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Primary School Places (London)

I apologise for being a little late in arriving for the debate, Mr. Amess. No disrespect was intended to you in the Chair or to the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey), who has, as other Members have said, rightly introduced an important debate that goes to the heart of thinking throughout the capital. It is an acute problem, as is well known, in his royal borough. The royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea has almost exactly the same problem, but it applies across much of London. The hyper-mobility and diversity of the capital's population has become ever more prominent, although perhaps that has always been the case. The Minister represents part of the busy city of Portsmouth, and her Parliamentary Private Secretary, the hon. Member for South Swindon (Anne Snelgrove), represents Swindon—both towns in which I suspect there has been much demographic change in the relatively limited time in which they have been Members of Parliament. The demographic change I have seen in central London and across the capital has gathered enormous pace over the past decade, and that is one of the key facts in the debate, as the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton rightly said in his opening comments. The predictive forecasting model, on which we have all relied, has to a large extent broken down. Demand for school places depends not only on the birth rate, but on migration, and aspects of the birth rate are linked to migration. In certain communities, particularly Muslim communities, there is a tradition of a much higher birth rate, which has had a significant impact on the issue. The hon. Gentleman was right to point out that private education is most prevalent in London, which means that the articulate middle class voices that would normally be upstanding in addressing the issue have been quieter than would otherwise be the case, but perhaps that will begin to change, given the economic downturn and stagnant property market. Many parents with young children who might have considered moving out to the country once their children were beyond primary school age or once a second or third child had been born will not be able to do so for some time. All those factors play an important role in a problem that is quickly catching up with us. It is easy for Opposition Members to criticise the Government for their predictive figures. Without such a high level of mobility, it would be easier to know what the birth rates are in any vicinity, so the number of primary school places that will be needed in four or five years' time could be predicted. I am not simply saying that the Department is at fault in this issue, because there are new concerns about the effect that the level of mobility and diversity in our population is having on the provision of school places, particularly in the capital. I reiterate the hope expressed by the three previous speakers that the Government will give considerable thought to that problem. I hope that you will allow me to say a little bit about local issues in my constituency, Mr. Amess, because the issue has come to the fore in the past few weeks. Indeed, I was contemplating asking for a Westminster Hall debate on a similar issue. I was contacted three weeks ago by Farah Baig of Marylebone Mums, who wished to highlight the group's concern about the provision of state education at primary school level. In her letter to me, she stated that, unfortunately, very little credit was given to the fact that people were long-standing residents of Marylebone and that it was not uncommon for people new to the area to be offered a place before someone who had been a resident for 20 years. On seeking clarification from Westminster city council's school admissions team, she was advised that that was correct procedure and that, despite being state-funded, it was proper for faith schools in particular to have selection criteria. The problem in my constituency is that choice is limited, and is often confined to faith-based schools. A significant proportion of parents take their children out of the state sector, and I fear that they often represent that articulate voice that could make a real difference. By the time they have decided to send their children to fee-paying schools from a young age, there is little incentive for them to make the difference that they otherwise might. Westminster has some fantastic local state schools at primary school level, but I am afraid that they are exclusively faith–based schools, either Church of England or Roman Catholic. However, their results are in the very top grade, even at the national level. Part of the problem is the assumption that those who live in my city-centre constituency are wealthy enough to send their children to private schools if they do not qualify for one of those excellent state faith-based schools. Indeed, Carl Upsall, a leading member of the Marylebone Association, told me:""Either you pay for private schools or you fall at the feet of the church."" I suspect that that sentiment applies to many parts of London and beyond the capital's borders. With the worsening economic situation, people are increasingly keen to see a good state school in their area. I hope that that means that some of those parents might have more of an incentive to make the state system work for them in future, but inevitably that will take time. When it comes to the education of any child of school age, time is one thing that parents do not have on their side. They want a good school now, not the promise of excellence four or five years down the line, by which time their child's education may have been detrimentally affected. Parents are increasingly turning to home schooling because of their concerns about the provision of primary and secondary education in central London. That issue was raised with me only last week by two constituents, and I hope to raise it in a future Westminster Hall debate. Two concerned mothers, Mrs. Helen White and Mrs. Tina Robbins, both decided to educate their children at home, because they were worried about the quality of education in the state sector, particularly with regard to the restrictive curriculum and the culture of levelling down, rather than encouraging excellence. We have an obsessive approach to equality in the educational establishment, and there is an increasing view, perhaps understandably, given the furore over the baby P case and others, that educating children at home is an issue not only for education departments, but for social services. There is more of a disincentive to go down the route of home education, yet some of our most dedicated parents are deciding to educate their children in that way, which in many ways should be welcomed in relation to choice and diversity. The only downside is that it is often a reflection of parents' despair about the quality of education offered by the state.