Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Penn Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 13th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I think Amendment 35 allows us to discuss Clause 3 standing part of the Bill, and I would like to say something about that. This is an important Bill.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, Clause 3 stand part was debated on our first day of Committee.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

I do not believe that Clause 3 was passed on the first day—

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, Clause 3 was not passed. It is possible for the noble Lord to de-group and discuss Clause 3 stand part, but it is not part of the group of amendments we are discussing currently.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

I thought that in fact, with great respect, in the earlier debate we debated Clauses 1 and 4, which are no longer there. Amendment 35 states specifically that:

“The above-named Lords give notice of their intention to oppose the Question that Clause 3 stand part of the Bill.”

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, it may be the Marshalled List that is causing confusion. We have Amendment 35 on the Marshalled List, which we are discussing in this group, and then we reach Clause 3 stand part, which is separate to that. As I said, we debated it in a group on the previous day but as the Deputy Chairman said, we have not put the Question on that yet. I believe we will come to that after this group.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, it might be helpful to point out that my amendment was inspired by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee report, which talks about Clause 3 and its relevance.

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Just finally, we have had to shoehorn this discussion into the Bill because it does not seem to say anything about admissions beyond the Secretary of State being able to have a power to make orders about them. This has been a most worthwhile, enlightening and enriching debate, and it would be good if the Government could be a bit more forthcoming about what they plan to do.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 35A, 78, 160 and 162 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Knight, Lord Shipley and Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, seek to clarify the strategic role of the local authority in education, particularly on admissions. I welcome the opportunity to restate that this Government believe that local authorities should remain at the heart of the education system, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said, championing all children, particularly the most vulnerable.

Through existing legislation, local authorities are already responsible for ensuring that every child in their area has a school place; for co-ordinating applications for the main round of school places; for identifying children and young people in their area who have special educational needs or disabilities; and for working with other agencies to ensure that support is available. As we move to a fully trust-led system, local authorities will retain these roles, continuing to ensure there are enough school places and to play a central role in fair admissions, particularly for the most vulnerable. We plan to increase the levers that local authorities have to help them deliver these duties, while maintaining trust autonomy.

Like my noble friend Lord Nash, I must disagree with some of the sentiments expressed by some of the Committee on trust autonomy with regard to admissions. The best MATs and academies have a strong record of admitting pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds and achieving excellent outcomes. My noble friend the Minister will happily write to the Committee to set out more detail on this issue.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, asked about how special educational needs will fit into the picture. In the SEND and alternative provision Green Paper, we proposed new powers to convene partners as part of a statutory framework for pupil movement, including for excluded children. To respond to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, we will also include consultation on a power for local authorities to direct trusts to admit individual children in limited circumstances. Consultation is ongoing on these proposals. In the schools White Paper, we proposed further strengthening local authority levers to deliver their duties with a new power to object to the schools adjudicator when a trust’s planned admission numbers threaten school place sufficiency and requiring local authorities to co-ordinate in-year applications. We will consult on these measures; it is important that we listen to the outcomes of that consultation. My noble friend Lady Berridge asked about the timing of that. Given the scale and complexity of the admissions system, it is important to get these decisions right, so we are working currently with the stakeholders to refine our proposals. We will consult in due course and seek a further legislative opportunity where needed.

I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Knight, and others that close working between trusts and local authorities on these duties is essential. Through the proposed powers in Clause 1, we will create a new collaborative standard, which will require trusts to collaborate with local authorities and encourage better co-operation. Amendments 160 and 162, however, propose making the local authority the admission authority for all schools. This would prevent school leaders making decisions that are most appropriate to their community, including, as we heard from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol, for voluntary aided schools, which have had long-standing control over their own admissions.

The proposal in Amendment 78 to allow a local authority to direct a physical expansion of any school would be very difficult to achieve, because in many cases neither the local authority nor the Secretary of State has control over a school’s land. Our White Paper proposal instead allows trusts to continue to determine how many places they will offer but gives local authorities an additional power to ensure that they can still meet their sufficiency duty.

Amendment 58A from my noble friend Lord Lucas rightly emphasises the importance of parents having access to the information that they need to support their children’s schooling and of schools having good links with their parent body. However, we do not believe that this amendment is necessary because existing regulations, which academies are required to follow via their funding agreements, already require academy schools to provide a range of information to parents on aspects such as exam performance, Ofsted outcomes and admission arrangements. Furthermore, the department’s governance handbook is clear that schools and academy trusts should have in place mechanisms to engage with parents and the broader community, and that should be able to demonstrate how those views have influenced their decision-making. These provisions will transfer to the academy standards in future.

Amendment 160, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, is rightly concerned with the best interests of looked-after children, some of the most vulnerable in our society. That is why the School Admissions Code already requires all schools to give the highest priority in their admissions criteria to looked-after and previously looked-after children. To respond to Amendment 169 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, I am pleased to confirm that the admissions code was updated last year to require admissions authorities to provide children adopted from state care outside England equal highest priority for admission with those who are looked after and previously looked after by a local authority in England. That change is now in force. I join him in paying tribute to my right honourable friend Nick Gibb, the previous Schools Minister, but also noble Lords in this Chamber—the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and the noble Lords, Lord Russell, Lord Watson and Lord Storey, as well as my noble friends Lord Agnew and Lord Nash, who, along with the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, have shown a commitment to advocating for this group of children. The Committee has my commitment that those children will continue to be prioritised in admissions criteria. As the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, noted, the Government are looking at including them in the school census from the 2022-23 academic year to gather the data that we need when we look at extending the pupil premium plus to that group of children too.

Finally, I turn to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, which seeks to remove Clause 28 from the Bill. As we have heard, grammar schools have a long history within the education system and, where they exist, they are popular and oversubscribed. However, they are concerned about surrendering their independence to a MAT if it does not share their views on selection by ability. Clause 28 will put the status of academy grammar schools on to a legislative footing by designating them as grammar schools in the same way as local authority-maintained grammar schools are designated as grammar schools. The Bill will not enable the opening of new grammar schools. These changes, at their heart, are about regularising, within legislation, the status of grammar schools.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

We completely accept that the Bill as it stands does not legislate for new grammar schools, but is it the Government’s position that, should such an amendment be forthcoming in the other place, they would oppose it?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

The Bill does not provide for that, and it is not government policy to open further grammar schools. It is about regularising their status within the legislation, and the provision makes sure that only a parental ballot can trigger an end to selection, whether that grammar school is a local authority-maintained grammar school or an academy grammar school. It will remove one of the main perceived barriers to them joining a MAT, while retaining the right of parents to choose whether they should continue to select by ability. I therefore hope that the noble Lord, Lord Knight, will feel able to withdraw his amendment and that other noble Lords will not move theirs when they are reached.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, might I just drop in before the noble Lord, Lord Knight? My noble friend is not right in saying that academies currently provide all the data required on admissions. I have written to the Minister and demonstrated many examples of where this information is not provided. Yes, you can go to the school and ask for it, and it may be somewhere on the school website, in an irregular place, but it is absolutely not given to local authorities in a way that makes it easy for the local authority to publish a booklet that gives parents complete information on the admissions structure in their demesnes. This hurts parents a lot. As editor of the Good Schools Guide, I know how much this disadvantages parents who do not have the time and experience to crack the code of 20 different schools and find out how to get the information and how it all knits together. It really gets in the way. If my noble friend would be willing to grant me a conversation with officials on that, I should be most grateful.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I will happily arrange that conversation. There are two points I would make to my noble friend. The first is that the information is publicly available, albeit maybe not in the format that he thinks is most usable. The second comes back to the new collaborative standard requiring trusts to work collaboratively with local authorities, which will encourage better co-operation. I hope that will be a positive move in his eyes.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful that we have been able to have an hour and 20 minutes to discuss admissions. Given that the Government’s policy is that all schools should become academies, it is an uncertain area and it is really important that we have taken a bit of time to debate it.

I am delighted that my noble friend Lord Triesman already has a victory under his belt. I think my noble friend Lord Hunt is pretty close to a victory: we noted the words that the Bill as it currently stands will not enable the opening of new grammar schools and that it is not government policy for new grammar schools to be created without a parental ballot. Let us just hope that this government policy remains sound as the Bill proceeds through both Houses. There were some really powerful speeches, as ever, from my noble friend Lady Morris in particular, my noble friends Lord Triesman and Lady Blower—those are just the ones around me—and others.

I say to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol that it was not my intention at all to interfere with the admission arrangements for voluntary aided schools. I am scarred from my time as Schools Minister from a moment when we heard the shadow Secretary of State, a young David Cameron, say that we might want to loosen up admission arrangements for faith schools. So the then Secretary of State, Alan Johnson, and myself announced that maybe that was a good idea and we then had priests preaching against us on Sunday and MPs in the Division Lobbies beating us up, saying, “We are going to lose the next election if you go ahead with this” and we performed a very delicate U-turn. I really did not want to go anywhere near interfering with the admission arrangements of voluntary aided schools.

I say to my noble friend Lord Grocott, in connection to his comment about the 11-plus, that my dad was one of four sons in Kettering who all took the 11-plus. He passed; his youngest brother, Hugh, passed; the middle two brothers failed. The two who passed joined the professions, one as an accountant, the other as a banker; the two middle ones took much lower-skilled work and both emigrated, one to Canada and one to Australia. Those two remained close; the two who passed the 11-plus remained close; but in my view, the 11-plus created a schism in our family, and that is part of my very deep opposition to selection and grammar schools.

My noble friend Lady Morris talked about the chaos of admissions, and that undoubtedly advantages middle-class parents. They can navigate the criteria; they can navigate what order to put schools in—what is your second or third choice, but you will only get looked at if it is your first choice, and you have to be quite sophisticated to work out the order you put things down. Then there are appeals. When I was an MP, I occasionally had constituents who came to see me wanting help with an admissions appeal in the summer, and they were never the more disadvantaged constituents in my area; they were only ever the more articulate ones. We really need to get this right if we want a school system that deals with entrenched disadvantage.

Having listened carefully to what the Minister had to say from the Dispatch Box, I will be pleased if, subject to the conversation we are having about Clauses 1 to 18, we get to a point where she introduces a collaboration standard. I would welcome that. I encourage the Government to go further and show us what their vision is for local authorities across the piece. She came close to that in some of her comments, but I would like to see, in the context of schooling, the Government’s vision for the role of local authorities, MATs, individual schools, and the Secretary of State. Publish that so that we can all see it before Report and can then make our judgment about whether they have it right. That would really help us, and then we might have some agreement about the future of admissions for all our schools. I am happy to withdraw my amendment.

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[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I beg to move that the House be now resumed—

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

Before the House is resumed, I draw attention to the clock, which has been stuck for a long time at 10 past three, as indeed, I understand, have all the clocks in the House. Since this is an education Bill and to do with the world of academia, I remind your Lordships of a poem written by Rupert Brooke just before the First World War. It was a nostalgic poem, because he was not very happy living in Germany at the time. He ends the poem:

“Stands the Church clock at ten to three?


And is there honey still for tea?”