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Lynne Jones : Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Mr. Clarke: I literally have no time.
We must tackle the question of selection. It is bizarre that, in order to secure as many supporters as possible, the Secretary of State should pretend today that we are arguing about the 11-plus, and about selection. She needs to address a key question: if education is to be personalised and tailored to each pupil, what is to be done about the gifted children in poorer areas? The old shibboleths do not answer that question, but it is a question that the Government must answer and we must answer—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal): Order. The right hon. and learned Gentleman's time is up.
3.10 pm
Mr. Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab): It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), although on this occasion he confined his remarks to generality and rhetoric. We heard very little about the outcomes of his own tenures as Secretary of State for Education and as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Those of us who have followed developments in education over many years know that those were years in which teachers and others involved in education, including parents, were desperate because of the underfunding of education and this country's relatively poor attainment levels in comparison with those elsewhere in Europe, to which the right hon. and learned Gentleman referred. Those levels are improving significantly, and I would have expected him to acknowledge that the Government's increase in resources for education has been a major factor in that improvement.
I am one of the Members who criticised the White Paper when it was published. I considered it a poor piece of work. It was incoherent in many respects, it lacked an evidence base, and it contained claims and statements that were difficult to credit. It was difficult to understand how local authorities could act as strategic champions for their areas, working to raise standards and to ensure an adequate supply of places to meet parental aspirations, if they were the subject of vilification in some of the background briefing and if their role was being written off as though they were being sidelined. I do not think that that was at all helpful.
I pay tribute to the Secretary of State and her team for the way in which they have worked with Back Benchers like me over the past few months, and to the Select Committee and others who have voiced significant criticisms of the original White Paper and have worked to improve it. We now have a Bill that I shall be happy to support tonight, although I still feel that changes are needed.
My main reason for supporting the Bill is that it continues the good work already done by the Government to raise educational attainment levels. It
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recognises the importance of a coherent approach that links what is being done for teaching with the wider "Every Child Matters" agenda—something that appears to be entirely unfamiliar to Conservative Members, whose approach seems to involve ignoring the importance of coherence and interdependence. I think that in future years they will rue their failure to understand the position.
I also support the changes that have been made to ensure fairness in selection, a proper role for local authorities and a significant reduction in the bloated and rather bureaucratic role envisaged for the office of the schools commissioner in the White Paper. Nevertheless, one or two fundamental changes are still needed. One involves the Secretary of State's power to veto a local authority's proposal for a new community school. I am glad she has accepted that if there is to be a competition for new schools, it must be a fair competition, and that if parents want a community school they should have that option. However, I do not buy the argument that the Secretary of State needs the power to prevent a local authority from proposing an inappropriate scheme.
Clause 7 provides for that veto, but only in respect of a local authority submitting a plan for a community school. If an authority submits a plan for a foundation or trust school, there will be no veto. If the aim is to restrain poorly performing local authorities, the provision should apply to all types of school. The fact that it applies only to community schools implies that a degree of bias remains, and I think that it should be removed in Committee.
I also hope that more thought will be given to the difficult balance that must be achieved between promoting choice and diversity, which I support, and ensuring that we maintain the highest standards of quality. It is not always possible to combine the two. Measures to improve one school may well be compromised and undermined by measures to expand another. In my area, a clear and co-ordinated approach has enabled a hugely successful post-16 campus to be created alongside the sixth forms of a number of existing schools. That co-ordination has ensured the widest possible choice of curriculums and courses, and the maintenance of quality. If there were a proliferation of small sixth forms, all constrained by a lack of resources and unable to provide such a wide opportunity, quality and choice would be undermined.
The issues are complex. I felt that the speech of the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts), in which he promoted diversity and choice, was a little superficial. He did not recognise that there are difficult challenges to be addressed. Addressing those challenges will depend on local authorities' having an understanding of the issues, an ability to engage with all the parties and the power to ensure a co-ordinated approach not just to education, but to the wider "Every Child Matters" agenda. That is why the crucial role of local education authorities must be maintained, as—I am glad to say—my right hon. Friend and her colleagues now recognise.
I am a little nervous about the fact that there is still a tendency to try to write the local authority out of the scene and I hope that it will be countered. The Conservatives need only talk to their own
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representatives in local government to realise that it is recognised on a cross-party basis that local authorities have an important role to play, and that rhetorical attacks on them and attempts to wipe them off the scene are counter-productive.
I hope that there will be further changes to the Bill in Committee, and that the Committee stage will be constructive but not excessively prolonged. With those reservations, I shall be happy to vote for Second Reading.
3.17 pm
Mr. John Maples (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con): I share the lukewarm support expressed by the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford). I shall support the Bill. I am sorry that the Secretary of State is leaving the Chamber: I was going to say some nice things about the intelligence and eloquence of her speech being a walking argument for the highly selective education that she enjoyed.
Our time is very restricted, and I shall deal with just one very specific issue—what I believe is the failure of the state system to deal with very talented and intelligent children. In my view, that failure has become abundantly clear. I can cite two studies, one of which was conducted recently by a professor of education at York university. He took a sample of 5 per cent. of the most able pupils at key stage 2, aged 11. Of those pupils—37,500—30,000 went into the state sector and 7,500 went into the independent sector. At the age of 16, almost every pupil who had entered the independent sector achieved five A or A* grades at GCSE, but only two thirds of those in the state sector did. At the age of 18, almost every pupil in the private sector achieved three As at A-level, while only 40 per cent. of those in the state sector achieved the same result. It is not surprising that when we look at the entry to really good universities, we see that it is skewed even further. The state sector is letting down bright pupils.
Anyone who wishes to dispute that evidence should look at the Department's own statistics. They show a happy improvement in the percentage of young adults attaining three As at A-level in all sectors. However, in the independent sector it has risen from 17 per cent. to 26 per cent., an increase of just over 50 per cent.; in the selective state sector it has risen from 12.5 per cent. to 20.5 per cent., an increase of slightly more—nearly 60 per cent.; and in comprehensive schools it has risen only from 4.7 per cent. to 5.7 per cent., an increase of 20 per cent. Not only is that group of children being let down by the state sector, and particularly by the comprehensives; the gap is becoming wider. Those in selective schools in the state sector, or in independent schools, are doing better and better as time goes by in comparison with those in the state comprehensive sector.
That is obviously palpably unfair to the children involved. They are bright kids, who are not receiving the education that they need and deserve to develop their talents for the purpose of their own lives. It is also bad for the country, however. Our economy relies heavily on the development of high technology, and if we are to have judges, doctors and professors of medicine, we need the brightest people we can get. Whatever their background, those people must have the education that is appropriate to them.
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What should we do? Lip service is paid to this issue, and my party talks a lot about streaming, which has its part to play. To judge by schools in my constituency, there is much more streaming than there used to be, but only big schools with a lot of teachers can stream in more than a few subjects, because it is resource-demanding. The Government have a gifted children programme, but it does not do what is called for. People do not want a national academy for gifted schoolchildren; what they want is for the school that their child attends to be able to teach them and to enable them to fulfil their potential.
Having represented two different constituencies, my view is that a school's ethos is absolutely crucial. If most of a given school's parents value education, the children do their homework, they learn from other pupils and there is a competitive academic environment, very bright kids will flourish. Some comprehensive schools have that ethos and almost all independent and grammar schools do, by definition, but it needs a critical mass. The constituency that I used to represent was an inner-city area, and my current constituency is a largely rural, very prosperous middle class area. I wish that there had not been a gap between my two periods of service in this House, but that gap has given me a perspective on both situations.
We have grammar schools in Stratford, but in fact the high schools and the comprehensives are also pretty good, and I suspect that they are able to deal with bright kids. However, in the main comprehensive school in the part of inner-city London that I used to represent, only 10 per cent. of children used to get five GCSE grades at A to C—frankly, for most purposes, a C is a fail—so what chance did bright kids have there? On examining the percentage of children with special educational needs and the number of unauthorised absences from school—a euphemism for truancy—it is clear that there is not much difference between the two types of school. The problem is the critical mass and the expectations.
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