School Standards

Question: In that long list of excellent Government initiatives, I do not think that I heard my hon. Friend mention teaching methods and classroom arrangements. Over a couple of generations, misguided teaching methods were damaging to our children's education success, but there are now demonstrably good methods that are much more successful. Will he use his good offices to ensure that those poor methods are finally eliminated and that the best methods are adopted?

Answer: Of course, there was not enough time to list all the many things that we are doing to raise standards in schools. Improving teaching is certainly one of them. Ofsted, which the Conservative party is keen to quote, tells us that we have the best generation of young teachers that we have ever had in our schools. One thing that we are doing further to develop the early years of teaching is developing a masters qualification in teaching and learning, so that teaching can become a masters-level profession. Part of that will involve ensuring that we have proper rigour. Recently, I was at a school in Calderdale, seeing the progression pilots. I saw really good rigour in key stage 3 English and maths teaching; teachers using progression pilot techniques such as the APP—assessing pupil progress—method were able properly to identify the level that each child was at in their class and help them to progress on to the next one.

Secondary information