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Education and Skills Bill

I commend the Government for getting the Bill on to the statute book. It is a landmark Bill, in exactly the same way that the raising of the school-leaving age in 1972 from 15 to 16 was a landmark piece of legislation. To those who argue against compulsion, I simply say this: do they honestly think that if the 1972 legislation had not put a legal requirement on parents to send their children to school until the age of 16, we would have witnessed the progress that has been achieved since then? It is manifestly obvious that there must be a legal sanction if we want to increase the participation age. However, that does not mean that the legal sanction is the centrepiece of the Government's means of increasing the participation age. The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) is absolutely right that the root cause of our comparatively low level of post-16 participation lies firmly in weaknesses earlier in the education system, and in some aspects of secondary education in particular. However, I return to the point that we touched on in the debate on the first group of amendments on Report. He and his party remain in a state of denial about the relationship between school admissions policies and the capacity of individual schools to perform well and do the best for their children. Some of the problems that the hon. Gentleman described are the legacy of admissions systems based on selection by ability, explicitly or implicitly, and many forms of quasi-selection, which leave large numbers of young people demoralised and demotivated, because they know at an early age that they have been deselected. That is one of the root causes of alienation in the secondary stage of education, and low self-esteem and demotivation at the age of 16, which result in Britain having one of the lowest post-16 participation rates of any country in the OECD. I commend the Government for the progress that they are making on fair admissions to our secondary schools. The Bill will bring about significant changes as the years go by. However, the longer we put off tackling the fundamental issue of selection by ability, which is the cause of our hierarchical secondary school system, the more difficult it will be to expand the numbers of young people wishing voluntarily to stay on beyond the age of 16. We want a generation of young people who enjoy school, who have high self-esteem and self-confidence and who are able to follow a curriculum that is relevant and tailored to their interests. The Government's curriculum reforms for 14 to 19-year-olds are absolutely central to this aim. I want briefly to touch on two other points, which have not been mentioned in the debate so far. The first is transport. I want to say to my hon. Friends on the Front Bench that, sooner or later, the House will have to look far more seriously at the question of concessionary travel for all young people. The changes proposed in the Bill will bring about a significant increase in demand for public transport. They will require more young people to travel further and in many more different directions in the course of a week than ever before. In the context of the national debate about climate change, congestion charging and the cost of transport, the Government will need to build on the success of the national concessionary fare scheme for pensioners. They must now start to do serious work on a national concessionary fare scheme for young people, because that will be the key to ensuring that the fairly complex arrangements envisaged by the Bill are successful. Finally, now that we have a 14-to-19 curriculum and a 14-to-19 phase of education, and now that we expect to see far more young people continuing beyond the age of 16, is it not absolutely logical that we need fair funding across the 14-to-19 phase? We can no longer justify the differential funding between school sixth forms, colleges and workplace training. Perhaps the Minister will say a few words about that when he winds up the debate.