Christopher Chope (Christchurch, Conservative)

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],'.

David Chaytor (Bury North, Labour)

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.

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

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.

David Chaytor (Bury North, Labour)

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.

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

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.

David Chaytor (Bury North, Labour)

I agree, and that is something on which I am sure we can have cross-party consensus.

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.