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Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: The Minister used the word "hypocrisy". Perhaps he will say how many of his colleagues in this House or the other place send their children to any of the schools that we have been discussing.
Lord Henley: That is not hypocrisy. I make no bones about the fact that I use the private sector, as I am entitled to do and as we encourage others to do. That is
why we have the assisted places scheme. I was referring to those who insist on choice for themselves but say that they would deny it to others. That is hypocrisy.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: Perhaps the Minister does not think that any of the schools under discussion are good enough for his own children. That is a choice that he has made--
Lord Henley: Perhaps the noble Lord will give way. I have a right as a parent to make a choice as I wish, just as Mr. Blair and Ms Harman also have the right to do. But it is not for them to say that they do not wish others to have that right.
Lord Dormand of Easington: I shall again ask a question with which the noble Lord has dealt many times but to which we do not receive a satisfactory answer. In all our debates so far we have heard how good grant-maintained schools are. I am sure that some of them are very good and some are perhaps not so good. However, the basic question is that, out of 26,000 schools, 1,200 have opted for grant-maintained status. The figures speak for themselves. Against a background of certain privileges, certain advantages and certain incentives, the process has now been going on (the Minister will correct me if I am wrong) for four or five years and it is still not convincing people.
There is no doubt that there has been a reduction in the number of ballots. However, where ballots have taken place, is it not a fact that the number of opt-outs decided are very few and far between? Is that not the basic question to be asked about grant-maintained schools?
Lord Henley: I will give the figures to the noble Lord if he wants them. Some 20 per cent. of children in secondary schools go to grant-maintained schools. That is a jolly good figure. There have been ballots in one out of 10 schools. In other words, in nine out of 10 the parents have not even been given the option of a ballot, largely because of the influence of LEA governors on the boards and so on. Of the one in 10 that have held a ballot, 75 per cent.--three out of four--have voted to go grant-maintained. Those figures speak for themselves.
Lord Dormand of Easington: The Minister understandably continues to repeat the fact that 20 per cent. of secondary school pupils are in the grant-maintained sector. It is a fair point. However, is it not fairer to concentrate on the number of schools, not the number of pupils in each school? The ballot takes place in relation to a school, not on the number of pupils in a school. Will the Minister address that question?
Lord Henley: The point is very easy to address. The answer is simply that we have something of the order of 3,000 or 4,000 secondary schools; the remaining 24,000 or so are primary schools. Grant-maintained status has been much more popular in secondary schools, which tend to be larger than primary schools. Secondary schools find it easier to take on the added burdens of being grant-maintained. That is why we have
had success in the secondary sector--1,100 schools; 20 per cent. of secondary school pupils in grant-maintained schools.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: Will the Minister confirm that as a result of government policy the governing bodies of schools are no longer controlled by a majority of local education authority appointees; and if the parents and teachers on governing bodies together were of the opinion that there ought to be a parental ballot, such a ballot would take place?
Lord Henley: Come, come, come. The noble Baroness has been on an LEA. She knows LEAs. She has been an LEA governor; I have been an LEA governor. As the noble Baroness knows, they wield quite considerable influence on the governing body.
Lord Monkswell: Perhaps that is the reason why a significant proportion of schools which have opted for grant-maintained status have done so--to get out of the control of LEAs that are Conservative. The Minister seems to have a lot of figures at his fingertips. What proportion of those schools that have opted for grant-maintained status were either scheduled for closure under reorganisation proposals or were under Conservative LEAs?
Lord Henley: I cannot give those figures. However, I refer the noble Lord back to my remarks earlier today about guidance in relation to schools seeking grant-maintained status to avoid closure. Obviously that point has to be taken into account. I recommend to the noble Lord the circular from which I quoted.
The number of schools in Conservative authorities is not relevant. I still believe that there are many more which could take that option. They would find it a lot easier if they did not have a hostile LEA, as in places such as Islington, desperately trying to prevent any school leaving that LEA. At the same time, all the parents are leaving that LEA. As we know, some 43 per cent. of secondary school children from Islington are now educated out of the borough.
Lord Monkswell: Surely it is relevant if the objective of grant-maintained status is to get out of LEA control. If the vast majority of schools opting for grant-maintained status effectively opt out of Conservative LEA control, surely that says something about Conservative LEAs.
Lord Henley: Not at all. Again, to be personal, why is it that Ms. Harman wanted to send her children not to a school in Labour-controlled Southwark but to a grant-maintained school in Conservative-controlled Bromley, where grant-maintained schools and the FAS work quite well with the LEA? The LEA still has a function and it can do a good job. My point is that LEA governors in many Labour local authorities are making it increasingly difficult for the schools to get even as far as a ballot.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: This has been a wide-ranging debate. The amendment sought to examine
the consequences of admitting children of different ages and any unintended consequences that that may have on the thresholds of selection. The Minister gave an interesting reply to that point. I should appreciate a copy of the letter that he is to write to my colleagues on this side of the House. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees: If Amendment No. 22 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment No. 23.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris moved Amendment No. 22:
The noble Lord said: In moving this amendment I wish to initiate a debate that will take in Amendment No. 23 as well.
We move now to the gentler waters, the calmer pastures of increased selection in specialist schools. Under the Bill, specialist schools are allowed to appeal to the Secretary of State over the head of the LEA if they consider that that authority is not progressing satisfactorily towards complying with their request. The first word that causes us concern is "comply". "To comply" means quite simply, "to yield to the wishes of another", from the Latin, complere, "to fulfil". To comply with someone's request is to agree with it whether you want to or not.
Our amendment argues that a better approach would be to test the progress that the authority makes in considering the proposals. The amendment examines the process by which specialist schools may seek to increase their proportion of selective admissions above the threshold.
The first question to which we are interested to receive an answer is why specialist schools should be singled out in this respect. Do we anticipate a sudden flourish of gifted trumpeters in a local primary school? Do we think that there may be an influx of brilliant violinists from Hong Kong? Paragraph 4 of Schedule 1 envisages the situation where the governing body of a specialist school which is not itself the admission authority writes to the local education authority to ask it to allow the school to increase the proportion of its selective admissions up to the 30 per cent. threshold. If, after two months,
How will that governing body reasonably form that opinion? Will it do so by vote? Will it do so by majority opinion, and is 51 per cent. enough? Can the Minister tell us more about what "satisfactory progress towards complying" will mean? An intemperate governing body--and I believe there might be some--could feel that nothing is satisfactory except total and utter
Paragraph 4 is clearly intended to prevent LEAs making dilatory progress in relation to an application of which they may not approve. I am bound to confess without the rack that it is theoretically possible that a local education authority might be of such complexion that it was so minded. We are all prone to sin. But can the Minister give us five recent examples of LEAs who are guilty of that particular sin?
However, it is unreasonable to enable the governing body to trigger national consideration of the issue purely where, in its opinion, the authority is not moving fast enough towards agreeing on what has been requested. The Wednesbury principles of reasonableness as to decisions by public bodies place a number of duties on LEAs and others to go through the proper processes in reaching a determination. Usually, it is accepted that a statutory body has a duty to consider the matter fairly and within reasonable limits of discretion as to which side of the question it opts to support.
Paragraph 4, however, pre-judges the whole issue by placing the LEA in the position of either agreeing with the request or being likely to be told to agree. There is no scope for the matter to be determined properly at local level unless it is in the direction with which the Government happen to agree. It seems to me and to all of us that this is quite a striking illustration of Ministers' views of local decision-making and the centralisation of the whole of the past 18 years. Local agreements are out of fashion with the Government; the power of the Secretary of State is in fashion. The amendment attempts to redress the balance. I beg to move.
Page 55, line 46, leave out from beginning to end of line 20 on page 56.
"the governing body reasonably form the opinion that the authority have not made satisfactory progress towards complying with the request, the governing body may refer the matter to the Secretary of State".
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