Schools White Paper

My Lords, if one visits schools that were grant-maintained, they are almost invariably flourishing today, often more than they were when they were grant-maintained, thanks to the much higher levels of funding and support that they have received from the Government. The idea that we have destroyed those schools is a fantasy that can only come from not having an engagement with the schools themselves. The schools that were grant-maintained, almost all of which now have foundation status, have all the essential freedoms and flexibilities that they had as grant-maintained schools, apart from unfair levels of funding relative to other schools—although their total funding will be higher because of the big increase in national education funding since 1997—and the power to select pupils unfairly that was given to grant-maintained schools. Apart from those two key elements—and the debate about whether it is best to fund schools nationally from one funding agency or locally from another, which is not really an issue provided that the money gets through to them directly, which it does—there has not been any change in the position of grant-maintained schools that has left them less able to deliver the high quality education that they did then and which they continue to deliver now.