Schools

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree with my noble friend’s point that the academic and the vocational routes should be equally valued. All pupils should have a basic grounding in academic subjects such as English, maths, science et cetera, but there is no doubt that we need to do more to improve vocational education in this country.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, at a time when, surely, the great challenge for political leadership is to unify a country which the Brexit vote exposed as being deeply divided by age, class, region, skills, income and wealth, the Prime Minister is insisting on introducing this most divisive of policies. The Government say that their concern is for ordinary, working-class people. Will the Minister acknowledge that the evidence we have indicates that although the policy could be beneficial to some of the 20% of children who may have the aptitude to qualify for grammar school education, it will clearly be to the detriment of other schools in areas where the new grammar schools are established or existing grammar schools are expanded, and to the detriment of the interests of the 80% of the nation’s children who will not go to a grammar school?

[Lord Nash]

I invite the noble Lord to read the consultation document carefully. There are some very well thought out plans there as to how we believe we can ensure that this has a much wider benefit, particularly for less advantaged pupils. Just because something has not worked in the past does not mean that something with the same kind of principles cannot work in the future. We are determined, as I have said, not to go back to the previous, binary divide.