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Education and Inspections Bill

I wish to respond to a couple of points. It is almost as if some kind of Scandinavian Utopia exists. We should be comparing like with like. Would that the UK was identical to Finland—I do not know whether I really do want it to be identical to Finland. But if it was, we would have to accept a slightly smaller population—about 5.2 million—and a country that was ethnically homogenous. That is hardly the case in the UK, where income inequality is one of the lowest in the OECD. I do not agree that Finland is a country that we could aspire to and match, due to the factors that I have just mentioned,. I agree that the international report mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, is interesting. I have not looked at the OECD report, but I will do so. The international report states that following the reforms of 1998, "““Finns are now free to choose which school their children are educated in””" and that many parents in urban areas now exercise choice. That is a really interesting scenario. The report also states: "““Choice is now exercised by many parents in heavily urbanised areas of Finland—for example in Helsinki in 2002, approximately 50 per cent of children entering secondary schools at ages 12 and 13 requested a school other than the one they were allocated to””." Not all the people who value choice are in the highest socio-economic groups. That is interesting. Even in Sweden, another much vaunted and justifiable example, there is no firm evidence of the impact of reforms, but a decade after the reforms, Sweden has one of the least ability-segregated school systems in the OECD. In areas where children have been encouraged by their local authority to choose and have been given support and information to help them to choose, the least well off appear to take advantage of the choices. So often we hear it said that parents do not want choice, but I believe that is invalid.