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Mr. Hilton Dawson (Lancaster and Wyre): Coming from the city of Lancaster, I have some understanding of what the right hon. Gentleman is saying. In arguing for the status quo, he is surely undermining the case of his right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Mr. Dorrell) that parents should be able positively to ballot in favour of grammar schools.
Mr. Curry: If it is a postulate of the Government that people should be able to change a school from a grammar school to a comprehensive school, and if the Government believe that we should have a diversity of education, it must be intellectually consistent to argue that parents should also be able to ballot to return to grammar school status. I do not think that that would happen often. I said in my very first sentence that we should look towards performance and not form in education.
I do not think that my party's campaign for a grammar school in every town made a great deal of sense. I did not think that the Labour party's views on grammar schools, which kept changing with every blow of the wind, made a
great deal of sense; nobody knew where it stood. Sensible people on both sides of the argument wanted to bring it to an end. We wanted to look towards performance and delivery.
In the modern world, public services are increasingly asked to demonstrate that they can justify the funding spent on them. That is right; I have no quarrel with that.
A ballot must be requested by 20 per cent. of parents--but over how long? Will the list be open for a month or a year? We know what will happen; people will persuade others to sign for a ballot on the grounds that they are not voting to change the school, but merely voting for a debate. It is a bit like Members of Parliament being asked to sign early-day motions--nothing will happen; it is just an expression of opinion. Before we know where we are, ballots will be triggered.
Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham):
My right hon. Friend has put his finger on an important point. Does he agree that, if the period in which signatures can be collected is not limited, we will be in danger of creating a charter for militant political activists--for what Harold Wilson described, in a different context, as a small and tightly knit group of politically motivated men?
Mr. Curry:
We are in danger of creating an almost permanent situation similar to that on the board of Newcastle United over the past few days. Such uncertainty would be to everyone's disadvantage. How long will the petition be valid? If there is no time scale, the five-year gap between ballots does not mean much, because people can collect signatures in the meantime.
Mr. Brady:
Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be wrong for it to be possible for a petition to roll over to a subsequent year, given that the parents who had signed it may not be part of the eventual electorate?
Mr. Curry:
I absolutely agree. Someone who had signed a petition in the initial stages might no longer be eligible to vote by the time of the ballot.
How will campaigns be funded? Rightly, local education authorities are to have no say. Governors are also apparently to have no say. However, I am worried that organisations such as the National Union of Teachers will throw hundreds of thousands of pounds at the campaign to comprehensivise British education.
I should like the Government to issue regulations. They should at least have a view on the funding of campaigns. The Freedom Association, or some similar organisation, will come in on the other side. Before we know where we are, megabucks will be thrown at the campaign. In the ideological battle, people will forget that kids' future is at stake. Opinion in small towns will be polarised, and a divisive bitterness will re-emerge in communities.
If a ballot results in a vote for reorganisation, who will pay for it? The reorganised schools would not use the same buildings in Ripon or Skipton. Where would funding come from for the necessary major physical reorganisation?
I accept that the Minister probably wishes that he did not have to bring the proposals forward. They are the tail end of the old policy. The Government would--rightly--prefer to address a more forward-looking agenda. In many respects they have done so. I support that. Arguments
about structures are out of date. We have tried to move the agenda to what happens in schools. How do we improve performance? How do we judge performance? How do we ensure value for money? How do we know that people are getting what they are paying for in education? How are their natural aspirations being achieved?
In the many small towns that still have grammar schools, I foresee a sustained period of bitterness and polarisation.
Mr. Campbell-Savours:
So you assume you will lose.
Mr. Curry:
I do not assume that. The hon. Gentleman should listen to what I am saying.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord):
Order. More importantly, Members should not intervene from a sedentary position, and Members who are on their feet should not respond to them.
Mr. Curry:
I regret that my natural courtesy overcame protocol.
We need to move the agenda forward. Grammar schools still exist. If they were continuing to fire the old salvos across the road at the secondary moderns, I should not leap to their defence. I do not leap to their defence on ideological grounds. Frankly, if anyone could not run an effective education system in the socio-economic conditions of north Yorkshire, my advice would be, "Give up." That is true of Kent and Sussex too, and of large parts of Essex.
I do not believe that comprehensive education would be a catastrophe in North Yorkshire. Heavens above, we have good enough conditions there for it to work. I am asking, "Is it worth the candle?" Do we really want to go back to that argument, or should we look forward to a different agenda in which, most importantly, the secondary modern schools will be able to find a new role in the world?
It is a great mistake to assume that the debate is about grammar schools alone. It is also about the other schools, and about giving secondary moderns a chance to find a new vocation--if I may use a Gallic word that I hope my hon. Friends will not misinterpret--so that they can carve a valid, different, high-quality place for themselves in the education world. If we can do that, we can put the old arguments behind us.
Mr. Dawson:
I take the right hon. Gentleman's point about the debate being not only about grammar schools but about the other schools too, but if the system that he describes is so good, would it not be a mark of confidence in that system to hold a ballot? Would not the system be validated by a ballot?
Mr. Curry:
That may be so, but we know precious little about the details of the ballots or about who would be able to vote. The evidence is circumstantial; we know little about the time scale, and little about the funding. We need precision to be able to come to the judgment that the hon. Gentleman suggests.
Mr. Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield):
Does my right hon. Friend not agree that Labour Members have been the masters of the art of looking to focus groups? If the
Mr. Curry:
My hon. Friend is confident about the outcome of a ballot. I do not make a judgment about that, because my argument is not about whether grammar schools are a "good thing" or a "bad thing". I am simply arguing that the measures before the House would lead to a period of uncertainty, and certainly to a period of division and argument. Above all, they would force the schools concerned to turn their backs on the progress that they are now making towards more extensive co-operation and the creation of a separate identity that works, and that delivers diversity of education, based on excellence in each case.
Mr. Rowe:
My right hon. Friend may be interested to know that some of the children who live in my constituency go to a school in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe), which, far from being a grammar school, managed through a parental ballot to become grant-maintained, and this year is aiming to send at least two of its children to Oxford or Cambridge.
Mr. Curry:
I look forward to the time when the city school in Ripon has a graduates club, and--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The right hon. Gentleman is now far away from the amendments, and I should be grateful if he would return to them.
Mr. Curry:
The point that I am trying to make, Mr. Deputy Speaker, is that one should not get locked into a particular mindset about what a grammar school can do and what a comprehensive or a secondary modern school can do. If people set their minds on developing those schools instead, they can achieve remarkable things--but they have to begin by putting the old arguments aside. In Ripon and Skipton, we are doing that.
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