House of Commons Hansard Debates for 11 Nov 1996 (pt 15)

Mr. Blunkett: There are only two ways in which to deal with the problem of parents not being offered choice by their neighbourhood school: first, to lift the standards in those schools dramatically and, secondly, to have a comprehensive and sensible admissions policy that covers the entire area. Let us tackle the issue head on. Every child who is selected for a school that is not currently selective will displace a child who would have attended. It is as simple as that. The statistical and mathematical geniuses on the Conservative Benches must be able to understand that the displacement of one child by another will mean that one child is rejected, and denied entry to the school that he or she would have attended. It is simple.

Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Blunkett: Yes, because I am interested to hear the mathematical genius who will disprove that fact.

Mr. Brazier: Among the seven secondary schools in the public sector in Canterbury, three are grammar schools and one is a selective school that selects on the basis of technological aptitude. Will the hon. Gentleman give us a straight answer? If he were sitting on the Treasury Bench, would he change back the system in Canterbury so that there were seven comprehensive schools? By selecting children in different ways in different schools, we are grouping them in the most beneficial manner to meet their requirements.

Mr. Blunkett: I do not accept that they are being grouped in a manner that is beneficial for them. I believe that the development of specialisms within schools is perfectly reasonable. The practice can be operated perfectly reasonably within the framework of comprehensive schools, and it can allow schools to share resources and expertise so that they can build on their strengths. Pure competition, however--which the Secretary of State advocated today, and which she mentioned on the "On the Record" programme yesterday--is the very opposite of collaboration, co-operation and allowing schools to share resources, and it flies in the face of the measures that she advocated today.

How did competition help the Ridings school? I challenge the Secretary of State to tell me that. I challenge her to tell me why, if competition is the factor that is improving standards, she blames the local education authority for not intervening to improve and increase standards at that school. Her demand for the authority's intervention--for its proactive intervention and hands-on action--to lift standards is the very antithesis and counterweight to believing that competition will raise standards and provide opportunity. That is an intellectual double-somersault, and she knows that it is.

The Secretary of State cannot tell me--I challenge her to do so--the name of one school in the county of Norfolk that she believes should adopt grammar school status, thereby denying children in villages and towns the

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opportunity freely to enter the school, as they would have been able to do had the selective system not been imposed. I challenge any Conservative Member to tell me which school--outside areas in which grammar schools and selection already exist--he or she would like to become a grammar school. Which set of parents will be denied the opportunity to send their child to the neighbourhood school?

Mr. Nicholls: Will the hon. Gentleman please explain why it is right that the Leader of the Opposition can send his child to a grant-maintained school, but it is wrong for parents in my constituency of Teignbridge to send their children to a grant-maintained school?

Mr. Blunkett: That is another intellectual problem for Conservative Members. Contrary to what the hon. Gentleman and the Secretary of State have implied, Labour will not deny people the right to make a choice. We will not deny people the right to opt for the school of their choice--quite the opposite. We shall free them from the restraint of having to go through the 11-plus examination to be able to get into the school. What is more--I want to make this clear--in no way are we threatening the ethos or the drive for standards in any school of whatever status. We applaud the work that is being done.

I visited a grant-maintained school in east Thurrock at the end of last week. It is a superb school that is working and sharing with the community, drawing on a deeply deprived area. The school is lifting its standards by its own actions--the quality of the head; the drive for a development plan and for the setting of targets; the lifting of expectations at every level for every pupil. The Secretary of State and I agree on those issues. So why deny all that? Why should the head, the targets, the plans, the lifting of expectations, good classroom teaching, in-service training and better initial teacher training be set aside in the interests of competition and selection? That is what the Secretary of State said for the bulk of her speech this afternoon.

If the flagship Tory borough of Westminster does not believe what the Government say, who does? The October report of Westminster city council says:

"By giving schools greater freedom to select pupils, one could be seen to be diminishing parents' rights to select schools. Consequently, the result of this could be fewer, rather than more, satisfied parents."

A recent survey in The Times Educational Supplement showed that the most rapidly growing problem faced by Conservative Members in their surgeries was dissatisfaction with the changes in school admissions policies.

Mr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham): The parents at the school in east Thurrock voted clearly for grant-maintained status. Did the Labour party oppose that decision?

Mr. Blunkett: I thought that the real issue was the decision on the choice and preference of parents. The selection process and the division of the community act against preference and choice. We have made it clear that we shall involve parents in decisions when dealing with the historic selective system. That is different from the proposals in the Bill, under which the community will be denied a say on any proposed change in admissions

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policy. There will no longer be an obligation for the publication of the statutory requirements that we have all taken for granted to ensure that the actions of one school do not damage another. We all know that a decision taken by one school can have a dramatic impact on the intake--and therefore the working--of a neighbouring school.

Mr. Andrew Mackinlay (Thurrock): I should like to clarify the position of Gable Hall school, which my hon. Friend visited last week. The school is in the borough of Thurrock, but will be in the new constituency of Basildon. The reintroduction of selection would be a major disadvantage to the pupils of Basildon and Thurrock and would cause immense problems for schools still under local education authorities and for those grant-maintained schools that have successfully structured themselves on the basis of there being no selection.

Mr. Blunkett: My hon. Friend is entirely right. That is why we want to avoid the rest of Britain having to face the shambles that the London borough of Bromley is facing under the Conservatives. The Conservative chairman of education in Bromley wrote to the Secretary of State in August, saying:

"The greater the extent of selection by ability, the greater the limits on choice for all except parents of the brightest children. The opportunities available to the less able or to those who happen to live further away from the school than most will be reduced in direct proportion to the increased opportunities of more able children and their parents."

I agree with the chairman of education in Bromley. Goodness knows, he ought to know what sort of shambles he will be facing when the extension of partial selection takes place. Children will be denied entry to the school that they would expect to go to.

I have a letter from a mother in Croydon, who explains that she took her daughter to an open day at the school of her choice a week or two ago. Her child's primary school has fed into that secondary school for many years. They looked forward to her going there with her older siblings and with the children she had played with when growing up. When they arrived, they were handed a pamphlet, and they suddenly discovered that the school intended to select 15 per cent. of its pupils. She said:

"The bombshell fell when we sat down to listen to the head teacher's speech and had an opportunity to look at the Edenham brochure that had been handed to us when we first arrived."

She describes how she had to explain to her daughter that, instead of going there automatically because she is from the catchment area--never mind about preference--she might be denied a place because they live on the fringe of the area and the 15 per cent. might apply from schools from over the boundary and push her out.

Frankly, that is a disgrace. It is a disgrace that we should have to put up with the waste of parliamentary time in going backwards to a bygone era; it is a waste that we cannot concentrate instead on the issues on which we agree.

We agree on strengthening discipline. Some of us are slightly taken aback to discover that, after 18 years of Conservative government, detention is not compulsory. If I had known that when I was at school, I could have saved myself hours of difficulty sitting through it, but I welcome the belated decision to ensure that, after all those years, people will not be prosecuted and locked up for having held me in detention. We had better make the measure

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retrospective, or somebody will sue the Department for Education and Employment. I offer my co-operation in making the measure retrospective.

We ought to be addressing how best to intervene at the earliest possible stage. We do not just agree with the Government on base line assessment, we promoted it. Birmingham city council was in the forefront. We not only agree with most of the policies in the rest of the Bill, we invented them, promoting them for many years in some cases.

I welcome the extension of the maximum period of exclusion from 15 days to 45 days. On 2 April, I suggested that a term should be the maximum. Ten days later--and three weeks shorter--the Secretary of State adopted the policy. That is welcome. More bipartisan approaches, with the Conservatives adopting our policies, will help a lot because, when we get into power next spring, many of the policies will already be in place, saving me a lot of time and trouble adding them to our first major Bill after taking office.

The Conservatives can by all means come on board. Let them get on board with standards, base line assessment and targets. Let them get on board with head teacher training and a much more sensible unification of vocational and academic education than currently proposed by the Secretary of State. Let us unite the National Council for Vocational Qualifications and the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority in a way that genuinely tries to unite high-quality vocational and academic education, rather than divide them. That is why we cannot have a free market in post-16 education. It is why some of the measures providing for a free-for-all from grant-maintained schools on the establishment of sixth forms do not make educational sense, never mind ideological sense. We must all pull together to promote measures that genuinely increase standards and the likelihood of opportunity for all children. We therefore offer our backing to provide a free passage for those measures in the Bill that are sensible, and ensure that some children are not denied opportunity at the expense of others.

We ask the Government to abandon the proposal to extend the assisted places scheme to primary and prep school children. The hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Walden) summed up the issue succinctly when he said: