Academies Bill [Lords]

Lord Brady of Altrincham Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Glenda Jackson]

Somebody else who does not listen—you are not the listening party, are you?

The Bill’s measures would take us back to a position to which we really should not want to return. As we all know, we are living in an ever more competitive world, and the greatest national resource we have is our people—their talent, their energy, their ability, their creativity. The future of this country is dependent upon our young people, and on our being able to deliver to them the best possible education, but it must be the best possible education we can deliver to all our children and young people, not just a selected, or selective, few. So I sincerely hope that the amendments that have already been presented will be accepted by the Committee, because this is the heart of the Bill and the Committee should reject the Bill as it stands.

[Mr Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale West) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) for giving me my cue, once again. She finished her remarks by saying that what is important is that we have the best possible education for all our children, and that is precisely why I have always been an advocate of academic selection. May I say to her—I hope that she will take this in the spirit in which it is intended—that there is always a danger in these debates of reverting to historical anecdotes about our own experiences? All too often, people look at debates about academic selection through a prism that is not the experience of people today in areas such as mine, which still have selective schools. The borough of Trafford has a model of diverse education, where the grammar schools are excellent and so are the high schools, a very large number of which are specialist schools that excel in particular areas.

We have moved a tremendous distance from the kind of world that the hon. Lady described, which was one of pass or fail. We have moved to a world where many people will choose to go to a high school because of its specialism and its very high academic attainment. My area achieves better results than leafier Cheshire does over the border. In fact, it achieves better results than any other part of the country apart from Northern Ireland, which also has a wholly selective system. As is well known, I am an advocate of that system.

[Glenda Jackson]

Surely the hon. Gentleman would also acknowledge that there has been an explosion across the whole country of parents buying additional educational facilities for their children at the point when they have to sit a selective examination, and not always in a secondary or a grammar school. That kind of pressure, which is being exerted on our children, is a pressure too far. We hear about that in respect of standard assessment tests. Why do we not hear about it in terms of the pressure on children whose choice of school must be via selection?

[Mr Brady]

As the hon. Lady well knows, there has also been an explosion in the practice of parents paying over the odds for houses in the catchment area of the better comprehensive schools, in her constituency and elsewhere. That is why the Sutton Trust found earlier this year that the better comprehensive schools are the most socially selective, not the grammar schools.

It is time that we had a more rational and open-minded debate. Hon. Members will have heard the exchanges that took place a few moments ago on the Bill’s content and whether it would allow an expansion of selection. As I said in response to the hon. Lady’s intervention on Second Reading, I only wish that it would. At the moment, although the Conservative Front-Bench team takes the view that parents should have more choice on the kind of schools that are available and that schools should have more freedom, it sadly still does not quite have the courage of its convictions to allow the choice to include academic selection where parents want it. I would like to see that additional choice allowed.

I oppose amendment 14, which is an attack on the remaining grammar schools, many of which, including those in my constituency, wish to become academies because they believe that they can benefit from the additional freedom that that will give them to flourish and excel. Of course, I wish to support amendment 43, which stands in my name and the names of some of my hon. Friends and at least one Labour Member. In speaking in support of amendment 43, I suppose I should start with a rare admission—

[Mr Mark Field]

Amendment 49.

[Mr Brady]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because I suspect that amendment 43 might have led me into all sorts of difficulties.

[Mr Field]

You might have been excommunicated for a start.

[Mr Brady]

My moral safety is now assured.

I expect broad support from hon. Members on both sides of the Houses on amendment 49, and I shall start my comments on that amendment with the unusual admission that I was once wrong in an education debate in the House. I am going all the way back to the Committee stage of the Bill that became the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, in which I opposed introducing ballot arrangements to continue grammar schools because I made the mistake of imagining that they were intended to be a route to abolishing grammar schools. It has become apparent, with experience and practice over the years, that those arrangements have been the greatest safeguard introduced by the Labour Government because there has been only one instance in which parents achieved the requisite threshold to trigger a ballot through a petition, and the proposal was then thrown out by an overwhelming majority precisely because grammar schools are immensely popular with parents. I was therefore mistaken in my earlier view.

The introduction of the ballot arrangements in 1998 was a great tribute to the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, the former right hon. Member for Sedgefield. Many of us came to understand, much to our regret, that he had an unrivalled feel for the views and instincts of middle Britain. In that instance, he had correctly identified the affection and support that so many people have for grammar schools and he had identified the perfect mechanism for protecting both them and the then Labour Government from the opprobrium that would have resulted had any of them closed during the years of Labour government.

[Mr Field]

I suspect that, given his record in so many areas, the then Prime Minister was more guilty of cock-up than conspiracy.

[Mr Brady]

My hon. Friend is being uncharacteristically ungenerous; Mr Blair needs all the support that he can get right now given that some of his friends are not helping him much.

As the ballot arrangements were introduced by a Labour Government and have been nurtured and kept in place by Education Ministers throughout the period of Labour government, I am sure that the shadow Minister will support my amendment. I am also sure, given the very strong support that the Minister of State, Department for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), has given to the continuation of grammar schools—he has also visited some of the excellent schools in my constituency—that the Government will want to reassure us that grammar schools are entirely safe under the Bill, and I look forward to hearing that reassurance.

During the general election, all four candidates in my constituency, which I think probably has the best state schools in the country, were to a greater or lesser extent supportive of the selective system. Even the Labour candidate was reasonably warm about grammar schools because he, like me, is an old boy of Altrincham grammar school for boys; perhaps that helped to condition his views on the subject. The Liberal Democrat candidate was strongly in support, and I hope that our coalition partners will follow suit and strongly support the grammar schools in the two Divisions on them this evening. The other candidate from the United Kingdom Independence party was also very supportive.

[Ms Buck]

Can the hon. Gentleman help me with one point? If grammar schools are, as he and other proponents of them claim, a route for high-achieving children from more deprived backgrounds, why do they have fewer children who are entitled to free school meals than other schools?

[Mr Brady]

There are a number of reasons, but the principal one is that most inner-city grammar schools were sadly destroyed by misguided policy, so there are fewer grammar schools in the most deprived areas and they tend to survive—[Interruption.] No, I am responding to the hon. Lady’s point. They tend to survive in the outer-urban and more rural areas. The reduction in grammar schools, particularly in London, where there are so few, has had another effect: they have become more selective over time. In my borough of Trafford, we select about 35% of that cohort to go to grammar school, but selection can amount to as little as 1% or 2% of the ability range at some London grammar schools.

[Ms Buck]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point about the national statistics, but is he saying that, in Trafford, grammar schools have the same proportion of children on free school dinners as non-grammar schools?

[Mr Brady]

That would depend on the part of Trafford that one was in, and the figure would largely relate to the school’s catchment area, but overall grammar schools have become more selective than they should have had to become.

I do not want to detain the Committee for long. The crucial point about amendment 49 is that it would protect the status quo not just of the excellent schools that are thriving and popular in their communities, but of their protection in current education legislation. If the amendment is accepted and those schools become academies, they will have the protection of a parental ballot, which will transfer with them and prevent any change in their status without reference to the parents. I hope that the amendment is uncontentious, and I very much hope that my Front Benchers warmly welcome it.

[Vernon Coaker]

Mr Evans, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to some really important amendments that clearly arouse feelings among Members on both sides of the Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) has left the Chamber, but in a very good speech she again outlined some of the differences between hon. Members on how to achieve the educational objectives that we all want.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

I will in a moment. This section of my speech is fairly technical, and I want to finish it before I give way again.

A similar arrangement would apply in the case of a foundation school without a foundation—in other words, a grammar school that is essentially a community school. The current governors would decide on the members of the academy trust. The members would be responsible for appointing a majority of the governors to the governing body by electing members who are committed to a selective ethos. That ethos would be maintained over time, because—in theory and, I suspect, in practice—they would appoint a majority of governors who were similarly committed. We are nevertheless committed to ensuring that the same rights are afforded to parents, and the same rights and protections are afforded to grammar schools on conversion, as were enjoyed while the school was a maintained school.

I hope that that reassures my hon. Friend to some extent. No doubt he will intervene, either now or later, if he needs further reassurance.

[Mr Brady]

I am greatly reassured by the tone of what my hon. Friend has said, but it is not entirely clear whether he is giving me an assurance that the ballot arrangements will be introduced at a later date, or whether he is suggesting that other protections might be introduced.

[Mr Gibb]

What I am suggesting now—it is as far as I can go at this stage—is that we will include the provisions in the funding agreements of academies. That will provide strong protection—as strong, in effect, as it would be if the measures were on the statute book.

[Mr Brady]

Is my hon. Friend saying that if a grammar school transferred to academy status, it would not be able to vary its selective admissions under the terms of the funding agreement without the support of a parental ballot?

[Mr Gibb]

According to my understanding, that is correct. All the protections that currently apply under the ballot procedure would still apply. If for some reason the governing body of a selective academy sought to change its status as a selective school, the funding agreement would require a ballot of parents to be held before that provision took effect.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Brady]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way a third time. He has been immensely helpful, and I think that that final reassurance will be of great help to the many excellent grammar schools—including many in the borough of Trafford—that are keen to proceed with seeking academy status. It is certainly sufficient to persuade me not to press amendment 49 to a vote.

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I hope that I can be equally successful with other hon. Members.

Amendment 24 has a similar intention, in that it seeks to make it a statutory duty for academies to take part in their local in-year fair access protocol. Fair access protocols are established by the local authority, and the requirement to take part in them is set out in the school admissions code. Since participation is a requirement of the admissions code, it is applied to academies in the same way as other aspects of the code, through the funding agreement. That means that academies, along with all maintained schools in a local area, will take their fair share of hard-to-place pupils, including those who have previously been excluded from other schools. The funding agreement is crystal clear about the compliance requirements, and the amendments are therefore unnecessary.