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Dr. Ladyman: May I clarify that I did not say that I would not vote in the ballot? I simply said that I would not use my position as a politician to make the ballot a political one. In fact, I rather admired the slightly detached approach to the ballot process displayed by the right hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Curry: If the hon. Gentleman is saying that he would not want to make the ballot party political, I would certainly agree, as I sought to exclude that possibility from the ballot in my constituency. However, politics goes far beyond parties, and this ballot process is intensely political. It is one of those few experiments in which ballot papers were delivered to doorsteps. Even then, the turnout of only 70 per cent. could have tempted me to an entirely unauthorised digression on local government election turnouts, on which I do not intend to embark in this debate.
As I said, the Government need to be let off the hook with regard to the scheme. In the next academic year, as we approach a general election, I look forward to watching Ministers and Labour activists campaigning through Daily Mail territory and encouraging parents to hold ballots on the future of their grammar schools. I have a feeling that the word may go out, quietly, that the Government are not too anxious to incite enemy troops at this particular time.
I understand that the Government wanted to find a solution to this problem, but their solution involves a formula that is so provisional and so unsatisfactory that virtually no one thinks it sustainable. I suspect that the Secretary of State will argue otherwise, and I said earlier that I am in a relatively comfortable position, as the ballot in my constituency has already been held. However, there is a case for a close examination of the system that has been set up, so that parents can have a genuine choice.
The Government must ensure that the extent of the franchise should not be open to dispute and that the question is honestly and fully put. A definitive result
would mean that everyone would know where they stood, and we would all be able to move on and deal with a much more pressing agenda.
Mr. Chaytor: I rise to oppose new clause 11, moved by the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow), and to support new clause 9, moved by my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman).
Interestingly, the hon. Member for Buckingham spoke for precisely 30 minutes about the selective system, but he focused entirely on grammar schools. Why did he ignore the 75 per cent. of children who fail the test at 11 and are deselected? The hon. Gentleman should answer that question when he speaks on the matter again, as should all Conservative Members. They try to define selection entirely in terms of grammar schools, even though most children in the selective system are not in grammar schools. The Conservative party must address that issue.
The hon. Member for Buckingham must answer another question. If he were to have children--God forbid, some might say--would he exercise his freedom of choice and send them to a secondary modern school? I look forward to his answer.
Mr. Bercow: The happy event to which the hon. Gentleman alludes has not yet occurred, and I accept that it might well not do so. I shall have to wait for events to take their natural course. However, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that I should be very happy for children of mine to go to a secondary high school in a number of the selective areas to which I have referred.
The hon. Gentleman is wrong: I celebrated the achievements of the grammar but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) will know, I pointed also to the success of the high schools.
There it is: a straight question from one politician gets a straight answer in the affirmative from another.
Mr. Chaytor: I look forward to the proof of that. If the hon. Gentleman were to act as he says he would, it would be a record. I think that he would be the only Opposition Member who had ever chosen to send a child to a secondary modern school. It would be a remarkable event, and I will hold him to his promise.
The hon. Member for Buckingham based his argument on the assumption that the evidence is that grammar schools perform better than other schools. He dismissed the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet regarding the recent research by York university, and the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey) about what happened in Milton Keynes. He insisted that grammar schools perform better.
Unfortunately, even if that was true at some point in the past, it is true no longer. I refer the hon. Member for Buckingham to the written answer that I received on 25 May from my right hon. Friend the Minister for School Standards. It showed that the top 25 per cent. of children in grammar schools and secondary modern schools differed in level of achievement by only about 5 percentage points.
The figures show that 100 per cent. of that top 25 per cent. in comprehensive schools obtained five GCSE passes at A to C grades. That may not be the ideal
benchmark, but it is the one normally used. By contrast, 96.4 per cent. of children in that ability range in selective schools achieved that success.Our comprehensive system has developed and improved over the years. The figures show that children in the top 25 per cent. in the ability range perform better in comprehensive schools than in selective schools.
Mr. Brady: Will the hon. Gentleman say where those top performing comprehensive schools are--in the most affluent areas, or the poorest ones?
Mr. Chaytor: The figures that I gave apply to comprehensive schools across the country that happen to have children from the top 25 per cent. of the ability range. Their geographical location is irrelevant. Conservative Members, newspaper editors and television pundits talk about the failure of comprehensive schools in inner cities, but it must be remembered that there is not a single comprehensive school in any inner city in the United Kingdom. Every school in the inner city has been selected once, twice, or even three or four times. There is no such thing as a genuinely comprehensive school in our inner cities because, in the vast majority of cases, those schools have been so heavily creamed that even though their curriculum may be available to children of all ability, their intake does not reflect the full span of the ability range.
Mr. Hopkins: On the previous point, does my hon. Friend agree that one problem with the selective system is that children who do not pass the 11-plus examination, or whatever one might call it, become alienated from education; therefore, across the system as a whole, such children perform less well on average? When children are in comprehensive schools, they are encouraged rather than discouraged.
Mr. Chaytor: That is absolutely right. If we contrast areas that have successively reorganised along comprehensive lines with those that have retained selection, comparing areas like for like in terms of their socio-economic status, that will prove to be the case.
I see the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) shaking his head and I am glad that he is doing so, as it conveniently brings me to my next argument. He made the sweeping statement that he represents the best performing local authority in the north-west--Trafford, which is an authority that I know reasonably well. I am not familiar with the performance of all the local authorities in that area, but I am familiar with that of authorities in Greater Manchester, where our constituencies are located.
If we compare selective Trafford with comprehensive Bury, on whatever indicator that the hon. Gentleman chooses to provide, we will find that there is, at worst, no difference and, in most cases, a significant improvement in the schools in Bury. Let us consider, for example, the performance at key stage 2 in primary schools: Bury's comprehensive primary schools outperform the primary schools in Trafford. If we take performance at key stage 4, or the number of children who obtain five A to Cs at GCSE, the most recent results show a negligible difference: 55 per cent. in Bury and 55 point something per cent. in Trafford. Consider the number of children
who get a single GCSE. This is the most interesting result, as it is where the bulk of the population is at, and the proportion of children who get A to Gs in comprehensive Bury vastly exceeds those achieving that score in selective Trafford.The most significant figure is that for the participation rate beyond 16--it is what this Bill is about--where selective Trafford performs not only far worse than comprehensive Bury, but far worse than many other districts in Greater Manchester and throughout the north-west--districts that do not have the enormous social advantages of Trafford.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet has performed a service to the House in his careful dissection of the weaknesses of the selective system in Kent and the impact that that has on the development of the potential of children, of the divisive nature of the system as it impacts on communities, and of its sheer inefficiency. He also performed a service by drawing attention to some aspects of the existing regulations for the ballots in selective areas that must be reconsidered. He advanced a significant argument in favour of one sort of change to the existing ballot. Other changes need to be reconsidered. The right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) also argued constructively about the way in which the system operates, in particular in the area that he represents.
I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will take the time--I know that he will keep the matter under consideration--to reconsider the way in which the ballot for selective systems operates. It is not a question of opposing selection out of dogma or ideology. My objection to selection by ability at 11--there are other forms, which I do not oppose--is entirely based on the evidence and the results. The fact is that across the board, like for like, the performance of children in comprehensive schools and systems is far better than that of children in selective schools and systems.
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