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Rose Report

I thank the hon. Gentleman for attending the debate. Certainly, Sir Jim Rose has mentioned that issue, and much more credit could be given to teachers in terms of their contribution to the whole education process. The teaching unions, for example, will be pre-eminent in helping to establish the essential part that teachers play in the whole education process. Teachers' assessments and judgments are often sidelined in favour of the crude measurements adopted by Ofsted and the Government, which then appear in league tables. I despise league tables—although not football league tables particularly. I despise league tables for schools for being as pre-eminent as they are, because they bias the whole system and miss lots of tricks about the skills and abilities that young people are developing. I do not want to go on about the kind of tests that exist. All I know is that teachers across the country are not impressed by league tables and the information that they provide. Of course, we need national standards, and testing must exist to track the progress of pupils, but anyone with any experience, expertise or even common sense recognises that the current regime has resulted in a narrowing of the curriculum and that it has had a detrimental effect on the education of our young people. I defy any MP to stand up and say that when they go into a school they do not hear that comment time and again from teachers who are absolutely committed to their young people and to their profession. Let us look at the changes in the curriculum that Sir Jim Rose has suggested. He wants students to have the following abilities: understanding of English, communication and languages; a mathematical understanding; scientific and technological understanding; human, social and environmental understanding; understanding of physical health and well-being, and understanding of the arts and design. Those are the issues that he has identified as themes; they are the areas where we should be discussing how we inculcate understanding, learning, a love of learning and a questioning attitude. Understanding English, communication and languages is fairly obvious. We need literacy, of course. Often, however, we miss the importance of communication. Communication is vital. A current instance is the baby P case; it is interesting that at the moment I receive more literature about that case than I do about the Gaza strip. One of the things mentioned over the sacking of the director of children's services in that case was that communication was very poor. Communication is a skill and an art. Being able to talk to people, and being confident in doing so, in order to transmit ideas is very important. As an ex-teacher in higher education, I have to say that American students over-communicated. Whenever I held seminars, I could not shut them up. I think that it was part and parcel of their training; they had lots to say, lots to question, and so on. By contrast, generally the English student or the Scottish student—sometimes we get them in England too—used to listen, take notes and then run off to the library to nick the relevant journal before anybody else could. That was their way of becoming involved in a seminar. We should encourage people to talk much more, to argue and not to be afraid of being stupid now and again—they may say something that sounds stupid but might just be on the button in a particular conversation. As I said, communication is very important. Various groups have written to me on the subject, such as the I CAN charity, which is very active in helping children to communicate; it is specifically a communication charity. It is doing lots of work in that area and I am sure that its work will feed into the Rose report in the next few months.