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Mr. David Tredinnick (Bosworth): This is an important matter. Does not my hon. Friend think it strange that, apart from the Minister, the Government Benches are deserted? Does not that send signals to the country about Labour's general attitude to this important matter?
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin): Order. The hon. Gentleman is making a speech, not an intervention.
Mr. Lidington: My hon. Friend makes a sound point, although I note that the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson) is sitting on the Government Front Bench. He has long taken an interest in education, and has strong views on it--which, no doubt, is why he has been silenced by being sent to the Whips Office.
My second point about the relationship between local education authorities and the private and voluntary sector concerns the proposal in the Government's circular that LEAs should have discretion to spend less than £366 per child per term when it comes to reimbursing private or voluntary providers for the costs that they have incurred in educating children. I am not sure what the justification for that is--especially given that, when the Nursery Education and Grant-Maintained Schools Bill was going through the House, the Labour party criticised the then Government heavily on the basis of a fear that we might be prepared to allow less than £1,100 a year to be paid to voluntary pre-school and other such organisations when their usual fees were less than the value of the vouchers. That seems rather a quick U-turn, even for the Labour party under its present leadership.
Have the Government thought about the criteria that LEAs would have to consider when judging whether a cut in the reimbursement to a private or voluntary provider was justified? Could an LEA make an arbitrary decision, or could it be placed under an obligation not merely to direct the money to other such providers--I think that that is in the circular--but to use it specifically to provide training for pre-school leaders and others to bring their talents up to the standard that the Government expect, or, indeed, to put it towards capital investment to provide additional places? I should like to hear more detail about that from the Minister.
Mr. Tredinnick:
I am listening with interest to what my hon. Friend is saying, but I must criticise him on one ground. He has not specified what we did in the previous Parliament, when we were in government. It is important to put on record the benefits that the Conservative Government managed to achieve for people through the pre-school voucher scheme, and it would be remiss of my hon. Friend to ignore those achievements.
Mr. Lidington:
My hon. Friend is right. The Nursery Education and Grant-Maintained Schools Act 1996 set in train a considerable expansion in nursery and pre-school provision, in a way that was responsive to the individual needs of parents rather than the administrative and financial convenience of local authorities. Nevertheless, my hon. Friend must accept the reality that the present Government have chosen a different course. It is incumbent on us as an Opposition not only to do as my hon. Friend suggests, and remind the House of what we achieved when we were in office, but to probe the details of the proposals that the Government are presenting to the House and the country.
My next point concerns admissions and planning for pre-school provision. Under the arrangements proposed by the Government, local education authorities would be responsible for the provision of pre-school places, but would not control admissions in every maintained school within their boundaries. An LEA would not, for example, be able to insist on the provision of a given number of nursery places at a Church voluntary-aided school, although one assumes that most primary schools would want to attract the funds and provide the places.
Do the Government plan to give local authorities greater powers in law to control admissions? Is there a risk that an LEA would have power to impose an artificial
limit on admissions to a popular nursery school or class in order to maintain the number of children attending an unpopular one? I hoped that we had escaped from that when the Conservative Government introduced open enrolment in the 1980s, and I now hope that we shall not return to such a policy.
Mr. Tredinnick:
Has not the Conservative policy of open enrolment proved extremely popular, and will not any move that threatens it be viewed with disdain by many parents? Choice has become an important element in education, and many parents expect it. I hope that my hon. Friend will develop that argument.
Mr. Lidington:
I agree. No doubt my hon. Friend will try to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, so that he can make his points in more detail.
There is a particular problem in regard to out-of-area provision. Perhaps it is most obvious in places such as inner London, which contains a large number of LEAs that are close to each other, but it also exists in counties such as mine. Buckinghamshire is long and thin, and its arterial routes tend to run east-west across the county rather than north-south between the major towns. Many parents choose to take their children to a pre-school institution just across the county or borough boundary.
Having studied the Government's circular, I am not sure how they propose to deal with the problem. The circular seems to suggest that an LEA should consider adding to its list providers in neighbouring local authority areas that have taught pupils from that LEA, but I wonder whether that recommendation is enough. There still seems to be a risk that an LEA might, for its own financial reasons, try to restrict parental choice, and insist on including on its list only the institutions that fall within its boundaries.
That would be regrettable. Many mothers, for instance, might want to use a nursery near their workplace--which might be across a local authority boundary--rather than a nursery close to home but remote from work. A number of women with pre-school children work at Stoke Mandeville hospital in my constituency. It clearly makes sense for them to take their children to a nursery on site, rather than taking them somewhere else, going to work and then collecting them later after another car journey.
In their circular, the Government say that qualified teachers
Mr. Phil Willis (Harrogate and Knaresborough):
I am interested in the hon. Gentleman's point about quality.
Mr. Lidington:
The key point is how we assess and monitor quality. Quality is not always ensured simply by having in the classroom someone who is seen as a qualified teacher. I do not wish to see places provided by means of a hypothetical conveyor belt, regardless of quality. The previous Government had it right, because we said that we would assess and inspect the quality of the education provided by the institutions and would base our judgment on that. Extra, inflexible rules about having a qualified teacher on the premises are unnecessary if that central principle, enforced through regular and professional inspections, is adhered to.
Many adults who may be doing a good job in pre-schools may want qualified teacher status but, because of family or other commitments, they cannot take the time to engage in a course. Perhaps some of them have followed other courses, which do not entitle them to qualified teacher status. However, they are doing a good job and it is for inspectors to decide whether the quality of an institution is up to scratch.
Mr. Willis:
Would you say that it is essential for an A-level history student to have a qualified teacher, but that it is not necessary--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. Under the procedure in the House, when an hon. Member uses the word "you", he is referring to the Chair.
Mr. Lidington:
Qualified teacher status does not necessarily guarantee high-quality education. In independent schools in particular, many teachers who have not gone through teacher training courses teach well. I should prefer to leave such judgments to the heads and governors, subject always to regular and rigorous inspection to ensure quality.
My next point to the Minister relates to the Government's policy on child:staff ratios. In Committee on 13 February 1996 on the Nursery Education and Grant-Maintained Schools Bill, Labour Members, including the Minister, voted for an amendment moved by the hon. Member for Barking (Ms Hodge), which would have provided a statutory maximum ratio of one member of staff to 13 children. Is that the Government's policy, or have they changed their views on ratios?
The single biggest concern that I have picked up from local authorities about the Government's longer-term ambitions relates to the funding of the scheme. We know neither the amount that the Government propose to spend nor the mechanism that they propose for the distribution of the money. When Labour was in opposition, it criticised the Conservative Administration for not spending enough and alleged that the £1,100 voucher would be insufficient to cover the costs of a pre-school place.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of Public Service, who was then a shadow spokesman on education and who has now been banished to the post of assistant valet, said on 22 January 1996 at column 104 of the Official Report that £1,100 was not enough. The Secretary of State for
Education and Employment, who was then the shadow spokesman on education, criticised the Conservative Government on their lack of provision for capital expenditure and on the lack of dedicated funds to train providers. That is recorded at column 44 of the Official Report on the same date. The Government's circular to chief education officers states that the cost of their proposals will be met "from existing funding".
We need to know more from the Government about whether they propose to divert money from elsewhere in the education budget to fund their proposed expansion, especially as they strongly argue that places should be provided free by April 1999 to every parent who wants such a place. I cannot see how that promise can be met, unless the Government are prepared to spend more on pre-school education, taking the money from other programmes, raising it by taxation or borrowing it as they think fit. Perhaps they are prepared to shoehorn pre-school children into extremely large classes, which would not provide the sort of education that we all want. As well as responding to that, I hope that the Minister will say whether the Government expect the money to be distributed to LEAs via the standard spending assessment or by some sort of specific grant.
I shall deal briefly with the Government's interim arrangements for 1997-98. I was somewhat amused to see that the certificates of eligibility are vouchers under another guise. It is hard to see how the Government's proposals will reduce administrative costs or bureaucracy, about which they criticised us so much. I have a couple of detailed points. I appreciate that LEAs do not have to have their plans ready until next week but, of course, they had to notify the Department by 16 June as to whether they intended to produce interim plans. How many LEAs have notified the Department that they intend to present an interim plan for 1997-98?
Secondly, there is the issue of the pupil-specific data, which the Government insist LEAs should provide. LEAs are being put under a duty to check individual parental claims for reimbursement, and the Department says that it will call for additional pupil-based data if it considers that necessary. That is considerably more cumbersome and bureaucratic than anything in the voucher scheme, which relied on checking providers. The Government's approach seems to expect LEAs to check individual families to make sure that they are not getting double subsidies, by having their children in a certificated or voucher-funded place one morning in a voluntary pre-school, and then putting them in LEA places in the second half of the week.
There is a particular problem in respect of cross-boundary places. I gather that the Data Protection Act 1988 stops the nursery administrative centre from giving a local education authority specific data about pupils being educated outside that LEA area. I wonder whether the Government have come up with a solution to that problem.
"should be involved in all settings providing early years education".
I think that the Under-Secretary spoke about that when the Nursery Education and Grant-Maintained Schools Bill was in Committee, and I hope that she will be able to explain what the Government mean by "involved" in this context. Are they suggesting that a qualified teacher should have to be present in every classroom where pre-school children are being taught? If that is the case, it would clearly present a problem for private and local authority day nurseries, for pre-school classes and for nursery classes in independent schools, which at present are not required to have a qualified teacher in the classroom all the time. I hope that the Government do not intend to try to squeeze those organisations out of existence.
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