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5.30 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Ms Estelle Morris): I am replying to a debate which has taken, I think, five days--we started in the early hours of Friday morning. The amendments deal with just one issue and I shall attempt to address the comments made. Although it has been a wide-ranging debate, the amendments are quite clear.
There have been a number of thoughtful and considered speeches. I am thinking particularly of the speeches of the hon. Members for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) and for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff), to which I listened carefully. I apologise to the hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May): I realised some time after I sat down on Friday morning that I had not addressed her specific query, although I had intended to. I shall take the opportunity to do so now.
I share the hon. Lady's concern about children, of whatever background, whose education is made more difficult. I also share her concern about children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds, who have enough to contend with without having to cope with extra burdens. I have not yet received representations from the organisation to which she referred on Thursday evening, but when I receive its letters I shall reply to them.
Mrs. May:
I should be happy to pass the correspondence to the Minister directly in order to speed up the process. I am grateful for her generous comments, and I look forward to her addressing the issue as sympathetically as she suggested she would.
Ms Morris:
The letters, which I shall look at, are probably wending their way from the officials to my office.
The hon. Lady referred to the assisted places scheme. I see from the note given to me by my officials that boarding fees are expressly precluded from the assisted places scheme. In the cases to which I suspect the hon. Lady is referring, an assisted places day scheme has been supplemented by boarding fees from elsewhere.
Mrs. May:
I am talking about those cases where the boarding fees are paid by charitable foundations and the assisted places scheme is used to top up the educational element of the package.
Ms Morris:
I do not wish to sound too sympathetic, for fear that I may mislead the hon. Lady, but our pledge not to extend the assisted places scheme remains firm. Decisions about whether to fund boarding education are for the local authority--sometimes they are mandatory and sometimes discretionary. That is a more complicated issue than that considered by the legislation. I shall ensure that a full reply is given, as I am aware of the hon. Lady's great interest in the subject.
I confirm that, as a Government, we have made it clear that we do not wish to extend the assisted places scheme and that the commitments that we gave in our manifesto will be honoured. I shall remind the Committee of those commitments. First, children in a secondary school will be able to finish secondary school and, secondly, children in a primary school will be able to finish primary school. Opinions differ over the age at which primary school is deemed to finish--whether it is 11 or 13. For all the long debates that we have had, it is that point which the amendments address.
I should like to clarify something that I think the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire was saying. The law has never allowed someone who takes a place under the primary assisted places scheme to transfer it and continue to 18. Even under the legislation passed by the Conservative Government, a child could not win a primary place aged five, seven, eight or 10 and automatically transfer it and use it up to the age of 18. My understanding is that someone on a primary assisted place would have to reapply for more funding for another place at 11 and someone on an assisted place at a prep school--where pupils stay until they are 13--would have to apply for a further place on a competitive basis at the age of 13.
Mrs. Gillan:
The hon. Lady is using a sympathetic tone, but her comments basically amount to, "No, no, no." Will she answer a specific question? Some children have been offered an assisted place at the age of 10, alongside others who have been offered places at the age of 11. It is my understanding that the director from the Department has visited the schools to say that those children cannot have their assisted places. Those pupils have already prepared themselves to spend the next seven or eight years in those schools.
The information that I have received show that those children number no more than 70 or 80. Will the Minister give me an answer now, at the Dispatch Box, on whether she will consider the cases and come to individual decisions using the discretionary powers granted to the Secretary of State in the Bill? Will she consider the cases, because they are causing a great deal of heartache and hardship to a small number of families?
Ms Morris:
I have outlined the Government's thinking on the issue: the primary age should finish at 11 and the
The Bill's principle is clear. We had to decide whether we deemed that the primary level finished at 11--
Mr. Boswell:
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Ms Morris:
No, I must make some progress. I have been generous in giving way.
We had to decide whether the primary level finished at 11 or 13--that is the crux of the matter.
I shall give way now, but then I must make progress--this is likely to be the last time that I give way.
Mr. Boswell:
I thank the hon. Lady, who has been most generous with her time.
I wonder whether, on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan), I can invite the Minister to try to give her response before the Bill is further considered in another place.
Ms Morris:
I shall certainly consider that invitation and try to respond to it--if not this evening, then later.
The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) talked about the age of transfer--11 or 13. He mentioned the difficulty of pupils entering schools where friendship groups have already been made, the curriculum has already been set and children have already settled down socially and academically.
Those aspects governed our decision on the transfer of pupils at 11 or 13. Half a million children every year already change schools at the age of 11. It is, therefore, sensible to provide for pupils to move into the maintained sector at the same age as other 11-year-olds transfer from primary to secondary schooling. Our approach is fair and puts the interests of the child ahead of the interests of the school--a point which was adequately summed up by the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire.
It is also fair--using the guidance mentioned by the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire--that, if the age of transfer to secondary school in an area is other than 11, the Secretary of State should hold discretionary powers. That provision is contained in the Bill--it is one way in which the discretionary powers can be exercised.
I reiterate that the Secretary of State will have discretionary powers that he may exercise when he sees fit. The golden rule is to make sure that we do not expand the assisted places scheme. We must move as swiftly and as fairly as possible so that we may use the resources that are freed from the scheme to make sure that five, six and seven-year-olds will not be in classes of more than 30. That is dear to our hearts, and there is a genuine difference of opinion on the issue between the Government and the Opposition.
We believe that class size matters. We, too, want to give opportunities to children and we care about lost opportunities and broken dreams. We have made the
commitment that we shall do all in our power to make sure that the education system delivers the best to the many and not the few. I shall use that phrase again.
It is wholly appropriate that public funding which, in the past, has been used to give opportunities to the few and deny them to the many, should more properly be used to ensure adequate class sizes. We have been generous and fair and have tried to ensure that no child's education is broken or damaged. We differ from the Opposition in that we think that to transfer 11-year-olds to the maintained sector is not dreadful. They will be transferred to good-quality schools where they will have opportunities and will succeed. Their education will not be damaged. We have more faith in the maintained system than Conservative Members who ran it for the past 18 years seem to have. That is why I invite the House to reject the amendments.
Mrs. Gillan:
We intend to press the amendments to a vote, and I understand that Liberal Democrat Members will press for a vote on amendment No. 3.
This part of the Bill will go down as the broken pledge clause because the Walton pledge was broken by the Government within a few minutes of their coming to power. The amendments relate particularly to children of about 11, but the Minister does not fully appreciate that for many children that is a vulnerable age. There is no doubt that such children will be badly affected by the Bill.
The Minister repeated the saying, "We are for the many, not the few." Therefore, the voice of protest and the voices of the parents of those children is obviously too small to be heard by the Government, although they are the few and not the many. If they were a mob, they would be listened to by the Government, but, because they are small in number and the children are from low-income families, the Government ride roughshod over them.
I do not want to add much to the excellent speeches by my hon. Friends. If the Minister is so firmly committed to abolishing assisted places, why did the Secretary of State agree to allow me when I was the Minister responsible for this area to expand the primary school places for at least a year? Was it not the most callous act to allow the scheme to expand for just 12 months? The Secretary of State was keen to get more money so that he could try to keep a pledge which he knows it will be impossible to fulfil.
The reason for the Bill is to produce extra money to enable the Government to try to reduce class sizes, but the money that will be gleaned will be nowhere near enough to do that. When he appeared with me on a television programme earlier today the Minister of State gave the impression that he was scrabbling around for money to fulfil his pledge on class sizes. In answer to a question about funding for primary schools he said:
"What we are doing is, we are releasing money from the nursery voucher scheme and the phasing out of the assisted places scheme. In the short term, that will bring in more resources."
He has not said how much will be released by the abolition of the nursery voucher scheme, but it is beginning to dawn on the Government that even the abolition of the assisted places scheme will not give them enough to fulfil their pledge. The first broken promise is the Walton pledge, and the next is the pledge on class sizes.
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