CONSERVATIVE
New Forest East

EDUCATION – TEACHING METHODS & STANDARDS - 07 July 1999

EDUCATION – TEACHING METHODS & STANDARDS - 07 July 1999

Dr Julian Lewis: I have a positive suggestion to make, and I want to know whether the Secretary of State will subscribe to it. Given, as he rightly says, that the key problem is that by the time children move on, at age 11, to secondary school, too much damage has been done by insufficient levels of literacy and numeracy, does he accept that it would be in everybody's interest if national performance tables were published, showing the results of the tests at age seven, so that one could find out which schools were succeeding and which were failing? Would it not be helpful also if the tables contained a register of how much cash was being spent per pupil at each school and the average class size at each school? We would not then be having these debates in a vacuum; we would have solid data and people would know what was working and what was not.