Education Bill

Debate between Lord Knight of Weymouth and Lord Rix

Monday 18th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I want to speak to this group of amendments in part to avoid speaking in a clause stand part debate not only because that is more efficient but because, I have to apologise to the Committee, I will need to leave in around 20 minutes in order to fulfil a speaking engagement. If I miss the Minister’s response, I apologise. I hope, nevertheless, that it is in order for me to make some comments.

In many ways, I think that Clause 34 is possibly the worst clause in the Bill. I know that there is some stiff competition for that accolade, but the issue of fair admissions is of vital importance. In passing, I want to thank Chris Waterman, who has done some excellent work on and analysis of the issue for us.

The reason I say that fair admissions are very important is because I support diversity and more competition between schools. As moves are made to increase choice and accountability and thus to drive competition in that way, it is all the more important to ensure that admissions are fair and every child is given an equal chance to attend the good schools so that, in the end, parents are choosing schools and not the other way around. It is on that basis that I strongly support Amendments 100A, 102 and 103 because they seek clarity on the overarching aim of fairness in school admissions. They seek to improve the situation presented in Clause 34, but in the end they will not fix the problem. The problem is that Clause 34 makes the job of the adjudicator pretty toothless by taking his powers away.

Paragraph 168 of the Explanatory Notes makes the position clear by stating:

“Subsection (3) restricts the powers of the school adjudicator. It repeals section 88J of SSFA 1998 which requires schools adjudicators, upon referral of a specific matter concerning a maintained school’s admission arrangements, to consider whether it would be appropriate for changes to be made to any aspect of those admission arrangements”.

Similarly, the notes in respect of subsection (4) state that it,

“removes the requirement under section 88P … for local authorities to provide to the adjudicator reports on admissions to schools in their area”.

Why do I think it is so bad to remove these two powers? As my noble friend Lady Hughes said, every school is potentially an academy so every school is potentially its own admissions authority. That means a confusion of the arrangements faced by parents. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, made a strong argument in that cause. There are numerous oddities in the arrangements of schools. We have oddities of scale in areas such as South Hertfordshire, with its particular preference to parents from Islington because of some historic arrangement, as well as partial selection—something I had to wrestle with at some length and which was very odd.

In the constituency in which I used to live, the school of Budmouth, a very popular school, gave particular priority to children from the village of Chickerell for some historic reason. It was difficult for people struggling to get their children into the school to understand. There are issues of siblings. There are issues of faith, which I do not want to get into for fear of stimulating a very long debate. There are issues of children of staff. How will staff be defined? If we are true to some of the themes running through the Committee, staff might be defined just as teachers. If we go down that road, we should include all school staff, but then a parent whose children a school might want to attract might get a job for just an hour a week helping out as a member of the support staff and then, magically, their children would be allowed priority. It is very important that we get that definition right.

The problem of coherence is already an issue with voluntary aided schools and academies being their own admissions authority. The admissions forums—fora; I am struggling with my Latin—are now being abolished in subsection (2)(a), despite the fact that they provided some co-ordination and tried to ensure that local unfair anomalies did not emerge. It is a retrograde step to get rid of them as we move into even greater proliferation of arrangements.

In many ways, the simplicity of the new code, which is currently being consulted on, will create massive local complexity, for the reasons I have described. That is a view held among many admissions officers, which is why I support Amendment 101A, with its focus on the views of parents. With every school its own admissions authority, as their resources come under pressure—as they are at the moment, for understandable reasons—fair admissions must remain a sufficient priority for the admissions code to be consistently adhered to by every school and admissions authority. We know, through the work of the Sutton Trust, that even with the current tougher admissions regime in place at the moment schools still find covert means to attract children who are more likely to succeed and discourage those less likely to attain five A* to C-grade GCSEs.

The removal of subsection (4) of section 85A of the 1998 Act, under Clause 34(4) of the Bill, removes the policing of admissions and the requirement of local authorities to report to the schools adjudicator—effectively, the prosecutor—all admissions arrangements. I was interested in what the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, had to say about around where they would report to. It seems clear to me that, in the same way that the police get in touch with the CPS if an offence might need prosecuting, local authorities should report to the school adjudicator.

The removal provided for in Clause 34(3) removes the teeth from the adjudicator making changes to admissions arrangements to ensure compliance. It is obvious to me that if we are to have a fair admissions system, the person in charge must have the power to get the admissions arrangements changed to make them comply with the law—we are talking about the law. The measures that Clause 34 will remove are necessary.

Finally, it is worth reminding the Committee why the current rules came in. In 1998, when the Department for Children, Schools and Families—as it was then—commissioned a look at the admissions arrangements in three local authority areas, the abuses found included: schools asking parents to commit to making financial contributions as a condition of admission; asking about the marital, occupational or financial status of parents; and ignoring the priority for admission that schools are legally obliged to give to looked-after children. Other cases uncovered included schools giving priority for places to family members who were not siblings and interviewing children before making an admission decision. Those are not fair practices. They allow schools to select parents, and not vice versa. For that reason, I very much support Amendment 101 and would support omitting Clause 34 altogether.

[Lord Rix]

My Lords, Amendment 102 addresses a variety of concerns I have in relation to the relaxing of duties of schools regarding the admissions process for children with special educational needs, including those with a learning disability. My concerns are clearly shared by other noble Lords in the amendments that surround mine.

Schools must be held to account for their admissions policies and the way they operate these policies in practice. If the parents of disabled children are to have full confidence that their children are not being discriminated against in terms of admissions, schools must be aware of their obligations under the Equality Act 2010 and make the reasonable adjustments required. In the interests of openness, transparency and the genuine empowerment of parents, the second part of my amendment would set out the rights of parents in appealing and complaining against admissions and oblige schools to publicise these details.

It is often said that information is power; I want parents to have easy access to the information to which they are entitled when it comes to challenging unfair decisions by schools over the admission of their children. However, in his letter to me to which I have already referred, the noble Lord, Lord Hill, advised me that parents and others would still have the option to make their objections known to the school adjudicator. There are also proposals to include academies and free schools, which of course I welcome. No doubt he will explain more in his response to these amendments.