Grant-maintained Schools (Hansard, 12 February 1991)

§ 2. Mr. Norris
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science how many schools have achieved grant-maintained status.

§ 10. Mr. Anthony Coombs
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science how many schools have become grant maintained since the passing of the Education Reform Act.

§ The Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Kenneth Clarke)
Fifty schools are now operating as grant-maintained schools compared with 20 this time last year. My predecessor and I have approved a further 10 applications.

§ Mr. Norris
I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for that reply. Does he agree that grant-maintained status is ideal for mature and well-managed schools that want and deserve greater control over their affairs and that local management of schools has proved to countless head teachers just how popular the concept is? Is not it extraordinary that the Opposition apparently want to deny that greater freedom of choice to schools, parents and pupils?

§ Mr. Clarke
I agree with my hon. Friend. Mr. Simpson, the headmaster of Wilson's school, Sutton, has said that grant-maintained status is an unqualified success and he is happy with it. He and many other heads are finding that being in proper control of their schools is an exciting prospect. Grant-maintained status is popular with staff and parents and many of those schools are heavily over-subscribed with applicants. Following the success of the first grant-maintained schools, many more will apply for that status. I share my hon. Friend's belief that it is extraordinary that the Labour party should still be organising such persistent campaigns in defence of nothing more than local authority bureaucracy.

§ Mr. Anthony Coombs
I welcome the expansion in grant-maintained schools, which is due to their popularity with parents, but will my right hon. and learned Friend reflect on the fact that in opposing grant-maintained schools and almost every other choice in education, including the independent sector, city technology colleges and grammar schools, the Labour party is really telling parents, "You will get what we deign to give you and, effectively, there will be no choice whatever"?

§ Mr. Clarke
I agree with my hon. Friend. The Labour party has consistently opposed giving more autonomy and independence to the management of individual schools, thereby opposing schools becoming more responsive to parents and the local community. Its attitude towards the assisted places scheme and CTCs shows that envy overcomes all appreciation of academic excellence in our schools.

§ Mr. O'Hara
Will the Secretary of State confirm that the countless numbers of head teachers who have been "delighted" by grant-maintained status is about 50 out of approximately 6,500 eligible in the first year of the scheme? Will he further confirm that it is easy to be delighted by grant-maintained status when one is bribed by the Government to the tune of three, four or in some cases even 10 times the capital expenditure allocation for state schools?

§ Mr. Clarke
I am delighted to tell the hon. Gentleman that another 54 ballots are pending and applications are increasing rapidly. It is indicative of the hon. Gentleman's extraordinary bitterness towards the concept that he uses the term bribery for perfectly sensible funding arrangements. It is extraordinary that he and many of his political friends in local authorities continue to show such bitterness towards local control of schools.

§ Mr. Simon Hughes
The Secretary of State must be honest about the matter. How can he answer the complaints of parents in local education authority achools who, in the Prime Minister's new classless Britain with education at the top of the agenda, know that their schools receive only one third or one quarter of the capital 718 resources of grant-maintained schools? Why do their schools have leaking roofs, unmaintained buildings and a lack of capital while grant-maintained schools get all the money? That is not a classless, equal, fair education system.

§ Mr. Clarke
I am always honest in my replies here and elsewhere. I seek to maintain my George Washington record in these matters. I accept that often when we consider applications for grant-maintained status we find that the schools have been neglected for many years and we pay particlar attention to the capital applications from those schools. The proportion that results is not on the scale that the hon. Gentleman suggests, but when we set up a new, autonomous, grant-maintained school, we should put right the neglect of years and put capital into that school. All that is capital investment in state schools. The capital allocations to local authorities for their maintained schools have been dramatically increased as a result of my predecessor's settlement. There is nothing unfair in what we propose.

§ Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman
Does my right hon. and learned Friend accept that the two out of 50 schools in my constituency which have gone for grant-maintained status are delighted that they have done so? They have been able to appoint new staff and broaden their subject areas and they have got away from the dead hand of the bureaucratic Lancashire county council. They can now choose the courses that they want rather than have them foisted on them by bureaucrats.

§ Mr. Clarke
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. She adds to the growing number of examples of schools where the transition has been a great success. It has given a boost in morale to teachers, parents and everybody associated with such schools and that has led to a big increase in applications from all over the country.

§ Mr. Straw
Is not one reason why, after 12 years of Conservative rule, the British people have less faith in their education system than the people of any other country in Europe have in theirs, the intense and corrupt double standard that the Government operate on the education of the nation's children? Despite what the Secretary of State said, there is bribery to encourage schools to opt out. That is in complete breach of categorical undertakings given by the Secretary of State's predecessors that there would be financial neutrality between the funding of LEAs and grant-maintained schools. As long as this intense discrimination continues, is not it clear that the Prime Minister's conversion to the importance of education is a cynical and hollow sham?

§ Mr. Clarke
I share fully the public's concern about educational standards and it is important that we improve them. I believe that the public's concern is based largely on their reaction to 20 years of the trendy, left-wing, misguided education policies with which the Labour party and its supporters have been closely associated and still are. We are now introducing a national, broad-based curriculum with a proper system of testing and reporting to parents and introducing local management for schools, which will give real authority to teachers and governors, thereby allowing them to put things right in their schools. The hon. Gentleman cheapens the debate by using words like bribery to describe the financial arrangements. He 719 does that to disguise the fact that he has nothing to offer to reverse some of the more unfortunate factors of the past 20 years.