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Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, I wish to speak in support of Amendment No. 1 and the other amendments in the grouping. We on these Benches are shocked by a government proposal which will thwart parental choice by allowing into the equation a consideration which would override the need for children from the same family to attend the same school. It shows the Government's failure to understand that a sense of community begins in the family and moves into the local primary school for those families in communities who choose to send all the children in the family to the primary school of their choice and where that primary school serves the locality and has strong links with it.
As the noble Lord, Lord Tope, said, children at primary age develop at very different speeds. Within the same year group it is quite possible to have a child who is barely four who is advanced for his or her age alongside a child who is a late developer and who is chronologically aged five. That makes an enormous difference. No doubt the Minister will say, "This is only a small thing. It is only 20 per cent.". But only those schools which are oversubscribed or which are able to demonstrate certain approaches, through the Government's abuse of comparisons between schools through the publication of primary school league tables, will be able to use this mechanism to reject children. There would be no purpose in selecting by ability for 20 per cent. were that not to be the case. That competition which the Government espouse is quite clearly not competition which compares like with like.
We on these Benches make absolutely no excuses for schools which fail pupils. But at the beginning of their primary education children start with very different skills and levels of attainment; for example, the child from a family background where English is not the family language or a child with a special educational need--not the statemented degree of need, which can be regarded, but a non-statemented need which affects 18.5 per cent. of children. Such children could be seen by schools which espouse the Government's marketplace approach to primary education as, if possible, children to be avoided because they would bring down the school's league table result.
That is not the way in which the real world works for over 90 per cent. of parents in this country. They want a welcoming school in which they can participate as parents. They want a school to which all the children in the family can go. As the Minister has just said from a seated position, they want a good school for all their children. They want the same good school for the child who is a late developer or who has learning difficulties as his or her brothers and sisters, in order that the family can be together. These parents want their children to go to the same school because they know the teachers and have links with the school. The parents want the children to go to the same school so that, as good parents, they can attend functions at the school, extra curricular activities and play a full role in the life of the school.
We on these Benches are aware that a tiny percentage of parents in this country exercise the option to buy private education for their children of primary school age. Not being one of those parents, I find it difficult to put myself in their place. But it may be that they look at league tables; they have an au pair who can drive, or a nanny or housekeeper, and access to one or more vehicles. It may be that it is possible for the children to be driven to different schools and to split up the family. That is not what primary education is about. This small wedge--as the Minister would, no doubt, describe it--is open to abuse because, as I said at the beginning, it can deny parents the right to choose and allow schools to put forward a reason for rejecting children which does not stand up to the test of what the role of the community primary school should be. I support these amendments.
Earl Baldwin of Bewdley: My Lords, I had to miss most of the Committee stage of the Bill for reasons beyond my control. But in catching up on the arguments which were advanced over this issue of primary selection, I was particularly struck by the curious position which the Government appear to have adopted.
On the one hand, the Minister accepted what the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, and others were saying about young children developing at different rates and about the early disadvantages for those for whom English is not their first language and so on. One would have thought that these were strong arguments against selecting, not just by general ability,
but also by particular aptitude at such a very early age as five. On the other hand, the Minister went on to say,
- "However, we believe that primary schools should have the same option as most secondary schools".--[Official Report, 24/2/97; col. 944.]
I find this impossible to reconcile. Like my noble friend Lady Warnock, I am no out-and-out opponent of all forms of selection. But if selection by ability at the age of 11 is generally discredited on grounds of reliability, as it is, then a fortiori it should not be contemplated at the age of five. I think it should be clear that in this respect at least primary schools must not have the same option as secondary schools as otherwise communities will be split, those who start disadvantaged will be further handicapped and much talent will go to waste. For those reasons I support the amendments.
The Lord Bishop of Ripon: My Lords, I would like to make one point which, I believe, has not been made so far in the discussion on this amendment. It is a simple one. There will be some schools where there is a trust deed which governs the purposes of the education to be provided. In some cases that may specify that the site of the school will be held on trust for educating, say, the poorer classes of a parish. I realise that that is a somewhat dated way of looking at admission to a school, but nevertheless it is clear that, where there are such trusts, they will not necessarily specify that it is to be the cleverer classes who are to be admitted. So in addition to the arguments which have already been advanced, I suggest that there may be some conflict should there be a provision for selection for a primary school which is on a site for which the trust provides for some other criterion of admission.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: My Lords, perhaps I may give a concrete example of what my noble friend was talking about earlier. The primary school league tables came out last week and four local primary schools in my immediate vicinity were included. One of them did relatively badly. It so happens that that primary school prides itself on taking in children with special needs. To compound its problem, it also had a number of children away on the day when the tests were done. The combination of those two factors meant that the school came quite low down in the league table in Wandsworth. My daughter's school did comparatively well. Already, her school is over-subscribed both in the reception class and in the nursery class. Parents are very keen to get their children into this school.
The problem that we see now in our very localised area, with four schools within about a mile of each other, is that the differences between them are being completely exaggerated in a way about which the schools themselves are very unhappy. The schools do not want to see themselves in competition in any way. They realise that there are different strengths in all the schools.
The problem of having the option of introducing selection at any level is that it will only exacerbate the trend which the league tables have started. I cannot see that they will give any benefit to any of the children at
all in any of the local primary schools in my area. They will do harm to the schools which have the enlightened policy of actively encouraging children with special needs. I support these amendments. They are extremely important. I believe that the Government are wrong even to leave an opening chink with the possibility of introducing selection at the primary level.3.30. p.m.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, in supporting this group of amendments I take as my text an aspiration of our Prime Minister, John Major. He aspired to build a classless society in Britain. I suggest that our primary school system in this country approaches the classless society to which John Major aspired.
Apart from that very small category of our citizens which my noble friend Lady Farrington mentioned, which effectively buys primary education for its children, we can see that by and large the different classes in our society send their children to the local primary school. There may be a Church affiliation in some areas, but by and large over 90 per cent. of the children of primary school age go to the local school. That is beneficial to our society. In effect, it breaks down class barriers between young children. Indeed, it has been suggested that young people are egalitarian in other ways. It has often been pointed out that young children of, say, four or five are almost colour blind when it comes to putting members of their peer group into any particular category. That is a powerful reason for supporting this group of amendments.
Perhaps I may give an example from my own experience in Manchester. Three county primary schools are equidistant from our house. When my children were coming up to primary school age, we went round each of them. They were all run--I believe that the usual description is "controlled"--by the local education authority in Manchester. Manchester is regarded as having a monolithic education system. Nothing could be further from the truth. Each of those primary schools had a completely different character and ethos. It was not a question of one being better or worse than another. It was simply a case of the characters of the schools being different. That was partly because of the buildings, partly because of the geographical sites, partly because of the staff but particularly because of the ethos and attitudes of the different head teachers.
As, dare I say it, middle-class parents, we had to make a choice about the education of our children. We took our eldest daughter around each of those schools and, to be honest, she picked the school with which she felt most comfortable. It was not a question of saying that this or that school would be better, because we recognised that the standard of education would probably be the same. What made the difference was the ethos of those schools.
I hope that the Government will acknowledge that we all recognise the diversity of schools and that there is a general understanding in society that no one primary school is better than another. That enables parents to choose a school largely on the basis of proximity to
home or on its ethos without putting the parents under the pressure of having to determine whether it is a "better" school than others.Unfortunately, however, as we have heard in the House many times in debates on education, when it comes to selection it is not a case of the parents choosing the school but of the school choosing the parents. I hope that simply because a particular primary school in an area has a relatively new building, or has been tarted up with a bit of paint, or has a head teacher and senior staff who are very good at marketing themselves in the local community--they may not provide a better education but they may well generate an image of being better--we shall not end up with competition which would be deleterious in the primary school sector.
I hope that the aspirations of our Government, our Parliament and, indeed, all our people will be to ensure that our young children grow up in a classless society in which all can benefit from a good all-round education. We must recognise that different schools have different characteristics. We should revel in those differences between our schools. We should not point out the differences between them only in terms of the quality of education because that can then constrain parents to start making choices--and what we shall end up with is the schools choosing the pupils.
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