Courting controversy

When Graham Stuart was elected chair of the education select committee, it was, in part, thanks to support from an unlikely source.

In 2010, for the first time in parliament's history, select committee chairs, instead of being party appointments, were elected by their fellow MPs. This meant that Stuart - one of four candidates for the position - required cross-party support.

"I found myself meeting (former Children's Secretary) Ed Balls in the bar, having spent the past three years trying everything I possibly could to trip him up, and asking for his support," he says."He smiled wryly at me as I recall, and said that if I was half as much of a pain in the neck to his successor (Michael Gove) as I had been to him (as a member of the children and families select committee), he would consider his support for me well justified.

"So he and others duly voted for me and I was elected in order to be a pain in the neck."

Asked if he has fulfilled his end of the bargain, Stuart says his role has been "more constructive" than the approach requested by Balls.

"I would hope I have been a critical friend," he says. "To question what we are doing, why we are doing it, what evidence there is to believe that it will work and what evidence there is that what is currently happening is working."

While he does not think of himself as a direct adversary of Gove, under his tenure, the committee has not shied away from criticising government policy.

But for all the reports and varying levels of criticism of initiatives like the National Citizen Service, plans to scrap GCSEs, and safeguarding of older children, it has tended to be the words of those appearing before the committee that have provoked greatest controversy.

Careers guidance

One such example came last December when Education Secretary Michael Gove defended controversial changes to careers guidance, by claiming that the system has improved for the better as a result.

The claims hold little stock with Stuart, for whom the plight of young people not in education, employment or training appears to chime with his personal passion for championing social mobility.

"The Secretary of State's insistence that careers advice and guidance in schools has improved is based on no evidence whatsoever as far as I can tell," he states sharply.

"It's refuted by the Ofsted thematic review. It's refuted by the National Careers Council report. It's refuted by every bit of evidence of which I'm aware. So no, I don't think he's right."

Not content with merely highlighting failings in current provision, Stuart is actively working to improve the situation on the ground. The fact that he drops into conversation the likelihood of being grilled over lunch with the Prime Minister at Downing Street later that day on progress since last year's inquiry into careers advice suggests he has a mandate to do so.

"The complexity of choices both within education and within the labour market has never been so great, so I think it is tremendously important," he says.

"We want to ensure people make the right subject choices within education that will best help them fulfil their hopes and aspirations.

"It's also important to let them know what the opportunities are within the labour market."

He points to research by the Education and Employers Taskforce (EET), which showed a "horrendous mismatch" between the job aspirations of 15-year-olds and demand in the labour market.

"I think a lot could be achieved simply by improving the quality of information available," he says. "There has been too little progress so far, but I'm working with the EET to look at getting jobs boards, which I would like to see in every school and college, that not only show an annual snapshot of the national labour market, but also one for local jobs markets. That information alone might just nudge young people to move from aspiring to a career where there's going to be six people for every job to one in which there might be fewer aspirant jobseekers than there are jobs available."

Inspections

Another controversial committee hearing was the appearance last month of Ofsted chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw, who said that children's social care is "coasting at an unacceptable level" and will not get better unless leadership improves and issues around the recruitment of social workers are addressed. His words followed repeated criticism of the existing regulatory system from the Association of Directors of Children's Services, which has called for the inspection regime to be re-examined urgently. Stuart himself denies that inspections are too tough.

"Part of the role of the inspector is to provide challenge," he says. "Just as a ship that's pushed to its limit creaks as it is moved to a higher speed, so too do we hear complaints from within the system as higher standards are demanded and pushed for.

"In that argument, I would side more with Ofsted, because we need to aspire to do even better. Doing that in a way that doesn't denigrate the astonishing hard work, personal commitment and sacrifice made by professionals in the field is the challenge.

"But if it's a choice between being rigorous and demanding or being supportive but flaccid, then I'll take rigorous and demanding any day.

"Vulnerable children are all our responsibilities and we have got to demand the same high standards for them as we would our own kids."

However, in the wake of criticism of Ofsted by a think-tank founded by Michael Gove that questioned whether it is fit for purpose - a move that left Wilshaw "spitting blood" - Stuart stands by a recommendation of the committee from 2011 that the regulator be split into separate inspectorates for education and social care.

"In our report on Ofsted, we said it was a schools regulator that had expanded and we weren't convinced it could deliver effectively both for schools and for children's social care.

"Michael (Wilshaw) was an outstanding secondary head and is passionate and knowledgeable about education.

"I continue to think that social care is a sufficiently different discipline that it would be better served by a separate dedicated regulator."

Older children in care

The committee's latest inquiry, launched last month, into the care of looked-after children post 16, raises further potential for controversy. Stuart strongly supports calls to allow young people to stay in residential care up to the age of 21 - a move that, after initially rejecting, the government has committed to exploring following an announcement in parliament by children's minister Edward Timpson last month.

"We have pressed Edward on that issue," Stuart says. "We highlighted in our report on child protection in England the need for authorities to focus more on older children.

"I'm delighted that changes have been made to raise support to the age of 21 for children in foster care. But we have had not entirely satisfactory answers from ministers on why they won't do the same for residential care.

"They have said that the quality is not sufficient to give them the confidence to do that, which I think is an odd answer. But I think there is a preparedness there to review it."

Stuart is less clear about how the government has fared overall in terms of improving the lot of children and young people since May 2010, while enforcing substantial spending cuts.

"We know that spending vast sums of money, as the last government did, didn't lead to massive improvement, so it's not certain that reduced expenditure is leading to diminished services," he says. "In many cases, it leads to greater innovation. It's hard, despite my role as chair of this committee, to know overall, if you look outside of schools, whether services have improved or worsened.

"The nature of my job is that I sit on the committee and a panel of people appear before me and tell me that five years ago things were pretty terrible, but things are really improving now. And one of the strange things is that five years on, you sometimes get the same people come along and tell you exactly the same thing again.

"Trying to discern the truth from the noise is difficult."

GRAHAM STUART CV

• Born in Carlisle in 1962, Stuart was sent to boarding school aged eight
• While at school, he read lots of Solzhenitsyn - a Russian novelist and prominent critic of Soviet totalitarianism - and developed "an abiding dislike for any ideology that oppresses the individual"
• He went on to read philosophy and then law at Selwyn College, Cambridge, where during his first year he set up a publishing company of which he remains non-executive chairman
• He failed his degree and decided to continue running his business
• He was elected to Cambridge City Council in 1998, becoming leader of the Conservative group in 2000
• Became Conservative MP for Beverley and Holderness at the 2005 general election.