The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, I am extremely pleased to answer this Question for Short Debate, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, is particularly timely as children across the country take up their new school places this week. I start by making absolutely clear that our priority is to ensure that the admissions system continues to fully support parents. Choosing a school for their child is one of the most important decisions a parent makes and we want to ensure they can easily understand how to navigate the admissions system and obtain a school place. I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lord Lucas for bringing this debate today as I have recently taken over responsibility for admissions—it is extremely prescient of him to have organised such a helpful teach-in for me. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Knight, for his comments about the Prime Minister’s commitment to social mobility and for bringing his valuable experience to this debate.
Let me reassure noble Lords that right across the admissions system there are good processes in place to support parents in applying for and obtaining a school place. Indeed, it is fundamental to the way the system is designed. All schools, including academies, are bound by the School Admissions Code and other admissions law. The code makes it clear that when drawing up admission arrangements the criteria should be fair, clear and objective. It stipulates that parents should be able to look at a set of arrangements and easily understand on what basis school places will be allocated. This will help parents consider whether their child has a good chance of obtaining a place. The code contains safeguards to ensure that the process of obtaining a place remains fair and transparent. For example, schools are prohibited from prioritising applicants who have named the school as their first preference to ensure parents are not restricted in their choice of school.
The process by which parents apply for places is also designed to make it as easy as possible for them to navigate. Although parents applying in the normal admissions round can express a preference for at least three schools, they only have to submit one application form to a single deadline, directly to their local authority. We require local authorities to then work with all the schools for which a parent has expressed a preference. They then give all parents in their area a single offer of a place at the parent’s highest preference school, which has a place available for their child. We also require this offer to be made to all parents on a national offer day—1 March for secondary schools and 16 April for primary schools—so there is clarity and consistency.
To support parents through the application process, each year local authorities are, as my noble friend Lord Lucas mentioned, required to publish a prospectus on admissions which contains information about how parents can apply for a school place in their area. It also includes the admission arrangements for all mainstream state schools in the area, including academies. Thereafter, local authorities continue to be a valuable champion for local parents and provide them with advice, assistance and support throughout the whole admissions process.
Having read all that from my brief, I was very interested to hear what my noble friend Lord Lucas had to say about data, both as regards their accessibility and usability. I found many of the issues he raised quite compelling and I was put in mind of a talk given by somebody from New York a couple of years ago about the New York iZone, which I think noble Lords will be interested to investigate. He said that when he took over responsibility for schools in New York the admissions requirements were so complicated that the average parent could not possibly work it out, and that the government website, as sometimes can happen, was rather difficult to fathom. They put the service out to tender to a whole lot of companies—no doubt run by young tech wizards—and within a few weeks had a number of apps which basically cracked the problem.
I was looking at this and I would like to read what it says on their website, as some of it might feel familiar. It says that research found that participants struggled to find personal relevance amidst the superabundance of admissions deadlines and data—I am sure that sounds familiar. Proceeding on the premise of certain understandings about how people experience choice-making and how design can influence human experience—for example, that people do not just need data to make choices but ways of evaluating options and relating those options to their own lived experiences —iZone led six software developers through the first school choice design challenge to create prototypes of new digital tools to help students and families identify schools that fitted their interests and qualifications, enhancing the school admissions process. Essentially, they designed ways to actively support more engagement and meaning during the evaluation stage, which led to more informed choices, which produced better outcomes.
I thought that was very interesting and I can assure noble Lords that we will investigate the iZone experience in some detail. I would also be delighted to continue discussions with my noble friend Lord Lucas to see what we can learn from that and other projects to modernise the admissions process and lessen its complexity.
The noble Lord, Lord Knight, asked about advice services. This is apparently not a compulsory requirement, although the school admissions code makes it clear that local authorities must provide advice and assistance to parents when they are deciding which schools to apply for. However—the noble Lord will be familiar with this phrase—the number of local authorities offering choice advice services is not centrally held information. I can assure him that I will investigate the issue further.
The noble Lord also mentioned Carol Dweck’s growth mindset, which I am a great fan of. I strongly recommend that he visits the excellent free school in Bradford, Trinity Academy, which practices this approach very strongly. I was struck by what the pupils had to say about their growth mindsets and I would be very happy to make that introduction.
I do not think at this stage, having been on my feet twice in the past 26 hours in relation to the matter of grammars, that there is anything more I particularly want to say on the subject, except in relation to the very moving points made by the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam. We have no intention of turning the clock back and will consider all the issues in relation to any increase in selection very carefully.
On a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, I repeat what I said in the House yesterday: we are working with the Grammar School Heads Association to develop tests that it will be much harder to coach children for.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, made some very powerful points. I pay tribute to King’s Maths School—which I have visited—which is producing a generation of new mathematicians. It is a very impressive establishment. I assure her that I share her suspicion of complexity and her desire for simplicity, and I was extremely interested in what she had to say about sixth form admissions. I will look at that very carefully in my new brief.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans mentioned the vital role that Church schools play in this country. I pay tribute not only to that but to the important role they play in community cohesion. Some years ago, the University of York carried out a very persuasive study to show that, in fact, Church schools were the most inclusive in the country.
The noble Lord, Lord Watson, requested various information. As I said, I have just taken over responsibility for this brief but I will look at his points carefully. We need to get it into context, though. Last year, the adjudicator received 218 objections, which is just 1% of schools.
The system we have in place to support parents ensures that the vast majority of children attend a school of their parents’ choice and 95% get one of their top three choices. However, as we said recently, many parents still cannot get their kids into a good school close to them, and that is partly what any reforms we come forward with would aim to improve.
In the last few years, we have made great strides in creating new places; something that I am also responsible for now. We have created 600,000 new places in the last five years and have funds in place to create another 600,000 over the next five years. We will continue to work hard to ensure that every child has access to a good education so that they can go as far as their talents and hard work can take them.
I thank all noble Lords again for their contributions to this debate.