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Mrs. Browning: With the leave of the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I promise to be brief in my summary, as I have already had one opportunity to outline the fact that the Opposition support some of the measures in the White Paper and to flag up our concerns.
One point that has come up many times in the debate--I hope that the Minister will take this comment in the spirit in which it is meant--is that there is still worry about the detail. Labour Members also mentioned that. The hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty), for example, mentioned that head teachers in his constituency had said that they wanted the details of many of the White Paper proposals.
The point was best summed up by my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Mr. Merchant) who suggested to the Government that putting in more of the detail by consulting before producing the White Paper would have allayed many of the worries and would have enabled Ministers to come to the House with more detail and more answers to the many questions that the White Paper raises.
Many points were raised about particular concerns, one of which was admissions. Again, my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham explained how admissions procedures affected his constituency. He referred to educational refugees from London boroughs. I hope that the Minister will take on board the point that, in many cases, schools that have gained a good reputation have done so because people have been concerned about education in their local schools and have preferred their children to travel some distance out of the London boroughs to have access to what they consider to be a suitable education, whether because of the school's standards or because they want to exercise a preference in terms of religious denomination.
I was particularly concerned to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) speak of the worries of parents who can at present access an education for their children in a Catholic environment, but who see that option under threat. That is not the only example of the worries of parents who are currently able to access Catholic schools. As the Minister will know, because I have raised the matter on the Floor of the House, we have had a similar problem in Exeter. I have had correspondence from parents in Merseyside about a forthcoming problem with maintaining an option for education in a Catholic school. My hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale, West was speaking not only about his own concerns, but about concerns being raised around the country about what will happen if parents are denied their choice of school, especially when that choice is based not on standards alone, but on religious denomination.
My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) raised clearly the problems of existing grammar schools and grant-maintained schools. He also asked about the future role of LEAs, which I raised in my introductory remarks. If LEAs are to take on more powers and more responsibilities, we should like to have full details. When the Under-Secretary replies, she may be able to tell us what will be the power of the LEAs if they are to have control over or to scrutinise the plans of individual schools.
Will the powers be advisory, or statutory--which would enable LEAs to overturn specific details in a school's plan? Rightly, my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham raised the concerns of both grammar and GM schools about what might happen to them when the LEA has control of scrutinising or even overturning those plans.
Equally, my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) outlined her concerns in relation to GM schools. I know that Labour Members have castigated Conservative Members for daring even to mention grammar schools and GM schools. Of course, they are not the only schools, but, at the moment, they appear to be the only ones under threat, and parents and pupils are worried--I return to that word "worry". The White Paper has worried many people. If they are worried unnecessarily, the Minister will have an opportunity to allay those fears. We would welcome that.
Various Labour Members criticised me and my colleagues for not participating in this spirit of partnership and co-operation. That is not true. We have been straightforward about the parts of the White Paper that we support and will continue to support, but, again, one of the issues that worry people, as has been demonstrated in the debate, is where the additional funding will come from, particularly the additional funding that will evidently be required by LEAs to carry out all the new responsibilities that the White Paper will empower them to carry out.
I invite the Minister, in a spirit of co-operation, to participate in some partnership with Conservative Members. I am aware that the shadow Secretary of State for Education and Employment, who is not here today because he is speaking at an education conference, is writing to the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions inviting him to announce immediately what the education part of the standard spending assessment for LEAs will be for the next financial year.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced that there will be additional funding on top of the funding that was already stated in the Red Book. Therefore, there is no need to delay announcing what LEAs will have in their budget for the next financial year. If the Chancellor is as good as his word, that detailed information could be given to them now, so that we could allay the concerns of teachers and governing bodies. They have, of course, welcomed the fact that the Government have announced more education expenditure for the next financial year, but the big question is how much of it will be held back by LEAs to perform their own duties and exactly how much of it will go into the classroom. That question applies also to the amount of additional money that the Chancellor has earmarked for capital expenditure for the repair and maintenance of schools.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Ms Estelle Morris):
I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to the
As well as writing to every school, asking teachers to consider the White Paper, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has invited schools to hold meetings with parents to make sure that they are fully aware of the Government's wishes and are fully involved in contributing to what I hope will be a national debate.
We recognise the important role of governors. My hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Mr. Darvill) praised the new role of governors and rightly reminded us that they have many responsibilities. Although I heard what he said, I am afraid that we have put a further burden on them because the Secretary of State has asked that they, too, should meet to discuss the White Paper. We acknowledge the work currently done by governors. When the relationship between the governing body and the school is right, it is a tower of strength for the good of the children. When it is not right and when governors feel that they are burdened down with paperwork, it is a matter for concern. Governors play a special role in our education service and I hope that they will comment on the White Paper.
Ministers and officials in the Department have already started to present the White Paper's ideas at events throughout the country. After people have had time to read it and think about its ideas--over the summer holidays, if they have nothing else to do--we plan to hold several regional conferences in September at which I and fellow Ministers will be present to listen and discuss further.
I hope that if local consultations take place, hon. Members will want to take part in them. I am sure that even hon. Members who do not belong to the Labour party will want to listen to teachers, parents, governors, industry and employers in their areas. We shall treat comments from them in the same spirit of partnership and hope for the education service as comments from my hon. Friends. We shall use the results of the consultation to build on the White Paper's proposals, and the legislation that we shall need to implement some of those proposals will be formulated in the light of consultation responses. However, there are actions that we can take without legislation that will allow us to act quickly and effectively in focusing on some of our priorities.
I should like to go into greater detail on an aspect of the White Paper that was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Ms Hodge) and, I think in my absence, for which I apologise, by the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster). I shall respond to some of the issues
that they raised. They spoke about early years education. We must get that right. It is no coincidence that we lag behind some of our major competitors in terms of the percentage of children who receive early years education and in the percentage of our young people who gain external education qualifications.
The evidence about the importance of a child's early years is clear and has been there for some time. Despite that, for 17 years the Conservatives failed to do anything to promote good quality early years education. What action they did take, they got badly wrong. I should have preferred them to carry on doing nothing, but what they did resulted in the mess that we have picked up. Answering the needs of young children and their families is not done by leaving them to the market or by setting up expensive bureaucracies. The nursery voucher scheme wasted millions on bureaucracy and advertising, and resulted in providers competing for children, and parents scrabbling for places.
Pre-school facilities in some of the pilot authorities closed down and, throughout the experience, there was no evidence that a single extra place was created for three and four-year-olds. To put matters right, an essential first step was to abolish the nursery vouchers scheme, and that is what we have done.
The White Paper outlines what we will do next. The world has changed since the previous expansion of nursery education, which was as long ago as the 1950s and 1960s. The traditional nursery provision of half a day a week is no longer suitable for many parents, who have to or choose to work.
When my hon. Friend the Minister for School Standards opened the debate, he said that investment in learning in the 21st century was the equivalent of investment in the machinery and technical innovation that were essential to the first industrial revolution. That is why the highest quality of education must remain at the centre of our early years programme and why the White Paper says that staff training and qualifications for early years providers, as well as ensuring that a qualified teacher is involved in each early years setting, is a matter of importance on which we want to seek views in the next few weeks.
Our early years service must support families as well as children. We must begin to try to bring together day care and early years education to create an integrated early years provision. I readily accept--perhaps this is the worry factor that the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning) referred to--that there is much in the White Paper that is ambitious and sets high standards.
If we are to achieve those standards, we must have a new approach, based on collaboration, partnership and accountability. That is why each local authority, together with local private and voluntary providers, will set up an early years forum to plan--yes, to plan--the provision of local education and child care.
The forum will need to represent all who have an interest in early years education, including employers, health workers and parents. Our plans for early years aim high and are, quite honestly, more far reaching than those of any previous Government, but we can demand no less if we are to do the best for the next generation of children.
To deliver our pledges, we must bring together all the providers, from whatever background, and all the skills and interests that are involved. I want to reassure hon.
Members, especially Conservative Members, that no providers from any sector--from the private or the voluntary sector--need fear being squeezed out in our approach to planning early years provision, as long as they offer the quality that we are looking for.
When the early years development plans come to the Department for approval, as happened with the 79 interim early years development plans that we announced on Monday, we will be looking for evidence of that partnership and that consultation. No interim plan was approved that did not make it clear that it involved in its partnership all those providers, in the voluntary and private sectors as well as the public sector, that had been in receipt of what I call voucher-bearing children.
That is a sign of our intent. It is not about squeezing out, but about planning and working together so that we do not have provider competing with provider for a child to come through its doors. I make no apology for planning in that respect; it is in the interests of the children whom we seek to serve.
I share the concerns of the hon. Member for Bath about some of the four-year-olds in reception classes, but I would not say that it is always wrong for four-year-olds to be in a reception class. We must ensure that their experience there is appropriate to both their age and their stage of development.
I want to approve plans not on the provider's label but on the quality of provision. We would not approve the plans of any local authority that seeks to meet our demand for places for four-year-olds by hoovering them all up into reception classes, regardless of the quality of their education. Early years development plans that offer nothing more than that will be sent back rather than financed. The 79 that I have looked at in the past two weeks did not do so; they reveal a spirit of partnership and the desire to get early years plans right.
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