| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Dr. Starkey: After the debate, will the hon. Gentleman look at the performance statistics for schools in Milton
Keynes and the rest of Buckinghamshire when they were under Tory-controlled Buckinghamshire county council, which believed in selective education, and compare those with the results now, when Milton Keynes has an education authority that does not believe in selective education? He will find that Buckinghamshire county council allowed a huge disparity in standards to build up between Milton Keynes schools and schools elsewhere in Buckinghamshire, and that since the threat of selection has been removed from Milton Keynes and we have an education authority that believes in the education of all its children, standards in all schools in Milton Keynes have vastly improved. The improvement has been at a much higher level than any improvement in the rest of Buckinghamshire.
Mr. Bercow: The hon. Lady is wrong. The record of Buckinghamshire as a local education authority is outstanding. It is comparable with anywhere in the UK. The results improve consistently across the board. I remind my right hon. and hon. Friends that what the hon. Lady says is entirely symptomatic of the Labour party's tendency to decry the achievement of secondary modern and high schools. I bitterly resent the way in which they seek to denigrate the achievements of those schools. I champion not only the grammar schools in the Buckinghamshire local education authority area, but the upper schools, which do an admirable job.
Mr. David Chaytor (Bury, North): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
6.30 pm
Mr. Bercow: I shall make a little progress with my argument and give way to the hon. Gentleman later, if time allows.
I mentioned Labour rhetoric before the election. What has happened since? Petition and ballot regulations have been put on the statute book and my right hon. and hon. Friends and I believe that there are several cogent objections to those regulations. First, they constitute a one-way ratchet. They allow for the destruction of grammar schools, but they do not permit their creation. Moreover, grammar schools are the only category of schools to which the petitioning and balloting procedure is intended to apply. We are not to have petitions and ballots in relation to technology colleges, comprehensive schools, voluntary-aided schools, single-sex schools or independent schools. Grammar schools have been singled out for this treatment.
It has been emphasised many times, and I do so again, that there is scope within the petition procedure for fraud. I have said on a number of occasions--and it has not been effectively contradicted--that there is potential for cheating in the collection of signatures for the petitions. My right hon. and hon. Friends and I were not remotely reassured to be told by Electoral Reform Ballot Services last year:
- The checking procedures are in accordance with the ballot regulations and the terms of our contract with the Department for Education and Employment.
Mr. Blunkett: Will the hon. Gentleman clarify that? Is he or is he not making an allegation that the ballots are
unfair and that civil servants in my Department seek to undermine their validity? I want an answer to that question from the hon. Gentleman, who purports to want to be a Minister.
Mr. Bercow: I am happy to answer the Secretary of State. I did not say that the petitions or the ballots so far had been subject to fraud. I am happy to repeat, however, that the scope for fraud and impersonation does exist. The Secretary of State should not affect quite such shock or seem so affronted. The point has been raised with him several times, and we have had no satisfactory response from him or from the Minister for School Standards. I stand by what I have said. I have said it many times before and I shall continue saying it until the Secretary of State is prepared to reconsider the terms of the regulations and the contract with Electoral Reform Ballot Services.
The ballots ask a loaded question. It does not refer to grammar schools, but simply says, "Are you in favour of the school or schools listed introducing admission arrangements which admit children of all abilities?" That is manifestly a motherhood-and-apple-pie question which invites an affirmative answer. The electorate who are invited to answer the question are perversely chosen by the Government. My right hon. and hon. Friends will agree that it is frankly indefensible that the parents of grammar school pupils, who themselves have a direct vested and continuing interest in the outcome of such ballots, are disfranchised by the Government's regulations in many cases.
Considerable costs are involved in sweeping away the grammar schools and the selective system. In Kent, in bricks and mortar terms alone, the cost is estimated at £150 million. For the whole country, a figure of more than £500 million seems to err on the conservative side.
Mr. Blunkett: Is it not a paradox that the amount that Kent claims it would take to alter the system is £6 million higher than the sum that it would need, according to its asset management activity, to refurbish, renew and extend existing buildings to provide a satisfactory solution to its building and construction problems? It seems that Kent is prepared to spend £6 million more on reconfiguration than it would on reorganising its existing buildings to make them fit for current pupils.
Mr. Bercow: The Secretary of State really does have a brass neck to make such a bogus debating point--to which I shall with relish reply. This is not a question of what Kent county council is prepared to spend; it is a matter of what Kent county council would be obliged to spend in order to secure a reconfiguration of the pattern of local education in that county. The Secretary of State himself has made it clear, albeit only sotto voce, that if parents choose to vote for the abolition of the existing system there will be a price tag, and the bill will have to be met at local level because the Secretary of State has no intention whatever of footing it. So it will mean crippling council tax rises for local residents--a fact that the right hon. Gentleman has been reluctant to emphasise, but which I want to underline tonight.
Why does the Secretary of State not listen to the authoritative view of the director of education in my own county of Buckinghamshire, Mr. David McGahey,
who has repeatedly told him that the size and configuration of local grammar schools in Buckinghamshire mean that they would not readily lend themselves to conversion to comprehensive status? The schools are full almost to bursting, the scope for development on the green belt is minimal and the capital costs of reconstruction are prohibitive. It is no good the right hon. Gentleman consistently refusing to allow the facts to intrude upon his declared prejudices in any way, at any time and to any degree. The reality is that it would be costly--and in many cases impracticable--to secure the sort of conversion that many of his hon. Friends envisage.
Dr. Ladyman: I know that the hon. Gentleman does not deliberately try to mislead the House, so he must allow me to correct him on two points. First, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is absolutely correct to say that Kent county council has said that it needs to spend £146 million on the existing system of education--only barely less than it would cost to implement a new system. Secondly, the hon. Gentleman implied that parents of pupils at grammar schools in Kent would not get a vote. That is absolutely untrue. All parents with children at feeder schools and secondary schools would get a vote.
Mr. Bercow: Let me make two points in response to the hon. Gentleman. First, I am grateful to him for confirming that reconstruction would entail substantial additional costs. He has not denied that. Rather, he has acknowledged the truth of the charge that my hon. Friends and I have been making. Secondly, of course I am happy to confirm that in Kent, as he rightly pointed out, grammar school parents do have a vote. The burden of my criticism was directed at the procedure that applies to areas where there are stand-alone grammar schools or groups of grammar schools, where it is an undemocratic outrage that parents of children at grammar schools are not allowed to vote.
Mr. Willis: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Bercow: I shall give way just once more and then I must make some progress.
Mr. Willis: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who has been most generous in giving way throughout the debate. Does he agree that it is equally an outrage that in the recent Ripon grammar school ballot, 25 per cent. of parents who were eligible to vote had children at private schools?
Mr. Bercow: I do not think that there is anything remotely outrageous about that. The hon. Gentleman is tempting me to address the subject of Ripon. He can rest assured that I shall not resist that temptation for long, but first I shall focus briefly on the arguments about educational opportunity and the threat of discrimination against people from ethnic minorities, as that is a point of great importance to the Opposition.
Thirty per cent. of pupils at Henrietta Barnet grammar school in the London Borough of Barnet are from ethnic minorities. As the former head teacher, Jane de Swiet, pointed out many months ago, if that school were to become a comprehensive, its catchment area would be
based around Hampstead Garden Suburb, which has some of the most expensive housing anywhere in the United Kingdom. Such an arrangement would prevent substantial numbers of bright children from ethnic minorities and from financially modest backgrounds from benefiting from the education that is presently available to them.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |