HC Deb 01 February 1994 vol 236 cc725-8
2. Mr. Gill

To ask the Secretary of State for Education what are the financial benefits of grant-maintained status.

The Secretary of State for Education (Mr. John Patten)

The key benefit is that the school controls 100 per cent. of its budget. Decisions can be taken quickly by those who know and care most about the needs of the school. Self-government enables schools to get good value for money and to spend that money where it really counts: in the classroom, on children.

Mr. Gill

In the light of that answer, and given the fact that there is far greater motivation in grant-maintained schools among both pupils and staff, does my right hon. Friend agree that most of the lingering opposition to grant-maintained status is purely ideological?

Mr. Patten

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and, happily, there is no ideological opposition in my hon. Friend's county of Shropshire, where 11 schools were balloted on grant-maintained status and all resulted in overwhelming yes votes.

Mr. Steinberg

Despite the blatant bribes that the Government have made to opt-out schools, and despite the vast amounts of money that have been spent on advertising opt-out schools, the policy is a failure. [HON. MEMBERS: "Question."] The previous Secretary of State for Education told us that there would be an avalanche—

Hon. Members

Question.

Madam Speaker

Order. I must have a question from the hon. Gentleman. It is Question Time, after all.

Mr. Steinberg

The previous Secretary of State told us that there would be an avalanche of schools opting out. That has not happened. [HON. MEMBERS: "Question."] Is the Secretary of State aware that, in my constituency, not one school has opted out? Will he give an assurance that he will continue the ballots for opting out, and that he will not force schools, in particular, secondary schools, to opt out without a parental ballot?

Mr. Patten

The hon. Gentleman does not give good value to the National Union of Teachers for its sponsorship. He cannot even ask a proper joined-up question without prompting from you, Madam Speaker.

We have no intention of changing during this Parliament our general election pledge on the conduct of balloting for grant-maintained schools. I am happy to tell the House that, today, some 530,000 children are being educated in grant-maintained schools—that is about 16 or 17 per cent. of secondary school children. It is a popular and progressive policy.

Mr. Haselhurst

Is my right hon. Friend aware of the financial disbenefits which are beginning to creep in for grant-maintained schools? Local authorities that are dominated by the Labour party and by the Liberal Democrat party are starting to take retaliatory action against them. Is that not typified by Essex county council, which is proposing to withdraw—almost at point blank notice—the boarding allowance for Hockerhill school in Bishops Stortford?

Mr. Patten

That is a disgraceful act; it is typical of the dirty tricks of Lib-Lab councils up and down the land. Only yesterday afternoon I saw one of my hon. Friend's county council colleagues to compIain about exactly that practice in Essex, and only last Friday, when I made a state visit to Swindon, I heard similar compIaints from councillors and teachers at grant-maintained schools there about the actions of the Lib-Lab pact in campaigning viciously and untruthfully not only against grant-maintained schools but against denominational schools. I bet that the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor) does not realise that her friends in Swindon want to stop denominational schooling in Wiltshire, which is a disgrace.

Mr. Don Foster

Does the Secretary of State acknowledge that, in the current advertising campaign— paid for by taxpayers' money—to advocate grant-maintained status for schools, one of the advertisements for Hatchford school states that that grant-maintained school has been able to reallocate its funds for benefits in the classroom? Would it not have been more honest to say that the reallocation has meant that £68,000 was taken from neighbouring schools? Does not that demonstrate a clear breach of his departmental guidelines on advertising information about grant-maintained schools?

Mr. Patten

The hon. Gentleman is entirely wrong—the advertisements contain factual information only. There is a level playing field. There are many differences between grant-maintained schools and maintained schools in terms of how they get their money, whether they have to pay value added tax and whether they can look to the county council or the local education authority to vire money from other capital programmes to capital programmes for grant-maintained schools. The hon. Gentleman must brief himself a bit better. Unless he is careful, I shall pay a state visit to Bath and deal with him.

Mr. Harry Greenway

Does my right hon. Friend agree that there are equal proportions of able, disadvantaged and poor children in grant-maintained schools and state schools, and that, when the Labour party continually attacks those schools, it is attacking poor and disadvantaged children—and it does not care?

Mr. Patten

I do not think that the Labour party has had an original idea in 15 wasted years in opposition. It has not advanced educational thinking one iota. My hon. Friend, with his long experience as a deputy head teacher, is right: our comprehensive grant-maintained schools, which are the majority, produce very strong results with children from all backgrounds.

Mrs. Ann Taylor

Does the Secretary of State realise that parents and school governors, as well as some Conservative councillors, have rumbled him and now realise that the rewards to grant-maintained schools for their political correctness are running out? Will he confirm that two out of three grant-maintained schools have not received any capital allocation whatsoever for the year 1994–95, and that the abolition of cash protection for GM schools means that they will lose £8..2 million in annual maintenance grants? As it is now obvious that Government targets for GM schools will not be reached, will the Secretary of State tell us whether that is why he is threatening to nationalise all secondary schools? What does that say about his respect for parent power—or is he just a bad loser?

Mr. Patten

I do not know how the hon. Lady manages to speak with such apparent authority about grant-maintained schools. I understand—I will of course be corrected if I am wrong—that she has never visited one.

Mrs. Taylor

Yes, I have.

Mr. Patten

I am very sorry. I understood that she had not. I am glad that the hon. Lady has done so, because I would not like those on the Labour Front Bench to carry out a policy of educational apartheid by trying to marginalise grant-maintained schools.

The hon. Lady really cannot criticise a policy of devolving power to parents, which is admired in most of the western world and is one of the most original of our policies of the past 15 years, when, over the same period, there has been no original thinking on education policy from her or her hon. Friends—15 wasted years. If the hon. Lady were subjected to an educational brain scan, there would not be a flicker on the screen.