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On the same principle, it is also important that teachers who are going to teach children aged 14 to 19 in schools or colleges should have some appropriate training in the needs of that age group. In saying that, however, I do not agree with part of the briefing that we received from the Association of Colleges. I agree that teachers in colleges should have the same esteem, professional recognition and pay as teachers who do the same job in schools-we on these Benches have long campaigned for that-but I do not agree that it does not matter if they have had no training that is specific to the age group. You cannot teach a teenager, boiling over with hormones and struggling with who he is and how to communicate, in the same way as you can teach a fully mature adult who knows who he is, where he is going and how to communicate with the rest of the world. Teenagers communicate ad nauseam-on their mobile phones and laptops-but they do it differently from adults, and teachers need to understand that.
As my noble friend Lady Garden indicated, 800,000 14 to 16 year-olds are now being taught for part of the week in colleges, and this number is likely to grow, so it is vital that those who teach them in colleges have training in child safeguarding and in identifying signs of abuse or distress and knowing what to do and who to turn to if they see them. They also need training in behaviour management. Managing a class of 14 year-olds, even those who are excited about getting out of what they see as the more restrictive school environment, is not as easy as managing a similar class of 22 year-olds.
It is easy to assume that young people who have proved to be difficult in school because they have not been engaged by the curriculum will suddenly become little angels who are totally engaged in their work when they get into a college. While I accept that that does happen sometimes-indeed, this is part of the point of it-it does not always happen, and teachers need training in how to manage those situations.
Do the Government have any plans to provide teachers who are taking their qualified teacher learning and skills qualification with the specific training that they need to teach teenagers? As things stand at the moment, they do not. This would improve the fluidity of the teaching profession and enable teachers to move between schools and colleges.
Schools have changed a great deal since I was a pupil and then a teacher, and so has society. In a very large percentage of households, both parents are working, which makes it difficult for parents to spend time in the school. Working patterns have changed so that many parents cannot even get to parents' evenings because they are working. That is why I campaigned, along with the right reverent Prelate the Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham, for wider rights for parents to ask for flexible working. Unfortunately, the Government said no. For that and other reasons, many parents find it difficult to engage with the school and to help their children with their learning.
Yesterday morning, the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, and I both spoke at the launch of a report on the involvement of parents in schools following research
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One of the recommendations that came out of the report was the provision at every school of a parents' support worker. I agree. Indeed, the same recommendation appeared in one of my party's policy papers a couple of years ago. These workers can provide a very effective way of identifying the problems at home that get in the way of a child's learning and of helping to find ways of addressing them. They can remove the barriers between the parents and the school and provide a conduit to other services that might help. There is a wide range of possibilities. Will the Government ensure that every school has the resources to employ such a person if they feel they need one?
Primary head teachers whom I met later in the day confirmed the value in their schools of the charity Place2Be, which the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, mentioned. Place2Be provides counselling to children and parents-someone to talk to and to help the child sort out his problems so that he is ready for learning. They made it clear that the role of these therapists in training the teachers to identify problems and signpost the children to help was also crucial. All these things are the signs of a good teacher. I echo the noble Earl's comments on all this.
Another recommendation of the report that I saw in the morning was that teachers should have training in how to interact with parents, especially those who perceive barriers. This can be done during initial teacher training or in CPD for serving teachers. I know there are many demands on teacher training and many things that should be included, but few things can be so profitable for the child in the long run than good relations, support and understanding between the family and the school.
At the end of the day, we should try to see things from the child's point of view and put him first. Avoiding the situation in which the school and parents are at loggerheads is one of the marks of an excellent teacher and an excellent school. I do not suggest that the Government try to tell them how to do it in a one-size-fits-all way, but I do suggest that the importance of home-school communications is emphasised, trained for, monitored, supported and evaluated as a key criterion of a good teacher and a good school.
I mentioned ITT, so I will also pass on something else that the primary heads told us. They felt that a nine-month course is not enough for initial teacher training and that young teachers come into the job ill equipped. The noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, mentioned many of the things that young teachers need to know about these days. They suggested that the course should be two years instead of one, with the second part spent in a school, rather like the current induction year but with ongoing work with their college or university.
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Both heads take student teachers in their schools but were concerned about the quality of the role models the students get. They felt that students should be assigned only to mentor teachers who are regarded as good or excellent, not just satisfactory. They also felt that if every school that had good or excellent teachers was obliged to take some student teachers, it would spread the load and the students would get the benefit of really good teacher role models.
We try to cram so much into ITT these days, such as SEN and safeguarding, and I have asked for even more this morning. Will the Minister look seriously at the suggestion made by these head teachers, who after all are at the chalk face? I should like the idea to be explored. It would not necessarily have to cost more, and the young teachers would earn during the second year. The head teachers had a good point about spreading the load.
I was struck recently by a comment by Clive James, who said that his only talent was to be able to turn a phrase until it catches the light: a lovely phrase in itself. I think that an excellent teacher is someone who can turn a child's head until it catches the light.
1.27 pm
Baroness Verma: My Lords, we are enormously grateful to my noble friend Lady Shephard for introducing this most timely and crucial debate, and I congratulate all noble Lords on their excellent contributions today. My noble friend, as always, put forward in her measured and informed way the real problems that face both parents and teachers after 13 years of a Labour Government. As a former Secretary of State for Education, her knowledge and experience so clearly highlighted the challenges that the Government have failed to address.
We want to build a strong society in which real opportunity is available to everyone, where there are no restrictions to ambition and there is an education system that offers both the vehicle and the tools to economical and social mobility and empowers our citizens to be guardians of society. Is the Minister aware that the British Chambers of Commerce have branded the education failure a national scandal? In a survey, this organisation discovered that 61 per cent of small businesses thought that the education system was failing to produce individuals with skills adequate for work. Will the Minister outline more fully what changes the Government have made to address this problem?
We all accept that the global market demands that we have a skilled and knowledge-based population, so it is critical that excellence is an expectation that is met in the early years of our children and that those who are in charge of delivering that are also well equipped and supported.
The Government have made much in recent days about wanting to offer parents more choice and more power over their children's education. But perhaps the Minister would like to answer why, as soon as they got into power in 1997, the Government got rid of the very institutions that had given parents and schools alike the choices and empowerment to teach free from
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As my noble friends Lord Norton of Louth and Lady Perry of Southwark have said so eloquently, this Government have introduced an overcentralised, bureaucratic system with a continual stream of initiatives, regulations and diktats, but without proper evaluation or monitoring systems to measure the true impacts of the many programmes and pieces of legislation that have been rushed through and imposed on educational institutions. If we are to have excellence, we must ensure that we attract the best people into education in order to deliver it.
We must ensure that teachers and lecturers already in post are supported in accessing professional development and training. We must also ensure that they are able to respond to the needs of the populations they teach and to the demands of the local, national and international challenges. We know that the quality of individual teachers is the most important determinant in a child or young person's educational progress. In her speech, my noble friend Lady Morris of Bolton vividly showed evidence of how good teachers influenced her. My noble friend Lord Elton touched on the importance of attitude as well as competency in teaching, which is such a common-sense approach.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and other noble Lords have said that it is imperative that we raise the prestige, esteem and professionalism of teaching in our country. Countries such as Finland and Singapore have a single factor in common: namely, that teaching is one of the most prestigious courses for graduates. Under this Government, however, teaching has become devalued. Will the Minister inform the House why 100,000 teachers have left the profession since 1997?
It is crucial that if we are to attract and retain the best teachers, we should also give head teachers greater flexibility over pay and conditions, and greater freedom to attract specialists in areas such as reading, maths and science in order that our schools send out well informed, well rounded young people. We must ensure that the qualifications they acquire are robust and rigorous. It cannot be acceptable that, since 1998, more than 3 million 11 year-olds have not reached the Government's basic level in reading, writing and maths or that 4 million children have failed to get five GCSEs, including maths and English, at grade C or better. Nor can it be acceptable that more than 20,000 students each year do not get a single GCSE, even at grade G.
The Government have refused state schools the opportunity to offer students the more challenging exams that independent schools and academies can offer. Excellence in education should not be restricted only to those who want to follow academic paths. It must also include vocational pathways, which is why we as a party will build a generation of technical schools to teach high-quality vocational courses. While the Government have increased the numbers of those achieving NVQ level 2, it is their failure to support
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With a million young people not in education, employment or training, it is crucial, through the important role played by our FE colleges, that they can deliver the most flexible and accessible route to reach those hard-to-reach groups and those adult learners wishing to reskill or retrain. FE colleges often lie at the heart of the community, which is why we want to see funding for Train to Gain redirected to community learning and to a dedicated NEET fund.
Each citizen must matter, so why has there been a sharp decline in the enrolments in FE colleges? I expect the answers lie in the Government's review by Sir Andrew Foster. He revealed shocking levels of bureaucracy and regulation. Yet what did this Government do? They abolished the Learning and Skills Council and are replacing it with not one but three other bodies. Add those new bodies to the existing 17 that colleges already have to work with and it is hardly surprising that FE colleges are being stifled. When the Conservatives freed up this sector, we saw innovation and the numbers enrolling rise: we have witnessed the opposite under Labour. Excellence, innovation and creative thinking in colleges will return when they are free of the stranglehold of this Government. The Conservatives will remove unnecessary bureaucracy from FE colleges and open up the supply of training with a streamlined funding model.
Last year, many students were left in great uncertainty as to whether they would have a place at their chosen university-or at any university. Places are set to be even fewer this year. Universities face many difficult choices; yet we need a better educated, knowledge-based workforce. Universities have raised concerns about their confidence in the qualifications being taken by students. With record numbers of students gaining top grades, employers and universities rightly question the rigour of those qualifications, particularly when universities are having, in many cases to put into place remedial classes to ensure that acceptable levels in literacy and grammar skills are reached.
We all want those who wish to go to university to be given the opportunity, but will the Government now recognise their mistake in placing arbitrary percentages that have added to the pressures of universities to comply? We have a world-class higher education system. We have led the way in large areas of research, innovation and entrepreneurialism. But many of us knew that when higher education was taken into the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the importance linked to the value and necessity of this sector would be lost as it became a tiny cog in a big machine under the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson.
For excellence in education at every level and sector, the standards of those teaching at the front of the class have to be excellent. It is a virtuous circle. Universities play a key role in the training of school teachers. We as a party will wish to see graduates with at least a 2:2 classification in order to qualify for state-funded training. We believe that our brightest students should be encouraged to enter teaching. In our country, social and economic mobility during the past 13 years has declined and it really is not good enough. Global
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1.37 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Children, Schools and Families (Baroness Morgan of Drefelin): My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, for securing this debate. I enjoyed very much her opening remarks. I agree with a lot of what she said, but I found her underlying analysis to be rather less optimistic than perhaps I would have hoped. She challenged me to respond on the question of funding for higher education, as did the noble Lord, Lord Norton, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Verma and Lady Garden. We must be clear: under this Government, we have seen record investment in higher education with 25 per cent more funding than in 1997 in real terms. There has been a decade of record public investment in higher education. This Government will spend around £15 billion on universities, teaching, research and supporting students. As we know, these are very difficult times and higher education must diversify and take its share of the cuts in the way that all sectors of society are and will.
We have made it clear that universities have to do their fair share of belt tightening, but no more. We are asking for savings of less than 5 per cent and we expect universities to do that in a way that minimises the impact on students, teaching and research activities. Total university income is about £23 billion per year. Our investment has created the capacity to deal with those harder times. I was incredibly interested to hear the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Bew. I am sure he is right that when we look at how our higher education fits with partners in the rest of the world it is always right to take stock on how we are doing.
I am very pressed for time and I shall do my best to pick up on all points made by noble Lords. I strongly agree with the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, about reducing the burden on higher education. When I was in the DES, it was something I was keen on and I know that BIS is committed to continuing that work. Also, I was incredibly moved by the contribution of my noble friend Lord Graham about his education on the Victoria Line. As someone who has spent a great deal of time on that line, I was delighted to hear his tribute to the Open University.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: It was a moving experience.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin: Exactly. I want to associate myself strongly with his remarks.
The noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, challenged me in one particular area on which I want to focus, and that is the question of continuing professional development. The noble Baroness asked me about the rollout of the masters in teaching and learning. She was right to ask me about this because our aspiration is to see teaching as a masters profession and will be one of the most significant steps on the journey to raise the status and effectiveness of our teachers and
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The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, talked about the need to extend access for teachers to training and contact with the training provider into a second year. Again, that is absolutely what we want to look at. The masters in teaching and learning is designed to begin in the summer term of the NQT year, which may pick up on some of her concerns. This is an extremely important issue and is why we have the masters, initial teacher training and the NQT year. However, I may need to write to the noble Baroness in more detail because I know that she is interested in how it is going to work.
My noble friend Lady Massey asked whether I agree with her that we have the best generation of teachers ever. I probably will agree because although I am the daughter of two teachers and I would not wish to be critical of the teaching of my parents' generation, we now have an absolutely tremendous profession. Many noble Lords have spoken of the dedication of teachers, and the noble Lord, Lord Elton, said that teaching is an "act of love". I agree absolutely with him. We could well be at the beginning of a golden age of teaching, but this Government are not complacent. We have come far but we have much further to go.
The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, talked about transferability between further education and schools, an issue that she was right to highlight and I will write to her about it. The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, was concerned about the fact that Ofsted is apparently not inspecting quality. That is not the picture that I see. Ofsted is telling us that the number of schools where teaching and learning is good or outstanding has risen on previous years. How could it say that without knowing? Secondary school teaching can be outstanding even in the most challenging schools, while in the primary sector the best teaching is now based on stimulating engagement with pupils and teachers who are secure in the knowledge that they need to promote excellence.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Warnock and Lady Walmsley, all talked about the importance of the early years and early intervention. We face challenges in making sure that we look after children with mental health problems by tackling them early through investing in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. The noble Earl also talked about the role of the Place2Be service. It is a fantastic charity and I echo the tributes made in the Chamber for its work. Sure Start is important because three and four year-olds now have access to high
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We all know that the best thing a Government can do, if they are dedicated to raising standards in schools, is to invest in excellent teachers. That is a given and we have all understood that today. It means making sure that teachers feel part of a profession with real status and programmes of training and continuous career development that allow teaching to attract and retain the very best. This has been our policy over the past 13 years. Our schools have changed beyond recognition, and this has been achieved by taking action. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton, said that it is important. Since 1997, total funding per pupil has more than doubled, and I say that because this is also about numbers. Since that year, every single school has benefited from increasing capital investment. There are around 4,000 new, rebuilt or significantly refurbished schools. If you are a teacher, you do not want to teach in a school with a leaking roof and without proper facilities. It is important for status and self-esteem. Remaining with numbers, the average salary for primary and secondary school teachers has increased by more than £11,000 over the 13 years.
I have to correct the noble Baroness, Lady Verma. We now have over 40,000 more teachers in schools than in 1997, backed up by over 200,000 support staff. This gives teaching staff the time to do what they should be doing, which is teaching and reflecting on their practice. The number of schools not achieving the National Challenge benchmark of 30 per cent of pupils getting five good GCSEs, including English and maths, has fallen by around 85 per cent, from more than half in 1997 to less than one in 13 today. That is a huge improvement and the figure is on track to reduce to zero by 2011-provided that we have another Labour Government. That is not something we should just assume, and this will not happen without another Labour Government.
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