Education Bill

I find it upsetting when people complain about my presence in debates. Frankly, I think that the hon. Gentleman has secured a very good deal. There is no bigger barrier to the recruitment and retention of good teachers than poor pupil behaviour. Figures published last month showed that in nearly one in five secondary schools, behaviour is judged as being no better than satisfactory. In the latest year for which we have figures there were over 363,000 fixed-period exclusions, of which 80,000 were issued for threatening behaviour or verbal abuse against an adult. Recent polls by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers found that two in five teachers had dealt with physical aggression during that year, and that a quarter had been subjected to a false allegation by a pupil. That underlines the fact that too many teachers have been hindered in doing their jobs because of poor behaviour. I fully understand why teachers have felt that the system, and the Government, have not always been on their side. The Education Bill will ensure that the pendulum swings back in their favour by strengthening teachers' powers. They will be able to issue same-day detentions, and to search for, and confiscate, items such as mobile phones and video cameras. We considered these measures in detail in Committee. I hope they are used only very rarely, but I would rather teachers were able to decide for themselves whether to use them and I am confident that they will help protect the rights of all children to learn in an environment free from disruption and bullying. Just as importantly, the Bill will also extend better protection to teachers from false and malicious allegations. Teachers will now have pre-charge anonymity when faced with an allegation of an offence by a pupil, to prevent false accusations being used to undermine teachers' authority. Teachers have campaigned for that for years, and it has been delivered by this Government in our first year. Of course, we will continue to listen to those who seek to extend these provisions to other staff in schools and colleges, but we also need to tread carefully in relation to cherished rights of free speech in a free society. Discipline is just one area in which teachers have not been afforded the trust and respect they deserve. Over the past decade, for every step forward, there have been three steps backwards as yet more targets and diktats were issued to schools from the centre. Understandably, much of the debate in Committee was about whether to retain the legislation that piled up under the previous Government. I do not doubt that much of that was well-intentioned, but it has clearly failed to address the performance gap this country faces, especially for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. We are determined to raise the professional status of teachers by giving them the space and flexibility they need. Since the Academies Act 2010 the number of academies has more than trebled, from 203 to 658. All those schools are able to decide what is best to raise standards for their pupils, free from red tape and political interference. That is why it has attracted not only Toby Young, but Peter Hyman, Tony Blair's former director of strategy and author of the autobiographical book, ““1 out of 10: from Downing street vision to classroom reality””. Peter Hyman is setting up a free school in Newham. Newham School 21 will teach children between the ages of four and 18 and aims to be open in September 2012. The Bill provides for two new types of academies: alternative provision academies, and 16-to-19 academies, which will extend the benefits of the programme even further. The Opposition have complained that the Bill centralises power, yet at the same time they complain when we strip back the layers of instruction and guidance telling schools and colleges how to co-operate, which they put in place. Similarly, they protest when we end the requirement on every local authority to set up forums, irrespective of their actual needs or unique circumstances. The Bill will help us bring an end to the perpetual revolution that has been inflicted upon schools, by allowing professionals—not the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency or the General Teaching Council—to do what is best for them. Just as we are liberating professionals from bureaucracy, so we are ensuring that there is stronger accountability to parents. The Bill will sharpen school accountability by reducing the number of areas in which Ofsted inspects to just four—pupil achievement, quality of teaching, leadership and management, and behaviour and safety—with outstanding schools and colleges also being freed from routine inspection, so that more focus can be diverted towards those that need it most. The independent regulator, Ofqual, will ensure that our qualifications stand comparison with the best in the world by measuring our relative performance. Because we are prepared to take action where schools and local authorities fail to give children their one chance of a good education, the Bill strengthens the Government's power to intervene in poorly performing schools, which often have higher proportions of disadvantaged pupils. The Minister for children, my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), is introducing an entitlement to free early-years provision for 130,000 disadvantaged two-year-olds across the country. The scrutiny in Committee has allowed us to set out clearly that we will maintain the free entitlement for all three and four-year-olds at 15 hours, and that we will ask Ofsted to review the impact of the two-year entitlement. We are also ensuring that more resources are targeted at the education of the poorest through the pupil premium, which will be worth £2.5 billion every year by 2014-15, and the Bill will ensure that funding for apprenticeship training takes priority when young people have a place, so that we deliver on our ambitions to expand the programme and make it the primary work-based learning route for raising the participation age. Thanks to the vigilance and scrutiny of the Chairman of the Education Committee, we have now removed a reserve power to suspend this offer, which underlines our commitment further. In addition, the scrutiny provided and arguments put forward by my hon. Friends the Members for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) and for Wells (Tessa Munt) on the issue of school governors and the proposals in clause 37 have allowed us to improve our policy in this area. We have retained the principle of governor appointments based primarily on skills, while also meeting their desire to reflect stakeholder groups with an interest in schools, in particular staff and local authorities. The schools White Paper, ““The Importance of Teaching””, set out a pathway to close the attainment gap between those from the poorest and wealthiest backgrounds, and to reverse this country's decline in international performance tables, so that all who are educated in our state schools have the opportunity to compete with the school leavers and graduates of countries with the best-performing education systems. This Education Bill will allow us to take important steps on that journey, and I commend it to the House.