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Education and Inspections Bill

The point is that the new clause would deal with the remaining anomalies in the system. I take it as read that the three main political parties have settled their argument about what happens in the majority of the country. Of course, there is an internal debate in the Tory party between those who deeply resent the change of policy and those who are prepared to put up with it; but that is a matter for the Tories, and I suggest that they go somewhere else and have that internal debate. New clause 39 has to be seen together with new clause 40. In retrospect, it may have been preferable to incorporate the latter into the former, because new clause 40 calls for an independent review of the admissions arrangements. So the strength of the argument is simply this. If the Government accepted the new clause, they would build on the all-party consensus that no longer accepts selection as the organising principle for admission to secondary education by following through the logic of that consensus and establishing the end-date of 2010. Six months after the Bill has been enacted, an independent review body would be established to examine all aspects of our admissions arrangements, and to study the evidence of the impact of admissions arrangements in different parts of the country. The review body would report before 2010, and we could then have an informed debate based on evidence, not on ideology or prejudice. Parents would then form their judgments in the light of that informed debate. That is precisely why I am confident that if such a procedure were adopted, very few parts of the country would choose to reintroduce selection. It is hugely significant that since the great change to our admissions policies under the Labour Government between 1964 and 1970, and under the Conservative Government between 1970 and 1974—of course, we all know which Tory Secretary of State was responsible for abolishing more selection in our system than anybody else—we have been unable to have that informed debate. I draw an analogy with the way in which we have tried to resolve other intractable problems when the political parties have themselves found it difficult to reach agreement. All the parties agreed that it was necessary to get a neutral third-party expert to consider the funding of higher education, and we invited Ron Dearing to take charge of the commission dealing with HE funding. The Government did not accept everything in the Dearing report, but it was subsequently considered to be the authoritative body of evidence and argument, and now we all refer to it. I am delighted that, in another of the Tories’ historic flip-flops, they have adopted our policy on HE funding. I also draw attention to the impact of the Tomlinson report on education reform for 14 to 19-year-olds. That issue was a political football that the parties kicked about for a number of years. There was a desperate need for consensus, and we resolved the problem by setting up an independent review body under the chairmanship of Mike Tomlinson. [Interruption.] No—Mike Tomlinson suggested that there would be a 10-year period of reform and change, and the Government have taken the first steps as part of that reform. Let us move outside education and consider the analogy of pensions policy, the implications of an ageing work force, and the balance between the responsibilities of the state, the individual and the employer. What did we do to deal with that issue? We brought in a former president of the CBI and gave him the task of building a national consensus on pensions policy. We can draw some lessons from the Turner report. A few months ago, there was very little public support for the raising of the state retirement age. Because of the work of the Turner commission and the informed debate that followed the publication of its report, the Government are now confident enough to raise the retirement age and a majority of the public are in favour because they now understand the arguments clearly. That is the best analogy I can give for the way in which I would envisage new clause 40 operating, with an independent review body of admissions. We need a neutral expert to lead the national debate and gather all the evidence. With such a lead, we could kill off all the old sterile arguments about which kind of school is best and how many A to C grades this school has as opposed to that school. We could really focus on the impact of selection in our system and, once we did so, people could form their views accordingly. I assume—I may be wrong, and they can correct me later—that the Conservatives have reached their new position because they understand that selective admissions policies lower achievement overall. They understand, because they have read the recently published evidence from Professor Jesson, chief academic adviser to the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust; because they have considered what the National Foundation for Educational Research has been saying for many years; and because they have read what the London Institute of Education has said. The Conservatives know that the brightest children perform equally well, if not slightly better, in all-ability schools than in selective schools. They know that the impact of selection is to depress results overall; to depress post-16 participation rates overall; and to increase levels of segregation overall. The Tory party also knows the differential between selective and non-selective schools, in respect of the proportion of children on free schools meals. It is slightly over 1 per cent. in selective schools and almost 17 per cent. in the population as a whole. Similar figures exist for children with special educational needs and, in some parts of the country, from minority ethnic groups—an issue that has not been examined in the detail that it deserves. The Tories also know what we find if we compare Northern Ireland, the most selected area with the highest levels of segregation, with Scotland, with the least segregation; it compares favourably with the Scandinavian countries that manage to combine equity and high standards. In Northern Ireland, the number of adults in the population who left school with no qualifications is twice the number for Scotland. In Scotland, the number of adults in the work force with degrees or degree-equivalent qualifications is almost 50 per cent. higher than in Northern Ireland. That is the most dramatic evidence that selective systems depress results overall, lower levels of attainment and increase levels of social segregation.