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Education and Skills Bill

Another teacher, I am afraid, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Newly qualified, I started teaching in the early 1970s at what was then the Crown Hills secondary modern school in Leicester. I quickly learned my place in the school hierarchy when I was given the ROSLA class, which contained those who were there as a result of the raising of the school-leaving age. More experienced colleagues were given the opportunity to teach the CSE group, and the heads of department got the small number of students who were doing O-levels. I am not sure whether it was a case of me being dumped on the ROSLA class or it being dumped on me, but it was certainly a rough first year of teaching. I am convinced that I learned more in that year than the students ever did. The reality was that a high proportion of those who were obliged to stay on for that extra year did not want to be there and resented the fact that they had to be. The situation was complicated by the fact that those who could leave at Easter did so, and those who could not left in the summer term as soon as they could get away with doing so. Indeed, there was often much relief for me and my colleagues when the most disaffected students decided that it was not worth turning up after Christmas. That was a model for how not to do it, and a lot has changed dramatically since then, not least at what was the Crown Hills secondary modern school. It is now fully comprehensive and a very successful sports college. It is enormously grateful to the Government for what they have done to enable it to meet its full potential as a college, allowing it to meet the needs of the diverse range of students from different backgrounds who attend it. It now quite rightly receives much praise and many awards for its work. The other thing that has changed dramatically is that the Government have learned the lessons from the raising of the school leaving age at that time. They are right to emphasise that the Bill is not about raising the school leaving age in that way; it is about enabling young people between the ages of 16 and 18 to have a range of opportunities to extend their education and training in a range of different environments, rather than leaving them stuck in a classroom with an inexperienced teacher who had little to offer them except attempting unsuccessfully to do his best to entertain them during the time that they were interred together. The Government have recognised that such an experience, although perhaps worth while in the longer term, was traumatic for those who were a part of it. They are right to stress that we need to offer a right not only to education beyond the age of 16 but to training, and a right for that education or training to be relevant to those who take part in it and, we hope, benefit from it. The Opposition parties have, understandably, made much today of the compulsion involved in the proposals in the Bill. Whether it is necessary or not, we all hope that that power will not have to be relied on a great deal by those involved in making a success of the extension of education and training to the age of 18. None the less, I am convinced that it will be necessary. Although there were many failings in the way in which the raising of the school leaving age was introduced in the early 1970s, it would not have been possible to achieve it without the element of compulsion that underlay it. It was interesting to listen to the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes) talking about the encouragement that he had given over the years to successive cohorts of young students to stay on beyond the age of 16. I think that he would acknowledge—as would other hon. Members who have been involved in education—that we were not always successful in encouraging those who ought to have stayed on to do so, and that that situation would be unlikely to change, for many of them at least, were there not to be a degree of compulsion involved in the extension of education and training to the age of 18, as the Government are proposing.