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Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD): Does the hon. Gentleman share my disappointment that the Government have not yet given way to the suggestion in the Select Committee report that a move towards the anonymisation of the admissions procedure could guarantee that it would not be used for selection through the backdoor?
Mr. Chaytor: That was the hon. Gentleman's contribution to the Select Committee report, and it was an important one. I agree that the issue has not been properly debated and that it needs to have a wider debate. It is an excellent way forward, but we are not yet at the stage where the Government will adopt the suggestion. However, these ideas must be pursued.
Those who feel the need to vote against the Bill have to decide what the educational reasons for doing so are. The process that we have gone through over the past six months involved the Government publishing their White Paper, with some of its critics publishing alternative proposals. The Government listened carefully, took on board many of the proposals and made assurances and promises that other issues would be considered in Committee. Once one has made one's contribution to the debate and the Government have listened and taken on
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board much of what one has said, one cannot then suddenly shift ground and say that there are other reasons for not voting for the Bill.
I know that some people will say that the Bill opens the doors to a market in state education. Where have they been since the Education Act 1980? Since open enrolment was introduced—it was the first Act of the Thatcher Government—we have been steadily moving towards a more market-based system. To those who are concerned about more private sector revenue or capital coming into the state system, I say that it is very difficult for a Member of Parliament cheerfully to issue a press release welcoming the close links between the schools and local businesses in his or her constituency, welcoming the designation of specialist status for schools in their constituency with the £50,000 that comes from the private sector and welcoming the launch of an academy in the constituency with the £2 million that comes from the private sector and then suddenly say, "No, we cannot have trust schools because that will lead to more private sector involvement."
Michael Connarty: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Chaytor: I have given way once and I do not accrue another minute if I give way again. I must carry on.
We need to explore in more detail—I hope that we will do so in Committee—some of the concepts that seem to go unchallenged. I pick out the issues of diversity, choice and independence as three of the most important concepts that go unchallenged. I am quite relaxed about schools being slightly different; I am not really bothered what the name on the front door of the school says. I recognise that there is a public demand for a wider range of products and services in all spheres of our public life, but what matters at the end of the day is not the name of the school. In fact, I am not sure that what matters is the school's ethos, because I get slightly nervous about the term "ethos". It really is a euphemism for selecting those who are similar to us. However, I am bothered about diversity within the school. If the Government are going to fulfil our absolute commitment to raising standards of education and achieving the potential of all children, we have to recognise the differences among all children, and we have to be able to provide diversity of curriculum and diversity of pastoral care arrangements within each school.
Some people take it as read that choice is a good thing. I do not think that we can have a system of totally free choice without paying attention to the practical consequences of implementing that. In any system of education, health care or of any other aspect of the welfare state, choice has to operate within a series of constraints. The key issue for Government is to decide what constraints there are going to be and in whose interests they operate. There could and should be such a thing as managed choice that works in the greatest interest of the greatest number rather than a naive view of totally free choice, which will inevitably advantage those who are most confident and articulate.
I am fairly relaxed, and have been for 20 years, about the commissioner-provider split. I am fairly relaxed about more innovation in the system, but if the system
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is going to be freed up, two things are of paramount importance. First, we need to have the powers for local authorities to manage at the strategic level and to co-ordinate in the interests of all children. Secondly, we have to have a tight admissions policy that works in the interests of all children. If we do not have a set of rules—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord): Order. The hon. Gentleman has had his time.
5.19 pm
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD): Throughout the Select Committee's work, it was clear that the education professionals who appeared before the Committee were in a mood to have reform; they were pro-reform, rather than anti-reform. The Liberal Democrats are not anti-reform either, despite some of the things that have been said during the debate. However, the Select Committee found that the reform that the professionals sought related to improving standards, enhancing quality and ensuring fair access for all. That is why it is a source of great sadness to me that, although there is much in the Bill to be welcomed, it is flawed by its concentration on structural change, as has been said. Much of that appears to be unnecessary and some of it is downright unhelpful and perhaps counter-productive, at least if we assume that the Government want to improve fair access to the best quality of education for all, as I believe they do.
Much attention is paid to the language of diversity and choice. Diversity and choice are good words—they are "hooray" words. Who is going to be opposed to such things? Not the former chief inspector of schools, Chris Woodhead, who has been on the airwaves this week, acting as Government apologist for the Bill and saying that diversity of provision is a precursor to increasing standards—[Interruption.] Hon. Members may have heard him. Of course, he presented no evidence for the claim, but he explained that the Bill was a welcome step towards "marketising" education. He did not give any explanation of why the marketising of education was to be welcomed. Given the problems that we are experiencing in the NHS, specifically with regard to dentistry, we can see the consequences of dogmatic and inappropriate marketisation. One would have thought that such language would be seen as reactionary and backward thinking—hardly the stuff of a legacy-setting reform agenda.
A successful school system provides the best opportunities for all its young people and ensures that every child meets their potential, irrespective of their background. On that basis, substantial parts of the Bill fail the test because they make it less likely that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds will succeed. Allowing independent admissions under current arrangements will undoubtedly lead to children from poorer families being left further behind. We have already heard about the Sutton Trust's paper, which states:
"Schools which are responsible for their own admissions take a low proportion of pupils on free school meals, which is an indicator of a school's overall social mix."
The Institute of Education, in its report in January, stated:
"There is clearer evidence that own-admissions authority schools are associated with greater levels of social segregation."
Furthermore, Baroness Warnock, in her evidence to the Select Committee last autumn, stated that greater independence over admissions inevitably led to children with special educational needs receiving a poorer deal.
As the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) and I mentioned earlier, the Selection Committee raised the point that that anonymisation of the admissions procedure could have given the Government a way out of the accusation that independent admissions procedures are selection by the back door.
Meg Hillier : The hon. Gentleman talks about the admissions code as though there have been no changes since the White Paper. Perhaps the Liberal Democrats have got that a bit confused. There is currently a postcode lottery in many areas. As people move to live nearer schools of their choice, the reality is that we have postcode performance in many areas. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Bill will go some way towards addressing that inequity?
Tim Farron: I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention and I acknowledge that there have been changes to the admissions code. That was the work of the Select Committee. I signed up to the report, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Stephen Williams), but we do not think that it goes far enough. We believe that one of the ways to ensure that we do not get discreet and sometimes unseen selection through the back door would be to remove the possibility of seen admissions, which would lead to that. I will deal with her other point later.
There are some positives in the Bill and my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) pointed them out. We welcome attempts to strengthen discipline in schools and to tackle underachievement, poor behaviour and truancy, which makes it all the more disappointing that the Government have again passed up the opportunity to make a real difference in this area. I wonder whether it has occurred to the Secretary of State that young people who are succeeding at school rarely play truant. Those who are achieving their potential, or on the way to doing so, rarely play truant. Almost exclusively it is the case that young people who play truant, who go on to get into trouble and whose contribution to society may end up being limited are those who do not succeed at school.
Why is the Government's focus on a mirage of choice between schools when it should be on the desperate need for real choice in curriculum? Why have the Government again, as has been mentioned this afternoon, ducked the challenge of taking on the Tomlinson report, which would provide young people with a spectrum of choices from which they could take a blend of traditional academic courses alongside professional and vocational ones, in a format that does not pander to academic snobbery and therefore reinforce social segregation and failure at school? The Government could truly make progress with their respect agenda, and win the respect of parents and teachers, if they only had the inclination to provide options at school that ensure that young people are enabled to succeed at what they are good at and reach their potential, rather than being relegated as failures.
This Bill has been characterised as one for urban Britain, more specifically for London. Nowhere is that characterisation more appropriate than in the language
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about choice that is being used to sell the Bill. Choice in education is important, but choice between different schools is a laughable nonsense to those of us living in rural communities. John Ruskin school in Coniston in my constituency is an excellent high school, and it is good that it is because the second choice school, or the second nearest, is a 10-mile drive along country lanes and two ferry rides away. The Government should not be surprised that so many teachers and parents in my constituency and others like it stand perplexed in response to the Government's celebration of choices that simply do not exist.
Even for those less rural parts of my constituency where it is physically possible to get to more than one school without resorting to ferries, choice will in essence be meaningless. The Select Committee discovered that the Government have no serious practical plans to expand the most popular schools, so once they are full, they are full. Given that most of the most popular schools are by definition already full, even in this respect choice between institutions is a mirage.
Perhaps, however, despite all the watering down of the Bill, the reality is not that important to the Government. Perhaps what matters are the messages. Perhaps the message of the controversial part of the Bill is intended to be a dog whistle to those who consider themselves aspirational and ambitious for their children. That includes me, by the way, so I am listening. The message is, "Whatever we say, this will lead to the opportunity for your child to do better, to take advantage of your aspirations and those of your aspirational school. It's a desperate shame, of course, for the other dozen schools in your city or town that are non-aspirational and also that the parents of the kids there aren't as aspirational as you, but that's not your fault and it can't be helped."
The Conservatives like that sort of thing, and I would like to think that that is why they are preparing to back the Bill, but it is nothing as sophisticated or intelligent as that. This is low politics. The Conservatives will back the Prime Minister simply to embarrass him, but they could back us and defeat him, and at the same time protect our children from a dangerous slide back to opportunities for a few at the expense of the many.
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