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Mr. Bob Blizzard (Waveney): I have a question that I hope the hon. Gentleman will clarify. In 1971, under a Conservative Government, a Conservative council in my county of Suffolk abolished grammar schools and introduced a comprehensive education system. Today, that system enjoys the confidence of the people of Suffolk. It achieves good standards according to the league tables, and no school opted out of it to go grant maintained. Does the hon. Gentleman maintain that the system in Suffolk is less good than that obtaining in the area that he represents, or does he wish to introduce a grammar school to every town in Suffolk?
Mr. Brady: It is not really a question of what I say or think. I simply point out to the hon. Gentleman that the figures show that the system in the borough of Trafford achieves better results than the one operating in Suffolk. That is not a matter for us to quibble over: I have stated a simple matter of fact.
Mr. Michael Fabricant (Lichfield): Does not my hon. Friend agree that what we consider to be the appropriate system in Suffolk is not the important point, but that what parents in Suffolk choose is? Did not my hon. Friend make the point earlier in his excellent speech that the Government have deprived parents of choice? Although parents can choose to allow grammar schools to become comprehensives, the Government have decided--disingenuously and in a manner that lacks balance--that it is not possible for parents to decide that comprehensive schools can become grammar schools. Is not that what is so unfair?
Mr. Brady: My hon. Friend is right. The one-way ratchet enshrined in the legislation is entirely wrong. I can tell the hon. Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) that I do not think that there should be a grammar school in every town unless parents want that. However, parents and schools should have the freedom to decide the arrangements that suit them. It should not be left to Government diktat.
The Minister for School Standards (Ms Estelle Morris): Why not give them a choice?
Mr. Brady: That is a remarkable question, given that the right hon. Lady was the Minister who, in the Standing Committee considering what became the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, opposed my amendment to give parents in all schools precisely that choice. So my record on the matter is entirely clean; the Minister should look to her own record before casting aspersions on mine.
Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham): Like me, my hon. Friend belongs to the growing tradition of Conservatives who pay mortgages and buy their own furniture. Does he not agree that it is especially unfortunate, as he develops his arguments, that he should be chuckled at by the
hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), who represents the wing of her party that has inherited wealth and privilege?
Mr. Brady: I need hardly comment. As ever, my hon. Friend has made a fascinating contribution to the debate that will enlighten hon. Members on both sides.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough): Pathetic.
Mr. Brady: I hope that the hon. Lady can contain herself, as I should like to return to the evidence of the achievements of selective systems of education. I was seeking to destroy the myth that selective systems perform better only when they are in wealthier areas.
That that is palpably untrue is borne out by the facts in Trafford, which is not the wealthiest part of the country. It has some wealthy areas, and some with considerable deprivation. In Trafford, 18.9 per cent. of children receive free school meals. That is higher than the national average, yet the LEA is arguably first, second or third in terms of academic performance. So Trafford demolishes the myth. I compare that with Kirklees, an LEA which has a slightly smaller 18.8 per cent. figure for free school meals. While Trafford was third in the 1998 GCSE results, Kirklees was 89th.
If we lose our grammer schools, selection by ability and merit will be replaced by selection by mortgage or postcode. Altrincham boys grammar school--my old school--and Altrincham girls grammar school are located in perhaps the most prosperous parts of Trafford. Under a comprehensive system, they would draw their pupils from some of the most expensive housing in the north of England. In the wards of Hale and Bowdon, new three-bedroom apartments have recently gone on the market at £500,000. That would not open up the best schools in the country to all pupils regardless of ability. It would do precisely the opposite, depriving access to the best schools to pupils who have the ability but whose parents do not have the wealth to secure that education.
The situation is similar in Barnet, where the Henrietta Barnett school would draw its catchment from Hampstead Garden Suburb, which has some of the most expensive housing in London. Destroying selection and the grammar schools would achieve precisely the opposite of what so many of the enemies of the grammar schools seek. Professor John Musgrove, former professor of education at Manchester university, said:
Mr. Phil Willis (Harrogate and Knaresborough):
May I take the hon. Gentleman to another flagship area of his party's policy--the private sector? How many public schools are selective?
Mr. Brady:
I chose the future of grammar schools for today's debate. The hon. Gentleman knows that I am no great champion of private schools. I believe that people should be free to choose private education if they wish, but I champion grammar schools precisely because I believe that they open up to all, regardless of ability to pay, an education for the children of parents who might otherwise have to pay. If the hon. Gentleman wants to enlighten the House by giving the statistics that he seeks from me, I shall be happy to give way again, but they would not add anything to the debate.
Mr. Fabricant:
I cannot help with those statistics, but others are revealing. Since the abolition of grammar schools, the popularity of private schools among parents has gone up.
Mr. Brady:
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The people who will be hurt by the Government's measures--if they proceed--will be those who cannot pay for an alternative. As happened when grammar schools were abolished, those who have the parental wealth to go elsewhere will do so. The polarisation of our education system and of opportunity for our children will thus increase, not diminish.
Mrs. Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham):
It may be worth noting that many successful independent schools resulted directly from the move to the independent sector of direct-grant grammar schools when the Labour party last chose to mount an assault on the education system.
Mr. Brady:
My hon. Friend is entirely right. Many of those schools were also able to preserve a tradition of free places through the assisted places scheme, another measure that the Government removed in order to diminish opportunity for ordinary children.
The Government's proposals diminish opportunity for those from working class or lower middle class families who do not have the ability to pay. However, they will also affect other groups, particularly ethnic minorities.A perfect example of the detrimental effect of the Government's policy is the Queen Elizabeth grammar school in Barnet, which draws 41 per cent. of its pupils from other cultural groups, according to the categorisation of the Department for Education and Employment. Most of those pupils are Asian people who got into the school on ability, not because of where they live or their ability to pay. The wards that would comprise the feeder area for the school under a comprehensive system have an ethnic minority population of 7.5 per cent. Members of ethnic minority groups are benefiting from the massive opportunity of fantastic education standards, and it would be snatched away from them by an unthinking and outdated policy.
A further effect of change would be a need for reorganisation in many education authority areas. Again, we face wasted opportunities for ordinary children and
wasted money in LEAs that seek to amalgamate or close schools or rationalise school estates. In Kent, education officers estimate that that would cost £150 million. Replicate that sum across all the areas that have grammar schools and the cost would be £0.5 billion--money wasted on destroying good education rather than trying to improve bad education.
Old socialists and new Fabians--there may even be one or two of them on the Labour Benches today--frequently have more sense than to support the policies that the Government are pursuing. Stephen Pollard, former research director of the Fabian Society, has made his views clear:
In 1999, the Select Committee on Education and Employment reported on highly able children, noting:
At the very least, parents around the country have a right to expect that those regulations will be observed and policed by Ministers. The Minister will be well aware that one of the regulations requires a prohibition on the use of public funds. Let me enlighten the House by drawing attention to some past exchanges between the Minister and me during the School Standards and Framework Bill's Committee stage. She said:
Regardless of the use of public money, schools and LEAs are barred from involvement as corporate bodies. That is why I wrote to the Secretary of State for Education
and Employment a little over a week ago to ask him to look into the situation in the borough of Trafford where evidence has come to light of a school across the boundary in Manchester writing to parents who are Trafford residents and using school letterheaded paper, school facilities and the school roll, thereby incurring public expense. In writing formally on letterheaded paper, signed by the headmaster of the school, it has not only used public funds but engaged as a corporate body in the campaign against the Trafford grammar schools.
Given that several hundred parents have received this one-sided propaganda campaigning material from the Stop the 11-plus campaign, I have asked that the Secretary of State use his powers to declare the process void for this academic year in the borough of Trafford. I seek nothing more than fairness and an evenhanded approach. I look forward to hearing the Minister's response, which may come today or, as she suggests, a little later.
I hope that Ministers will enforce the regulations on all schools and on both sides of the debate and take this caution to heart. If they do not, they will not merely be refusing to implement the regulations in this instance, but setting a precedent for all schools, LEAs and interested parties that will define the point to which the regulations will be enforced or ignored. That threatens a free-for-all in the areas where we face campaigns for the abolition of the grammar schools.
That instance was not the first contravention of the rules. In January 1998, I had cause to report Trafford borough council itself, which had sent misleading advice to parent teacher associations, warning that they would lose their charitable status if they sent information to parents relating to the ballot and the future of selection. I took advice from the Charity Commissioners and found that the council's advice had been totally unfounded and that only party political campaigning would have contravened charitable status. That showed not a school but the LEA, through the borough council, engaging in the debate and trying to influence the future of selection in contravention of the regulations set out by the Government. I reported it to the Secretary of State but, perhaps unsurprisingly, no action was taken.
There have been reports of other abuses around the country. It has been reported that anti-grammar school campaigners have booked council chambers as if for union meetings and so not paid for the facilities. There have been reports of children signing the petitions. If they signed in the name of their parents, the situation would not be covered because the Government have made no provision for verifying whether signatures are genuine. There are reports of trade union funding of the anti-grammar campaign, which results in an unfair imbalance of resources. There are also reports of names being transferred to petitions directly from the list of electors en bloc, which again could not be discovered because the Government did not take the trouble to contract the Electoral Reform Society to check whether people have really expressed their wishes in the petition process.
What now? It is time for the Government to admit the truth: selection works. It works for pupils in grammar schools but also for those in high schools, who achieve better results under a selective system than they would under a comprehensive one. It works for low and middle-income families who cannot afford to go
elsewhere for their education. It works for the ethnic minorities, who have a route out of poverty and a chance to achieve according to their abilities.
"You might have expected the Labour Party to abolish the public schools . . . It really was an astonishing historical irony that they should have abolished grammar schools instead. It was idiocy of the highest order and a disaster for academically gifted working and lower middle class children."
That case is further illustrated by the results achieved in 1998 by Altrincham girls grammar school. It is an exceptionally good school and 99 per cent. of the girls achieved five or more A starred to C passes at GCSE. By comparison, Eton college achieved 97 per cent., Harrow 92 per cent., and Cheltenham ladies college 89 per cent. That is the reality of an education system that provides
the best possible schooling for children, regardless of their parents' ability to pay. Those public schools are selective, but extremely expensive to enter.
"you don't overcome failure by destroying a success--grammar schools. Indeed, so true is this that the real motivation of the educational establishment is all too clearly revealed: to preserve its current power."
Sydney Webb, one of the founders of the Fabians, argued:
"What we have learned gradually and slowly is that nothing worthy of the name of a national education system can be built up of schools of a single undifferentiated type."
What he learned gradually and slowly seems to have been unlearned rather quickly by Labour between the Wirral, South by-election and today.
"Overall, the evidence showed that different types of schools, selective and non-selective, suit different kinds of pupils."
We have been left with a poor set of regulations that will influence the future of the grammar schools. They were criticised by the House of Lords in May 1998 when concern was expressed at how the proposals had been put in place through regulations rather than primary legislation. We are stuck with a flawed procedure, loaded against the remaining grammar schools.
"The Bill prevents them from using public money . . . Local authorities cannot use public money to campaign. Therefore it is right for that restriction to apply to schools and governing bodies."
I returned with the question:
"Will the Minister clarify whether a governing body could campaign corporately, provided it did not use public money?"
The Minister answered:
"No . . . The governing body as a legal entity would not be able to campaign."--[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 24 February 1998; c. 678-9.]
It is not only the use of public resources that is banned under the regulations; there is a prohibition on the entry into the debate of legal public bodies, such as schools, governing bodies and local education authorities. They are not permitted to incur expenditure to assist anyone else to publish such material or to influence or assist anyone else in influencing the outcome of a petition or ballot.
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