| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Nicholls: I should like briefly to develop a theme that my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) mentioned a moment ago and to which my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) referred. It concerns the missing ingredient in the clause stand part debate.
We have all been trying to understand the justification for the Bill. There is a great temptation to assume that the reasons for the proposals have something to do with the reasons advanced from the Dispatch Box. However, it does not work like that. If we are being asked to accept that the unhappy price of getting rid of the assisted places scheme is that there will be a great deal more money to spend on dealing with overcrowded classrooms, which is supposed to be the justification for this squalid little measure, it simply does not stand up.
My hon. Friend for South Hams gave us details from his own constituency--
Mr. Nicholls:
And Totnes, too. He asked the valid question, where were the 1,100 pupils currently on the scheme going to go? The short and brutal answer is that they will go into the existing classrooms of schools in his constituency. The idea that one can do an arithmetical calculation using figures plucked figures out of the air and disseminated to every Labour candidate, saying, "Voila"--as we are supposed to say in these
Mr. Steen:
I have entered the debate because I am desperately worried about where the 1,011 children in Devon who are seeking assisted places every year will go. Is my hon. Friend aware that a number of schools in my constituency have limited the number of children they can take every year? In 1989, the Totnes Kevick school--the former grammar school--persuaded the then Secretary of State to place a limit of 240 on the number of children who could enter each year. Other schools all over the country have the same limits, under which they cannot, by law, take any more pupils. If that is so, the situation in Devon will be extremely serious.
The First Deputy Chairman:
Order. As I have already told the hon. Gentleman, interventions should be much shorter.
Mr. Nicholls:
I understand what you are saying, Mr. Martin. Equally, I understand the passion of my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen).
Some people will say that the class sizes in my hon. Friend's constituency are too large. If time allowed--and it may--we could talk about the significance of class sizes. We could have a debate about the fact that excellence in teaching is far more important than mere class size. Many people would say that class sizes in Devon are already too large. I shall give my hon. Friend an answer to his question. He may feel personal grief as the Member of Parliament for that constituency, but it is not his responsibility. The 1,011 children will go into classrooms that are, for the most part, already full.
If we are looking for justification for this nasty, poisonous Bill, we can see that it has nothing to do with excellence or choice in education or enhancing options for people. In short, it has nothing to do with money or class size.
Mr. Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green):
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech and I simply wish to add to it and to ask him a question. When he looked at the league tables to see which schools were scoring highest, he will have noticed that a large number had class sizes well above the number that Labour Members maintain are necessary for success. My children attend a grant-maintained school that was 75th in the country and has class sizes that would be unacceptable according to the scales advocated by the Labour party. League table results are linked to the quality of teaching, not necessarily to the number of pupils in each class.
The First Deputy Chairman:
Order. The clause relates to assisted places and their abolition, not class sizes.
Mr. Nicholls:
I accept what my hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) says. I remember a curious incident during the election campaign. I went to see the headmaster of a school in my constituency that featured highly in the league tables to ask him whether he found that numbers in his school were being depleted as a result of the assisted places scheme. He told me that they were not.
I said that, given the class sizes of his school, he must find that the assisted places scheme drew away his pupils. He replied, "No." He said that in his classrooms children sat in rows and were taught by a teacher who thought that it was his job to teach children, not to get them into little informal groups and ask them how they should be educated. The headmaster found that, even with class sizes that Labour Members would find unacceptable, the assisted places scheme was not a threat to the numbers in his school, because of the teaching methods used there.
If we were trying to justify the measure and the clause, we would not say that they related to money--they cannot. The economic arguments do not stack up. In some ways, the situation is even worse. It sounds such a good idea to say to the public that the money saved will go directly into the classroom, but it does not work that way in practice. Insiders involved in government or local government know that it does not work like that. We do not ring-fence money in that way.
The idea that the Minister will pick up the money and say that he is to send it down to the schools in our constituencies is not right--that is not how it is done. If there were to be a saving--and there will not be--it would go to the Treasury coffers to be disbursed through the standard spending assessment and the like. Even if there were to be a saving, the money would not go to the schools in that way.
Mr. Nicholls:
I shall give way to my hon. Friend, but his intervention must be on the subject of the assisted places scheme.
Mr. Duncan Smith:
The money saved on the APS presents another problem. Successful schools are popular and there is pressure on their class sizes. Are we saying that the local authorities, many of which have opposed those schools and the way in which they have been set up, will redirect more money to them and leave the other schools with a bad feeling? Or will they blanket the money across all the schools to no purpose?
Mr. Nicholls:
Who knows? I suspect that the money will be spread across the whole lot. I hope that my hon. Friend can expand on that point in more detail in his own contribution.
Mr. Steen:
I am sure that my hon. Friend will remember this incident--knowing how assiduous he is, I am sure that he was present at the time. I do not know how many of my other hon. Friends will recall it, as very few of them were Members of Parliament when the Conservatives were in government.
I asked the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard), whether she would ring-fence money on education so that it could be applied exclusively to a particular school activity in Devon. She said that that
could not be done without primary legislation. If that is so, can my hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls) explain how the money realised from the abolition of the APS can go to the schools without primary legislation?
Mr. Nicholls:
It cannot be done. Under the present system and the funding of local authorities there is no way in which the money could be ring-fenced. My hon. Friend mentioned primary legislation. Perhaps he thinks that the Government, who have shown such breathtaking arrogance and contempt for parliamentary procedures, can pass the primary legislation that is necessary in double-quick time. But that cannot happen. The Minister is terrified of the idea of ring fencing. If we ever reach a situation whereby parcels of money can be ring-fenced for anything, every daft group in the country will say to the Labour Government, "You used to be one of us and we want you to fund our particular concern." The Camden lesbian refuge will say, "We want some money ring-fenced for us."
The First Deputy Chairman:
Order. The hon. Gentleman is drifting wide of the clause.
Mr. Nicholls:
There will be no assisted places for ladies in that category in Camden, because one cannot ring-fence sums of money in that way--the system would not work.
Mr. Clifton-Brown:
Does my hon. Friend agree that the extra money that my LEA might get may provide a solution to the problem in Gloucestershire? The average expenditure per primary and secondary school pupils is about half that of the highest level of expenditure in London. Therefore, I may be able to argue with the Government that, according to their logic, they should give my LEA more money for the schools.
8.30 pm
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |