Education and Inspections Bill

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention and I acknowledge that there have been changes to the admissions code. That was the work of the Select Committee. I signed up to the report, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Stephen Williams), but we do not think that it goes far enough. We believe that one of the ways to ensure that we do not get discreet and sometimes unseen selection through the back door would be to remove the possibility of seen admissions, which would lead to that. I will deal with her other point later. There are some positives in the Bill and my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) pointed them out. We welcome attempts to strengthen discipline in schools and to tackle underachievement, poor behaviour and truancy, which makes it all the more disappointing that the Government have again passed up the opportunity to make a real difference in this area. I wonder whether it has occurred to the Secretary of State that young people who are succeeding at school rarely play truant. Those who are achieving their potential, or on the way to doing so, rarely play truant. Almost exclusively it is the case that young people who play truant, who go on to get into trouble and whose contribution to society may end up being limited are those who do not succeed at school. Why is the Government’s focus on a mirage of choice between schools when it should be on the desperate need for real choice in curriculum? Why have the Government again, as has been mentioned this afternoon, ducked the challenge of taking on the Tomlinson report, which would provide young people with a spectrum of choices from which they could take a blend of traditional academic courses alongside professional and vocational ones, in a format that does not pander to academic snobbery and therefore reinforce social segregation and failure at school? The Government could truly make progress with their respect agenda, and win the respect of parents and teachers, if they only had the inclination to provide options at school that ensure that young people are enabled to succeed at what they are good at and reach their potential, rather than being relegated as failures. This Bill has been characterised as one for urban Britain, more specifically for London. Nowhere is that characterisation more appropriate than in the language about choice that is being used to sell the Bill. Choice in education is important, but choice between different schools is a laughable nonsense to those of us living in rural communities. John Ruskin school in Coniston in my constituency is an excellent high school, and it is good that it is because the second choice school, or the second nearest, is a 10-mile drive along country lanes and two ferry rides away. The Government should not be surprised that so many teachers and parents in my constituency and others like it stand perplexed in response to the Government’s celebration of choices that simply do not exist. Even for those less rural parts of my constituency where it is physically possible to get to more than one school without resorting to ferries, choice will in essence be meaningless. The Select Committee discovered that the Government have no serious practical plans to expand the most popular schools, so once they are full, they are full. Given that most of the most popular schools are by definition already full, even in this respect choice between institutions is a mirage. Perhaps, however, despite all the watering down of the Bill, the reality is not that important to the Government. Perhaps what matters are the messages. Perhaps the message of the controversial part of the Bill is intended to be a dog whistle to those who consider themselves aspirational and ambitious for their children. That includes me, by the way, so I am listening. The message is, ““Whatever we say, this will lead to the opportunity for your child to do better, to take advantage of your aspirations and those of your aspirational school. It’s a desperate shame, of course, for the other dozen schools in your city or town that are non-aspirational and also that the parents of the kids there aren’t as aspirational as you, but that’s not your fault and it can’t be helped.”” The Conservatives like that sort of thing, and I would like to think that that is why they are preparing to back the Bill, but it is nothing as sophisticated or intelligent as that. This is low politics. The Conservatives will back the Prime Minister simply to embarrass him, but they could back us and defeat him, and at the same time protect our children from a dangerous slide back to opportunities for a few at the expense of the many.