Self-government for Schools

HL Deb 25 June 1996 vol 573 cc789-802

4.35 p.m.

The Minister of State, Department for Education and Employment (Lord Henley)

My Lords, with the leave of the House I shall now repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment. The Statement is as follows:

"With permission, Madam Speaker, I should like to make a Statement on the White Paper which the Government are publishing today on extending self-government for schools. Copies are available in the Vote Office and in the Libraries of both Houses.

"The Government's education reforms have one central aim: to raise standards in schools. To achieve that, we have put in place a framework based on four elements: first, the national curriculum, linked to regular testing at seven, 11 and 14, and regular inspection of schools, so that there is a common understanding of what children should be learning, and what standards they can be expected to achieve.

"The second is greater accountability and transparency so that parents, governors and the wider community know how the system is performing. We have published secondary school performance tables, and will publish primary school tables from next spring. We have ensured that all school inspection reports are published. We have ensured that schools provide parents with regular reports on the school and on their children's progress.

"The third is more choice for parents and more diversity among schools. Church schools, grammar schools and others have long provided some choice for some parents. But we wanted more parents to be able to choose from a range of good schools the education which will best suit the abilities, interests and needs of their children.

"Thus we introduced the assisted places scheme. We set up the 15 city technology colleges. We have helped 180 schools develop their strengths in particular subjects by becoming technology colleges and language colleges. We have given all schools the chance to become grant-maintained. So far, more than 1,100 schools have done so.

"The fourth is more freedom and independence for schools, within this framework of accountability and parental choice, to run their own affairs. All local authority schools now control a high proportion of their budgets so that they can match their spending to their own priorities. All schools now have their own governing body, representing parents and the local community, and are responsible for overseeing the running of the school. Grant maintained schools which have opted out of LEA control have greater freedom to manage their budgets, their staffing, their premises and their future development.

"Standards, accountability, choice for parents, freedom for schools—a great deal has been achieved. We have a clear and comprehensive framework for raising performance across the board.

"Now we need to take the next step. Schools have gained experience and skill in handling their own affairs. They have shown that they can use that freedom well. So today's White Paper sets out a range of new measures to build on the framework we have put in place, particularly to give schools more freedom and parents more choice.

"We propose action in four areas: first, to give local authority schools more control of their budgets; secondly, to give grant-maintained schools more freedom in developing the education they provide; thirdly, to define more clearly the role of LEAs in supporting schools; and fourthly, to encourage more choice and more diversity, including through more selection of pupils.

"First, as regards more freedom for local authority schools to decide how to spend their budgets, delegation of school budgets and local management of schools have been a great success. LMS helps schools get better value for money and to match resources to their own priorities.

"We propose to bring more spending items within the global budget which LEAs use to set individual budgets for schools. And we intend to increase from 85 per cent. to 95 per cent. the proportion of that global budget which LEAs must delegate to schools. These steps would increase by some £1.3 billion the resources which LEAs are required to pass on to schools. Since many LEAs are already delegating more than the 85 per cent. minimum requirement, that is an extra £600 million, or some £90 per pupil, over what schools are currently getting in their budgets.

"Secondly, the White Paper proposes more freedoms for grant-maintained schools. Despite the Opposition's continuing hostility to giving schools the right to govern themselves, we now have over 1,100 grant-maintained schools. They include many of the best state schools in the country.

"The Government intend that grant-maintained status should continue to offer the fullest independence possible. We want to give grant-maintained schools more power to change what they do in response to local needs without seeking central approval. They would be free to increase their numbers by up to 50 per cent., and to open new nursery classes and sixth forms. We also want to give grant-maintained schools the choice to take on new functions currently undertaken by LEAs, such as running their own pupil transport.

"Thirdly, the White Paper sets out a clearer, tighter definition of the functions of local education authorities. LEAs would continue to have a role in providing services which schools cannot carry out for themselves. That includes, for example, drawing up statements for children with special educational needs. But it is not for LEAs to control what schools do. Each school should decide for itself how to operate. That includes deciding what support services it wants to buy, from the LEA or elsewhere.

"Hand in hand with that freedom goes an obligation on each school to account for its own performance. Responsibility for its standards rests with each school, not with the LEA. LEAs do, however, have a role in supporting schools in their efforts to raise standards. That includes working with schools in setting targets for improvement and intervening where Ofsted has found that schools are failing to provide an adequate education.

"LEAs in their turn must carry out these functions effectively. The record of LEAs has, to say the least, been mixed. So the Government will be looking to develop better mechanisms for assessing the effectiveness of LEAs themselves to ensure that what LEAs do, they do well.

"Fourthly, the White Paper proposes more choice for parents through a range of new measures to extend diversity. The Prime Minister and I have made clear that the Government want to see a spectrum of schools matching the varied talents, needs and interests of our children. That includes grammar schools. Grammar schools have a proud tradition of academic excellence. We want more parents and pupils to have these opportunities where there is demand for them in the local community—opportunities enjoyed by some Members opposite. We will welcome proposals for new grammar schools. Where an existing LEA school wants to become a grammar school, we intend to give the governing body a right of appeal if the LEA tries to block reasonable proposals. We intend to give the Funding Agency for Schools powers to propose setting up grant-maintained schools, including grant-maintained grammar schools, in all areas of the country where there is a need for a new school.

"Encouraging grammar schools gives parents greater choice. But our plans for increasing diversity go further. We do not want to see just two types of schools, grammars and secondary moderns. That agenda is out of date. The debate has moved on. Selection, too, is not just about the 11-plus. You can select in a range of ways, including by aptitude for a particular subject. Our view of selection is that it is about getting a better match between what schools offer and what parents want for their children to suit their individual needs.

"We want to encourage all schools to develop distinctive strengths and identities. There are many excellent comprehensives which serve their communities well. But we need diversity. We need choice. The White Paper would encourage that by a variety of measures.

"First, we want to give grant-maintained schools the right to select up to 50 per cent. of their pupils by ability or aptitude without needing central approval. Secondly, we want to give technology and language colleges the right to select up to 30 per cent. of their pupils by ability or aptitude in their specialist subjects. Thirdly, we want to give those responsible for admissions at all other LEA schools the right to select up to 20 per cent. of their pupils. Fourthly, we plan to reinforce the specialist schools programme by giving more support for technology and language colleges and by extending the approach to include schools specialising in sports and the arts. Fifthly, we want all schools to consider each year, in consultation with parents, whether, by using their new powers to select some of their pupils, they could contribute more to the diversity of schooling available to local parents.

"A lot of progress has been made over the past few years. The Government have now put in place, despite resistance every step of the way from Members opposite, an effective framework for raising standards.

"It is a framework which provides a clear specification of what schools and pupils should be achieving; which holds schools accountable for what they do; which gives schools freedom to decide how to run their affairs; and which gives parents more choice.

"Much more remains to be done. Our social and economic future depends on making sure that all our children are helped to achieve to the limits of their ability.

"Today's White Paper sets out important new measures for making further progress in giving freedom for schools and choice for parents. It will help to get the best possible match between what schools offer and what parents want—which is a good education suited to the individual abilities, interests and needs of their children. I commend it to the House." My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

4.45 p.m.

Lord Morris of Castle Morris

My Lords, the whole House will be grateful to the Minister for repeating that interesting Statement. We on these Benches wish at the very outset to extend our deepest sympathy to his right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment, who is so obviously suffering severely from a badly dislocated conscience caused by the repetitive strain of having to make so many U-turns so quickly. This year has been a difficult one for her.

We all know that the Secretary of State was no passionate enthusiast for the privatisation of student loans and that she espoused that Bill only to help the Treasury and the PSBR. We all know, because she said so, that nursery vouchers were not her preferred option and that she cooked up that absurd scheme only when her right honourable friend the Prime Minister told her to. And now, in loyal obedience to her leader, which we must admire, she has laboured and brought forth this White Paper on selection and grammar schools when we all know that she has always been a strong supporter of the comprehensive principle, even when the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, was Prime Minister. And, my Lords, that took courage!

Is it not a fact, as the newspapers told us last weekend and I have not heard denied, that as a Norfolk county councillor and a member of the education committee in the late seventies the Secretary of State voted for the closure of grammar schools, including the one which she herself had attended, despite legislation brought in by the Tories in 1979 which allowed local education authorities to retain them? She voted against them. She voted for their closure. But now, because the Prime Minister has stated airily that he wants to see a grammar school in every large town—whatever that means—up she comes with an entirely new set of principles and a wholly unnecessary, divisive, irrelevant White Paper.

One wonders who is in charge at the DfEE? Is it the Secretary of State? Or is it the Prime Minister, making policy on the hoof week by week and indulging the dying days of his discredited administration in a nostalgic fantasy about resurrecting the grammar schools of his childhood where 20 per cent., selected by the iniquitous 11-plus, went in their little blazers and school caps, or their gymslips as the case may be, and learnt Latin and played with their cricket bats or their jolly hockey sticks according to sex? Alas, the Prime Minister really should be told that those dear, dead days are dead and gone, long past recovery or recall.

We have heard an outline today of what is in the White Paper. It is an outline which seems to bear all the stigmata of a pretty rushed and incomplete job. On the Statement, I wish to ask the Minister just three questions. First, if the proposal to have a grammar school in every large town ever came to fruition, would it not inevitably mean that 19 out of 20 children in that town would lose out? The grammar school would simply cream off 5 per cent. of the most able children, and 95 per cent. would once again make do with inferior education in contemporary versions of the old secondary modern schools. Those who were not selected for the grammar school would be told by their parents in some cases and by their contemporaries in every case that they had failed to get into the grammar school. Let us have no nonsense about being specially selected as more suitable for some kind of language college or tech. They would be regarded once again, as were so many children a generation ago, as failures at the age of 11. That is what we on these Benches are against. How long would it be before, in the interests of equity and efficiency, the old 11-plus examination again reared its ugly head as a general means of selection? Is that the ultimate aim of this Government and, if not, how can it be avoided?

Secondly, if the grammar school proposal goes ahead and assuming there are something like 200 localities which could qualify as large towns in England and Wales, at about £10 million per school, would not the whole operation over time cost something not unadjacent to £2 billion? Can the Minister tell the House here, today, now, from where that money will come? The education budget is tight enough, as 31 per cent. capital cuts for universities make abundantly clear. There is no flexibility possible. It must require new money. Where is this obedient, pliable and helpful Secretary of State to find £2 billion? It must come from generous donations out of their budgets by her colleagues in the other spending departments. Or perhaps from the National Lottery. Or perhaps from Father Christmas.

Thirdly, is it not a fact that no one, except the Prime Minister, has demanded the new selective grammar schools? The Funding Agency for Schools said yesterday that there was no parental demand for them. The FAS has no money for them. Its new initiatives budget is a mere £13 million and it is having to cut back now on money for grant-maintained schools. And there is no demand from schools to have more selection—not even from the grant-maintained schools. Is it not a fact that out of 1,100 grant-maintained schools only 41—about 4 per cent.—have opted for increased selection? Of that 41, 35 have done so on the grounds of specialisation in music or drama, and we on these Benches have no problem with that. Where is the proof that parents, teachers and schools are crying out for more choice and more selection? There is simply no truth in the idea that parents want more and more choice. If they did, this proposal would not provide it. Selection means schools choosing their pupils, not parents choosing their schools.

We shall need to study the White Paper carefully but if today's Statement is any kind of advertisement for it we shall not approach the task with any manifest enthusiasm. Let us fervently hope that before it can damage too much it will all be swept away by a general election which will enable a Labour government to restore some sense, stability and sanity to an education scene which today seems to be directed only by the perfervid imaginings of a Prime Minister lost in some dreamland of his own.

Lord Tope

My Lords, I too thank the Minister for repeating the Statement in this House. I agree with many of the points that have just been made but I had intended to leave electioneering to a little nearer the date of the election.

The Statement contains no surprises. It was very well trailed. I still find it deeply disappointing. It concentrates much more on what divides us rather than what unites us. I believe that the education world needs more unity now. It also shows that the Government are more concerned with perceived party political advantage—I put the emphasis deliberately on "perceived" because I doubt very much whether it will achieve any party political advantage for them—than they are with a genuine desire to raise standards in partnership with local education authorities and schools.

With grammar schools must come secondary modern schools. They are indivisible and part of the same. There cannot be genuine all-ability comprehensive schools alongside grammar schools which have creamed off those with the greatest abilities. We are talking about a return to 30 years ago, to a time of grammar schools and secondary modern schools. Whatever language is used to dress that up, that is what it means.

Where is the evidence of the great desire for selection? It is said that the grammar schools are over-subscribed. So they are. They are good schools. But every good school—every good comprehensive school—is over-subscribed. The evidence shows not that parents want selection but that parents want good quality education. That is a very important difference.

I ask the Minister one very particular question, which has already been touched on. I want him to say today quite clearly from where the additional resources will come to provide the new grammar schools. Whether they be existing schools converting to grammar status or whether they be new-build schools, where will that money come from and how much will come? If he is not yet able to give specific answers to those questions, will he today give a cast-iron guarantee that no resources will be taken from schools which choose not to go down the route of selection, and that additional resources do not come from them in order to provide the funds that will be necessary if there is to be an extension of selection? If that were to happen, they would be doubly penalised and the Government would stand truly condemned.

Lord Henley

My Lords, the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, are somewhat extraordinary. To accuse my right honourable friend and this party of U-turns on the subject of education is a bit rich coming from the party opposite. I do not know whether the noble Lord is Old Labour, New Labour, Very Old Labour or somewhere in between. I do know that there are some fundamental splits in the Labour Party on the subject of education. I can assure the noble Lord that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment are at one on this and are at one on the subject of employment.

Can the noble Lord give me exactly the same assurance about the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the other place and Mrs. Harriet Harman? Can he assure us that they agree absolutely on the rights of parents to send their children to the schools that they wish? No, he cannot. Quite simply, the party opposite has adopted a policy of total and utter hypocrisy. It is a policy which admits—we heard it from the spokesman for education in the other place—that the comprehensive experiment has failed. It is a policy which then says that we must go on and have yet have more comprehensivisation. As sure as eggs is eggs, the only truly comprehensive system one can have that is totally comprehensive—the one which the party opposite seek—would remove all choice and all diversity, and possibly bring back bussing as well. The party opposite is pursuing a policy of hypocrisy. It is a policy which demands more comprehensivisation but which at the same time allows selection for those children lucky enough to be born to Members on the Front Bench in the other place.

The attempts by the noble Lord opposite to misrepresent the views of my right honourable friend were totally unfair and rather uncharacteristic of the noble Lord. I shall remind him of what my right honourable friend said on the radio this morning when talking about her experience as a councillor in Norfolk: The point is that while many comprehensives do a first-class job and many are in Norfolk, the Government's reforms have now proved that different kinds of schools within the state system are popular and help to drive up standards; and also that the whole thrust of our policy, as opposed to the policy that we were obliged to adopt in the '70s, is to allow schools to decide just what they want to do". The noble Lord raised a number of questions and made a number of points. He concentrated on part of the White Paper and spoke solely about the provisions relating to selection. There was no mention of his views about the extension of local management to LEA schools, a policy which is hotly opposed by the party opposite but no doubt, now that it has done another of its U-turns, one that it will support. No doubt this will be yet another policy that it will strongly oppose but come round to support in due course.

I shall deal with the three points made by the noble Lord and touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, in turn. First, if there is a proposal to have a grammar school in every town, how will that come about? Perhaps I can make it clear to the noble Lord—I recommend that he reads the White Paper—that there is no proposal to have a grammar school in every town. We are looking to offer new freedoms to schools to make decisions about whether they wish to become selective, partially selective or selective in one way or another. We are not going back to the old grammar school-secondary modern divide. As my right honourable friend made clear in the Statement, we are looking to much greater diversity in the variety and types of school on offer. We are not only looking at the 11-plus; we are looking also at other methods by which it may be possible for schools to consider selection by either ability or aptitude.

The noble Lord referred to an alleged cost of £2 billion—the noble Lord, Lord Tope, touched on it also. I utterly reject that figure. There is no cost of £2 billion in the proposal. We are looking at ways in which schools themselves can seek to change their status because of the desires of parents in that locality. There may, on occasion, as there always has been, be a need for demographic reasons to create new schools. In that case the LEA or the FAS can make proposals. But we are not looking at a new bill of £2 billion.

The final point raised by the noble Lord was in relation to an alleged lack of demand and lack of desire on the part of parents for any more selection. I remind your Lordships of an opinion poll that appeared earlier this year. I am not one who bases all my faith on opinion polls, as some do. I understand that they are frequently wrong, as the party opposite discovered to their discomfort four-and-a-half years ago. On this occasion it may be worth reminding noble Lords of the results of a poll which showed that the majority of the population and, more importantly, a majority of parents favour a greater degree of selection. I shall give noble Lords further details of that in due course if desired.

The important point is that we are not seeking to impose anything on the schools, on the LEAs, or whatever. We are looking to the schools themselves, should they so wish, to move on to a greater degree of selection. I conclude by saying that I regret the limited response we had from the noble Lord. No doubt we will have further opportunities to debate these matters in due course. I remind him again that selection is not just the old grammar school-secondary modern school split that he seemed to imply; it is not just selection by the 11-plus. It is a whole range of things offering choice and diversity to parents, and it is that choice and diversity which we believe will lead to the higher standards we desire in our education system.

Lord Morris of Castle Morris

My Lords, before the Minister sits down perhaps I can remind him that there is one question which both the noble Lord, Lord Tope, and I asked which slipped his mind in the heat of his passion. The Minister did not respond to the question: where is the money coming from?

Lord Henley

My Lords, I dealt with that question when I referred to the alleged cost of £2 billion. I said that there was no such cost. The educational system will continue to be funded by the taxpayer with the record amounts that we have made available to it over the years under a Conservative Government. That will continue to happen and it will be for the appropriate authorities to suggest new schools as and when they are needed. We are not talking about a massive bill for a vast number of new schools; we are looking at schools changing their status as they wish.

5.4 p.m.

Lord Glenamara

My Lords, in the middle of this White Paper which the Secretary of State cobbled together is a proposal to reintroduce selection in pursuit of the Prime Minister's stated objective of having a grammar school in every town. That is the purpose of the White Paper. If the noble Lord was a little older he would remember what happened when we had selection before. The White Paper is putting the clock back 40 years with a vengeance.

The noble Viscount, Lord Tonypandy, and I remember the utter misery caused throughout this country by selection. I have known parents who dared not leave their homes for weeks after the results came out because their children had failed the 11-plus. One could say that it was not a case of pass or fail until one was blue in the face. Every parent in the country believed it was a case of pass or fail.

I had the privilege of being the headmaster of a large and very good secondary modern school at that time. Every year I had an influx of a large number of excellent boys every one of whom came to me believing that he was a failure. That is what happens when we introduce selection in a locality. Whether or not it is left to the parents or the governors, if the policy is followed—thank goodness it will not be—throughout the country, in every town, in Cumbria and elsewhere, there would be a grammar school selecting by ability and 80 per cent. or even 85 per cent. of the children who go to the other schools believing that they are failures.

It must be part of the Government's death wish to put this proposal forward six months before an election believing that it will win them support. I can tell them that it will cost them hundreds of thousands of votes. They are already 30 points behind in the public opinion polls. This will put them 40 points behind. It is a disgraceful proposal. It fills me with anger and dismay that this "lot" here who are so discredited and who for months have been way behind in the public opinion polls bring forward this proposal to put the clock back by 30 or 40 years. We have lived through it, and we do not want the next generation to do so. My only consolation is that this lot will be swept out of office lock, stock and barrel long before the proposal can be put into operation.

Lord Henley

My Lords, it is the convention that I reply to each Peer who intervenes one by one. If noble Lords want to adopt another system, I am more than happy to do so. I rise to my feet only to say that I accept that the noble Lord is somewhat older than me. But I want to repeat the point I made earlier. We are not here to repeat the arguments of the 1950s and the 1960s. We are not looking to go back to the old grammar school-secondary modem divide. We are looking at diversity. That is why my right honourable friend stresses in the White Paper the success of the technology colleges and of the language colleges and the desire to extend that to the arts and sport, something welcomed by the party opposite. At the same time the noble Lord wants a comprehensive system and nothing but a comprehensive system.

We are offering a range of choice and diversity. That will mean that some schools will desire selection but it does not mean that all schools will. We are not looking at compulsion for schools; we want schools themselves to respond to the desires of the parents and to make the choices themselves. We believe that that is the right way forward; but that is not to bring back the grammar schools-secondary modern divide.

Lord Pilkington of Oxenford

My Lords, perhaps I can bring a little rationality and lack of passion to this debate and point out the insularity of our discussion. In Germany there is a tripartite system and people do not feel a sense of failure. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara, that there were problems up to the 1944 Act caused by the parsimony of the party with which I now stand and by the ideology of the parties opposite.

Everywhere in Europe—in Germany post-13 years of age, in France, the Netherlands, and Spain post-16 years of age, there has been diversity of choice without the passion and, dare I say it, the ideological nonsense which has bedevilled English education for the past 50 years. There was passion on both sides and I am merely trying rationality. We must look abroad.

Lord Glenamara

My Lords, the noble Lord is the one waving his arms.

Lord Pilkington of Oxenford

My Lords, I am not waving my hands; I am saying that we must think.

Lord Henley

My Lords, I do not believe that I have been giving an ideological speech, and that is a bit rich coming from the party opposite. That is the party that brought in a system that was trying to bring a sameness to everything and identical provisions to everything. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Pilkington for making the point that diversity is what we should desire. There should be diversity along with equality of esteem between the different types of school and that is what we are seeking to achieve.

Lord Taylor of Blackburn

My Lords, I wish the Minister would look back to see what has really happened. He is full of Central Office jargon rather than pure education. He should look at his own county a little more and see what has happened there. He would then realise that he is talking nonsense in so many ways.

I wish to put the record straight so that the Minister realises the situation. For four years I chaired a committee looking at the interests of schools and of the management of schools. I welcome the first part of the Minister's Statement regarding the financing of schools and giving more authority to governors. The whole idea behind the committee was to get the politics out of education and to bring more community involvement into schools. Is the noble Lord aware that 98 per cent. of the parents in my authority get their first choice and that only 0.2 per cent. get their third choice? In my authority there are comprehensive schools, a grammar school, an independent grammar school, which was formerly a direct grant school, a Church grammar school and a technical college with two sixth forms attached to it? There is everything within my authority. We do not want any more choice. The parents in my area are happy with the choices they have. Why try to bring in something else? Where will the money come from? The Government do not have the money. We do not have the money now.

As the noble Lord on the Liberal Benches said earlier, parents want quality. That is what they are crying out for and not the choice that the Government are trying to give them. They do not say "impose"; they say "suggest", but what it means is imposition in some way or other. I ask the Minister to think again or we shall certainly think again when the White Paper is printed and we can read it properly.

Lord Henley

My Lords, the noble Lord and I come from neighbouring parts of the world. I suspect that the authority he refers to is Lancashire. He is right to stress that within Lancashire there is a great deal of choice available to parents. In looking at the map within the White Paper I cannot see the precise boundaries of Lancashire but I can see that there are a large number of grant-maintained schools, both primary and special, and that there are a large number of grant-maintained schools in the secondary sector. There are a large number of independent schools in Lancashire making use of the assisted places scheme. The same is true of all three of those in my own authority of Cumbria. It is also true that there are a large number of technology colleges and language colleges, although I do not think Lancashire benefits from a city technology college. There is choice and there is diversity. I should like to see more choice and more diversity should that be the wish. I do not want the noble Lord to speak on behalf of all of the parents of Lancashire and say that they are totally and utterly satisfied with what they have at the moment. If we can bring them more choice and if we can give them more diversity, that will do a considerable amount towards raising standards and bringing the quality the noble Lord wants, and I want, for the parents of Lancashire and many other LEAs throughout the country.

Lord Addington

My Lords, we have heard a great deal about ideology and people's attitudes. I should like to ask a straightforward question. Can the Minister guarantee that any new funding required either for the construction of a new school or any conversion—there will be some costs involved in either process—will be new money and not money taken from the education budget in a re-slicing of the cake? That is important in knowing what the Government's ideas are. Is there new money?

Lord Henley

My Lords, we are not here talking about new money. I wish I could get that over to the noble Lord's party as well as to the party opposite which first raised the question of £2 billion. At any time, whether we have this White Paper or not, there will always be a need for new schools here and new schools there according to demographic changes up and down the country. If a new town grows up or a town grows faster than others one needs new provision. It is a matter for the local authority or for the FAS to fund that school through the usual mechanisms of money reaching it from the central taxpayer through the Government. Nothing is changing. What we are looking to is giving schools greater choice about how they look at themselves—changing their status—and that need not necessarily cost money as the noble Lord implies it will.

Lord Skidelsky

My Lords, it is worth repeating the point made by my noble friend Lord Pilkington. The position taken up by the Opposition has been very parochial. The comprehensive system which we adopted in the 1960s onwards is almost unique in Europe. Throughout Europe, and not just in the countries mentioned by my noble friend, but in eastern Europe as well, there is much more diversity of provision than we have. They do not do it as inflexibly as we did under the old 11-plus system and they do not do it at the same age. But no one on this side of the House is proposing that that should happen. It is essential to emphasise that point.

Secondly, it is because of our comprehensive experiment that we have had the crisis in standards which the other side accepts as well. Why are we, uniquely in Europe, talking about our crisis in standards? There seems to be a direct connection between that and the sweeping away of the grammar schools in the 1960s and 1970s. This is part of the policy of improving standards. It will be understood by all other countries in Europe, none of which has followed us down the disastrous path which the Opposition parties now want to strengthen.

Lord Henley

My Lords, I am more than grateful to my noble friend for again stressing the point that seems rather difficult to get into the minds of the party opposite. I refer to the importance of diversity and the importance of extending choice through diversity. I know that the party opposite does not like that choice and does not like that diversity, but we believe that offering parents choice about the kind of schools they want and the kind of schools that are appropriate for their children does an enormous amount to involve those parents in their schools and, by so doing, to raise standards. But my noble friend, myself and other noble friends can probably go on saying that until we are blue in the face. We can probably go on saying that we do not want to refight the arguments of the 1950s and 1960s, as I made clear to the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara, but they seem to want to go on fighting those old debates. That is not the case. We are taking things on further.

Lord Monkswell

My Lords, I do not want to go into the argument about the Government's aspiration to reintroduce secondary-modern education in every town and city in the United Kingdom. It seems to me from the Statement that that is the Government's aspiration. Perhaps I may touch on something the Statement says rather more specifically which gives me cause for concern because of relatively recent experience in the city of Manchester. As I heard it, the Statement suggested that all grant-maintained schools could select up to 50 per cent. of their intake.

One of the things most of us experienced at school was an esprit de corps, a feeling that our school was different from other schools. That brought us together. Our experience in Manchester as a result of a reorganisation which was interfered with by the then Secretary of State for Education, who later became Lord Joseph, resulted in three schools being singled out to stay as they were and not be part of the rest of the reorganisation that we were undertaking. One of those schools was a boys' school which was singled out by the Secretary of State for Education as a school of proven worth. It had been a grammar school and had become a comprehensive school.

In the immediate following years the intake of the school assumed two distinct profiles. One was from parents who aspired to an academic education for their sons who came from all over the city. The other was for a local school serving the local community. So within that school there were two separate and distinct communities of scholars. It is very sad to relate that that splitting of the school into two distinct communities within the one school resulted in conflict. It actually resulted in the death of a pupil who was knifed by another pupil.

That is a kind of experience that is relatively recent. It should be within the ken of this Government to gain some clue as to what might happen if they pursue this path of effectively allowing grant-maintained schools to have two separate communities within them. I ask the Government to think again on this particular element as it will be so divisive within the schools themselves.

Lord Henley

My Lords, I am certainly not going to follow the noble Lord in attributing the tragic death of a pupil at a school to the policies of Her Majesty's Government or to some such other cause. That would be over-simplistic and it is not the way to look at things.

The noble Lord is right to say that we put forward as one of our proposals the fact that grant-maintained schools have a policy for the selection of up to 50 per cent. of their pupils without coming to the Secretary of State. As it is, at the moment there are a number of grant-maintained schools which are selective and as the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, reminded the House somewhat gleefully, there are not very many. But there are some and the provision can be made by going to the Secretary of State.

All we are saying is that obviously that can be done in the future. If the schools desire to make statutory proposals of that sort they can be made to the Secretary of State. But there should be further freedoms to develop the schools without coming to the Secretary of State. We believe that one of those freedoms should be the right to select, by whatever is considered the appropriate means—and I emphasised that that does not mean necessarily returning to the 11-plus—up to 50 per cent. of pupils by ability or aptitude. The same applies to the technology and language colleges. For some reason that is welcomed by the party opposite despite its hatred of choice and diversity. The schools should be able to select by aptitude or ability some 30 per cent. of their pupils in particular subjects. We make no bones about it. It is a matter for the schools themselves whether to pursue that particular line.

Baroness Hayman

My Lords, before the Minister sits down, perhaps I may point out that he keeps referring to the hatred of choice and diversity on this side of the House. Will he explain to me how my choice as a parent is extended if my local school changes its nature from being a comprehensive to a selective school on grounds of academic ability and I enter my child for that school and the child fails the entrance exam? I fail to see how that extends my choice as a parent.

If my child were able enough to go to that sort of school, but in a system where there were schools for the academically able and the less able, I fail to see how my choice to have my child educated with a range of abilities among the children in the community will be enhanced. It is not a question of simple hatred of choice but the fact that these issues are very complicated and that there is a history in the selection process in this country as regards education that has been a millstone around this nation's neck. It is that more than the comprehensive system which has created the problems that we have today. The choice we want concerns quality schools for all our children.

Lord Henley

My Lords, the noble Baroness is right to say that this is a very complicated issue. It is the party opposite which is trying to reduce it to a simple matter of putting us back into the position of the old grammar school—secondary modern divide. We are not doing that. We are trying to extend the diversity and range of schools. The party opposite desires a comprehensive system of a sort that will offer no choice whatever. We reject that. We believe that the noble Baroness's choice is being extended.