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Mr. Robathan: I have never discussed the matter with the Secretary of State. What has happened over the past 10 years while bien pensant people such as the hon. Gentleman have been saying how marvellous it is that we have done away with caning and that there is less violence in society? I believe that our streets have become more violent.
Mrs. Mahon: Because of Tory policies.
Mr. Robathan: Not because of Conservative policies, but because young men, in particular, no longer leave school with respect for themselves and for others or with the self-discipline that ought to be taught in schools. Part of that may be due to the abolition of corporal punishment.
Mr. Foster: I disagree with the hon. Gentleman, who is performing the classic manoeuvre of desperately trying to find someone else to blame for what has happened and taking no responsibility for policies that he and his hon. Friends have supported for many years.
Mr. Robathan: Not I; I was not here.
Mr. Foster: The hon. Gentleman says that he was not here, but to my knowledge he has been here for four and a half years; he should accept responsibility for what he has voted for during that time.
Mr. Steinberg: I have listened with interest to the hon. Gentleman and I would not be as rude as the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan).
When I first became a head teacher, I used corporal punishment. My experience of using the cane on several occasions taught me that it did not work, because the same pupils kept coming back time and again; the naughty children who misbehaved were never deterred in the slightest by the cane, and the other children could be dealt with in other ways. Corporal punishment simply did not work.
Mr. Foster:
The hon. Gentleman speaks from experience and he is absolutely right. Many years ago, I visited a school and looked at its punishment book; it listed one child who had been caned time after time.
Mr. Robathan:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Foster:
In a moment--the hon. Gentleman must wait until I have finished responding to the previous intervention.
The punishment book showed that one pupil had been caned on 12 separate occasions and that on each occasion his crime had been failing to attend detention. On the 13th occasion, the crime was listed as
Mr. Robathan:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Foster:
The hon. Gentleman has had the opportunity to intervene. Perhaps he will catch your eye later, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
On selection and grant-maintained schools, let me first make it absolutely clear that my party is opposed to selection, because we do not believe that that is what the vast majority of the people want; they know that a selective system may ensure a reasonably high standard of education for a few, but that it does not ensure high- quality education for all. The provision of high-quality education and excellence for all should be fundamental to our education system.
I do not want to refer to the details concerning the Ridings school, but I am in no doubt that the selective procedures that have taken place in the area have played their part in the difficulties that the school is facing.
Mr. George Walden (Buckingham):
First, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on keeping her head in the morality maze, when many others have been losing theirs, and on her general efforts to improve standards in education. That is enough praise, as she is not here to receive it, and as I want to get on to some criticism.
I oppose the whole concept of assisted places. The Conservative party has a warm conscience about the assisted places scheme, and when anyone has an excessively warm conscience about anything, that normally means that there is something wrong with it. There are two things wrong with the assisted places scheme: the principle and the practice.
As I understand it, the principle is supposed to be about bridging the enormous divide between state and private schools; it does not bridge the divide, but widens it, for reasons that I shall explain. Money is transferred from the state sector into the private education sector, so a so-called independent school ceases, by definition, to be independent, and becomes reliant, at least in part, on state handouts. It is an important point of principle that an independent school should, by definition, be independent, if it wishes to remain private and to restrict access to those with sufficient money.
By subsidising such schools, as they are doing, the Government ensure their continuation in their present, highly harmful form. That is another major objection of principle to the policy. A further fundamental point of
principle--I could talk about principles indefinitely, as there is so much wrong with the scheme--is that the entire concept of assisted places is de haut en bas.
Hon. Members should note the word "assisted", with that little redolence of the National Assistance Board and the outdated concept of welfare of 30 or 40 years ago. We are throwing crumbs down in a Victorian manner; the scheme could well have been administered by a Victorian charity commissioner. That is why the scheme is socially as well as educationally backward; we are working from the top down and throwing crumbs to poor, deserving children.
Unfortunately, in practice many of the crumbs are intercepted by the agile hands of the middle classes. It is no use for Ministers to tell me that 80 per cent. of the recipients of assisted places schemes have below average incomes; that is a totally meaningless figure, because, as everyone knows and as I know from talking to people in the independent system, many of those people may technically have low incomes but, by God, they are not lacking capital.
Constituents have asked me, as they must have asked other Conservative Members, how they can get an assisted place. Sometimes, especially when I know their backgrounds and their houses, I say that it is really not for them, and that that was not the idea behind the scheme. However, they persist, and they get the cash. They get it because, as people in independent schools tell me frankly but privately, the scheme has largely benefited clean-break divorcees. That is what it is about, and let us not pretend otherwise. Of course some places go to deserving children, but an awful lot do not. There are major objections to the scheme, in principle and in practice.
What is the Labour response? It is to abolish the scheme. I want to abolish it, too, but Labour's response has as much intellectual and practical validity as our policy. By abolishing the scheme and replacing it with nothing, Labour will blow up the one inadequate and fragile bridge that we have built between the two very distinct sectors of education--the independent and the state sectors. That is a purely negative policy.
The idea that we can sprinkle the £100 million, which is soon to be £200 million, in penny packets around the state sector is not entirely factious, because there is a problem of class size in the state sector. However, it again underlines Britain's problem, which is not suffered in most European countries, of the permanent interface between the public and private sectors.
Dr. Hampson:
One figure that Labour spokesmen always overlook is the fact that it would cost £350 million to reduce classes even by only two.
Mr. Walden:
I accept my hon. Friend's figure, but my point is that our position is intellectually and practically indefensible, as is that of the Opposition. That is typical of the failure of the House as a whole to confront the distinguishing feature of our education system--our system of apartheid, about which no one wants to talk because it is embarrassing for both Government and Opposition. That is why we end up with our ridiculous system.
I suspect that there is an element of political provocation behind our policy in extending the scheme. We are trying to put the Opposition on the defensive.
In purely political terms, we will probably succeed. That will not help the country; it may help us a little in the general election, but I am not even sure of that. The Opposition have to reply, "We do not want to help the few; we want to help the many." The old, trite, primitive, typically British, anti-elitist argument, which has done so much damage to our education--and, in passing, to our culture--comes out yet again. I shall reprise later, and I shall try to make the same points again.
The Opposition's policy is negative. It will cut the one bridge. The private schools will be even more of a zone of money and privilege than now. Is that what the Opposition want? My criticisms may seem too easy; we need a solution. I have just published a book--it is very cheap at £9.99--in which I try to spell out my solutions. They are not easy; I understand that. Much of our time in the House--and I shall not be here for much longer--is wasted in our education debates. That is not because we cannot improve the system. I give credit to the Government for improving it, and to those Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen who have begun to admit there may be something philosophically wrong with state education.
However, there will be a clear limit on how far we can improve the system. We may make it more adequate, but it can never be more than second rate when we are the only country in the western world where the two sides of Parliament send their children to different schools. It is the only country in Europe in which the top 7 per cent. of society do not give a damn about what goes on in the rest. They do the sensible thing and send their children--and I always have to add that I did so, too--to private schools. Why? Education in private schools is not simply better but overwhelmingly better: 68 per cent. of A grades in physics at GCSE level are gained by the 7 per cent. of children in private schools. That is a catastrophic figure. We all know the arguments inside out. That is part of what is wrong with the debate.
"Failing to attend detention--again."
The hon. Member for City of Durham (Mr. Steinberg) is right to say that there is no evidence that corporal punishment works.
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