"Diversity which enables schools to find and foster the strengths of every single child Diversity which refuses to accept failure ... which ensures that the goal is to level up, not level down ... which enables local schools to become centres of excellence, playing to their own strengths but acting as a resource to other schools and to the wider community."Peter Downes, past president of the Secondary Heads Association, said Mr Blunkett was "up a gum tree". He added: "Where schools are genuinely comprehensive there is very strong evidence from exam results to show that lower and middle-ability pupils are doing better than they would have done in secondary modern schools. Where has he got the idea that we are all ideologically bound to mixed-ability teaching? The idea went out years ago."Nigel de Gruchy, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, said: "Labour have to come clean and admit that specialisation implies selection."Some specialisations will prove more popular than others. The idea that children could take advantage of specialist teaching at other schools is totally impractical."A spokeswoman for the National Union of Teachers said: "The linking of schools is a sensible use of scarce resources.

It extends the opportunities of children and makes sense in such hard-pressed times."Leading article, page 12. Had speakers in Monday's Scott debate been required to wear their old school ties, the suspicions aired in the Commons yesterday would have been aroused much sooner. For of the 13 Tories who spoke from the back benches, six of the most loyal were old boys of Eton - the same public school attended by William Waldegrave, one of the two ministers most at risk in the arms-to-Iraq affair. And five of the same baker's dozen went to Oxford University - as did both Mr Waldegrave, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and his partner in the dock, Sir Nicholas Lyell, the Attorney General. This preponderance of Old Etonians and Oxford chaps was spotted by Labour MP Barry Sheerman (Hampton Grammar and the LSE) who asked the Speaker Betty Boothroyd if she had come under "undue pressure" from Government whips.Noting that the debate was heavily oversubscribed, with more MPs wanting to take part than could possibly be called, Mr Sheerman said the majority of Tory speakers were also ex-ministers - nine out of the 13.The Old Etonians were Douglas Hurd, the former Foreign Secretary and Mr Waldegrave's former boss; Paul Channon, the former Secretary of State for Transport; Tim Sainsbury and Richard Needham, both former trade and industry ministers; Michael Alison, a former Northern Ireland minister; and Henry Bellingham, MP for Norfolk NW.Along the corridor in the House of Lords it was a similar story. Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone (Eton and Oxford) gave his personal endorsement of Mr Waldegrave, who he knew through his family and as a Fellow of All Souls.

"He is and always has been the soul of honour," said the former Lord Chancellor. Three other Old Etonians added their support and still more speakers had been to Oxford.Mr Sheerman contrasted the lists of speakers with John Major's early ambitions of creating "a classless society". The public would not only be horrified at the unwillingness of any minister to take responsibility for misleading Parliament, the Huddersfield MP said, but they would see the way the debate was conducted as "further proof that the Conservative Party is still dominated by those whose privileged backgrounds lead them to believe that survival of members of their club is far more important than the survival of a health parliamentary democracy".Dismissing the MP's suspicions, Miss Boothroyd (Dewsbury College of Commerce and Art) said the Commons was one Parliament where there was no pressure, "undue or otherwise", on selecting speakers."I don't look up Who's Who to see whether they went to Dewsbury Grammar School, or Oxford or Cambridge," she said.. NICHOLAS TIMMINS Public Policy Editor A "whistle-blower" from Matrix Churchill - the firm at the centre of the arms-to-Iraq controversy - was directly responsible for Michael Heseltine's decision not to sign the Public Interest Immunity certificate put before him, it was said yesterday.The claim was made by a group backing a private member's bill aimed at protecting people who choose to go public with their concerns.The Public Interest Disclosure Bill is due for its second reading on Friday.

But Mr Heseltine, the Deputy Prime Minister, has declined to see its cross-party supporters or declare whether the Government will give it a fair wind.Its backers now fear ministers want to see the Bill killed off. Yet if the Government had acted on the letter expressing fears over Matrix Churchill - which warned in January 1988 that the firm's lathes were to be used to produce shell cases - further export licences would not have been granted, Public Concern at Work said yesterday.Matrix Churchill might not have been prosecuted, the factory might not have closed and the Scott inquiry might not have been needed, the pressure group argued.The letter - written to Lord Howe and circulated around Whitehall - is described as "highly significant" in Sir Richard Scott's report. Its contents were disclosed to Mr Heseltine, then President of the Board of Trade, when he was asked to sign a PII certificate in 1991. He was told by officials that no action had apparently been taken on the letter by the Ministry of Defence, to whom it was sent, by the Export Licensing Branch or by the security services.He was warned that if the writer "retains his public spirited interest" he could write to newspapers.The letter and its distribution showed that "everybody knew" what was going on at Matrix Churchill, Mr Heseltine told the Scott inquiry.

His officials warned him that the contents of the letter could "appear across the front of the tabloid press during the court proceedings".Don Touhig, the Labour MP for Islwyn, who is the main sponsor of the Public Interest Disclosure Bill, said it was the action of a whistle-blower that led to Mr Heseltine emerging as a hero of the Scott report. Yet the Deputy Prime Minister will not say whether ministers will back Mr Touhig's bill, which has both Liberal Democrat and Conservative support.John Taylor, the junior DTI minister, has expressed worries that the Bill will involve compliance costs for industry - a point its backers reject.The Bill would protect employees in both the public and private sectors from financial and other reprisals if they disclose crime or other serious wrongdoing to the authorities, or, in some cases, to the media.Concerns would have to be raised internally first, however, and the whistle- blowers would have to convince a court that their actions had been in the public interest.. JOHN RENTOUL Political Correspondent The Prime Minister still faces perilous hurdles after Monday's cliffhanging vote, with his technical Commons majority only two - and likely to be cut to one if Labour wins the Staffordshire South East by-election.The first hurdle will be a vote on the Government's European policy, carrying dangerous echoes of the trench warfare which dominated the first 18 months of this parliamentary session. Malcolm Rifkind, the Foreign Secretary, will publish in the next two weeks a White Paper setting out the Government's views on the talks to revise the Maastricht treaty which open in Turin on 29 March.The vote on the White Paper will be similar in form to one which the Government won by five votes a year ago on a Labour motion which simply stated that the House did not agree with Government policy towards the European Union.Another danger sign is that, last March, Ian Paisley's three Democratic Unionists voted against the Government - and it was their abstention plus Rupert Allason's last-minute switch which saved the day for Mr Major on Monday. But Mr Paisley and David Trimble's Ulster Unionist Party are united in their Euro-scepticism, and could both vote against Mr Rifkind's White Paper.That means Labour could need to induce just two Tories into the opposition lobby to engineer an embarrassing defeat. Mr Major would then have to call a confidence vote, which he would be expected to win.He could also face trouble from Tory rebels over plans for divorce law reform expected to move from the Lords to the Commons next month.The next known hurdles are tests of support among a more hostile electorate.