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State Schools (Independence)

I began this debate by saying that I would try to bring a thoughtful spirit of inquiry to the Chamber, and I hope that we shall retain that. When people talk about grammar schools, emotions quite often take over and the debate starts to generate more heat than light. I am not opposed to the extension of grammar schools, of which there are about 167 in the country, but I am much more interested in having a debate about education that would improve the quality of life of all our children in all schools in the country. We need a debate far wider than an exclusive discussion of grammar schools. By all means, we can debate those schools, but I deliberately phrased the title of the debate so that it focused on the interests of the many, not the few. It is important that any policy should be assessed according to the impact that it might have on the most vulnerable. I feel that strongly, given my experience with children with special educational needs in my constituency. If we are to give schools greater independence and parents effective power, we need to ask ourselves about the impact that that might have on the more vulnerable in our education system. For me, the key critical test, first and foremost, is whether such children would be better off. We could come up with a system that ensured that. Too often, the statementing process to which those with special educational needs are subjected has put vulnerable individuals at the mercy of education experts. Such children have been more dependent on remote experts and, on occasion, have suffered as a result. The immoral policy of enforced inclusion and the immoral closure of specialist schools, such as the Leas school in Clacton in my constituency, which help those with special educational needs, are further manifestations of what happens when schools, parents and pupils surrender their independence to experts happy to dictate what they believe is right for other people’s children. By reforming the statementing process, we could ensure that greater independence meant that children with special educational needs were better off. Such children’s statements should not only be specific in spelling out what is necessary to help them, but include a form of financial entitlement that indicates the LEA money to which the child is entitled to have their needs met. If we introduced such a system and made schools more independent, we could show that, demonstrably, the more vulnerable children in our education system benefited the most. I shall wrap up my remarks and open the Floor to debate by drawing a few conclusions. There will be those who are opposed to ideas about parent power and setting schools free. Those who oppose greater independence for parents and schools are, in essence, stuck in a regressive 1950s mindset. It is progressive to give parents greater choice and to set schools free. The days of deference to remote experts are rightly over. We who argue for school independence and parental choice are the real progressives now. We need a system of education that offers genuine pluralism that cannot be dictated from the centre, and with pluralism and choice will come genuine innovation. To conclude, the only people in this room who are experts on what is right for children are those of us who are parents and who have the expertise to decide what is right for our child. The days of national politicians dictating what sort of education every child should receive should be over.