---

Education and Skills Bill

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. My contention is that those who criticise the Government for their approach to admissions are on to something. Instead of ensuring a genuine expansion in the number of good school places, the Government want to ration the limited number of such places. In Soviet Russia, there were a few goods that were worth while, such as Zil limousines, and they were reserved for the nomenklatura, the bureaucratic elite. As far as this Government are concerned, there are a few good school places and they will be allocated at random or through the admissions code. They believe that that is enough to justify their approach to education. Instead of concentrating and devoting their intellectual energy to generating more good school places, for the Government it is a matter of dividing up what already exists—a classic left-wing approach.