Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, it will come as no surprise that I profoundly disagree with virtually everything that the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, has said. In all fairness to him, he has been one of the strongest advocates of comprehensive education; he has been completely consistent—I think consistently wrong. The whole concept of comprehensive education held out promises that could not be achieved, and let down the quality of education for several generations of schoolchildren. That is why when I was Secretary of State for Education I tried to bring in diversity and a choice of schools. Many schools are now listed and I may say that the present Government have accepted my policy. They speak glowingly of the success of city technology colleges, specialist schools and academies. Now they will create trust schools. None the less, the Bill is a bit of a disappointment and a lost opportunity. Why do I come to that judgment? Let me take the House back to the summer of last year when the Labour Government won their third term with a very substantial majority. The commentators were then saying that the Conservatives were in terminal decline, the Liberals would be the natural party of opposition, and Labour would be in office for the foreseeable future. In those circumstances, as we have experienced in the past, that is when Prime Ministers start thinking about their legacy. Tony Blair wanted his legacy. It obviously could not be Iraq; that is a dismal millstone. It cannot be crime—remember:"““Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime””?" That is just a series of meaningless adjectives. It had to be, ““Education, education, education””. He called his advisers, including the Minister, to No. 10 to devise a new policy. It was immensely radical—more radical than anything that I suggested, and it is contained in a White Paper which has not been mentioned yet, but which was issued in October 2005. I am happy to have a copy; I think all the other copies have been destroyed in the Department for Education and Skills. This was an imaginative, sweeping change. It was not tinkering at the edges but was moving power for education to the parents of the children involved. Chapter 2 is headed in large letters, ““A School System Shaped by Parents””. That was Tony Blair saying that he would give power to the consumer over producer interests. He would give power to parents over the local education authorities and the various teacher unions. That was deeply resented by a large part of the Left wing of the Labour Party. Let me remind the House how radical that policy was. The new foundation schools would,"““control their assets, employ their own staff and set their own admissions criteria””—" not make their own admissions arrangements, which is what the Minister said. Parents at school level would decide which children would come to their schools. That is an immensely significant change, which would be totally opposed, of course, by the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, and others who believe that it would sap and undermine the system. While they had the admissions criteria they had to observe a voluntary code; it was only a voluntary code. The Bill has emerged after a series of humiliating concessions in the House of Commons. The White Paper has the Minister’s fingerprints all over it; it is the gospel according to St Adonis. There is no question about that. When it came to us, we had a letter from the noble Lord saying:"““The Bill places a duty on local authorities in England to promote fair access . . . and tightens the admissions framework to ensure this . . . ban on new selection by ability, the Bill will outlaw interviewing of parents””." It continued that there would be ““Admission Forums”” and a statutory ““School Admissions Code””. That is totally different from the White Paper. I find it amazing that parents are not going to be interviewed. That is not only absurd, but immensely demeaning. The argument runs that the parents of inner-city children—or, in old-fashioned words, the parents of working-class children—will always lose out against the parents of the upper class and middle class. That is absolute rubbish. You need only have a fleeting knowledge of the educational history of this country to know that working-class parents often have a better regime of discipline and control in looking after their children than the parents of upper-class children. The change is amazing. I want to make the point that it is fundamentally different from the White Paper. An opportunity has been lost. I shall say where I think the Government can now recover some initiative to improve education. The curse of education for the past 50 years has been the debates on selection at 11. We all know the arguments for and against. We know the solution that was introduced and its inadequacies; we know how all Governments have tried to make up for them. I have now come to the conclusion that the best age of transfer for children is not 11, but 14. I was coming to that at the end of my period in office but, as I had introduced so many changes, I could not introduce something as fundamental as that. By the age of 14, however, children have largely themselves determined what their interests in education are. The academic will want to go the academic route. Those who want to develop skills and vocational studies will want a different sort of education. The Government are half way there. They have produced a White Paper on the 14-to-19 curriculum, which I welcome. It is difficult to impose that curriculum on an ordinary secondary school, however, because it has children of 11 to 14. The Government can dismiss the political points I have been making if they like, but this is quite serious: I suggest that they create a large number of new 14-to-19 and five-to-13 schools. It cannot be done by reforming existing schools. When you are making fundamental changes to institutions, you must decide whether to change what already exists or start anew. That was a problem I faced when we set up city technology colleges. We first tried to persuade Conservative-led local education authorities to establish city technology colleges as free, not controlled. There was no way to do it, so we set up new colleges which have been built on by the Government. I suggest that they now have a drive to set up 14-to-19 apprenticeship schools, and 14-to-19 academic schools. That is not dividing society; it is recognising the reality of education in our country. The 14 to 19-year-olds are not going to be at second-class schools like secondary moderns. They will lead on to university. The range of courses now offered in our universities is predominantly vocational, not only at the new universities but at the old ones. When I was at Oxford in the 1950s, there were only three vocational courses: law, medicine and theology. All the rest were broadly general education. That is not the case in universities today. If I still had responsibility, that is what I would be doing: a really fundamental change. That would be a legacy of which Tony Blair would be proud if he could achieve it. It will not be done just by talking about a 14-to-19 curriculum. Another subject in the Bill troubles me. Under its provisions, there will be opportunities for groups of people to come together to form new schools and ask for state funding. I do not object to that—this sort of system exists in some Scandinavian countries—but it will also allow people of certain faiths to come together and establish new faith schools. I shall make my views clear: I am not against religious schools. I went to an Anglican state primary in Lancashire. It was my sort of Anglicanism, not very fervent or emphatic. We were taken to church only twice a year, and started each day with a hymn and a prayer; but all schools did that in those days. However, I was not indoctrinated to believe that I was one of the chosen and that this was the only way I would ever get to heaven. Indeed, my closest friend at that school was a Jewish boy, and I learnt about the Jewish religion by going to his house at the weekend to see how they prepared for the Sabbath. I do not object to that sort of religious school at all, because it is inclusive. I think that all the Anglican schools in our country are inclusive. Many Catholic schools are now becoming inclusive; several now take children from other faiths and look on that as an opportunity. I do not object to that, but I do object to exclusive faith schools that will provide education for only one faith. When I was Education Secretary, I had applications from Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Sikh communities, and I always found good reasons to turn them down. In many cases, they were very good schools, but I believe that to establish exclusive faith schools in today’s society is lunatic. I have been in correspondence with the Minister on this, and he does not agree with me. I accept that. He said that his great mentor, Roy Jenkins, taught him the lesson of proportionality. We are basically talking about 150 private Muslim schools that want state support to become state-funded schools. They are inadequate private schools. The argument is that 150 schools are not many of the 25,000 schools in our country, but that is the argument that the housemaid’s illegitimate baby is only a little sin. That is the proportionality argument. If he were alive today, the Minister’s great hero, Roy Jenkins, who was a Home Secretary, would never support the creation of exclusive faith schools—not with the problems that we are facing. I believe that if groups come together and ask for support for religious schools, the Government should insist that in order for them to get state funding at least one-third of the pupils should come from other faiths, and if that proportion is not maintained state funding should be withdrawn. I do not think that I have to rehearse the arguments to your Lordships on this. Exclusive faith schools are divisive, and I hope that when the Bill is passed and groups come forward, the Government will follow that policy. Finally, I must say to the Minister that although I hope to hear his concluding remarks, I have to slip out early in the evening to listen to a speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer—as regime change is on, I am sure that he does not want me to miss that. But as there are so many speakers, if the Chancellor speaks fairly briefly, I will be back to hear the Minister.