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That definition is repeated in the Bill. Demand is growing daily, as, understandably, parents become more aware of the problems and expect more from their LEAs. More pressure groups are being formed, especially in areas of moderate learning difficulty such as dyslexia, and there is increasing recourse to the law.At the heart of the problem is the assumption in the 1981 Act--still prevalent today--that only 2 per cent. of all pupils need statementing. In Wiltshire, the true figure is now nearly 5 per cent., the highest in the south-west, up from an accurate figure in 1983 of 1.8 per cent., and it is rising constantly.
Our children have only one chance to obtain a good education. It is our duty in government to ensure that we guard that chance jealously, so that all children go on to become members of a better educated generation. We in west Wiltshire are fortunate. We have many excellent schools, grant- maintained and locally managed. We have dedicated teaching staff and increasingly experienced school governors prepared to give generously of their time. I pay tribute to them all. We have seen the merits of the education reforms of the last 13 years. I hope that many others will reap the benefits of the proposals in the Bill.
6.58 pm
Mr. John Gunnell (Morley and Leeds, South) : On 3 June I received a letter from the Secretary of State about grant-maintained status for schools. He informed me that at that time there were more than 260 approved GM schools in England and that the number was increasing rapidly. Yesterday he told the House that there were 340 and we were told today that it had increased to 342.
So in five months there have been 80 new GM schools. That reveals the reason for the Bill. It shows clearly that the measure is born out of the failure of the Conservatives to attract the number of GM schools that they anticipated. If we continue at the rate of 16 a month, which is 200 a year, it will take all four and a half years available to the Government--if they last an undeserved further four years or more--to achieve about 1,200 GM schools. That would give them just 5 per cent. of all schools. Clearly, the forecast level of 500 by the end of March puts the rate up to 320 a year, which is still below the Government's expectation. The Government have therefore changed the rules so that they can say that they expect, in the year from 1993-94, a further 1,000 schools to go grant maintained. Grant- maintained schools are a disruption of the educational system for no good purpose. They are the antithesis of community because they make it impossible for neighbouring schools to share facilities and for schools to share their facilities with the wider community. They make extremely difficult the wider strategic planning framework in which education must prosper. It is essential that educational provision can be planned for all children in a particular area. If schools are taken out of the system and isolated, so that it becomes difficult to put the jigsaw back together, that is a form of disruption.
The Bill's funciton is to challenge local authority responsibility and to upset established structures. Naturally, that is not the stated aim, but it is the probable result of the Bill's enactment and implementation.
I am concerned about how the process is being pursued. Yesterday, the Secretary of State was pursuing it with unwarranted arrogance. The way in which he refused to respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham,
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Yardley (Ms. Morris) was unfortunate, given his earlier responses. But when he followed that by walking out when my hon. Friend spoke, it showed a degree of personal rudeness which, from a Secretary of State for Education, is an extremely bad example to young people watching how the House is considering the system by which they are educated.I am also worried about the Government's intolerance and direction on this issue. Why is it that, when local authorities put forward their views on the Bill, they are accused of unfair propaganda and curbing measures are taken, yet when the Secretary of State does the same thing, there is no condemnation?
Next week, the Secretary of State has called a meeting for head teachers in the north of England at the Hilton hotel, Garforth, in my authority--the city of Leeds. He has not told Leeds education authority that he will be meeting in Leeds to discuss educational issues. When it found out about that and suggested that it might meet him, it received no response to the invitation. A headmaster in my constituency asked to go to that meeting, but was told that he could not because there was not sufficient room--the space was already full.
How much has the meeting in Leeds to do with the Secretary of State's undoubted disappointment that Leeds has no opted-out schools and has had no applications for opting out, and that there is not even a ballot in sight? The answers by the Under-Secretary of State for Education in today's Hansard show that 322 schools in Leeds are eligible to follow that procedure, yet none of them has.
A schools commission has been set up in Leeds. It is run independently from the authority by 20 people : five head teachers ; five governors ; five members of the city council--only two of whom are members of the controlling Labour group ; the leader of the Conservative group ; and the education spokesman of the Conservative group. Every school in Leeds belongs to that schools commission. It has already agreed a parental choice -led system and abolished catchment areas throughout the city. It has agreed plans for the reduction of 3,000 secondary places and 2,500 primary places, most of which will be in place by 1994. It has agreed the closure of certain schools that are educationally, socially or financially unviable. Furthermore, it is producing a plan for the entire area, which shows strategic direction for that authority, and its plans are for 91 per cent. of funding to be devolved.
Will not the Government congratulate the city of Leeds on bringing forward such a comprehensive plan, put together by head teachers, governors, members of the authority, a small group of external people who represent race relations interests in the city, and the Churches? That is a model of a system that seeks planning for the whole authority. My argument against grant-maintained status is that it disrupts the coherence of plans which, ultimately, can only be bad for many of those whom we represent.
Why are the Government so keen on subsidiarity when it means devolving powers from Europe to nation states, but have such a hostile view of subsidiarity when it means moving from central Government to local government? Why does the Secretary of State need 44 additional powers whereby he can give direction?
Mr. Forth : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Gunnell : I have only half a minute left, but I shall give way to the Minister.
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Mr. Forth : We are pushing the concept of subsidiarity to its limit in devolving power to schools, not to local education authorities.
Mr. Gunnell : The Government are not doing that at all. The Secretary of State is taking powers to correct anything that he considers is going wrong in local decision-making.
I regret that the debate has focused entirely on structure and organisation rather than on what is really happening in education today--
Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. The hon. Gentleman's time is up. 7.8 pm
Mr. David Congdon (Croydon, North-East) : This important Bill builds on the excellent reforms that we have put in place in recent years. We are already seeing some of the benefits of the introduction of a national curriculum and standard assessment tests, with improved GCSE results.
What has been depressing about the debate is that it is based on a Bill introduced after a White Paper called "Choice and Diversity". It is abundantly clear that the Opposition have no conception of choice and diversity. They believe in a system in which all schools are the same children go to their local comprehensive or nowhere. The Conservative party believes in a rich diversity of provision. I am pleased that my constituency contains a city technology college, and Croydon has another technology college for the performing arts. It has just been announced that Edenham high in my constituency is to become a grant-maintained school. I hope that in the borough of Croydon we will see a continued growth in the number of grant-maintained schools.
We wish to see a system with a variety of schools. I do not mind whether they are voluntary aided, grant-maintained, assisted places, grammar schools or whatever. We are not afraid of diversity ; it is clear that Opposition Members are. Everything they have said has been about fear of change in education. As I listened to some of their statements about grant- maintained schools, I could well understand why too few schools in Labour- controlled areas have opted out because of the disinformation that is being spread.
The hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor) talked about grant-maintained schools being a process of centralised control. How can it be centralised control when those schools manage the totality of their own affairs without the interference of the local education authority?
The hon. Member for Cannock and Burntwood (Dr. Wright) implied that the process of going grant-maintained was compulsory. What could be further from the truth when schools have to go through a democratic balloting process? The hon. Member for the City of Durham (Mr. Steinberg) said that grant-maintained schools involved privatising the educational process. How can they involve privatisation when grant-maintained schools are state- funded schools which run locally? The grant-maintained process is not privatisation : it is giving power to those who run the schools. It removes the dead hand of local education authority control where too many local education authorities interfere far too much in the running the schools. It is a logical extension of the very
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successful reform of local management of schools, whereby 85 per cent. of expenditure has to be devolved to the schools.I welcome that extension. It is popular. Yes, it has been slow to take off in some areas because of the opposition of local education authorities. I was particularly grateful for the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Mrs. Lait) about some of the barriers to grant-maintained status that are put in the path of schools.
If I have any criticism of the Bill, it is that perhaps we need to go further in removing the barriers to schools becoming grant maintained. When the Bill goes into Committee, perhaps we should consider an annual ballot of parents, because the existing procedure, and even the procedure suggested in the Bill, is a recipe for not ensuring that enough schools at least have the opportunity to decide whether they wish to opt out. I should like to see such an improvement.
Turning briefly to the funding agency, given the growth in the number of grant-maintained schools, it is right to have a body that is responsible for the distribution of funds to the schools. It is very important that we severely circumscribe the role of the funding agencies so that they do not become surrogate local education authorities. I very much welcomed the comments of the Secretary of State yesterday when he made it clear that they would have a limited role.
Clearly the funding agencies should have a planning role in regard to the number of places in an area. Percentages are laid down in the Bill. My only plea on the percentages is that we should look carefully at the higher cut- off point for control to pass totally to the funding agencies. There is a case for arguing that that percentage should be lower to ensure a smoother transition to an improved regime of managing numbers in schools.
There is great doubt about the future role of local education authorities. I was pleased to be a member of an LEA for nearly 16 years. Many LEAs do a good job, but that is not true of all of them. That is one reason why I have very few qualms about taking some powers away from them. That is the quid pro quo for giving more control and power to the schools.
One important point, which I welcome very much, is that, apart from responsibility for school attendance, transport and the psychology service, LEAs will have a key role in special education. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mrs. Browning), in an excellent speech last evening, outlined the real importance of special education. Many of us recognised that the Education Act 1981 was a landmark and a great step forward. Regrettably, there has been a tendency for too many LEAs not to implement that legislation properly by taking far too long to issue statements for pupils with needs. Even when they issued statements, they made them so meaningless as not to lead to the right provision for the children.
The report of the Audit Commission was particularly useful and relevant. I am delighted that most of the recommendations in the report have been included in the Bill. That is a great step forward, which will lead to improved special education.
Mrs. Anne Campbell (Cambridge) rose --
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Mr. Congdon : I will not give way, because I have only10 minutes. The education system must respond to parental choice. While it is important to allow popular schools to expand, I welcome the proposal to deal with failing schools. For too long local education authorities have allowed schools that are not up to the job to continue to deliver third-rate education to the children. Even if there had been inspections by local inspectors, the schools had usually succeeded in making sure that the real difficulties went uncovered.
The Education (Schools) Act 1992 provided a firmer and stronger basis for inspection. The proposals in the Bill extend that by introducing a concept of educational associations. As has already been said, one difficulty is that youngsters have only one chance to get an education. We cannot afford to allow schools to continue to deliver third-rate education for too long.
Truth and reality in education are that a school depends very much on the quality of the head teacher, the leadership that is given and the quality of senior staff. It also depends crucially on the ethos of the school. Much research has shown that if a school has high expectations and the right ethos it will achieve high results. I make a brief comment about surplus places ; of course, it is right to take action to reduce some of the 1.5 million surplus places, but we must be careful not to reduce them too far. We need some surplus places to provide for parental choice.
In conclusion, the Bill builds on previous legislation
7.18 pm
Mr. Greg Pope (Hyndburn) : Education Bills are a common occurrence under the Conservatives. I sometimes wonder if they have taken Labour's election slogan, "Time for a change", and made it the motto of the Department for Education. Sadly, it is change for change's sake. We have had city technology colleges, assisted places, the national curriculum, changes to the national curriculum and more changes to the national curriculum. All that has achieved is to make education an ideological playground. Now we have this Bill of 255 clauses and 17 schedules, with no doubt many more to come before the end of the Committee stage. The sum total of that is to increase the sum total of the powers of the Secretary of State for Education. It is not only the Opposition who believe that the Bill is a centralising measure. No less a journal than The Times, hardly the most left-wing of papers, said in a headline on the day after the White Paper that preceded the Bill was published : "Ministers to seize control of education." So The Times knows the real purpose of the Bill. So do hon. Members and so, I suspect, do parents. The Government are committed to privatisation, yet the Bill is as important an act of nationalisation as anything in the 1945 to 1950 Parliament. The Government profess the virtues of subsidiarity to our European partners ; yet the Bill vests power not in the lowest tier of authority but at the highest level, with the Secretary of State. The proposed funding council will be non-elected and unaccountable. I fear that it will be underfunded, like many other bodies for which the Government are responsible.
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Parents do not welcome the Bill. They know the truth about the education system, although the Government try to hide it--they know, because unlike most Ministers, they send their children to schools in the public education system.One of the central tenets of the Bill is the idea of increasing the number of grant-maintained schools, which have been a disastrous flop. Only about 300 schools have opted out, despite the financial incentives to do so. Now we see the pathetic spectacle of the Secretary of State for Education sending out begging letters to the head teachers in every school in England, pleading with them to opt out. The head teacher in my constituency who gave me his copy of the letter told me that he did not need it any more : head teachers get enough junk mail offering them new-fangled designs which are of no use to school children.
I shall try to speak about special educational needs in the non-partisan spirit that the Minister advocated earlier. I welcome the powers in the Bill to tell GM schools to accept excluded children and to name GM schools in school attendance orders. Those are both constructive ideas. The problem is that they are bright spots in an otherwise gloomy Bill. More than anything else, this is a bill of missed opportunities in special education. It fails to answer the central question of who is responsible overall for special education.
The Bill makes it clear that LEAs are responsible for statements and statemented children, but it does not make clear who is responsible for special educational needs overall. As far back as the Warnock report, the Government have always accepted the estimate that about one fifth of pupils will require extra help with special needs at some point in their school careers, but only 2 per cent. of children will require statements. I hope that the Minister will tell us who is responsible for the other 18 per cent. of children who may need help at some point but who do not warrant a statement. A great deal of work is done by educational psychologists with this larger group of 18 per cent. In particular, they work with children who have emotional or behavioural difficulties--difficulties not mentioned in the Bill. Unless all 20 per cent. are covered by legislation, they will not be protected. They should all be included in the Bill to ensure that LEAs and psychologists can continue to protect and enhance the education of children in the wider group. Why are no incentives offered to schools to take children with special needs but who may not be statemented? Some schools will not take children with behavioural difficulties because they believe that they might affect truancy rates, which will then be published. Some schools will not take children with learning difficulties because they think that they may affect their published examination results. We must offer incentives to schools to take non-statemented children with special needs.
Why does the Bill place no duty on agencies such as social work and health departments and LEAs to work together? Such duties were given in the Children Act 1989. We have heard a great deal about delays in the statementing process. They are not always the fault of the LEA ; they could be the fault of the social services department or the health authority. If the Bill placed a duty on all those agencies to work together, we could cut
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some of the delays. Some of the most vulnerable children are those who are most likely to have special needs and to need help from these agencies.Why do the Government provide no target for the training of educational welfare officers to ensure that they become qualified social workers? I have the impression that the Government think that truancy can be solved by nabbing the truants. That simplistic approach helps no one--the problem is more complex than that. It would be much more sensible of the Government to invest in training educational welfare officers and ensuring that they were qualified. In the end, truancy is more likely to be a symptom than the root problem. Hence we need to deal with it in a skilled and professional way.
Why has one of the central thrusts of the Children Act been ignored in the Bill? I refer to the right of a child to be consulted about its own future. This would be an ideal opportunity to bring special needs policies in line with the United Nations convention on the rights of the child, article 12 of which states :
"Children's views should be considered on all matters and administrative proceedings relating to them."
We live in a society in which a child can take legal proceedings to divorce itself from its parents, yet children cannot have a say in deciding whether to agree to be assessed or in the sort of educational provision that would be best for them.
The Bill gives the Secretary of State 44 new powers, but it gives no new powers or rights to children. It reflects the long-term tendency of Ministers to take away powers from local people and elected local authorities and to give them to Ministers and their civil servants.
The Bill will fail to arrest declining standards in public sector education. It will fail to restore public confidence in the public education system. Worst of all, the Bill will fail to protect the most vulnerable children, those with special needs, and that is disgraceful.
We now spend less on education as a proportion of our national wealth than we did 13 years ago under a Labour Government. That is the root cause of the crisis in our schools. Nationalisation, centralisation, or however Ministers dress up this measure, it will not improve the education of a single child.
7.27 pm
Mr Graham Riddick (Colne Valley) : The hon. Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope) referred to an editorial in The Times , but as he said, it appeared the day after the launch of the White Paper, when the Times staff had not had time yet to read it. Once they had read it, they changed their tune.
This is not a measure of nationalisation. As far as possible in a state- funded system, the Government are creating semi-independent schools with a large degree of autonomy.
I should like to offer the Bill a positive welcome. I hope that it will not be too long before my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State introduces another Bill, this time to abolish the student unions' closed shop. It is high time the Government allowed students the freedom to decide whether to belong to a student union--or to the National Union of Students. I look forward to the day when my right hon. Friend presents that legislation. I take it from the fact that he is nodding that he intends to do exactly that.
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I welcome the measures in the Bill to reduce the incidence of truancy, and I am sure that making parents more responsible for their children's attendance at school is the right approach.I support the Secretary of State's additional power to intervene where individual schools are not properly providing education for their children. I welcome the way in which the Government are encouraging schools to specialise. However, such specialisation should not, and I am sure will not, in any way detract from the delivery of the national curriculum.
I particularly welcome the general thrust of the Bill. It is designed to encourage diversity among schools, to extend parental choice and to channel resources away from administration into education.
However, if I have one criticism of the Bill, it is that it is simply not radical enough. It does not go far enough. If the Government believe that grant-maintained schools are the most effective way of maximising educational opportunities for our children, we should bite the bullet and legislate so that all secondary schools become grant-maintained by a certain time--perhaps by the end of 1994 or the end of 1995. We should thereafter be looking to extend grant-maintained status to all primary schools. I have no doubt that grant-maintained schools provide a better quality of education, because they introduce real competition into our education system. We should not be ashamed of that. We should be shouting it from the rooftops. Competition is good in every other sector of life and it will be good in education. Competition drives up standards. Competition between schools would force schools to deliver what parents want for their children, not what the schools think those children should have. Competition between schools forces head teachers and their staff to ensure that academic standards are high, that extra-curricular activities are available and varied and that there is proper discipline and a proper spiritual and moral culture within the school.
That is what parents want. Where there is true competition and choice, parents will choose those schools which provide the highest standards. In a competitive environment, some schools will decide to specialise and that will increase choice. Therfore, the Government should go further than the Bill allows and ensure that all parents have access to a grant-maintained school for their children. As Conservative Members know, that is complete anathema to the education establishment. It believes that competition is vulgar. Head teachers talk about the need for their schools to "co- operate", whatever that means. It really means that they do not have to compete. Some teachers become governors at other schools in order to block those schools taking on grant-maintained status. Local education authority administrators do everything in their power to maintain their power over local schools. The teachers' unions argue for the status quo. It is not surprising, therefore, that many parents feel somewhat overawed in the face of the conspiracy against grant-maintained status by the education mafia.
I am sorry to say that the combination that makes up the education establishment is clearly present in and around my constituency. I regret that no schools in my constituency have taken on grant-maintained status. I
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hope that they will and that the Government will act to ensure that all those secondary schools do become grant- maintained, so that parents in my constituency can enjoy the benefits of grant-maintained status--high standards, more choice, more diversity and greater discipline in schools.Moreover, teachers and head teachers would benefit from having more control over the running of their schools. No longer would they have to respond to the dictates of the LEA. They would feel that they had a real stake in the schools in which they were working.
In a slightly less controversial vein, I come to special education. When I intervened earlier on my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, he gave me some reassurance on the point that I now want to touch on. We should be careful how far we push the drive for the integration of children with special educational needs into mainstream schools. That is the direction in which, dare I say, the education establishment, as well as my right hon. and hon. Friends, are going.
Mr. Win Griffiths (Bridgend) : That is not true.
Mr. Riddick : It is true. The hon. Gentleman clearly disagrees, and I accept that, but the accepted wisdom is that it is better for children to be integrated into mainstream education. However, there are times when a child will lose as a result of such integration, perhaps because he or she cannot cope with a new environment or because the mainstream schools simply cannot deliver the sort of special education that the children need.
When my local council, Kirklees council, issued a document last year to force through integration at a far greater pace, many parents expressed concern and opposition to the plans. I have a number of special schools in my constituency, and my experience is that they have achieved remarkable results in drawing out the full potential of individual children with special needs.
One of those schools, Royd Edge school in Meltham, is being forced by Kirklees council to become a day school as opposed to a residential school, much against the wishes of many parents. I therefore voice that note of caution, which I hope my right hon. and hon. Friends will take on board.
My second concern relates to independent and non-maintained special schools. Concerns have been voiced to me by a friend who is a governor of Chailey Heritage school in Sussex, and also by the headmaster of Holly Bank school near Mirfield, just outside my constituency.
I have visited Holly Bank several times, and I know that it provides a wonderful service for many children with severe disabilities. I think that I am right in saying that there was no mention of those schools in the White Paper. There is a real concern that LEAs will simply stop using the services of such schools if the LEAs suffer a financial penalty, and there is certainly concern that they will suffer a financial penalty. I hope that my hon. Friend will address that point when he replies.
The Conservative party is the only party with any radical ideas about how to improve Britain's education system. The Labour party is interested only in protecting vested interests--the teachers' unions and local education authorities. Labour's hostility to
grant-maintained schools is a disgrace. The Labour party remains wedded to the outdated and discredited notion of equality, where the lowest common denominator is dominant.
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It is the Conservative Government who are forcing through changes to improve Britain's education system. We believe in diversity, choice and high standards, and I am delighted to lend my support to a Bill which will provide all those things.7.37 pm
Ms. Mildred Gordon (Bow and Poplar) : The Education Act 1944 was an inspiration to teachers who felt that it was an opportunity to raise standards and to increase advantage and possibility for children. It was a real opportunity for educational reform.
The so-called reforms of the Government have the opposite effect. They have demoralised rather than inspired teachers. Local management of schools, based on the average teacher's salary, threatens the most experienced and valuable teachers in schools. Primary school teachers have been forced to put their children through the hoops of standard assessment tests. Classes are getting larger, and the lack of money for supply teachers means that classes have to be split up when teachers are away. All those things, coupled with the increased proportion of administrative work to teaching time, are demoralising teachers.
The White Paper fails to recognise that teachers are the linchpin of the education system. It says that parents are the experts, and I am not denigrating the expertise of parents, but I do not like the expertise of teachers to be brushed aside as of no importance. Although the White Paper concentrates on the role of parents, it fails to deal with their concerns. My advice surgery, like those of some of my hon. Friends, has revealed those concerns very clearly. One that arises again and again is the need for parents and children to benefit from the provision of nursery education, but the White Paper says nothing about that.
The same applies to discretionary grants for students ; to clothing grants for parents on low incomes ; to adult education, which is being whittled down to nothing, while LEAs are left short of money and forced to cut all provision except that which is a statutory obligation ; and to schools for children with special educational needs. Parents fear that good schools for children in that latter class are closing down, and that the money and expertise are not being invested in mainstream classes.
If anything can be said to be of paramount importance in education, it is the need for stability. Since the Government began to introduce education Bills, however, instability has become chronic in London. First we saw the wanton destruction the Inner London Education Authority--a much maligned organisation which provided a good standard of education in the inner city, against dreadful odds. It pioneered research into education, and the philosophy of education, and it raised the cultural level in many spheres. I remember the last concert that it organised in the Albert hall : children and adults from every ILEA area gave a brilliant performance, and I was reduced to tears by the thought that it would all be destroyed--along with the other avantages provided by a unitary authority, in art, drama and other spheres.
The local education authorities then took over in London. They tried to establish new methods, depending very much on the old ILEA divisional offices but trying to build up the schools. They were then faced with the problems posed by local management of schools. Now we
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have opt-outs and funding agencies. As the Government exert pressure on schools to opt out, the LEAs will be given less money and less control over planning. That is a recipe for turmoil and chaos. I am glad to see the hon. Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall) in the Chamber. He intervened to mention Hendon school, which he presented as a shining example of grant-maintained status which has now increased its numbers. The hon. Gentleman, however, did not tell the whole story. Barnet borough council--a Conservative body if there ever was one--tried to do away with its surplus places by amalgamating Hendon school, which was formerly a grammer school in a middle-class area, with Whitefields, formerly a secondary school on a council estate.Whitefields was on the larger site ; it had the more modern building and the better facilities. Hendon school parents, however, did not want their children to go to Whitefields--not on your nelly. They fought it, and they were allowed to opt out. Their grant is at the expense of Whitefields'.
Mr. John Marshall rose --
Mrs. Gordon : The hon. Gentleman has had his chance.
As a result, the disadvantaged children on the council estate have been further disadvantaged. I am very glad that the hon. Gentleman raised the matter ; I might not have thought of it otherwise. Mr. Marshall rose--
Mrs. Gordon : No, I will not give way. I have waited for two days to speak for 10 minutes, and I think that it is unreasonable to expect me to give way now.
All the organisations that have written to me are worried about what the Bill will do for children with special educational needs. Mencap asks this about the funding agency :
"How can a system operate coherently and efficiently if one body retains responsibility for children with special needs"--
the LEAs, that is--
"while another body is responsible for funding the schools which provide the education?"
That puts it in a nutshell.
So-called reforms--I cannot mention the Government's reforms without putting them, as it were, in quotation marks--such as the publication of league tables will disadvantage children with special needs who have not been statemented, and children who are learning English as a second language. Grant-maintained schools that want a high position on the league tables will be reluctant to take such children, although they may give other reasons.
Many hon. Members have pointed out that children have only one chance in the education system, and that a single experiment can affect their whole lives. The Government should have been more prudent : they should have waited to see how the funding agency worked in higher education before establishing a similar agency for schools. Given that if only 10 per cent. of schools were to transfer to grant-maintained status, the Government should have devoted much more serious thought to the process. They should have worked out what would happen when a conflict arose over plans.
For instance, an LEA might feel that a sixth form school should be set up rather than a primary school, or vice versa, and the funding agency think the reverse. It
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