Education and Inspections Bill

Public Bill Committee, 28 March 2006.

Education and Inspections Bill - Standing Committee E

Education and Inspections Bill

Jacqui Smith (Labour, Redditch)

I beg to move,

That—

(1) during proceedings on the Education and Inspections Bill the Standing Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 10.30 a.m. on Tuesday 28th March) meet—

(a) at 4.00 p.m. on Tuesday 28th March;

(b) at 9.00 a.m. and 1.00 p.m. on Thursday 30th March;

(c) at 10.30 a.m. and 4.00 p.m. on Tuesday 18th April;

(d) at 9.00 a.m. and 1.00 p.m. on Thursday 20th April;

(e) at 10.30 a.m. and 4.00 p.m. on Tuesday 25th April;

(f) at 9.00 a.m. and 1.00 p.m. on Thursday 27th April; ;

(g) at 10.30 a.m. and 4.00 p.m. on Tuesday 2nd May;

(h) at 10.30 a.m. and 4.00 p.m. on Tuesday 9th May;

(i) at 9.00 a.m. and 1.00 p.m. on Thursday 11th May;

(2) the proceedings shall be taken in the following order: Clauses 1 to 6; Schedule 1; new Clauses and new Schedules relating to Part 1; Clauses 7 to 16; Schedule 2; Clauses 17 to 28; Schedule 3; Clauses 29 and 30; Clauses and new Schedules relating to Part 2; Clauses 31 to 34; Schedule 4; Clauses 35 to 43; new Clauses and new Schedules relating to school admissions; Clause 44; Schedule 5; Clause 45; remaining new Clauses and new Schedules relating to Part 3; Clauses 46 to 57; Schedule 6; Clause 58; Schedule 7; Clauses 59 and 60; new Clauses and new Schedules relating to Part 4; Clauses 61 and 62; new Clauses and new Schedules relating to Part 5; Clauses 63 and 64; Schedule 8; Clause 65; Schedule 9; Clauses 66 to 72; Schedule 10; new Clauses and new Schedules relating to travel to schools and other places where education or training is received; Clauses 73 and 74; remaining new Clauses and new Schedules relating to Part 6; Clauses 75 to 97; new Clauses and new Schedules relating to Part 7; Clauses 98 to 101; Schedules 11 and 12; Clauses 102 to 135; Schedule 13; Clauses 136 to 142; Schedule 14; Clause 143; Schedule 15; Clause 144; new Clauses and new Schedules relating to Part 8; Clauses 145 and 146; Schedule 6; Clauses 147 to 151; Schedule 17; Clauses 152 and 153; remaining new Clauses; remaining new Schedules; Clauses 154 to 160; Schedule 18; Clauses 161 to 167; remaining proceedings on the Bill; j

(3) the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 4.00 p.m. on Thursday 11th May.

May I say what a pleasure it is to serve again in a Committee chaired by you, Mr. Cook, and how much I am looking forward to the coming weeks?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

On behalf of the Opposition I, too, welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Cook, and look forward to spending the next few weeks under your wise chairmanship. I say to the Minister that, of course, we are here only because of the Opposition, but we are delighted to be here and we look forward to working with her and her team over the coming weeks. We have no problem with the motion, so I wish to support it.

Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat, Brent East)

I, too, welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Cook. I am delighted to serve under you.

We, too, have no problem with the programme motion. We want to spend time particularly on parts 1 to 3 and, later in our proceedings, on clauses 61 and 62. We particularly want to make points on admissions, accessibility and accountability, and choice, and we look forward to being able to do so.

Frank Cook (Labour, Stockton North)

I remind the Committee that there is a money resolution and a Ways and Means resolution in connection with the Bill. Copies are available in the room. I also remind hon. Members that adequate notice should be given of amendments. As a general rule I and my fellow Chairman do not intend to call starred amendments, including any that may be reached during an afternoon sitting.

Clause 1 - Duties in relation to high standards and the fulfilment of potential

David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North)

I beg to move amendment No. 96, in clause 1, page 1, line 7, leave out from ‘are’ to second ‘exercised’ in line 8.

Frank Cook (Labour, Stockton North)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 2, in clause 1, page 1, line 10, after ‘standards’, insert ‘of educational attainment’.

No. 58, in clause 1, page 1, line 10, after ‘standards,’, insert—

‘(b)promoting emotional well-being,’.

No. 95, in clause 1, page 1, leave out lines 11 and 12 and insert—

‘(b)enabling each child concerned to have access to such teaching and learning support as may be appropriate to his needs and so as to promote the fulfilment of his educational potential.’.

No. 186, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, leave out ‘educational’.

No. 3, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, at end insert

‘and

No. 4, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, at end insert

‘and

No. 86, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, at end insert

‘and

No. 87, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, at end insert—

‘(1A)In subsection (1)(c) “well-being”, in relation to children and young people, is a reference to their well-being having regard to the matters mentioned in section 10(2) of the Children Act 2004.’.

David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North)

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Cook. It is a pleasure to be here under your chairmanship this morning.

It is a privilege to move the first amendment of our deliberations. I want to speak in particular to amendments Nos. 96, 95 and 186.

The Bill contains many admirable provisions and excellent and interesting clauses that will, without question, strengthen the provision of education for children in years to come. We know that some aspects of the Bill are more controversial than others, but I do not believe that clause 1, which deals with high standards and the fulfilment of potential and clearly specifies the local authorities’ role, is controversial. Nevertheless it contains some points of detail that need further consideration, the first of which is referred to in amendment No. 96.

Amendment No. 96 would delete from new section 13A(1) the phrase

“so far as they are capable of being so exercised”.

Although it may seem a slight amendment, which may be simply a technicality or slight emphasis in the wording, I am curious to know why the phrase should have been inserted in the first place. I should have thought that most members of the Committee would consider that a local authority’s functions could be exercised only to the limits of its capability. I do not recall seeing this kind of qualification of a body’s capabilities in respect of the exercise of its functions before. It seems at best unnecessary and at worst perhaps tautologous.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

It is not just local authorities but all sorts of outside bodies that will now have a duty to provide education. I had understood that the amendment was intended to remove the words in parentheses because the hon. Gentleman disapproves of bodies other than local authorities having a role in providing education to children in this country.

David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North)

That is an important point that goes to the heart of my remarks. We understand that in their original White Paper, the Government made a case for separating the commissioning and providing functions. Personally, I think that a powerful case can be made for that separation with respect to secondary schools. The question, though, is what are the implications of the phrase in clause 1? Are we saying that it is envisaged that, at some point in the future, the provision of education by local authorities will be withdrawn completely? The rest of the Bill does not spell that out. It takes steps towards opening up the provision of education to a range of different providers, but does not argue unequivocally that commissioning and providing should be absolutely separate functions. It is worth drawing attention to that, so that the Minister may clarify her vision of the future role of local authorities in education provision.

Rob Wilson (Conservative, Reading East)

The point is just about recognising that local authorities have limits on their powers, is it not? That was the whole purpose of the White Paper and the Bill itself.

David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North)

I think that it is about recognising those limits, but it must be self-evident that it is not possible to exercise functions beyond the level at which they are capable of being exercised. That is why I do not see that the particular phrase is necessary.

The second amendment to which I want to draw attention is amendment No. 95. It would delete the word “educational” in subsection (1)(b), which would then refer to

“promoting the fulfilment by every child concerned of his potential.”

The issue is to what extent the letter and the spirit of the Bill entirely match the letter and the spirit of the Children Act 2004, and of what is generally referred to as the “Every Child Matters” agenda. The whole thrust of the sentiments behind that agenda is that education cannot be separated from other public services that are essential in developing the overall well-being of children. If we focus specifically on educational potential, we will miss out on other elements of the “Every Child Matters” agenda, and we will not pay sufficient attention to health, general well-being and other aspects. I think that there is a case, therefore, for withdrawing the word “educational”, and focusing more generally on potential.

When I get the right piece of paper I shall talk about amendment No. 186. I apologise, Mr. Cook, because I have confused the numbers. I have just spoken to amendment No. 186 and I shall now speak on amendment No. 95.

Amendment No. 95 is perhaps more substantial: it links the promotion of the potential of every child with the whole issue of personalised learning. In both the White Paper and the Bill the Government give the highest priority to a major shift to a more personalised approach in the organisation of teaching in our schools. Last year, and again in last week’s Budget, they announced significant sums to enable a more flexible curriculum and more generous staff-student ratios in our schools, in order to enable the personalised learning programme to develop.

In the opening clause, and in the opening statement about the local authority’s functions, it would be useful to spell out in a little more detail the significance of the personalised learning agenda. That is the purpose of amendment No. 95, which refers to

“enabling each child concerned to have access to such teaching and learning support as may be appropriate to his needs and so as to promote the fulfilment of his educational potential.”

To bring my opening remarks to a close, in clause 1 it is important that we spell out exactly what the functions of local authorities should be in the new educational landscape that the Bill describes. I question whether we need to insert the phrase about the extent to which local education authority functions

“are capable of being ... exercised”,

and whether in paragraph (b) we need to be so specific about “educational potential”. Perhaps it would be more consistent with other aspects of Government policy if we concentrated on potential as a whole, or if we went even further and spelled out, at this point, the five “Every Child Matters” objectives for the development of children. Also, it would be useful if we could spell out at this early stage the critical importance of promoting a kind of education and a more flexible curriculum that is absolutely matched to the individual needs of every child.

Frank Cook (Labour, Stockton North)

I am anxious to preserve the comfort and ease of exchange in Committee, so if Members wish to divest themselves of the their upper, outer garments, that will be permitted.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I start by agreeing with the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) on one point—this may be the last time that I agree with him. The “Every Child Matters” duties should be incorporated into the Bill, and later we will come to amendments, proposed by Opposition Members, that do precisely that. However, I am not sure whether it is correct to put them in the place which he opts for in his amendments. By seeking to leave “education” out of clause 1, he is almost downplaying the education aspect of the Bill. Amendment No. 186 would take “educational” out of line 12 in clause 1, so that the duty on local authorities becomes a duty to promote the fulfilment by every child of his potential.

By contrast, our amendment No. 2 seeks to emphasise the importance of education by making it absolutely clear that the duty on the local authority to promote high standards relates to high standards of educational attainment. Without wishing to be too provocative at this stage of Committee proceedings, the hon. Members for Bury, North and for City of Durham (Dr. Blackman-Woods) are defending a strand of 1960s progressivism that downplays the need for children to be highly educated and that suggests that other priorities are more important. That strand of opinion is still dominant in the education establishment today.

I would like to think, and I certainly hope, that there is growing consensus between mainstream Labour Members and Conservative Members about the need for education reform and the need to resist the approach to education that has dominated policy for 30 or 40 years. There is also a growing consensus about how to reform education. Amendment No. 3 provides an opportunity to include in the Bill an approach that has widespread support, certainly among parents and the public.

In the last 20 years, a polarity has developed. The last Conservative Government believed that all the problems in education could be cured by the structural approach of grant-maintained schools, the internal market, local management of schools and money following the pupil, forcing poorer schools to improve in order to compete for pupils and money. By contrast, in that period Labour believed that the problem with education was the lack of cash and that all the country’s educational problems could be solved by a massive injection of taxpayers’ money. Indeed, in its 1997 manifesto Labour criticised the structural-base approach of the previous Conservative Government.

I believe that both positions are right and that both underestimate the problem. It is right that structural change has an important role. Competitive forces between schools have a positive effect in pushing up standards—to an extent. It is also important to look at models that give schools autonomy and independence to motivate head teachers and encourage the pursuit of excellence.

There is no doubt that more money was, and still is, needed in the education system but neither of the two approaches is the whole story. There is something else. It is not the third way but a third thing—I am marvellous at coining these new phrases—which is reform. I mean not just any old reform but a specific reform to tackle a particular problem that has afflicted the education system over the last 40 years. There is growing agreement between Labour and Conservative Members of Parliament on that issue. I hope that in time the Liberal Democrats will join that consensus.

The amendment would add to the list of duties that a local education authority has in relation to education

“promoting the transfer of knowledge from the current generation to the next.”

We propose the amendment, obvious though it may seem, because that view of the objective of education is not the established view in education circles today. It is the view of many good teachers but it is absolutely not the view of the educationists in our universities. It is the view of parents and, I believe, that of most Labour and Conservative Members of Parliament. It is not the view of John MacBeath, for example, a professor of education at Cambridge university, who is quoted in Chris Woodhead’s book, “Class Wars”, which states that he

“dismisses out of hand the arguments of ‘one [Paul] Hirst who wrote that teaching was about transmitting essential knowledge from one generation to the next.’ MacBeath knows better. ‘We now know,’ he writes, ‘that learning does not work like that ... Far from thinking coming after knowledge, knowledge comes on the coat tails of thinking ... therefore, instead of knowledge-centred schools we need thinking-centred schools.’”

It is that approach to education, which believes that knowledge hinders thought, that lies at the root of the underperformance of the English education system.

Angela Smith (Labour, Sheffield, Hillsborough)

Is not the transfer of knowledge far more complicated than the hon. Gentleman suggests? To prove that point, is it not true that our children’s generation can actually teach us knowledge of new areas of expertise such as ICT? Is it not that straightforward?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

The hon. Lady is right. Young people are better equipped to deal with computers than our generation and older generations were, but that does not mean that we should not be teaching them the knowledge that previous generations have acquired. We let our children down by not giving them that information. The hon. Lady confirms many of the issues that I want to draw out in my remarks about amendment No. 3.

I remember visiting a school in Rotherham during the by-election there in 1994 when I was the candidate. The head teacher said that it was not her role to prepare children to do well at “Trivial Pursuit” quizzes. I believe that her comment shows a jaundiced view of education. Of course, it is not the role of schools to prepare children for a television quiz or board game, but what she said reflects a view that knowledge is not an important aspect of education, which, in the words of Melanie Phillips, in her excellent book, “All Must Have Prizes”, has led to the “de-education” of Britain. Chris Woodhead quotes Tim Brighouse in an article in The Times Educational Supplement and basically points out the same thing: such people need an alternative approach to education that does not involve the transfer of knowledge.

The essence of the issue is best summed up by Michele Paule, in her contribution to the Campaign for Learning, which is also quoted by Chris Woodhead. She says that

“the sheer weight of content in the curriculum model inhibits learning by restricting the range of creativity of classroom experiences, leaving too many students engaged in accumulating information which they cannot see the use of beyond school.”

She wants to discover

“a much more coherent approach to developing meta-cognitive processes.”

The Campaign for Learning says that the task of the teacher, or “learning manager”, in the 21st century is to “equip” young people with

“the basic skill of ‘learnacy’, or learning to learn”.

Pupils will learn how to learn if there is

“an explicit focus on the skill of learning to learn”,

so that they have

“structured opportunities to explore the cognitive processes involved in learning”

and are helped

“to understand their particular blend of intelligence and learning styles and how they should develop these.”

The learning-how-to-learn approach is one of the dogmas of the current education orthodoxy that lies at the root of our underperformance. Surely, the best way to learn how to learn is actually to learn and acquire knowledge—lots of it—while young and able to absorb it. Thinking is about processing information and knowledge. Creative thinking is about people discovering new thoughts and concepts from the knowledge that they have. Thinking in a vacuum is just vacuous. As one writer has said:

“We tell our children less and less and expect them to think more and more.”

Perhaps the hon. Lady’s approach to education is right, but let us debate these things in public, rather than among educationists in specialised conferences that rarely receive any media attention. Let us talk about it in public and, if there is a general dispute between one form of education and another, let us ultimately put it to the public to decide.

We might ask, “Who are we, mere elected MPs, with no track record on education”—I speak as a former chartered accountant—“to gainsay a whole industry of education experts who have created this orthodoxy? They are the experts. Surely they know best.” Like all expertocracies, it may be dominant, but that does not make it right, nor does it make it representative of the views of the profession as a whole. The problem with experts in a given field is that they are intolerant of opposing views. That is particularly so in education.

Over the past 40 years, those with an alternative approach have simply been driven out, with no promotion, job, research funding or tenure, but there are opposing views.

Mary Creagh (Labour, Wakefield)

The problem with experts, particularly in education, is that they tend to know more than we do, having spent time conducting study, research and analysis.

The hon. Gentleman is so eager that we should acquire knowledge, but is he not setting up a false dichotomy between knowledge and learning? Hon. Members who have come from an education background—I taught for seven years in a school of management before coming to the House—would say that it is about equipping children with the knowledge, skills and attitude for adult life, all of which are important for a child to be able to learn. The hon. Gentleman is ignoring a key point, which is that people learn in different ways.

Frank Cook (Labour, Stockton North)

Order. Interventions must be reasonably brief. In Committee, we can be rather more tolerant than one would be in the Chamber, but that was turning into a speech.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention. I see that she represents Wakefield. I went to school in Wakefield, and of the seven schools that I went to—

Mary Creagh (Labour, Wakefield)

Was it QUEGS?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

No, I did not go to QUEGS. As I was saying, of the seven schools that I went to, the most disappointing was Thornes House grammar school. I did relatively well, but the school let down huge numbers of bright children because it did not deliver the education that we would want. That school was closed, which is why the hon. Lady may not have heard of it. We need to see the end of schools such as Thornes House, so that we have rigour in education.

The hon. Lady made some important and valid points, but there is a dichotomy. Some education academics do not take the hon. Lady’s balanced view. They take an ideological view that knowledge is not necessary in the teaching of children and that skills and learning how to learn should be dominant. This view is a huge mistake and will not be shared by the public. Of course, the academics have expert knowledge, but experts have certain philosophies and approaches, not just in education, but in spheres such as science and medical research, and often a dominant theory will drive out other philosophies and approaches because the experts simply will not promote those people who do not share their views.

Nadine Dorries (Conservative, Mid Bedfordshire)

I find that the most experienced people in education tend to be parents whose children have gone through the system. I have met many teachers who do not have a clue how to teach or relate to children. Sometimes, those who have been at the sharp end of education know more about it.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Some of the best educationists remain in teaching, and some of the weaker educationists leave teaching rapidly and enter academia to teach others how to teach. They say that those who cannot teach teach others how to teach. That can often be the problem. It is worse than a level of competence. It is also an approach and a philosophy, and there are opposing views among the most successful teachers in this country.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that although a balanced approach is needed, it is more important to acquire thoroughly the basic skills of life rather than, by itself, a huge bank of knowledge?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

The hon. Lady is confusing two things. Basic skills and the skills being debated today are different. The Government would argue that you do not need to teach the rudiments of reading using synthetic phonics—I did not intend to mention synthetic phonics in the first half hour of this debate. The Government are concentrating on learning how to learn. They do not mean teaching children how to read properly during the first 16 weeks of infant school. They mean something much more ethereal, and I would equate the basic skills that the hon. Lady mentioned with knowledge. If someone is to understand all 44 sounds of the alphabet and how to blend them, they need knowledge.

There are opposing views among the most successful teachers in the land. There are those who have persevered while pursuing what they know to be right and merely paying lip service to the orthodoxies. Examples are the teacher in the 1980s, who taught multiplication tables by rote, and had one eye on the classroom door in case the head teacher came in, and the teachers in the 1970s and 1980s, who used phonics to teach children how to read, while using look-and-say reading books.

It is interesting that the House has formed a clear consensus that the synthetic phonics system is the best way to teach our children to read. Members of the Labour and Conservative Benches are challenging the 30-year-old orthodoxy of using either whole-word methods or the look-and-say approach, where children are taught to guess a word from its context in a story or from the grammar or even an accompanying picture. Whole language teaching reached its peak in the mid 1980s. I do not remember whole language teaching being a major plank of the 1979 or 1983 Conservative manifestos. I stand to be corrected if any of my hon. Friends remember otherwise. These issues were going on beneath the radar. They were regarded then, and are even now to an extent, as matters for the profession.

However, as a consequence, as reported in “All Must Have Prizes”, which was published in 1996, standards of reading, spelling, comprehension and literacy fell continuously between 1991 and 1994. Melanie Phillips quotes John Dunford as saying in 1995:

“It’s clear that literacy standards in primary schools are falling”.

Some people blame the national curriculum for that, but those words predate it. Melanie Phillips quotes Kath Brooke, the head teacher of Garth Hill comprehensive in Berkshire, as saying:

“Our verbal reasoning score has dropped over the past 10 years from 104 to 93. The decline started long before the National Curriculum was introduced.”

We know that today, even with some improvements as a result of the national literacy strategy, significant problems still exist. One in five 11-year-olds still leave primary school unable to read and write properly and only 44 per cent. of 11-year-olds are achieving level 4 in reading, writing and maths combined. I do not accept that it is all to do with the socio-economic background of a school’s intake. I believe that it goes wider.

Anne Snelgrove (Labour, South Swindon)

The hon. Gentleman quotes Kath Brooke, who was a head teacher in Berkshire. He may not be aware that I was a county councillor in Bracknell. It is not solely a question of the teaching methods that were in use at the time. As a county councillor and vice-chair of Berkshire’s education committee, I was aware of the enormous problems that we had under the Conservative Government in starting nursery schools and improving children’s education. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that his party is in part to blame, because of the poor funding of schools and the large class sizes 10 or more years ago, which we were struggling with and which are now a myth?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I do not accept that point, although I agree that more money is needed. When the Conservatives were elected in 1979 there was a financial crisis in this country and spending cuts had to be made in the public services for the country to survive. Leaving aside the nursery schools that the hon. Lady wanted to establish and all those issues, there were still high reading standards before the whole language method of teaching children to read was introduced, without the facilities that she seeks to develop later. Therefore, these are separate from the other problems of that era, which she rightly points out.

We must be honest. If we are to have a consensus and try to tackle standards, we must get away from those old partisan points such as “Things were like that in your era”. I have been citing evidence from the mid to late-1990s, fully aware that there was a Conservative Government in that period, because I want members of the Committee, and the House, to get to the root causes of some of the standards. I accept that money is part of the problem, as are structures, but there is a third thing that we must also approach, and I hope that we can do so in a non-partisan way so that we can deliver a higher standard of education.

I do not believe that the problems are all connected with a school’s socio-economic intake; they go to the roots of the objects of education, which is what the amendment seeks to flush out. As part of my job I have taken it upon myself to visit all 50 best-performing primary schools and all 50 best-performing secondary schools in the country, and I am visiting some not so good schools as well. When one does that, one sees the contrasts between schools with very similar intakes. A school in Wolverhampton that I saw recently achieved 100 per cent. at key stage 2 in level 4 in English, maths and science and a staggering 85 per cent. at level 5. The head of that school wants a level 6 test at key stage 2 to provide a greater challenge for many of the pupils, which is why I tabled a question to the Minister about that.

I have been to schools with a similar intake to the one in Wolverhampton which achieve just 67 per cent. at level 4 in English and maths, and the difference between the two schools is the pedagogy and the approach to education. In one, synthetic phonics started even before reception and, in the other, phonics was one of a range of strategies. Similar problems occur with maths. There is now an abhorrence of teaching a formula-based approach to maths. It was recently reported that David Beckham was unable to help his son with his maths homework, as though that were somehow David Beckham’s fault. Parents make the widespread complaint that the maths taught today in primary schools is totally different from the maths that they learned at school, which means that they cannot help their children with homework. That would be fine if the new method were a better method of teaching children maths, but it is not—far from it.

Melanie Phillips said in the mid-1990s:

“Maths teaching in Britain has effectively been deconstructed. A fundamental shift in emphasis away from knowledge transmitted by the teacher to skills and process ‘discovered’ by the child has undermined the fundamental premises of mathematics itself.”

She cites a 1995 report from the London Mathematical Society, which said that

“emphasis on the practical application of maths and the obsession with presenting problems ‘in context’—i.e. relating them to real life situations—had denigrated the primary importance of maths as a training for the mind ... Schools had shifted from teaching core techniques to time-consuming activities such as investigations, problem-solving and data surveys.”

That situation is still dominant in our primary schools. I have met various experts on maths teaching who are very concerned about what is happening in our primary schools. I do not blame the Minister or the Labour Government. Such things are beyond politics. They occur beneath the radar.

I recently visited a primary school while a lesson in problem solving was taking place. In the problem, Jenny had a blue tube, a red tube and a black tube and Jimmy had a yellow tube, a purple tube and a white tube, and they were asked to make trains out of the two sets of tubes. The question was which train was longer, Jenny’s or Jimmy’s. Basically, there was simply not enough information to answer the question—that was the answer to the problem. The children in that school spent half an hour drawing the tubes with their rulers and their coloured pens, trying to work out which was the longest. They spent half an hour struggling with what was essentially a trick question, simply to be told at the end that they did not have enough information.

That scheme came from New Zealand and was given to the school on the advice of the education adviser at the county council. I do not think that asking children to do that kind of thing is a good use of half an hour in the maths curriculum. I found a similar problem in the other class: Jimmy bought a clock for 50p that gained one hour every day. When he bought it, it was 12 o’clock. When would it next tell the correct time? Such problems are intelligence or problem-solving tests, but they do not teach children anything about mathematical formulae or how to do the calculations that the problems require them to do.

Angela Smith (Labour, Sheffield, Hillsborough)

The hon. Gentleman is generous with his time. There must be evidence other than a few books by Melanie Phillips and a few visits to schools to suggest that the “learn how to learn” approach that he describes is prevalent in our schools and is damaging our children’s life chances. Would he share that evidence with us?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

There is a lot of evidence. I could bring the book and read out huge chunks of it. I might be wrong about all of it, but the point is that we should get the whole thing out in the open. We should get the education academics to say what they are doing—to say in public what their approach to education is—and let the public decide what approach they want.

I have seen a lot of that kind of stuff while visiting schools. I have talked to maths experts from a company called Making Maths Make Sense and a private tuition company called AE Tuition. They say that there are severe problems in how maths is taught in this country—problems that they can solve with private tuition within a few weeks of coming to those classes. We must be honest about what is happening in our schools.

Mary Creagh (Labour, Wakefield)

I wish to take up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Ms Smith) on the issue of using anecdotes as evidence. The evidence shows that in all measures of numeracy and literacy and in science tests, we have improved massively in the international league tables.

May I give the hon. Gentleman a word of warning? I note that he said he was a chartered accountant, and chartered accountants can solve complex financial and mathematical problems for their clients, but relying on the private sector to come up with the latest wonder bullet to teach all our children exactly the same things is not necessarily the answer. I do not see how that will help them to succeed and develop new products, skills and innovations in the future.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

The companies do not use new wonder products in teaching maths. They use tried and tested methods, which work. The universities and employers have a huge complaint about school leavers’ acquisition of basic skills in maths. That has become a serious problem in this country, if we want to compete and be innovative in the world. It is not possible to be innovative by thinking in a vacuum. It is necessary to have the knowledge that has been accumulated to date by preceding generations. Without that knowledge one cannot innovate. We are expecting our children to be creative without knowing anything.

One in three new jobs in the United States is in the creative industries, and people must be highly educated to get those jobs. Our children are competing today in a world jobs market against children and young people educated by methods uncontaminated by the approach to education that I am talking about. They are far better educated than many of our young people today. University professors will tell you—and this is anecdotal, but there is evidence to back it up—that some overseas students in universities, who speak English as their second language, sometimes have a better grasp of English and English grammar than some of our home-grown students in this country, because we were never taught grammar in our schools.

Some of the international evidence, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment study of 2000, which may be what the hon. Lady alludes to, are flawed. Academics at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research will say that the PISA 2000 study is flawed; we know that it is flawed because in the 2003 study the British results were excluded from the tables because of the low participation rate of English schools. We must look at all the evidence very carefully when assessing what has happened.

Again, it is not only the past eight years that we should consider. I accept that there has been an improvement in standards in that time, but much more significant improvements are needed, and the problems are not caused or solved by Labour or the Conservatives; these things go much deeper and we need a more serious approach.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

In some ways I concur; we need continually to scrutinise teaching practices. However, the hon. Gentleman is giving the impression that it is possible to identify a single method that is the best, applicable at all ages, regardless of the level of development. I hear no mention of developing the individual child—a consideration that is a great strength of clause 1.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I am not saying that there is one method, or one ethos. I am saying that there is a dominant ethos among educationists in this country, which has, I believe, been very damaging. I may not be right about what the correct ethos is, but I should like an open public debate in which the public can decide the approach that they want for our communally provided education system. I believe that the approach that is taken by many schools, particularly those in the bottom quartile of the value-added league tables, is resulting in a standard that is much too low.

Anne Snelgrove (Labour, South Swindon)

Some of the evidence that the hon. Gentleman is giving is anecdotal, but we need to weigh up other evidence. He was talking earlier about extra tuition. It seems to me that the one-to-one relationship with the person giving them tuition is important; it is not just a question of the method. One reason for our wanting to move to better funding for the secondary education system is so that the pupil-teacher ratio can be cut. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is far more important than any educational method, which will be watered down by those pragmatists, the teachers? It is far more important to get the pupil-teacher ratio down, which is an aspiration of the Government.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

It is an aspiration of all of us that pupil-teacher ratios should be lower, but it is not the dominant issue. I know of parents who have turned down schools with very small classes in Islington and transferred their children across town to better schools, with much larger classes, because the ethos of those schools is far better. The people who do private tuition will explain that the fact that it is one-to-one is not the only factor; they use a different approach to the teaching of maths to children. They show them how to carry the one, and all the formulae that are not taught in many of our schools today. That is the problem.

Professor Peter Saunders, who is quoted in “All Must Have Prizes”, said in 1995, when he was professor of maths at King’s college London:

“I don’t see how you can teach skills and operations without facts and techniques. How can you operate with nothing to operate on? How can you teach any mathematics when the students lack the fluency in technique and the knowledge of the previous levels to follow what you are saying? It’s hard to learn fractions if you aren’t confident with arithmetic, it’s hard to learn algebra if you aren’t good at fractions and it’s hard to learn calculus if you are still uncomfortable with algebra.”

The multiplication of fractions was left out of the maths framework at key stage 2 for a significant period before it was put back in. I am not blaming Labour—this is not a partisan point. However, some educationists espouse the things that I am talking about, which is why eminent professors such as Peter Saunders say that kind of thing—not as a chartered accountant and a consumer of education services, but as a producer and an expert. There are a lot of people like him saying that kind of thing.

Anne Snelgrove (Labour, South Swindon)

Professor Saunders is an education expert, but teachers are not necessarily teaching to such methods. As I said earlier, teachers are great pragmatists, and the hon. Gentleman does them a great disservice if he gives to the outside world the impression that those ideological ways of teaching are happening in schools. I do not believe that that is happening in my schools in Swindon.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

The hon. Lady makes a very good point, and I am not criticising teachers. Thank goodness that not all teachers slavishly follow that approach because otherwise standards in this country would be significantly lower than they are. I made the point at the beginning of my contribution that some teachers in the mid ’80s taught multiplication tables with one eye on the classroom door in case the head teacher came in and criticised that method of teaching.

We must accept that in the educationists’ world—among academics and professors of education in our universities and teacher training colleges—there is a different ethos and approach to education from the one that parents and, apparently, the hon. Lady would support in real life.

Anne Snelgrove (Labour, South Swindon)

I have not been supporting that method. I am saying that I am deeply sceptical about whether that is happening. As somebody who worked in schools in the 1980s and now visits them—more than 50 times in my constituency since last year—I am deeply sceptical about whether the pure form that the hon. Gentleman is espousing actually happens. I know that some academics push that forward, but I do not know of any teachers who take it on board unquestioningly, and I did not know of any in the 1980s.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I do not know on which side of the debate the hon. Lady is. If she is against the approach that I have been explaining, which is the dominant view of educationists, fine, but she cannot have it both ways. If she agrees with me that those things are wrong, we can discuss how prevalent in schools they are. I hope that teachers do not take those methods on board, but it is difficult for a conscientious teacher not to be swayed by the dominant view in education circles, particularly if they are leaning also on advice from the local education authorities, which, again, are influenced by education academics.

For example, the problem solving based on tubes, which I cited, was based on advice from a local education authority adviser, which was based on a scheme developed in New Zealand. The problem that the current education orthodoxy has with maths is the horror that many educationists have at rote learning—repetition and memory work—which is essential for a real grasp and understanding of maths.

There are similar issues with teaching foreign languages. Children are not expected to learn lists of vocabulary. English grammar is not taught in many schools. [Interruption.] Well, it was not taught to me, I can tell you that. That was my experience of education, and it is what I wrote in my speech. Fortunately, we did study Latin at my comprehensive school, and grammar was a key feature of the way that that was taught. Having said that, my English sometimes reflects Latin or French grammar rules, rather than English. If I were to use the subjunctive, it would be more by chance than through a real understanding of the rules.

I am aware that I have spoken at some length. I do not intend to do so on most of the other amendments and clauses, but the issue before us is fundamental if we are to tackle many of the root problems in our education system, so I felt that it needed a bit of an exposition. I have hardly scratched the surface of what is involved. Clearly, there are different philosophies of education, such as the George Steiner school, the Montessori approach to education and the approach that I have been discussing and which dominates our education system today. As a nation, we must decide how to have a communal education system, which I support. I also support private education, but 93 per cent. of children attend state schools. What education philosophy should drive our communal education system? That question has been answered not by politicians representing their constituents, but by educationists who are accountable neither to the marketplace nor to Parliament and the electorate. Politicians of all parties have neglected the debate and have focused instead on structure or cash.

If we are genuinely worried about the quality of education of all children, from whatever background they come, we should be focusing on pedagogical and curriculum issues. That does not mean that the Minister for Schools should sit down to devise a history curriculum, but that history experts should be appointed to devise a curriculum that is in tune with what she knows to be the wishes of parents in this country. The amendment would incorporate that approach into the Bill.

Amendment No. 4 would include in the objectives for an education authority that of raising the educational attainment of the most disadvantaged. It is in that area that our historical system performs least well. In many respects, the programme for international student assessment study of 2000 was flawed. It pointed out that the United Kingdom has a longer tail of underachievement than most countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. That translates into the fact that one in five 11-year-olds leaves primary school unable to read and write properly and 44 per cent. leave primary schools not having mastered each of the three Rs.

A similar, but slightly higher, figure of 56 per cent. is the proportion of 15-year-olds who fail to achieve five or more GCSEs, grades A* to C, including English and maths. Some 44 per cent. manage that, which is why 43.5 per cent. go on to higher education. It is no coincidence that the figures are similar. The fundamental problem is at the primary level. Once we have tackled successfully poor reading skills through the roll-out of synthetic phonics, we shall continue to see problems with maths and at secondary school.

The amendment is aimed especially at primary schools. If a primary school focuses on 100 per cent. of its pupils, including the 25 per cent. who currently fail to grasp reading and writing at the appropriate level, it will have to adopt pedagogical methods and a thoroughness of approach that does not let any child slip through the system for six years without having grasped the essentials of effortlessly decoding a word.

The other focus of the amendment is on ensuring that, at secondary school, the classes are set by ability with the groups for the lowest attaining pupils being smaller in size than the higher attaining groups, and with the best teachers allocated to those groups. Jim Kulik of Michigan university has undertaken studies of setting and has shown that the self-esteem of those in the lower attaining groups counter-intuitively rises when they are set by ability compared with a mixed ability class. We can see why. The children learn at a pace that enables them to understand and learn the things that they are being taught. No brighter kids then humiliate them. Instead of being bored and frustrated by not being able to follow what is going on, the pupils in the lower sets actually learn and develop, and often move up to higher sets as their confidence in the subject grows.

Amendments Nos. 86 and 87, along with amendment No. 58 tabled by the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather), would incorporate into the Bill the duty on local authorities under the Children Act 2004 to make arrangements to promote co-operation between agencies to improve children’s well-being, which, as the hon. Member for Bury, North knows, is defined as

“healthy, staying safe, enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution and achieving economic well-being”.

The Catholic Education Service sent members of the Committee a brief on this part of the Bill, and it makes a point that I want to bring to the Committee’s attention. The brief states:

“We recognise that there may be merit in drawing together the Every Child Matters principles in the Children Act 2004 and behind this legislation. However, we would like to remind you that section 10(2) of the Children Act omitted to make reference to spiritual well-being. We believe this was a fundamental omission and one which is out of step with both education legislation elsewhere and the reality of the lives of children and young people.”

Amendments Nos. 86 and 87 seek to address the concern of many critics of the Bill that the independence and autonomy that the Bill will give to schools, and which Conservative Members welcome, appears to contradict the drive behind the Children Act, which was to foster co-operation between agencies to prevent appalling tragedies such as that of Victoria Climbié being repeated.

The amendments effectively deal with that criticism. In the spirit of the consensus that we are trying to create, I hope that the Government will be able to accept them. The amendments have the support of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which stated that

“under the legislation schools will have increased autonomy and there is risk that their relationships with other bodies with responsibility for children’s welfare will be weakened.”

I have spoken for some time, but the amendments are important. I hope that we will have a serious and considered response from the Minister.

Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat, Brent East)

I shall be as brief as I can in following the contribution of the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb). I shall touch on amendments Nos. 58, 86 and 87, which the hon. Gentleman dealt with, and on some of the points that were raised in respect of amendments Nos. 96, 186 and 3.

Amendments Nos. 58, 86 and 87 seek to put back into the Bill the notion of well-being, which the Government’s amendment to the Education Act 1996 explicitly removes. It is important. The Government have done well at stressing the importance of dealing with children’s whole well-being, and, as the hon. Member for Bury, North said, schools are about much more than just educational attainment.

There is great danger in drawing on one’s experience when dealing with education—apart from anything else, it is probably 20 years since most of us were taught in school, and education has changed a great deal—but my presence here is testament to the fact that one can achieve educationally without going to school. However, other aspects of school are also important. I missed most of my schooling during my teenage years but still achieved A grades at A-level to go to Cambridge, but I knew very well when I arrived there that I had missed many of the other important aspects of schooling.

I strongly believe that the Bill must state clearly in the first clause that schools are about preparing well-rounded young people for life, and ensuring that all the aspects covered in “Every Child Matters” and in the 2004 Act are paramount. Those who run schools must have those thoughts at the front of their mind, and local authorities must take on those duties when they are working with schools and commissioning education.

As the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton stated, the Bill is moving towards autonomous schools. If we are to go in that direction, which the Government have decided is the direction that we must take, we must make it explicit from the beginning that co-operation is essential and that it is important to deal with the child as a whole.

The hon. Member for Bury, North made a good point on amendment No. 96, and I shall be interested in the Minister’s response to it. What are the Government’s intentions in putting in those words, and do they intend to move to a stage at which commissioning will be withdrawn? I suspect that that is not their intention, so I should be interested to hear why they have chosen to add those words.

On amendment No. 186, I have no problem with leaving in the word “educational”. Schools are about much more than just education, but they are also about education. Therefore, it is important to leave the word in the clause.

On amendment No. 3, we had an interesting academic, philosophical discussion about the nature of knowledge, but it is common sense that education must be about teaching young people to think, and teaching them facts and skills. We could have a lengthy discussion about the semantics of knowledge, but putting that explicitly in the Bill would be walking into the trap that the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton asked us not to walk into—going down one track of learning at the expense of all others.

It was fascinating to hear the hon. Gentleman’s rather prescriptive approach today. I listened to the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) speak in the Chamber yesterday about the need to trust teachers and head teachers, yet we are here prescribing a particular form of learning, or at least attempting to remove other forms of learning in the school curriculum. Of course, it is common sense that education has changed since even the youngest of us were at school. It has changed considerably because knowledge moves on—for example, the science curriculum that was taught at degree or postgraduate level is now taught at GCSE or a lower level in schools because knowledge has moved on. Pupils in schools need to learn different things at different paces. That is inevitable and it is not entirely surprising that some people find it difficult to help their children with their homework. That may not mean that they failed to achieve at school. It may mean simply that educational knowledge, information and thought have moved on.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

May I add my voice to those that have welcomed you to the Chair, Mr. Cook?

I shall speak briefly to amendments Nos. 96, 95 and 186. As the Minister is aware, they are essentially probing amendments to obtain clarification. Amendment No. 96 would clarify the role of local authorities and ensure that they continue to provide services to schools, particularly a range of support services.

Until the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton spoke, I thought we had all signed up to the personalised learning agenda, but I am not so sure now. Amendment No. 95 is about ensuring that resources are available to back up the personalised learning agenda and that schools will be able to deliver so that children have access to it.

Amendment No. 186 is not about downgrading educational achievement and does not in any way suggest that that is not what schools should primarily be about. Its purpose is to ask whether the Bill acknowledges that schools have a much wider role in, for example, children’s social and cultural development and whether that should be reflected in the Bill.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

What a delight it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Cook. I anticipate your benevolence and indulgence in the coming days and weeks.

Before I speak to amendments Nos. 3 and 4, it is perhaps worth saying something about the context of the Bill. Much has been made of it and many claims have been made for it, but it is the common habit of politicians to oversell their product—we are all guilty of that at one time or another—so let us be clear. The Bill is not a landmark Bill. In terms of education reform, this is not 1876 or 1944, nor even 1988. However, the Bill contains some important provisions, some good and some less so, and we shall explore those during the coming weeks.

I welcome the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, who started the Committee off in precisely the right way by looking at the fundamental aspects of the Bill; how it responds to the educational imperatives facing us and how we got to where we are. We have had a lengthy discussion about the nature of education and, in particular, the nature of knowledge. It is indisputable that transmission of a body of knowledge is a necessary part of the education process. So much would have been taken as read until relatively recently—certainly in my lifetime. I know it is hard to believe, but I am 47. Committee members may ask, “How can that possibly be true? How can that callow youth standing before us possibly be 47?” Well, I am—I plead guilty to that at least. In those years, there emerged a different view of education, which my hon. Friend began to articulate, and as a result the assumption that a body of knowledge should be transmitted from one generation to another has been challenged. Of course, education is not only about that; it is also about the acquisition of skills and, as the hon. Member for Brent, East said, about values and attitudes. There is no dichotomy.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

If education is about transferring knowledge from one generation to another, how do we accommodate new knowledge?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Incrementally. I did not anticipate needing to teach the hon. Lady a lesson so early in our consideration, but I am happy to do so. The collective wisdom of the ages, which is transmitted across the generations, added to, of course, by each of those generations and vested in our institutions, both small and large, is of primary importance and is bound up with the very nature of civilised society. It would be wrong to ignore that in the education system and so to assume that one can be educated and accomplished without acquiring elements of that historical knowledge and the new knowledge that comes with each new generation, each new discovery and each reinterpretation of what we know, such things being not static, but dynamic. That is a fundamental part of the education process, but education is not about that alone.

Mary Creagh (Labour, Wakefield)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I can see that this is going to be a lively exchange.

Mary Creagh (Labour, Wakefield)

Would the hon. Gentleman describe the discoveries of Archimedes, Isaac Newton or even Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the internet, as incremental increases in knowledge or great leaps forward? If they are great leaps forward, how can they be learned in tiny ways? They are examples of great leaps, and we need to teach people to take great leaps, as well as just learn what has gone before.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Yes, but people take great leaps only because of what has gone before. Einstein, for example, would not have been able to make his contribution to science and to our lives without Newton; similarly, Newton would not have been able to come to his conclusions without studying the ancients. Of course, there are great leaps forward in all kinds of fields, but they build on what has gone before, and any academic or scientist who is involved in such great leaps forward acknowledges their debt to those who have gone before them. All I am saying is that knowledge grows and that that growth in knowledge needs to be transmitted to children as part of the education system.

Angela Smith (Labour, Sheffield, Hillsborough)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I am moving on to skills, but I am happy to stay with knowledge for a while.

Angela Smith (Labour, Sheffield, Hillsborough)

Is it not true that the great leaps forward in thinking are due to the fact that great scientists and great inventors do not just accept the knowledge that has been transferred to them, but learn how to think and challenge?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

They do not accept that such things are static—as I said, they are dynamic. Inevitably, if one is to make new discoveries and develop one’s thinking, one must be sufficiently flexible to accept that things are dynamic. However, that does not mean that we should forget all that has gone before. The idea that we should learn in a vacuum, detached from that body of knowledge, is surely nonsense and no one on the Committee or more widely would make that case. Yet, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton said, a view grew up in the 1960s and particularly the 1970s among those who one might argue should have known better that the body of knowledge that my hon. Friend discussed at length was much less important than it really is.

My hon. Friend quoted Mr. Woodhead, and I had the book to which he referred close to hand, which was lucky because I did not know that he was going to quote from it. In that book, Woodhead deconstructs constructivism. He talks about his experience of teaching in the 1960s and says:

“Children had to ‘make their own meanings’ and ‘construct their own version of reality’. I did not want them to write down what I told them”

because

“The factual information that I could transmit was irrelevant to the emotional engagement that had to be at the heart of every authentic literary encounter, and the more I told them what to think and feel the more inauthentic that encounter would become. My role was to help my pupils to feel their way into the text, to relate it to their own experiences and inner life, and to come, as independently as they could, to their own judgements and understanding.”

One of the effects of that kind of orthodoxy was to demote the role of the teacher. We heard during an earlier, very good contribution, that the relationship between the teacher and taught—the ability of the teacher to inspire—was critical to the process of education. I have no doubt that each of us in this Committee was inspired during our education by a particular educator. But educators were demoted by the child-centred approach. The further we move away from the idea that teachers have the capacity to inspire because they transmit a body of knowledge and range of skills—allowing, of course, children’s own understanding to emerge and accepting that each child grows organically through that process—the more we undermine the important status and role of the teacher.

I do not claim that education is just about knowledge. That is the mistake made by critics of the kind of argument advanced by my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton. They assume that because one is making such a case, one cannot also believe that education is about values, attitudes and the acquisition of skills. That is a false dichotomy, which is well illustrated by an essay in an extremely good review of essays published by the National Union of Teachers—one in a regular series of collections of essays on education that it publishes. In his essay John White, emeritus professor of the philosophy of education at the institute of education at the university of London, sets up a dichotomy between education that is essentially about academic learning and education that is about personal well-being. To my way of thinking, however, the acquisition of understanding, the capacity to take on board a body of knowledge and the discovery of ways of learning. New skills are critical to people’s sense of well-being because they inform and inspire their sense of self-worth. Well-being and self-worth are inseparable, so I do not buy the idea that personal well-being is in some way contradicted by the idea of acquiring a body of knowledge.

Angela Smith (Labour, Sheffield, Hillsborough)

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman giving way a second time. Is it not true that self-esteem is very important to enable a child to learn in the first place? Is there not a history of failure and underperformance among children who lack self-esteem and confidence and who come from backgrounds where they are not supported or encouraged to believe that they can actually learn?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

That is where Professor White gets it right. He goes on to say in his essay, as I was about to mention, that if the only education offered to children is academic and we assume that all education is essentially literary, we fall into a trap where we disillusion and diminish those children to whom that sort of curriculum and educational experience are not best suited. That is why the Government are right, in my judgment, to put an appropriate emphasis on vocational education. I have heard the shadow Minister speak in much the same terms.

We need to understand that to be educated is not necessarily a literary matter. Some 300 or 400 years ago, most people were illiterate but they certainly were not uneducated. Education is about the skill of one’s hands as well as many other things. The people who carved the wood on the panels in this room, those who designed and printed the wallpaper and those who built this Palace were not necessarily literary people, but they were certainly educated. Re-evaluating our understanding of education is part of the process of delivering self-worth to a whole range of different types of person with different pre-occupations and talents and so different things to offer. I agree with the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough and I agree with Professor White about that. However, it would be a mistake to underestimate or, worse still, to undermine the argument in favour of that vital body of knowledge, that collective wisdom of ages, support for which is embodied in the argument that my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton made and in our amendment No. 3, which would be a happy and useful addition to the Bill.

It is perhaps worth adding that there will no doubt be a debate in the Committee about methodology and the different ways of teaching different things. To some extent we have had that debate this morning. I gather from hon. Members who have already contributed that it is necessary to lay before the Committee one’s credentials to comment on such matters. I make little of the fact that I was a member of an LEA in Nottinghamshire for many years, as shadow spokesman on education, and even less of the fact that I trained as a teacher. My principal qualification to speak on such matters is that I am the father of William and Edward—I have a photo that I shall pass round for hon. Members who are interested. Having two young sons, I spend a great deal of my leisure time dealing with the very business of teaching children to read, write, count and reason. Based on that experience, I have come to the conclusions that phonics are critical, although I do not entirely share my hon. Friend’s view about the real books method. My son is learning by a mix of the two. Although I learned to read, write and spell by a traditional means—in a golden past, in an idyllically happy childhood—my son is learning by a slightly different, mixed approach, which is proving effective. I believe in traditional methods, but I do not want to be hidebound by them. I am open-minded about methodology: different children learn in different ways.

Children certainly need the basics, however, and my hon. Friend is right to say that for too long those basics were neglected. A child who cannot sound the alphabet cannot make much use of the real books method. I first became politically involved in education in the mid-1980s, when the real books movement really got under way, and we were told that those basic things were not necessary. I entirely support the idea that phonics is a critical part of learning to read and write. The Government have also taken that on board, which is a negation of the views that were prevalent for too long. I am prepared to base my judgment on such matters on real life experience and to keep an open mind about methodology. I am sure that we shall talk much more about skills, attitudes and values, and knowledge as the days and weeks go by.

Amendment No. 4 proposes that we should raise

“the educational attainment of the most disadvantaged”.

That goes to the very heart of our conservatism. The Conservative party has a noble history of standing for the most disadvantaged. We are, after all, the party of Wilberforce, Shaftesbury and Disraeli. Over many years in this place, the Conservative party championed the cause of the disadvantaged against bitter opposition from Liberals and other reactionaries, and we do no less today. That is the reason for amendment No. 4. [Interruption.] I see that I have caused some hilarity among Government Members; I find that hard to understand, but no doubt they will share the joke with us later.

Perhaps it is worth quoting Rab Butler, who said of his great Education Act of 1944:

“Educationally ... Britain had to be one nation not two. So there must be an education system providing a training best suited to the talents of every individual”.

Our education system too often fails the most disadvantaged in our society. That is freely acknowledged by Members on both sides of the House. Indeed, when the Secretary of State introduced the Bill on Second Reading, she made it clear that there was still a long way to go in improving the quality of the education experience for the most disadvantaged children in society, although she of course advertised the claims of progress that the Government frequently make.

To state the position in graphic terms, in January 2005, 29 per cent. of all schools with special measures were located in the 20 per cent. most deprived communities. That statistic is drawn from the National Audit Office report published just a month or so ago. Nearly a million children—13 per cent. of the school population—are attending poorly performing schools, which means that there are 1,557 poorly performing schools in England, and that recent NAO study made it clear that those poorly performing schools were staying in difficulties for too long. The problem is not simply the number of schools in difficulties, but the time that the schools spend in less-than-ideal circumstances. They perform poorly for too long and take too long to react. As we heard again in the Budget debate yesterday, according to the Department’s own figures, almost half—44 per cent.—of all 11-year-olds leave primary school without mastering the three R’s. Less than half of school leavers—44 per cent.—attain five or more good GCSE grades, including English and maths.

If, as Chesterton remarked, education is the soul of society as it passes from one generation to another—I am reminded of earlier discussion in Committee—we must loosen the grip of the soullessness that besets our great cities and towns, and we must ensure that the wisdom of generations is passed down to all our children, not just the fortunate few. That is why, over generations, there has been debate about methodology and teaching and learning strategies. It is the kind of debate that we began this morning—one in which we consider the relationship between teacher and taught and how to elevate expectations. We engage in such debates in an effort to ensure that children aim for a more distant horizon, particularly those children who start with low self-esteem. That is also why we debate education structure.

It is legitimate to consider how far structure has inhibited the useful debate about methodology and how far it has facilitated a useful consideration of how to deal with disadvantage. To be frank, the jury is out. There is a case—my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton began to make it—for saying that the predominance of debate about structure in education has been unhelpful in addressing the more fundamental problems, which have tended to continue regardless of the structural changes made. Having said that, the Bill is in large measure about structure. We need to consider that in relation to the amendments, because if we are to talk about structure, we should not do so outside of considerations about the most disadvantaged pupils and the most poorly performing schools.

It is because of successive Governments’ determination to change the structure of education in order to raise standards that the Education Act 1944 was introduced. You, Mr. Cook, and the Committee will be relieved to know that I do not intend to speak about that in any great detail—not that you would permit me to do so. More especially, that is why the Education Reform Act 1988 was introduced. That is relevant, of course, because it has been said that the 1988 Act was a forerunner of the Bill in terms of the independence that the Act gave schools. The arguments that ran throughout the 80s were fierce; I was involved in them and I remember the 1988 Act as an active member of an LEA at the time. The debates were about whether by giving schools greater freedom and competence over their affairs, we could raise standards.

The debates have raged and been waged for 20 years since, and as my hon. Friend rightly said, a consensus has been emerging and is embodied in the Bill. By giving schools greater flexibility in what they do and thus greater freedom to prioritise, we might be able to raise educational standards and improve the quality of education offered to our children. Broadly speaking, I support that view. If we are to raise standards and improve the quality of education, we must give schools more freedom to develop in the way that best suited to the needs of their locality and most sensitive to the requirements of their children. We must allow schools to explore the capacity of their leaders, governors, heads and teachers to innovate. That is why we supported the Bill on Second Reading and broadly approve of it in essence.

Even so, there is a worry that some schools will continue to struggle. There is concern about children in the most difficult areas and schools with the most difficult cohorts, who are perhaps bound to fail. I am not prepared in Committee to accept that as the status quo. I, like Members throughout the Committee, want to ensure that every child has the chance to fulfil their potential—the chance that I guess we have all had. To that end, I urge the Committee to accept amendment No. 4 and add the emphasis on disadvantage to the Bill. Amendments Nos. 3 and 4 and others tabled by my hon. Friends would be constructive, consensual and intelligent additions to the Bill. They are designed not to frustrate its intent, but to improve the legislation that we hope will emanate from our considerations during the next few weeks. In that spirit, I urge my hon. Friends and other hon. Members throughout the Committee, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton did, to support the amendments tabled in our names.

Anne Snelgrove (Labour, South Swindon)

I, too, welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Cook. The amendment is not necessary, because the whole Bill looks at promoting the education of the most disadvantaged.

Rob Wilson (Conservative, Reading East)

One of the problems that although the measures for the disadvantaged have received a lot of window dressing, the Bill does not focus on them much. It is more about keeping the middle classes in the education system, as Downing street advisers have said, rather than helping poor children to attain their best in schools.

Anne Snelgrove (Labour, South Swindon)

I cannot accept what the hon. Gentleman says. This is not a Bill just for the middle classes—a Bill to keep the middle classes in the education system. It is a Bill for all children, and it will help in particular the most disadvantaged in my constituency. However, we are introducing the Bill to ensure that all schools can promote the education of all their children.

I, too, remember the Education Reform Act 1988 very well. I was working in education at that time, and my issue with the legislation was that it set school against school. It did not promote collaboration among groups of schools—indeed, it destroyed much of the work that the Conservative Government had funded to promote schools working together under the technical and vocational education initiative. The Government missed the opportunity to continue skills education and collaborative education among the education community. That Act made the divide between good and poor schools even greater, which was a great pity.

Since 1997, we have been putting the emphasis on people working collaboratively in education, and we brought the grant-maintained schools back into the family of local education authority schools, which is where they remain.

Nadine Dorries (Conservative, Mid Bedfordshire)

The hon. Lady has mentioned a number of times things that were done by a previous Conservative Government. We can all hark back to the past. I note, however, that the hon. Lady did not mention the Education Act 1996, which gave all children, particularly those with special needs, full access to education. If she wants to hark back to the past, perhaps she would do so accurately.

Anne Snelgrove (Labour, South Swindon)

I am harking back accurately; I remember it well. My purpose in mentioning the 1988 Act was not completely to castigate the former Tory Administration but to say that it worked against the implementation of provisions that had been introduced previously by Keith Joseph. Perhaps the hon. Lady should consider the activities of Keith Joseph—and the actions of subsequent Conservative Education Ministers, who destroyed some of that work.

Mr. Evennettrose—

Anne Snelgrove (Labour, South Swindon)

I want to make some progress.

Mr. Evennettrose—

Anne Snelgrove (Labour, South Swindon)

If the hon. Gentleman is going to be so insistent, then I shall give way.

David Evennett (Conservative, Bexleyheath and Crayford)

I always like to listen to the hon. Lady, because she is always educational. She said that the Bill would certainly help the most disadvantaged. How?

Anne Snelgrove (Labour, South Swindon)

It will do so by enabling schools to undertake trust status, to work together if they wish and to formalise many of the collaborative arrangements that are already in use in my constituency. For instance, the excellence cluster is making some improvements for the most disadvantaged children; however, it could work much better with the university of Bath. In addition, most disadvantaged children will be helped, particularly through the personalisation of the curriculum and, at last, the formalisation of powers for teachers to deal with disruptive children.

Angela Smith (Labour, Sheffield, Hillsborough)

Is it not also true that the greater powers that the Bill will give to local authorities to intervene when schools are failing to deliver will make it much more likely that levels of attainment among such children will be raised?

Anne Snelgrove (Labour, South Swindon)

I agree with my hon. Friend. The provisions that I have described will also give my local authority, a small unitary authority, a greater opportunity to work with schools strategically, rather than having to be direct providers. Parts of the Bill will really help small authorities.

David Evennett (Conservative, Bexleyheath and Crayford)

We are really looking at the most disadvantaged children, and we all passionately want to help them. Many existing powers are not being used. Why not?

Anne Snelgrove (Labour, South Swindon)

Many powers have already been made available, but we are not complacent. We must not stand still.

I draw hon. Members’ attention to the National Audit Office report, published in January, which stated that we had gone a long way to helping the most disadvantaged children. It said that the number of failing schools had halved between 1998 and 2005, and that the number of low achieving secondary schools had fallen by 75 per cent. Many schools in my constituency are among those improving secondary schools, but they are still not improving enough—and they would the first to acknowledge the fact. I have spoken to some head teachers in my constituency about this, and they say that the Bill will give them powers over and above those that they already have.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The hon. Lady is right about the National Audit Office report, but as I pointed out it also says that the problems of the most disadvantaged schools, which stay on special measures or perform poorly for the longest period, seem to be intractable. What extra do we need to do to improve the performance of such schools, which are often in the most disadvantaged areas, serve the most disadvantaged communities and have the most intractable problems?

Anne Snelgrove (Labour, South Swindon)

The hon. Gentleman is right to raise that point, and I thank him for doing so. There are two examples that I can mention: first, the earlier intervention by local authorities, particularly in the case of Church schools. In the past, local authorities have had to stand on the sidelines and watch such schools fail. Secondly, there will be an opportunity for head teachers who have proven their leadership skills to take over one or two other schools and look at the leadership that they could give to that group of schools. Some successful head teachers are concerned about that and say, “What about the school that I am already in? Will it be disadvantaged?” Once a school is successful and has the right staff, the head teacher can move on to a new challenge while keeping an eye on the school that they have already made a success of. We do not have enough excellent leaders in education for all failing schools to have one of them. The scheme is therefore a way of making creative use of the expertise available.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I endorse that view. Mentoring is an important part of the process, and I think that the hon. Lady makes a powerful case for it. Will she extend that case to the private sector? I was lucky enough to speak at the independent schools conference a few days ago, and I invited the private sector to use its skills, resources and expertise to mentor schools in the circumstances that she described. Does she welcome that approach?

Anne Snelgrove (Labour, South Swindon)

I have always had an open mind on such matters, and I think that there should be a two-way process. We have failing private schools as well as failing state schools, and I want to see the barriers between the private and state sectors broken down. I welcome the fact that some private schools are coming into the body of local education authority schools.

This has been an excellent debate, and I thank you, Mr. Cook, and others for it.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I welcome you to the Committee, Mr. Cook.

Frank Cook (Labour, Stockton North)

Order. I have been waiting for some time for a hearing device. In common with the rest of the community, I have to wait my turn. I have been fitted for it, but it has yet to be delivered. I ask everyone to speak up so that I can hear and so that I might be able to understand. I am the only person in the Committee who is not allowed to fall asleep.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

Thank you, Mr. Cook. I am looking forward to serving under your chairmanship again. We should also cut out conversations so that our voices reach you clearly.

I had a faint vision from the Opposition speeches that we may be steered back towards rote learning, and I hope that there is not a new consensus in that direction. In a way, one welcomes the Conservatives now saying that they want to flag up the attainment of the most disadvantaged. I suspect that, admirably, the Minister will say that that important matter is covered in the Bill, but the schools that acquired grant-maintained status in my constituency were in the most advantaged areas. That deprived our most disadvantaged school of resources and facilities and was incredibly divisive. It showed the need to maintain a local authority that can put in as much support as possible, but the withdrawal of funds from the local authority made that difficult. I welcome the fact that we are now talking about the most disadvantaged children.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I just want to pick up on the hon. Lady’s point about rote learning. Does she believe that children in primary schools should learn by rote the multiplication tables?

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

Hon. Members will hear me express throughout our debates the view that it is most important to have strategies for particular children, and that a single approach of rote learning of multiplication tables is a meaningless exercise.

Let me address amendments Nos. 86 and 87, on which my hon. Friends and I are in agreement with the Conservative Opposition. “Every Child Matters” and the agenda associated with it were a big step forward. We began to take a broader view of child development, and focused on the outcomes of all children. We believe that there should be a link in the Bill to the Children Act 2004, particularly to section 12. It could be argued that what is in that Act does not need to be in this one, but that might not be sufficient to draw attention to the importance of co-operation between local authorities, schools and the many other bodies involved in the general welfare of the child.

It concerned us greatly when I served on the Committee that considered the Children Bill that schools were not identified as a separate body—academies and independent schools were left out of the loop, and that was a serious matter. This Bill takes us further along the route of giving more autonomy to schools. We need to be absolutely sure that our most vulnerable children are protected. It is right that we should place great emphasis on standards, but at the same time we must recognise that vulnerable children have to be supported by a wide range of different agencies, and their needs have to be identified. There is a danger that we will overlook their needs.

On amendment No. 58, as well as the “Every Child Matters” agenda, there is an additional strand—the promotion of emotional well-being. Clearly, the other two objectives of this section cannot be achieved unless the children have emotional well-being. We know that emotionally disturbed children—for example, those with low self-esteem—have great problems with learning. Emotional well-being underpins the promotion of high standards and the “fulfilment by every child”. It would be a positive move to highlight that by making that addition to the clause.

Of course, the clause is not about particular subjects or courses of work, but I should like to mention an important programme for the social and emotional aspects of learning—SEAL. I do not say that it is a strand that should be highlighted by itself, but its importance, and the way in which the Government have promoted it, should be reflected. I have taught in a high-performing school, and when one is on the bandwagon of aiming for high standards, less time is left for other matters that are very important for a large number of our children.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Will the hon. Lady give way?

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I wanted to be brief.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I defer, of course, to the hon. Lady’s immense experience as a practitioner, but good teachers have always understood the importance of the emotional well-being of children. The relationship between the teacher and the taught is founded on the trusting bond, which includes a proper consideration of emotional well-being. Is the issue not the quality of teaching and the value that is placed on teachers?

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

It may be about the quality of the teaching, but that might be less appropriate if we look at the ethos of the school. If a school’s ethos is to concentrate on the high-fliers, it sometimes finds it easier to ask children to leave than to address their problems.

Still on that matter, there is a significant difference between the clause that we are considering and the clause that it replaces in the Education Act 1996. That specifically mentions community, and that will be an important issue as we progress through the Bill. If we give greater autonomy to schools, what will be their contribution to the wider community and to all aspects of children’s development? The particular clause that has been replaced mentioned spiritual, moral, mental and physical development. Through the way it was expressed, it focused on a collaborative model in the community, and I rather think that with the new provision we lose those values. Nevertheless, its great strength is in speaking about the fulfilment of every child. That is something on which we should really focus.

Edward Leigh (Conservative, Gainsborough)

I hesitate to take part, because I am not an educationist and I have never taught in schools or in a university or college; I am simply a parent. I apologise for the fact that I do not have a photograph of my children in my wallet.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

It would have to be a big photograph.

Edward Leigh (Conservative, Gainsborough)

It would indeed. I do know a lot about children, however, and about being a parent. Only last night, my son, who is in year six in primary school, asked me what a past participle was, and I had absolutely no idea. So clearly they are doing grammar in some primary schools nowadays. Forty years ago, when I was at school, I was doing a lot of thinking, but I suspect not much learning.

Despite confessing that I am not an educationist, I much enjoyed the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton. It was a wonderful performance and very interesting—one of the best speeches I have heard in this place. I never read Chris Woodhead or Melanie Phillips, and on that I am probably in tune with 99 per cent. of people. Equally, I have not read all those very dangerous left-wing professors who teach at other universities. Intellectually, I am a completely virgin field in the matter.

Anne Snelgrove (Labour, South Swindon)

I would advise the hon. Gentleman to stay as he is, and to remember what Oscar Wilde said about ignorance being like a delicate, exotic fruit—touch it and the bloom is gone.

Edward Leigh (Conservative, Gainsborough)

That is right; I do not deny it. I have, however, read Chesterton, and I pay tribute to the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings. I think that people like Chesterton probably had a great deal of wisdom, which can illuminate our debates now.

Talking of the past, I have been serving on these Committees for many years and I served on Committees which considered education Bills in the late 1980s, which may make me a villain to Labour Members. I sat behind Lord Forsyth, who was introducing grant-maintained schools to Scotland when he produced a paper that had been set for a board school in the western isles in the 1890s for 11-year-olds. The questions on English, mathematics and history were so difficult that not a single member of the Committee could give the right answers. That shows that standards in education in many areas have been declining for many years, in terms of the rigid understanding of fundamental concepts. My hon. Friend made the point that Einstein and many great thinkers had that foundation, which has been lost in many schools.

I do not know whether synthetic phonics are the right answer, or—what it is it called?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

The whole-language approach.

Edward Leigh (Conservative, Gainsborough)

Whole language. These things are never talked about to parents. I have been a parent at primary schools for many years and teachers do not come and talk about such things—they get on with the job. So much of the debate is completely unreal in relation to what is going on.

In a moment, the Minister will come up with a well-prepared speech, and no doubt she will say that amendments Nos. 3 and 4 are not entirely necessary because part 1 of the Bill already provides that schools must promote high standards and the fulfilment of every child. No doubt she will say that it is not necessary to promote the transfer of knowledge. These debates go on.

Jacqui Smith (Labour, Redditch)

It does not say that.

Edward Leigh (Conservative, Gainsborough)

Well, the Minister will say what she likes, of course. I am just assuming that Ministers always oppose all amendments produced by the Opposition. Maybe we are in a new enlightened age, with a new leader of the Opposition, and apparently we do not talk about party politics any more. Perhaps Ministers will start accepting amendments proposed by the Opposition, which would be a wonderful way to proceed, and these Committees might mean something, but I suspect that will not happen.

Will it actually matter what is in the Bill? Will teachers not get on with what they know best?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I am delighted that my hon. Friend has given way and I thank him for it. I think that he underestimates these Ministers and that he is doing them a disservice, because I have noticed them hanging on every word issuing from the lips of my hon. Friend, and my own humble effort was also listened to attentively. Therefore, I believe that, during our proceedings, the Ministers will accept a number of the Opposition amendments, if they are put in the balanced way that we have put them today and are argued in the best possible spirit of what is already turning into an excellent Committee.

Edward Leigh (Conservative, Gainsborough)

Well, we live in hope. I suppose that if one is nice enough to Ministers, they might respond, but in my experience that does not work, with either Conservative or Labour Ministers. However, we will see what happens.

The simple point that I want to make is that, whatever we decide in the Committee this morning—it is a crucial issue and it has been a very interesting debate—whether we accept the amendments or not, most teachers will simply get on with what they want to do, which is teaching. Ultimately, we must give freedom to teachers to teach. The whole philosophy of what we have been talking about in the 23 years that I have been in the House, with education Bills every year, the national curriculum, an obsession with structures, trying to change things and throwing everything up in the air every year, is completely irrelevant. We need an Education Bill that gives as much freedom as possible to teachers to do what they do best.

I have a great deal of respect for my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, but I know that he thinks that teachers are corrupted by educational fashion and that we cannot trust many of them. There may be something in that, because some of them are infected with what he would consider to be dangerous, progressive ideas. Some are; some are not. There are good primary schools and bad primary schools.

Mr. Gibbrose—

Edward Leigh (Conservative, Gainsborough)

I am not making any point against my hon. Friend, because I have enormous respect for him. The very fact that he is taking his job so seriously that he is visiting both the 50 best-performing schools and the 50 worst-performing schools shows that he has a real commitment to what he believes in. However, there is one thing wrong with his analysis, which I suspect is the one thing wrong with many of the views put forward in the Committee. That is that somehow the centre can decide; that the man in Whitehall knows best. I assure the Committee that, having spent 23 years in this building under both Conservative and Labour Governments, the man in Whitehall does not know best. We do not know best. The parent and the teacher know best.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I just wanted to put the record straight on one point that my hon. Friend made about not trusting teachers. I do trust teachers. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude and they are very able people, but many teachers have to rely on the advice that they are given by local education authority advisers and by academics in the universities. Any conscientious teacher would. That is what I am concerned about. I want to ensure that that advice is the advice that parents want those who teach their children to be given. It is not a question of whether I or anybody else trusts teachers. I certainly do trust teachers and their professionalism.

Edward Leigh (Conservative, Gainsborough)

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I visited a primary school in my constituency recently and was asking about synthetic phonics, as it has come into public debate recently. I said to the teacher, “Surely there were all these educational fashions and all those circulars coming from the Department.” She said, “I ignored all that. I just got on with my job. I have carried on with synthetic phonics all these years, when it was out of fashion.” That is the point that I am making.

I say that we should trust teachers, but that trust must be tempered by parent power. That is why I am strongly in favour of schools being given maximum freedom from the centre to teach what they want to teach. Some people want progressive schools, some may want Montessori principles, some may want faith schools, some may want traditional teaching, some may want uniforms, some do not. Let the parents decide, and ultimately schools will find their own level. I believe passionately—that is an over-used word in this building, but it is why I volunteered to serve on the Committee—that, as a parent, I know best and I know what is best for my children. I know the sort of school that I want my child to go to. I want that choice and I want a chance to get them into that school.

The point that I was making on Second Reading is that, in London, although not so much in Lincolnshire, there are many frustrated parents who cannot get into excellent primary or secondary schools. They are not necessarily schools in the best catchment areas or schools with the most money, but they provide the ethos that the parent seeks. As a result of the Bill, I want those schools and schools such as them to have a chance to expand.

There has been a lot of talk about the National Audit Office. I know a lot about the National Audit Office. One can read anything one likes into its reports. They are not written by politicians. There are good and bad aspects of education. Some schools have improved; others have not. Still too many children are, I believe, stuck in failing schools. Whatever circulars the Department issues, we will not make a difference until we allow good schools to expand, new groups to set up schools that cater for what people want and bad schools ultimately to close.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

The hon. Gentleman talks with some passion about parental choice. Can he explain how he equates that parental choice with the continuation of grammar schools in Lincolnshire?

Frank Cook (Labour, Stockton North)

Order. I do not detect any reference to parental choice in the group of amendments. Can we leave that discussion until the appropriate moment?

Edward Leigh (Conservative, Gainsborough)

Of course, grammar schools survive in Lincolnshire. People want them to survive and they are popular. We can come to grammar schools at another time.

I have made my point. We have to be realistic. It has been a good debate. Some people in the Committee clearly have a more traditional idea of education and want to return to more traditional forms, some think that multiplication tables can be learnt only by rote, and others think that they cannot. I suspect that one can learn them only by rote, but I do not know for certain. I am not an education specialist.

Such arguments are not central to what is important for our children’s education. What is important is what is going on in schools. Schools will improve if they are allowed to respond to what parents want. Parents will see what is going on in schools and the results at the end of the process, at key stage 6 or wherever, and they will make their choice. If we have confidence in what parents want, we can start significantly to change education for the better.

Nadine Dorries (Conservative, Mid Bedfordshire)

The debate so far has been particularly wide ranging. I shall certainly not be bringing the names of my children forward. They are now teenagers and certainly would not welcome it. I would be in huge trouble. I, too, come here as a parent and not as an educationalist with any particular expertise in education. I have three children. One is at university and the other two are in local comprehensive schools. They have been through the system and through a number of schools.

I want to speak not only about amendments Nos. 3, 86 and, in particular, 4, but about clause 1 in general, which concerns the fulfilment of potential. That is a broad term, and it depends on what group we are talking about, how we define its potential and the fulfilment of that potential. I have looked at three diverse examples of education recently.

Since I became a Member of the House, I have been surprised at how fiercely partisan it can be. I have never read Melanie Phillips, on principle. Nor do I read Chris Woodhead much, for the same reason. However, I sometimes find the level of partisan involvement quite difficult.

I am here as a mother, as well as an MP, and I will not make any adverse political points, or lob any grenades about what happened under previous Labour Governments. I could say, “In the Labour Government of 1979”, or whatever, but I will not. That is not in keeping with the essence of the Bill and will not get the best out of the Committee, or the debate. I hope that Labour Members will realise that any point that I make is for my children and everyone else’s and not because I am being partisan.

I want to consider the three aspects of education that I have looked at, and particularly to discuss amendment No. 4, which I will come to in a moment. On Friday, I visited a Roman Catholic school. It is competitive and has a waiting list. In fact, I think that a letter from the Pope is needed to get in, it is so popular and competitive. I spoke to the headmaster about the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next and the type of teaching in that school. He is retiring this year. He has been teaching in that school for 40 years, and worked his way up from a young teacher to headmaster.

We talked at length about the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next, and he gave me an example of what happens in his school. It was quite scary, in a way. The headmaster spoke about the children aged four who came into the reception class last September. They arrived knowing how to read and write—not all of them, but there is a good level of knowledge. He said that that did not happen 40 years ago. He was shocked at how competitive parents have become and how few social skills the children have now. They can read, but they cannot mix with the other kids in the playground. They are starting to write, but they do not know how to share. He has noticed a huge difference during 40 years of teaching. Forty years ago, children arriving might know how to care for younger siblings but not how to read and write. They knew how to care for other children and how to play and mix.

The headmaster felt that the transfer of knowledge from generation to generation and the way in which we teach have deteriorated and are almost on the point of disappearing. One of the reasons that he gave was the lack of moral and Christian teaching that takes place in school. I do not mean that every school should be Christian—by Christian I mean religious, because the basis of every religion is teaching morals and transferring knowledge. Being a Christian, I know really only about my own religion, including instructions such as “love thy neighbour” and lots of other lessons that come from the Bible, such as the feeding of the 5,000, which is about sharing.

I have to agree with that headmaster’s comments. Having visited a lot of schools recently, I have attended a lot of assemblies in which I have noticed that almost no moral teaching—no handing down of moral knowledge—takes place.

Angela Smith (Labour, Sheffield, Hillsborough)

Is it not the case that we have a fully developed citizenship curriculum in our schools, which caters to the kind of educational attainments that the hon. Lady is talking about? Religious education is still compulsory, but citizenship is flourishing in our schools, producing some of the most well rounded young people that I have ever met.

Nadine Dorries (Conservative, Mid Bedfordshire)

It is incorrect to say that citizenship is flourishing. It is not. As the hon. Member for City of Durham said—we have taken evidence on the matter in the education Select Committee—it is not flourishing. It is embryonic. There is no training for teachers; the subject takes up one hour of their entire teacher training. Citizenship is not flourishing. It might be in some areas and some schools, but we have heard evidence that it is not. Citizenship teaching is not the same as passing on gathered information from one generation to the next. It is not about passing on moral values or religious teaching.

Angela Smith (Labour, Sheffield, Hillsborough)

It is.

Nadine Dorries (Conservative, Mid Bedfordshire)

I am afraid that it is not. I have looked at the citizenship curriculum. It is not about passing on the knowledge that has been gained by one generation to the next.

To return to my speech, I suppose that the school headmaster I talked to on Friday would say that we would be much better off if we could consider the fulfilment of the child’s potential and move back to taking an holistic look at the whole child, not just at educational, moral or any other attainments. We should look at what makes a child into a good citizen who contributes to society and what enables that child to think and to learn.

Although I absolutely support the Bill—I voted for it, and I will do so again—one of its problems is that it is quite broad. I hope that I will vote for it again, if it has not changed too much by Third Reading. [Interruption.] I do not want to become partisan, as I said. Having spoken to that headmaster, a very wise gentleman with 40 years’ experience, I agree with him that transferring knowledge is important.

Amendment No. 4 refers to “the most disadvantaged”. Before I became a Member of Parliament, I had the pleasure of working for my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin). When he was shadow Home Secretary, I spent some time working in an organisation in London called Kids Company, which I am sure many hon. Members have heard of. Kids Company deals with what are probably the most disadvantaged children whom one will ever see in society. When Camilla, who runs Kids Company and whom I am sure many hon. Members know, opens the gate at 8 am, children drift in from various parts of south London. Those children are underneath the radar of society. Education and society have failed them, and they have very little in their lives, but Camilla does an amazing job in trying to educate them.

One eight-year-old girl whom I witnessed being counselled had seen her mother thrown off the balcony of their maisonette flat by drug dealers. We cannot readily imagine the lives of such children. One little boy who came in with someone else was six. He lives in a flat that has no furniture or bedding—that has all gone to drug dealers. There is no electricity in the property; no bills have been paid. The parents are not often there, and the siblings look after each other. That is in a part of Camberwell.

It is hard to imagine the lives of such children, who are the most disadvantaged in society. They are under the radar of education, and it is hard to see how the Bill addresses them. Sometimes when we talk about the most disadvantaged children, we might be talking about children who go to my daughter’s comprehensive school who perhaps come from lower socio-economic backgrounds and may not have the advantages that many of our children have. However, the children that I am talking about today really are the most disadvantaged ones. They are still in the poverty trap, and I have yet to see how the Bill will help to raise them out of that situation, because they are outside education and the other normal structures that we know.

Mary Creagh (Labour, Wakefield)

Does not the insertion of clause 1, which places a duty on local authorities not to ignore such children any longer, mean that the Bill will force authorities to take seriously the children who have been excluded from school and who do not attend pupil referral units? It will deal with the problem that the hon. Lady is describing. Does she not see that?

Nadine Dorries (Conservative, Mid Bedfordshire)

I understand the point that the hon. Lady makes, but she is wrong. I was not going to bring this up because I did not want to be partisan—[Hon. Members: “Oh go on!”]—but as she has brought the issue up, I will have to say it. One of the problems for Kids Company was that the local authorities were trying to close it down. That would not have helped; it would have meant that the children were abandoned to the four winds, but let us not harp on that.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way—

Frank Cook (Labour, Stockton North)

Order. The hon. Gentleman has maintained a perfect level of projection. Perhaps he would be kind enough to do that in my direction.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Sharing your hearing impairment, Mr. Cook, I fully appreciate the need to project as forcefully as possible. I only wish that I could make as much sense as the force of my projection might lead you to believe I am making.

In her intervention, the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) suggested that clause 1 would implicitly do the things that my hon. Friend recommended should be done for the most disadvantaged children. I therefore find it hard to understand why the hon. Lady and other hon. Members might, as I anticipate, resist our amendments Nos. 4 and 86, which precisely reinforce the comments that my hon. Friend has made about disadvantage and well-being.

Nadine Dorries (Conservative, Mid Bedfordshire)

Having spoken about two types of education, I should like to talk about a third. I want to talk about a particular school that I think provides almost a perfect model of education. As a Christian, I find it difficult when I talk about education not to consider those areas that I think are very much lacking in education today. There is a school called Ampleforth in Yorkshire that teaches children on the rule of St. Benedict, which is about enabling every child to reach their full potential, whatever it might be.

Ampleforth is an expensive, exclusive, non-selective boarding school, but having visited it—one of my children went there for two years—I can see nothing that is taught there that could not be taught in any state school in the UK. We do not need grand buildings. The school teaches the national curriculum, as do all independent schools in the UK, and there is nothing that is taught there that could not be taught, taken or produced anywhere else.

Angela Smith (Labour, Sheffield, Hillsborough)

Is the hon. Lady suggesting that the curriculum, methodology and pedagogy used at Ampleforth should be imposed on all state schools?

Nadine Dorries (Conservative, Mid Bedfordshire)

Absolutely not. I am saying that it is an excellent example of teaching and practice. Should not we look at all available models of teaching and practice and use the best of them? The way in which children are taught at Ampleforth and the principles that they are taught help children to reach their full potential, whatever it might be. The experience of hundreds of years of teaching under the rule of St. Benedict has enabled teachers to look at the potential of any child. They are quite specific. The Bill refers to personalised learning: that is what Ampleforth specialises in—personalised learning and helping each child to reach their full potential. We need to investigate that far more.

Mary Creagh (Labour, Wakefield)

I do not know whether the hon. Lady has read the papers lately, but I feel that I must bring to the Committee’s attention the fact that a priest has recently been jailed for what I believe—

Frank Cook (Labour, Stockton North)

Order. I have been concerned for some moments about the meandering rambling and lack of focus. Can we return to the amendments please?

Nadine Dorries (Conservative, Mid Bedfordshire)

If I were the hon. Lady, I would be quite careful. We should not believe everything that we read in the newspapers. There are libel issues around that, so she should be careful.

I conclude by saying that helping a child to reach his full potential is about identifying the purpose of education and how it is imposed, and how the best is drawn out of the child. As we go through the amendments in this Committee, it might be of value for us all to bring examples of educational best practice so that we can best discuss the amendments and the Bill.

Jacqui Smith (Labour, Redditch)

Well, haven’t we made a good start, Mr. Cook? The debate on clause 1 has been interesting and generally well-informed. That is appropriate, because the clause establishes a fundamental duty on local authorities to promote the fulfilment of every child’s educational potential. It bears on the discharge of all local authorities’ educational functions, and stands alongside their existing duty to promote high standards.

The clause and the duty represent the fundamental expression in legislation of the Government’s undertaking in last year’s White Paper to ensure that we will continue to create opportunities to achieve the highest standards in our schools. We also undertook that in doing that, we would pursue the principles of equity and ensure that those standards are made available to every child through a real, new and invigorated approach to personalised learning in planning, organising and securing education that contributes to the spiritual, moral, mental and physical development of the community.

The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), who is not in her place at the moment, suggested that clause 1 would replace the wording in section 13 of the Education Act 1996, with its statement about contributing to the spiritual, moral, mental and physical development of the community. It would not; it would be additional to that provision. It would in fact replace a previous provision, which identified only the need to promote high standards, and put the fulfilment of educational potential alongside high standards. I hope that that reassures the hon. Lady somewhat.

Under clause 1, local authorities will have as their touchstone the twin duties of high standards and the fulfilment of individual potential. The clause establishes local authorities’ responsibility to promote every child’s achievement and to deal with the factors that stand in the way of that achievement. In taking account of the duty, local authorities will have as the test of their strategic policies and practices their capacity to draw out the abilities of children and young people according to their potential, rather than their background or circumstances. The duty will bear on functions as diverse as deciding where to establish new schools, providing support for educational achievement among particular groups in the community and, for example, consideration of the effects of the local funding formula in encouraging the personalised curriculum. I shall return later to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham made about the resources for personalised learning.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

On the point about assessing and acting on the potential of each child, on which I think we are in broad agreement, does the Minister anticipate any further measures by way of prior attainment tests to determine that potential? Some mechanisms are already in place, but what further measures does the right hon. Lady anticipate might be established to enable better conclusions to be reached about the potential of each child at an early stage?

Jacqui Smith (Labour, Redditch)

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that we have already made considerable progress, not least in introducing the foundation stage with its opportunity to consider, at an early stage, younger children’s abilities and areas of development. We already have the ability to assess progress, and are developing that all the time. In particular there is increased emphasis on teachers’ ability to use continuing assessment to inform what happens in the classroom. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that those are important matters, although they are not within the remit of the clause.

Debate on the amendments has broken down into two areas. First, there has been an understandable challenge about what we are doing being in line with the strong emphasis that the Government have put on the “Every Child Matters” work, and recognition that all the needs of children and young people are important to their ability to learn. On that aspect of the matter, I should like to make some remarks on amendments Nos. 186, 58, 86 and 87, which bear on the issue of children’s potential and on the wide issues affecting that and their well-being.

Amendment No. 186, tabled by my hon. Friends the Members for Bury, North and City of Durham, would make it a duty on local authorities, under clause 1, to promote the fulfilment by every child of his potential, rather than specifically his educational potential. I understand and strongly agree with my hon. Friends’ intentions, particularly as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North described them. We believe in improving all aspects of children’s lives, to improve their life chances. However, clause 1 relates to the local authorities’ education functions, and it makes sense, therefore, to retain the direct link in the clause to the fulfilment of educational potential. Educational potential is an important element that does not feature in a duty elsewhere in legislation, and I think that it deserves its specific mention in the clause.

I am not resisting the removal of the word “educational” because I disapprove of the principles expressed by my hon. Friends, but because it is right to place an emphasis on educational potential and, as I shall expand in relation to the other amendments, because the effects that the amendment seeks are already covered in the Bill and existing legislation, particularly the Children Act 2004, which I should like to explore a little further in relation to amendments Nos. 58, 86 and 87.

Amendment No. 58, as we have heard, would replace the duty of the fulfilment of educational potential with a general duty on the promotion of well-being. Amendment No. 86 seeks to ensure that the local education authority is placed under a duty to contribute to the well-being of children, and Amendment No. 87 defines that in relation to section 10(2) of the 2004 Act.

Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat, Brent East)

If I may just correct the Minister. With amendment No. 68, we were seeking to add “well-being”, not substitute it.

Jacqui Smith (Labour, Redditch)

I accept what the hon. Lady says. I will deal with that aspiration as well as the substitution.

Amendments Nos. 86 and 87 play back the words of the 2004 Act, particularly in defining “well-being” with respect to the five positive outcomes for children that we identified in the “Every Child Matters” work and programme and appear in the Act as follows:

“physical and mental health and emotional well-being ... protection from harm and neglect ... education, training and recreation ... the contribution made by them to society ... social and economic well-being.”

That is clearly a principle with which we in the Government agree. Having said that, and recognising the principles behind the amendments, there are two important reasons why, despite the spirit of consensus and general well-being engendered in the Committee this morning, I am not willing to accept them as they stand.

First, they are not necessary, for the reason that I have begun to identify. Section 10 of the 2004 Act already places a duty on local authorities that is far more powerful than the one proposed in the amendments. Every local authority that has education and social services functions—called the “children’s services authority” in the Act—is required to promote co-operation between the authority, its “relevant partners” and

“such other persons or bodies as the authority consider appropriate”

to improve well-being. Not only is the local authority already required to contribute to children’s well-being, it is also required to engage the co-operation of other key partners to ensure the cross-agency, child-centred approach to the holistic needs of children to make sure that the way in which services are delivered contributes to their well-being.

Nadine Dorries (Conservative, Mid Bedfordshire)

Will the Minister give us an example of how that happens on the ground? It is difficult to see how that happens in a school.

Jacqui Smith (Labour, Redditch)

One of the ways in which it is happening in many schools now is through the development of the extended school programme, children’s trusts and other arrangements in local authorities. Multi-agency teams are now working with schools, so that some of the services that were needed for children with particular health or care needs, which had previously been operating, are much better co-ordinated with schools. We need to do much more to ensure that that happens, but that is one example of how the new arrangements and emphasis on the “Every Child Matters” five outcomes are making a practical difference in schools throughout the country.

David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North)

In exploring the responsibilities of local authorities for education and wider functions in respect of children, will my right hon. Friend comment on the provisions in clause 147 that give the Secretary of State the power to repeal references to “local education authorities”? I am not clear about their significance, but I am certain that they are relevant at this point. For example, would those provisions mean that local education authorities as such would be abolished, and that all future legislation would refer simply to “local authorities”? How would all that tie together? I think my right hon. Friend would agree that there is some confusion. We now have three sets of terminology: children’s services authorities, local authorities and local education authorities. Does the Minister agree that it is essential that we clarify this?

Jacqui Smith (Labour, Redditch)

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is one thing to ensure clarity of language, but he identifies a more fundamental issue. We are proposing to do away with the terminology “local education authority” and “children’s services authority” so that when we use the phrase “local authorities”, we can be clear about the cross-cutting, integrated role that only they can play in a local area to bring together the education and other functions that they need to pursue to deliver the five “Every Child Matters” outcomes.

David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North)

In that case, why does clause 1 still refer to a “local education authority”?

Jacqui Smith (Labour, Redditch)

We have not yet passed this legislation, although I am sure that we will. Until the Bill has passed through all the parliamentary stages, we will not be able to call local education authorities “local authorities”. My understanding is that when clause 147 comes into force, it will work back and change such references.

In proposing, in clause 1, the duty on local authorities to exercise their functions with a view to promoting the fulfilment of the educational potential of every child, we wanted to ensure that local authorities take an holistic and rounded view of children’s needs, as is envisaged by the amendment. Local authorities will scrutinise performance in respect of both educational potential and high standards. Under that new and inclusive duty, they will act to reduce barriers to learning and promote achievement among all groups of children, regardless of their backgrounds or circumstances.

We have heard some examples of what, in addition to a strong focus on higher educational standards, might contribute to ensuring that such barriers are reduced. The hon. Members for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mrs. Dorries) and for Mid-Dorset and North Poole were right to identify the importance of emotional well-being and the social behaviour skills that are a crucial part of a child’s education. Parents have a central role in developing those, but schools have an important role as well.

Primary school teachers know that a lack of social, emotional and behavioural skills can be a barrier to learning; that is why, as the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole identified, we are investing in the roll-out of the SEAL materials across all primary schools and developing that work into secondary schools. Having social and emotional skills and knowing how to behave are a prerequisite for children’s being able to learn properly, and we have identified such skills as an important priority.

Another priority is promoting positive mental health and emotional well-being, and we are doing that through the national healthy schools programme. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough identified the contribution of personal, social and health education and citizenship education, and that of the development of extended schools provision, not only in helping to address some of the wider issues that might affect children’s learning but in contributing to the ability to have new, personalised opportunities for learning and experiencing.

My concern with the amendments is not that I disagree with the intention behind them, but that they would, if anything, weaken the current position—not only the position under the legislation, but the one increasingly being developed by local authorities and schools.

Education and Inspections Bill - Standing Committee E

Clause 1 - Duties in relation to high standards and the fulfilment of potential

Frank Cook (Labour, Stockton North)

I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following amendments: No. 2, in clause 1, page 1, line 10, after “standards”, insert “of educational attainment”.

No. 58, in clause 1, page 1, line 10, after “standards,”, insert—

‘(b)promoting emotional well-being,’.

No. 95, in clause 1, page 1, leave out lines 11 and 12 and insert—

‘(b)enabling each child concerned to have access to such teaching and learning support as may be appropriate to his needs and so as to promote the fulfilment of his educational potential.’.

No. 186, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, leave out ‘educational’.

No. 3, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, at end insert

‘and

(c)promoting the transfer of knowledge from the current generation to the next.’.

No. 4, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, at end insert

‘and

(c)raising the educational attainment of the most disadvantaged.’.

No. 86, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, at end insert

‘and

(c)contributing to the well-being of children.’.

No. 87, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, at end insert—

‘(1A)In subsection (1)(c) “well-being”, in relation to children and young people, is a reference to their well-being having regard to the matters mentioned in section 10(2) of the Children Act 2004.’.

Jacqui Smith (Labour, Redditch)

It is a pleasure to recommence where we left off before lunch. I note that the sunny spring skies of this morning have clouded over, and it is now rainy and dark. I hope that that does not mean that the Committee’s sunny disposition will become stormier this afternoon. I am British, Mr. Cook, and feel the need to refer to the weather as often as possible.

We were discussing amendments to do with standards of pedagogy and had had a good and interesting debate. I must say, however, that the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) went “off on one”, so to speak. We heard a lot about Melanie Phillips and Chris Woodhead. Wise as both those writers are, one skill that I hope young people in our schools are developing is that of not depending too much on one data source to make a case, and I think there was a little of that this morning.

I strongly agree with the points made on both sides about the importance of high standards and ensuring better reading, writing and mathematical skills, and about our educations system’s important role in developing knowledge in young people. I shall identify how the Government are already ensuring that that happens and how the Bill will take it forward. First, however, let us examine the amendments.

I do not have particularly strong objections to amendment No. 2, but it is unnecessary to add “of educational attainment” to “high standards”. It is clear that high standards of educational attainment are contained within the overall duty on high standards. Local authorities will certainly be in no doubt of that, not least given the Government’s record since 1998 in challenging local authorities to bear on pupil attainment in schools, and supporting them. Our successful national strategies on literacy and numeracy led the way.

I accept that the hon. Gentleman has played an important role; he has long been interested in the role of phonics, and synthetic phonics in particular. Let us not be under any misapprehension, however; the literacy strategy introduced by the Government put phonics at the heart of literacy teaching, and our review, led by Jim Rose, will ensure that synthetic phonics plays the role it should in building on our success so far.

That should be linked to our strong and decisive lead on measures to tackle the number of weak and failing schools, which demonstrates that we cannot allow poor schools to carry on failing our children. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Anne Snelgrove) said, that has resulted in there currently being half as many failing schools as there were in 1997. Our programmes, such as excellence in cities and London challenge, have brought resources and the benefits of school collaboration to the most deprived areas of the country.

All those measures highlight the fact that the responsibility to deliver high standards introduced in the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 is already leading to increasing standards of educational achievement. They also demonstrate the focus that the Government and local authorities throughout the country place on those standards. That is the driving force behind the Bill.

Amendment No. 3 leads us to knowledge transfer and, in particular, the wish of Opposition Members to add what would be an extraneous—even otiose—requirement to add knowledge transfer to the existing local authority duty to promote high standards and the fulfilment of the educational potential of every child. The first point to remember is that the clause bears on all the education functions of local authorities, not just those related to teaching and learning. I am not unsympathetic to the idea that education should be about the transfer of knowledge from generation to generation, and we must therefore make it clear that that is already a key role of the national curriculum. The national curriculum handbook states that the school curriculum should:

“Pass on enduring values, develop pupils’ integrity and autonomy and help them to be responsible and caring citizens capable of contributing to ... a just society.”

It also says that the curriculum should

“contribute to the development of pupils’ sense of identity through knowledge and understanding of the spiritual, moral, social and cultural heritages of Britain’s diverse society and of the local, national, European, Commonwealth and global dimensions of their lives.”

As many of my hon. Friends have pointed out, a well rounded education should surely cover both the acquisition of knowledge and the development of skills, particularly learning skills, and the ability to continue gaining knowledge and developing skills and attitudes throughout our lives. That is why we believe that young people must have a rigorous and stretching educational experience at school, while also developing the skills to enable them to do well in further learning and work, and in their communities. We have consistently taken the view that the curriculum must provide rich and varied contexts for learning and offer all young people the opportunity to develop and acquire a broad range of knowledge, understanding and skills.

On amendment No. 4, it is heartening to see Conservative Members turning their attention to the disadvantaged. If I remember rightly, the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) gave us a small history lesson about Shaftesbury, Wilberforce and Disraeli, which was good. I welcome the instillation of that knowledge.

Edward Leigh (Conservative, Gainsborough)

All good Tories.

Jacqui Smith (Labour, Redditch)

I am pleased that the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings identified the contribution made by Conservatives. I was identifying the historical knowledge that informed his contribution. However, my skills of critical evaluation and analysis, honed during the 1980s when I was a pupil, student and teacher, do not lead me to believe that the Conservative party’s objective has always been so. While the amendment’s proposition is a welcome one, I am not yet in a position to depend on the Conservatives to put disadvantaged children at the heart of our education system. I shall explain, therefore, why the Government are ensuring that that happens and how the Bill will take it forward.

Standards have risen since 1997. Then, a third of children left primary school without the skills in English and Maths necessary to make progress in the secondary curriculum. In 2005, 79 per cent. achieved those standards in English, and 75 per cent. achieved them in Maths. Pupils aged 11 to 14 have benefited from improvements in teaching and learning from our secondary strategy, and national test results for 14-year-olds show the best ever results in English, maths, science, and information and communications technology. In 2005, schools achieved record improvement in GCSEs, which is testimony to the hard work of teachers, head teachers, governors and support staff, backed up by this Government’s investment and reform.

The reforms have meant striking improvements for children from all backgrounds, but I accept that the evidence shows that there is still an attainment gap for pupils. That issue is at the heart of this education reform. More than seven out of 10 pupils in receipt of free school meals do not get five higher-level GCSEs. When we look more closely at the statistics, we clearly see that particular groups do less well than their peers: children from particular black and minority ethnic groups, white working-class boys, children in public care and those with complex and problematic family lives all experience poorer outcomes throughout their educational careers. It was because we were unwilling to accept that situation that we introduced the Bill and the education reform that it supports.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I am grateful for the Minister’s acknowledgement of the severity of the problem facing some of our schools and some of the children who attend them. She is absolutely right to say that poor schools tend to be located in areas of disadvantage; it is not universally so, but it is certainly a tendency. We share her determination to give a new opportunity to the most disadvantaged young people—we see education as an escape route from disadvantage—so why on earth will she not reinforce that determination in the Bill? To do so would seem entirely consistent with what she articulated and with the spirit that she claims underpins the Bill.

Jacqui Smith (Labour, Redditch)

I shall come in a moment to the reason for framing the duty as we did. Suffice it to say that the Secretary of State told the Education and Skills Committee that the White Paper is all about driving up standards for the most disadvantaged children. We have made it clear that we are happy for the measure to be applied when judging the success of the reform programme as a whole and the White Paper and the Bill in particular. That is why we set out a programme of activity over the next three years to deliver more personalised learning with a special focus on helping groups at risk of under-achieving by providing small-group or individual tuition for pupils who need help to catch up in English and maths and offering exciting opportunities to stretch the brightest pupils by providing access to study support and out-of-school activities to children from disadvantaged families who have not had the opportunities that depend on family background. We have also identified a range of systemic and organisational barriers to equity, and the Bill brings forward provisions to bear upon those.

We are creating a fair admissions system to ensure that all children and their parents have a fair chance of accessing the schools they want and ensuring that children are not let down by the performance of their school by taking action to improve those schools faster and more decisively. Clause 4 ensures that we identify those children who are missing education. Surely they are most likely to be disadvantaged and to lose out. There are strong proposals on discipline later in the Bill. All those provisions are aimed at ensuring high standards for everyone, but with a particular focus on disadvantage.

We considered how to embody for local authorities those aims for excellence, equity and tackling disadvantage. We concluded that we wanted a positive duty couched in terms of individual children and their potential rather than a category or list of children grouped by circumstances or level of disadvantage. That is why I believe our formulation is better than that proposed by the Opposition, but I hope that they are in no doubt that the clause will have the effect that they seek in ensuring that disadvantaged children and young people benefit from the proposals.

Amendment No. 95 would more narrowly define how fulfilment of education might be achieved by limiting it to teaching and learning. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) made it clear that he is interested in exploring the extent to which our approach to personalised learning and teaching is part of our proposition in clause 1. It is clearly absolutely key.

The current wording refers to all local authority functions and allows for a range of strategies to improve a child’s educational potential, including access to teaching and learning support, which will be central to any strategy. As I suggested earlier, that includes other elements such as the planning of school places, access to admissions, transport and so on, which go beyond teaching and learning. Nevertheless, my hon. Friend identifies an element key to ensuring that every child can fulfil their educational potential. That is how we will develop personalised learning in our schools.

In the White Paper we announced significant new funding to support personalised learning. In the Budget last week, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor added to that £565 million a further £365 million by 2007-08. Schools can use those funds to support a range of learning opportunities that are much more clearly tailored to the needs of all children; however, those learning opportunities can include small-group and one-to-one catch-up classes for those falling behind, as I suggested. The funds could also be used for stretching opportunities for gifted and talented children, or on extra support for vulnerable and minority ethnic groups.

I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North did not intend this, but the effect of his amendment would be to support those things while ruling out some other local authority functions that I know he believes also have a bearing on a child’s attainment, such as those to do with the admissions system, transport, pastoral support, or extended services; they would not fall within the clause. My hon. Friend and I certainly want to ensure that local authorities have every weapon at their disposal as they seek to promote high standards and ensure that every child in their area fulfils his or her potential. That is what the clause will do.

Finally, my hon. Friend’s amendment No. 96 seeks to remove an important, although in some respects quite technical, provision that already exists in current legislation; it is in section 13A of the Education Act 1996, as amended by the Schools Standards and Framework Act 1998. I am not sure of his intention. The wording that the amendment would remove acknowledges that some education functions are not susceptible to being exercised in a way that would promote high standards or the fulfilment by every child of his or her educational potential. An example would be duties that are principally technical or related to process, such as the requirement under section 44 of the Education Act 2002 to provide copies of maintained schools’ accounts to the Secretary of State, or those responsibilities that admit of no discretion, such as the duty to modify a school’s instruments of government to reflect a change in name. Those are important duties; they are education functions of local authorities. However, it is hard to envisage their being carried out in a way that promoted high standards and the fulfilment of the potential of every child. I hope that my hon. Friend accepts that relatively technical reason for the addition of the relevant words in the clause.

As I have said, we had a good debate this morning. I hope that it has enabled me to reassure hon. Members. There was not one proposition made this morning with which I did not have considerable sympathy, given the objectives of the Bill. Our debate enabled me to identify why we think that the current drafting enables us to ensure that the well-being of the child, and the way in which educational achievement and the fulfilment of potential are supported, is recognised. We will continue to focus on high standards of teaching and learning, and that will be backed by considerable extra resources and support, and by other reforms that this stage of the education reform process will put in place. With those reassurances, I hope that my hon. Friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

This has been an interesting, good-humoured debate, reflecting quite a bit of consensus. To an extent, I expect that that is because the Opposition supported the Bill on Second Reading, but there is also some consensus on some of the underlying issues to do with our education system.

I was heartened to hear that the Minister wants to ensure better schools, and better reading, mathematical skills and knowledge among young people. Those are important issues, and it is good that we have agreement on them across the Committee. They are not really motherhood and apple pie. The Minister wants better knowledge among young people; that makes a statement that I hope will be heard in our education institutions and universities. I hope that they will hear that that is the direction in which the Government are taking the country’s education system. I hope, therefore, living as we do in a democracy, that they will take note of those points and not pursue an ethos or ideology that counters that view.

The Minister referred to amendment No. 2 and said that the phrase “educational attainment” was unnecessary because it is clear from Government action, on the basis of their record, that they believe in having higher standards of educational attainment, and that the phrase therefore is not needed. The right hon. Lady cited the national literacy strategy, which I accept. I happily acknowledge that it has led to a rise in standards. It was completely unacceptable that only 56 per cent. of 11-year-olds achieved level 4 in reading in 1996, and we should be trying to find out why. It was not just because John Major was Prime Minister, and before that Mrs. Thatcher. If Labour Members were intellectually honest, they would acknowledge that the huge move towards the real books and whole language form of reading in the mid-1980s made a considerable contribution to the decline in literacy. At last, we have a Government who are tackling that, and I pay tribute to the Minister and the others in her Department for their work to get synthetic phonics on to the statute book, as I hope, and thereafter into classrooms.

The Rose review and synthetic phonics are important because they tackle the long tail of under-achievement—the 25 per cent. who, even with the national literacy strategy are still not reaching the required level in reading. Synthetic phonics tackles that 25 per cent. more than any other group in the classroom because its essence is that no child can leave a class in the first two years of infant school without having grasped the basic decoding skill and being able to decode any word effortlessly. Too many children in the bottom 25 per cent. cannot do that basic thing—decoding any word, regardless of whether they understand its meaning. Once they can do that, they can ask their parents or teacher what a certain word means because they can read it. Synthetic phonics is geared to that bottom 25 per cent and is a key link to amendment No. 4, on which we are so keen, and to which I will return in a moment.

The Minister talked about amendment No. 3 and the knowledge transfer between generations. Again, I was heartened that she was sympathetic to the spirit of the amendment. Its purpose was to draw out debate in Committee and throughout the country about some of the pedagogical and curriculum-based issues that do not get enough air time as we focus on structure and money in education.

The right hon. Lady said that knowledge and skills are needed. As I said this morning, I do not want to be caricatured as taking a Gradgrind approach to education; that is not what it is about. Clearly, children need skills. What is a skill? It is being able to do multiplication tables and effortlessly know that eight sevens are 56—as I hope they are! [Laughter.] Don’t ask me any more. To be able to do that effortlessly is a skill but also knowledge. There is a strand of opinion that says that that kind of knowledge is not necessary in the world of computers and calculators. I beg to differ.

The hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Jonathan Shaw) and I are members of the Select Committee on Education and Skills and the hon. Gentleman will remember that we took evidence from Professor Adrian Smith who said that children need to know their multiplication tables by heart because it gives them an instinctive understanding of numbers. If they go on to become nurses in hospitals, they need instinctively to know the difference between 10 ml and 0.1 ml, especially if they are giving a patient an epidural. These are crucial issues. Professor Smith said that it helps to develop the synapses in the brain of young children if they learn by rote and by heart in their early years of education. These things are very important.

I do not want to caricature an issue that involves a combination of knowledge and skills, but the skills-curriculum-knowledge debate is slightly different in academic circles. It is about whether a child should have the skills to decipher a historical document, and whether those skills are more important in some parts of the curriculum than knowing the full facts and timeline of the history of this country and of Europe. The timeline, factual side of the history curriculum has been reduced at the expense of historical skills, which most children do not really need.

I was heartened by the Minister’s response to amendment No. 4, but I am afraid that I will ask the Committee to divide on it. There is no harm in stating in the Bill the desirability of

“raising the educational attainment of the most disadvantaged”.

She was wrong to say that the Opposition have recently been converted to caring for the disadvantaged. I believe passionately—I know that phrase is overused in politics—that the increase in progressive education in the 1960s has done enormous damage to that group, which is why I cited the case of how not having synthetic phonics in the teaching of reading has damaged children in the bottom 25 per cent. of academic ability. Social mobility has declined in the past 30 or 40 years, when being traditionally educated was a way out of poverty and deprivation for children. The fact that we no longer have such rigorous education has done huge damage to the groups of children that I have mentioned.

I do not accept the Minister’s argument that amendment No. 86 is unnecessary owing to the provisions of the Children Act 2004. She said that section 10 of that Act places duties on local authorities to promote the well-being of children. I cannot understand the argument that putting such a requirement into the Bill would lessen that duty. One cannot lessen a duty by obliging local authorities to

“contribute to the well-being of children”.

I will ask the Committee to divide on that amendment as well if the Minister persists in not accepting it. I therefore wish to press amendments. Nos. 4 and 86.

Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat, Brent East)

I, too, think that this has been an interesting debate, and, I must confess, a more wide-ranging one than I had anticipated. I thank the Minister for clarifying the point that new section 13A of the Education Act 1996 will stand in addition to the existing words dealing with the wider aspects of spiritual, moral, mental and emotional development. There is nevertheless a point of principle about the need to link the present Bill right at its beginning with the Children Act 2004. It is a shame that the Minister was unwilling to accept the need to include in clause 1 a broad, general approach to well-being and an onus on local authorities to consider it. I have no wish to press the amendments to a Division, but we will later consider whether to take matters further.

We will not support the Conservatives on amendment No. 4, because we entirely accept the Government’s argument that that matter is dealt with by the reference to the performance of “every child concerned.” We feel no need to identify one group of children in particular. However I accept the point that the Conservatives made, as does the Minister.

Jacqui Smith (Labour, Redditch)

I agree completely. Does the hon. Lady accept that putting such a word as “disadvantaged” in legislation brings with it considerable legal challenges in defining what is meant?

Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat, Brent East)

I suspect that the Minister is right. I think that the terms in the clause are broad and include all children. The clause needs to be broadly drawn, but I persist with the point that it would have been helpful to include a reference to emotional well-being at the start of the Bill. As I said, we will not press the matter but will consider whether to take it forward on Report.

David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North)

Six hours have elapsed since we began debating the amendments. Time passes so quickly on these occasions. Who would have imagined when I initiated debate with my harmless amendment, No. 96, that we were opening the Pandora’s box of discourses on human reason that has preoccupied us for the past few hours?

When I left my flat this morning and was walking to the House looking forward to Committee proceedings, I knew nothing about “the third thing”. The new Conservative party—or, as it should be known from its desperate attempts to reinvent itself, the newborn Conservative party—has created an intellectual underpinning in the “third thing” concept, which will doubtless sweep through the intellectual bastions of western Europe and transform our politics in the years ahead.

In tribute to the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, I must say that I absolutely support his attempts to transform our education system by raising standards and reducing the grotesque inequalities between high and low achievers that have always disfigured the British educational system. That gap is now closing. I have no reason whatever to doubt his commitment. From my discussions with him in the bars of various European capitals and the back seats of minibuses on Select Committee visits—perhaps that was where the third thing was hatched—I am absolutely convinced of his dedication to the cause.

However, I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s method of arguing his case by setting up a stereotype of what he believes are the weaknesses of the current system and then dismantling it. Setting up and destroying stereotypes that bear no relation to reality actually invalidates the argument that one is trying to put.

I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s characterisation of the education system as bedevilled by what he calls 1960s progressivism. What strikes me about 1960s progressivism is that most of its main tenets have been absorbed into the mainstream of our social, political and cultural life, to the great advantage of the nation. I worry when he argues his new Conservative, third thing philosophy that he is really taking us back to the early 1970s. He quotes many academics in support of his argument, but the real intellectual guru to whom he should refer is Professor Brian Cox of Manchester university, who in the early 1970s published the series of “black papers” that paved the way for Sir Keith Joseph’s attempt to restructure our education system completely.

Unlike the Opposition, or at least Opposition Front Benchers—I am not sure that Back Benchers agree with them—I do not see this debate as a contrast between conservative and liberal approaches. It seems to me that the real issue in education policy today is not the distinction between progressives and reactionaries but the distinction between those who think that there is one solution to all our problems—a single way forward, be it the teaching of reading or the organisation of children in their classes—and those who believe that a multiplicity of approaches must be tried. I am of the tradition of letting a hundred flowers bloom, and I hope that the Committee can be persuaded of that approach as we move through our proceedings.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

When the hon. Gentleman checks the record later, he will see that I said exactly that in my contribution. I do not take a narrow view on methodology, but there are some fundamentals in this debate, including raising expectations for and of all our children and re-establishing the primacy of the educator’s role. Those truths stand well beyond detailed debates on methodology, do they not?

David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North)

No one would disagree. The hon. Gentleman takes me to my second point in winding up, which concerns the flaw in the Opposition’s approach. We saw it to some extent in the Budget debate last night. On the one hand, they continuously reiterate that the way forward in education policy must be to increase the freedom of schools and teachers, while on the other they argue simultaneously that the way forward must be to adopt a single method of teaching reading, a single kind of curriculum content or a single way of organising children in the classroom.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

The fact is that there is now a single method. The approach that I have described is prevalent in the majority of state schools in this country. It is difficult for a parent to find a school that adopts methods used in the most successful state and private schools. I want the methods that work in the most successful schools to be more prevalent throughout the system and the way in which to achieve that is to tackle the philosophy that is dominant in the overwhelming majority of schools because of the philosophy that is dominant in the educational establishment. I want a more diverse approach. At the moment, there is a homogeneous approach in education.

David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North)

I applaud the hon. Gentleman’s determination to open up a public debate about the curriculum. It is long overdue. He has done a service in pressing the point. However, his characterisation of what takes place in state schools is not one that I recognise. I did not recognise the stereotyping of many state schools as bog-standard comprehensives nor did I recognise his description of the diversity of practice within state schools as a single method of teaching dominated by the educational establishment of the 1960s.

My third point concerns the relationship between learning and knowledge. It is absolutely self-evident that the acquisition of knowledge is a necessary, but not sufficient, precondition of a good quality education. The Opposition are assuming that knowledge can be separated from the application of knowledge or from the capacity to acquire further knowledge. There is a significant dividing line between the Government and the official Opposition because we believe that knowledge is not fixed or rigid.

In this era of globalisation and rapid expansion of information technology that has resulted in an explosion of knowledge and an explosion in access to knowledge of which previous generations could have only dreamt, the role of the teacher needs to change dramatically. The fact is that rote learning under the instruction of a teacher is arguably far less effective than simply enabling children to acquire knowledge directly from a computer.

Angela Smith (Labour, Sheffield, Hillsborough)

Is it not the case that, for children who suffer from dyslexia and dyscalcula, it is incredibly important that we adopt a range of approaches? Rote learning is not always appropriate for children who have trouble recognising words and numbers, and decoding them.

David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North)

That is correct. It relates to the point made towards the end of the response of the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton about the bottom 25 per cent. being able to decode language. It is important that children should be able to decode. He is overlooking the fact that many children in what he describes as the bottom 25 per cent. of the ability range will have specific learning disabilities that will prevent them from ever decoding in a way that most of us would find necessary for everyday life. It is not possible to make sweeping statements about particular forms of teaching of reading, given the enormous diversity and range of ability and learning disabilities that our children experience.

Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat, Brent East)

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the type of knowledge that young people are required to learn changes from one generation to another? Merely comparing what one generation learned at one stage with another generation and saying that standards have fallen is a false comparison. As he has just described, knowledge is exploding all the time, so the knowledge that is relevant changes at each stage.

David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North)

We do not want to get into a debate about the relative merits of mediaeval history and media studies. That may be for another part of our deliberations. I agree completely. It is especially because of the dynamic society in which we live and the impact of globalisation and IT that we must recognise that the acquisition of knowledge itself is an insufficient precondition for an excellent education.

An Opposition Member—I apologise for forgetting who—cited Einstein as an example of someone who could not have achieved what he did without a body of knowledge. I agree: Einstein is—or was, sadly—an excellent role model. However, I doubt that he is typical of most young people in our schools today.

This set of amendments, of which my amendment No. 96 is the lead, has cast an interesting light on clause 1. Many things in the clause could be expressed differently. Disadvantage, the “Every Child Matters” agenda and the Children Act provisions are important. However, it strikes me as a remarkable contradiction that the Conservatives want to press to a Division the amendment relating to disadvantage because, ironically, when we had a similar discussion on the Education and Skills Committee’s report on the education White Paper, the Conservative members of the Committee argued precisely the opposite point. The majority of members of the Committee were trying to introduce a specific reference to the importance of dealing with disadvantage as the prime objective of policy, but the Conservative members argued against such a reference. That debate resulted in what I thought was quite a good compromise, but I still make the point.

In respect of the comments of the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mrs. Dorries), I am still struggling to understand the principle on which she refuses to read Melanie Phillips. Perhaps she can tell me later, because I am desperately searching for a reason not to read Melanie Phillips.

My right hon. Friend the Minister for Schools responded to the debate carefully, thoroughly and sensitively, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 2 - Duties in relation to diversity and choice

Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat, Brent East)

I beg to move amendment No. 59, in clause 2, page 2, line 10, after ‘(3A)’, insert

‘Subject always to the overriding requirements of efficiency and effectiveness in the delivery of education,’.

Frank Cook (Labour, Stockton North)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments:

No. 161, in clause 2, page 2, line 12, after ‘schools’, insert

‘, including a range of provision for children with special education needs’.

No. 178, in clause 2, page 2, line 12, leave out from ‘schools’ to end of line 13 and insert—

‘(b)securing diversity of educational and curriculum provision within schools and colleges;

(c)increasing opportunities for parental and pupil choice; and

(d)value for money.’.

No. 5, in clause 2, page 2, line 13, at end insert

‘and

(c)ensuring the spread of best practice adopted in the best performing schools.

(3B)For the purposes of section 14(3A), “best performing schools” means schools in the first quartile nationally of the value added measure of school performance.’.

No. 88, in clause 2, page 2, line 13, at end insert

‘and

(c)ensuring that at least 10 per cent. of school places are provided by one or more of the following types of school—

(i)foundation school with a foundation;

(ii)academy;

(iii)voluntary-aided or voluntary-controlled school.’.

No. 97, in clause 2, page 2, line 13, at end insert

‘and

(c)ensuring that the education provided in schools in its area shall contribute to social inclusion and community cohesion in that area and promote equality of opportunity and good relations between persons of different racial groups.’.

No. 98, in clause 2, page 2, line 13, at end insert

‘and

(c)ensuring fair access for all pupils in its area to opportunities for education according to their educational needs and wellbeing.’.

Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat, Brent East)

Amendments Nos. 59 and 178 probe further what the Government mean by the word “choice”. Choice for whom? [Interruption.]

Frank Cook (Labour, Stockton North)

Order. We are here to scrutinise the Bill line by line. Any other kind of conversation should take place outside the Committee Room.

Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat, Brent East)

As I said, the amendments probe what the Government mean by choice. Choice for whom, about what, at what time and in what circumstances? What are the limits to choice? Should there be any limits to choice, and if so, what are they? Unlimited choice requires unlimited capacity and we do not have unlimited capacity in the system. It is important to put that on the record because local authorities will be charged with doing what is required when they exercise their powers and they need to know what the limits are when they compare one aspect with another.

The Bill has come at the end of 10 years of rising school rolls but there is about to be a period of 10 years of falling school rolls. We expect schools to lose about 500,000 teenagers in the next 10 years. What should local authorities do in those circumstances? Should they leave lots of school places empty to allow more choice or diversity in the system, or should they try to work within the boundaries of efficiency and value for money?

Let us suppose that a few Catholic families in a majority Muslim area want a Catholic school. What are the limits on the choice that the local authority must consider? Should it provide for the majority or the minority? It is important for the Government to be explicit about what they mean. In a rural area there may be only one local school to which a child can go. What does choice mean in those circumstances?

What does diversity mean? Does it mean diversity across the whole of a local authority area or choice specifically for parents? For example, in a rural area there may be diversity of provision across a borough but a very limited choice for parents who live within the catchment area of a local school, which may be a faith school or a specialist school, if they do not want to send their child to that school and it is impractical for them to travel further. What do the Government mean when they talk about exercising choice and diversity?

What is meant by choice for parents? It conflicts with aspects that we will debate later when we discuss admissions. When more choice is provided in the system and schools control their own admissions process, we will end up with schools choosing children rather than the other way round. Choice probably means preference. Perhaps the Minister will be more explicit about that; it would be more honest if we used that word.

We may talk about choice, but the Bill refers only to choice at 11. Choice should be extended through the system and it is why we have referred to choice and diversity within schools. Choice should apply to young people as they are trying to decide what kind of curriculum they want to follow.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I have listened carefully to the hon. Lady’s remarks. Do I understand it that the Liberal position is that they are in favour of the surplus places rule?

Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat, Brent East)

I am not sure that I understand the question. Would the hon. Gentleman clarify it?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I am sorry. Are the Liberals in favour of the surplus places rule that no school is allowed to expand if there are surplus places in the local education authority area?

Jacqui Smith (Labour, Redditch)

As it does not exist, she should not be in favour.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

The Minister says from a sedentary position that the rule does not exist, but the Prime Minister certainly referred to it. Whether it exists or not, it is preventing many good schools from expanding, because there are surplus places in the area. The hon. Member for Brent, East seems to be implying that while there are surplus places in a local education authority area, good schools will not be able to expand and new schools cannot be established.

Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat, Brent East)

No; I am trying to get some clarification about the limits on choice. My questions are directed at the Government and the Minister. They put “choice” into the Bill. I want to know what the limits on choice are and what the Government mean by it, because local authorities will have to exercise it. I hope that the Minister will clarify this point when she responds.

I return to the point about choice in the curriculum and in schools. We were extremely disappointed that the Government did not use this opportunity to implement the reforms proposed in the Tomlinson report. I know that we will discuss entitlements to diplomas later when we debate clauses 61 and 62, but the Bill does not implement the whole of the reforms recommended by Tomlinson, which have been recommended by advisers for at least a decade, including in Labour party reports. It does not break down the two-tier system.

We have tried to introduce the notion of choice in the curriculum to lay the groundwork for discussions that we would like to have later. We have included colleges because if there is to be choice in the curriculum, young people need to be able to move between schools and colleges, which requires a fundamentally collaborative model. We have proposed amendments to later clauses to ensure that that collaboration takes place.

The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton poured scorn on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development PISA report, which was rather unfair. The OECD found that educational systems that enable choice of provision within schools rather than between them—I do not think that it is necessarily an either/or choice—are far more likely to meet the needs of all young people rather than some young people. That is why we have added those points to the amendment.

I return to my initial point about the limits of choice. Will the Government be clear about what the limits are? Do they mean value for money? The Audit Commission reported in “Trading Places” that large numbers of unfilled places are a substantial waste of public money. Will the Government be explicit about what they want local authorities to consider when deciding the extent to which they want to provide choice and diversity within the system?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The Liberal Democrat amendments show that they do not really have a clear understanding of the fundamental purpose of the Bill. No doubt the Minister will enlighten us of that in the coming hours, days and weeks, but I understand it to be to extend the capacity of schools to exercise certain freedoms. The Government believe, as, I think, do the Opposition, that that will help to drive up standards in education to the benefit of our children. There are debates about the precise nature of those freedoms and the continuing role of local education authorities, and there are debates, which we have heard at length today, regarding the pedagogy that would help to improve the quality of education provided in schools. But the essence of the Government’s position is that the greater freedoms enjoyed by schools are likely to be beneficial.

The other aspect of the Bill that seems to be central to its purpose is the notion that with that greater diversity should come greater choice, which could be exercised by parents in pursuing their children’s interests. For once, I agree with the Liberals: choice should be qualified. Choice is not a good in itself. That is a popular misconception in modern politics. Across the political spectrum, it has become the orthodox view that choice is a good per se, and that by advocating choice without connection to its effect, we should receive plaudits. Politicians of all parties seem to have fallen into that trap, but I do not buy the argument. Incidentally, I make the same case about freedom, but perhaps we shall return to that.

I therefore have some sympathy with the case made by the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather), arguing that choice needs to be explained and, in some circumstances, qualified. However, central to the Bill is the idea that the extension of choice, the extension of freedom for schools to innovate, and the resultant diversity is likely to have a beneficial effect on standards. If the hon. Lady does not believe that, and from her amendments she does not seem to—because she was straightforward enough to question the basis on which the Bill is predicated—she takes a different view from the emerging consensus on educational matters, as it was described so eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton.

The understanding of the importance of diversity, greater school freedom and choice is a lesson that the Conservatives learned a long time ago. Grudgingly and falteringly, our Government friends have come to similar conclusions—I say that without meaning to be patronising. The Liberals have always been some way behind in politics. I was reminded of that earlier by the hon. Member for Brent, East when she opposed our crusade for disadvantaged people.

I was reminded of the antecedents of the Liberal party: people who opposed every 19th century reform introduced by Tories; who defended the slavers and those who put boys up chimneys and women and girls down mines. The Liberals drag their history behind them like a millstone. One understands that they are captives of that history. They are slow to catch up with the mood of the times, and that is well illustrated by their amendments.

To return for inspiration to the words of the Prime Minister, he spoke of the Government’s intentions towards education and illustrated his Pauline conversion to the Tory perspective on those matters on 12 December 2005 at the City of London academy. He said:

“The logic of changing to the specialist schools, of starting city academies, of giving greater freedom to schools in who they hire, what they pay, how they run their school day, is very clear. It is to escape the straitjacket of the traditional comprehensive school and embrace the idea of genuinely independent non-fee paying state schools. It is to break down the barriers to new providers, to schools associating with outside sponsors, to the ability to start and expand schools; and to give parental choice its proper place. This will never mean every parent has the place they want for their child.”

The hon. Lady is right that, in practical terms, choice cannot be unlimited. However, as the Prime Minister said,

“it will mean that their preferences start shaping the way the system works.”

Choice is a means of shaping the way the system works; choice is a vehicle for something greater. When I make a case against choice as an absolute, I do so on the basis that choice is only ever a means to a greater end. The hon. Lady seems not even to recognise it as such.

Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat, Brent East)

We are seeking not to prevent choice, but to qualify in exactly what circumstances a parent should have absolute choice. We are not seeking to prevent diversity in the system; we are saying that diversity should exist within schools and within the curriculum. It is not an either/or issue.

Ours is a probing amendment to get on record exactly what the Government mean by their provision. Diversity between schools or within the system is required if we are to implement Tomlinson. Young people would have to move between one institution and another. I am seeking to get on the record exactly what the Government mean by choice.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I do not want to be unnecessarily harsh on the hon. Lady, because that is not in my nature, as you know, Mr. Cook. No doubt “overriding” is a carefully chosen word; I am sure that the hon. Lady laboured long and hard into the twilight hours devising the amendments. However, saying that the choice should be subject to

“the overriding requirements of efficiency and effectiveness”

would limit the capacity to choose beyond the practical measures that she and I both believe are needed—because it would be impractical to offer ultimate choice, as she says—to a point at which the principles outlined by the Prime Minister in the important speech from which I quoted were impaired to an unacceptable degree.

Amendment No. 59 suggests that the Liberal Democrats do not really trust parents to make the best choices for their children. I am not sure that Liberal Democrats really believe that the effectiveness of education will be increased through parental choice, or that there should be as much diversity in education provision in schools. I think that they are still wedded, in a way in which the Labour party is increasingly not, to the straitjacket of the traditional comprehensive school. In that sense, they do speak for a constituency. It is a small and declining constituency, but that is, I suppose, the mantle of the Liberal Democrats as a rule, and no less so in this Committee.

The Liberal Democrats’ second amendment in the group relates to curricular choice. The hon. Lady made an interesting point about securing diversity of curriculum provision in schools and colleges and providing opportunities for parental and pupil choice. However, the logic of the amendment is that there would be less choice between schools, but individual schools having widely differing curriculums. I am not sure whether the hon. Lady made a compelling case for that—she certainly did not elaborate on it to a great degree. I wonder how it would be handled.

It is of course appropriate for schools to emphasise different aspects of the curriculum; indeed measures taken by the Conservatives when we were in government began that process. Some of us remember city technology colleges and their successors—technology colleges and then specialist schools. Some of us understand that it is desirable for schools to emphasise particular strengths, to appeal to parents on that basis and to cater for students with particular aptitudes. However, to write that into the Bill without a full explanation of its implications would be very worrying.

I am sure that, as I go on, I am persuading the Minister, who may have been hesitant, to resist the amendment. I think that she may have been waiting to hear what the Conservatives had to say before coming to a final judgment on it. She may now come to the same conclusion as I have, which is that the hon. Member for Brent, East has not made a sufficiently compelling case for the type of diversity that we are considering. It is a pity that in the amendment, which again deals with matters within schools rather than between schools, she did not address some of the pedagogic issues, which she might well have chosen to consider in relation to her views on the curriculum. It would have been interesting to hear how she applied her view of the nature of teaching and learning to the amendment.

For me, there are much more worrying aspects to what is going on in schools. I do not say that there are such problems in every school, or that there is a universal picture. As I have said, I do not take a narrow view on methodology. However, if we are to debate the curriculum and how we might vary it, it is important to have a clear view on teaching and learning strategies and how the curriculum might be developed. No doubt at some stage in our proceedings we shall have an extended debate about some matters that we began to explore this morning, such as the repercussions of Plowden and its effect on the delivery of the curriculum, teaching and learning strategies, and the relationship between the teacher and the taught.

I saw worrying signs in what the hon. Member for Bury, North said earlier about the way in which people gather, exchange and use information. We will discuss that in respect of technology—before I became a Member of Parliament, I spent my professional life in the IT industry so I have a perspective on such matters. I do not claim that it is particularly interesting, but I do have one. I was also worried about what the Minister said about personalised learning. We know that that will be debated further, and we do not take a dogmatic view about it. However, I have read some literature on the subject and seen in the debate on personalised learning shades of the old debate about child-centred learning. My concern is again about its effect on the nature of the relationship between teacher and taught. I take the view that teachers can and do inspire and that teaching is a valuable skill—a craft that we should never underestimate as a means of enriching and enlivening children’s experiences.

I know that the Minister cares about disadvantaged children as passionately as I do. I am not so sure about the hon. Member for Brent, East, but I shall give her the benefit of the doubt. For those children, school may be their first and last chance. The mentors that they find in their teachers—the models that they find in the adults whom they meet in the important role of educator—can change their lives. I have some concerns—I put it no more strongly—that an agenda might be developed that may be like the post-Plowden agenda that focused on child-centred learning and which, in my judgment, did considerable damage to many children’s life chances. We might be going down a similar road through personalised learning. I should like to hear from the hon. Lady about such matters in respect of the curriculum. My hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton will speak to the Conservative amendments in the group. I do not recommend that the Committee support the Liberal Democrat amendments.

Greg Mulholland (Liberal Democrat, Leeds North West)

In this, my first contribution to the debate, may I also welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Cook? This is also my first contribution as a member of my party’s education team. Last Wednesday morning, when I was returning on the train from Leeds, having been at a pleasant ceremony to celebrate Leeds university being awarded Fairtrade status, I received a call on my mobile phone saying that the new leader of my party wished me to be its new shadow schools spokesperson. My first instruction was, “As soon as you get down to Westminster, get yourself on the Front Bench.” In the past week, I have done as much as I possibly can to read through the material. The advice that sticks out was from my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East when she said that all MPs think that they are experts on education because they went to school. I assure the Committee that I bring that level of expertise to our proceedings.

There has been much talk about consensus between the official Opposition and the Government, and choice is one of the areas to which that particularly applies. However, I remind members of the Committee not to become sucked into the way of thinking that what happens here necessarily reflects the views that are held throughout the country. We must remember that many people in professional organisations and within schools are not part of the consensus to which the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings referred. It is important to hold debates such as this and for the Committee to hear the opinions that will be expressed by the Liberal Democrats today.

I come from a marketing background, and choice is what we in marketing call a buzzword. It is a word that connects with people and appeals to voters. The amendments seek to get away from last week’s political rough and tumble, which was perfectly legitimate, and accusations that we do not agree with choice if we oppose the Bill. The purpose of the amendments is to tie down what is meant by choice, as clause 2 does not sufficiently do that.

Rob Wilson (Conservative, Reading East)

The Liberal position seems to be against trusts, against foundation schools—at least it was—and against academies. In that context, what choice are you offering people? You say that it is all about having a good local school—

Frank Cook (Labour, Stockton North)

Order. I am not offering people anything at all. The hon. Member must learn to speak through the Chair. Please do not directly ask a Member what they are offering but pose questions indirectly in the third person through the Chair.

Rob Wilson (Conservative, Reading East)

My apologies, Mr. Cook. I believe that my comments have been received.

Greg Mulholland (Liberal Democrat, Leeds North West)

I am not sure that they have been received. I think that you are probably falling into the trap of trying to hear what I did not say.

Frank Cook (Labour, Stockton North)

Order. It is appropriate for an education Bill that people should learn. I suggest that hon. Members pick that one up and run with it.

Greg Mulholland (Liberal Democrat, Leeds North West)

Thank you, Mr. Cook. The hon. Gentleman and I will stay back after class if you require us to do so.

Amendment No. 59 is about the need to have parental choice, but in the context of efficiency and effectiveness. Choice leads to unbridled expansion of popular schools. That must work to the detriment of less popular schools, which are often in less popular areas, and that cannot be a good thing.

Amendment No. 178 is about diversity and choice. We need to think about choice within schools. Prince Henry’s grammar school in my constituency—before Conservative Members get excited, it is not a grammar school but a comprehensive school—is an excellent model of how to accommodate pupils from different social backgrounds and educational abilities. It places a high emphasis on sport, and it demonstrates that if there is diversity in a school, it can do many of the things that the Bill is trying to do and that we support.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

I am a little puzzled by the hon. Gentleman’s comments. He seems to be saying that it might not be a good thing that a school is good and people want to go to it. I am also keen to know exactly what he means by “less popular areas”.

Greg Mulholland (Liberal Democrat, Leeds North West)

The hon. Lady asks a valid question. I was about to answer it through an example from my experience. Like hon. Members who have been MPs for many more years than I, every year I have parents who ask me to support appeals to get their children into what are perceived to be the most popular schools. Many parents want to send their children to a particular school, which, I am afraid, is in a nice area in my constituency, even though they live near another school that has a good record on the whole, but not as good as the other school’s. They do not want their children to go to it because of perceptions.

Parents often ask why a school cannot just add another class for that year’s entry, but where would that end? That summarises what we are trying to do with the amendment. We are asking where choice ends. Clearly, another class cannot be added every other year. Schools cannot necessarily expand physically, nor would we want them to. The hon. Member for Elmet (Colin Burgon), one of my fellow Leeds MPs, made an impassioned speech last week on Second Reading. He said that the choice in this Bill would lead to a situation where children were bussed from one community to another, and in his opinion that situation would be to the detriment of both communities. I agree with him, and we need to address that issue.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for generously giving way a second time. In my constituency and in Hackney borough, due to poor planning and school performance in the past, many pupils were shipped out of borough to go to schools elsewhere, but people are now writing to me, clamouring to get into schools in Hackney, which has piloted much of what is in the Bill. Will the hon. Gentleman respond to that point?

Greg Mulholland (Liberal Democrat, Leeds North West)

I cannot comment on the hon. Lady’s experience, but let us not fall into the trap of looking at things that did not work in the past and assuming that the Bill therefore represents a step forward. We are trying to get the Government to clarify what is meant by “choice”, and I hope that the Minister will respond positively to that. To make it clear and to address the point made by the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings, we do not oppose the concept of choice, or parental preference, which is probably a better way of putting it, but we have to be realistic. We have to accept that people will not always be able to have the preference or choice that they want. Again, where are the parameters?

Nadine Dorries (Conservative, Mid Bedfordshire)

I would like to rewind to the point at which the hon. Gentleman said that a good school cannot expand. I would like to know why a good school cannot expand. I think that it can: that is one of the objectives of the Bill. He also referred to a school that is not doing so well in a not-so-popular area. We want the best education for all children, so if one school is doing better than another, the objective must be to drive up the standards of the one that is not doing so well. If that does not happen, that school should be closed and the ones that are doing well should be expanded.

Greg Mulholland (Liberal Democrat, Leeds North West)

The hon. Lady obviously misheard what I said because I did not say that good schools should not expand, but that there has to be a limit. Let us focus on the point: we are trying to determine the limitations and the definition of choice. The Liberal Democrats agree with local decision making, but that is in danger of becoming a local free-for-all. We want the Minister to clarify the matter and to consider putting provisions in place to ensure that choice does not simply become a licence for the best schools to expand indefinitely and without limitation.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is a new Front Bencher, but notwithstanding that, I wonder whether he would clarify the point he made about the limit of choice being the capacity of people to travel to the school. He said that we might end up in a situation where people travel past one school to get to another, but is that not a common experience of many our constituents, who choose not the school closest to them, but the one that they prefer? Is that the sort of limit he wants? Would he place a distance limit on people’s capacity to choose?

Greg Mulholland (Liberal Democrat, Leeds North West)

As the hon. Gentleman knows, there are provisions in the Bill that deal with transport to schools, and we shall debate such issues when we get to them. However, the answer to his question is no. Of course we are not saying that everyone has to go to the school that is nearest to them: that would be ridiculous and would give people no choice. We do not think that. We support parents having a range of schools to choose from in an area, but that must not become a licence for the best schools to expand with no limit and to the detriment of the other schools. The evidence from the Audit Commission and from Sweden shows the danger that such a process will be socially exclusive. I simply ask the Minister to consider the amendments in the spirit in which they are proposed. I ask her to consider the issues, and I look forward to her response.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I shall not respond to the Liberal amendment; my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings has done that extremely well. However, I offer my congratulations to the hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Greg Mulholland) on his appointment. I think that he will enjoy the position very much and I look forward to working with him in the coming months, and hopefully years, in our respective positions. Leeds is a former old town of mine: hon. Members will be unsurprised to learn that I went to school there. I went to Roundhay, a very good school in Leeds North-East. It was a grammar school that went comprehensive the year before I joined, and it had many of the grammar school traditions. It covered the whole ability range but it produced some very good results.

It appears to me that the amendment tabled by the Liberal Democrats tries to reinforce the surplus places rule, and I think that that is a big error. One of the problems with the local management of schools and with the agenda of the internal market and of choice, and with the way that that agenda did not raise standards as much as those of us who advocated it had hoped, is that good schools were not allowed to expand if they were in a local authority area with surplus places. The local authority would say that it could not justify, in financial terms, allowing a good and popular school to expand while there were x-hundred surplus places.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings, I like quoting the Prime Minister. On 24 October 2005, the Prime Minister said:

“No one will be able to veto parents starting new schools or new providers coming in, simply on the basis that there are local surplus places.”

I think that he is right. Whether the rule exists in practice or not, we need to get rid of it.

Angela Smith (Labour, Sheffield, Hillsborough)

I think the hon. Gentleman misunderstands the surplus places rule. As one who had to deal with an application to expand a popular school when I was a cabinet member for education, I can say that the rule does not apply to expansion of schools but forces a local authority to tackle surplus numbers in individual schools. If a school has a surplus of more than 20 per cent. of places, the authority is required to act to deal with it. That is the rule that we are discussing.

The expansion of popular schools often gives rise to the argument by local authorities that surplus places will be created in other schools. More often than not, however, and as indeed was the case in the situation with which I dealt, that argument fails, both with the schools organisation committee and with the adjudicator.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

That is a welcome intervention and an interesting point. Often, though, the argument never gets to a schools organisation committee. Schools do not even contemplate expanding because they know that the local education authority is opposed to expansion as a result of the surplus places rule.

I faced that situation in West Sussex. I wrote to the director of education and asked why such schools could not expand, given that he and I were dealing in correspondence with parents who were disappointed that they could not get their children into those schools. He said that there were surplus places in the area and that the financial justification could not be made. So it is a problem that I hope that the Bill will eradicate.

Sarah Teather (Liberal Democrat, Brent East)

Presumably the hon. Gentleman would not advocate having unlimited surplus places in order to maintain choice and diversity in the system. The question is where local authorities should draw the line, and what the Government recommendation is. It is important to get that on record, because local authorities have to implement the Bill.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I understand that, but in introducing the amendment the hon. Lady said that unlimited choice requires unlimited capacity. That is a similar phrase to, “There is no such thing as perfect markets.” Things do not have to be perfect in order for benefits to apply to the system. Things can be imperfect, and there can be a degree of choice. A school can be allowed to expand without there being perfect, pure, unlimited choice for all people. There can be benefits from giving just some choice and allowing some schools to expand. Of course there will be financial matters to take into account, but the amendment proposes an overriding requirement. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings said, that puts a burden on local authorities not to allow any expansion of good schools for as long as some surplus places exist.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The real point is that some local authorities would use that part of the Bill—if the amendment were incorporated—to resist the very changes that the Government and the Opposition, and most of us who believe in this agenda, wish to pursue. We know that local authorities have a history of maintaining excessive numbers of surplus places, and that is exactly why the obligations to deal with them were introduced by the Government. The Liberal Democrat amendment would provide them with an excuse not to grasp the nettle.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

My hon. Friend makes the point well. I am grateful for his intervention.

I want to talk about amendment No. 161 and the other Conservative amendments. The amendment is about including in clause 2, which deals with diversity and choice, a range of provisions for children with special educational needs, which is important. It is difficult to understand the debate on the future of special schools unless one visits one or more of them. I visited a school at the invitation of Maria Hutchings, whom hon. Members may recall confronted the Prime Minister on the issue of special schools for those with moderate learning difficulties during the general election, thereby creating a furore. Maria Hutchings is the parent of a child at Cedar Hall school in Thundersley, near Benfleet in Essex, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink).

Cedar Hall is a special school for those with moderate learning difficulties and is the very type of school that current education orthodoxy and policy is seeking to eliminate. It is excellent and achieves high standards, with high expectations for all its pupils; it has a happy environment, but a strict policy on behaviour. I had a chance to chat with a number of the pupils. One boy was a football fanatic; his trousers were covered in mud from having played football at playtime. He was a keen Arsenal supporter, although that should not totally be held against him. He was a happy, well-balanced extrovert of a child with lots of friends at school. It was impossible to tell, when chatting to him, that he had such a traumatic start to his school career. He went initially to a mainstream school, where he was bullied remorselessly and became withdrawn. He hated school and tried to commit suicide—this eight-year-old boy—by throwing himself down the stairs on a school day and, on one occasion, by trying to get out of a moving car on the way to school.

There is no question that, for some children, mainstream school is not appropriate; they do not want to go there—nor do their parents want them to. There is equally no question that for some children with moderate learning difficulties, mainstream school is entirely appropriate, and they can flourish and make friends. It depends on the child. It should be a matter of choice for the parent, which is why we must keep the special schools open and ensure that parents are informed by the local education authority of the full range of options available to them.

Amendment No. 161 would ensure that the concept of diversity and choice extended to a range of provisions for those with special educational needs. Lady Warnock was responsible, in many ways, for the orthodoxy that led to closure of many of those schools, but at least she is honest about that and accepts that it was a mistake. She said to the Education and Skills Select Committee on 31 October 2005:

“people, and particularly parents, do feel that they are being cheated and therefore their children are being cheated”—

The White Paper emphasises parental choice as the great good that will come with educational reform, but she says:

“I think that produces a hollow laugh on the part of parents with children with disabilities because they have no choice. Everything depends on the assessment that their child gets and it is the local authority which conducts the assessment and also has to pay the money and naturally the parents do not believe the assessment is truthful because it is pitched as low as the local authorities can get away with because of the money. They really have virtually no choice of schools and no control over wishing for anything else”.

Lady Warnock makes a valid point, which is why the Conservative party established a commission under Sir Bob Balchin to look into that matter. It concluded that the assessment needs to be separated from the provider and funding, so that the statementing is done by an independent set of people and the funding comes direct from central Government and will follow the statement through to the school. In that way we remove any possibility of a conflict of interest.

Amendment No. 161 has the support of the National Autistic Society, which made the important point that, although there are an estimated 90,000 children with autism in this country, there are only 7,500 specialist places. To quote from its brief on the amendment, which it has circulated round the Committee, it says:

“There is an overall lack of specialist provision for children with autism, and more broadly, special education needs ... Parents want a range of provision, including mainstream schools, special schools, resource bases within mainstream and dual placements.

66 per cent. of parents said their choice was limited by a lack of appropriate placements for children with autism in their local area.”

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I cannot resist the temptation to make a special plea for the Government to look again at the early diagnosis of autism. On behalf of the autistic community and carers, it is vital to acquire the right kind of education in the way recommended by my hon. Friend and to identify autism as early as possible. It is still a significant problem, and it needs to be addressed. This would be a good opportunity to air the issue and for the Minister to say a word about it.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I am grateful for that intervention. I am sure that the Minister will take heed and respond appropriately.

Not only the National Autistic Society but the Royal National Institute for the Deaf supports the amendment, which might interest you, Mr. Cook, in view of your earlier comments. The RNID says:

“The RNID supports the current practice of including deaf children in mainstream schools, but only where parents want it and only when the process is adequately resourced and supported. The level and type of support for deaf children in mainstream schools should be driven by the individual needs of children and by the choice of parents—not by the need of LEAS to reduce expenditure”.

It goes on to say:

“Special schools for deaf children have an important role to play within the range of educational provision that is available to deaf children and their families. Parents may want a special school placement for their deaf children”,

and the RNID lists various reasons, which are all valid. The first reason might be:

“Their child will benefit from being taught in small classes and acoustically treated classrooms by specialist teachers of the deaf—particularly at secondary level.

The parents may wish the child to have a peer group of other deaf children, among whom the child will find their friends.

“They may wish their child to be educated within a signing community using British Sign Language”.

Finally, parents may want a special school placement because

“Their child has additional learning difficulties or disabilities and needs the support of teachers and teaching assistants with very specialist knowledge and expertise.”

I recently tabled some parliamentary questions to the Government about the number of such schools that existed and I foolishly tabled a question that simply asked

“how many schools for the hearing impaired there were in each year since 1996.”

I was told in response:

“The type of special need for which a school is formally approved to make provision is collected from special schools only.”—[Official Report, 12 January 2006; Vol.441, c.830W.]

I was told that there were 26 such schools in 1996 and 258 in 2005. That seemed a bit odd, as I had been told that schools for the deaf were being closed, but I had mis-asked the question, enabling the Government to include mainstream schools that had deaf provision. When I redrafted the question, I asked specifically

“how many of the special schools approved to make provision for pupils with hearing impairment are schools for the deaf; and how many schools for the deaf there were in each year since 1996.”—[Official Report, 15 February 2006; Vol. 442, c.2079W.]

I was told that there were 20 in 1996, and now there are 16. There is a concern that, by the same philosophy that is leading to the closure of special schools generally, schools for the deaf are also being closed. I think that that is a mistake. We should allow parents, who know their children and their children’s needs, to make the decisions, instead of having them made for them by the establishment.

I want to make one final point about amendment No. 161. There are also special needs at the end of the IQ spectrum. There was an interesting article in the New Yorker in January this year about Brandenn Bremmer, aged 14, who lived in the United States and had an IQ of 178. Statistics show that only one in a million people will have an IQ of 178. He found that he was unable to cope with life and committed suicide at the age of 14, because of his high IQ. Such children also need special provision, and special care and attention, in the school system, and I am not sure that children with that type of gift are looked after well enough in this country.

Amendment No. 5 is about spreading best practice. It says that we must ensure

“the spread of best practice adopted in the best performing schools.”

Some issues are so important and fundamental that they need to be incorporated by regulation into the national curriculum. Keen as I am to mention synthetic phonics at every possible juncture during the Committee stage, the teaching of reading is so crucial that it should not only be in the framework documents for the teaching of literacy in primary schools, but in the national curriculum.

Other matters are not so fundamental, but, nevertheless, can have an enormous impact on educational achievement and attainment. For example, the ethos of a school, methods for the maintenance of good order, discipline and good behaviour, the approach to the setting of homework, the head teacher’s leadership techniques and how his or her team monitors and evaluates the quality of lessons by other teachers in the school, and the approach to lesson planning, are vital to the running of a school, but they could never be incorporated into law, nor should they be.

There is, however, a case for ensuring that best practice is disseminated throughout the school system, that Ministers are involved and that local education authorities take seriously their responsibilities in that regard. When visiting some of the best schools in the country, it can be seen that they have a number of things in common. They have in place meticulous processes for the monitoring of lessons by senior staff, subject specialists or peer reviews. There is no embarrassment or shame in having someone sat at the back of the class monitoring the lesson—it becomes part of the process.

That applies in primary and secondary schools. One of the best primary schools that I have been to is the Lent Rise combined school in Burnham near Slough. The head teacher, Brenda Bigland, who has won at least one teacher or head teacher award, runs a school with meticulous systems in place for almost everything, including for monitoring lessons, and raising money for the school and the upkeep of the school premises—the school sparkles and shines, and all the surfaces are immaculate. Brenda Bigland has an approach to the development of staff that could be adopted elsewhere. Lesson plans are computerised so that teachers do not have to slave away for hours to produce a new plan each year. All that happens is that each year, the plans are tinkered with to update them. As standards at the school rise, as they have been, so the following year’s curriculum and school plan is stretched slightly more than in the previous year. That is the type of best practice that we need to help spread and disseminate.

James Clappison (Conservative, Hertsmere)

While my hon. Friend is on the point about spreading best practice by reference to the definition of best schools, may I welcome the fact that his definition of “best schools” is linked to their performance according to the value-added measure? That is an important point.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing the second part of the amendment to the Committee’s attention. It is designed to ensure that we do not define a good school just by the raw results which of course will be influenced by the intake of a particular school. The value-added measures are a better way of assessing a school’s contribution to delivering higher standards of education to all intakes, regardless of ability. It is an accurate measure of how well a school is doing.

Tarun Kapur, the head teacher at Ashton on Mersey school in Trafford, took over that school several years ago. At that time, it had poor standards and behaviour—just 29 per cent. of its pupils achieved five or more GCSEs at grades A-C. He changed the ethos of the school. He introduced a strict school uniform with blazer, white shirt and tie. Shoes had to be black, and trainers—black or otherwise—were not permitted. He introduced regulation hair cuts and a no-jewellery policy. That was a huge change, which he had to sell to parents. He did so by inviting them to a large meeting at which the new uniform was modelled by two students and he explained precisely what he wanted to achieve for the school, and how their children’s education would benefit.

None of that was easy for Mr. Kapur, but it worked. Ashton on Mersey school is in an area of Trafford in which the grammar school creams off the top 40 per cent. of the most academically able. Despite that, 67 per cent. of his pupils achieve five or more GCSEs at grade A* to C; 57 per cent. when English and mathematics are included. Those are very good results for a comprehensive, let alone for what is, in effect, a secondary modern school. When I visited the school, I saw the uniform being strictly enforced; a child was sent home for wearing trainers. Teachers addressed one another as “Sir” or “Mr. Jones” or “Mrs. Jones”, even out of earshot of pupils. There was a professionalism to the way in which the school was conducted. Whenever an adult entered a classroom, the class stood up—it was a reflex action. That is what I remember from my childhood. I was educated at a school in Canada. There, it was a reflex; one just stood up.

I did not give that example because I hark after a bygone age. This is a modern school in Trafford, led by an effective and highly regarded head teacher, and his approach works. Students feel safe there, and achievement is high. That is the kind of best practice that we should spread in this country, and I hope that the amendment will help to encourage that to happen.

I mentioned the Trafford example to the general secretary of one of the teacher unions—I shall not say which, as it would embarrass him or her—and he or she said that if he or she were still a head teacher, that is the approach that he or she would take and that, almost certainly, he or she would want children to stand up when a teacher or other adult came into the room. The issue is not confined to fuddy-duddies or to those on the right, it should be cross-party and cross-ideology. Best practice should be spread.

In Trafford, there is another school, Wellington school. Again, 40 per cent. of the most academic children are creamed off to the grammar school. However, last year that school saw 73 per cent. of its 15-year-olds achieving five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C, 66 per cent. when English and mathematics were included. There are no GNVQs in those numbers. That school has rigorous setting and very high expectations of the children. Again, it has effective lesson monitoring and staff development, things that should certainly be spread to other schools.

The best-performing comprehensive in England is the Thomas Telford city technology college in Telford. That school has a banded intake based not on the ability range of the applicants but on the national array of ability. On that basis, one would have thought—

Angela Smith (Labour, Sheffield, Hillsborough)

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s having given way one more time. Is it not the case that best-performing schools should be measured over time rather than on the basis suggested in the amendment? Year-on-year improvement in results is the real sign of an improving and well performing school, rather than a constant performance level that does not change. A school might well have a success rate of 65 per cent. but if it does not move from that rate, what is there to suggest that its practices are any better than those of schools that start at a low level but improve year on year and constantly strive for further improvement, changing their practices to achieve the best for their pupils?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

The hon. Lady makes a valid point. However, if a school is in the top quartile of the national table for value added measure—given that that is a normative-based approach—and if standards are rising nationally, the implication is that it remains in the top quartile only if its standards rise too.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I first became interested in value added measurement in the 1980s, when the University of Sheffield did its pioneering work on the subject. The point is that it shows not only those schools that are performing excellently with a difficult cohort, but those that are coasting in rather more straightforward circumstances. It has the effect of exposing good and less good practice. I entirely agree that there is a need to use the Bill to find better mechanisms for sharing that good practice throughout the range of schools, regardless of their starting point.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that valuable intervention. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Ms Smith) is also right to say that we should pay attention to a range of years. The school might pop up to the top of the league table one year and drop down the next. However, the amendment will obviously be read intelligently by local government officials, and not in a very mechanistic way.

If a school is improving, it has not yet reached the point at which its practices should be spread around the country. It must maintain its position in those upper echelons, and it cannot be an example to follow until it has become a peer of the best performing schools in the country.

The Thomas Telford school in Telford has a banded intake on the basis of the national array of abilities in the country, so that in theory, if it were in tune with the national average, about 56 per cent. of its 15-year-olds would achieve five or more A* to C GCSEs. One might expect that figure to rise to 60 or 65 per cent. if the school were better than average. In fact, Thomas Telford managed to get 100 per cent. of its students to achieve five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C—all of them, including the bottom 7 per cent. of the attainment ability that the school takes in.

That, of course, is not the end of the story. What those 100 per cent. of students achieved was not five or more GCSEs but 12 GCSEs at grades A* to C. That included GNVQs, which are worth up to four GCSEs, but even if that equivalence calculation is removed from the results, Thomas Telford is still the top-performing comprehensive school in the country. If at that school, with an ability range that reflects the country as a whole, 100 per cent. can get at least five good GCSEs, why is the national average 56 per cent?

As an aside I want to mention that I asked the head teacher at the school, Sir Kevin Satchwell, about the uniform policy. I asked, “Does it matter that the students at the school wear blazers? Couldn’t they just wear pullovers, as many comprehensive school students do?” He said, “No, they must wear blazers, shirt and tie because that is what adults do. If you want to treat children like primary school children, with a soft jumper and sweatshirt approach to uniform, they will behave like primary school children.” That is the view of a head teacher, and I think that we need to take the views of such people seriously. Let us impose on ourselves the duty to spread the best practice adopted by schools such as Thomas Telford, to achieve such results.

The amendment deals with adopting the practice of schools in the top quartile of the value-added league tables. Perhaps we could be even more discerning and specify the top 5 per cent. I hope that we can pay attention to the schools that I have listed, because they achieve a huge amount and I think that we can learn a lot from what they do.

Finally, amendment No. 88 would establish a target of 10 per cent. of school places to be made up of schools of the types specified: trust schools, academies and voluntary aided schools. The main purpose and drive behind the Bill is to achieve diversity in the range of schools available to parents, and a greater chance that parents who are not happy that their children should be taught in a progressive school, or one with whose ethos they disagree, will find the type of education they want for their children. A 10 per cent. target should make local authorities more proactive in initiating competition, not simply on the basis of need, but on the basis of fulfilling the obligation to provide a diverse range of schools.

David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North)

Before I speak to amendments Nos. 97 and 98, which are in my name, I want to make some general observations about the debate so far, and the other amendments.

I want to start by commenting briefly on some of the points made by the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton about best practice for special needs. It is indisputable that a central priority for our system should be the extension of best practice. It is a fair criticism of the English, and perhaps the British, education system that we have not been as good at spreading best practice as we should have been.

I do not find the idea in amendment No. 5, that an arbitrary cut-off point fixed for schools in the value-added performance tables should be used as the criterion for which schools spread best practice, in any way convincing. I have several reasons for that. First, why should it be the first quartile? Why 25 per cent. and not 20, 30, 10 or 5 per cent.? There is no logic or rationale for choosing an average percentage. Secondly, year on year the schools in whichever percentage group is chosen will change. Thirdly, the nature of the value-added methodology is likely to change too, not necessarily year on year but over time. In fact, the contextual value-added indicators that will be published for the first time this year are slightly different from the value-added indicators used previously, and there is a lively debate among statisticians as to which is the appropriate methodology. There is no fixed value-added methodology.

Fourthly, the distinction between the schools that happen to be 25th and 26th in the league table can be so tiny as to be almost insignificant. Fifthly—I am trying reach tenthly, but I am not sure how to do so—there is little or no reason to assume that the methods shared by those schools are common. I should have thought that experience would teach us that such schools use a variety of methods and that no single method can be transferred universally. That returns to our earlier debate about those who believe in a silver bullet to solve all education problems and those who believe in a variety of methods for all aspects of running a school which need to be tried and explored, and that it boils down to the quality of the head teacher, the management team and the teaching in the school rather than whether the children have short haircuts and shiny shoes. I discount the amendment.

In amendment No. 161, on the subject of special needs, the hon. Gentleman does not accurately reflect the contribution that Baroness Warnock has made to the special needs debate, either through the article she wrote last year or in her most recent article, which was published just a few weeks ago. Her understanding of the system is one of greater complexity than Opposition Members would like to believe. There is no evidence of a systematic policy to close special schools.

The general consensus among all the experts who came before the Education and Skills Committee during its recent inquiry into special needs was that we need a range of provision, which should include some special schools for children with the most serious disabilities, a considerable amount of mainstreaming and improvements to the way that children with disabilities are taught and supported in mainstream schools, together with a significant increase in the number of special units and special resource centres attached to mainstream schools. We are talking not about an either/or debate about special or mainstream schools, but about one that focuses on a continuum of provision that is more sensitively matched to the needs of individual children. I am not sure that amendment No. 161 deals with that.

I want to return to the starting point of the debate, which was the comment made by the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings. Looking at the list of members of the Committee, I see that he has the privilege of representing the constituency with probably the most beautiful name, and I congratulate him on his good fortune. I envisage his constituency as peopled with individuals with names such as Bilbo Baggins. Frankly, aspects of Tolkien came into his argument.

The hon. Gentleman said that clause 2 and the focus on choice and diversity were central to the fundamental purpose of the Bill. That may be the case, but I put it in a slightly different way. They are central to the Bill but they highlight the different reasons why people of different perspectives can support it. The real issue is not in accepting choice and diversity but in how we interpret them.

It find it surprising that the clause is perfunctory in describing the powers of local education authorities in terms of securing diversity and increasing the opportunities for parental choice. I should have thought that the brevity of the way those concepts are dealt with provides a blank cheque for a large number of lawyers to argue about the definitions of choice and diversity in the years ahead.

I do not see it as a question of whether one is broadly in favour of, or opposed to, choice and diversity. The heart of the clause is about how we define them. The problem is that in many respects the two concepts have been used loosely by both main political parties for many years and by the Department for Education and Skills in a series of publications. There was a time when it seemed that every White Paper, whether from a Labour or a Tory Government, included the terms “choice” and “diversity” and something else, perhaps “excellence”, in a seemingly infinite series of combinations. However, we must move on from the use of “choice and diversity” as a political slogan and examine what we really mean by it.

It bothers me that there is no clear or detailed definition of the concepts in clause 2. If the clause is accepted unamended, it runs the enormous risk of opening the floodgates to a series of legal arguments and challenges as time goes by. It worries me that there appears to be a consensus about diversity; it appears to be defined in respect of simply having different kinds of school—different names, different labels, different forms of governance and perhaps different structures of ownership. I have no great objection to that, except that in England there is a great problem in supporting the concept of diversity and accepting it without rearranging the objects of diversity into hierarchies. If we merely focus on diversity and on creating a range of different institutions with different names, labels and forms of governance attached, the clause runs the risk that sooner or later parents will sort those institutions into ever greater hierarchies. That is precisely what Her Majesty’s Opposition would like and it is why they are so enthusiastic in their support for the Bill. I hope that Labour Members can put greater emphasis on the parity of esteem between schools and support a concept of diversity that is designed to deliver it, rather than reinforcing and extending existing hierarchies.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I am following the hon. Gentleman’s argument with great interest. Is he concerned that should a future Administration inherit this measure, it could be implemented in a very different way from what is intended now?

David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North)

That is a concern about all legislation. I do not completely buy the argument that it is easy for an incoming Government to turn legislation to their advantage merely because it contains a degree of ambiguity. If an incoming Government were sufficiently committed to a particular policy, they would simply introduce new primary legislation.

I want to tie the question of diversity and hierarchy in with the whole question of ethos. “Ethos” has appeared briefly in this afternoon’s discussion; the term is increasingly used to describe the qualities of certain good schools. It is right to identify an ethos and a sense of identity as characteristics of a good school, as has been well documented over a number of years by Ofsted and others.

However, I am a little concerned when diversity and hierarchy are linked with ethos—again, I can see that this is attractive to some members of the official Opposition, although not necessarily those who are here—because we run the risk of having schools that operate an exclusive policy of admitting only those children whom they feel match their ethos. There is a fundamental difference between a school developing and establishing an ethos and encouraging children to benefit from it, and a school developing an ethos and keeping children out because it does not wish to admit those whom it judges not to be beneficial to the continuation of that ethos.

I am worried about the word “ethos” and am grateful that it does not appear in the Bill—perhaps it appeared in an earlier draft. I make that point because it is absolutely relevant to the debate about diversity.

Nadine Dorries (Conservative, Mid Bedfordshire)

Will the hon. Gentleman clarify whether he is saying that all schools must be the same, with exactly the same ethos? There is no room for diversity, difference or choice in those schools if they are not allowed to have their own distinctive ethos.

David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North)

I am arguing precisely the opposite. I am saying that diversity within a school is more important than diversity between schools. I am less concerned about having different types of ownership or governance, or different categories of school as a matter of policy, and more concerned about having a curriculum in each school that is sufficiently flexible to match the range of individual needs that each child brings to that school. It is far more important to focus on diversity within the school than on diversity between different categories of schools.

David Evennett (Conservative, Bexleyheath and Crayford)

Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that one school should have lots of different ethoses? He seems rather confused. He wants to have diversity within the school, but surely the school would then lose its ethos.

David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North)

I think that it is entirely possible for a school to have its own distinctive ethos but, within that ethos, for it to run a varied and flexible curriculum that can respond properly the needs of each child. The best schools do just that.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

My hon. Friend may be referring, if not by name, to Mossbourne city academy in Hackney, which has a mix of pupils from all ability ranges and all social and ethnic backgrounds. The school has a strong ethos, which all its pupils buy into, and there is a queue of parents waiting to get in. Is that the sort of the school that my hon. Friend is talking about?

David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North)

I was not specifically thinking of Mossbourne city academy in Hackney, but that is a good example of exactly the argument that I was trying to make. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that point.

David Evennett (Conservative, Bexleyheath and Crayford)

I am very interested in Hackney, because the Prime Minister says that the academies have a different ethos—indeed, one specific ethos—so what the hon. Lady said does not make sense.

David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North)

I am not sure that the Prime Minister has ever said that every academy shares the same ethos. He has argued that having slightly different arrangements for the academies has enabled them to establish their own ethos more easily. The important point is that whatever ethos an individual academy establishes is not used in an exclusive way to deter certain children from applying or to find ingenious ways of preventing children from being admitted.

One argument that is often put in support of the diversity policy is that we need a wider range of schools to generate a strong ethos and raise standards, but there is not much evidence to support that view. Nor did the Education and Skills Committee report on secondary education, which was published last year after two years of inquiry, reach the conclusion that a diversity of schools or different kinds of school would, in itself, raise standards. The evidence that we found, and the conclusion that we reached—this is very much the conclusion that Ofsted has reached over the years—is that what matters in raising standards is not so much a school’s structure, name or even ethos, and certainly not the existence of a pattern of different kinds of school, but the quality of management and teaching, the flexibility of the curriculum and parental engagement.

Rob Wilson (Conservative, Reading East)

Is the hon. Gentleman then arguing that the money spent on academies, for example, is wasted?

David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North)

No, I am not arguing that at all. I believe in letting 100 flowers bloom and in innovation, and it is important to explore a range of different ways of delivering education, but I do not buy the argument that establishing a diversity of institutions is, in itself, guaranteed to drive up standards. The track record of the academies to date is mixed: some are doing significantly better than their predecessor schools, but some are not. It is not easy at this stage—although it may become easier later—to draw conclusions about the impact of the academies programme on standards. One might argue that we would have had a stronger impact on standards if we had spent £11 million on two schools or £7.33 million on three schools, rather than £22 million on one school, but that is a separate issue.

I think that I have been able to make my point about diversity. I am concerned that the clause does not adequately define diversity and therefore leaves it wide open to challenge in the future.

Let me move on to the question of choice. The clause talks about

“increasing opportunities for parental choice”

and I am a strong supporter of parental choice. Again, however, the difficulty is one of definition. The assumption, probably since the Education Act 1980, which first introduced the concept of open enrolment, has been that choice is at the heart of the system. From the early 1990s onwards, with the establishment of city technology colleges and the expansion of grant-maintained schools, the view has been that a greater range of schools offers choice. The problem, however, is that we have defined choice as a range of theoretical alternatives for parents, whereas most parents would define it as the capacity to secure their first preference. Simply increasing the range of different schools or different types of school, therefore, does not necessarily mean that we are increasing a parent’s chances of securing their first preference of school.

Of course, that might work in precisely the opposite direction. We might have a greater diversity of schools and ethoses—I am not sure whether that is the plural of ethos. Perhaps I can check that with the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, who might know the answer from his days in Leeds and Nottingham. The hon. Gentleman did not attend school in Bury, did he? I am sure that somebody on the Committee knows what the plural of ethos is, but it is not me.

The extension of the range of different kinds of ethos can result in an increasing number of parents being denied access to their first-choice school. Again, it is extremely important that we define choice more precisely. I really believe that we, and the overwhelming majority of parents, would define “choice” as the capacity to secure their first preference. Quite frankly, from a parent’s point of view, there is little point in having six, seven, eight, nine or 10 different schools within immediate travelling distance if they are not able to secure their first preference.

The consensus now is that choice is the driver of the system, and that that is what most parents want. That is true in many respects, but not all, because I think that parents use the concept of choice as a proxy for quality. Clause 2 does not take that on board fully. As the hon. Gentleman said, we are being led to confuse choice as a means to an end with choice as an end in itself. Clause 2 emphasises choice as an end in itself, whereas choice should really be a means to an end, and that end should be an improvement in quality. Parents frequently say that they want choice, but that is because they deem that to be the way to get better quality. When parents want to choose something other than their neighbouring school, they say that it is because their neighbouring school is not good enough.

If we could develop a policy under which every local school was good enough, parents would place far less emphasis on choice. The great paradox is that if we could secure quality in all local schools, choice would become far less significant than we have been led to believe it is. I just make that point about choice as a proxy for quality.

There are two other issues to raise about choice. There is another great paradox. The real choice that a small but significant minority of parents want for their children is that of avoiding their being taught with the slightly more unpleasant children down the street, or on the other side of the tracks. I sound a note of caution about that. How can I explain this delicately? It should not be made any easier for parents to opt out of the normal processes of social life. It should not be the role of the state education system to increase segregation between parents and between children.

The final point about choice is that if we really believe in choice as I defined it—as the ability to secure one’s first preference—the logical corollary is that it is absolutely impossible for schools to establish their own over-subscription criteria. We cannot have it both ways; either parents can choose the schools, and the system has to adapt to respond to those first preferences, or the schools can establish their own over-subscription criteria, in which case it is the school that will determine which places go to which children. We really cannot have it both ways. We may return to that later, when we deal with admissions.

I will try to be brief to allow others to speak, but first I move on to amendments Nos. 97 and 98. In one sense, they would provide a counter-balancing mechanism to what could be the worst consequences of the simple statement about diversity and choice in proposed new subsection (3A)(a) and (b). Amendment No. 97 would place a responsibility on local authorities to ensure that education in the schools for which they are responsible contributes to social inclusion and community cohesion. The amendment has, if not exactly the same wording, very similar wording to that of the Education and Skills Committee’s report on the White Paper.

I need not over-emphasise the deep and growing concerns about the consequences of growing social exclusion among young people. Those concerned about education have been debating for a number of years the consequences of some aspects of faith schools and the increasing trend of children from particular families to be educated separately from children of different faiths or beliefs.

I do not see any great movement to change significantly the nature of our faith schools—I think that they are a fixed part of the landscape—but I detect at some of the highest levels in the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England a growing awareness of the consequences of reproducing in a multicultural society an education system in which children are taught only with children of similar background and faith. In the context of 9/11 and of growing concerns about the alienation of Muslim youth in the United Kingdom—a debate that is now far more high-profile than it was some years ago at the time of riots in some east Lancashire and West Yorkshire towns—we need to be more sensitive about how to educate our young people and avoid falling into the trap of educating them in ghettos.

I do not pretend that there is an easy solution to the problem, and my amendment does not prescribe one, but I think that putting the responsibility on local authorities to ensure that their schools contribute to social inclusion and community cohesion would put down a marker. We have an increasingly dangerous tendency to segregate our young children according to the belief systems of their parents. Although one must respect the views of parents and the way that many wish their children to be brought up in their own beliefs, it is a growing trend among parents of different faith and ethnic groups. A more integrated approach to primary and secondary education might provide a better foundation for our society’s development in years ahead.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

I am slightly concerned by my hon. Friend’s comments. He speaks of faith schools as though they create ghettos. Has he thought about faith schools in east London? A Catholic school might have Vietnamese children alongside Nigerian, Irish, Spanish and first-generation Italian children. That is not one cultural group; it includes people from different backgrounds, nationalities, races and incomes. Such schools can be very diverse. Will he clarify his argument?

The rest of the debate is in Hansard.