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Education and Inspections Bill

I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather), who seems to have a skewed view of the principled stance taken by head teachers. I do not believe that there is mass cheating by head teachers who deliberately manipulate the admissions system to boost their results. If that is happening, we need to take action against head teachers who are behaving in such an unprincipled way, but I do not believe that it happens to the extent that she suggested. Listening in Committee to the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) speaking about admissions, and to other Labour Members over the years, it is hard not to conclude that the new clauses tabled by him and his colleagues are driven primarily by ideology, rather than by a concern for raising standards in our schools. That ideology is based on the notion that the quality of a school is determined solely or largely by the intake of the school. That is not true. What makes a good school is the quality of the teaching, the quality of the head’s leadership, and the ethos and approach to behaviour and discipline taken by the school. There are schools in extremely deprived parts of the country where behaviour is impeccable because the head has in place strong systems and procedures that ensure that poor behaviour is dealt with swiftly and predictably. There are schools in leafy county towns that have appalling behavioural problems because of weak leadership. There are schools that have intakes where the most academic pupils have been creamed off to the local grammar school, yet those schools achieve examine results higher than most comprehensive schools. Wellington high school in Trafford, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady), is in effect a secondary modern school, where the 40 per cent. most academic go to the grammar school. At Wellington high school last year, 73 per cent. achieved five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C, 66 per cent. including English and Maths, and there are no GNVQs in that figure. That figure—73 per cent.—is way above the national average of 56 per cent. By contrast, there are many schools in leafy prosperous towns and suburbs that languish with just 35 per cent. achieving five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C, and in a number of cases schools with much worse results. In a small minority of schools, the intake can be so challenging that it becomes overwhelming and we need to intervene, but in the vast majority of the 3,500 secondary schools, the intake is largely not as relevant as what happens within the school.