Education and Skills Bill

My Lords, it does not seem long since our last education Bill but this one covers some very important territory. The direction of travel is welcome and I am sure that many of us will spend many more hours considering it and getting properly into the detail. The Bill continues to push against the ceiling on expectations, about which we can never be complacent. We know what we want from our schooling—we have talked about this many times in this House. We want every school to be a good school and every student to be able to fulfil their potential. We want no child to be written off at any stage of their schooling and, particularly, we need to focus on the transition points at 11 and 16. To deliver an education system that truly delivers for 100 per cent of pupils is a major undertaking and requires sustained commitment. A huge shift in expectations is still needed. We should remember that, a generation ago, the top one-fifth or so of school leavers gained good school-leaving qualifications and that less than one in 10 went into higher education. The other four-fifths left school with only a basic education and few qualifications, and the bottom 10 per cent lacked even basic competence in literacy and numeracy. We have moved a long way from that, and quite quickly, but no one who believes that education is the key to equality of opportunity can feel that we have yet gone far enough. Some of the proposed changes that we are talking about today are controversial, but education reform is never easy and is not necessarily popular at the time. I looked back over comments on recent reforms and found that literacy and numeracy hours were ridiculed as some sort of Stalinist measure that would knock inspiration out of teaching. The tune changed when the levels of achievement went up. We were warned that city academies would extend provision for the privileged few but they have instead started to deliver improvements in results that are well above the average in the most disadvantaged communities whose children were written off for too long. Of course, tuition fees were savaged by commentators and opposition parties and, I admit, by more than a few in my own party who thought that it was fine to continue a system that limited the number who could go to university to those who always had gone and who were subsidised by those who never had a chance to go. It is always tempting to sit still and consolidate and it is understandable why many in education with the best of motives say that enough is enough. Reforms are always difficult to implement for those at the sharp end. We have a great deal to celebrate and build on today. Let us look at the 2007 results achieved in our schools. We now have 80 per cent achieving key stage 2 at level 4 and above; that is up 17 per cent since 1997—the figures are 77 per cent in maths and 88 per cent in science, up respectively 15 per cent and 19 per cent. With key stage 3 in English, 74 per cent get to level 5 and above; that is up 17 points since 1997. In science, the figure is 73 per cent, which is up one point; 76 per cent get maths, which is up 16 points since 1997. Big, big improvements have already been made. Sixty per cent now get five or more good GCSEs, with 47 per cent getting maths and English as part of that. Today's announcement on failing schools—in which less than 30 per cent of pupils get five GCSEs—is welcome. Although I know that that will be controversial in some quarters, I confess that in time I hope we can go further. It is right that we are rigorous in our efforts to turn round these schools in as short a time as possible. Those who say that it needs longer must recognise that generations of pupils are failed in this way. Personally, I confess that I am also concerned about that group of somewhat coasting schools in the middle—the ones that get along quite happily but whose value-added scores tell the real story: that those pupils, too, are not being challenged sufficiently to reach their full potential. While pupils living in the top quartile of affluent areas have a more than 70 per cent chance of gaining at least five good GCSEs, those in the bottom quartile still have only a 30 per cent chance; we cannot afford to sit still. Of course, we know that it can be done. Most of us here today have visited many schools that are bucking the trend. Much of our focus has been on secondary schools and beyond, but we also need to be increasingly concerned about primary schools and keeping up the pressure there, as well as on the transition from primary to secondary schools. Too many children are still behind grade at 11, and stand still or worse in year 7. Literacy is the tool that opens up education, and without it we see underachievement, disillusionment, poor behaviour and wasted future lives. I strongly welcome the additional resources being put into individual literacy schemes by the Government. I have seen the evidence, on paper and in person, in various primary schools around the country. Last year I visited Maryland primary school in Newham, which had increased its skill level in two years from 59 per cent to 87 per cent of children achieving key stage 2 at level 4 or above. It was running the Read Write phonics scheme. Similar schemes are being run by different LEAs around the country, but Maryland had an amazing scheme. Every adult was involved, from dinner ladies to lollipop ladies, from every teaching assistant to the head teacher. The whole school was divided into very small groups doing intensive literacy support, with amazing results. There are other schemes with equally great results. For example, Wigan is producing phenomenal results with normal funding as well. So there is a lot to look at and learn. I urge renewed energy on literacy or there is a real danger that we will stand still and make later opportunities so much more difficult to access. I turn to another area of concern, which is the transition from school at 11. It is little wonder that many pupils never recover from this change as it is traumatic for too many. Recently I have seen three interesting actions to try to improve that transition . The first is nurture classes—intense classes in year 7 in primary schools in an attempt to bring pupils up to standard within year 7. It is obvious stuff, but it is not done enough. It is very intensive and focuses on very few teachers and a smaller curriculum. But by the end of year 7 there is an amazing transition and those children are ready to access fully the national curriculum. The second experiment worth looking at are all-age schools, which can ease or virtually eliminate the transition from primary to secondary, which is particularly important in disadvantaged communities. I advise a charity, Ark, which has two such schools under way that will offer education from three to 18. We should follow this important experiment with interest. The third approach refers to small schools focused on year 7, so that within secondary schools there is a school that is almost separate, where pupils can be separated at play and lunch times and the focus is much more on developing ethos, belonging to the school and setting clear expectations of behaviour and achievement. When those pupils go into year 8, they are ready to learn in greater depth. There is so much that we all agree on in this and previous Bills on education, but I know that the big controversy will be the change in the leaving age for education and training to 18. I confess that if the change were to be brought in immediately I would oppose it. The curriculum would not be ready; the apprenticeships and training opportunities would not be there in sufficient numbers; and the organisation would not be ready. But this change will happen in stages between now and 2015. Above all, this change must build on continuous improvements through the school system from five to 16. We know that the enlarged numbers entering higher education have not yet truly widened opportunities for the most disadvantaged pupils whose numbers at university have barely changed. Young people who leave education and training at 16 are disproportionately from poor families. Less than half of those with no qualifications are in work compared with nearly 90 per cent of those with graduate level qualifications. Raising the education participation age in stages from 2013 to 2015 is about social justice, provided of course that the right building blocks are in place to make a success of it. The onus will be not only on government, but on employers, who want skilled workers, and on schools to ensure that the building blocks are in place well in advance of those stage dates. Some will argue that this is in some way illiberal. I do not understand the arbitrary nature of that argument. If it is illiberal to educate to 18 it must have been illiberal to raise the school-leaving age to 16. It would be great if the change to 18 could happen without legislation—in many ways, all of us would like that—but it has not happened and there is no reason to presume that it will. The UK needs to realise the potential of all its children, and I believe that this measure can help us to do that. It is the obvious next stage of the UK’s long history of increasing participation in education.