House of Commons Hansard Debates for 15 Jul 1996 (pt 37)

Mr. Barry Jones (Alyn and Deeside): Will the Minister give way?

Mrs. Gillan: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will bear with me. I am trying to go through my speech as fast as possible and I do not intend to allow any interventions.

As hon. Members know, this is the annual laying of the regulations on the assisted places scheme and, from debates in previous years, hon. Members will also know

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that the amendment regulations have a specific and straightforward purpose. They simply update the principal regulations, the Education (Assisted Places) Regulations 1995. Essentially, they implement the annual uprating of the parental contribution tables, setting out the amount that parents must pay towards a child's assisted place at a participating independent school in the coming year. If approved, the amended regulations will come into force on 25 August.

Regulation 3 of the draft regulations permits schools to offer an assisted place to a child from the beginning of his or her compulsory education, thus extending the ladder of opportunity for many more able children. We are making places available for the first time to children in the junior and preparatory departments of some of our best independent schools. For the sake of brevity and so as not to take up too much time, I commend the regulations to the House.

10.12 pm

Mr. Peter Kilfoyle (Liverpool, Walton): The Minister omitted to mention that children do better in schools that are beneficiaries of the assisted places scheme not least because, unlike many of our schools, they have smaller classes and resources such as books and roofs that do not leak. If the Minister needs any evidence of that, she has only to look at this year's report by Her Majesty's chief inspector of schools, which shows in painful detail what happens in state schools.

Each year we have this debate and each year the same arguments are put. This debate is perhaps the most significant since the assisted places scheme was introduced by the Education Act 1980. It was a device to underpin the newly independent former direct grant schools. Subsequently, there was a steady increase in the number of places, although they have remained reasonably constant since 1987-88. Take-up has also increased, although 13 per cent. of the places that are available still go begging. However, the increase in cost speaks eloquently. While the cost of the scheme has increased by 3,000 per cent. since its inception, the number of places has increased by only 600 per cent., which is a telling sign of educational inflation in the independent sector.

In his wisdom, our misguided Prime Minister has announced plans to double the number of places, notwithstanding the failure to take up the slack in the scheme from the start. His proposals dovetail with his other plans to establish secondary moderns in every town. To coin a phrase: de pluribus ad minores--[Interruption.] That is a fitting epitaph for this most divisive of Governments. By such means, he hopes to put his seal on the differences between the Labour and Conservative parties. The hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey) shows his ignorance of Latin. A rough translation of the phrase is, "From the many to the few."

In short, the proposals are a party political manoeuvre rather than a serious attempt to deal with the educational divides in our country. They enable independent schools to choose from among our brightest youngsters, bringing money and talent within their walls. We should remember that the closure rate of independent schools was halved after the introduction of the assisted places scheme.

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Perhaps there were so many closures because so many parents realised--as the Secretary of State for Wales reportedly has, according to the weekend newspapers--that good comprehensive school education made private education a waste of money.

However, the Government set out to delude parents further, and the scheme was their answer. Now we have a further development of that illusion. Schools that were formerly deemed to be ineligible will now be able to jump on to the gravy train, joining schools that receive up to half their fees in income from the assisted places scheme. No doubt that will be seen by Conservative Members as an expansion of choice and diversity, and the Under-Secretary of State said as much today. If that is so, why did the leaflet entitled "Assisted Places at Independent Schools: A Brief Guide for Parents" say:

"Schools choose the pupils themselves . . . Most schools will need your child to take an entrance exam and go to an interview."

Schools make the choice, not parents--or certainly not working-class parents, according to Professor Tony Edwards of Newcastle university, who reckons that only 10 per cent. of assisted places scheme scholars are from a working-class background.

Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cirencester and Tewkesbury): I am glad that the hon. Gentleman admits that the scheme is becoming increasingly popular and that it will double in size. He says that, according to his policies, £240 million will be saved if his party abolishes the scheme. However, has he forgotten that it will cost £183 million to send those children to the state system, thereby saving only a net £57 million?

Mr. Kilfoyle: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me an opportunity to point out that, this year, 86,000 children entered the education system without any extra funding and that, next year, another 60,000 will enter it. I should like to ask him or the Minister whether the Chancellor will make available the same type of funding to those 60,000 pupils that is provided to those on the assisted places scheme. The answer is that they will not receive the same funding, because the Government have a two-tier view of education. What is good enough for the private system is not good enough for the state system.

Mr. Patrick Thompson (Norwich, North): The hon. Gentleman referred to the distinction between the state system and the independent sector, and earlier in his speech he used the word "divisive". Can he tell us whether, when the Labour party, or if the Labour party--[Hon. Members: "When or if?"] Should the Labour party have the opportunity to abolish the assisted places scheme, can he tell us how it proposes to break down the barriers between the state and the independent sectors, as he clearly believes should be done?

Mr. Kilfoyle: We shall do it by giving half a million infants a far better education than they currently get. The answer is as simple as that.

Perhaps the Minister will tell the House what has been done to investigate the fraud allegations made in The Sunday Times on 12 November 1995. When the Minister trots out her statistics, will she confirm that fewer than 1 per cent. of applications are checked and whether, in fact,

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schools check applications for irregularities? Will she explain how possession of large amounts of capital is disregarded in the award of places, and how a de facto step-parent is considered in assessing a family's income? Does she agree with the claim made by David Jewell, of Haileybury school, that 20 per cent. of assisted places scheme applications are--to use his euphemism--"incorrect"?

The Sunday Times article cited the Freeman family. They had saved £30,000 for school fees, only to discover to their delight that, despite having their own building business, they qualified for an assisted place for their son. As Mrs. Freeman confided to the newspaper,

"on paper we are not high-income earners."

Christopher Marley was pleased that he could invest his nest egg in his business after his son, Simon, received an assisted place. Mr. Marley said:

"the world is not a fair place."

How true that is for children in overcrowded, under-resourced and dilapidated state school classrooms.

The Under-Secretary undoubtedly believes that the APS has merit. Perhaps she agrees with the headmaster of Ampleforth, which is new to the scheme and who apparently believes that it will reinforce his links with his north Yorkshire community. How wrong can one be? He will select 25 "bright boys"--to use his words--for the college, which I assure him will divide the community, and that is not something I associate with the Benedictines. Other schools will, like Ampleforth, seek to replace diminishing returns from private and service applicants with assisted places. Although the assisted places scheme does not match the huge fees of many independent schemes, it is better than empty places.

Fees paid under the APS are nevertheless generous, compared with the money allocated to state schools, for which the Government have steadily reduced funding. The Library estimates that the average cost of an assisted place in 1993-94 was £4,110, compared with £2,105 for 11 to 15-year-olds and £3,050 for over-16s in the maintained sector. Curiously, the Under-Secretary, in a written answer to the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Walden) on 23 November 1995, put the same figures at £3,700, £2,600 and £3,600 respectively. Inflation apart, I rely far more on the numeracy of the Library than on that of the hon. Lady. Perhaps the Minister will also explain how, in 1993-94, 33,139 places were available--of which 29,747 or 97 per cent. were taken up, yet the Budget estimate of £101.6 million was the same as the outturn. Was there an unforeseen leap in the cost of places taken up? How does the hon. Lady account for such remarkable figures?

Will the Minister explain the increasing proportion of places concentrated in schools that are already heavily dependent on the assisted places scheme? Does she agree that if the Prime Minister's fantasy became reality, many of those schools would need virtually to be wholly populated with APS pupils? What would that mean for the Prime Minister's other pie-in-the-sky plan for a grammar school in every town? There is not a cat's chance in hell of those cloud cuckoo land commitments being realised.