? There are other yardsticks of measurement to say how we are doing in that competitive sphere, in the sense of who is taking our jobs—who is coming to work in the UK. People educated in the UK are finding it difficult to compete with those educated to the higher levels that we see abroad. That is why schools that choose to examine the current situation and are not happy with it are turning their backs on A-levels and GCSEs and looking towards the more independent, more respected and higher-standard international baccalaureate. I should declare an interest in that I was taught the international baccalaureate, and I believe that it is a superb system.