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Education and Skills Bill

That is a valid point, and one could make it again with reference to other areas. The Select Committee recently heard evidence from a former rear-admiral who now heads a group for public schools. He told us that what mattered is ethos. I said that Lord Adonis had said we should get the DNA of grammar schools and public schools and transfer it to the rest of the sector, and asked what was the DNA that was so good for this ethos. Was it the fact that those schools spent twice as much per pupil, that their class sizes were half that in the state system, that the teachers were paid more and had longer holidays, and that they selected only bright kids and they could get rid of any problem kid, or was it something else to do with the ethos? I think that question answers itself. As I have mentioned, I thought that the Government were absolutely committed to addressing selection as a result of what they said about it, and the action they have taken on it in Northern Ireland. The Conservatives certainly were committed to that, until their research-based and visionary spokesman was sacked for stating the obvious based on that research. I have to address my own party, too. My party leader, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg), said on January 29 that"““if education is to deliver liberal social justice we must ensure that a minority of schools don't skim off the brightest pupils at will, leaving other schools to suffer the consequences of poorer attainment and weaker reputations. That's why we must end selection in academies, trust schools and foundation schools.””" I have to ask the same question, however: why does that sentence not conclude with the additional statement, ““and grammar schools””, because they are clearly the biggest problem in terms of overt selection in this country? They are the elephant in the room that the Government and the Conservatives ignore—as do others. I thought there was cross-party agreement on this issue, but the key is how we push towards the final goal. Perhaps we should be happy. We know that politics is the art of the possible, and that we get incremental improvements. Under the previous Prime Minister, it was difficult to get this Government to admit that there was any problem on admissions. Things have been moving forward much more rapidly since the change of Prime Minister last year, so we can hope, and new clause 14 goes some way in the right direction. With amendments such as new clause 18 and the amendments standing in the name of the hon. Member for Bury, North and myself, things would move a bit further, but the elephant in the room is the issue that new clauses 20, 21 and 22 address—the outright, open, overt selection by ability that privileges a small elite in the grammar schools and penalises the large majority in the secondary moderns, which, whether they are called comprehensives, community schools or academies, are indeed secondary moderns in that situation.