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Higher Education

That is the Woodhead argument, is it not? It is not true. That is not the percentage of children leaving school at 11 with those low levels. The hon. Gentleman does the children and teachers of this country an injustice by exaggerating the levels of illiteracy and innumeracy. Perhaps he can provide me with the facts or statistics that would authenticate his wild view or perhaps he will change his view after two minutes in the way that he did with the Connexions service as the result of an earlier intervention. It is not right to talk about low levels of performance. The performance of children in our schools is improving steadily, although of course it is never good enough and we want it to be better. Let me talk about the responsibility of higher education in that respect. I have taken the Education and Skills Committee to visit many of the ivy league universities in the United States. People in those universities do not sit there, concerned and worried about the lack of bright students from less privileged backgrounds. The universities have a technique for identifying where those students are and a rigorous way of going out, finding them and bringing them into their institutions. If we look at the overall performance—particularly of the research-rich universities in our country—it is lacking, in terms of what our universities could learn from the United States. Stanford, Princeton and other leading ivy league universities in America have a map of America that shows every state, city and community. They know where the students are coming from and they know when they are underperforming in terms of attracting students from a particular state or municipality. They are so well organised that they use their alumni, as well as professional staff, to visit schools in areas from which they do not get students.