Don Foster: The hon. Lady's intervention may save time in her winding-up speech. I am grateful for that clarification, but it does not help many people who do not know what it means when they are told that there will be a democratic framework. Does it mean that grant-maintained schools will be brought back into LEA control? I tell Conservative Members who have been heckling me that my party's policy is...
Don Foster: I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving me the opportunity to put the matter on the record. Before I do so, it is slightly bizarre of the hon. Gentleman to talk about the democratic decisions of those parents, because the Conservative party will never agree to have genuine democracy on the issue and give parents the right not only to vote out of LEA control but, equally, to vote back in...
Don Foster: The Minister will be aware that there have been one or two comments on television programmes, although I accept that people have argued that there were misquotes and so on. It is hardly surprising, under the current level of bribes and additional funds that grant-maintained schools—[Laughter.] Conservative Members laugh, but it is quite frightening to hear that they do not believe that...
Don Foster: I am grateful to the hon. Member.
Don Foster: I shall not give way to the hon. Gentleman. I have given way to him several times. The House will want me to make a little progress.
Don Foster: I shall give way to the hon. Member for Colchester, North, as I have not given way to him yet, but then I must make progress.
Don Foster: No, I certainly will not, unless I am allowed to do that in the context of the educational framework that I would like to see in place in this country. If the hon. Gentleman is asking me to do so in the current context, I am not surprised that the Minister was able to say that relatively few want to come back, although one hears increasingly of a number of governors, head teachers, deputies...
Don Foster: In view of the poll results today, the hon. Gentleman is making strange predictions about the future of his party. However, I shall not spend more time trying to make him believe that the grant-maintained policy is failing. The evidence is clear, and few schools are now interested in moving in that direction. The Government's shift on league tables is welcome. As I said in an intervention...
Don Foster: I agree with the need to provide a wide range of information, but I understood the hon. Gentleman to say that Labour would publish league tables based on crude test or examination results. In the past, Labour said that it would not do that.
Don Foster: Before we progress, it might be helpful to the House and others who might be listening if the Minister could clarify what he said. He agreed with his hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, North (Mr. Jenkin) that the tests were summative. From that very Dispatch Box on several occasions, he has said that they are not summative but formative, diagnostic tests aimed at helping teachers and...
Don Foster: I should remind the Minister that, as well as being an adviser to the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, I am also an adviser to the NUT, with which, as the Minister well knows, I have had violent disagreements on a number of occasions. Like the Minister, I should be interested to hear the comments from the Labour party's Front-Bench team. For the sake of the record, will the Minister...
Don Foster: Before the Minister leaves the issue of grant-maintained schools, will he give the current prediction of his Department for the number of pupils in grant-maintained schools by December 1995? I hope that the Minister will not say, as he has on other occasions, that his Department does not make predictions about such matters, because it has regularly done so in various memoranda and in evidence...
Don Foster: The Minister cannot get away with it as lightly as that. His Department makes predictions which, of course, have often been dramatically wrong. There were predictions in the press release relating to the Budget. I ask the Minister again to place on record his Department's prediction about the number of pupils in grant-maintained schools over the next two or three years.
Don Foster: Absolutely.
Don Foster: The right hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Jopling) said in his early remarks that the cut in public spending may cause difficulties in the House. I am not especially concerned about difficulties that may arise for members of the Conservative party, but I am very worried about the effects that some of the public spending cuts will have on the people. I was interested to listen...
Don Foster: indicated assent.
Don Foster: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Don Foster: I, too, congratulate the Secretary of State and the shadow Secretary of State on their recent appointments. I hope that we may now see some consensus in education in the next couple of years. Is the Secretary of State aware of the importance, in the calculation of an individual school's grant, of the number of school meals that are consumed on census day each January? Will she condemn any...
Don Foster: I gave the calculations.
Don Foster: With your permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I should like to begin by making an apology. During Education questions last week, I inadvertently and incorrectly attributed to the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Squire), a quotation which appears in column 817 of the Official Report. Although I rapidly discovered my error before it was pointed out to me by anybody...