Education Bill

This has been an interesting debate, with the Bill having been described variously as minor tinkering building on Blairite successes and as creating a wasteland in education across England and Wales—and that is just from Labour Members. We have heard some very diverse opinions from them. Although there was some good in what the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) said, she fails to understand the reality of what classroom teachers face in our schools today. An awful lot of myth has been put about in respect of many of the Bill's proposals. I am broadly supportive of the Bill, although it contains bits that I do not particularly agree with and so I will get those out of the way first. Since I have been in this place, I have learned that legislation is like a box of chocolates: you do not like everything in it. I am not a particular fan of the forced raising of the participation age to 18, but I am probably out of sync with many people, on both sides of the debate, about that. I also have some concerns about the changes to student loan interest and I have some issues to raise about the English baccalaureate, which I shall discuss in a moment. Those are my minor concerns with the Bill, but in general I am a huge supporter of it and of the ministerial team in this Department, who have the best interests of this country's young people at heart. I wish to deal with some of the points made by Opposition Members about bringing unqualified people into the classroom, as if that were something new. I intervened on the Secretary of State on this matter. The practice is not new, although there are more unqualified staff teaching young people in our country today than at any time since the war and possibly ever. Studies have been done by the unions to prove that. Some of that teaching has been very good and in some circumstances schools have had to go down that route, because standards have slipped in some of our schools and they have been unable to recruit qualified staff. There is nothing wrong with bringing in people from different backgrounds. My personal view is that once they are teaching in the classroom, they should at least follow a route to a formal qualification. We should make that process as easy as possible, because it is desirable. When I did my post-graduate certificate of education, I learned important things in the classroom that people cannot necessarily obtain outside the classroom. We should not be worried about bringing in people from different backgrounds. The hon. Members for Wigan and for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn) have mentioned discipline. In specific circumstances, the power to search pupils there and then is important. One may have concerns about the wording of the provision, but sometimes situations arise in schools where classroom teachers need to act immediately—I can think of a number of situations in which it would be important to conduct a search there and then for the safety of other people in school. The power is important, but it is a permissive power, because Ministers would prefer teachers not to have to search young people. On notice for detentions, there are times in teachers' careers when they need to act there and then, because it is important to deal with an issue at the end of the school day. I taught at an incredibly difficult school, and I remember a huge problem on the local estate when a large number of our young people got involved in physical fights with another school—the situation also involved some parents, which was not helpful. We needed to deal with that situation there and then, and writing to say that we wanted to see a child in 24 hours' time was not helpful. We had to deal with the situation there and then, but we were hamstrung by the rules. The hon. Member for Wigan has raised the issue of discipline. I did not want to write home to some pupils' parents to tell them that their child had a detention; I wanted to deal with the situation myself, because I knew that if I made contact with some of those young people's homes, their lives would be made much more difficult. I would prefer to deal with such issues in the way in which I see fit rather than necessarily by engaging with parents. There is a protection issue for young people. I do not have a great deal of time left, so I will not discuss exclusions, but I will comment on the curriculum and standards. I welcome the review of Ofsted, but the issue always comes down to interpretation. It is virtually impossible for a school to put itself through an Ofsted inspection in an honest way. The school has to step up to a mark that is not necessarily sustainable throughout the whole school year and jump through hoops that are impossible in any other circumstances. Classroom teachers are asked to do things that it is not possible to do all the time. I welcome the changes, but I hope that Ofsted's interpretation will change. The English baccalaureate is not simply a case of requiring schools to do certain subjects. However, it is probably drawn a little too narrowly, particularly where schools are required to do modern foreign languages. It might be very good to get young people to do modern foreign languages—I make these remarks as a history teacher, who will benefit from the change—but in a selfless act I appeal for the baccalaureate to be drawn a little more widely, because we will end up with its being used as a measure. In schools such as the one where I used to teach, engaging children and young people in modern foreign languages who may not receive support at home is incredibly difficult, and those schools will be judged against that standard, no matter how much we try to make it a secondary standard. I am sorry that I do not have time to continue in further detail. I say to Ministers that the Bill is good and that I will support it, but please will they think again about the English baccalaureate?