Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Hughes of Stretford and Lord Avebury

Monday 24th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Avebury]

Perhaps the noble Baroness did not hear the Minister say that he will write to my noble friend giving her the statutory reference. Is not that enough?

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

I do not have a statutory reference. I am just responding to the words that the Minister himself chose to use. If I might get to that point, I will perhaps explain what I mean.

My noble friend Lady Morris rightly said that, even in the context of trying to free head teachers to run schools, it really does not make sense to enable each school to decide which pupils to admit and which to reject. In a local system, this atomisation of admission decisions by individual schools means that some children will be left out and that the interests of children as a whole will not be protected. My noble friend Lord Knight of Weymouth gave some good examples from his experience of how some schools will not abide by the admission codes and will not comply. The examples we have seen of that confirm the need for a duty or power outwith the system. That is the point that we were trying to get across to noble Lords.

My noble friend Lady Morris said it should be a referee; I would say a guardian of the rights of children and parents in this system. The Minister said that the duty on the Secretary of State was not strictly necessary, but when he went on to talk about what powers and duties the Secretary of State has in law, he said that the Secretary of State had full oversight of admissions through the school adjudicator. This gets to the principle of the role of government. We are seeking an active agency within government to make sure that admissions are fair across all children—not to have oversight through the adjudicator only. That is not an active requirement on the Secretary of State, either through the admissions code or directly on the Secretary of State himself. Yes, the Secretary of State has the power to ask the adjudicator to investigate, but that is not the same as the Secretary of State having the duty to satisfy Parliament that he is pursuing by every means possible the principle of fair access.

The Minister also said that he thought that the right level for that duty was the local authority. As I said in my opening remarks, local authorities will have a co-ordinating role on the admissions code, but that is a co-ordination in relation to the administration of the admissions, not to the actual decisions that schools will make. That is not where the qualitative decision lies; the local authorities have no power at all under the proposed arrangements to challenge. They will have a power to refer to the adjudicator if they think a school is not in compliance, but they do not have that overall duty, at least where most schools are academies, to ensure fair access. There is nobody actually holding that ring in the system at the local level or nationally. That is why we feel very strongly, on a point of principle, that it is the responsibility of government to protect the rights of children and parents. That is where democratic accountability lies in this regard, in our view—to protect) the interests of citizens who are, in this case, children and parents. Given the ambition of the Government that every school should be an academy and be its own admissions authority, and given the other changes that the Government are making to the system, we feel that these amendments are necessary. I wish to press the amendment.