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Address in Reply to Her Majesty’s Most Gracious Speech

My Lords, the gracious Speech reaffirms the fact that education remains the main priority of the Government. I want to speak to that and, in particular, about schools, but, before I start, I echo the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. I am disappointed that the usual channels have not made an attempt to group the topics of this debate. In a multi-topic debate, unless grouping is done, there is a random distribution of speeches, which is not what most of us think of as a debate. I hope that this will be the last year in which we suffer under that formula. After spending a great deal of the 1990s making speeches on education, I took a vow never to open my mouth on the subject again, at least in public. Quite honestly, I was disappointed with the low quality of thought and language that seemed obligatory in discussing educational topics. I suppose my peak as an educational guru came when the Times printed my name with the byline ““leading British educationalist”” under a very large photograph of Mr Nelson Mandela. I thought that the time had come for me to retire from the fray. I have been tempted to re-engage by two things. First, this debate gives me an opportunity to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, on his elevation and on his appointment with responsibility for schools. His impressive, confident and well crafted speech gives an indication of the quality of the contributions that we can expect in our debates. I only hope that his flame is not extinguished by ministerial responsibilities. Secondly, I have been modestly encouraged by the Government’s—or perhaps I should say, by the Prime Minister’s—education policy. For as long as I can remember, education policy has lurched around in a kind of drunken frenzy, with structures, curricula and examinations all in a continual state of upheaval. Generations of our schoolchildren, our most valuable asset, have been sacrificed on the altar of ideology, muddle, incompetence and vested interest. Ever since I can remember that has been true. There are welcome signs that that era is now coming to an end. For the first time, one feels that there is a coherent strategy in place for raising school standards. Whether it will work or not only time will tell, but there is a strategy. Let me pick out three principles from the Government’s five-year strategy—I almost said ““five-year plan””—for children and learners, which was issued last July. First, it seems that the line has finally been drawn under what Alastair Campbell called ““the bog-standard comprehensive””. I say ““seems”” because there is a gap between rhetoric and reality, and one is still waiting to see how it will be bridged. The Government have accepted the principle, at least for secondary schools in England, that there will be a variety of schools, each offering something a little different. We now have the remaining grammar schools, special schools, city technology colleges, specialist schools and the new academies that are coming on stream. The Government intend that 95 per cent of all secondary schools will be either specialist schools or academies by 2008. That is not a pipe dream; 2,000 of the 3,000 secondary schools are already in the process of becoming specialist schools. Secondly, parental choice is enthroned as a principle of allocation, rather than LEA allocation. The Government assert the right of,"““every parent to choose from a range of modernised specialist schools or academies””." What that means, or should mean, is that schools for which there is a high demand will be allowed to expand, even if that creates surplus places in schools that parents shun. Those of us who urged that principle in the 1990s could not get the Conservative governments of the day to accept it. I am glad that it has been accepted. Finally, the five-year strategy envisages a further reduction in the role of local education authorities. Unlike the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, I welcome that. The city technology colleges are already outside LEA control and so are the new academies. They are both examples of the fashionable public/private partnership idea. Specialist schools can become foundations schools, which makes them sole owners of their land and buildings and the legal employers of their staff. So, an enlarging number of publicly funded schools will increasingly correspond to the legal status of independent private schools. The philosophy of that approach goes all the way back to the 1980s and to the quasi-market ideas of that period. The Thatcher governments would really have liked to privatise all the public services, but, when that proved to be politically impossible, they settled on the next best thing, which was to marketise them. In education, schools should be allowed to compete for pupils within a publicly funded system. It was that competition between schools for pupils that was supposed to drive up standards and increase efficiency. I am describing the logic of this kind of system, not the system that we actually have. Diversity and choice in public services are difficult for Labour to accept, smacking too much of the supermarket. As far as I can judge, parental choice as a lever for driving up standards has not played a prominent part in government thinking. That thinking focuses much more on target setting, based on a centralised curriculum and examination system. Similarly, the Government see the specialist focus of the specialist schools as a catalyst for internal school improvement, rather than as a magnet to attract parents. It is not what the Government think now that matters, though; it is the framework that they set up and whether it can expand or restrict future development. Here I am moderately hopeful. So, then, two cheers. There are some snags, however, and the Government will have to go further and shed some of their illusions if we are ever to achieve a first-class public education system. First, it seems at least possible that the ““specialist”” label will turn out to be largely cosmetic. The Commons Select Committee on Education has had fun with a debate between two professors, one claiming that specialist schools outperform non-specialist schools, the other that they do not. Both ignore the larger point, it seems to me, which is that any comparison between specialist and non-specialist schools will probably favour the former, whichever way the data are cooked. That is because the most dynamic, entrepreneurial heads and governing bodies will apply for specialist status, and their schools will do better with the same children, whether they are called specialist or not. So when all the schools are called specialist, will we just be back, with a few small variations, to the ““bog-standard comprehensive””? My second point is about foundation schools. They will become the sole owners of their buildings and land, but, as I understand it, they will not be allowed to collateralise their assets for loans. That takes away most of the benefit of ownership, in particular the ability to finance expansion in response to demand. Not even the Conservatives are willing to allow borrowing by secondary schools. That topic will have to be revisited. The Government talk about ““independent specialist schools””, and I believe that the right to borrow is integral to the concept of independence. Finally—here I am on controversial ground, beyond what anyone has said in this debate—I doubt how far improvement in standards can go without introducing means-tested fees, at least into secondary schools. That is the only way of locking parents into the drive for higher standards. There are already signs that the target-setting approach is running out of steam. A study led by Professor Peter Tymms of Durham University found earlier this month that, despite a 58 per cent increase in annual spending on education since 1997, measurable achievements—such as the number of children able to read and write properly on arrival in secondary schools—have levelled off, or indeed are dropping. The fact is that, unless people pay for something, they do not value it, or at least value it as much. I do not suppose for a moment that these issues will be resolved in a day, but they will be at the heart of the debate over education policy in coming years, together with the future of 16–18 education and the exams appropriate to it, the funding of universities and so on. The arrival of the new Minister for Schools at least promises us a more interesting educational time in this House than we have had for some time past, and I wish him all the best.