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Lord Henley: My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord will forgive my intervening. I assure him that we have had concerns about standards over time regarding A-levels. We set up an inquiry under both SCAA and Ofsted which reported last year.
Lord Annan: My Lords, I thank the Minister very much indeed. I am sorry that I missed the results of that inquiry.
The clauses in Part IV of the Bill about discipline are admirable and long overdue. The upper limit for expulsion is set at 45 days. That allows time for social services to sort matters out. The previous period of 15 days was far too short. It is also right not to allow a pupil to be excluded indefinitely. However, I should like to see provisions that bring home the responsibility, and if possible the cost, of expulsion to the parent or parents of a child. I am sure it will be argued that that is impractical. How is a single parent, often living on support, to pay fines or costs resulting from the insupportable behaviour of her offspring? Yet much more should be done to compel parents to bear responsibility for the bad behaviour of their children. Has the Minister any further initiatives to pursue on this matter?
There is one comprehensive school under a particular LEA of which I have a little knowledge. Among LEAs, Harrow comes around the top of the table of achievement in secondary schools. I assure the House that I do not refer to Harrow-on-the-Hill; I refer to Harrow, the dormitory area of Heathrow Airport. It is one of the most multi-racial areas in the country.
My nephew is head teacher of a comprehensive school in Harrow. Twenty-five per cent of the pupils are white; 50 per cent. are of Indian origin but speak different languages such as Gujerati and Bengali; the remaining quarter speak a variety of mother tongues, including one speaking Japanese. The last count, in 1995, showed that 39 different mother tongues were spoken. The other day, 30 Somalis suddenly arrived, some of whom had received no schooling at all in their own country. They were admitted on the order of the
LEA. The teachers, naturally, are similarly multi-racial. Yet 50 per cent. of the 180 who enter for GCSE and A-level are awarded grades of between A and C.There are head teachers with far more intransigent and devastating problems than those that face my nephew. I sometimes wonder whether we realise how formidable are the problems that teachers face. The grant-maintained schools do not have to admit children who cannot speak English. The LEA-maintained schools are obliged to do so.
The Government and the Chief Inspector of Schools have decreed that there should be league tables that show the attainment of schools in terms of examination results. I understand that the reports presented by inspectors refer to particular difficulties under which certain schools operate. But those are not reflected in the bare statistics; nor is any allowance made for them when grading a school, since grading purely reflects examination results.
I do not suggest that there should be an elaborate scheme of weighting which would reflect the inequalities. We do not want more unnecessary form-filling. But it would do a world of good for morale in disadvantaged schools if an asterisk could be placed against some of their names to show that inspectors are human and recognise that there are handicaps under which some schools labour. I am thinking particularly of a benighted school in the eastern part of Newham which received a dreadful report from Ofsted. Quite rightly, the weaknesses of management and staff were emphasised, but little was said about the deplorable condition of the buildings and the inadequate back-up facilities. By "back-up facilities" I mean all those aids essential for helping immigrant children to integrate with the school and learn the conventions and morality of their new country. Those facilities are the first to be cut by LEAs which are forced to economise.
I do not blame the chief inspector for his brutally frank remarks about the failings of some head teachers and staff. He is quite right to wake us up and face the truth. But I am bound to say that neither his record nor his pronouncements gain the confidence of teachers. I think he needs some guidance and he would find it were he to consult some of the noble and gallant Lords who sit on these Benches such as the noble and gallant Lord, Field Marshal Lord Bramall. They understand how to lead men under their command and inspire them, as well as tearing a strip off them when things go wrong. The chief inspector has something to learn about leadership. He should go himself to visit some good schools, accompanied by his PR officer and, if possible, a television crew. He should compliment the staff on the admirable work they are doing, praise them, encourage them, esteem them; and then add: "O si sic omnes!".
6.2 p.m.
Lord Skidelsky: My Lords, since I became a Member of this House in 1991 we have had an education Bill every year. At various times I remember Ministers saying: "This is the last education Bill we are going to bring before the House". But each year there is another one. I understand that this is now called the
"evolutionary approach", as if we were going through the stages of a carefully matured programme of legislation based on a coherent vision. I should like to believe that that is so, but it seems to me that the evidence is against it.As I have said before, the Government have a choice: they can either try to raise standards by increasing bureaucratic control or they can try to raise standards by freeing schools to respond to the varied demands placed on them by parents. I do not think they have ever made up their mind which they want to do or perhaps even realised that beyond a certain point there is a contradiction between the two approaches. So each Bill we have had has had elements of both approaches. That is why I do not think we have yet achieved a stable framework for our educational system.
But that is all I want to say by way of criticism of the Bill. The great achievement of the Government has been to introduce the language of parental choice into educational discussion. So much so that even the Opposition parties feel constrained to pay lip service to it. However, I do not believe that they have the slightest idea what it means.
This is what Margaret Hodge said on Second Reading in another place:
- "If all schools were good, parents and children could exercise real choice".--[Official Report, Commons, 11/11/96; col. 101.]
I quote her because she said succinctly what the other Opposition Front Bench spokesmen said verbosely. I suggest that she is simply misusing ordinary language. What she seems to be saying is this: "Trust us to make all schools equally good. Then we will trust parents--and only then--with the right to choose". But what sort of choice is that? Not only does it deny parents the right to choose things of which Margaret Hodge might disapprove, but it also ignores the role parental choice has in making and keeping schools good--choice as a mechanism. It shows no understanding of what choice can do in improving the quality of education.
Most people understand the difference between having and not having choice, even if the Labour and Liberal Democrat spokespersons do not. Having choice means the freedom to choose. It means having a variety of things to choose from. It means getting what one prefers. It does not mean a bureaucrat in Whitehall or town hall deciding what people ought to have and stopping them from having anything else. That is why I support the Bill. It allows more variety to develop; it gives parents more to choose from.
In theory, the Labour Party is all in favour of variety. Did not David Blunkett say so? Did he not say on Second Reading that:
- "the development of specialisms within schools ... can be operated perfectly reasonably within the framework of comprehensive schools".--[Official Report, Commons, 11/11/96; col. 51.]
Specialism is variety. How can it be developed within the framework of existing comprehensive schools? He is much too bashful to say. How can a school build up strength in music, sport or anything without being able to select pupils with a talent in those areas?
The Bill proposes a modest increase in selectivity: up to 20 per cent. of places in ordinary LEA schools. The Opposition parties throw up their hands in horror. Again at col. 51, Mr. Blunkett says that specialisms can be developed as part of
- "a sensible admissions policy that covers the entire area".
If you pierce that fog, what it seems to me to mean is that the LEA will decide which school is to specialise in what and allocate places accordingly. In other words, the LEA will do the selection. Mr. Blunkett turns out to be in favour of selection after all, provided neither the school nor the parent does the selecting. What sort of hypocrisy is that?
The noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay, has followed her party in seeing a fundamental contradiction between schools selecting pupils and parents choosing schools. But I do not believe that that is true. It is not true of the independent sector, it is not true of universities, it is not true of the labour market, as my noble friend Lady Perry pointed out. Let me ask the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay, a question. Do parents who send their children to fee-paying schools claim that they are deprived of choice because they cannot get their children into Eton, Winchester or Wycombe Abbey? Of course they have choice. Selection by schools and choice of parents are not contradictory. There is no conflict between them provided there is a sufficient supply of places for which parents or pupils have a preference. That is not necessarily a first preference, but a positive preference. The contradiction only arises if parents are forced to send their children to schools they actually dislike. That can only happen, I suggest, if over-subscribed schools are not allowed to expand or new schools are not allowed to be set up. That is why those of us who genuinely believe in parental choice have attached great importance to allowing the supply of school places to vary with demand.
The Bill made a modest contribution to that aim. In particular, it allowed over-subscribed grant-maintained schools to expand by up to 50 per cent. without getting permission. What happened? The Opposition parties combined to ambush that clause--Clause 3 in the original Bill--in the other place. I welcome the announcement by my noble friend Lord Henley of the Government's intention to re-introduce that clause in this House. The belief underlying the Opposition's attitude seems to be that no school should be allowed to be more successful or popular than any other school, that all should rise together or not rise at all. That is classic socialism and I do not accept it. On the contrary, I endorse what the Secretary of Sate said in another place that competition between schools is a powerful lever for raising standards. It seems to me to be much too generally accepted that if some schools are temporarily more popular than others, the others will simply become sink schools.
Why should it not be assumed that competition encourages emulation? It does in most other walks of life. Why should education be particularly immune to the stimulus of competition in raising standards? What worries me about speeches such as that of the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, is that they are full of phrases about what we should do and do not pay nearly
enough attention to how those things--many of which I agree with--can come about. I suggest that competition is one of those mechanisms.We must remember that what makes schools attractive to parents is not just good examination results but intangibles such as discipline, ethos, moral standards and so on, which are often, but not invariably, associated with good academic performance. Competition between schools is one of the surest ways of spreading what is called "good practice" as well as variety.
- "We will not deny people the right to opt for the school of their choice".
That was tactful. The noble Lord, Lord Morris, rather let the cat out of the bag this afternoon when he said "People don't want choice". There speaks the candid planner. His party has supported him. Whenever the Government have tried to extend parental choice, whether by allowing popular schools to expand or by allowing a variety of schools to develop, the Opposition parties always vote against it. The only thing that they consistently support is more control and more planning. The only choice that they allow is Hobson's choice--take it or leave it. If that is one of the grounds on which the election is to be fought, I welcome it. We have nothing to be ashamed of, a lot to be proud of and further to go.
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