Education and Inspections Bill

I share the lukewarm support expressed by the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford). I shall support the Bill. I am sorry that the Secretary of State is leaving the Chamber: I was going to say some nice things about the intelligence and eloquence of her speech being a walking argument for the highly selective education that she enjoyed. Our time is very restricted, and I shall deal with just one very specific issue—what I believe is the failure of the state system to deal with very talented and intelligent children. In my view, that failure has become abundantly clear. I can cite two studies, one of which was conducted recently by a professor of education at York university. He took a sample of 5 per cent. of the most able pupils at key stage 2, aged 11. Of those pupils—37,500—30,000 went into the state sector and 7,500 went into the independent sector. At the age of 16, almost every pupil who had entered the independent sector achieved five A or A* grades at GCSE, but only two thirds of those in the state sector did. At the age of 18, almost every pupil in the private sector achieved three As at A-level, while only 40 per cent. of those in the state sector achieved the same result. It is not surprising that when we look at the entry to really good universities, we see that it is skewed even further. The state sector is letting down bright pupils. Anyone who wishes to dispute that evidence should look at the Department’s own statistics. They show a happy improvement in the percentage of young adults attaining three As at A-level in all sectors. However, in the independent sector it has risen from 17 per cent. to 26 per cent., an increase of just over 50 per cent.; in the selective state sector it has risen from 12.5 per cent. to 20.5 per cent., an increase of slightly more—nearly 60 per cent.; and in comprehensive schools it has risen only from 4.7 per cent. to 5.7 per cent., an increase of 20 per cent. Not only is that group of children being let down by the state sector, and particularly by the comprehensives; the gap is becoming wider. Those in selective schools in the state sector, or in independent schools, are doing better and better as time goes by in comparison with those in the state comprehensive sector. That is obviously palpably unfair to the children involved. They are bright kids, who are not receiving the education that they need and deserve to develop their talents for the purpose of their own lives. It is also bad for the country, however. Our economy relies heavily on the development of high technology, and if we are to have judges, doctors and professors of medicine, we need the brightest people we can get. Whatever their background, those people must have the education that is appropriate to them. What should we do? Lip service is paid to this issue, and my party talks a lot about streaming, which has its part to play. To judge by schools in my constituency, there is much more streaming than there used to be, but only big schools with a lot of teachers can stream in more than a few subjects, because it is resource-demanding. The Government have a gifted children programme, but it does not do what is called for. People do not want a national academy for gifted schoolchildren; what they want is for the school that their child attends to be able to teach them and to enable them to fulfil their potential. Having represented two different constituencies, my view is that a school’s ethos is absolutely crucial. If most of a given school’s parents value education, the children do their homework, they learn from other pupils and there is a competitive academic environment, very bright kids will flourish. Some comprehensive schools have that ethos and almost all independent and grammar schools do, by definition, but it needs a critical mass. The constituency that I used to represent was an inner-city area, and my current constituency is a largely rural, very prosperous middle class area. I wish that there had not been a gap between my two periods of service in this House, but that gap has given me a perspective on both situations. We have grammar schools in Stratford, but in fact the high schools and the comprehensives are also pretty good, and I suspect that they are able to deal with bright kids. However, in the main comprehensive school in the part of inner-city London that I used to represent, only 10 per cent. of children used to get five GCSE grades at A to C—frankly, for most purposes, a C is a fail—so what chance did bright kids have there? On examining the percentage of children with special educational needs and the number of unauthorised absences from school—a euphemism for truancy—it is clear that there is not much difference between the two types of school. The problem is the critical mass and the expectations.