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Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby): The hon. Gentleman says that the scheme favours higher ranks. If he looks at it differently, he will note that it favours people who tend to be over 40 who have children of school age. Most of the more junior ranks will leave the services earlier. The hon. Gentleman will discover that most people serve approximately five or seven years in the armed forces and leave before they are even 30. A full career for a non-commissioned officer takes him to the age of 40 and officers go on further than that. That is a pertinent reason why the scheme favours higher ranks.

Mr. Jamieson: I accept the hon. Gentleman's argument. I do not want to go into the matter for too long, but if one takes two people in exactly the same circumstances serving for the same period, the person of a junior rank is at a disadvantage under the scheme compared with the person of a senior rank on higher pay. Obviously, the pay of a sergeant who may have children in school is less than a major's pay and 10 per cent. of the fee is a considerably greater proportion of his pay. That is the point that I am making, but I fully accept what the hon. Gentleman says: people who serve longer in the services will benefit more from the scheme.

Many local education authority boarding schools are better than and all of them are cheaper than the independent schools. I wish to know from the Minister why they are not included on the admissible schools list. Why do parents have to send for a separate list of the LEA boarding schools? Why are they not put on the list so that parents can see them? Why are some schools on the list in the first place? Why are they not excluded? The Service Children's Education Authority gave the following advice to parents in relation to all-age integrated independent schools:

"Nevertheless, there are some, and especially some of the least expensive, that may be said to fall short of really satisfactory provision. Parents must take care and seek good advice."

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The advice continues:

"You will be particularly wise to take advice when considering schools in this area of the market."

The Service Children's Education Authority is putting a health warning on some of the schools that it has on its list. I ask the Minister: why are the schools on the list if the SCEA feels the obligation to give a health warning about their quality? Why are the boarding schools in the LEA system not on the list when the SCEA says that many of them provide a much better education at a lower cost? Today's debate is not about the principle of the scheme--which I support--but about its operation and the quality of advice to parents. Today's debate is not about the principle of private education--it is not an attack on private or independent schools.

I recognise that many independent schools are excellent and that the majority are at least satisfactory, if not good. One could argue that they should be giving a good education because, in most cases, they are funded at a much higher level than local education authority schools. However, I am concerned about those schools that are falling below the standard that they should achieve. Evelyn Waugh described independent schools with acerbic accuracy in "Decline and Fall" when he said:

"We class schools into four grades: Leading School, First-Rate School, Good School, and School. Frankly, School is pretty bad."

The SCEA should closely examine some of the schools that Evelyn Waugh would class as "school". What are the issues for the schools in the boarding school allowance scheme? First, what checks are made on academic standards in the schools? Secondly, is the taxpayer getting full value for money from the £107 million spent in the schools? Thirdly, is there a threat to the value and existence of the reports on boarding schools from social services departments? Finally, does the Service Children's Education Authority need to revise its role, its practices and its advice to parents?

I refer to academic achievement. For many decades, Her Majesty's inspectors of schools have had the role of inspecting the quality of schools. Since 1993, the Office for Standards in Education has taken over that role. Among other things, it looks at the quality of teaching, academic standards achieved and the value for money that the school gives. When Ofsted was set up, it was the intention that local education authority schools would be inspected every four years and that independent schools would be inspected every seven years.

I shall contrast what happens with an inspection in a local education authority school with an inspection in an independent school. If an LEA school has an inspection, there has to be a pre-meeting with the head, the governors and the parents. When the inspection is completed, a summary of the report has to be sent to all parents in the school. The parents are also informed where they can get hold of the full report on the school should they wish to see it, which is usually within the school and provided free of charge. The report is also made public. Therefore, it is available for the wider community to look at and, if necessary, for comment in the press. I have no objection to that procedure.

When deficiencies are found in the school, an action plan has to be drawn up, where appropriate, which is overseen by the LEA and the inspectors may have a role in coming back at some future time. In extreme cases, where a school is deemed to be failing or to be

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substantially substandard, an education association can be sent into the school and it can be made grant maintained or, in extreme circumstances, it can close. As hon. Members know, that has already happened to the Hackney Downs school in London.

I contrast that approach with that of the independent schools. There is a dwindling number of reports on the independent schools. In the past two weeks, I have received a letter from the chief executive of Ofsted. He said that in 1993-94, there were 19 inspections of independent schools; in 1994-95, there were 13; in 1995-96, there were just nine; and in 1996-97, up to three schools will be inspected in the independent sector--none, one, two or three schools may be inspected. I have concluded that Ofsted is going to cease inspecting independent schools.

I have seen some of the inspections that have been made on independent schools and they show the same wide spectrum of achievement that one sees in local education authority schools and in grant-maintained schools. Some of the reports on the schools are excellent, most are good or satisfactory, but some are poor. If they were LEA schools, they would be deemed to be failing schools. Such a school has no obligation to show the report to parents. On 17 February 1994, I received a letter from the then Under-Secretary of State for Schools who referred to Ofsted reports on independent schools as follows:

"Any such school which is the subject of a published report is supplied with copies of it which it can distribute as it sees fit."

He then said:

"The onus is on the school to distribute the report to interested parties or to advise them where the reports can be obtained."

Many of the smaller independent schools, private schools, have no governors--there is just a proprietor and a head, and in some cases the proprietor is the head. I refer to meetings to discuss what is in the report and to what Ofsted said in its document "Inspecting Independent Schools":

"It is for the proprietor and/or governors to decide who else shall attend the meeting."

The inspectors are not obligated to call parents or anyone else into the meetings to discuss the report, other than the proprietor--who can choose who he informs.

Last year, Finborough school in Suffolk had 123 pupils from the boarding school allowance scheme. The head of the school wrote to the parents in 1994 regarding an Ofsted inspection that he had had the previous year. He wrote to parents--one of whom is my constituent--as follows:

"We have not obtained copies of the Report for parents because",

and he then listed a number of reasons, one of which was:

"we were extremely unhappy about the way it was carried out and what we believe are serious statistical misrepresentations of the evidence of teaching standards."

He rejected the report because it was critical of his school, of which he is the principal and proprietor, and from which--I dare say--he receives profits. If he had been a local education authority head teacher, he would have been committing an offence by not providing the report to parents.

The message is very simple: if an independent school has had an Ofsted report and it does not like it, it can commit the report to a dusty shelf or to the bin. I am

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pleased that, in the case of Finborough school and one other school, as a result of pressure from me and my writing to the Minister, the report was sent by the Service Children's Education Authority to service families of children at the schools who were receiving funds through the boarding school allowance scheme.

Mr. Nick Hawkins (Blackpool, South): The hon. Gentleman will acknowledge that head teachers in the local education authority sector write to parents rejecting the result of Ofsted inspections. That happened in my constituency recently. What he describes is not by any means restricted to independent schools.

Mr. Jamieson: Head teachers or governors can write to parents disagreeing with reports; it is their right to do so. I do not say that the head teacher did not have the right to put his view, but it is not right that the head teacher of an independent school can block parents from seeing a report or even knowing of its existence, as in this case. At an LEA school, the head teachers and governors are obliged by law to give all parents a summary of the report and make sure that the full report is available in the school. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, on reflection, would agree that, if that is right for LEA schools, it must be right for independent schools, and especially for those schools that receive substantial sums of taxpayers' money--£107 million altogether--through the scheme.

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