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Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab): I resent some of the comments that have been made to me in this debate about the White Paper and the Bill, as they have suggested that I am somehow in favour of the status quo. I do not support the status quo: I accept that this Government have improved education across the board, in every school in my area. However, I am sure that those schools still occupy almost exactly the same places in the secondary education league tables as they did when those tables were first published.
Much has been said about choice in regard to this Bill, but for whose benefit are we introducing that choice? Who are we empowering to make choices in the education process? Fiona Millar and Melissa Benn produced an alternative paper entitled "Quality and Equality for all Children", in which they proposed a bounty for children attending schools that attract those who have not achieved higher results in primary education. In support of their argument, they quoted Tim Brighouse, who suggested that there should be a flat rate for pupils, with additional sums for those who had achieved only levels 3 or 2 at primary school.
Similarly, Peter Hyman wrote an article for The Guardian on 24 October, in which he suggested that resources should be targeted at schools with the most challenging pupils. We need to ensure that the system drives up standards in those schools, but the Bill does not say how resources will be targeted on those areas, with the specific aim of raising standards.
The Bill wants to promote diversity, and places an onus on local authorities to do that in their areas. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) said earlier, it is a question not of using the Bill to end selection in one sweep, but of challenging discrimination in our education service and removing the circumstances that cause people to opt out. However, the creation of a marketplace in our local education service requires winners and losers and, sadly, the people who will be the losers will be the same ones who have always lost in our education system. The challenge for all of us is to empower those parents so that they can ensure that their children's education improves.
Who are we legislating for? Many parents do not engage in their children's education in the way that we would like them to. Recently, I visited a primary school in my constituency, where only five parents had bothered to visit any of the secondary schools that their children might attend. We must make sure that we improve standards in such schools, and that we legislate in such a way that they get the resources that they need.
6.30 pm
Mr. Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con): This has been a fascinating and enjoyable debate, with pro-Bill speeches from Labour and Conservative Members and some passionate anti-Bill speeches from Labour Members. The number of people wanting to participate in the debate reflects the importance that many Members attach to education.
This is a necessary, if rather modest, Bill. It is necessary because although we happily acknowledge that there has been a degree of improvement in standards since 1997, there is still a huge amount to do.
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It cannot be right that nearly half of 11-year-olds leave primary schools without the necessary skills in reading, writing and maths combined. These children rarely catch up when they go on to secondary school.
It cannot be right that despite improvements in GCSE figures, still only 44 per cent. are achieving five or more good GCSEs when English and maths are included, or that the proportion gaining five or more good GCSEs is falling when the core subjects of English, maths, science and a foreign language are included.
Nia Griffith: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that GCSEs were set up as an amalgamation of O-levels—available to only about 25 per cent. of the population—and the CSE, and that a D is actually the average grade of GCSE expected of a pupil? We must stop labelling as failures the pupils who struggle to get D and E. A child may equally be under-achieving if he or she gets a B when capable of an A. We should be looking at the reasons behind that. Does he agree that we should stop labelling these children, as that is half the problem?
Mr. Gibb: I accept the hon. Lady's point, but no one is blaming the children. Too many schools in this country are underperforming and letting down the very children she is talking about. For example, it cannot be right that employers complain that new graduate employees are writing what they describe as illiterate memos and letters. The National Audit Office has reported that 23 per cent. of secondary schools are underperforming. It is clear that education reform is still crucial.
"The system will finally be opened up to real parent power. All schools will be able to have Academy style freedoms . . . No one will be able to veto parents starting new schools or new providers coming in, simply on the basis that there are surplus places."
How could anyone disagree with the Prime Minister when he said that? Even after the unnecessary concessions made to Labour rebels in the Secretary of State's letter, these essential principles of reform remain as she described them. She said:
"I remain committed to all the freedoms for foundation and trust schools that we set out in the White Paper—schools owning their own buildings, employing their own staff and setting their own admission arrangements . . . the ability of good schools to expand, as set out in the White Paper, will remain."
Tom Levitt: Will the hon. Gentleman tell the House whether Conservative members of the Local Government Association regard the changes that are being made to the Bill as unnecessary? I do not think that they do.
Mr. Gibb: We have a diverse set of opinions in the Conservative party, but we all believe in more good schools. It is important that good schools—schools that are over-subscribed by 10 applications for every place—are allowed to expand if they wish. It is important that committees made up of people with a vested interest to maintain the status quo are not allowed to veto such expansion. That is why we welcome the abolition of the school organisation committees in clause 27 and the abolition, in effect, of the surplus places rule.
It is important that underperforming and failing schools are reformed or closed over a much shorter time scale, rather than allowing them to languish year after
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year, providing a poor education to thousands of youngsters. That is why we welcome the Bill's provisions to make it easier to close bad schools.
School discipline remains a major concern of parents and is a key reason why many teachers are leaving the profession.
The Steer committee has made some important recommendations about giving teachers statutory powers over discipline, and we welcome the fact that the Bill contains those new powers. Good behaviour is crucial to raise standards in our schools. However, we have some serious concerns about parts of the Bill. It is over-prescriptive on admissions, reflecting a world view that the quality of a school is driven by its intake, rather than by the quality of its teaching and leadership. The school adjudicator's powers, which are increased in the Bill, need to be tempered by a right of appeal. We will table amendments on those issues and amendments to undo the unnecessary concessions in the Secretary of State's letter.
Despite all the measures in the Bill that make it easier to establish foundation schools, trust schools and academies, the Conservative party could have taken the view that, because the Bill did not go far enough, we would oppose it. With a looming Labour rebellion, that approach would have ended up with the Bill being defeated. We could have formed an unholy alliance with Labour's rebels in the No Lobby. The public loathe that kind of politics. Such an approach brings politics into disrepute and is deeply cynical, and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has set his leadership against it. He has made it clear that, when the Government do the right thing, we will support them.
Clive Efford: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Gibb: I will not give way.
Our view is that the Bill's net effect, taking the good with the bad, will make it easier to establish trust schools and therefore increase the freedoms available to our schools.
The Secretary of State has written to my hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) to ask why, if we support the Bill, we oppose the programme motion. We oppose the programme motion, because we almost always oppose programme motions, as they are an affront to the procedures of the House. It would be wrong therefore if we failed to oppose this programme motion simply because we happen to support the Bill. Some of the concessions made to Labour rebels that were agreed behind closed doors should be debated more fully on the Floor of the House—issues such as the powers of the unelected schools adjudicator; the outlawing of interviews by schools, even interviews that help to enforce home-school contracts, which are particularly important in raising standards in inner city schools; and, of course, the concessions on community schools.
Those concessions were negotiated by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), who is the Chairman of the Select Committee on Education and Skills, on which I had the pleasure to serve. I was struck by his impressive speech, in which he said that we did not think hard enough—all of us, collectively—about what we replaced grammar schools with and that some of us
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have been slow in realising that vision. He is right: we need to take ideology out of education and to replace it with what works.
A similar point was made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke)—a former Secretary of State for Education and Science—in an excellent speech. He said that we may now be moving towards a consensus, perhaps one that is 20 years too late, and that we should try to build a consensus on how we tackle low expectations and poor leadership and standards in schools, such as those referred to by the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), where only 8 per cent. of pupils achieved five or more good GCSEs in the 1990s.
Consensus was also sought by the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), in a very powerful and passionate speech, and by my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, East (Mr. Wilson), whose speech was very different from that of the hon. Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter). I was surprised by the speech of the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather), who leads on the issue for the Liberal Democrats. She agrees with the provisions on discipline and vocational education, yet she is pledged to vote against the Bill. She also agrees with not serving mechanically recovered turkey, yet she is pledged to vote against those provisions in the Bill. Perhaps her predecessor and fellow Liberal, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis), hit the nail on the head when he said, in the shortest speech that I have ever heard him give, that this was a Tory Bill. In a very thoughtful and candid speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) made a similar point when he asked how Conservative Members could vote against a Bill that promotes diversity and choice. He, indeed, is right.
I understand the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) about the ban on interviews, particularly for faith schools such as the London Oratory. We will table amendments to try to redress that in Committee.
My hon. Friends the Members for Salisbury (Robert Key) and for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) are passionate about the grammar schools in their constituencies. I have been to both the secondary moderns that my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale, West referred to—Wellington school and Ashton on Mersey school. Despite 40 per cent. of the children in Trafford going on to grammar schools and Wellington school taking some of the other 60 per cent., 73 per cent. of its pupils achieve five or more grades of A to C at GCSE. It can be done.
In a highly effective three-minute speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner) made the key point that we need more good schools. My hon. Friends the Members for Buckingham (John Bercow) and for Northampton, South (Mr. Binley) sought more setting in schools. I believe that that is the way forward.
This is a modest Bill, but it is significant in one important respect. It probably marks the last education Bill that we will see from this Administration and the last serious education reform that we are likely to see over the next few years. Education remains one of the most crucial issues facing this country. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon
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(Mr. Maples) said in his speech, in today's increasingly competitive world in which knowledge and intellect are the source of new wealth creation, the only way that we can compete with India and China and the millions of highly educated graduates these countries are producing is if we can deliver a significantly improved quality of education.
Leaving aside the economic importance of the issue, we should also want all our children to be highly educated for its own sake, so that they can enjoy and enrich our culture. That means ensuring that children are taught to read properly and effectively at primary school with methods that work—with synthetic phonics rather than whole language teaching—that maths is taught properly and that children learn their multiplication tables. We need to ensure that the curriculum is rigorous and that pupils are set by ability so that the less able have the time and space to learn and the most able are stretched to their full potential.
What the Bill, the White Paper and the row and debates in the Labour party over the past few months reveal is that Labour can no longer deliver any future serious reform to our education system. What Lord Kinnock and Lady Morris have established, together with all the Labour Members who signed up to the alternative White Paper, is that only a Conservative Administration can now deliver the changes we still need in our education system if we are to provide for a prosperous and fulfilled future for the next generation.
We support the Bill this evening, modest though it is, because we believe that it will increase the freedoms that are available to schools and that it will make it easier to close bad schools, easier to expand good schools and easier to establish new schools. All this is a small step to ensuring that children from whatever background get a better education. That is why I urge my right hon. and hon. Friends and right hon. and hon. Members from all wings of the Labour party to join us in the Lobby in support of the Bill.
6.43 pm
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