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Mr. Jackson: The hon. Gentleman assumes that best practice will always be uncontroversial and something on which everyone will agree. He must understand that universities may well disagree among themselves about what constitutes best practice for admissions. Does he agree that that must be respected?

Mr. Chaytor: I agree completely, which is why I said that there should not be a single model that constitutes best practice. However, universities must be obliged to defend their concepts of best practice.
 
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There is a view that the strength of our universities lies in the purity of academic freedom. Professor Schwartz defines that as the freedom to choose

"what will be taught and to whom",

but I am not sure that that is the best definition of the concept. In other aspects of public life in which huge quantities of taxpayers' money are invested, people have an interest in ensuring that the money is well invested and that all taxpayers and their children have a reasonable chance—preferably a reasonably equal chance—of benefiting from that investment.

For some reason, UK universities have managed to create the myth that they should not be held accountable in the same way as primary and secondary schools and further education colleges and that they should not regulated in the same way as the nuclear, water or gas industries. However, it is a basic principle of any broad social democracy that it must be in the public interest to have regulation so that the use of taxpayers' money is accounted for.

Mr. Sheerman: Does my hon. Friend agree that if we were to pursue that direction carelessly, we would end up running UK universities as a form of nationalised industry? Surely we would not want that.

Mr. Chaytor: I do not think that that is the case. The water and gas companies are not forms of nationalised industries, and our primary and secondary schools are increasingly unlike nationalised industries. The key issues are the amount of public money that goes into the sector and the mechanisms for accountability.

To go back to a point that I made earlier, anyone who is under the illusion that there is not a problem should examine the figures published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency over the past few days. They show the enormous discrepancies between the benchmarks and the performance of some of our universities. I recall reading out a long list of such statistics in Committee on the Higher Education Bill because I believe in the principle of accountability and that such figures should be on the parliamentary record.

There is not only a question of elite universities versus the rest, because there are large differences between the performances of individual universities that are, to all intents and purposes, at the same position in the pecking order. There are large differences among members of the CMU and among Russell group universities. However, the average discrepancy of Russell group universities is 8 per cent., and that of CMU universities 1 per cent., so that situation must be addressed. We are having a serious debate about a matter that is integral to the success of both our universities and the British economy, because in this century each successful nation must recruit its best talent from whatever source it can.

5.44 pm

Mr. John Maples (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con): I would go along with some of what the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) said, but what he must face is that, while it may be legitimate for Parliament to take an interest in university admissions policies, if it tries to interfere in them, it is necessarily at the margin—saying to a university, "You should accept B rather than A, when you would have preferred A rather than B." That
 
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seems an inevitable consequence. If we start doing that in pursuit of a political objective, we will get less able people in our universities, and our universities, which are currently the best in Europe—although not in the world, because we are way behind the Americans—will be in danger of ceasing to be so.

We have a legitimate stake in this argument because a lot of public money is involved. I want to examine the purpose of university education. There are personal and public benefits to educating someone at university. The personal benefit to those of us who have been there is obvious—it broadens our minds, teaches us to think and opens areas of intellectual enjoyment that we would not otherwise have open to us. Undoubtedly, almost everybody who goes to university receives a personal benefit. There is also a public benefit in that, if I need an operation in the health service, I benefit from the consultant's education. It is in our interest as a society to ensure that able people become judges, permanent secretaries, professors of medicine, consultant surgeons, doctors, lawyers and even, dare I say it, politicians, and that there is a group that is really well educated.

From the public point of view, it is important that the people who get that education are those who are most likely to benefit from it and get the best degrees. The current system of A-levels is perhaps not the way to ensure that; perhaps rather than trying to adjust A-levels, we ought to try to improve them. However, the question is: how do we get those most able people into the system? I do not care whether they come from a Huddersfield comprehensive, Stratford girls grammar school or Winchester, as long as the country ultimately gets the best people that it can to do those jobs.

We must face the fact that there is a problem with the 50 per cent. target. I doubt whether 50 per cent. of 18-year-olds want or could benefit from sitting in lectures, writing essays, researching in libraries and doing experiments. Some people absolutely do want to do that, and are capable of taking advantage of it, and for them we should provide it. By definition, however, once we reach 50 per cent., we are reaching the halfway ability range—traditionally, it is thought that people who are at about 125 on that scale can benefit from universities, which may be wrong—and I suspect that that is territory in which vocational education is much more important. I do not know a lot about that, but I suspect that we are weak in vocational education. Were I advising an 18-year-old who was a marginal case as a university entrant, I think that I would say, "You'll have a much better life, and probably make more money, as a good electrician than as a bad lawyer."

Mr. Sheerman: I am enjoying the hon. Gentleman's speech, but it is a stereotype that most of our students are 18-year-olds. In fact, most of them are not. People come into higher education at all ages and 18-year-olds are the minority now. Mature students are a larger percentage of those coming into higher education than 18-year-olds. In addition, much of the higher education in our expanded system is vocational of a sort.
 
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Mr. Maples: I take the hon. Gentleman's point, but I hope that he also takes mine: there is no point suggesting that 50 per cent. of the population should study academic subjects in the way that those at our leading universities do. That is absolutely right for some people, but I suspect that it is not right for as many as 50 per cent. The basis of those two educations is also different. Someone who will benefit from studying Latin and Greek, for example, at Oxford or the London School of Economics, may need a different kind of education between the ages of 14 and 18 from someone who will not do that.

I want to take that point a little further. I went to university in the 1960s, which dates me horribly. I went to a college at Cambridge where 75 per cent. of my year's intake came from state schools. I went to an independent school, and I and those others who went to independent schools were in a minority. No prizes for guessing where most of those 75 per cent. came from—state grammar schools. Many of them were working-class kids. Those state grammar schools gave a bright working-class kid a way into Cambridge or lots of other good universities, although there were not anything like as many then. We can argue about whether we should have abolished grammar schools, but we must provide a route so that the bright working-class kid finds it easier to get into Oxford or Cambridge than he finds it at the moment; apparently, it was a lot easier 43 years ago than it is now.

What did grammar schools do to give those children that opportunity? There are a few things that we need to try to replicate. Here are some concrete suggestions. Much of the problem is not about universities' admissions policies but about the quality of secondary education.

There was an academic ethos in those schools. That is difficult to create at inner-city comprehensive schools. It certainly can be created but it is difficult. I do not say that it is impossible; there are some schools that do it.

I have represented both kinds of constituencies. At the moment, I represent a prosperous middle-class constituency where comprehensive schools can do that. I represented an inner-city area for the first two Parliaments that I was here. At the main secondary school there, 10 per cent. of the kids got five A to Cs at GCSE. That was not only the level of attainment but the level of aspiration. To inculcate that academic ethos there would have been very difficult. Kids who did their homework and talked about going to university would have been considered freaks by many of the children. It is difficult to maintain that aspiration, that work ethic and that academic ethos in that environment.We must therefore find a way of reintroducing—the Government have tried to do it, and I noticed it in comprehensive schools during my own education—pretty rigorous academic streaming. It should be very flexible.

The problem with grammar schools was selection at 11. I have grammar schools in my constituency. At 16, there is another selection, when many kids go to the grammar school sixth form to do their A-levels. Actually, at sixth form, it is not a grammar school but more a comprehensive, so we need much more flexible transfers. We need to realise that, if we are to get that
 
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bright working-class kid into a good university, we must provide the academic foundation at an early age.

Two of the three grammar schools in my constituency are used effectively as sixth form colleges. They take the kids who want to do A-levels from the comprehensive schools, bringing them into a school with a strong academic ethos. They get very good results.

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