EDUCATION BILL

§ The Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Frederick Mulley)

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I deem it a privilege, Mr. Speaker, to open the first debate under your chairmanship, and it is a very happy coincidence that today we are debating education, the field of activity which you left some years ago to come to this House. But, as hon. Members know, you continued to take a great interest in education matters, and it is well known that you were held in great esteem in the education world. I am sure that it is the wish of everyone in education that I express congratulations and good wishes to you. It is perhaps the only time that I can claim to speak on behalf of the whole education world with certain unanimity.

This Bill is intended, first and foremost, to give effect to the Government's policy on comprehensive education. There are other clauses which deal with the expenses paid to members of independent schools tribunals, student awards and school milk, but I have no doubt that most hon. Members will be most interested in that part of the Bill dealing with comprehensive education and, therefore, while I shall refer to the other clauses later, for the most part I shall concentrate on this major question.

The Education Act 1944 laid the foundation of universal secondary education for all. At that time, it was widely recognised that the provision of elementary education for the masses and secondary education for the few was both socially unjust and a waste of the nation's talents. Accordingly, the Act provided that all-age schools should be reorganised. Primary and secondary education was to be provided in separate schools. This was Government policy, and local authorities and the voluntary bodies who wished to be part of the maintained system were required by Law to conform to it.

1218 The Act also said that all pupils should be educated according to their ages, abilities and aptitudes. It was widely held at the time that this end could he secured by the provision of three types of school—grammar, modern and technical—which between them would meet the needs of three identifiable groups of pupils. Such a system seemed to open new opportunities to pupils of all backgrounds and abilities, and the 1945 Labour Government supported and encouraged it.

During the 1950s, educational opinion began to swing away from the idea that pupils could be neatly categorised at 11-plus. Evidence was gathered which showed that a very significant proportion of pupils were wrongly placed in the secondary selection procedure—wrongly, that is, in terms of their potential. It came to be asked whether pupils' potential could ever be assessed so precisely as to justify their being placed on a narrowly defined educational track. It came to be asked also whether there were indeed two or three identifiable types of pupil, or whether each pupil was an individual with his own particular combination of needs and potentialities which could be met only in a school providing for the whole range of pupils and their interests at a variety of levels.

Finally, it came to be asked whether it was desirable to segregate a small proportion of pupils for what was inevitably—however wrongly—seen as privileged treatment. So the ideal of the comprehensive school came into being. With the raising of the school leaving age to 15 and later to 16, selection at 11 was not only unfair and unjust but largely irrelevant. I think that Opposition Members will accept many of the arguments against selection at 11-plus, not least because, for every boy or girl who passed, four or five failed, and failure, at the tender age of 11, determined future career possibilities and in most cases ruled out the opportunity of further or higher education. The only effective means of abolishing selection is to have a system of non-selective or comprehensive secondary schools.

On taking office in 1964, our first step towards this goal was the issue of Circular 10/65. This circular not only gave the first major impetus to our policy but reflected a growing tide of public and 1219 educational opinion against a system of selection, the very arbitrary nature of which caused grave disquiet in the minds of all thinking people. The circular requested local education authorities to submit plans for reorganising all secondary schools on comprehensive lines, and between 1965 and 1970 almost 1,000 new comprehensive schools were established.

Despite the issue of Circular 10/70 by the incoming Conservative Government, yet another 1,000 comprehensive schools were established between 1970 and 1974. Indeed, by January 1975, 68 per cent. of secondary pupils in England and Wales were in comprehensive schools and only one local education authority—Kingstonon-Thames—had none at all at that stage. Such rapid progress hardly suggests, as the Opposition often contend, that a substantial number of democratically elected authorities were opposed to our declared policy.

When we returned to office in 1974 we made a formal statement in Circular 4/74 of our intention to develop a fully comprehensive system of secondary education and to end selection. The circular invited all local education authorities to submit to the Department of Education and Science by the end of 1974 details of the successive measures to be taken to complete secondary reoragnisation. Voluntary schools were urged to co-operate with local education authorities. The response of local education authorities to the circular has, in the main, been good. Similarly, the vast majority of voluntary schools have expressed themselves willing in principle to reorganise along comprehensive lines.

Nevertheless, there are seven local education authorities which have declared their intention in principle of retaining some measure of selection. There are also, it would seem, a small number of voluntary schools—nearly all of which are non-denominational—likely to be an impediment to complete reorganisation. As I said in the House on 24th November, I should have preferred to deal with this by agreement rather than by legislation. But we face an impasse. We can progress no further by discussion and agreement towards our declared policy of comprehensive secondary education for all. I have, therefore, introduced the Bill which will, I hope, lead to a determined 1220 effort by all local education authorities in England and Wales to bring their reorganisation to a speedy and as efficient a conclusion as possible. I am confident that once the Bill has become law all local education authorities, including the seven which have said hitherto that they intend to retain a measure of selection, will be willing to implement it.

§ Mr. Stanley Newens (Harlow)

Will my right hon. Friend clarify the situation that has arisen in Essex, particularly in the light of the statement made last Friday? Will he make it clear that there is no question of continuing selection in that county?

§ Mr. Mulley

As I understand the position in Colchester, there was a scheme that was turned down by my predecessor. Revised proposals for the Colchester area to retain two grammar schools were submitted. We have approved these proposals because they are a step in the right direction and will in no way prejudge the question of the future of the grammar schools.

It is to deal with that kind of problem that we are introducing the Bill, and it will in the meantime be of great benefit to the children who will be going to these schools in the next year or two while the new reorganisation is being undertaken when the Bill becomes law. It is by no means ideal, but in the present situation it is the best that can be achieved and it will be beneficial to the children concerned.

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

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for informing the House that these selective schools are to be retained in Colchester. Can he give the same undertaking with regard to two selective schools at Chelmsford and the selective schools at Southend? Are the same principles to be applied to them?

§ Mr. Mulley

I think that the hon. Gentleman, with his capacity for misunderstanding, has got the Colchester position wrong. The two grammar schools in Colchester are not coming within the comprehensive system because the county's proposals did not include them. At the moment I have no power such as that which I am seeking in the Bill to send the matter back to the county and to ask it to introduce a scheme that will 1221 bring the grammar schools into consideration. The hon. Gentleman realises that this is, in a sense, an illustration of the kind of problem that has led us to introduce the Bill.

However, the Bill will not and cannot ensure that all schools will be comprehensive within the next two or three years. We recognise that there are local education authorities and voluntary schools which would like to reorganise but face resource problems. For this reason, I have allocated £25 million specifically for assisting comprehensive reorganisation, and authorities in England and Wales were invited to submit specific projects for consideration against that sum.

I should make it clear that this allocation is additional to the provision of building allocations under the usual headings. Even so, we recognise that some local education authorities and voluntary schools will still be unable to reorganise immediately because of resource problems.

§ Mr. Mark Carlisle (Runcorn)

The right hon. Gentleman used the expression "against the sum of £25 million put aside for this purpose". Is that a sum of money from the Government? I ask that because yesterday the hon. Lady the Under-Secretary of State told me that capital authorisations are not grants to local authorities but sums within which loan sanction will be allowed."—[Official Report, 2nd February 1976; Vol. 904, c. 483.]

§ Mr. Mulley

My hon. Friend's answer was perfectly correct. I used the word "allocation" carefully. This follows the same procedure as is used for any building allocation to local authorities. It permits them to have loan sanction. The repayment of the loan and the charges in connection therewith are, like other relevant expenditure, treated as part of the rate support grant. There is no difference in the treatment of this sum of £25 million and of moneys for normal school building. It is on exactly the same basis.

About 70 per cent. of our children are now being educated in comprehensive schools. As reorganisation extends, it reaches into more difficult areas, and in some of those further progress at a time of declining school population is difficult to achieve even when everyone—teachers, 1222 parents and local authorities—are all anxious to introduce comprehensive schools.

§ Mr. Paul Channon (Southend, West)

The right hon. Gentleman referred to the situation where teachers and parents are anxious to press ahead with comprehensive reorganisation. What is his policy about those areas where there is no doubt that the majority of parents are against comprehensive reorganisation? Is he aware that in my constituency a recent poll of all parents of children of school age in the town showed that 75 per cent. of them wanted to retain some grammar schools in the town?

§ Mr. Mulley

The hon. Gentleman made some reference to this on a previous occasion, but I do not feel that we can legislate or determine our national policy on the basis of isolated examples.

§ Mr. Channon

I had always understood that education was a matter for local people to decide in the light of local interest. Is the right hon. Gentleman saying that the Government intend to introduce the Bill to flout the democratically-expressed wishes of the parents involved?

§ Mr. Mulley

I am taking the same view on national education policy as the hon. Gentleman took when he was discharging housing finance responsibilities when again the views of democratically-elected people were expressed.

§ Hon. Members

Answer.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Oscar Murton)

Order.

§ Mr. Mulley

The opinions of parents on particular schemes are relevant, and if the hon. Gentleman will contain himself a little I shall explain as I go through the Bill in detail how the procedures will be akin to Section 13 procedures for change of status, with the opportunity for everyone concerned to express his view.

§ Mr. Channon

That has been done.

§ Mr. Mulley

Clause I will require all local education authorities to have regard to the comprehensive principle, that is, that all secondary education should be provided in schools to which pupils are admitted without reference to ability or 1223 aptitude. Excluded from that principle are schools for the physically and mentally handicapped. The Warnock Committee is at present considering the special needs of this goup. Without this specific exemption, of course it would not be possible to have special schools for handicapped children at all.

§ Mr. John Hannam (Exeter)

Is the Minister aware that this part of the Bill affecting disabled people is causing great concern to organisations for the disabled, since he seems to be enshrining now in legislation the selection of disabled children for special schools whereas all the objectives in the past have been to integrate them in normal schools?

§ Mr. Mulley

I think that there has been a certain misunderstanding here. There are several experiments going ahead. In my own constituency, for example, experiments are being conducted on the integration of handicapped children in ordinary schools. One wants to encourage that, but we should await the recommendations of the Warnock Committee. However, unless we had this specific general exemption, there would be no possibility anywhere for a special school. It does not mean that all special schools must continue, but there may be some categories of disabled children for whom, because of their special disabilities, it is desirable that they have facilities not available for them in other institutions.

§ Mr. Mulley

I must get on. There are many matters with which I should like to deal, but I suspect that the House will be giving attention to them in the future.

I have also excluded from this principle schools which select by reference to ability in music or dancing. Ability in these fields can be diagnosed early, and its encouragement in special institutions is unlikely to be educationally or socially divisive.

Clause 2 will give me power to require a local education authority to submit proposals within a specified time, giving effect to the comprehensive principle. It would allow me to call for proposals if I felt that further progress was needed in 1224 either all or part of a local education authority's area. This clause will also require local education authorities to consult the governors of all voluntary schools affected by their proposals. I hope that they would reach an agreement about the role of the voluntary schools in the reorganisation proposals, but if not, local education authorities will be required to forward to me, with their own proposals, any alternative proposals produced by the voluntary schools.

Clause 2 will also enable me to call for proposals from the governors of a voluntary school, within a specified time, if they have not submitted satisfactory proposals themselves or have declined to do so. If I consider that proposals submitted by local education authorities or governors are unsatisfactory, I am able to call for further proposals to remedy deficiencies. Proposals would have to be submitted to me in such form as I directed, and would have to indicate the proposed timing of implementation.

To sum up, Clause 2 will give me power, if necessary, to call for proposals from local education authorities and voluntary schools, and to indicate the unsatisfactory aspects of rejected proposals. I emphasise, however, that it will not empower me to substitute detailed alternatives to those rejected proposals. The power to design individual solutions for areas remains firmly in the hands of the local education authorities and voluntary schools.

I do not propose to set a date by which comprehensive reorganisation throughout the country will have to be completed, and I think that hon. Members will agree that it is neither practical nor desirable to do so. Any such date would have to take account of local education authorities with the greatest technical and resource problems and would thus be much later than a reasonable date for many other local education authorities. Yet many authorities might feel that, provided they kept to this date, they were meeting the requirement, and the consequence could be delay rather than an acceleration in the rate of reorganisation.

But, of course, as I have said already, the timing of implementation will be an important part of the proposals I shall ask to be submitted, and I shall need to 1225 be convinced that the dates proposed are on the basis of proceeding with reasonable speed and due diligence. Equally, I should stress that we shall expect the plans to make good educational sense. If they do not, or if it seems to me the plans submitted represent significantly slower progress than is feasible, I shall not hesitate to point these matters out to the proposers when rejecting them and requiring a fresh submission.

§ Sir John Eden (Bournemouth, West)

On what basis would the Minister make a judgment on whether proposals made educational sense?

§ Mr. Mulley

The first question to which I should address myself is whether they would fall within the scope of Clause 1 of the Bill.

Clause 3(1) will empower me to treat reorganisation proposals likely to be in effect within five years as I would those submitted under Section 13 of the 1944 Act. The normal Section 13 procedures will then be employed. The proposers would be under a duty to give public notice of their proposals, and the usual two-month period for objections would follow. I should have power, after considering the proposals and any objections to them, to approve or reject them.

Clause 3(2) is a special provision to safeguard the position of the voluntary aided schools. The governors of such schools have to find 15 per cent. of the cost of any new buildings, the other 85 per cent. being found by my Department. It would clearly be wrong of me to approve proposals involving new building when the governors could genuinely not afford to implement them. The Churches asked for a reassurance that I should not force aided schools to spend money they had not got in order to reorganise. That assurance I gladly give, and here it is in the Bill. Of course, I should expect voluntary schools to submit realistic proposals which they could afford, and if their proposals were not realistic in financial terms I should reject them and require fresh ones.

Clause 3(3) would mean that where proposals, involving new buildings and submitted under Clause 2, are approved, there would be a duty to produce building plans. Section 13 as it stands assumes 1226 that if the plans are approved they must then be carried out. For ordinary Section 13 proposals of this type, such as the establishment of a new primary school, there will still be no duty to submit building plans.

Clause 4 makes amendments to Section 13 which will apply both for ordinary proposals and for those submitted under Clause 2. There will now be a duty to implement all proposals approved under Section 13 which do not involve subsequent production of building plans and specifications.

Clauses 3 and 4 taken together will therefore place a duty on local education authorities and governors of voluntary schools to submit reorganisation proposals at my request under Clause 2 in the form of Section 13 proposals. They will be under a duty either to carry out those proposals which are approved or to submit the necessary building plans for implementation and then to carry out these if the plans are approved. There would be no point in taking powers to require local authorities and governors to produce plans and to treat those plans as Section 13 proposals if, at the end, those who had produced the plans could frustrate Government policy by not implementing them.

I now turn to Clause 5. Local authorities have certain powers and duties with respect to non-maintained schools. For instance, they may give assistance to such schools under Section 9(1) of the 1944 Act, they may take up places at such schools under Section 6(1) of the 1953 Act, and they may also pay on a means test the whole or part of fees and expenses of individual pupils attending non-maintained schools, under the 1945 Regulations made under Section 81 of the 1944 Act. These powers were intended to be exercised with the approval of the Minister, as he then was. But as a result of a relaxation of controls in the late 1950s, I have now no power to withhold approval for arrangements of the second and third kinds.

§ Mr. T. H. H. Skeet (Bedford)

I am very concerned about this, because it is retrospective legislation. These powers go right back over the years, possibly to 1944. Will any compensation be payable to any school which suffers loss?

§ Mr. Mulley

I have not yet completed explaining Clause 5. I am taking power to revoke approvals already given, otherwise I would not have any power. The 1944 Act has been commended so warmly to me by Conservative Members that I am trying to put the position back to what it was in 1944. That is exactly what I am doing, in this matter at any rate—

§ Mr. Skeet

It is retrospective.

§ Mr. Mulley

It will not be retrospective in the sense that it will take away fees paid for children who have already been to school, but it will mean, in relation to future expenditure, that arrangements which have been going on will have to be justified. That seems a reasonable situation.

§ Mr. Simon Mahon (Bootle)

This is a very serious point. The Secretary of State has said that he would rather do things by agreement than by legislation. In my constituency, ordinary dock labourers as well as members of the professions now have to go to Dubai or somewhere else to work. The maintenance of children according to the religious teaching of their parents is very important. If my right hon. Friend wishes this matter to be done by agreement rather than by legislation, will he continue to have discussions with the voluntary bodies along these lines as he has in the past, with a view to getting agreement?

§ Mr. Mulley

It is a mistake to give way before I have explained a point. I have a note to say exactly that—that arrangements involving boarding or denominational needs will certainly be approved. Also, we shall be willing to consider any other exceptional case on its merits.

Clause 5 has been included in the Bill to give specific powers to the Secretary of State to restore the position to what it was in 1944. I will have power to revoke any previous approval for existing arrangements and authorities would need to seek approval for any arrangements under Section 9 of the 1944 Act or Section 6 of the 1953 Act. New Regulations under Section 81 would be made, and new arrangements governing general assistance to individual pupils would need my approval; I should have power to revoke existing arrangements. Local education authorities would have a duty 1228 to discontinue any arrangements for which approval is revoked.

Where an authority can satisfy me that it cannot provide education of a type suitable for the age, ability and aptitude of some pupils without taking up places in the non-maintained system, I shall, of course, give approval for such arrangements, but for a limited period. I would envisage this occurring where there is a short-term lack of maintained school provision or of special needs such as boarding or denominational provision. I would also of course consider any other exceptional case on its merits. This clause will prevent a local authority from seeking to circumvent Clause 1 and using the take-up of independent places as a means to avoid establishing a fully comprehensive system of secondary education.

§ Mrs. Kellett-Bowman

Will the Secretary of State cut off pupils in the mid-flight of their careers? Will he regard every one of those cases as exceptional?

§ Mr. Mulley

I might have known better than to give way to the hon. Lady. She has made no contribution. She knows that all this does is ask local authorities to seek approval. It does not in any sense prejudge the answer to those requests. Second, as she knows, in the direct grant schools and in the case of a "cease to maintain" order for a school, we have provided for the continued education of those already at the school. It is wrong for the hon. Lady to go around making that sort of allegation.

§ Mrs. Kellett-Bowman

I simply asked for an assurance.

§ Mr. Mulley

I do not normally give assurances about whether I will approve arrangements until I know what the arrangements are. I think that that is a reasonable course to take.

Before turning to the other clauses of the Bill I should like to make a few general comments particularly about voluntary schools. Hon. Members will recall that before the Bill was presented I sent a consultative document to both the local authority associations and to those who have national responsibility for voluntary aided schools. Subsequently my colleagues and I met representatives of these organisations. I should like now to pay a tribute to the reasonableness and understanding that they showed during 1229 the discussions and also to the constructive and useful comments they made on the proposals as originally drafted. Those with responsibility for voluntary aided schools were no less frank about what they felt would be acceptable than were the local authority associations.

There was, of course, no coincidence of views among all the parties themselves and not all of them agreed with what had been proposed. While I listened with great care to all they had to say, I was particularly impressed by the views put forward about the attitude to be adopted in the Bill to the voluntary schools. I have no wish to undermine in any way the concordat that was reached with the voluntary bodies, particularly the Churches, and settled in the 1944 Act. My experience of the attitude of those responsible for the provision of denominational schools is such that, I am convinced, any attempt to coerce them along the road to reorganisation is completely unnecessary.

Of the 800 or so voluntary aided denominational and non-denominational schools, all but a handful are willing to co-operate. However, a few are either reluctant or deliberately obstructive. Most of these are grammar schools of ancient foundation many of which hold special positions in the communities they serve. They often enjoy considerable prestige which in no small part flows from the facilities which they provide and which have largely been found from public funds and which enable them to attract good staff who are paid from public funds. They are schools whose facilities make a substantial contribution—facilities for which the people have paid and without which the community would be educationally poorer. Most of them are charitable bodies, founded specifically for the education of the poor in the community.

Because of these arguments I was urged to make it legally possible for local education authorities to submit Section 13 proposals for these schools where the governors were unable or unwilling to do so. Under existing legislation local education authorities may make proposals only to cease to maintain such schools—to eliminate them from the maintained sector. I was urged to allow local authorities to make other proposals—that is, to change the character of the schools by 1230 requiring them to admit pupils without reference to academic ability, or to admit girls as well as boys, or to change the age range for which they catered, or to enlarge the number of pupils they provided for.

This I have resisted, partly because any such changes in the law could, potentially at least, be construed as a threat to the independence of the Church schools but mainly because I wish to uphold the dual system and to continue to encourage the Churches and other voluntary bodies to play a full part in our educational system and to bring to it the expertise, the enthusiasm and the resources they have accumulated and developed over the years. What is provided in this Bill was discussed with representatives of the voluntary schools, including the Churches, and was pursued in correspondence with those who wished to have further clarification.

I believe that the solution which is set out in the Bill and which provides for the Secretary of State to require the governors of such schools to produce proposals is not unacceptable to the Churches. I know how highly they value their status as a voluntary and independent partner, along with local education authorities, within the maintained system. I am happy to preserve the balance of this historic partnership which is fundamental to our whole education system. Indeed, I believe the continuation of the religious settlement achieved in 1944 is an essential prerequisite to the successful establishment of a comprehensive system.

I now turn to the other provisions of the Bill. Independent schools tribunals consist of a legally qualified chairman and two other members. They are constituted ad hoc to determine complaints made by the Secretary of State about an independent school, its proprietors or teachers, or to hear appeals over previous decisions. During the past five years, 13 tribunals have been convened.

Section 75 of the 1944 Act states that remuneration and allowances paid to members of these tribunals should be decided by rules. As these fees and expenses have to be increased regularly it means that new rules also have to be laid before the House at regular intervals. Clause 6 will enable the rates and fees to be dealt with administratively as for 1231 all the other 70 tribunals for which the Lord Chancellor has responsibility. This change will bring these tribunals into line with the provisions made for all other tribunals in England and Wales.

Under the Education Act 1975, the scope of mandatory awards was extended to cover students on full-time courses leading to the Higher National Diploma. These diploma courses will eventually be replaced by courses for the higher awards of the technician or business education councils and will start effectively in 1977–78. Clause 7 has been introduced to amend further the Education Act 1962 and enables students on these courses to receive mandatory awards.

Clause 8 is designed to revoke the present requirement of the Education (Milk) Act 1971 that the charge made to pupils for milk must cover the full economic cost of providing it. As I have said before, I find this quite indefensible, since it singles out milk as the only food or beverage about which the local education authorities have no discretion as to the price they charge for supplying it and in fact requires that the authorities can offer milk for sale in their schools only at a charge significantly higher than the retail price of the milk delivered to one's door. These arrangements were criticised by both the Committee on Catering Arrangements in Schools and the Nutrition Working Party.

The first step therefore is to repeal these provisions. The second step will be to make new regulations after consultations with the local authorities as to the extent and nature of the discretion they wish restored to them. In present circumstances it is not intended to make mandatory the restoration of free milk to the children who lost it in 1971 and it is unlikely, I think, that the local education authorities will wish to supply milk free, except perhaps in cases of hardship.

The present Milk and Meals Regulations would remain in force until replaced by new ones.

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas

We are grateful to learn that the Government do not intend to change the position, which was established by the 1971 Act, concerning children over the age of seven. However, may not this clause be interpreted as giving power to local education 1232 authorities, which they do not possess at present, to charge for milk up to the age of seven years?

§ Mr. Mulley

I give the hon. Gentleman up as a bad job because the purpose of the Bill is precisely to repeal the outrageous provisions of the 1971 Act with which the hon. Gentleman was associated.

§ Mr. Mulley

I shall answer the hon. Gentleman's comments in my own way, if he does not mind. The 1971 Act required a school to charge schoolchildren more for a pint of milk than I pay the milkman when he delivers it to my door. That is the present situation which we shall change. As a normal arrangement we shall consult the local authorities but I dare not consult them until I have the power to change the regulations otherwise the hon. Gentleman will talk about legislation by conference or by circulars. When the Bill is passed we shall talk to the local authorities and on that basis, as I have just said, we shall make new regulations. The present Milk and Meals Regulations will remain in force until they are replaced by new ones. The Bill does not change the law in any respect except that it permits us to make regulations on a different basis because at present we are restricted by the 1971 Act which is now to be repealed.

The Bill has no special commencement provisions. It would become effective in its various measures upon receiving the Royal Assent.

Hon. Members will have noted that there are no specific provisions for enforcement in the Bill itself since by virtue of Clause 10 (3): This Act shall be construed as one with the Education Act 1944". This has the effect that the enforcement provisions of the 1944 Act and in particular, for example, Section 99 of that Act, can be invoked to provide legal sanctions by mandamus to enforce directions given under the powers to be conferred by this Bill. The section applies not only to local education authorities but to the managers and governors of county and voluntary schools.

I have sought to summarise the provisions of the Bill and to set before the 1233 House the cogent reasons why we attach importance to the enactment in particular of the powers to make general and more rapid progress towards the reorganisation of secondary education on comprehensive lines, thus ending the heart-aches and injustices which flow from the 11-plus and similar selection procedures.

We believe this to be a fundamental feature of any educational system designed to provide reasonable educational opportunities for all children whilst at the same time ensuring the maximum utilisation of the talents of our young people for the benefit of both our society and our economy in future years.

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

So many congratulations have been rained upon Mr. Speaker that perhaps it has been overlooked that you, too, Mr. Deputy Speaker, are worthy of congratulation on your election to your present position. I offer these congratulations in both justice and in anticipation of favours to come. I should like also to join the Secretary of State in this one moment of co-operation and agreement in congratulating Mr. Speaker on his election and saying that, like the Secretary of State, I feel that it is a privilege to be partaking in the first debate over which he is presiding. I can wish him no greater success than that he should be a worthy successor to his great predecessor, Thomas More, who had the unique twin distinctions of being beheaded and canonised, in one of which precedents I hope that Mr. Speaker will follow him.

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about this badly drafted, negative and destructive Bill is that it has been introduced in to the House of Commons at this particular time. The education service is facing unprecedented problems. We are facing drastic cutbacks in the rate of financial growth. We are seeing the demolition of the nursery programme which was so assiduously and farsightedly planned by my right hon. Friend who is now the Leader of the Opposition. We are seeing closures in colleges of education, cutbacks in the number of teachers and rising teacher unemployment. We have seen the demoralising of the universities and other institutions of higher learning and the collapse of confidence among millions of parents over standards 1234 of learning and discipline in our schools. This is an extraordinary time to put forward a partisan, doctrinaire, and unwanted measure.

The Secretary of State, at the North of England conference on 9th January, repeated words which I had used in my first speech as Opposition spokesman 18 months ago. He reaffirmed for the first time the importance of the three Rs and of learning these basic skills as a priority in education. I thought that he had suffered a Pauline or at least a Rhodine conversion. But, less than a month later, we find him at the Dispatch Box giving as his first priority in educational matters the introduction of a Bill which embodies all the worst dogmatism of Socialist attitudes to education.

§ Mrs. Kellett-Bowman

Will my hon. Friend give way for one second?

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas

For two seconds to my hon. Friend.

§ Mrs. Kellett-Bowman

Is my hon. Friend aware that I was at that conference which was addressed by the Secretary of State and that a prominent Labour member of the university said that Labour had totally lost confidence in the Government and asked whether they hated universities?

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas

I am grateful for my hon. Friend's testimony. I realise that the conference was even more distinguished than I thought.

This Bill is an insult to the intelligence of all parents and is contemptuous of the anxieties that they feel. Parents are concerned not with how schools are organised but with how their children are taught within those schools. They want something simple and basic: a disciplined and ordered learning environment in which their children can learn to read, to write, to spell, to add up, to express themselves in good clear English, and to confirm the moral values and attitudes which they have learned in the home and which have been built up in this nation over generations. That is what parents want, but the Bill offers them nothing. They are asking for bread but the Secretary of State is handing out a stone.

The Secretary of State is failing in his duty because he is responsible—nobody else can discharge the responsibility— 1235 for initiating a rational, balanced and constructive debate on education. It should centre on how to improve our schools instead of forcing the whole of the educational discussion back to the sterile conflict between grammar and comprehensive schools.

I should like to quote from a paper which is not normally a supporter of the Conservative Party regarding education or any other matter—The Guardian. In its leader on 17th November last year, headed Mr. Mulley decides on a dogfight", it states: The most profound peril this Government runs, is, increasingly, one of irrelevancy—and the most immediate peril that of a long, bitter, parliamentary session filled with party bickering which at no stage touches the fundamental plight of the country. It is in this context that Mr. Fred Mulley's expressed intent to abolish the eleven-plus by law deserves a severely sceptical, even despairing response. That is the judgment of an impartial newspaper which, if anything, is favourable to the Labour Party.

Thus, the first indictment of this Bill is its essential irrelevance to the promotion of educational values and standards.

The second count is that, if the Bill is irrelevant to education, it is very relevant to political objectives. It is a further instalment of the policy which has informed the Government's approach to all our social services—that is, to increase the power and control of the State and to exclude from effective influence individuals, voluntary bodies, local authorities, and all who can express an independent point of view.

How else can we explain the phrase used by the right hon. Gentleman in the debate about the voluntary schools relying on their legal rights when he castigated them for deliberately obstructing the Government? The right hon. Gentleman said that they were being deliberately obstructive. They were not. They were relying on rights conferred upon them by this House, and they are entitled to do so until those rights are taken away by this House.

This is a major attempt to destroy the harmonious balance between the Department of Education and Science, the local education authorities and the voluntary schools which was created by the Educa- 1236 tion Act 1944 and has been sustained by every educational statute since.

§ Mr. Mahon

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman does not wish to mislead the House in any way at all. It is wrong to suggest that the voluntary educational bodies are not to a great degree supporting Her Majesty's Government on this Bill. I am and have been for many years a member of the Catholic Education Council of England and Wales. It is my strong belief that the hon. Gentleman is erroneous and is misleading this House by suggesting that voluntary bodies are not prepared to co-operate to a great degree in what the Minister said this afternoon.

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas

I must treat with great weight any intervention by the hon. Gentleman. However, we differ in our assessment of the situation. Whatever the fine words which may have been used by the Secretary of State this afternoon, the voluntary schools have found the pressure brought to bear upon them such that, on the whole, they have had to go along with these proposals whether they wanted them or not.

It is clearly right that central Government should be satisfied that any proposals submitted by local education authorities which involve major changes in the character of their schools should not only make good educational sense, but have been adequately discussed with parents, teachers and other interested parties. That is why the Secretary of State has the veto.

However, it is equally clearly wrong for central Government to say that local education authorities, which have conscientiously decided that a particular type of organisation is right for the schools and children in their areas, must submit proposals for reorganisation in one way only—a comprehensive way—regardless of their judgment, parental wishes, local conditions, or available finance. That is precisely what the Bill sets out to do.

At the root of the bad practice in the Bill is a bad principle which was well expressed by the Secretary of State in the debate on the Gracious Speech on 24th November when he said that it was the Minister who determined national policy and the local authorities which executed it."—[Official Report, 24th November 1975; Vol. 901, c. 520.] 1237 That is to reduce the role and status of the local education authorities from that of partners and co-operators in the educational service to that of agents. That is completely different from the view contained in the Education Act.

Whether he knows it or not, the Secretary of State is elevating himself—I do not intend this as a compliment—into a species of educational pope. He is destroying the balance carefully constructed by Lord Butler and the late Mr. Chuter Ede in various sections of the 1944 Act—Section 8, which lays down the rights and duties of local authorities, Section 36, and Section 76, which protects the rights of parents. The purpose of that settlement was to harmonise in a careful balance the rights and duties of parents, local authorities, voluntary schools, Churches and the Secretary of State. It is that balance which this Bill upsets, whether the Secretary of State will admit it or not.

The Bill constitutes a general breach of an agreed settlement. It is being breached unilaterally by the Government. It is worth remembering that it is a particular breach of the words and the pledge of the Prime Minister. I remind the House of what the right hon. Gentleman said in answer to the question: Will the Labour Party abolish all grammar schools? He said: The answer to this as a former grammar school boy is 'Over my dead body. There may be some people who think that's worth it. I don't.' Today we have the worst of both worlds because the Prime Minister's body is marching, or rather lurching on over the spread out corpses of the grammar schools which he was pledged to protect. I wonder how he will get his carcase off this particular hook.

I turn to consider the clauses of the Bill. Like the Secretary of State, I shall not devote a great deal of time to the miscellaneous provisions in the second half of the Bill. The Bill is a rag-bag, stitched together roughly—I do not accuse the hon. Lady the Under-Secretary of State of that—by the officials in the Department of Education and Science. It is hardly the stuff out of which a great educational Act will be fashioned. Clause 6 deals with the remuneration of mem- 1238 bers of independent schools tribunals and Clause 7 is concerned with the awards for higher diploma courses. Clause 8 deals with provisions for school milk and provides the Government in general and the Under-Secretary in particular with a cover-up for their acceptance of the changes in the 1971 Act.

Some of us may recall the passionate denunciations which were made by the Under-Secretary of State when those changes were introduced, when she swooped in and out of the debate like a kind of frenzied valkyrie. How strange that she sits here today so meek and mild in acquiescence: she is like Lavinia with her tongue apparently torn out. I shall leave the hon. Lady to her conscience.

The substance of the Bill and its venom lies in the first five clauses, which embody the attempt to impose comprehensive schools throughout the country against the wishes of those who are most concerned.

§ Mr. John Ovenden (Gravesend)

Who are they?

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas

The hon. Gentleman asks "Who are they?" I shall tell him. Among the many are those who have been in the van of the comprehensive crusade. The Bill has been condemned by one of the most distinguished supporters of the idea of comprehensive schools, namely, Professor Judge. It has also been condemned by the editors of The Times Educational Supplement and The Guardian, who have consistently supported the idea of comprehensive schools. It has been condemned by Lord Alexander, who is possibly the most distinguished figure in the administrative world of education. I should have thought that that list was enough to show that there is strong resistance on educational grounds to the Bill.

§ Mr. Martin Flannery (Sheffield, Hillsborough)

What about the parents and the teachers? The hon. Gentleman has not mentioned them.

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas

I am very willing to mention the parents and teachers. My hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Channon) indicated that the majority of parents in Southend were opposed to the proposals in the Bill. He said that they wanted to retain the exist- 1239 ing system. What comfort did they get from the Secretary of State? They were told that they were a minority and that minorities, by definition, have no rights.

I was asked "What about the teachers?" In a recent poll in The Times Education Supplement 70 per cent. of teachers in every category of school said that they supported the continuance of grammar schools and did not wish to see them abolished. That is the answer to the hon. Gentleman's question.

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas

I shall not give way to the hon. Gentleman. I have answered his question.

It is strange that at a time when there is disillusionment about the panacea of comprehensive schools and when confidence is sagging among educationists such as Professor Jenks and Professor Cohen, the Government choose to decide that only one type of school shall be provided for every type of child within the maintained system and so impose a uniformity which will rule out variety and severely curtail the possibilities of innovation.

How much better it would have been had the Government heeded the plea of the Opposition, which we advanced in our manifesto of October 1974, for an impartial inquiry into the successes and failures of comprehensive schools. If the Government had only done that before proceeding to compulsion! They should have examined such vitally important questions—which will remain long after the Bill is forgotten—as: what is the right size for a comprehensive school, what is the right type of comprehensive school, should it or should it not be on the 11 to 18 all-through basis, the 11 to 16 basis with sixth-form colleges, or on the middle school concept; what are the merits and demerits of the mixed ability class and what is the case for streaming within the comprehensive school? Those are the questions which need to be answered. They are not answered by the approach embodied in the Bill.

The Government should concentrate their energies and resources on improving existing comprehensive schools, to which the majority of secondary school children go, instead of dissipating resources in 1240 altering the whole character and concept of schools which already have high academic standards. That is the point of difference between the Government and the Opposition on this vital question. We need an honest, painstaking and thorough educational assessment—not a political short-cut by the Secretary of State waving a big stick in order to bludgeon into submission the seven authorities which have decided, as they are entitled to decide, that it is in the best interests of children to retain selection, and the 30 other education authorities—carefully not mentioned by the Secretary of State—which have told him that they will have to retain selection unless greater resources are made available than are at present.

The Secretary of State, in a moment of greater wisdom than that he has shown this afternoon, said, "I cannot abolish selection at a legislative stroke". An examination of the relevant clauses in the Bill amply confirms that judgment because those clauses are highly unlikely to attain even their stated object. What they will do is to create confusion, uncertainty and conflict throughout the educational world.

Clause 1 states: …local education authorities shall, in the exercise and performance of their powers … have regard to the general principle that such education is to be provided only in schools where the arrangements for the admission of pupils are not based (wholly or partly) on selection by reference to ability or aptitude. One thing is very clear. It is clear and has been clear to every Minister in the Department of Education since the passing of the 1944 Act, that it is virtually impossible to enforce a general principle through the courts. That point has been established in the courts in relation to Section 76 of the Act. Let me remind the Secretary of State what that says. It lays down, in the same words, the general principle that pupils are to be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents.

§ Mr. Mulley

In all fairness, the hon. Gentleman has been exceedingly selective in some of his quotations. He might at least read the rest of that rather short section. We shall then know exactly what he is getting at.

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas

I am perfectly willing to do that. I do not have to read 1241 the section. I can remember it. Section 76 says that pupils shall be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents—subject to the non-incurrence of unreasonable expenditure, et cetera.

§ Mr. Mulley

Could we have the "et cetera"?

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas

The rest of that section? If the right hon. Gentleman thinks that there is a point of substance here, I am glad to help him. In the exercise and performance of all powers and duties conferred and imposed on them by this Act the Minister and local education authorities 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. I fail to see that those additional words, which the Secretary of State has insisted on having read out to the House, add to the argument. My argument is that a general principle as such does not give rise to a cause of action in the courts. That was the ratio decidendi of Watts v. Kesteven. Here we have the Secretary of State using exactly the same language in this clause. The practical conclusion that one draws from that is that the keystone in the arch of the whole Bill is shaky. If that is so, so are all the other provisions which it upholds.

Local authorities are bound to obey the law. The Opposition espouse that principle. We wish that the Government, when they were in opposition, had been equally forthright in their support of that principle. Local authorities are bound to obey the law as enacted by Parliament—no more, no less—and as interpreted by the courts. That is very different from following an arbitrary fiat of the Secretary of State, who may think that people are being what he calls "obstructive", or who is relying on the shaky legal opinions of his advisers in his Department.

How will local authorities decide which of two general principles to follow when they have equal status in the Act and when they wish to follow one and not the other? Which takes precedence? We have the example—which was so cavalierly dismissed by the Secretary of State—given in the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West, who showed that in the Southend 1242 area a majority of parents want to retain their existing system. Now the local authority has to give effect to the general principle of the wishes of parents. If the Bill becomes law, it will also have to give effect to the principle that there is to be no education in the selective schools which those parents want. How will there be any mediation between those principles unless it is by litigation in the courts?

§ Mr. Channon

I should like to interrupt my hon. Friend in case he should underestimate the case. No fewer than three-quarters of parents there support the retention of some grammar schools in the system.

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Perhaps I may add a further gloss to the gloss that he has added to what I said. It was a very high poll, and 65 per cent. of the parents who were eligible took part in it. They amounted to over 17,000 voters. Therefore, it is an extremely apt, relevant and weighty example.

What will be the position, if the Bill becomes law, of those authorities which band children into ability groups, as the ILEA does with children of average, above average and below average ability, so that the bright children are not concentrated in a few schools? I do not know whether this is so, but it was reported in a newspaper that the ILEA has been advised by officials of the right hon. Gentleman's Department—perhaps the Under-Secretary will be able to give us some information on this matter when she replies to the debate—that if the Bill becomes law these arrangements of banding will be illegal.

We welcome that as a prevention of bussing, which has been so disastrous in the United States of America. The educational achievements of the United States are constantly being lauded by the Secretary of State. Let us hope that he is not creating a situation here in which we have to resort to that kind of expedient, which has caused so much social dislocation and educational upheaval. However, if this interpretation is right, it would mean the creation in our urban centres of wholly neighbourhood schools, which would deprive the disadvantaged child of the very opportunities which that child so desperately needs.

1243 There is the further absurdity that has been touched on in the debate in the intervention of the hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Newens). That is that at the very moment that the Secretary of State is busily outlawing selection in the Bill, he is equally busy approving selective schemes within the County of Essex, and has done so for Colchester. He has been rebuked by hon. Members of his own party, not only the hon. Member for Harlow but also the hon. Member for Basildon (Mr. Moonman).

All this muddle has come upon the Secretary of State because he has ignored the warning which was given to him so clearly, by The Guardian and others, that the law is likely, in this matter of delicate educational structures, to get him nowhere very fast. With this Bill the Secretary of State is rather like a frightened woman with a gun—aiming it at every target and hitting only the target at which the gun is not aimed. That is exactly the position into which the right hon. Gentleman is getting himself with this badly drafted Bill. [Interruption.] It is not a Freudian slip. It is a quotation, as a matter of fact, and it will come as no surprise to the House that it is a quotation from Walter Bagehot.

What I have described is a fairly good measure of the confusion and uncertainty that will be created by this Bill—and we have so far reached only its first clause! However, the second clause makes the situation worse. It requires local authorities to submit proposals to give effect to a general principle whose legal status is in itself dubious. What kind of muddle will they get into when these proposals are put forward? The Secretary of State referred to the proposals having to be put forward within a specified time. That is not being frank with the House. The Bill has no specified time. The only time specified is that which is to be arbitrarily fixed by the Secretary of State himself.

There are inadequate cash resources for these projects. The £25 million which the Secretary of State heralded with such a fanfare now turns out to be a mere allocation of resources in the form of loan sanction, so there will be no grant as such to these schools. This loan sanction, inadequate though it is in form, is even more inadequate in substance. When we last debated this matter, in 1244 November of last year, the Secretary of State told the House that already it had been three times over-subscribed by 85 local education authorities. Thus, the only certain result of this part of the Bill will be a multiplication of botched-up schemes, of split-site schools, which this very week have been condemned in very clear terms by the Assistant Masters Association. This clause also upsets the settlement with the voluntary schools. It takes away the long enfranchised exclusive right of the governors of voluntary schools to initiate proposals for reorganisation and confines them to such matters as staff appointments—and this at the very time when the Secretary of State should be considering ways of increasing the powers, the effectiveness, and the representative character of school governors. Instead, he is moving in the opposite direction.

As if all that were not enough, the Secretary of State is arrogating powers to himself, not in name but in effect, to amend schemes, because he is saying that he will in practice take powers to issue detailed directives to local authorities and to governors of schools of whose plans he does not approve.

There is another basic change in Clause 5. This lies in the power which he is taking to control the right of local authorities to take up places outside the maintained school system if he judges it wise so to do, and also retrospective powers of revocation.

By some inferior form of casuistry, the Secretary of State is trying to maintain that he has aways had these powers under the Act. Of course, that is true in a nominalist sense, but under Section 81 of the Act the power given to the Secretary of State to issue regulations is a mandatory power. He is told that he has to issue regulations in order to empower local authorities to take up places. Now the Secretary of State is proposing to take powers to stop them from doing so.

What in effect the Secretary of State is doing in the Bill, starting from bad principles, is creating in practice a legal morass in which he and others less culpable than himself will flounder for a long time to come, unless of course he is rescued from this folly as his predecessor was rescued in 1970, not by the General Election as is sometimes supposed but by the defection of Labour Party supporters 1245 in the Standing Committee so that the central clause of the Bill was lost.

Meanwhile, the Opposition, if we do not defeat the Bill today—we might have a chance to do that if we had some support from the Liberal Party—will endeavour to improve it in Committee. We will do our best to be constructive and to clarify it. We will do our best to remove its arbitrariness. We will insert safeguards for children at existing selective schools who may suffer interruptions in their courses.

Nothing was more significant than the Government jeers which greeted the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Mrs. Kellett-Bowman), concerned as she was with the effect of the Bill and other legislation on children who are undergoing education at schools which arc at present organised on one basis and who will find themselves in schools organised on another basis at the end of their course. That is important to the Opposition, because we regard children as rather more than painful prerequisites for schemes of comprehensivisation. We believe that every child has a right to the best education that is available according to that child's age, aptitude and abilities.

In Committee we will include constructive proposals about all those aspects of Conservative policy which we have been developing over the past two years about parents' rights, about the importance of providing national tests for literacy and for numeracy, and about monitoring standards so that we know what is going on in our schools. We will include proposals to make teachers a more professional rather than a less professional body.

§ The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mr. Gerry Fowler)

I have been following the hon. Gentleman's series of new proposals with great fascination. His party was in power for nearly four years. He was a Minister in the Department of Education and Science. What happened to these exciting proposals then?

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas

I am referring to the debate on educational policy as it has been developing over the past two years. It is typical of the totally petty and unworthy approach of the hon. 1246 Gentleman, who has just been appointed Minister of State, that he should seek to make some kind of party political point out of a vitally important discussion for parents.

§ Mr. Mulley

This is rather important because, by inference, the hon. Gentleman was criticising the right hon. Lady the Leader of the Opposition. She was responsible for education in the four years which have just been referred to. I wonder whether there is any connection between this and the hon. Gentleman's alleged comment in the Business News of the Sunday Times when, by some inference, he recognised her as somebody else's grandmother. This is a serious matter.

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas

That intervention shows merely that the Secretary of State is even more unworthy of holding his office than the Minister of State is of holding his.

Some good may come from this foolish, dangerous and unnecessary measure if we can turn it into a constructive statute. But what an indictment it is of Government education priorities that they find time for this Bill while after a year we have still not even had one day devoted to a debate on perhaps the most important post-war education report—the Bullock Report, with its 330 proposals to improve literacy and standards of learning in our schools.

§ Mr. Stanley Cohen (Leeds, South-East)

Why not a Supply Day for it?

§ Mr. St. John-Stevas

It is not a subject for a Supply Day. It is the Government's duty to provide time for a debate on the Report of a Committee which was appointed by the predecessor of this Secretary of State.

I come to my conclusion. I say to the Secretary of State and his colleague the Minister of State that yesterday's men are bad enough, but yesterday's nostrums and yesterday's obsessions are considerably worse. We will do our best to defeat the Bill today. If we do not succeed in that we will do what we can to improve the objectionable clauses. If we are prevented from doing that, we will, when the moment comes, repeal them, because they constitute a threat both to liberty and to learning.

§ Mr. Martin Flannery (Sheffield, Hillsborough)

Seldom have hon. Members had to listen to such pseudo-educational claptrap as the speech which has just emanated from the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas). The hon. Member's fatal facility for words—or should I say "verbiage"—not merely had most Government Members lost at times but I am sure that it had many Tory Members completely lost.

If the Tories did not have at their disposal the majority of the Press and other media, Heaven knows where they would be if it came to honest argument and educational knowledge about the subject under discussion. The Tory Party will, as always, play its traditional role of holding back human progress and, in this instance, educational progress.

In the course of his peroration the hon. Member quoted The Times Educational Supplement. Thank God we do not regard The Times Educational Supplement as the last word in educational knowledge.

Indeed, when the hon. Gentleman refused to allow me to intervene in his speech he well knew that I had been a member of the national executive of the National Union of Teachers which has within its membership more teachers than all the other teachers' organisations put together. I do not for a moment decry the other teachers' organisations. Not only the National Union of Teachers but most of the other teachers' organisations are in favour of comprehensive education. Therefore, no matter what The Times Educational Supplement in its chaste columns says, that is the reality.

Indeed, it is time that all of us, including hon. Members opposite, some of whom are still in the middle of the last century, welcomed this long overdue Bill. It is time that they realised that the vast majority of the parents they say they represent actually welcome comprehensive education and have approved it, no matter what happened in Southend, West. If hon. Members opposite came to my constituency and others in the city of Sheffield and talked to working people, they would jolly well soon find out that they, like people throughout the country, welcome this Bill, which is long overdue.

§ Mr. Flannery

I will not give way. I wish to make a series of points. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State gave way to the hon. Member for Chelmsford more often than I would have wished and regularly in mid-sentence.

This Bill is a major step on the road to the further democratisation of the education system in our country. The point is well taken when hon. Members opposite laugh. Comprehensive education and the democratisation of education will go from strength to strength, no matter how loudly they laugh, how many quotations they use or how many newspapers they have at their disposal. The British people want comprehensive education.

This view is taken not only by parents who support the Labour Party. Hon. Members opposite should have seen many of the areas in better-off parts of our cities when the 11-plus was in existence. Sadly, a number of people were deeply ashamed that their children had not passed this dreadful examination and were accused of being failures. How dare we accuse children of that age of being failures? But it was repeated into the ears of these young children, and the Tory Party was blowing the trumpet, as it is today. When that iniquitous examination has gone for ever, it will be one of the greatest days our educational system has ever seen. In places where the examination has gone, they would never dream of returning to the selective examinations wanted by the Conservative Party.

I have said before that the Conservative Party wants privileges in every direction. It has taken me to task for saying it, but I repeat it today. Tories want private beds in hospitals and private schools for themselves so that they may have a select, elite group in education. We are totally against that in principle and in philosophy and we believe that the people of this country are with us. The Tories want education according to the depth of the purse, not even according to ability and aptitude, much as we deplore that as well.

Comprehensive education is incomplete as long as grammar schools exist. If the Prime Minister said that grammar schools 1249 would go only over his dead body, he was not stating the policy of the Labour Party. Our policy is the abolition of the 11-plus. What my right hon. Friend meant was that the best aspects of grammar schools—and there were good aspects—would be incorporated within the comprehensive system, and that is what we intend to do. But as long as grammar schools exist as elitist institutions, it is idle nonsense to talk about comprehensive education running in parallel with them.

Between 5 per cent. and 20 per cent. of children in an area are creamed off and sent to elitist schools. The rest go to schools which not even the Tory Party has defended. I have not received a single letter defending secondary modern schools as institutions, even though the teachers have done their best, in difficult circumstances, to educate children. Parents do not agree with secondary modern schools, but they agree that all children should have access to education in comprehensive schools.

§ Sir John Hall (Wycombe)

I cannot allow that point to pass unchallenged. It is untrue that parents condemn secondary modern schools and do not want their children to go to them. In my constituency, the secondary modern schools are excellent and many parents welcome the opportunity of sending their children to them.

§ Mr. Flannery

I said I had not received a single letter from a parent. I was not speaking of parents throughout the country. I cannot prove how they feel. In the same way as we are told that 70 per cent. of people in the Southend, West constituency support elitist education, they also support an MP who is in favour of it, which I deplore in exactly the same way. No doubt the two things are inter-linked.

§ Mr. Channon

Will the hon. Member give way? He has referred to me.

§ Mr. Flannery

I wish to get on. I have already taken a considerable time.

§ Mr. Channon

Give way.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker

Order. If the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Flannery) does not desire to give way, he canot be pressed to do so.

§ Mr. Channon

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. While I of course accept your ruling and bow to it, is it not a convention of the House that when one lion. Member refers to another he then gives way?

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker

That is a matter which the hon. Member concerned must decide.

§ Mr. Flannery

One point which is not often made in education debates is that our State primary schools are comprehensive. Children from a particular neighbourhood, no matter who their parents are, go to the same primary school. Those of us who taught in primary schools know that as soon as the blight of the 11-plus was lifted from us, a great cloud disappeared from the education horizon. It meant that, instead of catering for that examination, we were able to teach our children properly without having to look over our shoulders to consider how many children we would get through the examination. Virtually no primary school teachers who have had experience of the 11-plus would want to reintroduce it, and that is an important factor.

The hon. Member for Chelmsford talked about streaming. Many of us want streaming abolished not merely in primary schools but in secondary schools as well. He said that we should be discussing the size of comprehensive schools and their age range. What, in heaven's name, makes him think that we are not discussing the size of comprehensive schools, their age range and whether there should be streaming? We are discussing all these matters, and to pose them against the struggle for comprehensive education was typical of the tenor of the hon. Member's speech.

Many so-called comprehensive schools are often condemned after a creaming-off process has taken place. What is being condemned in these cases is a secondary modern school. The creaming-off process takes place and then the schools are open to unprincipled attacks launched against them by people who want to retain grammar schools. They say that these schools are comprehensive when, in reality, they are not.

The motives of the anti-comprehensive lobby are clear. They are basically elitist.

1251 We expect the Conservatives to condemn comprehensive education. Many of us would worry if they did not. In time they will undoubtedly move over to it because it will be a vote winner.

They make numerous unprincipled arguments. Every weakness in our society is laid at the door of the teachers and blamed on comprehensive education. One is led to think that a school is an organisation for rectifying the evils of the capitalist society. It is not. It is an organisation which tries to do its best within the framework of a society which is still based on privilege. The Labour Party is doing its utmost to make inroads into that society by trying to make it more benevolent and by utilisng aspects of it in the interests of the working people who have been oppressed by it for so long.

There are normal difficulties in every school, and those difficulties are caused not by the teachers but by the system. There are financial problems in every school. The Conservatives give the impression that the Labour Party loves to make cuts i