Education and Inspections Bill

I should like to make progress, as I want to consider two crucial concerns about the Bill. The first, which has been mentioned already, is what we might call the fragmentation concern—that the proposals in the Bill will lead to fragmentation and diversity, which will lead to inequity. That is a genuine concern, and I recognise that Labour Members express it with sincerity and conviction. If I honestly believed that the agenda of opening up more freedom for schools and giving them greater diversity would create even wider gaps in our society than exist at present, that would be a powerful objection to the proposals. However, I have to ask hon. Members who believe that argument, and who believe that we should return to the classic comprehensive model with every child going to their local secondary school, whether that model is as fair and equitable in practice as it is supposed to be in theory. In today’s Britain, the main route for getting one’s child to a good school is to get one’s local priest to sign a chit or to be willing to pay the higher price to get a good house in a catchment area close to a good school—a higher price of £50,000 on average and in some cases possibly £200,000. I do not believe that a system of allocation of school places by the power of the local clergyman or the parents’ ability to pay high house prices is any basis for a 21st century education system. In a modern, diverse, socially mobile country there is no way we can tie people down to their local catchment area and their local school. They are used to having a range of options and choosing between them. They will search the internet for information about how different schools are doing, and there is no basis on which any of us, on either side of the House, should try to pass laws and regulations to stop them exercising such choice.