Education (Grants and Awards) Bill (Hansard, 29 March 1984)

§ The Earl of Swinton
My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons Reason for disagreeing to the Lords Amendment be now considered.

§ The Earl of Swinton
My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth not insist on the amendment to the Bill with which the Commons have disagreed. Your Lordships will see from the paper that the Commons 347 disagreed to the amendment proposed by the Lords for the following reason: Because it would alter the financial arrangements made by the Commons, and the Commons do not offer any further Reason trusting that this Reason may be deemed sufficient. You will see that the other place have taken the view that this amendment infringes their financial privilege and have indicated that they do not wish to waive their privilege in this instance. The amendment was, however, fully debated and rejected in the other place on its merits, and the Government firmly support this rejection. In the interests of brevity, I do not propose to reiterate the Government's objections at this stage. However, I should make it abundantly clear that I am not hiding behind the cloak of Commons privilege, and I am more than willing to reply to any points raised. I beg to move.

§ Baroness David
My Lords. I understand that before our amendment after Clause 3, inserting the new clause which reads: No money provided under this Act shall be used in any school where admission is based on selective examination or sets of tests of ability. was discussed in another place, Mr. Speaker drew attention to the fact that Commons privileges were involved. I understand it is very seldom that this happens—in fact, it last happened six years ago, in 1978, when the Parliamentary Pensions Bill was going through Parliament—but that when it does happen it is customary for this House to accept the decision of the Speaker, and we shall therefore not disagree with the Commons in their disagreement to the amendment.
However, that does not prevent me from saying a few words on the merits of the case. I cannot agree with the Secretary of State when he said in his speech (as reported at col. 857 of the Official Report of 19th March): The amendment is simply a device to further the objective of Opposition Members to eliminate all forms of selective secondary education". Our intention was that education support grants should not be used in schools where entry was based on selective examination; that is to say, we wanted the grants for innovation and experiment in the curricu-lum to be used in comprehensive schools. As the number of grammar schools remaining in the country was only 175 at the beginning of January 1983 and is probably slightly less now—the number has declined by over a quarter since 1979—it does not seem unreasonable that what the noble Earl has repeatedly referred to as not a large sum of money (£33 million) should be spent where the greatest numbers of pupils attend—the 5,000 or so secondary schools where entry is not based on tests of ability. A very wide choice therefore remains. It seemed right to us that the attempts to improve the quality and range of educational opportunities that Sir Keith said he wanted should be made where by far the greatest numbers of pupils were. Now nearly 90 per cent. of children are in comprehensive schools.
348 However, we have had the assurance from Sir Keith, that we are not proposing that education support grants be used to enable local education authorities to set up new grammar schools". So we shall have to be content with that. We shall of course be watching with the greatest interest exactly on what, and where, the new powers given to the Secretary of State and the department will be used, and we shall have the opportunity to comment on the proposals when they come before us in the form of regulations, as Clause 3 of the Bill says they must.

§ Lord Alexander of Potterhill
My Lords, I am very surprised that this matter should be pursued so strongly. For myself, I am very grateful for the fact that I went to a grammar school, and I have a feeling that a good many noble Lords who sit on these Benches owe where they are a great deal to the fact that they went to grammar schools. Recently the Opposition has been very strong in defence of the freedom of local authorities. It is the freedom of local authorities to decide whether to have grammar schools, and I am very sad that the Opposition should seek to punish those who make that decision by moving an amendment of this kind. Surely if there are children in grammar schools—

§ Baroness David
My Lords, may I please interrupt? I am not quite sure whether the noble Lord, Lord Alexander, has understood that we are not disagreeing with the Commons in their disagreement.

§ Lord Alexander of Potterhill
No, my Lords, but what the Opposition is suggesting in the amendment is that if there is in a grammar school a child who would benefit by a project which the local authority is undertaking—for example, relating to handicapped children, or other similar purpose—that child should be debarred from benefiting from the Bill. That I find deplorable.

§ The Earl of Swinton
My Lords, I think that I must answer one point that the noble Baroness made about this matter, and I am very glad to hear that she is not going to press it. She said that there are only 175 grammar schools in the country. That, I think, is the case, but even though there are only 175 there would be quite a lot of children who would be debarred if the Opposition decided to press this point.
Of course, were the clause to have been enacted as part of the Bill it would have been for the courts, ultimately, to rule on its precise meaning and applica-tion to particular schools. However, it seems clear to me that under this clause no part of education support grants could have been used to support any activity in a sixth-form college that based its admission on pupils' performance at O-level. After all, an O-level examination is a test of ability.
It is also arguable that an 11 to 18 school, for example, which admitted pupils into its sixth form from other schools on the basis of their O-level results might have been similarly excluded, and that exclusion would have applied not just to its sixth form but to the whole school. A further possible interpretation is that, within a local selected school system of grammar and secondary modern schools, the secondary modern schools as well as the grammar 349 schools might have been ruled out for ESG purposes. In such circumstances it could well be argued that the admission of a pupil to a secondary modern school is as much based on a test of his ability as is the admission of a pupil to a grammar school.
Finally, there would have been grave room for doubt about whether secondary schools maintained by ILEA might have been excluded by this amendment. The system of banding operated by ILEA depends partly upon primary pupils' performance in a verbal reasoning test. As I understand it, the test partly determines the proportions of children from each primary school going into each band of ability, and those proportions in turn affect admissions to individ-ual secondary schools. It therefore might well have been argued that ILEA's policy on admissions to secondary schools is based to an extent upon a test of ability, though the objective of that policy is of course to achieve a spread of ability in each school.
I do not think that I need go on at length, and the noble Baroness said that she was not going to do so. But while she spoke about only the children in 175 grammar schools being excluded, had the Opposition insisted on this amendment I think she would have found that it affected very many thousands of children throughout the country.