Higher Education and Research Bill

Mark Field Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

The Bill is about ensuring that we have a strong, robust, successful, innovative and high-quality higher education sector for Britain’s young people. The hon. Gentleman sets out problems and then suggests we should not bring forward a Bill to tackle them.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

It strikes me that the Secretary of State is giving a lot of good detail on the safeguards, which should satisfy most reasonable people. Others may feel there is something of a closed shop on degree-awarding powers, and I am very glad that the Bill will, among other things, do its best to break it down. Such a closed shop is unacceptable, particularly in relation to global education provision, which, as she says, we benefit from and can push out to other parts of the world.

[Justine Greening]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. For the many institutions that have spent years working steadily to get their own degree-awarding powers, these changes will be welcome. They should not have to wait so long, and once the Bill is passed, they will not have to do so.

[Mark Field]

I suspect institutions that have spent many years trying to get degree-awarding powers and have not quite got them will feel that they have spent a frustratingly long time doing so. None the less, I am sure this provision will be welcomed in the years to come by many of the institutions she is talking about.

[Justine Greening]

I am sure my right hon. Friend is right.

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[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Secretary of State and welcome her to her position. We look forward to the development of her thoughts on the subject.

The Bill has positive elements, which the Opposition welcome. The recognition and identification of social mobility as a key factor in the expansion of higher education is important. It is crucial that we create a system that works for social mobility not just for young people, but for adults. The introduction of a transparency duty for university admissions will be a good start, but more must be done.

We welcome the promise at last of an alternative student finance method, as pledged in the White Paper. We hope that it addresses the concerns of Muslim students about a lack of sharia-compliant funding. The Opposition had to press the Government hard on that issue during the maintenance grants debate in January, as my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) has made clear. I am pleased that, finally, it has been taken on board.

I praise the Minister for Universities and Science for his strong and consistent advocacy of the importance that the EU has had for universities in the UK. During the referendum campaign, he spoke trenchantly against Brexit, saying that

“we’re potentially confronted with a funding black hole roughly equivalent to the size of one of our world-class research councils.”

He also said that ditching membership would mean

“losing a seat at the table when the big decisions about funding and priorities are made”.

There’s the rub. The reality is that our world and the education world are utterly changed since 23 June. That makes all the concerns and criticisms that the Opposition and others have voiced on the Bill much more powerful, but we find that the Government are still groping for answers. The Bill too often produces 20th century answers to 21st century challenges. It is laced with an obsession for market-led ideology that does not reflect the realities in higher education or those of the post-Brexit world.

[Mark Field]

As someone who was on the same side of the debate for the 23 June referendum, I recognise the concerns about leaving the EU. However, we must look to the future. There are great opportunities. One of the great things about our higher education system is that it is focused very much on being a global operator, particularly given the strength of the English language. Therefore, there will be tremendous opportunities. It is a difficult, unpredictable and uncertain time, but none the less a time that is open for and ripe with opportunities for our best higher education institutions.

[Mr Marsden]

I welcome what the hon. Gentleman says and the fact that he spoke so staunchly on the part of the remain campaign. The fact remains, as it were, that the Government have not put forward a pathway. I will talk about that later.

Everything one needs to know about that obsession can be found in one small section towards the start of the White Paper, which states that

“we need to confront the possibility of some institutions choosing – or needing – to exit the market. This is a crucial part of a healthy, competitive and well-functioning market, and such exits happen already – although not frequently – in the higher education sector. The Government should not prevent exit as a matter of policy...and it will remain the provider’s decision whether to exit and their responsibility to implement and action any exit plans.”

Such breezy complacency and laissez-faire attitudes would be comical were it not for the dire consequences that they threaten for thousands of students and dozens of research and higher education institutions.

The Government have made great play of their new teaching excellence framework as a way of strengthening HE’s offer to students. The Opposition of course approve of moves to value excellence in teaching—who could not?—and we approve of the concept of measuring teaching quality, but the lack of detail on how it will work is added to by concerns that the Government are using the TEF as a potential Trojan horse for removing the fee cap. If that happens, it could bring in its wake a two-tier system and a very damaging separation between teaching and research institutions.

We are strongly opposed to linking the TEF with fees, as are the majority of higher education institutions’ respondents to the Green Paper, which is why the Secretary of State was so coy in saying that only the best people believe in it. We are strongly opposed because, in the first year, it would allow almost all universities or HE providers to charge an automatic index-linked inflation increase to students. That is particularly problematic post-Brexit, with the fragility of our economy. There are no guarantees on the level of inflation for the next few years. Therefore, students could face significant increases in fees—the Government cannot guarantee otherwise.

In any case, as the White Paper makes clear, all bets are off, because we do not know what further increases will be permitted by the second and third stages of the TEF. The University and College Union and others are deeply concerned by the lack of parliamentary scrutiny built into the TEF. By putting key aspects of the TEF proposals out for consultation separately from the Bill, the Government are denying Parliament the chance to debate the vital aspects of the plan in full. The equality impact assessments the Government have published alongside the Bill raise further questions about the devil in the details of the TEF.

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[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I will try to keep this even shorter, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a great pleasure, as a London MP, to be here with the dynamic duo who have now taken over our education system: my right hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening), who is, unfortunately, not in her place, and my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson). Having sat here for the past two hours, I can confirm that he has slightly blonder hair than she does, although I will allow excuses to be made about that. We have another London Member here, the birthday boy, no less: the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). Mysteriously, when I read The Guardian today I saw that it said he was born in 1972 and I was sure that must have been a misprint— he does not look a day over 55 to me. I look forward to hearing his words later on.

At this point, I should make a brief declaration of interest, in that I have spent the past 11 years on the advisory board of the London School of Commerce, which is a private higher education provider.

[Michael Gove]

I am sure the House is delighted to hear that my right hon. Friend is a reader of The Guardian, but may I say that I am glad we do not have mandatory reselection in the Conservative party, because such a confession might not endear him to his constituents, and I very much hope he is here for many years to come?

[Mark Field]

That is very kind. As a vice-chairman of the party, may I say that there might be mandatory reselection in Surrey Heath before too long if we are not careful? I thank my right hon. Friend for the observation. Perhaps this is another Guardian misprint; perhaps that is what the problem has been.

As I was saying, before I was rudely interrupted, my role on the advisory board of the London School of Commerce has been enthralling and interesting. I have watched the development of a private education provider that has dabbled with the idea of having full university status and trying to get degree-awarding powers but has actually expanded overseas. This debate is probably not a great opportunity to talk about the Government’s immigration-related policies, but let me say that I do recognise that they have had an impact on the broader higher education sector; a school that had some 7,500 students coming from abroad only 10 years ago now has about a third of that number. However, one interesting thing has been that this college provides two-year degrees and charges well under the £9,000 limit, and there has been growth in the number of domestic students in recent years; there is a sense that this is a vocational, value-added degree going forward. I have watched the college develop further colleges overseas in places such as Kuala Lumpur and Dhaka in Bangladesh, and in a number of European centres. The fact that the college is often just regarded as an alternative provider fails to acknowledge its genuine contribution to the vital eco-system of higher education, where this Bill, perhaps belatedly, is doing important work. Elements of this Bill would have come into place some five years ago had it not been for some high-profile problems arising.

It is fair to say that there is an apparent sense of rude health in this sector, and we all have to recognise that this is a hugely important business and revenue generator for UK plc. That is partly because of the benefit of our having the English language, but to a large extent it is because we have highly recognised and highly approved standards of quality. We perhaps take that for granted with our own education providers, be they in the HE or the FE sphere, but this is not necessarily the case in many other parts of the world. The Minister will know that we have some 125 publicly funded HE institutions, which have almost 2 million students. The sector employs 170,000 academic staff and has an income in excess of £25 billion per year.

The research side of what is being proposed in the Bill is crucial, as innovation is at the heart of what is done in many of our universities, although not all. It is right to recognise that some providers in this sphere will not go down the research route, recognising that they will be focusing largely on vocational education. It is also important that we bear in mind that it is not just spin-off companies from the Cambridge universities of this world that do well; a huge number of high-tech companies, in pharmaceuticals and in other areas, have tremendous successes.

I have been the MP in this district for the past 15 years. Right in the heart of London, we have a tremendous array of HE providers. We have the super Russell Group of the London School of Economics, King’s College London, Imperial and, just outside my constituency, University College London. They are globally successful universities, and in many ways the dominance in popular culture of Oxbridge is now being threatened, in a positive way, by the raising of standards by those four London universities, which are now global players in what they do.

I also have in my constituency one of the sites of the London Metropolitan University, which has been a troubled institution. I have worked with a number of MPs across the House to try to make the case for its continued existence in these troubled times. When I hear debates such as the one that took place earlier today on the idea of allowing universities to fail, I think that that is an important part of any economic eco-system. I do not deny that the implications of such a failure for employees and for students cannot be ignored, but I believe that that is a healthy state of affairs if universities are not doing the job and not providing the education that they ought to provide. If that education is not of appropriate quality or there is insufficient demand for it, universities should not be preserved just because they have existed as institutions for a long time.

I welcome the Bill. I shall focus my brief comments on part 1, which deals with the creation of the office for students. No one can deny that the regulatory system in this sector has evolved into a bafflingly complex framework of organisations and an alphabet spaghetti of acronyms. The overlap between the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the Office for Fair Access and the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education has rightly been identified. The new mechanism will get rid of that overlap.

I wholeheartedly support the recognition of the role of students as consumers. They are far more conscious of that role than they ever were in my time as an undergraduate in the mid-1980s, and that is a positive thing. One of the by-products of students paying for their education is that they want to get good value from it. They will be much more critical of poor or repetitive teaching. They will want to ensure broadly that the facilities, both academic and non-academic, within the institutions to which they are paying that money are of a high standard. When I see undergraduates in my constituency, I am struck by how focused they are on getting the best out of their education. One might say that that is consumerism; one might say it is a source of regret for those of us who were at university in bygone decades. I think it is a healthy state of affairs that students take such matters seriously. The Bill implicitly recognises that by setting up the office for students.

The Bill needs full scrutiny in Committee and in the other place, where there are plenty of experts in this field. There are concerns about the granting of provisional degrees, which were mentioned earlier by the hon. Member for Blackpool South (Mr Marsden). The proposals to relax the criteria for validating degree-awarding powers will need to be examined thoroughly. I have some sympathy with the view that because the title of a university is much respected, it should be clearly protected and defined. I hope that if we have a system that allows market failures, the Government will make provision for the interests that need to be protected. No university should be seen as too big or too old and established to fail. A range of regulatory relationships will need to be clarified, but the Bill establishes an important new architecture for the higher education system.

One aspect that will no doubt be debated here and in Committee is Government and ministerial interference in university courses. We need to ensure above all that those institutions retain as much academic and administrative freedom as possible. That is important going forward.

I take this opportunity to congratulate the Secretary of State on the ambitious proposals set out in the Bill. She has already shown herself willing to put excellence and elitism at the heart of the state school system, with her open-mindedness about the expansion of the grammar school sector. As a committed Conservative and former grammar school boy, it is tremendous for me to hear a Conservative Government putting social mobility at the heart of our educational philosophy.

I regard the promotion of competition, variety and consumer choice as long overdue, so I am delighted that this Secretary of State and her Minister for Universities and Science have indicated the intention to take on the vested interests in this field. There are few things as conservative as the left-leaning cadre of vice-chancellors. I wish the Bill Godspeed and look forward to hearing the rest of the debate on it this afternoon.

Electoral Registration

Mark Field Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be aware that we introduced the measure in 2009, and he supported it. Under our motion, we would not get rid of individual voter registration but ensure that there were safeguards before the next general election.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I represent an inner-city seat where we shall see a significant reduction in the overall number of our electors, and I am concerned about the implications of that. Individual voter registration came in cheek by jowl with the concerns about electoral fraud that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) mentioned. Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise the genuine concern about the fact that we can now have postal votes at will? The number of postal votes went up from some 920,000 in the 1997 election to over 6 million in the last election. It is the concern about the misuse of postal votes that makes individual registration so important.

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[Sadiq Khan]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. To be fair to the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster, he was not suggesting that there was huge-scale fraud but pointing out the concerns that exist. He is nodding, so I think he accepts that.

[Mark Field]

rose—

[Sadiq Khan]

I will let the hon. Gentleman make one final point before I make progress.

[Mark Field]

I was suggesting not that there is widespread fraud but that the large number of postal votes makes it all the more important to ensure the sanctity and security of the electoral system. Taking the individual registration route was an important part of that. Indeed, the right hon. Gentleman’s party, when in government, made it clear that we should go down this route. The concern that he is expressing about students and people from certain socio-economic groups is part and parcel of the individual registration process.

[Sadiq Khan]

I am grateful for that clarification, and to demonstrate what a nice guy I am, I shall give way one last time.

Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Mark Field Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Richard Fuller]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is one of the problems of trying to make policy on the hoof. Small businesses in this industry up and down the country will be looking aghast at the actions of the Secretary of State. Serious business people run these breweries. They have to make long-term investment decisions that affect themselves, their employees and their customers. To have a Secretary of State who makes his position clear on a Friday, but changes it by Tuesday and again when it goes to the upper House sends an incredibly poor set of signals to an industry that has to make those long-terms decision. To be quite honest, a Secretary of State for business should understand that and should have the decency to be here—[Interruption.] I am sorry, I should not say that. It would have been preferable if he had been here today so that he could explain his rather unforced flip-flop at the last minute, because these are unprecedented changes that he is putting forward.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful and impassioned speech. Does he not recognise that Ministers have tried at least to find some element of compromise? For those of us who had some concerns about this—I share the concerns, as they have been put to me by Fullers brewery in Chiswick—the change to 350 provides a reasonable compromise, and it will now go to the other place to be determined.

[Richard Fuller]

My hon. Friend, with his emollient and soothing words, makes a fair point. The Minister has done a fantastic job in presenting these compromises. However, they raise severe questions both in terms of the specificity of the number of companies that will be affected by this additional change and the fact that they were presented to this House at the last minute on a “trust us, we will change it” basis. Yes, it is a step in the right direction, but would it not have been so much better to have this sorted out before and to have included the proposals in the Bill or in the amendments so that we could debate them here today in this House?

This issue shows some of the problems with Government intervention on industry. Essentially, anyone who runs a business knows that they cannot trust the politicians. They cannot trust the politicians to keep the guidelines for the industry safe and secure if we have an interventionist as Business Secretary, and we certainly have that. They cannot trust the Government if they know that they will change the rules one week so that the next week they will affect the industry.

Repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011

Mark Field Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

I am delighted that we can now come on to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 debate, and I am pleased to open the proceedings on that discussion. I want people to watch our proceedings in Parliament, but, privately, I hope that they are doing other things—perhaps going out with their families—because sometimes we can be incredibly embarrassing in this House. It was only three or four weeks ago that the Union nearly fell apart. I am glad that the numbers were what they were at the end, but there was a moment when all of us thought that the Union—the United Kingdom—would be split asunder. It may still do so if we do not deliver properly on the package.

One would think that everything in the garden was rosy, apart from the fact that some would like to revert to those great old days that the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) described. I am talking about those days when we had an empire, homosexuality was illegal, we could slaughter people around the globe, we always had a Prime Minister who told us what to do, and we could go hunting, shooting and fishing in the right seasons. Those were the days indeed. Of course there are many colleagues who long for that degree of exclusivity and privacy, but there are some of us for whom times have changed. We believe that we must do better, and that joining the family of democratic nations in having the people know when a general election is to take place and when the Executive can be replaced is one of the hallmarks of a modern democracy. We are not yet there, but we have made progress in some areas in recent years. One such area is having a fixed-term Parliament.

I say to the hon. Gentleman, whom I have known for many years, that this idea that somehow this Parliament, rather than the Executive, is the creature that runs the nation is the fundamental misapprehension and fundamental flaw in his argument; it is mythology. This is not the Executive. This is not even a body that effectively holds the Executive to account, so to say that things should go back to the way they were does not alter some of those truths, which we all need to consider as parliamentarians first and foremost and as members of the Executive, members who want to be in the Executive, and members who have been in the Executive. That so-called truth is a mythology, and I hope that during this debate we can explore why having a fixed term—having some openness about how long a Parliament or a Government is—will be one of the things that lead people outside to say that at least it looks like we are getting it.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I share some of the hon. Gentleman’s concern at the lamentable way in which Parliament fails to hold the Executive—of whatever Government—to account. Obviously, he supports the notion of a fixed-term Parliament, but does he think that it is right that the Act ensures that that cannot be changed? The Act reinforces this whole push towards coalition Government almost irrespective of public wishes because there has to be a two-thirds majority for getting rid of them. Does he not think that an old-fashioned straight majority would have been the correct way for a fixed-term Parliament to operate?

[Mr Allen]

Sadly, one cannot always bring about democratic change through a rational process; it is often a matter of seizing opportunities. In this case a coalition Government came together and it was helpful—there is no question about this—to have a fixed term, because otherwise there would have been votes of censure and the Government could have fallen at any moment over the past four and a half years.

This might sound strange coming from the Opposition Benches, but I must say that I think history will judge the coalition, however painful and bruising it might have been for the partners, to have governed, or at least administered, in a way that will have surprised many people, particularly if we think back to 2010. There are wounds and difficulties, of course, and I do not seek to underplay them, but a coalition was formed and governance in this country, much to my regret at one level, has continued, one could argue, in a relatively civilized way.

We are where we are, and it would not be democratic to take the power away from Parliament and restore a power that allows a Prime Minister alone to decide the date of a general election. It is yet another strong Executive power that this House should stand up and say should not be restored. There are other Executive powers in this highly centralised democracy that we should be looking to next to ensure that they are made properly democratic, or at least that Governments are held to account for their use.

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[Mr Allen]

I believe that—particularly if there is a little less game-playing and a little more consensus-building—a five-year or a 10-year Parliament and longer-term planning make a lot of sense when we are faced with issues that are not about tomorrow’s newspapers, but about the future of the planet, the future of our children and the future of our economy.



Some of our colleagues are new to the House—I except the hon. Member for Gainsborough—and assume that things have always been like this. Some colleagues, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes), are very new to the House. They are probably thinking, “Why on earth are they talking about this ancient history?” Well, some of us remember the ancient history.

Having been in the House for some time, I am aware—as are you, Madam Deputy Speaker—of the paralysis that grips a Government when there is speculation about when a general election can take place. We have all lived through it. There is a long period of under-achievement, of anxiety, of shuffles, of the civil service not knowing when the general election will be, of appalling speculation in the media, and of threats by Back Benchers who say that they will do this, that or the other. That, to me, is bad governance and bad administration.

A fixed term brings clarity. It means all of us saying, “Let us get on with our job.” It does not mean saying to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the House will appoint you for a term but it may throw you out at any moment, or press speculation may end your wonderful career. Of course, no one operates like that in the real world. A degree of certainty will end much of the paralysis and speculation that has been so damaging to our politics for many years.

[Mark Field]

I do not entirely disagree with the hon. Gentleman’s remarks about uncertainty in regard to election dates. However—this may be because there is currently a coalition Government, and because all the parties are going into the next election telling the electorate that they intend to win and have a manifesto that will enable them to win—an element of paralysis has clearly set in even at this early stage. As we know, there will be an election in May. I think that, in the event of another indeterminate election result, we should be relaxed about the possibility that we will not return for the Queen’s Speech until early or mid-June next year. There may well be an interval of several weeks. That would not necessarily constitute paralysis—it would be possible for government to continue—but Parliament would not be able to sit until we recognised what sort of coalition would be taking the place of the current Government.

[Mr Allen]

The benefit of our having a final year and knowing it is a final year is that we can plan for how we can sensibly use that final year. I absolve my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) of this, but is all the nonsense of “It will be a zombie Parliament unless we pack the last year full of inconsequential legislation, so that we can we pretend that we are macho and running the country” the best that we can do?

My Committee has produced two reports on this issue. We have studied it in great detail, and have heard from highly expert witnesses. We concluded that the fifth year of a Parliament could, because we would know that it would be the last year, be very different culturally—although not this first time round, because we are not used to it. Let us return to the default position of the old dogfight! Let us all slam each other over the Dispatch Box! But perhaps we could use the last year very constructively, rather than entering a state of paralysis or conducting ourselves in our normal, conventional way—often disgracefully, in the eyes of the public.

Grammar Schools

Mark Field Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Brady, to serve under your chairmanship, the irony of which will not be lost on hon. Members who are present. I know that you take a keen interest in education matters.

I applied for this debate because grammar schools are an important and integral part of the education system in the United Kingdom. They provide social mobility and opportunity for thousands of children every year and are hugely popular with pupils and parents alike in the areas where they are found and beyond. It may help if I give a brief history of how they were established.

Grammar schools were created during the second world war and promoted by the Labour Government that was formed in 1945, but it is fair to say that subsequent Labour Governments have had a less enthusiastic approach to them. In 1965, Harold Wilson declared an end to selection in schools—a diktat that was withdrawn by Ted Heath in 1970, after which date the matter was left to local education authorities. That was again changed in 1974 by the re-elected Harold Wilson, who obliged LEAs to close grammar schools, a situation that was repealed in 1979 by Margaret Thatcher. The Government’s recent announcement allows an expansion of existing schools, and I congratulate the Minister on that announcement.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Before my hon. Friend finishes his history lesson, which is timely—I congratulate him on obtaining this important debate—surely one problem in the post-war era and one reason for the hostility on one side of politics to the grammar school system was the failure of the plan to build up technical schools and colleges as part of the 1944 Butler Act settlement. Will he congratulate the Government on their tremendous work in the past 18 months in developing technical schools, which I hope will work in tandem with a strong and thriving grammar school system well into the future?

[Gareth Johnson]

My hon. Friend makes a pertinent and correct point. Having a range of options available for children is undoubtedly the key to a good and successful education system. We should not try to pretend that all children are alike and that they have the same needs and desires in the education system. The Minister’s recent announcement is a huge step towards the goal that I would like to reach—new grammar schools where parents and local authorities want that option.

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[Gareth Johnson]

Education will always provoke differences of opinion. Some academics disagree with other academics, but common sense seems to dictate that it is right to have different types of schools because we have different types of children. What is inherently wrong with the comprehensive system is that it is a one-size-fits-all system. It tries to put all children, of all types and varieties, into one bag. Common sense dictates that that surely cannot be right.

Common sense also suggests that children learn more when they are placed with other children with similar abilities, and that has been shown in the streaming that takes place more and more often in non-selective schools. I cannot understand why some people believe that it is acceptable to stream within a school, but not between schools. That simply does not make any sense whatever. Grammar schools are generally good schools, and heaven knows we need to look after good schools. We need them to ensure that we educate our population and that the country’s future is secure.

More than 98% of children who attend a grammar school achieve five GCSEs or more compared with 80% in comprehensive and independent schools. I concede that those figures may not cause surprise, because selective schools are, by their nature, full of children with a record of academic achievement. However, when we look at A-level success where there has already been a record of achievement at the GCSE stage, grammar schools again out-perform all other forms of schooling. In addition, boroughs with grammar schools tend to out-perform boroughs with none, so grammar schools help all the schools in the area to perform better.

In my constituency of Dartford, we have four grammar schools: Dartford grammar school, where I was a pupil; Dartford grammar school for girls, where I am a governor; Wilmington grammar school for boys; and Wilmington grammar school for girls. Each offers something different, and each provides academic specialisation, which is highly sought after in the area, particularly by children from modest backgrounds. My neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr Evennett) is a passionate supporter of grammar schools in his constituency. I know that his constituents enjoy the benefit of grammar schools in my area, and vice versa.

It is a myth that non-selective schools in selective school areas inevitably suffer. In Dartford, we have first-rate non-selective academies, one of which is the most over-subscribed school in Kent. They form as crucial a part of the educational system as the grammar schools and benefit from the existence of grammar schools.

[Mark Field]

We all know that the existence and indeed excellence and elitism of grammar schools have been a matter of dispute in our party. Does my hon. Friend agree—I hope the Minister will discuss this later—that if we can commit to making academies the grammar schools of the 21st century, places of great elitism and excellence, the culture war that has existed within the Conservative party can come to a close and we can look firmly to the future?

[Gareth Johnson]

I very much hope that that will be considered in due course by the Department. I have spoken about the benefit that grammar schools offer children from poorer backgrounds. Children who receive free school meals in grammar schools achieve almost an equal success those who do not have free school meals—95.6%, compared with an overall figure of 98%. However, pupils in non-selective schools who have free schools meals achieve far less in examinations—30.9%, compared with an overall figure of 55%. That confirms my point that pupils from the poorest backgrounds have most to gain from the grammar school system.

My hon. Friend highlights the potential for academies, and I welcome the freedom that the Government have given to schools to become academies. The new freedoms allow schools to become flexible in their approach to education. The Department for Education has wisely allowed grammar schools to continue to select on academic ability when they convert to academy status. I hope that the Department will soon consider allowing academies that did not previously select on academic ability to do so. Grammar schools are popular. They provide excellent education, offer social mobility and enable many children to reach their maximum potential. We need to allow them to flourish.

[Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) on securing this extremely important debate. His commitment to grammar schools is well known. I note that he is a distinguished alumnus of Dartford grammar school, along with Sir Mick Jagger.

Reading school, in my constituency, can boast my hon. Friends the Members for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) and for North East Hertfordshire (Oliver Heald) as Old Redingensians. While not easily described as rock stars, they have equally made their mark in the world of politics.

[Mark Field]

My hon. Friend has missed out the black sheep of the family: the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) was also an alumnus of Reading school. Despite the disadvantage of a grammar school education, he still managed to go to Oxford and become a Cabinet Minister, although in a Labour Government.

[Mr Rob Wilson]

That is an excellent intervention. I recall that his hairstyle back in those days was very much like a rock star’s.

As a keen supporter of grammar schools, I have campaigned vigorously to protect them in my constituency, and I am delighted to contribute to the debate today. Grammars have played a significant part in the important role of social mobility. Through selection, grammars offer our most academic young people and constituents across the country excellent educational opportunities. Academic selection in secondary education is often the focus of rigorous debate, and we are getting a flavour of that this morning. Some have argued that grammar schools are an impediment to social mobility, but that view is profoundly wrong. Our 160-odd grammar schools continue to offer fantastic opportunities to gifted pupils from more disadvantaged backgrounds, thus unlocking all the potential that an academically rigorous education can provide.

Far from impeding social mobility, our grammar schools encapsulate the driving principle of aspiration and ambition. The Prime Minister has said, when staving off class-based attacks from the left about his educational background, “It matters not where you come from, but where you are going.” Grammar schools reflect that ethos. They are precisely about where someone is going, not where they are from. They provide a ladder of opportunity, and I fail to see how that is an impediment, as some have described.

If we take social mobility seriously, as I do, it is fundamentally important that our grammar schools are safeguarded and that threats to their future are taken seriously, but those who wish to threaten and destroy our grammar schools do not rest. Their commitment to vandalising some of the best schools that state education provides continues undiminished, as I recently found in Reading.

Reading is on the front line of the battle to protect our grammar schools. Reading East is fortunate to have two excellent grammar schools: Reading school, which I have already mentioned, and Kendrick school, which is a girls’ grammar school. Both schools feature at the top of the nation’s league tables for educational attainment, a fact of which I am enormously proud. Despite their excellence, Reading’s grammar schools find themselves firmly fixed in the crosshairs of those who seek to kick away the ladder of opportunity that they offer by removing their ability to select pupils. This year, a mere 10 Reading residents formed an anonymous group to put a petition together to trigger a ballot to end grammar school education in Reading.

Without wishing to suck this debate into the realm of legal complexities, the law pertaining to a ballot was confusing and flawed, because the grammars had converted to academy status, as they had been encouraged to do by the Government. A lack of synergy was exposed between annex E of the academy funding agreements and the provisions of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, the legislation that sets out the regulations pertaining to grammar school ballots. The confusion focused on the 20% petition threshold of local people eligible to vote in the ballot—namely, parents at feeder primary schools.

It is also worth noting that the ballot itself, should it have gone ahead, was undemocratic, because it comprised only parents from primary feeder schools and not the parents of pupils currently in grammar schools. Why should parents of children attending a grammar school be disfranchised in decisions about the school’s future, as parents and their children will be affected by the outcome of any ballot?

Is it right that 10 faceless people can cause huge instability at local schools that have served the people of Reading so well for so long? Recently, when those faceless individuals started that ballot process, it caused huge problems. How does a school cope with a threat to its future? The uncertainty it causes for staff, parents and pupils is significant. Enormous effort and expense have to go into administering the ballot and putting the case for the school, taking time away from the important teaching effort that has to go on. It was both wrong and unfair, and it should never have been allowed to happen.

In short, the episode in Reading exposed a gaping democratic deficit whereby a tiny, unrepresentative part of Reading’s community managed to unsettle two schools along with their staff, pupils and parents. Because of the disruption and potential expense to our grammar schools, I hope that the Minister will look at the initial trigger point for initiating such a ballot, which should surely be well above 10 anonymous people. Working closely with Reading school’s head teacher, Mr John Weeds, we lobbied Ministers in the Department for Education. As a result, we have an undertaking from the Minister that amendments will be made to the funding agreement, which I hope will achieve greater clarity.

For now, the threat to Reading’s grammar schools has been temporarily beaten back, but it could return at any time. If they wish, the same 10 people in Reading could return with their protest year after year, and the Government must change the rules so that, if a ballot attempt fails one year, it cannot be constantly repeated. Such a strategy could become a device for destabilising grammar schools all over the country, and I would have grave concerns for the remaining grammar schools in England should it be repeated elsewhere. In defending the few grammar schools that we have left, it seems that the price of their retention will be constant vigilance, unless the Government make significant and necessary changes to the legislation. I am therefore encouraged to see that so many determined hon. Members are participating in this important debate.

To remove grammar schools would be to remove a specialist part of our state education system that seeks to maximise a pupil’s academic potential. Critics of grammar schools—usually, although not exclusively, from the left—say that those who do not pass the selection criteria for a grammar school education will in some way be left behind by the system. That argument, however, is flawed. Not every pupil is academic in orientation, but that does not mean that their potential should be left unfulfilled. Too often, our state education system has let down technically gifted as well as academically gifted pupils, and we need schools that reflect the abilities of all pupils.

That is why I am delighted that university technical colleges are growing in number and strength, and last week I joined Lord Baker of Dorking in celebrating and promoting the success of such colleges at a parliamentary reception with rest of the UTC community—a community which now looks more like a movement. By departing from a one-size-fits-all approach to education, both types of school serve the interests of social mobility. It is about being holistic, serving pupils in the system and reflecting their needs accordingly. Our grammar schools do precisely that, and they deserve our unwavering support.

Education Performance

Mark Field Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

I am delighted to have secured this debate under the auspices of the Backbench Business Committee. Underlying many of the key questions facing us, such as where our future growth will come from and issues about youth employment, is our country’s education performance, and how it compares with that of our international competitors. There has been much soul-searching around the world about education performance, so when Germany did badly in the programme for international student assessment tables in 2000, it upped the academic standards in many of its technical schools to address the issue. Other countries have delayed specialisation, and the US has introduced new policies in teaching. In Britain, there is not enough soul-searching, either in politics or in the wider education community and establishment, about our performance.

I want to talk about how our results compare internationally, the impact of that, and the main causes. I have identified two. The first is the false choice that is often presented between quality and quantity in our education system, which has led to a decline in standards, and the second is our process-orientated system, which does not rely on the student driving it. I also want to talk about how we can start to move towards the high-quality mass education system that should be our goal in Britain.

There has been much coverage of the hourglass economy. The number of high-skilled jobs has grown by 30% in the past 10 years, and the number of medium-skilled jobs has declined by 10%. There is an increasing return to education throughout the global economy, and if the 20th century was a human capital century, surely we will see an acceleration of that in the 21st century.

The US was very successful in the 20th century, having universal high school education and increased college access, but it has acknowledged that the quality was not there, although the quantity was. There has been a catching-up with that in the UK, where participation has increased at high school and university level, but unfortunately quality has fallen. We see the evidence for that in the PISA league tables. Although flawed, as all international comparisons are, they at least represent students sitting the same test in each country. They show that Britain has dropped to 28th in maths, 16th in science and 25th in reading. Some people will cite TIMSS—the trends in the international mathematics and science study—which shows that the UK came seventh, but we were still behind the Asian elite countries, such as Japan and Hong Kong, and France and Germany were not included in the comparison. However we look at the issue and however it is sliced and diced, we are performing worse than we should as the sixth largest economy in the world.

As well as our current standards not being good enough, our historical standards have also been poor. The problem is deep and historical. According to a CBI survey, 40% of people in the UK do not have basic skills, compared with 34% in the US, 28% in France and 22% in Germany, yet the political debate in this country has been dominated by the idea that our standards are rising year on year, despite the fact that we are clearly not producing enough rigorously educated students to fill available jobs. Schools are producing strings of A* students, when there would previously have been a smattering of As. According to Durham university, a maths A-level grade E in 1988 would now be a C or even higher.

There is still a persistent failure in basic qualifications, with 45% of students not achieving a GCSE in England and maths at grade C or above. The economic impact of all that is clear, and I see it in South West Norfolk, where companies struggle to recruit skilled engineers and graduate business managers, and we have a shortage of teachers in critical subjects such as maths. Between 1997 and 2007—the boom years for our economy—the number of jobs increased, but the majority were taken by people from overseas, many of whom filled our skill gaps. Employers consistently say that they are not satisfied with the quality of people leaving school and university—71% are unhappy with language skills, and half of all universities have remedial courses in English and maths to bring students up to standard. I have spoken to academics at Cambridge university, Greenwich university and throughout our university sector who say that our education system is not delivering people who are ready to learn and able to think for themselves. That is a crucial problem.

Some people say that it is inevitable that if we have more people in our school system, send more people to university, and have higher participation, standards will decline. They claim that there is a trade-off between mass education and standards. I have heard it said during the past year that some students are not suited to such education and are not up to it because they are not academic. I think that belief is holding our country back, compared with other countries, and has driven an unwelcome change in our school system.

Encouraged by the crazy equivalence in league tables and UCAS points, media studies has been given the same value as mathematics in our league tables. I studied both subjects, and I know that they are not equivalent. That has hastened the flight from academic subjects, particularly in comprehensive schools in this country. Employers and universities are absolutely clear about what they want: they want maths, languages, science, and people who can think and analyse. Nevertheless, fewer and fewer people are studying those subjects, and there has been a fall in the number studying GCSE languages from 79% to 44%. There was a fall in the number studying core academic subjects at A-level from 60% to 50% between 1996 and 2010.

That is a uniquely British phenomenon. It is not happening elsewhere. In fact, academic standards elsewhere are being tightened, so at the end of high school in a top US state such as Massachusetts, students will be studying maths, science, humanities and languages. In France, all students studying for the French baccalaureate study maths, French and foreign languages. In Japan, 95% of 18-year-old students are studying maths, sciences, languages and humanities. We are an outlier. Indeed, the Nuffield Foundation produced a report that showed that we are unusual in not requiring maths from 16 to 18, and that is feeding through into our school system. Unfortunately, we now have primary school teachers—I have seen this in classrooms—who do not understand maths concepts, and are unable to communicate those concepts to the next generation.

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes interesting international comparisons. Does she have any data for China and India, the two great economic superpowers of the 21st century that she rightly heralds? The great changes being made in schools in those countries, and their passion for what my hon. Friend would regard as hard subjects, is equally important, and augurs badly for the state of our education system.

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is right, and I believe that the Shanghai region of China is included in the study that I mentioned. The appetite for education in some of those countries—as shown by the thousands of applications for the Indian Institute of Technology—shows a cultural attitude towards education that will help drive those countries in the future.

In Britain, we hear the idea that introducing new subjects is somehow modern, or that it is inclusive to different types of people and that is what is wanted by employers in the broader world. That is simply not the case, and the accusation that it is somehow retrograde or old-fashioned to want those core subjects is wrong. We can see the subjects studied by our international competitors. The reason why those subjects are taken is that an in-depth study of an academic discipline provides a level of rigour and the ability to analyse and think, which prepares a person for any kind of job. Technology is changing rapidly, and we do not know what skills and abilities we will need in 20 or 30 years’ time. Studying an academic discipline to a high level gives a person that vital ability to think and learn. Such study is not an elitist or minority pursuit. If it were, how come 95% of students in Japan already study in that way? Why do many emerging countries aspire to study those subjects?

The system in Britain actively encourages students to study subjects that provide little return. I was pleased to hear the announcement earlier by the Secretary of State for Education that some of those qualifications will be removed from the league table, but I think we should go further and also remove low-quality GCSEs and A-levels that are not equivalent to the more rigorous core subjects. Our system hampers young people’s chances of going to university, particularly our country’s top universities. Computer programming can be studied at Oxford, but it requires maths, not an A-level in information and communication technology. A student is 20 times more likely to study A-level law if they attend a sixth-form college as opposed to a private school. If they take that subject, however, it will not help them to study law at a Russell group university, because that is specifically prohibited. Students are being misled about the kinds of subjects that will help them get ahead in life.

This debate is not only about the sort of subjects that people study, but about the way some subjects are studied. A combination of modular examinations and bureaucratic intervention has damaged the intellectual integrity of many subjects at A-level. I frequently hear academics in universities complaining that students do not have a holistic view of the subject, and that they have been taught a pick-and-mix of various elements and therefore do not have the deep understanding and practice that they need to move to a higher level.

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[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship for what I think is the first time, Mr Rosindell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) on securing the debate. I was delighted to support her in securing it, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating the time.

I will start with a quote that might ruffle your feathers, Mr Rosindell: “Education, education, education.” Perhaps that is the one thing on which I agreed with the former Prime Minister, Mr Blair—how important education is in our country. It is very important that we give our youngsters the best chance in life, to allow them to cast their net further and wider, so that they can reap a rich catch in life and become big fish in a big pond, not minnows in shark-infested waters.

Education performance matters for our country at different levels. At macro level, it is about preparing people to be innovative, and making them ready for business and work—ready to be our future doctors, nurses and teachers. It is about creating people who are flexible and skilled—people who will do the everyday jobs, as well as the ones that involve scanning the world for new wealth to come to this country. At micro level, it is about having people who are cultured and enlightened, and having a social country in which we live at peace with one another in a culture of respect and tolerance. At individual level, there is no question but that education is the passport to a bigger choice in life and to social mobility, that magic phrase that we often hear now. For me, nothing else fits the bill as well as education.

Educational performance is about preparing not only for university, but for life. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk said that there is a risk of imbalance between vocational and academic choices. Trying to say that one degree is worth the same as, or a similar amount to, another perhaps suggests that not going to university means that one has failed in life. Far from it; we need people to develop all their talents in whatever way they can.

I genuinely believe that every child has talents that can be nurtured through school and later in life, but every child needs a good foundation in reading, writing and mathematics to allow them to succeed. There is no one more disadvantaged than the voter I met in the streets of my constituency the other day, who said that he could not read. He had struggled all his life to find work that did not involve him using his hands. I am not saying that he did not have a valuable skill, but how much more he could have achieved! For instance, he could have set up his own business or something similar. Frankly, even Wayne Rooney and David Beckham need a good educational foundation if they are not to be reliant solely on their lawyers and accountants and are to get the best out of them; they need to be conscious of that.

I will not rattle off a lot of statistics. My hon. Friend has already given us some good evidence, and I know that others are prepared to do so. Instead, I shall take the House on a bit of a personal journey. I do not pretend that my educational history is typical. I did my first O-levels when I was 13; I then did some A-levels and finished my schooling in the constituency of the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg). I went to university and then changed universities; I effectively stopped attending one and moved to another because I could not cope with the way of learning at the first. I then went on to do a PhD. I do not pretend that that is typical, but during that journey I found out that, in a way, standards have changed, and that is unfair on those who are slightly younger than me. That leads me on to the challenges that the country is struggling with 20 years later. I know of them as a result of my science education.

I am old enough to have taken O-levels; I took them a bit early in 1986. When I went on to do A-levels, I happened for whatever reason to do physics for a year. I was working with students from the lower and upper sixth forms, doing a combined kind of crash course. When I was with one group—I should keep up to date; we now call them year 12 students—I was often told, “Oh, Thérèse, you’ll have to do an extra half hour because year 12 does not need to learn that any more, but you can add that topic during your extra learning out of class.” That happened quite regularly throughout my physics A-level studies.

Some might argue that I took a harder A-level, but that is not strictly fair. I genuinely believe that the year-on-year debate about A-levels, O-levels or GCSEs not being as difficult as they used to be gives rise to a false argument about standards. I do not want to make this into a generational slanging match. I would not say that those studying physics 20 years ago were any brighter than the youngsters doing it today, but the opportunity to stretch the learning, to stretch the imagination, may now be constricted. The differentiation, with more children getting A and A* grades, is the result of youngsters today having to learn a lot less. Frankly, if children now have to learn their times tables only up to three, when before they had to learn them up to 12, it does not surprise me that more children now get their sums right.

[Mr Mark Field]

I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend’s journey. As she is a Liverpudlian, it must have been a magical mystery tour. Although I agree with much of what she says, I am not sure that she is correct about the exam system. There has been an utter debasing of the results system over the past 20 years in GCSE and O and A-level exams. The results are now largely discredited, and there needs to be an urgent rethink. As my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) said, someone who got a grade E in an A-level exam only a decade and a half ago could now receive a mark as high as grade B. That does not allow great confidence in the system. There has been a debasing of the system, and we need to consider it afresh.

[Dr Coffey]

I fully accept what my hon. Friend says, but I am trying not to turn this into an inter-generational slanging match. There is nothing worse than getting these wonderful results in August and then, all of a sudden and from whatever quarter—not from politicians but from others—people say, “Oh well, standards are getting lower.” I imagine that that is really hurtful to those receiving their results because, frankly, they are doing the best they can with the course and the exams that are set. It is not their fault, and I agree with my hon. Friend that we need to challenge the education establishment and the Government.

That brings me to another part of my speech. We should not be ashamed to challenge the education establishment, and even ask it to pause and reflect, in order to improve educational standards and performance. The Government are already doing that with elements of the English baccalaureate. We saw it also with the acceleration of academies under the previous Government. I note that academies have longer school days, and that they build other activities into their school day; school is no longer a half-past 8 to 3 o’clock existence, with pupils then being sent out. Academies allow a much wider existence; they are building an education for the entire person, not just slotting pupils into classes. I accept what my hon. Friend said, but I do not want to attack the young people or teachers of today, because they are already in the system. It is our role to challenge it and to get it changed.

Stepping back a little further, I am sure that many Members who went to university did three-year degree courses. I did my BSc in three years. Just as I was finishing my PhD, I saw that many universities were starting to move to four-year courses, and that is now almost the standard; the degree is now called MSci. Although not many universities will say so, the reason for the change is that when students had finished their A-levels, they did not have enough of the curriculum to grab the university course in year one. It is not that they were doing a remedial year, but they needed a foundation year at university. They could then continue. Some courses were perhaps not really four years; they were three and a half years with an extended research project to make up the time. As a consequence, students now spend four years at university, and with fees going up, that means more money being spent on university courses.

It would be honest to ask whether A-levels are at the right standard for entry to university, so that we ensure that we do not leave the universities with the challenge of making up the gap. The Russell group universities have done a great service to schools and teachers—and, most importantly, students and parents—with their brochure “Informed Choices”, in which they give a list of subjects. The facilitating subjects are maths, English, physics, biology, chemistry, geography, history and languages, classic and modern. The Russell group believes that those building blocks allow students to go on to do almost any subject. I accept that those who want to do a degree in art need to study art, and that it would probably help those who want to do music if they have studied a bit of music on the way, but for most degrees, it almost does not matter what subjects have been taken at A-level; students simply need the ability to think and to analyse, as suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk.

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[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Rosindell, for calling me to speak in this vital debate. It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship.

I want to focus on the improving performance of schools in our education system. I speak as a parent, an employer and a former governor of a large secondary school. As a parent, I know that it is vital to us all that our children make the most of the opportunities they have and meet their full potential. As an employer, I need—indeed, we collectively need—a good supply of well-educated, well-motivated and engaged employees at every level. They need not only the ability to learn, but the basic core skills to make their way in the world. As a former governor of a secondary school, I care deeply about the school system and the service that it provides to society. I want to ensure that we always recognise and applaud schools’ efforts.

The Government have made great headway in the short time they have been in post. I particularly welcome today’s statement from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education on Professor Wolf’s report. However, there are other good things to celebrate, including the £2.5 billion for the pupil premium, the emphasis on vigorous and rigorous academic attainment, the encouragement given to schools to go for academy status and the fact that we are attracting more good graduates into the teaching profession. We also recognise the value of high-quality vocational education.

I want to focus on three issues. The first is the role of the head teacher in improving education performance. It is universally recognised that good schools have good head teachers. An energetic, dynamic head teacher really sets a school’s ethos. Their energy can drive forward improvements, and they set the framework in which the school functions.

One key aspect of that framework is discipline across the whole school, which is as much about the staff as it is about the students. If a head sets out clear and high expectations of the staff, that can quickly filter down into the student body. The consistent application of school rules means that everyone knows precisely where they stand. If that ethos is instilled in staff and students from day one, it can avert the problems that students may otherwise have had later in their school careers.

Teachers, too, have to set down clear guidance for behaviour and stick to it. Whether that guidance relates to uniform policy, behavioural standards or classroom etiquette, it must be consistent. A flaky approach to discipline undermines students so that they do not know where they stand from one day to the next. If schools get their approach right, that can dramatically improve their performance. We must recognise and accept that the head teacher plays a vital role in that.

[Mr Mark Field]

I entirely agree. In our time as Members of Parliament, all of us will have visited schools, and the single most important difference between well-performing schools, which have positive results and a positive attitude among parents, and less well-performing schools is the leadership of the head teacher, as my hon. Friend rightly said. Does he not agree, however, that clamping down on paucity of aspiration, which was mentioned earlier, and having zero tolerance for it, is an important part of that leadership?

[Stephen Metcalfe]

Absolutely—I agree 100%. I picked on discipline as one aspect of the framework that a head teacher can put in place in a school, but aspiration, energy, drive and ensuring that all staff want to get the maximum out of every pupil they come into contact with are also vital. There are other things, but I wanted to focus particularly on discipline.

Unfortunately, a good teacher does not always make a good head teacher, because the two roles require very different skills. I therefore want to ask the Government to examine a system that would allow for greater movement across the senior management team. I am aware of senior managers—members of a school’s top team—who may have had excellent pastoral skills and data manipulation skills, but who have been promoted to the role of head only to find that they did not have the entire skill set to do the job.

Unfortunately, the school and the individual are then left with few options. There is always the nuclear option of going down the competency route, but that is a painful experience for the individual and the school, and it normally results in someone who was a highly skilled professional leaving the service, which means that we have lost a good teacher, their skills and their commitment. Just because someone cannot be a good leader and a head in a school, that does not make them a bad teacher. I would therefore very much like to find a flexible system that would allow someone to recognise that they are perhaps in the wrong role.

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[Stephen Twigg]

I do not believe so. I am relying on the particular table in front of me. In each case, it examines a country that was in the 1995 cohort and the 2007 cohort. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman’s criticism is valid. The hon. Lady’s implied criticism is a fairer one because I was relying on the improvement. She is right to say that, if we look at the absolute score for Japan, it is, in every case, slightly better than ours, but we have made a greater improvement in that period. Interestingly, the United States is behind us on not just improvement but the absolute score in every case.

[Mr Mark Field]

In the midst of this battle over evidence—I accept that evidence is important and that getting the figures right does matter—surely the hon. Gentleman does not disagree with the assertion of my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk that there is a problem. We are going down the league table, although perhaps not by as many places as might have been predicted. More importantly though, there is a lack of rigour in the choice of subjects that the average student is taking for A-level. We are not looking at academic subjects in the way we were in the past, and that is in stark contrast to many of our most important economic rivals in the 21st century.

[Stephen Twigg]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. At the end of the hon. Lady’s speech, she said that there is no contradiction between a high-quality and a high-quantity education system, and that is something with which I passionately agree. I do not necessarily agree with everything that she said in constructing that argument, but I certainly believe that we should be aspiring to that.

Let me take up something that the hon. Lady said and that has also been said by other Government Members. We face a real challenge in changing the attitude of many state comprehensive schools to getting their brightest kids into Oxbridge. As someone who went from a comprehensive school to Oxford—okay, it was quite a long time ago, as the hon. Gentleman will know—I relied on a particular teacher who mentored and encouraged me. He studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford and I was doing A-level economics. Without him, I am not sure whether I would have made that application. I do not think that that situation has changed as much in the subsequent 25 years as I would like. It is not just about Oxbridge, but if we are rightly to criticise Oxbridge for the comparatively low numbers of state school kids getting in, part of the challenge is for the schools as well as for Oxbridge.

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[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) on securing this extremely important debate. I shall try to make my comments even briefer than you have asked us to, Mr Rosindell. The debate has been very interesting and we have touched on a lot of issues to do with aspiration, but I just want to say a little about education for excellent pupils, a matter about which the Minister and I had a brief exchange on the Floor of the House only yesterday.

It is, I think, in a bid to dampen some of the political furore over tuition fees that fresh debate has recently emerged over access to our best universities. As everyone has been admitting which university they went to, I should say that I, too, was at Oxford but, as I had the misfortune—at least in the eyes of the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan)—of coming from a grammar school, I did not do a Mickey Mouse subject such as PPE, but read law—[Interruption.] Yes, I know, it has been downhill all the way from there.

It has been suggested that the Government would grant permission to charge more than £6,000 a year in fees only to universities willing to widen their intake, and suggestions of measures to avoid penalties have included lowering grade offers and taking background into account when handing out places. We all know that, in practice, that could mean preferring a less-qualified pupil from an inner-city comprehensive over a student with top grades from an independent school. It is not clear how that might objectively be regarded as fair or evidence-based, but I suspect that it was hoped that the airing of such plans might take the sting out of any accusations that the new fees system was making our higher education system too elitist.

I have long contended, and will continue to, that our education system cannot be elitist enough. For far too long, the British attitude has been one of slight embarrassment and discomfort at the notion of high performance, excellence and the pursuit of academic rigour. I am not sure that the rest of the world feels the same, at a time when the likes of India and China are relentlessly pushing forward in global league tables. The two economic superpowers of this century have the pursuit of excellence and academic rigour at the heart of their thinking.

The domestic access-regulation plans have also betrayed an expectation that politicians seem to have had in recent years that our higher education system should somehow miraculously make up for the lack of genuine attainment by children in their primary and secondary-school years, particularly in the state sector. If universities fail to take in students who are not up to the mark, we blame not a child’s upbringing or education but the university itself for being too exclusive.

The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) and I were almost contemporaries at Oxford, and he will remember the outreach efforts that our colleges made almost three decades ago, which have continued—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman went up in 1985 and I went up in 1984, so it was almost three decades ago. Even at that time, tremendous efforts were made by the student union and, more importantly, by colleges via their tutors, to open up access. It is worth putting that on the record.

I do not believe that universities have an innate bias towards students from independent schools, but our top institutions are international leaders with worldwide reputations for excellence, which they aspire to maintain. In their admissions policies, they most pride themselves on recruiting the brightest and best globally. If the brightest and best have a tendency to come from a particular sort of school, we might be wise first to examine the deep shortcomings of the state sector.

That the private education sector has so flourished in recent years is a mark of how many parents have lost faith in the state’s ability to deliver their child a rigorous, thorough and excellent education. When articulate, active parents turn away, local state schools lose the key stakeholders that have traditionally helped to drive improvement. As a result, the poorest and most vulnerable children suffer, and they will not be helped by the state’s facilitating places for them at the best universities if they do not have the tools to make use of such places.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I cannot make a lengthy intervention, but my mind has been shifted somewhat, on the topic that my hon. Friend is addressing, by a visit to King’s College London, one of the universities in his constituency. I urge him to visit the medical department there and see for himself the fantastic work being done with state school students with lower grades who are enrolled on the extended medical degree. They struggle not with the science but with some lifestyle factors which, with additional support, they are able to overcome.

[Mr Field]

I very much accept that. I have visited King’s College on a number of occasions and get on very well with the authorities there. Funnily enough, a lot of the evidence suggests that medicine is one of the very few subjects in which a lot of the comparators about school performance and expected academic performance at degree level break down to a certain extent. I suspect that King’s had that very much in mind when it set up its very innovative and important programme.

It seems to me, however, that the relentless focus of the Minister, who I know has a passion for driving up standards, should be on giving state sector students the tools they need to compete on a level playing field with their peers in the independent sector, and I admire a lot of the work that he is doing in that regard. He instinctively understands the damage that has been done in recent years by the levelling down of standards and opportunities to the lowest common denominator that has so entrenched underachievement. I particularly praise him for his emphasis on phonics, which is an essential learning tool. Given my experience of day-to-day life with a three-and-a-half-year-old son, I can entirely vouch for what the Minister has said on that matter. In some respects, however, the Government could be more radical in promoting choice and competition in the state sector.

Yesterday, I spoke briefly in the House about the importance of looking after the special educational needs of the most gifted children in the state sector, in the same way as we strive to help children who are less gifted, because all too often their needs are ignored. My words provoked an e-mail later that afternoon from a teacher in Norfolk:

“What a breath of fresh air it was for me, as a retired educator, to hear your intervention. My wife and I are both graduate teachers who have experienced at first hand the consequences of an absence of special provision for the brightest of our pupils, to the serious detriment of their educational development and realisation of their full potential, not to mention that of wider society. The needs of the talented must be formally brought under the SEN purview and schools and Ofsted should be expressly required to give as much attention to these needs as to those of lower achievers.”

I ask the Minister to give greater consideration to that issue. We want to retain the most gifted students in our state schools, bring them to their full potential and use them as exemplars for other students, so that a golden thread of aspiration is sewn through each and every school, as has been suggested by a number of other Members.

I am the product of a grammar school, and I remember various episodes when I was there that allowed me to aspire to the university place to which my parents could never aspire, and also to running my own business, becoming professionally qualified and eventually becoming a Member of this House. We must push pupils upwards and not hold back their talents.

I finish this brief contribution by returning to a theme that runs through so many of my speeches, but which nevertheless is important to drive home once again. Our wont in recent years has been to tinker with our educational system to engineer particular social outcomes, but the attitudes of our competing nations could not be more different; my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk covered that matter skilfully and in great detail. It is that sense of being in a highly competitive globalised world that will, and should, remain an important element of all our thinking. One need look only at the high number of highly skilled school leavers and graduates, not just in India and China but in Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, to understand that the world is not waiting for Britain to churn out the brightest and best any more.

In my 10 years as a local MP, I have regularly visited primary and secondary schools and higher education establishments to talk to students. Contrary to the negative image of young people sometimes portrayed in the media, I am always impressed by students’ sharp and inquisitive minds. Our country is brimming with talent, including here in our inner cities. That talent exists to be developed and can compete with the likes of India and China in the decades ahead, but that will happen only if we pursue excellence relentlessly and equip our young people with the tools to take on their peers. We do everyone a disservice by suggesting that there are shortcuts in this world.

Education Bill

Mark Field Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

I will speak first to new clause 1, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller), and new clause 13, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah), who both served, alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland), on the Bill Committee. I welcome the strong support for the Government’s expansion of the academies programme that lies behind both new clauses. There are now more than 650 academies, more than two thirds of which have opened since September 2010, and that is equivalent to more than two every working day. I am proud that the coalition has achieved this pace of expansion in its first year in office. I believe that it is vital to ensure that the benefits of academy status are used to address underperformance in our education system.

As my hon. Friends will know from their scrutiny in Committee, the Bill includes measures to strengthen the Secretary of State’s power to intervene in underperforming schools. We are strengthening those powers to ensure that we can take the necessary action to invite an effective academy sponsor to transform a school where children are receiving an unacceptably low standard of education and the governing body and the local authority are reluctant to intervene.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bedford mentioned exclusions, special educational needs and, in particular, children with autism. I welcome his support for the Green Paper on special educational needs and disability. He is right to raise those issues. I, along with officials, recently met the Special Educational Consortium to discuss the matter. I look forward to continued discussion with it on the Bill as it progresses through the House and another place. He rightly highlighted the fact that even with the Bill’s new provisions, many schools will still not be eligible for intervention, despite performing below the minimum floor standard. Ofsted’s inspection judgments in recent years have not always paid sufficient attention to the quality of teaching when identifying schools that require special measures or a notice to improve. I welcome the fact that the changes to the inspection framework proposed by Ofsted start to address that issue.

I share my hon. Friend’s concern that no excuses should be made for low standards. He may be right that the current proposals do not go far enough in allowing my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to intervene swiftly in schools that perform below the minimum floor standard. However, we need to be sure that, in any changes we make, there are appropriate safeguards in place for schools to ensure that the Secretary of State is not left open to legal challenge that might continue to frustrate the conversion process.

On new clauses 1 and 13, I sympathise with my hon. Friends’ desire to ensure that unnecessary hurdles do not get in the way of the efficient transformation of poorly performing schools. However, there is a need to ensure appropriate safeguards. We have been convinced by the weight of opinion across both Houses that appropriate local consultation should inform conversion to academy status. The ability to disapply such requirements when converting poorly performing schools, as proposed in new clause 1, is not something we are seeking. For those reasons I cannot accept the new clause.

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Does the Minister not recognise some of the concerns felt by Government Members? One of the fundamental problems is that often there are not articulate parents who can make the difference in those failing schools and provide the safeguard to ensure that children’s need are properly looked after. It is for that reason alone that we would like some additional powers in the hands of the Secretary of State, along the lines of those outlined new clause 1.

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I am not unsympathetic to the views he expresses. I know how concerned he is about educational standards, and the Government are committed to raising standards throughout the system, particularly in inner-city districts, such as those he represents, where there are areas of deprivation that are not well served by schools.

We believe, however, that we do have significant powers. It is always open to argument that more are needed, but we believe that there are sufficient powers, and the Department, headed by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, is determined to raise standards and is actively seeking sponsors to take over the leadership of schools that do not provide the necessary quality of education. The pressure, help and assistance coming from the Department means that people will be able to make proposals—more articulately than I am being at the moment—locally, but that does not mean that, at the same time as an academy proposal is going forward, there should not be a consultation process enabling all local people to put their views forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

I share that view. There is too much sectarianism in education. There should be more working between the independent sector and the state sector. I should like us to look at the methods that are used in the independent sector to see what can be learned from it. Indeed, many of those in the independent sector tell me that they want to learn from what is happening in some of the best schools in the state sector. There should be greater movement between the two sectors, and we are committed to that. We share the views of Lord Adonis and Anthony Seldon in the article that they jointly wrote for today’s edition of The Times.

[Mr Mark Field]

The Minister refers to principles. Does he accept my view that an important academic and educational principle is that it is as important to look after the special educational needs of the most gifted academic children as it is to look after the needs of those who are less gifted? The concern expressed by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) in his new clause is that all too often the special educational needs of some of the most gifted are ignored.

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend is right. We need to ensure that our comprehensive schools are genuinely catering for children of all abilities, and that those able children are as well catered for in comprehensive schools as they are in schools that specialise in children of that ability, whether in the independent sector or the state sector. The point I was making to the right hon. Member for Birkenhead and to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) is that the state sector has many examples of where such children are extremely well catered for, and that is why some schools in the state sector have very high levels of entrance to Oxbridge and to Russell group universities. It is our view that if it can be done in those schools, it can be done throughout the state sector. We are determined to have a state education system that can deliver a high-quality education for children of all abilities, including the children that my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) mentioned.

The hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) asked about unnecessary referrals to alternative provision academies or to pupil referral units generally. There are three routes by which pupils can be referred to a PRU: first, through section 19 of the Education Act 1996 on placements by local authorities; secondly, through section 100 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006, which was introduced by the Government of whom he was a member, under a duty on schools and academies to provide education for pupils on fixed-term exclusions of more than five days; and thirdly, through section 29A of the Education Act 2002, under which a maintained school can direct a pupil to be educated off-site for the purpose of improving behaviour. Each of those routes carries its own safeguards, which will remain in place. That will ensure that alternative provision academies will provide for pupils who can most benefit from that provision.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham talked about the need to ensure that there are sufficient places in primary schools, particularly in rural areas. We recognise that the large increase in the number of children of primary school age means that more schools are needed. We have made the funding available to meet that increase, and the academy free schools programme will add to that provision. We are very well aware of these issues. The birth rate has been increasing since 2001, and we are absolutely determined to ensure that there are sufficient places.

With those few comments, I commend new clause 20 to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

New clause 20 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

New Clause 21

Charges at boarding Academies

‘After section 10 of AA 2010 insert—

“10A Charges at boarding Academies

(1) This section applies where—

(a) a registered pupil at an Academy is provided with board and lodging at the Academy, and

(b) the local authority for the pupil’s area is satisfied that either condition A or condition B is met.

(2) Condition A is that education suitable to the pupil’s age, ability and aptitude, and to any special educational needs the pupil may have, cannot otherwise be provided for the pupil.

(3) Condition B is that payment of the full amount of the charges in respect of the board and lodging would involve financial hardship to the pupil’s parent.

(4) If the authority is satisfied that condition A is met, the authority must pay the full amount of the charges in respect of the board and lodging to the proprietor of the Academy.

(5) If the authority is satisfied that condition B is met, the authority must pay to the proprietor of the Academy so much of the charges in respect of the board and lodging as, in the opinion of the authority, is needed to avoid financial hardship to the pupil’s parent.

(6) The proprietor of the Academy must remit the charges that would otherwise be payable by the pupil’s parent, to the extent that it receives a payment from the local authority in respect of those charges under subsection (4) or (5).”’.—(Mr Gibb.)

Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.

English for Speakers of Other Languages

Mark Field Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Heidi Alexander]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Later in my speech, I have some testimony from Lewisham college students who make precisely that point—that to improve and, indeed, to make the best progress possible, there needs to be continuity of learning.

I was talking about the latest guidance note from the Skills Funding Agency. While I am on that subject, I would like to ask the Minister a few more questions. In particular, why is the Department treating ESOL differently from other basic skills training and foundation learning? In paragraph 47 of the latest Skills Funding Agency note, the Government state that where a learner has an entitlement to a level 2 qualification, entry or level 1 aims will be fully funded to facilitate progression. However, the note also states that skills for life, including ESOL, are exempt from that provision. Will the Minister tell me why? Simply saying, as guidance note 7 does, that guidance note 6 deals with that is not an answer to my question.

It is remarkable that colleges and training providers may not be able to spend money that has been allocated to address basic skills because of the new co-financing requirements that the Government are introducing. That just does not make sense.

I will turn now to some of the wider arguments about why investment in ESOL courses is so important. In the last few days, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research has estimated that eastern European immigration has added £4.9 billon to the UK’s gross domestic product. Surely having more people able to speak the language and able to work is a good thing. The alternative is more dependence on the state and a greater outlay on benefits. That is before we start to think about the knock-on effects of poor language ability on the public purse.

In April, a series of freedom of information requests to London hospitals showed that in the three years from 2007 to 2010, £15 million was spent by seven different hospitals on interpreters and translators. We know that other parts of the public sector, whether councils or the Courts Service, have similarly high bills. Again, I find myself in the strange position of agreeing with a Minister. This time, it is the Minister for Immigration, who is quoted in connection with that story as saying:

“This illustrates very starkly why we need to do more to ensure that those people who are settled in this country can speak basic English.”

Will the Minister responsible for skills tell me what discussions he has had with the Minister for Immigration about the impact of his changes to ESOL? Has he told the Minister for Immigration that his Department’s changes will result in fewer people being able to speak basic English? It is not just the NHS that is affected.

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a very powerful case with which most of us would agree. Given the financial constraints that the Government find themselves under because of the general economic situation, will she accept that for every pound that she would like to be restored to the budget for ESOL, a pound should be taken away from translation along the lines that she has suggested?

[Heidi Alexander]

This issue is so important and has such knock-on effects that investment in English language courses is fundamental. That is why I have called for the debate today.

I was making some points about the wider societal importance of English language skills and had spoken about the NHS. Let us think now about schools and what happens to many children who grow up without English as their mother tongue. They go to primary schools and hundreds of teachers throughout the country do a sterling job in improving their language skills and helping them to integrate with their classmates. Then they go home, where perhaps they revert to speaking the language of their mother and father. Is it not much better for those children to be able to hear both their parents speaking English—perhaps not all the time, but at least so that they can see and hear that their parents can speak the language? Is it not much better for their parents to be able to understand the letter from school, to be able to speak to the teachers and to be able to contribute to the wider school community?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) on securing this important debate. She spoke in a heartfelt way, although some hyperbolic concerns have been expressed by some of her colleagues.

I want to offer my input as a Government Member with an inner-London seat. I share the concerns that have been expressed about the unintended consequences at the margins of some of the proposals, and I will be listening to the Minister with interest. Westminster Kingsway college in my constituency does a tremendous job not only for my constituents but for other central London authorities.

As the Minister shadowed his role in opposition for some years, he fully understands elements of the skills gap. He is passionate about what he is trying to achieve in what has been the Cinderella area of further education for many years. We will see some tremendous advantages from some of the deep-seated work that he has done in the area. He recognises the importance of English language skills, and I hope that he will work through all the unintended consequences of the financial implications. I expect that he will say more on that point.

We are living in difficult financial straits. In the exchange that I had earlier with the hon. Member for Lewisham East, I was sincere in saying that there has been a tremendous amount of waste in translation services not only in our hospitals but in local authorities. Conservative local authorities have been equally big offenders, with huge amounts of money spent on translating masses of literature into umpteen languages. I have seen that both in Westminster and in the next-door authority of Kensington and Chelsea, where I was a councillor for eight years. I made these points time and again during the late 1990s about the amount of money being spent in rather more clement economic weather—I was not trying to be flippant and we have got to think about that. Is there a way in which we can make distinct savings and ring-fence money saved on translation services to be put into ESOL?

In the 10 years in which I have been an MP in inner London, I have always stood up for English language courses. I have always said, whenever I have been lobbied—particularly by the large Bangladeshi and Chinese communities in my constituency—about courses in their home language, that I do not believe it right for public money to be spent in that area. However, where there is a need—there clearly is—for English language skills in those communities, we should do all that we can. I accept we are living in a very different economic environment and that money is tight.

I take on board what the hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward) had to say. This issue transcends further education; it is an issue of community cohesion, and we must take it extremely seriously. If that means the Minister knocking some heads together in the Home Office to ensure that we can parcel elements of this budget, it would be a sensible way forward.

I hope that the Minister will take on board some of the heartfelt concerns expressed today. I accept that we are in such a difficult financial state that we have to make some difficult decisions and that this is one of them. However, I hope that we can look at community cohesion in a much broader way, and I also hope that the Minister will work with other Ministers.

I look forward to hearing other contributions to the debate. I hope that we can all work together, and that it is not a matter of making hyperbolic claims about the Government being somewhat racist or sexist. We all recognise that there are difficult decisions to be made, and I hope that we can work together in the interests of community cohesion and of making life better for many millions of immigrants who are committed to this country. Many of them were equally committed to the events on the streets of London last Friday. It was great to see many coloured faces of people who recognise that the royal family represents all their interests in a way that no political party can purport to do.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Mark Field Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

That is a different issue, and capital will be available to deal with the increasing population of young children. The birth rate is increasing, which means that new capacity will be required in some areas, and those capital costs will be met. I thought that the hon. Lady was making a slightly different point—that some very popular schools are over-subscribed because parents from a wider area try to get their children in, crowding out local children in some circumstances. We want to ensure that parents are happy with the quality, as well as the quantity, of provision.

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

The Minister will be aware that there are specific issues in inner London, particularly given the massive increase in population mobility and local authorities’ policy of encouraging families in. There are therefore some issues specific to central London that the Minister needs to be aware of as he puts this policy in place.

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that important issue on behalf of his constituents, which he has raised before in Westminster Hall debates. I am aware of it, we are concerned about it and I can assure him it will be dealt with.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall raised a number of issues. In particular, he talked about monitoring schools and asked about the Young People’s Learning Agency. I reassure him that it will have the capacity to monitor academies’ performance as the number of academies increases over the years. He also asked about buying back services from local authorities. That is very much part of the model. Just because a school opts to become an academy, it does not mean that it will sever its links with the local authority, or will not continue to use local authority services. Local authorities that provide high-quality services are more likely to be able to sell them to academies.

I listened carefully to my hon. Friend’s comments, and will continue to reflect on his arguments, but I make three points, which are best summed up by the Minister in the other place, my noble Friend Lord Hill:

“First…we believe that the number of primaries that will convert in the very first wave is likely to be very modest. Secondly, the Secretary of State has made it clear that he will keep the situation under review and learn any lessons from the first primary converters.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 6 July 2010; Vol. 720, c. 127.]

His third point was that there will be an annual report to Parliament on the progress of academies policy. Noble Lords from my hon. Friend’s party managed to persuade the Minister in the other place to put that requirement on the statute book. That report is precisely the vehicle through which to consider the impact of academies policy on primary schools.

Having made those few remarks, I very much hope that I have persuaded the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend not to press their amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Mr Mark Field]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

He’s only just started.

[Mr Field]

Well, my point is actually rather important, because many of us fundamentally differ in our objectives for the education system and in our feelings about what it is there to achieve. The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) made a very impassioned speech, but we should not be fooled, because some of us have very different objectives. Some of us do not feel that an egalitarian and equal education for every single child is necessarily the right way forward. Some Government Members feel very strongly that, given the global world in which we will compete in the decades ahead, we should look at an elitist education in order to ensure that our brightest and best have the very best opportunities without having to rely upon the wealth of their parents.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vernon Coaker]

I was quoting earlier from point 20 in the equalities impact assessment.

Let me try to make some progress. This set of amendments is extremely important. Allowing outstanding schools to fast-track to becoming academies raises all sorts of questions and concerns right across the Committee. What will it mean for admissions? We are told, “Trust the funding agreement.” What will it mean for exclusions? We are told, “Trust the funding agreement.” Grammar schools are to become part of the academy world. We are told, “Don’t worry, it won’t mean more selection. Don’t worry, it won’t mean more selective places.”

It is clear from the answers we have been given and the evidence before us that grammar schools becoming academies will lead to more selection. It is clear that, without its being made explicit in the Bill that there is a requirement to abide by the various codes and the legal framework in respect of exclusions and admissions, over the next few years we will see an expansion of selection and of exclusions from the intakes into certain schools—or, more likely, non-admittance—and a more socially exclusive education system. We all want increased attainment and our young people to achieve the very best they can, but we cannot do that by creating what this Bill in effect creates at its heart: a two-tier education system.

[Mr Mark Field]

I will not detain the Committee for long as I know we have a lot more business to get on with. I want to speak to amendment 49, which is in my name and those of my hon. Friends the Members for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon), for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady) and for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing). My hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West went into the amendment in great detail, and I agree with every word that he had to say.

In many ways, ultimately this is a philosophical debate that fires up many of us. We have all had our own experiences, and I was sorry to learn from the contribution of the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) that she has only negative thoughts about her admission to a grammar school. I am the product of the grammar school system, although I must confess that I cannot even remember the day I got in. However, I do remember various episodes while I was there that allowed me to aspire to the university place that my parents could never aspire to, and to aspire to running my own business, becoming professionally qualified and eventually becoming a Member of this House.

That was an opportunity for me, because my parents could not have afforded to send me to one of a range of independent schools within a few miles of us. I do not suggest for one minute that my experience was of an entirely open school, but there were people attending the school who lived in social housing. An element of selection is a healthy aspect of the choice that should be available to all parents, and to children of all abilities, in our society.