| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
7.15 pm
Mr. Brady: I shall be brief, but some of the arguments that have been advanced in the debate, in particular those in the previous contribution from the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor), need to be challenged. It would be deeply boring for the House if the debate degenerated into a ding-dong between Bury and Trafford and who has the best results, so I will not go too far down that road--but the hon. Gentleman should look at the performance in Trafford between key stages 2 and 3.
An article in The Times Educational Supplement last year demonstrated that the authority had one of the best improvements between those stages in the country. That is because something happens between primary school level--
Mr. Chaytor: I will tell the hon. Gentleman exactly what happens between key stages 2 and 3: a large number of children leave Trafford at 11 to avoid the secondary modern schools and an equally large number come in at 11 from surrounding affluent districts to take advantage of what they perceive to be the value of Trafford's grammar schools.
Mr. Brady: The hon. Gentleman can pursue his fictions if he wishes. There is a traffic in and out of
Trafford, not least across the boundary from the Manchester local authority area, which is, of course, Labour controlled, and is less affluent than the areas in my constituency to which children come. They come across the boundary not because of the affluence of their parental background, but because they are seeking a better standard of education, and they are fortunate to be able to obtain it.The improvement between key stages 2 and 3, which is one of the best in the country, is because of the quality of the schools--not merely the grammar schools, but the high schools too. I have talked often in the House about the quality of the secondary modern high schools in my constituency and the Secretary of State has acknowledged it. Ashton-on-Mersey is a beacon school. Children in my constituency are not consigned to failure if they do not go to a grammar school; they go to a beacon school. Now, they may also go to a technology college, as we have one coming on stream. It is a question of the quality of the system as a whole, and it delivers.
The hon. Member for Bury, North can say what he likes about performance in Bury. I very much hope that the schools there are excellent and I congratulate him on the results that they achieve. However, he cannot say that the borough of Trafford is universally affluent. Let us compare like for like. Trafford has 18.9 per cent. free school meals. A comparable authority, such as Kirklees, which has about 18.5 per cent., comes 78th in the league table of local education authority performance, whereas Trafford always comes towards the top.
We can dispute these matters day in and day out and we have had numerous opportunities in this Parliament to do so. The crucial question is not whether hon. Members believe one set of statistics or another for the performance of selective schools; it is whether parents believe in the performance of the selective system. That is why I was dumbfounded and disappointed to hear the hon. Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman) propose his amendment, the basis of which was that the Government had introduced a rigged balloting system in which, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow), the question is inappropriate in many areas where there are stand-alone grammar schools as the electorate is manifestly unfair. I do not object if Labour Members have a passionate, ideological objection to grammar school and selective education: in that case, they are right to state that view. However, if after a debate that has lasted 20 years in Kent, as it has in Trafford, they still cannot persuade the 20 per cent. of parents necessary to sign their petition to trigger a ballot, it is not acceptable for them to come back to the House and say that they cannot do it under the rules introduced two years ago so please may they change the rules because they have failed.
I will not compare the hon. Member for South Thanet, who seems to be a perfectly charming man in most respects, with President Mugabe in any other respect, but the hon. Gentleman's disregard for the democratic process in this matter is worthy of the situation with President Mugabe. People are saying, "We did not win. If we do not win under the current electoral process, we will change it and do it differently. May we please have new rules?" Surely not.
I happen to believe that even if the hon. Gentleman were to have his way and the Secretary of State were to buckle to pressure from the Benches behind him and make it easier to secure ballots on the future of selective education where it exists, we would find in Trafford, in the Wirral, in Buckingham and in Kent--as we did in Ripon, where it has been tried--that the vast majority of parents have the good sense to recognise good schools and to want to defend them, and that they put in practice what the Secretary of State puts into words. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Mr. Blunkett: I shall be brief. I want to place on the record once and for all that Labour Members think that the 11-plus is an anachronism. It will be an even greater anachronism when we have raised standards in primary schools sufficiently to make a nonsense of selecting 25 per cent. of children on the basis of a test of their mathematics and English ability, with or without verbal or non-verbal reasoning tests.
The 11-plus will be an anachronism because actually it is possible to provide diversity in the secondary school system, both within and across schools, in a way that develops the talents of the gifted, provides support for those with special needs and allows those who are good at a particular subject to flourish but does not penalise those who, at a particular age and stage of education, have not managed to jump through a particular hoop.
If we can manage that, we shall have a world-class education system that prepares people for the future--one that demands not that we have an elite composed of a small number of people, educated to a high level in schools that are separated out, but that the majority of people are able to develop their talents to the full and contribute to a knowledge economy that can compete with the best in the world. Everywhere else, there is an end to dogma. Everywhere I go, whether in Europe or in China, which I visited two weeks ago, there is a desire--a commitment--to provide excellence for everyone, to develop children's talents and to enable children to flourish.
Had I had my time again over the last three years, I would have picked up what the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) alluded to tonight, so let me put that on the record. First, I believe that the coming together of the grammar school and the college, as it now is, is an extremely good development: the combining of the work of the governing bodies and the ability to interchange children across the schools is an excellent development. Where grammar schools and secondary modern schools are close enough together to make that a possibility I, in the time that is left to me as Secretary of State, will do everything I can to encourage them to combine, to show once and for all what a nonsense it was to separate out children at 11.
If we can achieve that in those areas, we can do a service to local people because the practice of separating out children at 11 and the argument that has taken place tonight illustrate the fact that, in this country, we cling to the past. We invent a structure and a system and cling to it as though that were the determinant of success; whereas the teaching in the school, the nurturing of the individual and the tailoring of education to meet that individual's needs are what is required. Therefore, I take the challenge by the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon head on. I do not agree with him about the detail of the ballot in
relation to giving a vote to the parents of those who have already entered secondary school, because in this case the matter to be decided is not the abolition of a school but a change in the admissions process.There was a problem in the introduction of comprehensive education, in that we allowed schools that excelled--that had excellence--to deteriorate. I have one in my constituency. It was the only grammar school in the north of Sheffield, with a population of 250,000. It was for boys. It deteriorated; it fell apart. It was never and has not been since, until very recently, a comprehensive school. It is pulling itself up by its bootstraps. I use that illustration only to show that we can learn lessons from the past, but the issue for us all tonight is to move forward to the future.
I found many of the other lines of argument that the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon pursued very interesting. I say to him, and to my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman), that we should seriously consider whether there are anomalies that should be examined. I shall return to that subject. The interesting argument about Buckinghamshire was important, and my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey) put it very well. I thought that the intellectual argument that the predecessor of the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) used to make was very entertaining. The trouble is that intellectual entertainment is irrelevant to the needs of individual children.
The excellent speech by my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet was from the heart. It was about the dilemma of parents and the consequences for children. We should take very seriously the heartfelt cry that he made, as a parent as well as a politician representing the area. He spoke of the silly nonsense of a Dover test versus a Kent test--but with the channel tunnel, I was wondering whether there might be a Calais test, which would override both.
My hon. Friend made interesting arguments about the possibility of dissecting the county, as a previous Conservative-controlled Kent county council did when it suited it. I believe that it will be difficult to respond positively on that theme. The idea is intellectually possible, but looks very difficult in practice, despite the anomaly of the Dover test and the nonsense that results from it, which my hon. Friend rightly outlined. It is even more impossible to change the 20 per cent. threshold.
It is equally impossible to conceive of starting a process of allowing parents to ballot, holding one ballot in one area and then deciding to abandon ballots altogether, which is what the Conservatives are proposing. As Baroness Blackstone rightly put it, that would be rather like holding a by-election to determine a general election. I am sure that, after the Romsey by-election, the Liberal Democrats would consider that to be a wonderful idea. Perhaps the Opposition would not find it quite as attractive, although the idea has points in its favour.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |