Education and Inspections Bill

I am in serious trouble here because I cannot think of anything that the noble Lord, Lord Gould, said that I disagree with. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, but that is not such a surprise to me. However, I am not sure that these sentiments belong in Section 14 of the 1996 Act. If I understood the noble Lord, he is concerned about the importance of schools to the community. He feels that LEAs should be careful before they rip schools out and should take care to support them and give them added emphasis because they are important to the community, whether in a Hampshire village or the suburbs of Liverpool. I agree with that and perhapsit is somewhere in education legislation. If a Government ever get round to providing us with an updated, consolidated set of education legislation so that we can find the right place without an army of advisers, we may find somewhere to put it in the Bill. If the Minister is feeling kind towards the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, I hope he will direct us in the right direction. I find it difficult to understand what Amendment No. 16 is about and what it would require local authorities to do. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, and I was not calling schools grey—I was calling the Liberal Democrats’ vision of what schools should be grey, but perhaps I misunderstood it. I would never call schools grey; I spend my life celebrating their achievements. What are we asking LEAs to do in terms of Section 14 of the 1996 Act, which relates to the provision of new schools, to ensure that schools contribute to social inclusion? When we come to admission arrangements, I shall be arguing a radical line because it is important that schools are open to every section of the population. I have lived most of my life in middle-class parts of London and ““community”” is a diverse word there. There are schools that draw a particular community. I can think of a good primary school that draws children from the Kosovo Albanian community that is widely spread over north London. In my patch of south London, communities are not a matter of this or that street, but are broader and interwoven. It is hard to devise admission arrangements that provide for social inclusion and community cohesion without getting very odd arrangements for admission and the provision of schools. I am not clear how they would work, and that worries me because they might work in ways that we do not want.