Burdens on Schools — 2 Mar 1999

I beg to move,

That this House deplores the bureaucratic burdens placed on schools by the Government which are seriously undermining schools' ability to run their own affairs; condemns the pursuit of uniformity at the expense of diversity; considers the Government's proposals for performance-related pay for teachers to be cumbersome and unworkable; believes the complicated process of bidding for centralised initiatives is fragmenting budgetary responsibility and has caused unacceptable delays in setting indicative budgets; and further believes that the Government's ceaseless flow of directives to schools and LEAs has become a significant obstacle to raising educational standards.

He continued--

I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:

"commends the Government for the introduction of vital measures to improve standards, particularly in literacy and numeracy; applauds the extra flexibility it has introduced in the national curriculum for primary pupils and support for work-related learning for 14-16 year olds; welcomes the Government's support for greater diversity through specialist schools and education action zones; believes that the extra £19 billion for schools will underpin the drive for higher standards and welcomes plans to reward good teachers well; congratulates Ministers for introducing much greater clarity to mailings for schools with a view to keeping paperwork to a minimum; recognises the huge benefits which the National Grid for Learning and voluntary schemes of work bring in reducing unnecessary paperwork; and notes that the Opposition has no proposals to raise standards in schools."

Question , That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.

Question put accordingly, That the original words stand part of the Question:--

The House divided: Ayes 172, Noes 334.

Historical Hansard | Online Hansard |

Public Whip is run as a free not-for-profit service. If you'd like to support us, please consider switching your (UK) electricity and/or gas to Octopus Energy or tip us via Ko-Fi.

Party Summary

Votes by party, red entries are votes against the majority for that party.

What is Tell? '+1 tell' means that in addition one member of that party was a teller for that division lobby.

What are Boths? An MP can vote both aye and no in the same division. The boths page explains this.

What is Turnout? This is measured against the total membership of the party at the time of the vote.

PartyMajority (No)Minority (Aye)BothTurnout
Con0 134 (+2 tell)084.0%
Independent1 00100.0%
Lab333 (+2 tell) 0080.3%
LDem0 30065.2%
PC0 2050.0%
SNP0 2033.3%
UUP0 4040.0%
Total:334 172078.9%

Rebel Voters - sorted by party

MPs for which their vote in this division differed from the majority vote of their party. You can see all votes in this division, or every eligible MP who could have voted in this division

Sort by: Name | Constituency | Party | Vote

NameConstituencyPartyVote
no rebellions

About the Project

The Public Whip is a not-for-profit, open source website created in 2003 by Francis Irving and Julian Todd and now run by Bairwell Ltd.

The Whip on the Web

Help keep PublicWhip alive