Education and Inspections Bill

Let me make progress on this very important point, because it matters enormously to us on the Conservative Benches. We do not believe that that old model is any longer a way in which people can credibly claim to deliver social justice. That is why the system needs to be opened up, and why we need to consider a radically different alternative allowing greater diversity and choice. However, the alternative model has powerful critics, and none more powerful than the Deputy Prime Minister, who put it so well when he said:"““If you set up a school and it becomes a good school, the great danger is that everyone wants to go there.””" That is his objection to the model and his concern. I wish that that were only one of the absurdities that we are used to hearing from the mouth of the Deputy Prime Minister, but sadly, what he was describing is the thinking that lies behind far too much regulation of schools in our local areas. As an example of such thinking, I quote from the adjudicator’s report on a request to open a new voluntary aided Montessori primary school. He wrote:"““With its new facilities, it””—" that is, the new maintained school—"““might prove attractive to more local families who might indeed find places to be available. If this were the case, then the anxieties expressed by the LEA, the schools local to the proposed site and other objectors would prove to be well founded””." So the chief adjudicator did not allow the new Montessori school to go ahead. That is an outrage. That is not the way that education should be conducted in our country today. We want to see conditions made easier for new schools to be created and for successful schools to be expanded. Somewhere in No. 10, and perhaps at least with the Secretary of State and her adviser, Lord Adonis, there is a recognition that school adjudicators should no longer turn down bids to run a Montessori primary school. That is not a vision for education reform in the 21st century. The Prime Minister gets it. He is clear about that whenever he makes the case for education reform. It is a pity that, because of her fear of her own Back Benchers, the Secretary of State has been reluctant to make a case for education reform on those lines today. We know that the abolition of the school organisation committee and the new power of schools to compete to create new places are exactly what is necessary to move us in the direction that I have set out.