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Mr. Willetts:
Of course the extra money has gone in—I am not denying that—but surely Labour Members must realise that the question on more and more people's lips is why, when so much money has gone in, the improvement in education has been so modest. Conservative Members know the answer: it is because the extra money was not accompanied by reform. If, when the Labour party first came into government, it had put some of the reforms in this Bill before the House, instead of abolishing grant-maintained schools, the hon. Lady might be able to enjoy a rather greater
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improvement in school standards as a result of the money that has been spent. That is the important point that I am trying to make.
Mr. Willetts: I give way to the hon. Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard), who has a long-standing interest in education.
Mr. Bob Blizzard (Waveney) (Lab): Before entering Parliament, I taught in one of the Conservative Government's independent state schools, otherwise known as grant-maintained schools. As I have said before, there is no doubt that the autonomy that we were given enabled us to achieve more, but grant-maintained schools operated within a system of inequitable admissions, which is ruled out by the Bill. Is the hon. Gentleman happy that that is ruled out, or does he want to go back to grant-maintained schools?
Mr. Willetts: We have heard a great deal about grant-maintained schools, which have been caricatured. Two points have been made about grant-maintained schools. First, we have heard from several hon. Members that funding was unfair and that new trust and other schools will be funded differently. Let us be absolutely clear and set the record straight. Grant-maintained schools received the per capita funding of current expenditure along the lines inherited from their predecessors and there was no special arrangement whatsoever.
Ruth Kelly: What about capital?
Mr. Willetts: It is true that they had access to capital on a different basis, because they did not have access to local education authority capital. If the Government think that grant-maintained schools having access to such money was wrong, why do schools receive access to £0.5 million if they decide to become specialist schools? Why do academy schools sometimes have access to more than £30 million of capital? If the arrangement was wrong for grant-maintained schools, why is it a feature of specialist schools and academies? If Government Members oppose that system, will they denounce those provisions as well? No more extra funding was provided to grant-maintained schools for capital than is provided to specialist schools or academies, so let us hear a bit less from them about that.
Mr. Peter Kilfoyle (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab): Many Labour Members would object to any preferential funding for any school if we are to treat all children equally. The hon. Gentleman has made more than passing reference to his recent trip to Liverpool. Did he meet the Liverpool Association of Secondary Heads, which is another driving force behind improved standards? In a letter to the Secretary of State it said that the Government have missed a meaningful opportunity by emphasising structural change rather than the agreed drive for improved standards, which has already paid dividends, but with which we need to persist over a period of time.
Mr. Willetts:
I accept that structural changes are not the whole answer to the challenge of raising standards in
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schools, but we need such changes. Evidence from around the world clearly suggests what works. We need more diversity of school provision and school choice, and we need to be able to give schools more freedom. That is the model that is buried in the Bill.
Mr. Willetts: I should like to make some progress, and I hope that it will not be too uncomfortable for Government Members if I set out my reasons for backing the Bill.
It is the Ides of March today, and the sound of daggers being sharpened around him may make the Prime Minister uncomfortable. The Opposition, however, are here to praise the Education and Inspections Bill, not to bury it, and I should like to take the opportunity to do so. The Prime Minister described the launch of his education proposals as
We all know that a pivot allows something to shift to a different position. It is a great relief that, even though he does not have a reverse gear, at least the Prime Minister has a pivot. On his pivot, the Bill turns.
May I explain to Government Members which provisions we support? We support the fact that local education authorities are at last to be given a clear legal responsibility to pursue choice and diversity in the schools in their area—that is a good thing. We welcome the fact that local education authorities will now be obliged to conduct competitions for new schools, and perhaps more widely. Indeed, although the Secretary of State has not referred to it, buried in the Department's evaluation of the costs and the regulatory issues associated with the Bill is the assumption of 100 competitions a year between different providers to offer new schools. We think that such competitions to provide new schools are a very good idea. We look forward to 100 competitions a year, and welcome the fact that private providers, outside organisations—not just charities but commercial organisations—and independent schools can take part in the competitions to offer to provide new schools. It is a good thing to open up British education to far more diversity than has been the case in the past.
Mr. Gordon Prentice (Pendle) (Lab): On the new duty to promote diversity, do we need many more single-sex Muslim schools?
Mr. Willetts: If that is the community's position I would not oppose single-sex Muslim schools. If schools wish to offer single-sex education, they should be able to continue to do so, but there are threats to that in some parts of the country.
Dr. John Pugh (Southport) (LD):
As 200 schools close every year because of falling rolls, roughly how many new schools and new providers will we need? Does the hon. Gentleman still support the Bill, given the Secretary of State has expressly made it clear that it will prevent the expansion of existing selective and grammar schools?
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Mr. Willetts: The Secretary of State has duplicated the provisions in the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, because she was concerned that she was in danger of receiving our support. On balance, however, the Bill still increases schools' freedom.
Mr. Willetts: I shall try to make some progress, as hon. Members on both sides of the House wish to speak in the debate.
I should like to talk about the provision in the Bill for trust schools. That is a strange policy—it is a policy that dare not speak its name, as the expression "trust school" does not appear in the Bill. Such schools are known as foundation schools with a foundation. Trust schools are the successors of our grant-maintained schools. It is a pity, unlike our approach of proposing grant-maintained schools clearly, honestly and openly in a manifesto for an election fought on that proposal, trust schools do not appear in the Labour manifesto. We made it clear, however, in our 1987 manifesto—[Hon. Members: "1987?"] I have a copy with me. It makes clear what our grant-maintained schools could do. It is true that trust schools do not have quite as many freedoms as our grant-maintained schools, but they are a step in that direction. I would like to remind the Secretary of State of the commitment that we made on grant-maintained schools, and how we envisaged their operation. We said that they would become "independent charitable trusts". That was the proposal that we made in 1987, and I believe that it is the origin of the trust concept.
Martin Salter (Reading, West) (Lab): The hon. Gentleman, who leads for the Opposition on education, has indicated his support for the Bill, despite the fact that it now includes a mandatory code on admissions and the capacity for local authorities to open new community schools. Will he take the opportunity to distance himself from the lamentable minority report that was prepared by his Conservative colleagues for the Education and Skills Committee and fundamentally opposes both policies? He cannot have it both ways and retain any credibility.
Mr. Willetts: There are excellent Conservative members of the Select Committee, and I thought that their minority report made important points about the provisions. I very much hope that we will have ample time to consider them, because they suggest ways in which the Bill could be improved. I am not claiming that the Bill is perfect—it is a Bill that needs to be improved.
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