Tony Blair today admitted that pushing through his school reforms in the face of a large backbench rebellion was like a “high wire act”.
Speaking at his monthly No 10 press conference, Mr Blair recognised that preserving his reforms was vitally important to his authority over his party, and “fundamental” to the Government.
A backbench Commons education committee was meeting today, in which the Conservatives will set out their terms for offering the Prime Minister support to protect his flagship Bill, in case the rebellion overturns his majority.
Today Mr Blair brushed aside the prospect that the result of a key vote - and with it, his political future - might lie in the hands of the Tories.
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“I am not intending to lose it, but it is a bit of a high-wire act just at the moment, I accept that,” he said.
“I have got significant numbers of my own side who are against it. But my job is to go out and say to people ‘this is critical, about standards, about educating our children’.”
The public opponents of the plans include Lord Kinnock, the former Labour leader, and Estelle Morris, a former Education Secretary. John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, also opposes the reforms.
The rebels argue that giving trust schools power over their own admissions will lead to them cherrypicking the bright middle class pupils, and bring a return to what they see as educational apartheid, with the less able majority of children condemned to second-rate “sink” schools.
Mr Blair came close to admitting anger at the rebels. He said: “Angry is the wrong word, but I get really concerned when I hear people talk about how local schools develop and this kind of idea that if you get a really good school, it creams off the best pupils from the other schools.
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“Look, the answer to that is not to stop that good school being good. The answer to that is to go and find out why the other schools aren’t so good, and lift the standards in those schools, and ask why is that good school good?”
Mr Blair described as “extraordinary” the argument - recently put forward by Mr Prescott - that making schools better created problems, by encouraging more parents to apply for places for their children at those schools.
“I’m sure he can’t have said it in quite that way,” he said. “The British public thinks that good schools should be allowed to expand and that if a school is an average school, (we should) help them become a good school. Let nothing stand in the way of that, because the children come first and their opportunities come first.”
Conservatives on the committee of MPs reviewing the Education White Paper say that they will back Mr Blair’s plans to give more autonomy to every school.
Their support highlights Mr Blair’s dilemma: whether to keep to his radical plans, which they support, or to try to win round more of his own MPs by rejecting Tory demands.
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Over the weekend Alan Johnson, the Trade and Industry Secretary, hinted at concessions, but said that the Government was not prepared to compromise over the fundamental principles.
Under the White Paper plans, trust schools would have control over admissions, budgets, staffing and land. In similar fashion to the 900 or so foundation or voluntary-aided schools, they will be run by a charity, university, business or another school.
The committee’s report is expected to form the basis of a compromise between Downing Street and about 100 Labour rebels. A leaked draft of the committee’s report recommended reining back plans for new “trust schools” and giving local authorities more powers over education instead.
But the three Tory MPs on the committee are pushing for the White Paper reforms to be made more, not less, radical. Today the committee was meeting in private to debate about 30 Tory amendments brought by Rob Wilson, the MP for Reading East, before finalising its verdict.
One amendment is understood to call for an obligation on local authorities to promote trust schools. Another is likely to back the White Paper’s suggestion that there should be no more local authority-run community schools.
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All tend to reduce the power of local education authorities compared to the White Paper’s position. The committee’s final report is due to be published on Thursday.
Nadine Dorries, one of the Tories on the select committee, said today that she would have “absolutely no qualms whatever” about backing a Labour education policy.”
“With the White Paper, 90 per cent of it is rhetoric and 10 per cent is substance,” she told BBC Radio 4’s The World At One. “But that 10 per cent is vitally important to education.”
Helen Jones, the Labour MP for Warrington North who also sits on the select committee, told the same programme that it was good heads and good teachers that raised standards, not changing the structures.