 House of Commons |
Session 2005 - 06 Publications on the internet Standing Committee Debates Education and Inspections Bill |
Education and Inspections Bill |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Alan Sandall, Committee
Clerk † attended the
Committee Standing Committee ETuesday 2 May 2006(Afternoon)[Part I][Mr. Christopher Chope in the Chair]Education and Inspections BillClause 36General
restriction on selection by
ability Amendment
proposed [this day]: No. 441, in clause 36, page 26, line 7, at
beginning insert ‘Until the school
year starting on or after 1st August 2010,'.—[Mr.
Chaytor.] 4
pm Question
again proposed, That the amendment be
made.
The
Chairman: I remind the Committee that with this we are
discussing the following: AmendmentNo. 209, in clause 36,
page 26, line 7, at end insert ‘or an
academy'. Amendment
No. 230, in clause 36, page 26, line 7, at end
insert ‘, academy, city technology
college or city college for the technology of the
arts.'. Amendment
No. 210, in clause 36, page 26, line 8, leave out from ‘ability'
to end of line 11 and insert ‘or
aptitude unless selection is for the purpose of section 101 (permitted
selection: pupil banding) of SSFA
1998.'. Amendment
No. 367, in clause 36, page 26, line 11, at end
insert ‘,
or (c) the school is a
comprehensive with a grammar
stream.'. Amendment
No. 442, in clause 36, page 26, line 11, at end
insert— ‘(1A) The admission
authority for each secondary school, in exercising their functions,
shall— (a) have regard
to the general principle that secondary education is to be provided in
comprehensive schools, and (b)
determine that arrangements for the admission of pupils for compulsory
education is not based on any test of ability or
aptitude, except where the
admission arrangements have been determined under section 101 of SSFA
(pupil banding) or regulations made under section [Retention of
selection by ability or aptitude after parent
ballot].'. Amendment
No. 368, in clause 36, page 26, line 13, leave out ‘or
any'. Amendment No.
45, in clause 36, page 26, line 28, at end
insert ‘and (c)
in subsection (4), after paragraph (b)
insert—
“(c) any selection of 10 per cent of pupils
by aptitude in a subject that is a compulsory target-setting subject
for the purposes of the specialist schools
programme.”.'. Clause
stand part. New clause
8—Freedom of
Selection— ‘(1) A
maintained school shall have complete freedom to select pupils by
academic or other ability at its absolute
discretion. (2) Sections 99 to
103 of SSFA 1998 shall cease to have effect.'.
New clause
51—Retention of selection by ability or aptitude after
parental ballot— ‘(1)
The Secretary of State must, after consultation, by regulations,
make— (a) such
supplementary, incidental or consequential provision,
or (b) such transitional,
transitory or saving
provision, as he considers
necessary or expedient for the purposes of, in consequence of, or for
giving full effect to subsection
(2). (2) Regulations under
subsection (1) must, in particular, make provision
to— (a) amend or
repeal Part 3, Chapter 2 (selection of pupils) of SSFA 1998 to provide
for the legislation to be consistent with the general principle that
there must be a ballot of parents of pupils attending local primary
schools if any secondary school is to continue to select pupils by
ability or aptitude after the school year starting on or after 1st
August 2011, and (b)
amend or revoke any subordinate legislation (within the meaning of the
Interpretation Act 1978) made before the passing of this Act necessary
to achieve the principle set out
above. (3) Nothing in this Act
is to be regarded as limiting the generality of subsection
(1).'.
Amendment No. 443, in clause
158, page 108,line 12, at end
insert— ‘(aa) regulations
under section [Retention of selection by ability or aptitude after
parent
ballot],'. Mr.
David Chaytor (Bury, North) (Lab): To continue the point
on streaming and setting that I was making before the lunch break,
there is a contradiction between the Opposition’s policy of
devolving as many powers as possible to individual schools and their
plan simultaneously to centralise decisions on streaming and setting. I
am sure that they appreciate that that is a contradiction, which must
be worked out. The
evidence and advice of those working within the education service on
streaming and setting is not quite as straightforward as the Opposition
would like us to believe.
Mr.
Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con): On the
first point, responsibility must be shared. Some things are the
responsibility of the day-to-day management of schools and some are the
responsibility of central Government. Having said that, our policy is
not to be prescriptive on setting and streaming; it is about having a
view of what works, exhortation and disseminating best practice. It is
about persuasion and not necessarily
prescription.
Mr.
Chaytor: That is a helpful clarification, and it helps to
support my next point. The review of the impact of setting—I
shall leave streaming for the moment—was considered by the
Education and Skills
Committee in its report on the White Paper. Our information—the
view of academics at the Institute of Education, university of
London—was that the evidence on the impact of setting was
mixed. Schools set in
certain subjects, and the subjects with the most incremental structure
are those most likely to be taught in set groups, but even in such
subjects, such as English and history, there is a powerful body of
evidence to suggest that teaching in mixed-ability groups brings the
best out of children in all ability bands. If the hon. Gentleman is
backtracking from his previous adamant view that setting must be
increased, that is helpful. I hope that he will look at the body of
work done by the Institute of Education and tell us why the
Conservative members of the Select Committee, in their minority report,
deleted a section of the main report that referred to that evidence.
That was an example of evidence-based policy making with a
vengeance.
Mr.
Gibb: The hon. Gentleman needs to be careful with
evidence-based policy making in the education sector. Much
evidence-based policy is not scientifically based. We will table an
amendment later in the Committee to insist that research paid for by
the Department for Education and Skills is scientifically based, with a
control group of randomly placed children. That cannot be done
deliberately, but it can be done inadvertently, and we need to focus
only on research of that kind. In America it is now the law that
state-funded research must be scientifically based. We need to ensure
that the evidence on which we base our policy is as rigorous in
education as in
medicine.
I wish to
spell out the reality of educational achievement in Britain in the past
30 years. The Opposition have argued that we should retain the status
quo based on their belief in a golden age of selective education, which
occurred, I imagine, sometime in the 1950s, when old maids cycled to
communion drinking their warm beer as they went along. That bears no
relation to modern
reality. In 30 years,
we have moved from a situation in which our secondary admissions system
was wholly selective, and half of young people left school at 15
without a single qualification to their name, to one in
whichthe majority of our schools operate non-selective
admissions policies—although we all know the degree to which
there is a covert selection system, and I welcome the fact that the
Government are taking that seriously—and in which approximately
95 per cent. of children leave school with a qualification and 55 per
cent. obtain five GCSEs at grades A to C. Those are results that could
only have been dreamed of by their parents.
That enormous advance in our
achievement, coupled with the year-on-year advance in A-level results,
the year-on-year increase in participation in higher education and the
steady improvement in our overall staying-on rate at the age of
16—although we still have a long way to go and we do not perform
well compared with other OECD countries—has been brought about
by the gradual introduction of non-selective admissions policies over
the past 30 years. It
has not been achieved by increases in the numbers of selective schools
or of pupils who are
selected. That is
recognised by most of the objective research on the subject. I
mentioned the OECD programme for international student assessment
survey that concluded that those countries with the greatest equity in
their secondary school admissions policies succeed in producing the
best results for their young people. I also quoted the research from
the National Foundationfor Educational Research, which looked
at the performance of the upper quartile of our young people in
selective and non-selective schools and concluded that the upper
quartile of the ability range in non-selective schools performed
equally well, if not better, as their peer group in selective schools.
The idea that selection is necessary to raise the achievement of the
most able is not the
case. How are we to
move forward? In amendments Nos. 441 to 443 and new clause 51 I propose
what I consider a constructive way to deal with the remaining anomalies
in the system and to ensure the logical development of the all-party
consensus on selection that superficially appears to exist. It follows
the precedent set in Northern Ireland where the Government took the
decision to end formal academic testing in 2008. My amendment suggests
it should be done in 2010 in England. My proposal allows a period of
debate about the alternatives, it will enable parents to engage in that
debate, and it will allow local authorities and individual schools to
propose different ways in which their schools could be reorganised.
That debate will have to take place in the years to 2010 anyway,
because of the impact of falling rolls and the “building schools
for the future” programme—the new capital investment that
is coming into our schools will bring about some
reorganisation. Most
importantly, my proposal also maintains the commitment in our 1997
election manifesto that parents would be able to vote on selection. It
simply changes the issue on which they are voting—whether to get
rid of it or to reintroduce it. My amendment gives them the power to
reintroduce it if they so wish. I do that in the full knowledge that
wherever selective admission systems have been abolished in Scotland,
Wales or England, there has been not a single successful attempt by
parents or local authorities to reintroduce it. I conclude from that
that once selection is eliminated from the system, the overwhelming
majority of parents and local politicians of every party have no desire
to reintroduce
it. Finally I should
like to make a few small points on aptitude and on banding. My right
hon. Friend the Minister said that the amendments would not permit
banding. I may have made a drafting error, but as I understand it, the
purpose of amendment No. 210 is to end selection other than the form of
selection that would apply in systems of banding. I think that I have
taken care of that point, but I may be in error and I accept
responsibility for that.
On selection by aptitude, the
amendment includes both aptitude and ability. The only point that I
would like to make is to repeat the memorable words of my right hon.
Friend the Member for Holborn andSt. Pancras (Frank Dobson)
who asked whether Manchester United paid £3 million for Wayne
Rooney merely because he had an aptitude for scoring goals.
That highlights the continuing difficulty of separating the concepts of
aptitude and ability, and I am not sure that we have resolved that
problem. I am grateful for the Minister’s detailed response and
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
amendment. Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn. Amendment
proposed: Amendment No. 45, inclause 36, page 26, line
28, at end
insert ‘and (c)
in subsection (4), after paragraph (b)
insert— “(c) any
selection of 10 per cent of pupils by aptitude in a subject that is a
compulsory target-setting subjectfor the purposes of the
specialist schools programme.”.'.—[Mr.
Hayes.] Question
put, That the amendment be
made:— The
Committee divided: Ayes 5, Noes
14.
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