The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Lucas for the welcome he gave at the beginning of this debate and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for its consideration of the new school admission code and the School Information (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021, which came into force this September, without objections from either House. I depart from my noble friend on his dentist analogy but, apart from that, we are in agreement on the new code.
Our priority as a Government is to ensure that the admissions system fully supports parents to secure a suitable school place for their child. It is important, as the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Storey, emphasised, that the admissions process works effectively for all children, particularly the most vulnerable, so that children can secure places in a timely way.
In contrast to the description given by my noble friend, we believe that, on the whole, the normal admissions round and the overall admissions process work well. However, there have been delays to in-year admissions, which can have a particular impact on vulnerable children, who we know are more likely to move school in year. That is why our recent changes focused on improving in-year admissions.
The noble Lord, Lord Storey, talked about the importance of co-operation and stressed the role of the local authority on admissions in an area. The anecdotal feedback I received is that, particularly during the pandemic, there was much closer co-operation between local authorities and multi-academy trusts, which all would like to see continue.
The changes that we have made involve setting a clear process for in-year admissions, including clear deadlines for processing applications and strengthening requirements to make better information available, which I know my noble friend will be particularly pleased to know. This will enable parents to navigate the system more easily and to secure places more quickly. We have also made changes to improve the fair access protocols, which are of course the safety net used for the most vulnerable children.
The noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Watson, asked about where the focus has been in ensuring that the most vulnerable children get school places quickly. The top of the list in this regard are looked-after children and previously looked-after children, including those who have been adopted from state care outside England. For other children, priority was increased or the mandatory category was extended to include them: children on a child-in-need or child-protection plan, children in refuge, children in formal kinship care arrangements and children who have been out of education for four or more weeks. There are other categories, which the noble Lord, Lord Watson, is aware of, I am sure, including homeless children, which go some way to addressing the points about disadvantage that he rightly raised.
As I mentioned, overwhelming support has been shown for these changes, and we now know that schools and local authorities are taking the necessary steps to ensure that they are being implemented. We have had a bit of anecdotal feedback about how that early implementation is going. Inevitably, there are some teething issues in some areas, but I was very encouraged to hear that we have had direct feedback saying that local authorities felt that they had been supported to get really quick decisions for these children in a matter of days, where previously they dragged on for much longer, quickly placing children in a school, which we all know to be critically important.
I now turn to the specific points raised by my noble friend. I start by saying that, clearly, we share his ambition of having a simple admissions process and ensuring that parents have the information that they need to make the best choices for their child. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, articulated so well, choosing a school for a child is one of the most important decisions that a parent makes. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Watson, gets the school of his choice for his child.
A variety of information is available to support parents in making that decision. Local authorities are required to publish annually, and then keep up to date, a composite admissions prospectus that needs to be published online, with hard copies available, bringing together all the information on school admissions within their areas. I know that my noble friend suggested that this does not always happen. I agree with him that they vary in the approach that they take, and some perhaps appear more accessible than others, but I ask my noble friend perhaps to write to me with examples of where he thinks it is not happening so that we can follow that up, because I am not aware of that.
Individual admissions authorities are also required to publish a range of information on their websites, all of which is designed to support parents in making good choices. My noble friend also talked about the need for information about the likelihood of getting into a particular school. That is one of the things that is stipulated: the number of preferences expressed for places at each school for the previous admissions year is one of the elements that it is stipulated that local authorities must publish, so that, as my noble friend said, parents can judge how popular a school is.
There are also websites, such as Get Information about Schools, and the department’s performance tables, which provide links to Ofsted reports. They give easily searchable databases for parents to compare local schools, including information on performances. Finally, school open days are a key opportunity to hear directly from school leaders and teachers about local schools.
We believe that requiring the admission arrangements to be published in a machine-readable format would be another pressure on schools and local authorities and would duplicate information they already provide in formats that, we believe, are already accessible and friendly to parents.
My noble friend questioned the effectiveness of the system more broadly. As I am sure he is aware, in the past year 93.4% of secondary applicants and 98% of primary applicants received offers from one of their top three school choices. We look at appeals from parents and, on average, about 20% are upheld in favour of parents and about 2.7% of admissions are heard at an appeals panel. If we look at the role of the schools adjudicator in assessing the fairness of admissions policy, to which the noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred, 123 cases were referred last year. The other critical point in all this is that if a school has availability, it must take all the children who apply. We will continue to keep the system under review to ensure that it works effectively for parents and that they are able to navigate it and secure a good place for their child in a timely manner.
The noble Lord, Lord Storey, asked what we mean by oversubscription. Oversubscription criteria are used to judge all applicants, not those on a waiting list. We do not have an oversubscription code, but both looked-after and previously looked-after children are at the top of the oversubscription criteria. The noble Lord also asked what we mean by disadvantage; we are referring to children in receipt of the pupil premium.
The noble Lord, Lord Watson, challenged the role of faith schools. They play a very important part in our education system and have done for centuries. Faith schools remain popular with parents and are more likely than other schools to be rated by Ofsted as good or outstanding. As the noble Lord knows, schools that are designated as having a religious character are allowed to prioritise children for admission based on their membership or practice of the faith when a school is oversubscribed but, if places are available, all schools with a religious designation must admit children of other faiths or of no faith.
The noble Lord, Lord Watson, rightly challenged what the Government are doing to make sure that particularly vulnerable and disadvantaged children have access to a good school. He will be aware that the proportion of good and outstanding schools has risen over the past few years from 68% to 86%, so the best thing we can do for all children, particularly vulnerable and disadvantaged children, is to make sure that they go to a good or outstanding school.
I close by thanking all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate today. I hope I have gone some way to reassuring your Lordships that the support we have in place for parents to make informed school choices is effective and enables them to obtain a good school place for their child. We believe that the new code will greatly improve access to schools for all children, especially the most vulnerable.