Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Hoey and Glenda Jackson

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

What a pleasure it is to follow the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who has broken the overwhelming trend in the contributions we have heard from Government Members, which has been to paint a virtually dystopian picture of education in our country in which virtually every classroom is a battlefield, every teacher is incompetent and lacking in inspiration, every child is badly taught and where examination results are lamentable in comparison with other countries.

The ability of children who receive free school meals to make it to Oxbridge seems to have been the recurring theme. The hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), who was the most recent Member to make that contribution, gave the example of Westminster school. If he is so concerned, why is he not arguing ferociously with the Government to fund pupils in our schools to the level charged in fees by Westminster and for class sizes to be as small as the standard not only in Westminster, but in every private school in this country?

As far as I can see, the Bill is a typical Government piece of legislation; it purports to be under the overarching aegis of giving back to people in this country the right to make local decisions that affect them in their local areas, but it does exactly the opposite. It will put powers into the hands of the Secretary of State that are currently undreamt of by many local authorities and by the schools in my constituency.

What I find most paradoxical is the way Government Members have bought what the Government are attempting to sell in the Bill. It starts with early-years education, because the Govt have trumpeted loud and long that every disadvantaged two-year-old—we are yet to know what will constitute that disadvantage because the Government have given us no detail—will be able to have nursery education. They then attempt to convince us that a child going from age two to five will of course be given a place in a local primary school—there is a desperate need for primary school places in my constituency—and that there will then be a gradual progression on to secondary school. Hang on a moment, because it looks, certainly from what the Government have said and from what has happened in my constituency, as though when children get to the age of 11 there will be no comprehensive schools left, only academies and free schools. The central and monstrous aspect of the Bill is that it will reintroduce a form of selection in schools. If there is no concerted local area agreement on what constitutes an admissions policy for all schools, we will see a return to what people of my generation lived through, which is the “them and us” approach to education for all our children.

The Secretary of State’s speech this afternoon culminated with the example of two schools that he admires and wants us to admire, but he ignored the fact that they rose to their present heights under a Labour Government.

[Kate Hoey]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Glenda Jackson]

No.

The Secretary of State also asserted that the Government are committed to ensuring that every child in this country has the best possible education. How can that conceivably be so when we are looking at a situation in which academies and free schools will be the only schools available to local people? We have no idea what the capital costs or revenue costs of those schools will be. The idea that we are making a real inroad into affording opportunity and aspiration for every child, however disadvantaged their background, by introducing free education for two-year-olds, when we know that Sure Start facilities are being closed even as we speak—