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7.28 pm
Mr. John Gunnell (Morley and Rothwell): If we must meet in Christmas week, it is just as well that we should consider some glad tidings. The Bill is extremely positive, and I congratulate the Government on their single-minded drive to improve standards in education. I welcome the greater involvement of the local education authorities. After 18 years of the Tories drawing education power to the centre, I am glad that at last some authority is returning to the LEAs.
The Government clearly take seriously the principle of partnership. The Bill draws in schools, teachers, governors, parents, pupils, business, the training and enterprise councils and central Government in raising standards across the board.
We must also bear in mind the fact that the Government are making resources available in order to achieve the class size objective. Resources are important if we are to raise education standards. The Government have allocated nearly an extra £2.5 billion to schools, including £1 billion from the contingency reserve and the new deal for schools from 1998-99, and they will provide another £1.3 billion in grants for school maintenance over the next five years. I think that that is proof of the Government's commitment of resources as well as ideas in their single-minded drive to improve education standards.
With regard to the role of parents as envisaged in the Bill, the Jesuit cliche, "Give me the child at five and I will show you the man"--apart from its one-sided focus on the male of the species and its underrating of the years from zero to four--contains the essential truth that the early years of a child's development play a profound part in determining his or her life chances. I am glad that the Bill recognises, as the Secretary of State said when presenting the White Paper in July, that parents are a child's first teachers. Rather than treating that as a mere truism, the Bill contains concrete ideas for ensuring that parents are more involved in enhancing the life chances of their children from early years, through their school years, until they leave school and, sooner or later, the family home. More than that, the Bill contains concrete mechanisms for involving parents in the success of their child's school, and therefore of the community in which they live.
I shall comment on just two measures. First, I turn to the home-school contract. Leeds local education authority, in common with many others, already promotes parental commitment via home-school contracts. When I consulted parents and teachers in my constituency over the summer to gauge their reaction to the White Paper, they suggested that, while home-school contracts are a good idea, they need more legal strength in order to do the job. Therefore, I am pleased that the Government have chosen to put on the face of the Bill the requirement for parents to sign home-school contracts and for governors to ensure that they do so unless exceptional circumstances apply. However, in time, the Government may wish to consider ensuring that contracts are a condition of admission and that failure to observe the requirements of a home-school contract brings a legal sanction upon the head of the parent or guardian.
The contracts spell out that parents also have the right to expect the school and its teachers to display a minimum of good practice in teaching the pupils, just as the school has a right to expect the co-operation of parents. I would want to avoid any problems associated with legal claims for damages on the basis of a pupil's performance, but I think that we must consider the strength of home-school contracts. In addition, the Bill provides for parent governors in schools. Parents must have a genuinely representative voice on boards of governors, which, together with their presence on LEA committees, will help to cement the partnership that the Bill tries to bring about.
Secondly, the Bill gives various roles to LEAs after 18 years of Conservative hostility to those authorities--it was clear from the way in which the Conservatives
presented their policies during the election campaign that LEAs would have ceased to exist if the Conservatives had won the election. I welcome the participation of LEAs and their commitment to raising standards. That can be seen in several specific ways. It is a matter not just of warm words and pious hopes but of definite proposals to enhance co-operation between schools, schools and LEAs, between LEAs, and with other key community and education stakeholders.
We can see that in the proposals for school organisation committees and in the role that LEAs will play in producing early years development plans and development plans that will apply in each area. LEAs will make a constructive and positive impact on the way in which schools approach the raising of standards: their duty will be to promote higher standards. Ofsted may be brought into a school at the behest of the LEA and emergency teams may be sent in by the Secretary of State when a LEA is judged to have failed. Schools will be required to produce capability procedures for removing teachers who are deemed to be poor performers. Those measures will give LEAs a bigger role in ensuring schools take education standards seriously.
Mention was made today of education action zones, which are another option open to LEAs. That proposal has been broadly welcomed, so I shall not dwell upon it now. Education action zones will be particularly important in deprived areas.
I must also comment on class sizes. It is important that we take class size seriously and that we recognise that it matters. For years, I heard Conservative Education Ministers claiming that there was no evidence that pupil performance improved as class sizes were reduced. The abolition of the assisted places scheme is already releasing money under the standards fund that will be used to help infant schools to realise our class size objective and pledge.
However, we cannot legislate for a change to class sizes of 30 or under for all five, six and seven-year-olds in one fell swoop. According to the House of Commons Library, there are as many as 13,502 classes of 31 pupils or over. Speaking to teachers, I found that they rejected any attempt to force a rigid number upon all infant classes within a short time scale--not through any scepticism that the objective was worth realising, but through concern about over-rigidity of prescriptiveness and resources. That concern is shared widely by teachers and local authority representatives alike.
Thankfully, the class size commitment in the Bill is not too prescriptive. It allows the Secretary of State to set class size targets, but they may be determined according to age within the infant school sector and will, I hope, not follow too tight a timetable. The Bill also allows LEAs to draw up proposals for realising the class size objective, thereby allowing local factors to be taken into consideration. Unless flexibility is introduced into the school appeals system, not only will the ability of schools to achieve the class size objective be undermined, but the distance that some children must travel to school will frustrate attempts to encourage parents to give a commitment to the school beyond securing their child's place at it.
The Bill makes clear that parental preference must not
Mr. Patrick McLoughlin (West Derbyshire):
I could not disagree more with the first few words of the speech by the hon. Member for Morley and Rothwell (Mr. Gunnell) when he welcomed the Bill for giving more powers to local education authorities. Looking back on my experiences with my local education authority, I think that any Bill that gives LEAs more power is to be regretted.
We heard the exchanges between the Secretary of State and the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) earlier today. There is a long-running argument in Derbyshire about the amount of money that central Government have given the county council and, at the end of the day, how much of that money has found its way into schools. I regret that the Bill does not set out a way to ensure that the money that the Government provide, irrespective of party politics, finds its way into schools and not, perhaps, into some of the education authorities' favourite projects.
A long-running dispute between myself and Derbyshire county council involves the subsidy of school meals. The Under-Secretary of State answered one of my parliamentary questions only a few weeks ago. I asked the hon. Lady to provide a list of the amount of subsidy in the form of school meals that was given to the shire counties. It will not surprise the House to know, bearing in mind what I have just said, that, over 10 years, Derbyshire came top of the league in providing the greatest subsidy--and not by short measure, but by a huge amount.
From 1986-87 to 1995-96, Derbyshire provided a subsidy of about £150 million. Over the same period, the neighbouring authority of Staffordshire provided a subsidy of about £64 million. If an authority takes a decision to subsidise school meals, it can do so, but the money cannot be spent twice. If an authority decides to subsidise school meals, the money that is used for that purpose will not be available for education, and it will not be available for schools generally.
I am glad to say that it seems now that Derbyshire county council basically agrees with me. There has recently been industrial action between Unison and the council. The council has been trying to reduce the subsidy for school meals by about £2.6 million. For the first time in 11 years, some of the press releases issued by the county council could have been put out under my own name. One such press release reads:
Unfortunately, because the county council wanted to make a political point, it continued with what I believe was an unrealistic subsidy. Finally, it is having to come to grips with reality. That led to industrial action taking place within the county, which is doing no one any good. It is not doing the school meals service any good, and it is not doing pupils' education any good.
Derbyshire has suffered because it provided a subsidy for school meals that was larger than that of any other shire county. The result has been a diminution of the quality of school buildings and an increase in class sizes. At the same time the council can go on only about the difference in spending and in allocation between Hertfordshire and Derbyshire.
In the past, I have supported the case for a review of the additional cost allowance. In that regard, I welcome the Government's undertaking. The previous Government initiated an independent review, and the result was a solution different from that which I wanted. We shall see in due course the Government's eventual solution to area cost adjustments. I understand from a recent parliamentary answer that it will be some time before the Government see area cost adjustments being changed in any way.
Derbyshire county council seems to rely on the difference in spending between it and Hertfordshire county council. That brings me to the annual capital allowances that were announced by the Government last week. The Minister of State sent us a letter which set out what the allowances would be. Even the new Government have given Hertfordshire about £7.2 million and Derbyshire about £5.8 million. We need to spend money on schools, on reducing class sizes and on ensuring that expansion takes place where it is necessary. There is no difference between any of us on those issues, but Derbyshire argued that it was treated unfairly by the previous Government. By the same token, it would seem that it has been treated unfairly by the Labour Government.
I am concerned about the future of grant-maintained schools, given the terms of the Bill. It is clear from the Bill that the Government are proposing to introduce foundation governors, who will come from the local education authorities, to sit on GM school boards. The Government seem to be forgetting some of the battles that
they encouraged when in opposition between schools that wished to become grant maintained and those that did not. The Under-Secretary of State shakes her head--it would seem that she disagrees with me profoundly. Anyone who was an observer when schools were opting for GM status will be aware of what took place.
I understand that the Minister represents a Birmingham constituency. There were horrendous stories circulating in Birmingham about the lengths to which the authority was prepared to go to try to stop schools becoming grant maintained. There were similar stories about other authorities. It is thought now, however, that there will be sweetness and light and that no malice will be held by local education authorities although they have witnessed battles in the past. I do not believe that. On the contrary, I believe that there is a threat to the future and structure of GM schools.
"prejudice the provision of efficient education or the efficient use of resources",
22 Dec 1997 : Column 716
which includes the duty of the LEA to comply with the class size commitment. Given that the Greenwich judgment is still very much in place and that appeals increased by more than 8,500 to 62,900 in the period from 1994-95 to 1995-96, that is good news for schools that are wondering how they can achieve the Government's objective. I also welcome the fact that the Bill states that an LEA's power to direct a school to admit a pupil shall likewise be in accordance with the class size objective and that the school should be a
The need to encourage parental commitment to schools, and thus to their communities, is inevitably compromised by the right to send children many miles away from home in pursuit of a place that may lie in another LEA area. I am glad that the Government have adopted a flexible approach to the class size question.
"reasonable distance from the child's home."
7.38 pm
"Figures released by Unison show how much more efficient the Derbyshire service needs to become to bring it into line with services in other neighbouring counties. Last year Nottinghamshire spent £8.51 per head and Leicestershire £6.77 per head on their school meals services, compared with £12.78 per head in Derbyshire."
Councillor Wilcox, chairman of the education committee, said:
"What these figures actually demonstrate is the need for our service to become more efficient to protect the future of the service and to make it more attractive to parents and pupils."
The council has also been saying that if money is spent on subsidising school meals, that money will not be available for the education service within the county. I agree with that and I much regret that for 10 years we have had a sterile debate about the level of subsidies provided by the county council for school meals when that money should have been made available for the schools to reduce class sizes.
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