The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for opening this debate, and I am grateful for the many contributions. I will do my best to respond to as many as I can in the time available, and I undertake to write to noble Lords on those that I am not able to get to. I put on record that I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, that there are many excellent schools in the private sector, as there are in the public sector. My mother taught at one of them in Malvern. I spent time during my teenage years washing up in the kitchen of another. I know that excellent education is provided in those schools, which is why the department will continue to have, I hope, an important and constructive relationship with the ISC and the ISA in thinking through the whole range of issues that relate to independent schools. But some people listening to this debate might have thought that the intention was to completely do away with the private sector. The noble Lord, Lord Naseby, described how independent education has been with us for centuries. It will be with us for centuries more. People will continue to have a choice of whether they want to educate their child in a state or a private school. I will return to that in a moment. I was a teacher in one of the excellent state schools which educate more than nine in 10 of our children, and I now discover that I attended the same state school as the noble Lord, Lord Hampton. So I will be crystal clear about the focus and priority for this Government. We are determined in government—on these Benches and in the other place—to drive up standards in those schools for the overwhelming majority of the children in this country, so that they may receive the opportunities that, too often, have been the preserve of the rich and the lucky, as many noble Lords have demonstrated. There has been an assumption from some contributors that only some parents have aspirations for their children. As the mother of two children, of course I understand the absolute passion of parents to do the best for their children—to find the place that suits their children the best. That is not confined to people who choose to educate their children in private schools and are able to. As my noble friends Lord Davies and Lord Griffiths made clear, it is an aspiration shared by many parents around the country and one that this Government are determined to meet. Private education is not an option—