Education and Inspections Bill

I am sure that Members on both sides of the House will understand the nerves of a new Back Bencher. Even on the ides of March, I thought that the speech of the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts), the shadow Secretary of State, did not add up to a Mark Anthony and it is unlikely that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State would wish to play Cleopatra. His speech was, first, all about apologising for past Conservative education polices and, secondly, a feeble effort to try to divide this side of the House by pretending that the Conservative party is in favour of the Bill because it believes in the measures in it. The measures remove the kind of unfairness that the shadow Secretary of State has been talking about this afternoon when he was eulogising about grant-maintained status. Some Labour Members remember that very well: the unfair admissions, the unfair funding, the separation of one school from another and the inability to get people to realise that collaboration, not competition, helps schools to work with each other to provide a decent education. In the six and a half years during which I had the privilege of leading Labour’s education policy, we undertook to overturn the unfairness we inherited in 1997. I commend my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister for listening and responding to the concerns that existed when the White Paper was published. It would be a great disservice to those who listened and responded if the message were to go out that Labour Members were churlish enough not to take that response and rejoice in it; in other words, if they were to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, as we did so often in the 1980s. The message must go out that if the Government are prepared to listen and respond, then we, too, listen and respond and give our support to those measures. The strengthening of the admissions code, placing the changes in the Bill so that the wording will be ““in accordance with”” the code, not merely ““have regard to”” it, will be a major step forward, as will be the development of the forum not merely for admissions at local level—which some progressive local authorities, such as my own, already operate—but also to plan places for the future. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) mentioned in Prime Minister’s questions, this also undertakes what is covered by the agenda in the White Paper, ““Every Child Matters””. We believe in equality of opportunity in a way that the Conservative party demonstrated that it never did in the 18 years that it was in power. The Bill provides for a pupil-centred curriculum, an emphasis on vocational education—I hope that that will be a link between academic and non-academic pupils, not merely those who have been struggling with an academic agenda—and an emphasis on discipline and on the ethos of the school, which often drives people, particularly in inner London, out of the state system. In Hackney, the most deprived borough in the country, 20 per cent. of parents send their children to private school at secondary level. Those parents are making a choice by opting out. We want people to make a choice by opting in to their local school where the standard of education is such, and where the culture and ethos have been so developed, that parents are proud to say that they are sending their chid to that school. The legacy we inherited was exactly the opposite. Special needs children were forgotten and under-investment and under-achievement were simply taken for granted. I remember what it was like in my constituency. People were not worrying about 25, 35 or 45 per cent. of pupils achieving A to C grades, but 6 and 8 per cent. In the school that is now known as Firvale community school, a specialist school, the figure was 6 per cent. The school had an 80 per cent. ethnic minority intake and the children and parents were told that no better could be achieved. The figure is now 36 per cent. and rising. That did not hurt neighbouring schools. They have transformed their achievements with the same intake they always had. Children will not be bussed from my constituency to the south-west of Sheffield, not just because it is a practical impossibility to get those in the south-west to bus back to my constituency, but because places are not available. The imperative is to transform education for those children by the sixfold increase in capital investment, the 30,000 extra teachers, the 110,000 teaching assistants and the emphasis that we place on intervening in the most disadvantaged areas. Trust status, collaborative as it must be in those areas that choose it, builds on the education action zones that we have created since 1997. Education action zones focus on disadvantage and they draw in resources from outside business and support from universities. I do not mind at all if HSBC wants to use some of its £11 billion to invest in an academy in my constituency. It will not have to because the seven schools that serve my constituency at secondary level have transformed themselves. They have also formed a new sixth form college in collaboration with the education authority in an entirely new governance model, reminiscent of the trust status that we are talking about. Each is sharing and contributing—a part of the transformation in education that every one of us on the Labour Benches wants to see. While accepting that there will be differences between us, all of us accept that the real fervour—the passion—for education in the Labour party is because we know, as I certainly know, that it is the transforming element in people’s lives. It takes people up the ladder, out of disadvantage. We want good education authorities, sharing and working through the forum, to be able to liberate people to enjoy the quality of education that so often they have been denied. Schools control schools, not education authorities. Today, we are building on the history of what we debated in 1995 and 1996 at conference and in the Education Act 1998. Because I benefited so much from education, I know that my constituency is an area that needs educational reform more than any other part of Britain. Building on what we have done, we shall achieve even greater strides in the future to transform our system.