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Mrs. Shephard: I must make some progress. I have taken about 15 interventions. [Hon. Members: "Give way."] Very well, but this is the last one.
Mr. Hattersley: We all know that the Church rebuffed the Prime Minister: it was one of his many humiliations during the autumn. Will the right hon. Lady now answer the question that I asked her? How did the Prime Minister's offer of allowing schools to opt out without consulting parents square with the avowed policy of parental choice?
Mrs. Shephard: Mainly because my right hon. Friend did not make it--[Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman did not listen to my answer. I said that six options were put to VA schools--[Hon. Members: "No."] Yes, I did. Church schools were consulted on the sixth option. It is a great pity that the right hon. Gentleman, who intervened twice, did not listen to the answers that he was given.
I now intend to make some progress. I have taken a number of interesting and jolly interventions, but the House will begin to lose patience if I do not do so.
We are proposing a series of measures to ensure quality. First, parents will be in control. All the providers to which grants will be made will be required to publish information for parents. That will include details of their staffing, admission arrangements and the education programme on offer. Parents will be able to see whether their children will be offered the opportunities that will help them make the most of their pre-school year in just the same way as they can make judgments from the prospectuses of primary and secondary schools.
Mr. Cynog Dafis (Ceredigion and Pembroke, North):
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mrs. Shephard:
I will of course give way in a little while, but I want to make progress.
Secondly, I have gladly accepted in full the advice that I received from the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority on the goals for learning for children by the time they enter compulsory education. Different children will of course make progress at different rates, but all children should be able to follow a programme towards the outcome. I want children to start compulsory school excited by the prospect of learning and keen to question and investigate.
Thirdly, inspection is essential in ensuring that there is good-quality provision. The Office of Standards in Education will be responsible for drawing up an
inspection framework for recruiting and training inspectors, and for organising inspections and monitoring them. For most non-maintained providers, that will be a new development. For many that think that they already deliver good-quality education provision for young children, that will be an opportunity to demonstrate that fact and to be recognised for it in an inspection report. The inspections will concentrate on the education quality of the places supported by the grant. They should be rigorous but not disruptive, and should apply with equal rigour to all settings. Providers that have been given an initial validation if they have met certain qualifying conditions will get their final validation after a successful inspection.
Mr. Dafis:
The Secretary of State suggested that consultation was of the essence and added that the Government listened to consultation in relation to Church schools. Can she confirm that the outcome of such consultation in Wales was a universal rejection of the scheme? Will she therefore pay heed to that consultation and make sure that the scheme does not go ahead in Wales at all?
Mrs. Shephard:
I know that there is to be no phase 1 in Wales, but I am quite sure that once parents in Wales have caught on to the fact that parents in England are benefiting a year earlier than they are likely to, enthusiasm will then grow in Wales and pressure will be put on the providers.
There have been some worries that institutions will not be inspected until they have begun to exchange vouchers, but those worries can be set to rest because there will not be free entry to the scheme. Providers will be eligible only if they are a maintained school, a finally registered independent school, a local authority day nursery or an institution registered under the Children Act 1989, and if they agree to these three fundamentals--to publish specified information for parents; to work towards the SCAA desirable learning outcomes; and to agree to regular inspection and work through a self-assessment schedule that shows what the inspectors will examine and gives an idea of what standards are required.
Quality and the maintenance and enhancement of standards are of supreme importance.
Dr. Keith Hampson (Leeds, North-West):
Does my right hon. Friend remember a report by the university of Leeds four years ago, on the primary education structure in Leeds? Although standards are critical, as my righthon. Friend says, that report highlighted the real problem with state provision as against the flexible and innovative measures that she is proposing. That totally independent report was critical of the way in which teachers felt under pressure to adopt good practice as set down by local authorities. Teachers felt straitjacketed, and believed that their career prospects would be blighted unless they followed that good practice. Does not my righthon. Friend's scheme provide the innovation and flexibility that a state scheme cannot give?
Mrs. Shephard:
I am not familiar with the report that my hon. Friend quoted, but I must say that the scheme will encourage innovation and imaginative co-operation between providers, all of which, with quality assured, will be for the benefit of the children's early education.
When those matters were considered in the House on 21 November last year, the hon. Member for Brightside claimed that, for example, a regime that puts the emphasis on parental choice is "absolute nonsense". Given the events of the weekend, the hon. Gentleman should take up that statement with an increasing number ofhon. Members on the Labour Front Bench.
The hon. Member for Brightside apparently believes that a regime that puts the emphasis on quality of outcome, inspection and validation is also absolute nonsense. I cannot believe that he will hold to that after hearing this debate. Does he believe that our aim to increase the number of four-year-olds receiving nursery education is also absolute nonsense? It may be that the hon. Member for Ladywood will have different things to say about that.
I should like to say something about the funding system. There will be a document--for convenience we can call it a voucher or, if it suits the Opposition better, an individual learning credit--which has no face value, is not transferable and is not what lawyers might call a means of exchange. The voucher is an administrative tool for determining the grants to be paid to the providers chosen by parents, in exchange for providing the service of nursery education.
The mechanics of the voucher scheme will be perfectly straightforward. Parents with children in the eligible age range will receive an application form and apply to the voucher agency. The agency will issue a voucher. The parents will choose the provider and present the voucher. The provider will return the voucher to the voucher agency. The validity of the voucher will be checked, and passed to the Department for Education and Employment for payment of the grant.
The hon. Member for Brightside called that scheme an "administrative nightmare". I can suggest only that he perhaps has other nightmares to worry about now--the Labour party's education policies. There are more myths to dispel about the voucher scheme funding.
Mr. Peter Ainsworth (East Surrey):
I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way. She has been generous in giving way and splendidly robust on the subject of the Labour party's education policy. I wonder whether during her speech she might find time to comment on the Liberal Democrats' policy, because we have been told by the excellent Mr. Gareth Roberts, the senior researcher for the Liberal Democrats, that all they want to do is to throw money at education and that their policies are interchangeable with Labour's. That is an amazingly accurate description. Could my right hon. Friend comment on that?
Mrs. Shephard:
That description is likely to be proved during the debate, but of course we shall all be noticing.
There are more myths to dispel about the voucher scheme funding--for example, the claim that local education authorities will lose out. That is not so. Funding will come from two sources: the new money that I mentioned, which is £390 million during three years, put together with around £565 million from local authority budgets. Let me be clear about it: the only money to be deducted from local authority budgets will be the voucher value for four-year-olds already in state schools. If those schools continue to recruit the same number of
four-year-olds as they do now, all that money will be returned and the local authority budget will be unchanged. If local authority schools recruit more four-year-olds, the funding will increase. If local education authorities provide what parents want, they will not lose out.
Let me examine another myth. It has been claimed that places for three-year-olds are threatened. That is not so. Local authority spending on three-year-olds is unaffected by the funding for vouchers because it applies only to four-year-olds. Local authorities can continue to spend just as much as now and provide just as many places.
There is another myth. It has been claimed that reception class places will be reduced from full time to part time. Again, that is not so. If local authority schools continue to recruit as many four-year-olds as they do now, the funding will be the same and there will be no need to change the number of full-time places that they provide. Moreover, contrary to another myth, expansion of places for four-year-olds will bring benefits to children with special educational needs. There will be the potential to detect special needs earlier. That will be good for parents, their children and their children's future education.
If recruitment of four-year-olds by local authority schools is maintained, the funding mechanism for vouchers will not touch resources for special needs. We want the places for special needs children to be good as well, so we shall discuss with interested parties the impact of requiring all providers to have regard to the special educational needs code of practice. In the meantime, providers must tell parents of their special needs policies.
Other myths, about the future of nursery schools and grants for pre-school playgroups, can also be dispelled. None of those is under threat. There is opportunity and funded growth for the whole sector.
The plans to monitor standards across the board have received a warm welcome from the pre-school movement. The chief executive of the Pre-School Learning Alliance said:
"We welcome the plan to bring pre-schools within a common inspection framework which will be regulated by Ofsted".
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