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Dr. Starkey: My hon. Friend is asking about the threshold of a ballot, and I agree that it has been set impossibly high so that it is not possible to get a public consultation. Buckinghamshire county council held a consultation, ignored the results and then had repeated consultation. During this time, the secondary school--which should have gone ahead--was kept on ice.
My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, North-East (Mr. White) and I have been well aware of the consequences of that decision for the whole school system in Milton Keynes, where a much needed secondary school was held up for a considerable time because of the determination of Buckinghamshire county council to foist a selective system on the people of Milton Keynes, despite their repeatedly expressed view that they did not want it.
Fortunately, the attempt by Buckinghamshire county council to force the system on people was frustrated by the determined efforts of the Milton Keynes council, which is now the education authority with responsibility for schools. Thanks to the council and the Government, we now have a new comprehensive school that is meeting the needs of pupils in the part of Milton Keynes that is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, North-East.
In my intervention on the hon. Member for Buckingham, I said that the consequence for the parents and children of Milton Keynes of the removal, once and for all, of the sterile debate about selection is that we now have an education authority that has concentrated on the needs of all the children and schools of Milton Keynes. In the short time it has been in control, the authority has overseen a substantial improvement in standards across the whole ability range: markedly so for boys. There has been a substantial improvement in the level of achievement in comprehensive schools. I am confident that that improvement in standards will continue.
That vindicates the expressed view of the people of Milton Keynes that what they wanted were excellent schools for all their children and not the distorted debate that Buckinghamshire county council was attempting to push on them. The council's action exemplifies the view--one that is held, certainly, by the hon. Member for Buckingham--that the way to improve education is to push resources into a small number of schools for which we select the best pupils. Not unnaturally, those schools will turn out good results. It is as if we were to select on the basis of the height of the children and then be surprised that, in selective schools, the average height of pupils was higher than elsewhere.
The amendment to which the hon. Member for Buckingham spoke is a blatant attempt to ensure that parental choice cannot be operated to express a view that selective education is divisive and does not provide a good education for all children. I do not believe that it even provides good education for those children who are often put into narrowly academic schools where they are unable to fulfil their full potential across a range of activities and where they are channelled into a narrow sort of education.
Mr. David Curry (Skipton and Ripon): This has been a wide-ranging debate which, in many respects, has concerned the very principles of selective as against comprehensive education. I am unique in the House, in that there has been a ballot in my constituency. I wish to speak from experience, rather than from a theoretical position.
I say to the Secretary of State that Ripon college--the city school, as it was; formerly a secondary modern--will, in the next academic year, benefit from its technology status. I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that award, which was well merited. He will be interested and pleased to know that, recently, the school received two awards for excellence in teaching, demonstrating the commitment of the school to continue to improve standards. He will be pleased to know also that the co-operation with the grammar school--promised at the time of the ballot--is being pursued. We intend that that partnership--formed in the heat of battle, if I can put it in those slightly melodramatic terms--will continue now that, for the moment, the battle is over. I intend to make sure that those important promises are kept.
I wish to refer to the circumstances in which the ballot took place and how it took place, as they illustrate the difficulties of a Bill that the Government are defending but which has been so roundly attacked by Labour Members today. In my constituency, the electorate was incomplete and, frankly, arbitrary. First, the electorate was confined to feeder schools which had sent five children to the grammar school over the previous three years. However, if the junior school in question had a separate infants department, children at the infants school did not count towards the ballot. If the school was integrated, the children did count. Parents would find themselves in identical situations in different junior schools in Ripon, but some were disfranchised.
Secondly, the parents of both secondary schools were denied the franchise. I would never suggest that only the parents of those children at the grammar school should have the vote. It is legitimate that the parents of the children at all the secondary schools should have the vote. However, they did not. We had the arbitrary situation that a parent in Ripon with a child in the last year at one of the feeder primary schools had a vote. However, a parent with a child in the first year of either the college or the grammar school--where there is an expectation that that child will spend between five and seven years at the school, right through to university entrance--was denied the vote. I regard that as an arbitrary definition of the electorate.
The problem with the Bill is that the question is incomplete. The question does not ask the electorate, however it is defined, to vote on a particular scheme of reorganisation. The electorate and parents are canny, and
want to know what they are voting for. They want to know where the beef is. They do not want just a theoretical debate about education.When North Yorkshire education authority--which behaved entirely properly throughout this matter--pointed out to parents that a vote for change did not necessarily mean that a single comprehensive school would be created in Ripon, the parents said that that meant that they were voting for the unknown. They were not voting for a particular proposal whose meaning they understood. It was not clear what the organisation would entail.
Technically, the ballot was about admissions to the grammar school, and the only question on the ballot paper was a technical one. The question that that opened up--what sort of education we would get if there were a vote for change--was not answered. That was left to the local authority. When the authority put forward its answer in the event of a yes result, the electorate was not consulted on its practical shape.
I reiterate the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow): the solution in Ripon is only temporary. In five years, those concerned can come back to the matter. It is difficult to manage and run a school knowing that that possibility is constantly looming.
If they want a definitive solution, the Government could adopt reasonable procedures that would satisfy their own Back Benchers. First, they should require every local authority with selective schools to set out a scheme of reorganisation--except where ballots have taken place already, as the principle of double jeopardy should be maintained. Those local authorities should set out not the principles of reorganisation but how they would reorganise their schools on a comprehensive basis. That would mean that parents knew what they were voting for.
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The Government should then issue an undertaking that, if the scheme necessitated further capital expenditure, they would provide it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham said, it is clear that funding would not be available for capital expenditure consequent on reorganisation. If the Government want to give parents a real choice, on the famous level playing field, they must demonstrate that parents will not, by their vote, penalise themselves or their children in terms of funding.
Finally, there would be a ballot of eligible parents. For stand-alone schools, parents of all pupils at both secondary and primary schools would participate. Where the present whole-LEA system of education obtains, the ballot would be much wider and would therefore be held broadly in accordance with the principles that have been set out. However, when that decision has been taken, that would be the end of the process. There would be none of the constant returning to the old argument that has been described already in this debate.
In this Chamber, hon. Members have made it clear that they are fed up with the argument about structure and are more interested in performance, and I agree with much of what the Secretary of State has to say in that regard. He has stated that what matters in schools is individual performance, and he has stressed the importance of head teachers. I echo what the right hon. Gentleman has said, with authority, about the sheer difficulty of running some inner-city schools, where teachers have to combine
teaching with being police officers and social workers. Their role in loco parentis is the greater because, to be blunt, children often come from deeply inadequate backgrounds.The House should focus on those difficulties, so it is important that a term be set to the current debate. In that way, we could take the matter forward: parents would be able to make a definitive choice, and schools would finally know where they stood.
I believe that the Government need to be got off the hook over this problem. They have proposed a scheme with the wonderful advantage that both sides of the argument believe that the ballot is rigged. That is quite an achievement, and it happened with the ballot in my constituency.
I must pay tribute to the Secretary of State again, as he gave a judicious and balanced response when he was called upon to adjudicate the complaints. No reasonable person could have objected to his decision. However, the hon. Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman) showed that he thinks that the scheme does not work effectively. He excoriated the scheme, before announcing--somewhat curiously--that he intended to take no part in any ballot in his constituency that might result.
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