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9.29 pm

Mr. Peter Kilfoyle (Liverpool, Walton): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) on his brilliant and lucid exposition of the constructive Labour policy for raising standards. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Miss Lestor) on her excellent analysis of the reality of exclusion. The hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) made his usual sound and sensible contribution and my hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing) and for Warrington, South (Mr. Hall) spoke about the arbitrariness of the 11-plus.

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My hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Mr. Pickthall) underlined the difficulty about the planning of places under the Government's proposals and my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) spoke about the Bill's lack of choice for many. My hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Ms Hodge) again spoke eloquently about the need for more regulation of agencies. I look forward to hearing the Minister on that, given his anti-regulation history. My hon. Friends the Members for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy) and for Cannock and Burntwood (Dr. Wright) brought their usual sagacity to the debate.

The Secretary of State repeated the tautology that somehow the introduction of selection enhances choice for parents, but we all know that schools select the children and that parents have no say in the matter. After some prompting by the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Sir D. Thompson), the right hon. Lady spoke about The Ridings school which, of course, is not her fault. She should try telling that to the leader of the Conservative group on Calder Valley council. He has made it abundantly clear that he holds the Secretary of State personally responsible for what happened in that school.

More interesting is the Secretary of State's position on caning in which she is aided and abetted by the hon. Members for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey) and for Dartford (Mr. Dunn). It is bizarre that they should extol the virtues of corporal punishment. I give credit where it is due. The hon. Members for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) and for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland) take a somewhat different view, a more civilised view. It is more than ironic that the Secretary of State can tell the House that there will be a free vote on caning but not on handguns. That shows the kind of priorities that obtain in the Conservative party.

What can one say about the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold)? I have to say a little because he is sometimes referred to as the hon. Member for Transylvania, dealing in the education policies of the political undead. His promises and his commitments on education bear no relation to what is being offered by the Government. I am pleased that the hon. Member for Dover (Mr. Shaw) agrees with the Labour proposals that are set out in our document "Diversity and Excellence", for the inspection of LEAs by Ofsted. However, he took one of his usual right turns when he spoke about a dress code.

I taught in two schools in Australia which regularly turned out Rhodes scholars. We used to go to school in T-shirts and shorts and what are colloquially called thongs in Australia. We call them flip-flops. Our dress code certainly did not affect the academic excellence of those schools. There is no relationship whatever between the quality of education and how someone dresses.

My only advice to the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) is to speak to his archbishop about ecumenism.

We look in vain in the Bill for desirable measures. We look for a commitment to reduce class sizes to less than 30 and for the promotion of a general teaching council to enhance, develop and promote a noble profession. We also look in vain for guarantees to ensure that every 11-year-old without a special educational need reaches level 4 in national reading tests; for the removal of a taxpayers' subsidy to private schools; for unifying

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proposals to give parents true choice; and for the efficient planning of school places. I looked in vain for any mention of special educational needs.

Perhaps the House should look again at the parts of the Bill that I have not mentioned and on which there is some agreement. In April, my hon. Friend the Member for Brightside flagged up our proposals for school discipline. The Government are right to follow his example and look for a third option on exclusion. However, they have failed to adopt his whole package, which includes the holistic approach to the excluded child in pupil referral units with the appropriate diagnostic and remedial skills, working where possible towards the reintegration of the child in the mainstream school.

We are happy to welcome other Government proposals such as home-school contracts and base line assessment. We have proposed the former since 1988; the latter has been piloted by Labour authorities in Birmingham, Sheffield and Staffordshire. Both proposals were in our policy document "Excellence for Everyone". Furthermore, we are pleased that our plan for Ofsted has been adopted. We set the plan down in the policy paper "Diversity and Excellence".

Last but not least, Labour Members have clearly spelt out our commitment to careers education and guidance in the policy statement, "Lifelong Learning". The problem for the Government is one of credibility because nearly 800,000 16 to 25-year-olds are out of job, education and training networks. That is a clear indictment of the Government's long failure in the sector, as in many others.

All those capitulations to Labour policy initiatives are yet to be tested. I suspect that much of what appears to be non-contentious might yet be the subject of intense debate in Committee, not so much because of what is in the Bill, but because of what is not. There are, however, other proposals in the Bill that are divisive and damaging to education provision. They are more to do with desperate attempts by this discredited Government to win over a sceptical electorate to an education programme that would take us back to the future.

The Government's answer to the challenges of the 21st century is to resurrect failed policies that were condemned as such in the 1960s and in the 1970s, principally the idea of grammar schools and increased selection. The Association of Grant-Maintained and Aided Schools said in its submission that the White Paper "will produce a mish-mash." It also said that Government intentions on selection

"will distort the provision of school places . . . and lead to a diminution of choice for many parents, and unacceptably long journeys (with consequent expense). The Association urges you to think again".

Labour Members urge the Government to think again on much of the Bill.

Let us consider the notion of increasing the number of selective schools and the rate at which they select. Even in vanguard grant-maintained schools, there is no real constituency for increased selection, as the views of AGMAS show. Out of 1,100 GM schools, only 41 have sought an element of selection in their admissions criteria and only three have sought grammar school status.

Despite that evidence of what we might describe as underwhelming interest in selection, the Government insist on an annual consideration by schools of selective

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status. The Government have failed to recognise what has eventuated with their similar legislation, demanding that schools regularly consider grant-maintained status. The result of the latter misguided prescription is that ever fewer schools ballot on grant-maintained status, while, among those that do, an ever increasing number of ballots refuse grant-maintained status.

The lesson is simple, even for this dictatorial Government. People cannot, and will not, be forced down a sterile educational path. When one faces the united opposition of both teachers and parents, it is wise, even for a Government such as this, to reflect on the wisdom of going against the tide of both educational opinion and plain common sense. No one wants selection other than the right-wing ideologues of this doomed Conservative Government--that much is obvious.

The reasons for the opposition to those proposals is simple: selection has been tried before and found wanting for our children and for our national economic needs. We need all our children to be highly qualified, highly trained and highly skilled. The Bill does not cater for those wider needs. It will provide for a revived two-tier system, with neither the jobs for the people condemned to the lower education level proposed, nor the realisation of their potential, which the nation desperately needs.

As we have established, selection denies parental choice, making it less likely for many parents to send their child to their chosen neighbourhood school. The effect on children with special educational needs is especially pernicious. If their need involves intellectual impairment, selection exacerbates their sense of failure. If a child is able, but needs particular support--for example, a signer--in these days of ever tighter budgets and league table competition, that child may be discriminated against in a selective school ethos, contrary to the trend for more inclusive education for children with special educational needs.

Over many years, the Government have sought selection of one sort or another by the back door to undermine comprehensive education. We have had city technology colleges, grant-maintained schools and the odd grammar school. There are the scorched-earth policies of Tory Buckinghamshire, which bequeathed an unwanted grammar school and a £7 million debt to unitary Milton Keynes, in the face of community opposition.

This year, a Gallup poll showed 77 per cent. of people against selection, with only 19 per cent. in favour. Is it not peculiar that when a poll demonstrates support for corporal punishment Conservative Members are glad to trumpet the democratic wish of the people? When the democratic wish of the people is against selection, they ignore and ride roughshod over it. I give a simple challenge to the Government--if they want to implement the Prime Minister's pledge of a grammar school for every town, they should come clean and not play around the edges; they should tell the nation that it is their intention to return to the 11-plus for everyone. No one is fooled by the incremental steps to total selection. The Government should have the courage to place their plans before the people, before the election.

At the same time, the Government should clearly state their complete lack of interest in parental views on grant-maintained status. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South referred to the comment by the right hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon

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(Mr. Patten), when he was Secretary of State for Education. He famously said that by 1996, most of the 3,900 maintained secondary schools, as well as a significant proportion of the 19,000 maintained primary schools, could be grant-maintained. As my hon. Friend also said, the right hon. Gentleman promised that he would eat his hat if he was wrong. He can eat his hat. I hope that it is a large hat to match his large orifice and his even larger ego because his commitment has not been fulfilled--[Interruption.] Hon. Members are talking about playground jokes. The biggest playground joke is that they are not concerned about the educational needs of the vast majority of our children. The only thing in which they are interested is reflecting their own prejudice.

There are five locally managed secondary schools for every grant-maintained secondary school. In the primary sector, the ratio is 50:1. The policy has failed, but the Government still seem intent on switching the goalposts. Thus, the Bill removes the requirement for publication of statutory proposals on changes in the character of grant-maintained schools. In theory, they can expand or contract places without any reference to wider community needs. The Funding Agency for Schools, a Tory quango packed with Tory placemen, can determine new schools without reference to the local community--which will, however, have to pick up the bill. Local Tory cabals, in areas where they have no electoral legitimacy, will be able to ride roughshod over their communities and promote grant-maintained schools. What a repudiation of local democracy by this dreadful Government.

At the same time as the Government are waging ideological warfare on local schools, subsidies to the private sector will be extended via the assisted places scheme extension to primary schools in the independent sector. The only reason for that is an attempt to hogtie education finance for an incoming Labour Government. It has nothing to do with educational need. In fact, it completes the circle in the Government's justification for the assisted places scheme. They began by saying that the scheme was a subsidy to the former direct grant schools so that when they went independent they could keep their heads above water. Belatedly, it became a post-facto justification to say that the scheme took children from working-class families--in theory, 33,000--and gave them an advantaged education. Now, the Government are back to the original, very obvious, reason for the scheme--to provide a subsidy for, in this case, independent schools in the primary sector.

Much of the Bill fails abysmally, yet again, to deal with the education priorities apparent to all except Conservative Members, who seem intent on saving their own skins--especially those on the Front Bench--in their internal party battle after their impending election defeat. Each of them wishes to establish his ever more right-wing credentials.

We need a general election so that the people can voice their opinion on the real educational needs of the nation. Governments--like people--experience growth, adulthood, decrepitude and decay. In this case, the Government should go none too gently into their own good night. I urge the House to vote in favour of the official Opposition's amendment and motion.

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