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Education and Skills Bill

I will leave the exact number of signatures required and the exact rules of the ballot to the imagination, as there is no reference to them in new clause 20. New clause 21, moving along the spectrum, deals with the issue in a different way. Whereas in new clause 19 I tried to reverse the assumption that all parents want to avoid their local school by building in an assumption that many parents want their children to attend their nearest school, in new clause 21 I try to shift the focus of debate from the choice between selection and non-selection to the age at which selection takes place and the interface between selection and choice. New clause 21 reiterates the case that selection by ability is completely unacceptable, for the reasons outlined earlier, but says that there comes a point in the education system at which children have to choose which curriculum they will follow. Few people in the House would challenge the notion that selection takes place when people enter a university—there clearly has to be a selective process for a degree course. Many people would accept that there needs to be a form of selection at the age of 16, as people move on to level 3 education. An absolutely fascinating question concerns the implication of the emergence of the 14-to-19 curriculum and the development of diplomas for selection by ability. Another fascinating question concerns the role of an institution in choosing which pupils should be admitted to a diploma programme and the role of an individual pupil, with the support and advice of their teacher and their parent, in deciding which programme they want to progress to. New clause 21 reiterates the inappropriateness of selection by ability at the age of 11, but accepts that at a certain stage of a young person's progress through the system some selection takes place. It emphasises that it is far better if children and young people can choose the curriculum that they want to follow, on the advice of their teachers and parents, rather than having an arbitrary institutional decision made to keep them out of an educational establishment. Finally, new clause 22 is the big bang solution. It asks why on earth the Government do not just get on with it and legislate against selection by ability at the age of 11, as Harold Wilson did 42 years ago.