EDUCATION

§ Mr. Speaker

Before I call the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John Stevas), I wish to inform the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister and his right hon. Friends.

As I have already indicated, many right hon. and hon. Gentlemen wish to speak in the debate, and once again I appeal for brevity.

§ Mr. Norman St. John-Stevas (Chelmsford)

I beg to move. That this House, in view of the widespread disquiet amongst parents about the standards of conduct and learning in certain schools, calls upon Her Majesty's Government to modify its educational policies so as to preserve the rights of parents guaranteed by Section 76 of the Education Act 1944, and to raise academic standards in schools; and, in particular, to withdraw Circular 474 which seeks to impose a system of universal comprehensive schools without regard to educational considerations, parental wishes or local needs and conditions. One thing we are all agreed about in every part of the House is the importance of education for the future of the nation. Anybody who speaks on this subject, whether from the Front Benches or the back benches, bears a heavy responsibility to measure his words carefully. We must all think of the effects which anything we say could have on those who are struggling with grave problems in our schools.

All of us, however different the means we may propose, want to make things better in the educational system rather than worse. But to speak responsibly is not to be mealy mouthed. The Government have their own educational philosophy. The Secretary of State for Education and Science has spoken out in a forthright manner on a number of occasions. We on the Opposition benches have equally clear though different views. It is our right and duty to proclaim them here this afternoon.

405 This debate takes place in a setting where parents all over the country are increasingly anxious about what is going on in certain of our schools. That is recognised in the opening words of the Opposition motion. That is not to say that our education system is bad or collapsing, nor is it denying that the majority of our schools are good and are served by dedicated men and women.

But we cannot ignore the views of parents. If the educational system is to prosper it must have the sure support of public opinion. Every Member of this House knows from his correspondence that parents are worried about two things in particular—the maintenance of discipline in the schools and the standards of learning which are achieved, particularly in the case of literacy and mathematics in our primary schools.

The Opposition charge against the Government today is that instead of concentrating on the solution of these practical problems they are diverting the energy and the attention of all who are concerned with education, and driving us back into the sterile battle between grammar and comprehensive schools, by seeking to impose a system of universal comprehensive schools which can only exacerbate these problems instead of ameliorating them.

If we want higher standards in schools, the first thing we need is a higher standard of teachers. One will achieve that only if teachers are paid reasonable salaries. What has happened over the past decade—this is not a party point since it has been going on under the last two Governments—has meant that teachers are in danger of becoming a depressed profession. They are being overtaken by manual and white-collar workers.

There is only one figure which is needed to establish that point, the increase in the earnings of women. Women, after all, form a very high proportion of our teaching force. If one looks at the figures between September 1968 and April 1973, the median earnings of manual workers went up by 75 per cent., that of non-manual workers went up by 58.2 per cent., and that of teachers by only 38.7 per cent.

I know from my experience as a Minister that it is extremely difficult to obtain extra money for education. But my right hon. Friend the Member for 406 Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) succeeded in many a battle with the Treasury and I hope that the Secretary of State achieves the same success. He has a record as a man of courage and forthrightness. He must accept, along with his other duties, that he is in fact the titular head of the teaching profession. Teachers in this country expect him to fight their battles for them. If he does that he will have the support of the Opposition.

We welcome Lord Houghton's appointment to inquire into teachers' pay and conditions. I should like to say this to the noble Lord: if we are to attract the right people into the teaching profession, it is extremely important that there should be a proper salaries structure offering adequate rewards in the higher branches of the profession. We should move rapidly towards an all-graduate teaching profession. I am very glad that the Secretary of State has taken over the ideas of his predecessor on the diploma of higher education. He will have our support if he continues to build on those ideas.

I should like to put forward some further ideas as to how we could raise standards in our schools. One of the deleterious effects of the abolition of the 11-plus examination has been the lack of any national objective standard or test so that we can judge what is happening in our primary schools. It is true that Her Majesty's inspectors apply tests, but they are local tests and I do not think they are enough. I hope the Minister will urgently consider introducing a national standard to which all schools would be expected to conform.

Secondly, I hope he will look at the curriculum in colleges of education. Potential teachers need to be taught the skills of how to teach reading and mathematics in primary schools. I hope that courses will be provided both in colleges of education and in in-service training as, to how to maintain discipline in schools, which is becoming a more and more difficult and highly complex subject.

Thirdly, I hope that we can move away from the large, impersonal schools, which are centres of trouble, to smaller schools with which children and parents can identify. Lastly, I hope that the Secretary of State will, through the urban programme and other means, concentrate help in disadvantaged areas to ensure 407 that the differential disadvantages from which children in those areas suffer are overcome.

The nursery school programme—it was to the credit of my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley that it was introduced—should be given a very high priority, particularly in the disadvantaged areas, where the nursery schools are needed most and where the nursery programme can make the greatest impact.

One of the sad things about the present situation is that the Secretary of State seems to be obsessed with the avant-garde theories of a decade ago. What happens to a child at the age of five is much more important than what happens to a child at the age of 11.

We would all prefer to take education out of party politics. One of the causes of the present crisis in our educational system is the abrupt changes of policy which occur upon changes of Government. Three months ago the Secretary of State had a great opportunity to lay the foundations of a national consensus on educational policy. He personally commanded great good will in all parts of the House, but he chose deliberately to throw that away and to introduce Circular 4/74 which embodies as extreme a policy as we have ever seen in education in this country. It revives not only the worst features of the previous Circular 10/65 but those of the even worse Circular 10/66 as well.

The principle is clear enough. The Secretary of State has set out to destroy the diversity of the pattern of our schools and to force them into a strait-jacket of rigid and universal compulsory and comprehensive education. That is the aim of the circular. We shall resist that. If battle is now joined on this issue, the responsibility rests squarely upon the shoulders of the Secretary of State. Perhaps it was always a chimera, in view of the ideological gulf between the parties on the aims of educational policy, to hope that we could have had some kind of non-partisan agreement.

The dominant principle in the policy of the Labour Party is to use the educational system as a means of social engineering to promote egalitariansim. We reject that completely. Our concern is to promote educational values in general and in particular to preserve and 408 strengthen the rights of parents in our educational system.

§ Mr. Charles Loughlin (Gloucestershire, West)

What does the hon. Gentleman know about it? He is not a parent.

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas

If I were a parent I think the hon. Member might make it a further point of reproach against me.

It is central to our philosophy of education that the right to educate children belongs to parents and is only delegated to the State or the local authorities or the teachers. It is part of the self-respect of parents, particularly in a society which is growing ever more impersonal, that they should be able to have a say and a participation in the education of their children. That is a principle which has been written into the Education Act of 1944 by Section 76. But it is too often ignored and it is flouted by the Secretary of State in his Circular 474. We are giving urgent consideration as to how that Section of the Act can be strengthened.

§ Mr. R. C. Mitchell (Southampton, Itchen)

I taught for 13 years in a secondary modern school under the old selective system. Eighty per cent. of the children coming to my school were in the failed-11-plus age group. Could the hon. Gentleman tell me exactly what choice the parents of that 80 per cent. had?

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas

That is covered in a series of points that I am about to raise.

What we need to do is to extend parental choice and not to extinguish the limited parental choice which exists at the moment. Above all, parents want choice of school. That is why we value independent schools. Although it is only a minority of parents who make use of them, it is a large and a changing minority consisting of more than a million parents. It is not a matter of a few great public schools, although they are making a worthy contribution to education. It is a matter of small schools all over the country which meet specialised needs. Religious schools, schools of music, nursery schools and infant schools are all provided by the private sector, and all of them are threatened with extinction by the present Government. The Secretary of State has said that they are to have a reprieve. He has said that they are safe for a few years. But we fear that those years would be 409 very few were this Government to be returned with a larger majority at the next General Election.

When I was in the Department of Education and Science, I calculated that over the period covered by the White Paper on education up to 1983, we were being saved in the maintained sector nearly £1,000 million by the existence of these private schools. They are a contribution to the maintained sector because they relieve the maintained sector of a pressure which would be added to it if they were abolished. We shall protect their charitable status and resist any attempts to rig the law against them.

I turn to the direct grant schools, which are needed even more today than before, principally because they are centres of academic excellence. At a time when we are concerned about standards in our schools, it seems strange to threaten these academic centres with destruction. In this connection, one figure is extremely relevant. It is that 50 per cent. of pupils in these schools go on to higher education, as opposed to 7 per cent. of those in comprehensive schools.

Another important factor is that the direct grant schools provide bridges between the maintained school and the independent school and give a wider social mix than many independent and maintained comprehensive schools.

§ Mr. Christopher Price (Lewisham, West)

That is completely untrue.

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas

Even now, the Secretary of State is planning to get rid of them. He has told us that. The effect of this action will be to deprive parents of modest means of any choice. It will simply have the effect of driving the majority of these schools into the independent sector. Government policy again and again is directed not against the rich but against those of the centre and those in the middle income groups. We shall continue to support the direct grant schools. When the moment comes, we shall see that capitation fees are increased to take account of rising costs, especially teachers' salaries, and we shall consider whether to re-open the direct grant list. This would provide a refuge for the 40 or so grammar schools in London which at the moment are being persecuted by the Inner London Education Authority.

§ Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South)

The hon. Gentleman has referred to levels of academic attainment. However, I have no doubt that he will agree that it is easy to achieve apparent levels of excellence by excluding those who do not show any potentiality. Are not there great dangers in that and in the fact that the direct grant system has its bridge at 11-plus rather than the bridges of which the hon. Gentleman speaks?

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas

It is possible to achieve high academic standards only by some form of selection, and selection takes place in comprehensive schools as well as in grammar schools.

§ Mr. Spearing

But not at 11-plus.

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas

Important though these two groups of schools are, it is the maintained sector in which more than 90 per cent. of our children are educated, and that must be our principal concern.

Conservative national policy is clear. We believe in principle that a diversity of schools is desirable. We think that there should be not only a choice between comprehensive and grammar schools but a choice between different types of comprehensive schools—between single-sex and mixed schools and between denominational and non-denominational schools. The pattern in any locality should depend on educational considerations, local needs and parental wishes. In the County of Buckingham, for example, all types of schools exist happily together.

We are not and never have been against comprehensive schools as such. We are against the ruthless and mindless imposition of these schools everywhere as a matter of doctrine. That is a very different matter.

What finally convinced me of the folly of this type of policy was my experience in the Department of Education and Science when dealing with Birmingham's proposals to this effect. What Birmingham needed was not a set of botched-up comprehensive schemes. It needed an extended building programme, and I have no doubt that it still needs it. The folly of the policy and the present proposals of the Secretary of State is compounded in that he is not providing a penny extra for the compulsory comprehensivisation of schools.

§ Mr. Christopher Price

Will the hon. Gentleman extend the strictures that he has laid against my right hon. Friend in terms of imposing comprehensive education against the Conservative leaders of the Surrey County Council, of the Barnet authority and of many other local education authorities which are doing what they wish to do and were prevented from doing by his right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher), which is exactly what the hon. Gentleman is castigating at the moment?

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas

No. The whole point of our approach to this problem is that we allow local authorities to choose the system or combination of systems which, subject to parental wishes and general educational considerations, is the best for their areas. Our system is a flexible one, as opposed to the rigidities of what the Government are attempting to impose. The Government are making an idol out of the comprehensive schools when they should be taking a long, hard look at what is happening in comprehensive schools.

Quite apart from the question of principle, there are practical reasons for maintaining a diversity of schools. We do not know enough about the academic results of comprehensive schools and their merits and demerits compared with selective schools to make a final judgment. We have no evidence, for example, to prove that either bright or slow children benefit from being in mixed ability classes. We need time to make the right assessments, not to impose a dogmatic overall pattern which would be done prematurely.

While on the subject of selection, it is not a case of putting the 11-plus back or going back to it, as the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) assumes. No one wants that. It is a question of using flexible methods of assessment and making some provision for transfer between schools so that we get rid of the rigidities of selection and at the same time preserve its advantages.

We have to remember that selection will take place in any event. The choice is between selection for ability and selection by social class. Parents simply buy their houses in more prosperous neighbourhoods where they find better comprehensive schools—

§ Mr. R. C. Mitchell

Nonsense.

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas

That is the truth of the matter, and the hon. Gentleman can check it by looking at price lists in estate agents. By abolishing the selective and direct grant schools the Secretary of State will deprive the bright child in a poor area of the chance of having a good and suitable education for his talents.

I turn in conclusion to the circular. Our principal objection to it is its rigidity, its compulsion, and the intolerance of both its ideas and its language.

Parents' rights are dismissed in a throwaway phrase: Authorities will no doubt continue to have due regard to parents' wishes in respect of their children's education, e.g. in denominational schools where these are available. That is all. The vagueness of that language is all the more striking when it is compared with the precise language of the overriding principle laid down in the circular, … the need to eliminate all forms of selection at all stages. There is no principle in the circular to mediate between these two contradictory principles. What it means in practice is that the parents' wishes will be simply ignored if they want the selective system of schools to be preserved.

There is a further objectionable blackmail in paragraph 13 of the circular. Any authority that dares to resist is to be deprived of its building programme. That means that local authorities are to be put into an intolerable dilemma by the Secretary of State. They will have to choose between the kind of organisation which they believe to be right in the long run and the short-term interest of their pupils, because if they dare to go for a long-term selective form of organisation they will penalise the children who are at their schools now. So the children are being used in a totally unscrupulous manner to establish a universal system of comprehensive education.

The third and perhaps the worst feature of the circular is the bullying of the voluntary aided schools. These schools have their rights and status guaranteed by law, and yet they are told by the Secretary of State that if they do not fall in with his wishes they may be deprived of financial support. I hope that it is 413 clear to the managers of these schools that this threat has no basis in law. They will be well within their rights to resist it, and if the governing body of any of these schools exercises that right it will have the full hacking of the Opposition. Under the law the governing body of those schools alone has the right to propose changes to the Secretary of State.

What a reflection it is upon the Secretary of State that in a circular he should stoop to this kind of intimidation which could threaten the whole balance of the 1944 Act in its most sensitive part—the religious settlement. Already the evil effects of the circular are being felt throughout the country, but especially in London where 40 voluntary aided schools are threatened. These are schools of proven worth and high esteem. They include Godolphin and Latimer, Emmanuel Battersea Grammar School, Sir Walter and St. John, Strand School, Clapham County School and Rosa Bassett School. Take Godolphin and Latimer as an example. It is an excellent school, but it is proposed that it should join up to a school of a totally different character separated by a mile. Between the two schools is one of the worst traffic intersections in Britain. What will happen to those schools if the circular is allowed to stand? They will go independent and the end result of this intolerable policy will be to deprive thousands of parents of the choice they at present enjoy.

Let me make clear that the next Conservative Government will withdraw this circular. It could be withdrawn tomorrow and would be if the Liberal Party would remember its past traditions of liberality and freedom and vote for this motion tonight. The immediate effect of that would have to be the withdrawal of the circular on the expression of the mind of this House. Whatever the Liberals do—and it is anyone's guess from reading their amendment—we shall be true to our principles, and by voting for the motion tonight we shall strike a blow for parental rights and freedom that will reverberate throughout the kingdom.

§ The Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Reg Prentice)

I beg to move to leave out from "House" to the 414 end of the Question and to add instead thereof: recognises the need to raise academic standards in schools; and, having regard to the denial of any real choice to the majority of children in a selective system, congratulates the Government on the steps it has taken to develop a fully comprehensive system of secondary education, and to increase the opportunities for all children, without regard to means or social position, to realise their educational potential to the full. We have heard a most extraordinary speech from the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) who begain by proclaiming the need for a non-partisan and consensus approach to these matters and then proceeded to make the most partisan and reactionary speech on education that we have heard from the Conservative benches for many years.

This is the second time in two months that the Opposition have chosen to use half a Supply Day to debate Circular 4/74 and the whole question of comprehensive reorganisation. There is a marked contrast between the two occasions. On the first occasion the debate was on the motion, "That the House do now adjourn", and there was no Division. On this occasion we have a highly contentious motion on which the Opposition apparently intend to divide. On the first occasion the case was put in a truly non-partisan spirit by the hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. van Straubenzee), but on this occasion it was put in a most partisan fashion by the hon. Member.

These two events illustrate the schizophrenia of the Conservative Party on education policy, because in it are two strands distinctly observable, both in this House and in the local authorities. There is a minority tradition—what I would call the Edward Boyle tradition—which is reasonable, middle of the road and well informed on education policy. These attributes, particularly the last, are crimes in the Conservative calendar, because the majority tradition, the diehard tradition seeks to pander to the most reactionary views of a minority of the people of this country. The unforgiveable crime of the hon. Member for Wokingham, and the reason he is not on the Front Bench today, is that he was in the more enlightened tradition. That is why the change has taken place.

415 The Opposition motion favours selection, and they must not fudge that, as the hon. Member for Chelmsford tried to, in his speech. He said—I took down his words—that his party "is not against comprehensive schools as such", but we are faced with a motion that demands the withdrawal of a positive Government policy directed towards the extinction of comprehensive secondary education. If the motion were passed it would encourage those in the local authorities who want to preserve selection and it would discourage those who want to end it.

If the Opposition want to defend the 11-plus, let them get up and state a case for it, but they should not in one speech say that they are not against comprehensives but they are against any policy to bring about comprehensive education.

§ Dr. Keith Hampson (Ripon)

Surely there are different sorts of selection, and just because we are in favour of selection that does not mean selection at 11. So far the Secretary of State has at no time acknowledged in the House that there can be a system of comprehensives with selection at 15 into a sixth form college. Is the right hon. Gentleman to deny local authorities the right to have sixth form colleges?

§ Mr. Prentice

No. The model of comprehensive education involving an 11 to 16 comprehensive secondary school and a sixth form college was one of the alternatives specifically mentioned in the circular that is under attack in this motion.

I object not merely to the purpose of the motion on the spurious grounds put forward in it but particularly to the reference to concern about standards of conduct and learning. That is smearing comprehensive schools in a totally unfair and unreasonable way. Of course we are concerned about standards of conduct and learning, but I suggest to the Conservatives that the onus is on them to prove why our concern in these matters leads to the conclusion that we should withdraw the circular.

Let me examine both these matters. On standards of conduct, of course we are concerned about truancy, indiscipline, violence and bad behaviour of various kinds. I should have thought that we 416 could all acknowledge that these have always been problems for schools, and that there are problems of behaviour particularly among some teenagers, problems connected with the difficulties of growing up, and problems arising from bad home backgrounds or from the fact that some teachers and some schools are better at coping with discipline and moral problems than others.

These problems have existed for generations. They are not recent problems. As to the question whether they are now worse, in the survey conducted by the Association of Education Committees into these matters there was a division of view in the returns, between local education authorities and between schools, whether there had really been a deterioration. But if we assume that there may be a deterioration in some of these matters, I put it to the House that this applies to the whole of society. We are concerned about many features of our national life today—the growing incidence of crime, the growth of attitudes by some people which involve a declining respect for the law, and the growth of destructive and anti-social attitudes in our society. The schools are not exempt from this; but the schools should not be identified as the cause.

Having said that, I believe that the schools must help to tackle these problems. It is my duty and my Department's duty to support them in that. I do not accept for a moment that because we are calling upon LEAs throughout the country to reorganise on comprehensive lines we must, therefore, be neglecting the other matters—which was one of the points the hon. Member for Chelmsford seemed to be making.

We have been conducting a survey into truancy. I hope to publish the statistics arising from that very shortly. We have commissioned research projects into variouts aspects of this matter—a research project into the effectiveness of school-based treatment of maladjusted children, and another research project into secondary school influences on children's behaviour. All this work must go on. These are very serious matters, with which we are all concerned. But if the Opposition want to link these problems with comprehensive reorganisation, the onus of proof is on them, in the debate, to show the connection. No one has 417 shown it yet, and the hon. Gentleman did not show it in his speech.

I turn now to the other half of the phrase, where the hon. Gentleman talks about concern for the standards of learning. Of course, the amendment expresses our wish to raise academic standards in schools. This is common ground. But in what sense are we being told that standards of learning in this country have been lowered or are likely to be lowered by comprehensive secondary education? Where is the evidence for that? Let me give two sets of figures to the House, taking the eight-year period from 1965 to 1972 inclusive. During that period we have seen a 28 per cent. increase in A-level passes, taking the whole secondary school system of England and Wales in this case. We have seen an 11 per cent. increase in O-level passes. The reason why the O-level figure is lower than the A-level figure is that, simultaneously, we have seen the exciting new development of the CSE examination, for which there has been an eight-fold increase in passes in that period. In other words, this has been a period in which, measured by examinations—which are only one measurement, not necessarily terribly accurate but a rough and ready measurement—we have seen an improvement in our secondary schools of academic attainment. Simultaneously, during that period we have moved from a situation in which we had 221 comprehensive schools, with 6 per cent. of the secondary school population in them, to 1,602 comprehensive schools, with 47 per cent. of the secondary school population in them. I believe that part of that improvement in academic standards—not necessarily the whole of it—is due to the fact that there has been this comprehensive secondary reorganisation.

Anyone who visits a comprehensive school in a locality in which selection prevailed a year or two ago will meet boys and girls in the fifth and sixth forms who are getting excellent academic results, and he will be told that these boys and girls failed the 11-plus examination a few years earlier. For those in the middle range of ability and for the late developers we have opened doors, extended choice—if choice is what we are arguing about—and given new opportunities. The onus of proof is not on me but on the Opposition to say why we should connect concern about 418 academic standards with the case for withdrawing Circular No. 4/74.

§ Mr. Nigel Lawson (Blaby)

If the hon. Gentleman is using statistics he must be careful in informing the House about what those statistics mean. Is it not the case that the increase in A-level and O-level passes is because more children have been taking those examinations, and that the proportion of passes each year is constant from the point of view of the examining bodies? Therefore, it proves nothing whatsoever about educational standards.

§ Mr. Prentice

The hon. Gentleman, unintentionally, is backing up my point. It is part of my argument that a larger proportion of children should stay longer at school and carry on their studies to a later stage and, therefore, should sit for CSE and GCE at O-level and A-level. If the Opposition want to say that reorganisation in a comprehensive direction is bad for academic standards, they have a difficult job on their hands if they are to reconcile these figures with the fact that the country has been moving in a comprehensive direction during the years in question.

I now come to the argument about the rights of parents. This is the most "phoney" part of the whole argument from the Opposition benches. The motion refers to Section 76 of the Education Act. The House should consider what that section actually says. Omitting some of the verbiage, it says that both the Secretary of State and the local education authority shall have regard to the general principle that, so far as is compatible with the provision of efficient instruction and training and the avoidance of unreasonable public expenditure, pupils are to be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents. That is not a guarantee—to use the word which is in the motion. Indeed, this matter has been tested in the courts. In the case of Watt versus Kesteven County Council in 1955 it was reiterated that Section 76 lays down a general principle to which the Minister and the LEAs must have regard, along with the other relevant considerations.

We all know that in practice local education authorities now and in the past have had to deny choices to parents for reasons of geography and the availability of school buildings. and because some 419 schools—whether grammar, modern or comprehensive—have been very popular and have had better reputations than others. Therefore, LEAs have had to deny the first choice to parents in a very large number of cases. They do so every year, under Conservative or Labour Governments, and this has been an unavoidable fact of the situation.

I believe in the extension of voluntary choice just as much as the hon. Member for Chelmsford believes in it. But we must be frank about this matter and say that the practical difficulties involved have always prevented that choice being exercised fully. But, in addition to that, there is a great element of humbug in the Opposition's case. They are not talking about 100 per cent. of parents and children. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Mitchell) brought out the point clearly in his intervention. It is the same point as was made last week in The Times Educational Supplement in referring to the speech of the hon. Member for Chelmsford made during the previous weekend. The article said: It is certainly disingenuous to deprive four out of five parents of the right to choose anything but a secondary modern school (howsoever labelled) in the name of parental choice'. That is the answer to that part of the motion.

§ Mr. T. H. H. Skeet (Bedford)

The right hon. Gentleman is on record as having indicated that he is in favour of phasing out both direct grant and public schools. They educate only 6 per cent. of the total population of schools. Why is he seeking to eliminate those? How does he reconcile his remarks with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which gives parents the distinct right to choose the education for their own children?

§ Mr. Prentice

As many hon. Members wish to speak in the debate, I do not want to discuss at length this afternoon the future of direct grant and independent schools. However, let us have a debate about them. I should be delighted to debate the subject at any time the Opposition choose. I have answered the point on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in what I have just said. There cannot be, and there never has been, 420 under any Government in practical circumstances a completely free choice for the majority of parents. We might as well face that frankly.

§ Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Lancaster)

rose—

§ Mr. Prentice

I must carry on. I have other points to make and many hon. Members wish to speak in the debate. I had better not give way any more.

I want to emphasise our commitment to the extension of choice for pupils within schools. That is what the debate is about.

The central argument against the 11-plus selection system is that basically it confines the choice that is open, even if the choice were made freely—it is not; it is made by an arbitrary test—to a conventional grammar or modern school. However, there are many types of children needing the greatest variety of choice within the educational community in which they work. I want more choice for the child who is below average at the age of 11 and who later develops a talent, perhaps in one or in more than one subject, within the educational community in which he works.

I want to see a choice open to the boy who is perhaps a potential technician of ability who wants to spend a lot of his time in the woodwork or the metalwork shop combined with advanced mathematics, but who has no talent for any other subject.

I want to see a choice open to the girl with abilities and interests in domestic science combined with potential ability in English but no other subject. We want to bridge the gap between the old rigid concepts imposed by the selection system. We want the maximum choice for the below-average pupil who remains below average but is stimulated to take an interest in one subject or another and therefore requires a greater variety of choice.

There is another aspect of choice which is relevant to this matter. We want to liberate the primary schools front the strait-jacket imposed on their syllabus by the dead hand of 11-plus selection. In other words, we on this side of the House stand for the maximum choice being made available to pupils in the system from eight or nine years of age 421 throughout the rest of their school life. The Opposition want to hang on to 11-plus selection, which is opposed to choice. We argue in favour of maximising choice.

I do not pretend that reorganisation on comprehensive lines will of itself provide the wide variety of opportunities that I have mentioned. However, I believe that it will open up the options and enable resources to be used in ways which will enlarge the choice.

That will depend on resources and, above all, on teachers. The hon. Gentleman was absolutely right in his emphasis on the need for teachers to have a better deal in terms of salaries. That is relevant not only to recruitment and the retention of people in the profession but to morale and efficiency.

I make only one addendum to what was said by the hon. Gentleman. He is right about the relative position of teachers having declined under both Conservative and Labour Governments. But the previous Government in 3¾ years did nothing about the situation. We have just established a commission under Lord Houghton to look into and do something about it. It is true that the hon. Gentleman wished the commission well, but it is hardly a point to be made in the context of what is supposed to be a motion of censure against Government when we have acted on a matter on which they delayed action for 3¾ years.

The motion before the House is bad enough, but I understand that we are threatened with a great deal worse. The hon. Gentleman apparently gave an interview to Mr. Max Wilkinson of the Daily Mail, a report of which appeared on Wednesday, 26th June. That report opened with the statement: The tough new Shadow education secretary, Mr. Norman St. John-Stevas, is preparing a bombshell which will shock Left-Wing educational pundits". Some of the contents of that bombshell are not very precise. We are not told how far the Conservative Party is yet committed. It apparently includes, if the article is correct, a possible decision by the Opposition that the compulsory school leaving age might be reduced to 15 years. [HON. MEMBERS: "Quite right."] "Quite right", say hon. Gentlemen opposite. It includes the possibility of a voucher system which would enable public funds to be 422 used to subsidise the independent sector of education. It apparently includes a reopening and extending of the direct grant school list. Indeed, today the hon. Gentleman said that he had this in mind. It is what many hon. Gentlemen opposite want.

All these policies are a long way to the right of any policies pursued by the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher), the Secretary of State for Education and Science in the previous Government. Her policies were bad enough, but we are now threatened with policies far more reactionary than those carried out by the right hon. Lady.

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas

Excellent a paper as the Daily Mail is, and very good a journalist as Mr. Max Wilkinson is, I should like to point out that he is writing for himself. The parts quoted by the right hon. Gentleman are what Mr. Wilkinson was saying, not what I was saying.

On this important point about the school leaving age. I have never said either to Mr. Wilkinson or to anyone else that it should be reduced to 15 years. I said that because of the difficulties that had arisen in the last year we would look to ways of being more flexible so that some of the objections might be overcome.

§ Mr. Prentice

That brings me to my next and almost final point. I certainly look forward to greater clarification of the hon. Gentleman's thinking on some of these matters. I think that all on this side of the House will look forward with a certain relish to the prospect of debating Conservative policies on some of these matters.

It is fascinating to me that, at a time when the Leader of the Conservative Party is talking about the need for national unity, the Shadow Education Secretary should be working out policies which will provide greater inequalities and divisions in our society than for a very long time. Cloudy generalisations about national unity will not carry much conviction if the policies to which the Opposition are committed are as divisive as those that they appear to have in mind. If it means that at the forthcoming General Election education will play a larger part than in the past, I will welcome it. I think that the next General Election will 423 and should be about education and that it ought to be recognised as one of the major issues to a greater extent than in General Elections since the war.

The hon. Gentleman today and in public utterances since he became Shadow Education Secretary has helped to define Conservative policy more clearly. I should like to make it clear to the country that the choice will be between a reactionary, backward-looking divisive policy and the policy to which we are committed in our amendment, namely, to increase the opportunities for all children without regard to means or social position, to realise their educational potential to the full.

§ Sir George Sinclair (Dorking)

I agree with the Secretary of State in forecasting that education will be one of the important elements in the forthcoming election. I agree that it should be, because it is patent from every discussion that we have in our constituencies and with friends that people are desperately worried about what is going on in some of our schools. I believe that those worries are fully justified.

There are too many schools in which both work and behaviour are bad. In the worst, teachers have lost control and work is constantly disrupted by rowdy children who have been allowed to get out of hand and to defy authority without being checked or punished. In such schools truancy is rife and teachers are mocked, threatened and even subjected to physical violence. Such hostile prospects are already driving some teachers in training—for example, in the Birmingham area, as the National Union of Teachers told us two weeks ago—to seek work outside education. This is a serious situation.

It is claimed that such schools are most often found in decaying inner-city centres. But, in such areas, some good schools do exist and triumph over the difficulties of the environment. As a member of a Select Committee, I have over the past six years visited many of those areas and I have been taken over good schools. I have, on my own account, also visited other schools in such areas—I refer particularly to Clissold Park in Stoke Newington where two of my nieces have been teachers. Some of those good schools were in bad buildings, but they were marvellously led by gifted heads and 424 dedicated staff. There the children were secure and full of life and could get on with their work and play. There, also, parents were encouraged to take a lively interest in the school community and the school was being begged by parents from outside the immediate neighbourhood to take in their children.

The stark fact is that we do not yet know enough about what makes a good school work. We, certainly, do not know enough to allow us to be dogmatic. But we do know that it depends far more on leadership and on teachers and on the support of parents than on buildings and equipment. We know that good schools can be found in deprived neighbourhoods and bad ones in easier neighbourhoods. We find both not only in decaying city centres but also in the country.

Schools must not be too large, otherwise it becomes difficult to build proper relationships between the staff and the young. They must be orderly and disciplined. A good school must be a learning community in which young people are cared for as individuals and feel confident, and in which they can grow and flourish. It takes time and imagination to create such a community, but this is what we should be aiming at.

Such a school is easily recognised. In any neighbourhood most parents who are concerned about the education of their children have a shrewd idea about which schools are good and which are bad and where they would prefer to send their children.

So far I have been talking about schools in the maintained sector. But there are good schools and bad in other sectors, too—the voluntary-aided, the direct grant and the wholly independent.

Schools are living communities. They do not remain static. Today they are having constantly to adjust their attitudes and teaching to the rapidly changing conditions of the technological age, to the changing attitudes of parents and their young, and the changing attitudes of the teaching profession.

In this uncertain field it is right to experiment, but we must expect some of the new ideas, however fashionable at the outset, to produce problems when put into action. Some local education authorities are experimenting with middle schools and some with six form colleges. Both 425 these initiatives, as I hope the Secretary of State will allow, may affect the structure of the secondary comprehensives. There are new ventures also in the fields of further and higher education. And, at the other end of the scale, there are exciting educational discoveries in nursery schools and play groups. But these are experiments and we must allow time in which to judge both their contributions to our educational system and their claims on our limited educational resources. We do not know enough yet to justify imposing any of these new patterns uniformly throughout the country.

Here I come to the nub of my argument. Experience over the past few years has shown that the comprehensive school, too, is still experimental and should not be imposed upon us as the best or only answer. Some of them are good and some of them are bad—I hope that the Secretary of State will allow this, too—and there are many between the two extremes. But they have produced their own serious problems—for example, the idea of the right size for the all-through comprehensive is having to be revised. It has proved extremely difficult in schools of 2,000 or more to build a community in which the individual can receive proper care and a sense of security and belonging as a basis for making the best of his or her talents. If the size of such comprehensives should be halved—as ILEA now seems to think—their structure also may have to be changed.

Surely, what we now need is a calm and thorough assessment of what is good and what is bad in the existing patterns of comprehensive schools, and of how best to deal with those that are now recognised as being far too big. In the meantime, when there is so much doubt about the best patterns—and we shall always need variety and experiments—and when there are far too many bad schools and far too many desperately worried parents, I believe that it is wrong—it is educationally wrong—to destroy or change the nature of any good school anywhere. Equally, I believe that parental choice—a basic right that is being unduly restricted—should be made as wide as practicable and that it should be encouraged to play a more influential part in deciding which patterns are best suited to our needs. My hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) has 426 described some of the choices which he believes should be open and should be expanded.

It is, I know, fashionable to assert that selective schools cannot usefully coexist with comprehensive schools, but this is not borne out by the facts. There are good examples of happy coexistence in London and in other cities, for example. Bristol and Norwich—

§ Mr. Skeet

And Bedford.

§ Sir G. Sinclair

There are many other protagonists of happy coexistence.

It would, I believe, be particularly damaging to our national stock of good schools if the Government were to develop their current pressure against the direct grant schools—

§ Mr. Martin Flannery (Sheffield, Hillsborough)

Does the hon. Gentleman mean by coexistence that where there is a group of grammar schools and a group of comprehensives, and where in those grammar schools the top 20 per cent. of the children have regularly been creamed off, that is coexistence? I cannot accept that at all.

§ Sir G. Sinclair

The hon. Gentleman may not accept that, but I invite him to visit some of those areas which I have mentioned and see what the facts are on the ground.

§ Sir John Hall (Wycombe)

Would my hon. Friend not agree from his own personal experience that anyone who wishes to see first-class examples of diversity of education could be no better than visit Buckinghamshire?

§ Sir G. Sinclair

I have not ranged as widely as I would have liked to through Buckinghamshire.

If I may go on to make my own point, it would be particularly damaging to our national stock of good schools if the Government were to develop their current pressure against the direct grant schools and force them to become either entirely independent or comprehensive. I declare an interest as chairman of one direct grant school. They have earned their high reputation in our education system. It is a reputation for hard work, good academic standards and good conduct. They draw their pupils from the widest possible range of income groups, and they are good communities.

427 The headmaster of a direct grant school in Bristol, Queen Elizabeth's Hospital, has analysed the family occupations of parents of boys entering his school in the 15 years from 1954 to 1969 and compared them with the 1966 General Register of Occupations. His findings show that school percentages compared with national ones were as follows: Class I, professional—school 11 per cent., national 71 per cent.; Class II, intermediate—school 24, national 15; Class III, skilled—school 53, national 46; Class IV, partly skilled—school 7, national 25; Class V, unskilled—school 5, national 7. In other words, the zone that goes from bus drivers and clerks downwards—that is, Classes III to V—accounts for 65 per cent. of the parental occupations of the parents of the boys who have entered that school. That is a pretty wide social register.

§ Mr. Christopher Price

rose—

§ Sir G. Sinclair

I do not want to give way again because there are other speakers.

§ Mr. Christopher Price

On this point—

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas)

Order. May I remind the House that this is a shortened debate and that interruptions will stop some hon. Members from getting in?

§ Sir G. Sinclair

Thank you, Sir.

The direct grants schools are among the academic pace-setters but they also produce balanced communities in which the young can both learn and develop as individuals. They should not be threatened or harassed. On the contrary, they should be given the opportunity, while keeping their essential standards, to serve able young people even more widely. They should be helped to continue their adjustment to our changing needs and to our constant need to bring on the best brains. Our need for good schools is so great and so urgent that the direct grant system should be expanded and some of the voluntary-aided schools should be encouraged to seek transfer to this sector.

I urge the Secretary of State to accept the motion and then to pursue three parallel courses—to carry out a thorough review of the comprehensive system, to 428 encourage all existing good schools of whatever kind and to provide the widest possible range of choice to parents, both in the maintained and in the other sectors of education.

§ Several Hon. Members

rose—

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker

Order. I appeal to hon. Members to make short speeches so that others may get in.

§ Mr. Guy Barnett (Greenwich)

It is a pleasure for me to follow the hon. Member for Dorking (Sir G. Sinclair) because, like him, I sit on the Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration and together we have visited a large number of excellent schools to study the problems which concern the Committee. I can bear out the hon. Gentleman's evidence that every school we visited was a school that we could only admire.

I was interested that the hon. Gentleman, while rightly referring to the number of good schools that he had seen and knew at first hand, did not speak of the bad schools. It is easy for us here or people outside to talk about bad schools without really understanding the situation or the conditions of those schools. So-called "bad" schools in my constituency have been drawn to my attention. When I have investigated them, I have come away with the clear impression that each one had been slandered over the years. We do a great deal of damage if we speak in this way of certain schools.

A situation with which many London Members will have been concerned over the last few weeks is the problems which arise annually over secondary transfer. Again and again I hear of "popular" and "unpopular" schools. Invariably, I find that public opinion is wrong. It judges the look of the building or the area and does not spring from first-hand knowledge of the school or the quality of its teachers. So I hope that we shall cease talking of "good" and "bad" schools and recognise that certainly some schools have problems, especially in London and other great cities.

To suggest, as the Opposition motion does, that the cause is a move towards comprehensive education is, as the Secretary of State has already said, unjust, untrue and misleading. All of us, if we have any knowledge of education at all, 429 should be aware of the reasons for many of the problems.

One undoubtedly is the considerable staff turnover. I was glad that the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) referred to that factor, although I wish that he had spent a little more time on the problem. My right hon. Friend has already taken a couple of practical steps, as he said, to deal with that situation. I hope that I am right in believing that the £10 million which will be made available for the deprived areas will be used to encourage teachers to stop in those schools and not move on.

My experience of teaching in a comprehensive school suggests that the troubles arise largely as a consequence of a constant turnover of teachers and the degree to which those schools depend on supply staff. Everything that my right hon. Friend can do to deal with that problem is much more relevant than the Opposition motion. We heard from the hon. Members for Chelmsford and Dorking the usual arguments—

§ Mr. John Wells (Maidstone)

Before the hon. Gentleman leaves the subject of teacher turnover, which is very worrying, would he not agree that one of the greatest problems is lack of accommodation for teachers in the city centres, in places like Bethnal Green, where single teachers find it impossible to rent council flats? Is this not one of the biggest causes of anxiety?

§ Mr. Barnett

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is right. I could say a great deal about the matter, but I hope that he will understand if I do not pursue it. He is right to draw attention to it.

I said that the school at which I taught was a comprehensive school. The hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friend had referred to direct grant schools. I also taught in a direct grant school for a number of years. I suppose that the hon. Gentleman would describe it as a very good direct grant school. It had one of the best reputations in the country. Yet at the end of that period I was convinced that direct grant schools should not continue to exist.

The first reason is that almost invariably the big direct grant schools select a very small proportion of some of the appar- 430 ently abler children in a wide area at the age of 11. They cream off the top, as it were, in a certain area. One of the interesting discoveries I made was that there was almost as big a problem with the children who had passed the 11-plus, and gone into a direct grant school and failed there, as there was over the children who had gone to a secondary modern school on failing the 11-plus, and had missed opportunities which they should have had because their intelligence and standards developed subsequently.

It so happens that I was form master of the lowest stream in a direct grant grammar school. I was always worried about what the school was doing to those boys because, as the hon. Member for Chelmsford made clear, even within a direct grant school there must be a tight selection system to achieve the results that such a school achieves in terms of open awards at Oxford and Cambridge, which is what many of them are anxious to do. I have heard it said of one direct grant school—obviously, I do not want to mention its name—that it creams off boys or girls as soon as they enter and forces them right the way through to Oxford open standard. I believe that that is done at the expense of other children in the school, that the whole ethos of the school is turned towards academic standards, regardless of whether many of the children are academically inclined.

§ Mr. Patrick Cormack (Staffordshire, South-West)

rose—

§ Mr. Barnett

This is a very short debate, so I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not mind if I do not give way.

I believe that positive damage is often done to non-academic children who find their way into direct grant schools. That damage is done because of the ethos of the school and because, being an academic institution, the school cannot cater for the child with practical or technical interests. Therefore, the tripartite, or bipartite system of education has the effect, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State pointed out, of limiting choice and often putting children in situations that are wrong for them, because the 11-plus is so often unsatisfactory from that point of view.

§ Mr. Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way very 431 briefly? It should not be forgotten that perhaps it is the Burnham salary structure that works against a more flexible system within the present selective system set up under the 1944 Education Act.

§ Mr. Barnett

I hope that the hon. Gentleman has a chance to develop that point, because I do not understand it.

I referred earlier to the problem of maintaining teachers in schools, and particularly to the importance of doing so in the deprived areas, because it is only where there is a stable staff that the beginnings of the development of a good school are likely to take place. Reference has already been made in the debate to the general state of morale in the teaching profession, and to the way in which teachers' salary levels have fallen compared with those of other sections of the community.

We are already affected in London by a number of strikes as a consequence of the Pay Board's report. I want to put a question, the answer to which I hope will go some way towards reassuring those teachers now on strike. As I understand the situation, the report was made to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment, who has regarded it as an interesting document and one that is no doubt useful to those public service unions which will be conducting negotiations, but that it in no sense states Government policy on the amount of money that will be available to public services in London, nor does it necessarily describe the way in which that money should be split up. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment said on 1st July: The Government have said that the matter is now for negotiation. We will not for many more weeks be governed by the statutory system, and that will assist the situation. I believe that the report can be used as a valuable guide for settling the matter, taking into account that the sums proposed are to be fair to London and to the rest of the country."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 1st July 1974; Vol. 876, c. 34.] I believe that the Government, if I understand their position correctly, are right to see this question of the London allowance as one for negotiation. As to the size of that allowance, the sky is the limit, in that it is a matter for the unions to decide what should be the differential 432 between those public servants who work in London and those members of the same trade union who do not. I hope that that is correct.

If I am right, I believe that there is no reason for teachers in London to be going on strike now. I very much hope that as a consequence of the negotiations, and of the work of the Houghton Committee, we shall revalue our teachers and take steps to encourage them and give them a proper career structure within one school, rather than encourage them to move from school to school in furtherance of their careers as we have done in the past.

Only with a stable teaching force, and by trying to maintain teachers in a single school, can we hope to deal with the problems in some of our schools.

§ Mr. Christopher Chataway (Chichester)

I am glad that the debate has afforded the opportunity to discuss, among other things, the concern about the problems faced by a minority of schools this year, of which my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) spoke. I do not think that many hon. Members will be in any doubt about the scale of the problems in some of those schools. I had occasion to talk the other day to an able young man who has the task of teaching the bottom stream at a London secondary school in an area of great difficulty. There is no doubt that he and others like him have a tremendous struggle, sometimes even a physical struggle, to maintain any semblance of order.

I know that that is not the general picture. I know very well that our attention is necessarily focused by the media upon the areas of difficulty. But we must examine the way in which the raising of the school leaving age is working out in practice. I should regard it as a counsel of despair to think that we have to return to a leaving age of 15. I do not believe that there is something inherently inferior about the British which means that we can encourage large numbers of youngsters to leave at 15 while the Belgians, the French, the Germans—in fact, most other civilised countries—recognise that there is a need for a higher standard of education for a higher proportion of the population.

433 None the less, it has been urged upon me by my friends in the Inner London education service and in my own very different area of West Sussex that there is little point in requiring all youngsters to stay on to the end of the summer term after examinations have been passed. I have reservations about the whole idea of two leaving dates—namely, Easter and summer. It is a concept that poses problems. I hope that the Secretary of State and his hon. Friends will consider carefully the argument that is being put to them from a number of quarters, including the headmasters of West Sussex schools, that there should either be one leaving date at the end of Easter and no compulsion beyond Easter or, better still, in my view, that there should be no compulsion beyond the end of May, so that those who had taken their CSEs would then be enabled to leave.

There is no doubt that there is a problem in the last month of the summer term. Many youngsters see no point in staying, and their eyes are entirely fixed on the outside world. Having said that. I was delighted that in neither of the Front Bench speeches was there a suggestion that we should, faced with the present difficulties, simply retreat to 15

§ Mr. Skeet

rose—

§ Mr. Chataway

Let me finish this point. Many of the difficulties that we now face were faced in exactly the same way in 1947. I am sure that many hon. Members who have spoken to older people in the education service will have heard that exactly the same problems of truancy and ill-discipline were faced in that year when the school leaving age was raised from 14 to 15 years. There is now less opportunity for local educational authorities successfully to prosecute in cases of persistent truancy. There have been changes in the law, and since the matter has been put in the hands of the social services undoubtedly there is a changed approach. That is a matter that we should consider.

As the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State said, we now have a society in which there is much less respect for authority and for law and order. Therefore, the schools face a more difficult task. I ask the hon. Member for Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud), the Liberal spokesman on education, to look at some of the litera- 434 ture that is put out by Young Liberals and circulated round the schools.

§ Mr. Skeet

rose—

§ Mr. Chataway

I have an example here. It reads: Do you resent the decisions and punishments imposed upon you—reject the authoritarian structure of your school? … We want to end privilege and authoritarian control in schools—the prefectorial system …". I do not exaggerate the importance of that, but I believe that there is a duty for the House to help teachers in hard-pressed schools who need public support and backing if they are to maintain the framework in which orderly education can take place.

§ Mr. Cranley Onslow (Woking)

I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to a similar leaflet which has been circulating in schools in my constituency which scarcely helps teachers in their task. The Young Liberals say: We want to see all decisions affecting the internal running of the school decided democratically by a Joint Schools Council of students, teaching staff and domestic staff.

§ Mr. Chataway

That would not seem to me to be an ideal way in which to organise a school.

I now turn to the questions of choice, selection and secondary reorganisation, which have dominated this debate as they dominated so many of the debates in which I have taken part in the past 10 years or so. I am in favour of comprehensive schools. I am opposed to the 11-plus. That is a view to which I have not come lightly. I have felt the full force of the argument on both sides. My emotions have, over 15 years, been engaged on behalf of the various conflicting interests. I have had the experience of going round good grammar schools and meeting their staffs. They know that they are doing a first-class job for the children that they teach. They naturally fear for the changes that may be made.

I spoke to groups of parents when I had responsibility for the Inner London Education Authority. I have spoken to large groups of sometimes anxious and sometimes angry parents, who have rightly feared that during the process of transition there would not be much benefit for their children. I have represented Chichester for some years. West 435 Sussex is, I suppose, what the Secretary of State would call a backwoods Conservative area. The right hon. Gentleman made a rough division between the two types of Conservative area. In the last 15 years my local authority has not often had the misfortune of any significant representation from parties other than the Conservative Party. It has pursued consistently a steady policy of secondary reorganisation and except in one area we are totally comprehensive. I do not pretend that changes have been made entirely without transitional difficulty, but I am certain that if there were any suggestion of reintroducing a bipartisan system in West Sussex there would be furious opposition.

The experience to which I have referred, and my experience of seeing many comprehensive schools over the years, has convinced me that if reorganisation is carried out properly and is not rushed for political ends, it can ensure that we have comprehensive schools which are able to do justice to the full range of ability. One of the troubles, and one of the reasons for argument within the House on this subject, is that there tends to be a good deal more party political interest in this forum than in some other forums—

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas

Fora.

§ Mr. Chataway

—or fora. I must confess that I am not a product of the kind of school of which at the moment I am speaking well. One of the troubles is the unrealistic and extravagantly elagitarian claims that are made for comprehensive schools. In the first paragraph of the circular we are told: The Government have made known their intention of developing a fully comprehensive system of secondary education and of ending selection at eleven-plus or at any other age. Can the Government be serious? Do they think that it is within the capacity of any Secretary of State to end selection in education? We live in a society which is bound to be served by our schools. Does anyone think that we are moving towards a society in which there will be no selection—a society in which the Chairman of the British Steel Corporation will have equal status and standing with any of the corporation's cleaners, where people will not mind whether they are Prime Minister or party constituency 436 workers? Of course not. We shall always have a society in which there will be selection

It is odd that in this House—where we all spend a great deal of our time assessing and reassessing the ability of individuals—almost more than anywhere else, personal ambition and competition for advancement are often responsible for getting things done. It is odd that in such a place people can talk as if the education system can abolish selection. It cannot.

The argument is not whether there shall be selection; it is about when, where and how. First, when? For those with disabilities I hope that selection will be as early as possible. It is vitally important that many of the disabilities should be identified early and that the child be given special care in a special school. For those with a particular genius—for example, a genius for music, ballet or, perhaps, mathematics—there may be an argument for early selection. There may be a necessity for a special institution as the kind of teaching that is required is so specialised. But for most, the age of 11 is, I am sure, far too early.

How should there be selection? Not, I think, between two different types of school. After all, human beings come in a greater variety than that. If they came in two different types, the bi-partite system would be admirable and we would not have seen local education authorities, Conservative as well as others, moving away from it over a period.

My anxiety about the bi-partite system is not that it is selective—there will be selection, anyway—but that it is an inefficient form of selection, based on the demonstrably ridiculous proposition that there may be a value in dividing children into two classes. They come in many more categories than that.

So, selection should generally be in the school to the extent to which it is self-sufficient. There are important questions, to which we should give more time, about streaming, for example—that is to say, segregating not a totality of ability within the school but setting the dividing process according to ability in a particular subject.

I am convinced that it takes a teacher of far more than average ability to teach a mixed ability class. I have a child with 437 experience of mixed ability teaching, and I know that it can be done well. It has been done well in independent schools and primary schools for a very long time. There is nothing new about it, but it demands more of the teacher, and I believe that there is a danger in some of our secondary schools that those teachers with no more than a commitment to a progressive idea may be forced into taking mixed ability groups when they are not really prepared for it. So, selection within schools seems to me to be far more important a subject than selection between schools.

The same goes for choice. There is no more choice under the bipartite system than under the comprehensive system—that stands to reason. I do not think that anyone would argue about that. If there is simply a secondary modern school and a grammar school serving one area, no one in his right senses whose child has passed the 11-plus will choose the secondary modern school, while no one whose child has failed the 11-plus will be able to choose the grammar school. There is no choice in those circumstances.

More difficult is the concept of coexistence. I do not care at all for the revengeful spirit which seems to go after the grammar school just for the sake of abolishing it. If, in an area, as we have been told, only 1 per cent. of the children go to a grammar school, that is not inhibiting the existence of the comprehensive schools. Clearly, we should not work for uniformity, but we must he motivated by the spirit of wanting to create something rather than destroy it. As parents have to make their choice, so do we. We cannot pretend that we can have a grammar school which takes 20 per cent. or 25 per cent. of the children locally and also a comprehensive school. We can put a comprehensive label on the other school if we want to, but it is still really a secondary modern school.

The majority of parents naturally will not take a risk with their child who is bright; they will put him in with the rest who are bright. There are choices to be made, and all of us reckon that we have to face them. Let us keep as much as we can of choice within and choice between schools.

When I was Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science, I had the task, as my hon. Friend the Member for 438 Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) no doubt did, of dealing with appeals under Section 76 of the 1944 Act. One tried all the time to help any parents one could. One's inclination was to try to find a way, but if the school to which parents wanted their child to go was full, there was little one could do. In many areas, such as rural areas, there is little choice anyway.

Choice by parents is often taken on very imperfect knowledge. I have been particularly struck by the fact that in the independent school sector parents do not seem to devote the same kind of appraisal of alternatives to the choice of school as they do to their choice of car. In deciding upon a car for the family, they go into great detail about performance. Yet, in choosing a school, they are apt to do it on the basis of a visit, or just because they were there themselves.

Nevertheless, far more important is the succession of choices which the child has to make within the school. I hope that our attention will increasingly be focused on this very important area. In some schools, the extent to which parents are brought into the picture and encouraged to think about and make choices is admirable; in many other schools, parents are kept at arm's length. I believe entirely that what my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford has called "parent power" is vital. All research has shown that the main determinant of a child's progress is the home, and that if we want to have the parent involved we have to give the parent some information about the important choices, and that the important parental influences are the continuing ones—the ones that are influential throughout the child's career.

I have made my criticisms of the circular issued by the Secretary of State. I do not believe that he will look back on it with much pride, or regard it as one of the great State papers. I hope that the argument will be increasingly concerned with the problems of the great majority and with the vitally important question of selection and choice within a school as well as between schools.

§ Mr. Michael Stewart (Fulham)

I was much interested in the remarks of the right hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Chataway). I agree with him that we 439 need to pay attention to the choice that a child can make within the school. Of course, the more fully comprehensive a school is, the wider the range of choice a child can make. The more we have not merely selection but segregation of children at the age of 11 into different types of school, the narrower will be the range of choice within the school. I think that the right hon. Gentleman, without quite realising what he was doing, was inserting a stiletto into the back of some of his hon. Friends who have been determinedly trying to defend selection. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State pointed out that at the heart of the motion lies a desire to preserve segregation at the age of moving to secondary school, and therefore, whether hon. Members opposite like it or not, the desire to preserve the 11-plus.

A number of hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) have tried to dodge that question and the idea has been put something like this: let us have an arrangement whereby we have many different types of school, some called "grammar" schools—which, presumably, are intended to cater only for those children who are judged at the age of 11 to be the brighter children, and will provide academic courses—and some called "comprehensive" schools, which will be populated by those children who have not been able to get into the grammar schools, and perhaps a few others, which we might call "commercial" or "trade" schools. But if we have that system, the schools that one calls "comprehensive" are not comprehensive at all.

I admit, as a point of elegant argument, that if there is what the right hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Chataway) was describing—a grammar school that took 1 per cent. of the age group while the other 99 per cent. went to another school—possibly the word "comprehensive" could be used in respect of that 99 per cent. The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that that is nothing like a typical picture. When there is an attempt to have this happy coexistence between grammar school and comprehensive, people try to put in the grammar schools between 20 per cent. and 30 per cent.—one of the criticisms of the system is that the percentage varies 440 widely and illogically from one area to another—while the rest are put into what is called a "comprehensive" which, by its nature, cannot be comprehensive.

It is important to notice that that is done on the basis of some sort of selection procedure at the age of 10½—what is popularly known as the 11-plus. However much the method of selection is refined by the introduction of, heaven help us, psychiatric tests and the rest of it, what is being done is that a decision is being made when the child is aged 10½ which will affect the kind of school he enters.

It is not selection; it is segregation into different types of schools intended for different purposes. It is done on the basis of some sort of test. It is wrong to say that it is done on the basis of parents' choice. Where, in any of these systems that we have had described—where there are grammar schools and so-called comprehensives peacefully coexisting—is there a rule that any parent can have his or her child go to a grammar school simply by saying, "I want my child to go there"?

It is not parents' choice; it is segregation by the 11-plus—by an educational method the fallibility and stupidity of which has been increasingly demonstrated over the years. We ought to give all parents as much say in the way in which their children should be educated as is possible, consistent with the problems of running a system of education.

If a parent says, "I believe my child's abilities are such that I want him to go to a secondary school in which academic courses of instruction will be provided," tha