HC Deb 21 March 1995 vol 257 cc137-8
12. Mr. David Evans

To ask the Secretary of State for Education how many schools have applied for grant-maintained status. [13253]

Mr. Robin Squire

To date, 1,157 schools have published proposals to acquire grant-maintained status. A further 15 schools are currently under a duty to publish such proposals following "yes" votes in parental ballots.

Mr. Evans

I thank the Minister for that reply. Is he a member of the Transport and General Workers Union? Does he agree with me that if the 1 million members of the TGWU had gone to grant-maintained schools, preferably the Oratory, they might have been prepared to support Bambi, the leader of that lot on the Opposition Benches, in rewriting clause IV?

Mr. Squire

My hon. Friend, in his typically understated way, has put his finger on it. Although I am not a member of the TGWU, what is good enough for its members and for those sponsored by it should be good enough for and on offer to all parents. That will happen as self-governing schools become the norm under the Government.

Mrs. Mahon

Are not the Minister and the Government engaged in a huge bribery exercise? Surely that is why the Government have given more than £400,000 for the capital building programme to just one grant-maintained school in Calderdale, Holy Trinity, while the remaining LEA schools have just £125,000 to spend between them for 1995–96. How do the Minister and the Government justify such blatant discrimination against LEA schools?

Mr. Squire

The hon. Lady is wrong. As my hon. Friend the Minister of State said a moment ago, capital programmes for LEA schools will increase by more than 6 per cent. next year.

Mrs. Mahon

Not in Calderdale.

Mr. Squire

The hon. Lady suggests that Calderdale is treated differently from the rest of the country; of course it is not. Capital allocations for LEA or GM schools are treated on the same basis. If she visits the GM schools in her constituency or in Calderdale she will generally find that, far from being bribed to become grant maintained, schools are pleased to become GM and they would not dream of doing anything differently.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman

Did my hon. Friend see the news item in last Tuesday's Evening Standard, which proved conclusively that support for grant-maintained status is not confined to Conservatives? Eric Hammond, a well-known trade union leader, said quite categorically that it was not in the interests of the school in his area to be part of an expensive bureaucracy such as Lancashire county council.

Mr. Squire

My hon. Friend, in her inimitable fashion, adds her voice and her own references to the examples that have already been given of prominent socialists who have seen the light and who are now embracing the advantages of grant-maintained status. We can only wait until all Labour Members take that view and, more particularly, encourage their local supporters to remove their tanks from the lawns of schools whose only crime is to seek to run themselves.