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Education and Inspections Bill

When I was at my comprehensive in Newcastle-under-Lyme, I very much enjoyed going out to the ice rink at Altrincham. I can speak only for my area, where the historical legacy of the way in which the system was changed led to the expansion of private education, not the existence de facto of comprehensive schools. I want to turn to the years before 1997 when I was campaigning in Chesham and Amersham in Buckinghamshire with my good friend Keith and other long-suffering Labour stalwarts such as my agent, Peter Ward. The area has some great secondary schools—high schools that are not grammars, such as Chesham high school. However, it would be wrong to say that as a result most parents to whom I spoke are happy with the selective system—quite the contrary. Many would welcome the opportunity of a change, or a proper debate about change, which new clause 39 would facilitate. None of us would be supporting the new clauses if we did not believe that comprehensive education levels up, not down. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North quoted the evidence, which has remained unchallenged by Conservative Members. But there is another factor that is often overlooked. Selective schools, grammar and private, take out of the state system many of the very parents who are most likely to agitate for and contribute to better standards for every child in every school in every community. I want to mention one another overlooked factor. In 2000, when, much to the horror of some of my former teachers, I became a governor of my old school, which is now Wolstanton high school, I was taken aback by its size. It had 1,200 pupils, compared with 600 when I was there. Whereas before it had teachers and form heads, it now had, like so many schools, senior management teams and lots of the bureaucracy involved with administering such a large establishment.