POWER TO SET LIMITS ON INFANT CLASS SIZES. (Hansard, 15 July 1998)

§ The Minister for School Standards (Mr. Stephen Byers)
I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst)
With this, it will be convenient to discuss Lords amendments Nos. 2, 3, 108, 150, 151, 327, 331, 332 and 408.

§ Mr. Byers
I shall try to be as brief as possible so that the House can spend longer on the issues where there is clearly disagreement about the approach adopted in the House of Lords.
The amendments seek to implement the recommendations of the Deregulation Committee that a class size limit of 30 should appear in the Bill. The amendments achieve that objective, which the Government support. They also provide that the time limit by which the class size pledge should be introduced should be the year 2001–02. That is the legal deadline, as it were, by which the class size pledge should be introduced.
432 As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment said this afternoon, we intend to introduce that pledge from September 2001, although, as a result of the comprehensive spending review, we will be able to provide resources to local education authorities and Church authorities to allow them to implement the pledge from September 2000, if that is their wish. The amendments meet the requirements of the Deregulation Committee, and I commend them to the House.

§ Mrs. Theresa May (Maidenhead)
I assure the Minister that I do not intend to delay proceedings on technical matters, although there are a number of groupings of amendments—where it is proposed not to disagree with the Lords—where we will wish to make some comments. We have had lively debates about class sizes on a number of occasions, and I will not reopen the issue as a whole.
I note in passing that there are no fewer than 260 Government amendments from the Lords. The Government have been amending the Bill right up to the last minute—they have constantly had to make changes—which suggests that they did not think through all its practical implications.
I have two questions on class sizes. They have been put to Ministers and to the Secretary of State in various debates, but we have not yet received answers to them. The first is technical; I was asked it by a head teacher when I visited a school in my constituency on Monday. The hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) asked the same question in the Opposition Supply day debate on class sizes, but, as I recall, he did not receive a response. It concerns the definition of a class that contains mixed ages. When does a class of five and six-year-olds or of six and seven-year-olds—or, after the infant stage, of seven and eight-year-olds—count as one to which the 30 limit applies? When a class contains a mixture of seven and eight-year-olds, will it be the majority of children's ages that count in determining whether the limit applies?
The second question is not technical; it goes to the heart of whether the Government can implement their class size pledge. The Minister will know that many people have raised the matter of parental choice. The Local Government Association has made it clear that the class size pledge can be implemented only by a reduction in parental choice. Will the Minister reassure the House—he and the Secretary of State were asked this in the Opposition Supply day debate—that children will not be turned away from a school that their parents want them to attend because of the class size limit of 30?

§ Mr. Byers
The 260 Government amendments have improved the Bill; very often, they were tabled as a result of the comments made by Opposition Members. We make no apology for that, as we believe that the Bill is now far better because of the changes that we have been prepared to make along the way after listening to Opposition Members, to the Churches and to parents. By working in partnership, we now have a Bill that will introduce a new school structure framework that has broad and popular support—that is why I very much commend the Bill to the House.
The Bill will create a legal requirement on local education authorities to produce plans to reduce class sizes. The hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) will 433 know that we have sent out regulations for consultation; if she looks carefully at them, she will see that there is a clear requirement that local authorities will have to give regard to the expression of parental preference in bringing forward their plans for the Secretary of State, and that the Secretary of State will not approve plans that do not give regard to parental preference.
Conservative legislation never stipulated parental choice; it provided for an ability to express parental preference. We have made it clear that the expression of parental preference, which we are retaining, will not be hindered in any way by the introduction of the Bill's measures on class sizes.
The hon. Member for Maidenhead also asked what constituted a class for five, six and seven-year-olds. The definition is contained in the Bill; I cannot lay my hands on it immediately, but I shall write to her and give her the reference. With those comments, I hope that we can agree to the Lords amendments.