Education and Inspections Bill

I know that we want to move on as swiftly as possible, but The Costs of Inclusion has raised again the long-standing concern that sometimes schools that are successful at including pupils—difficult, challenging pupils, perhaps—are the victims of their own success. A primary school head teacher says: "““The problem is that we are becoming a victim of our own success. It’s word of mouth and then because we do so well with special needs we create a demand and then this imbalances the proportion of children we’re able to cope with””." I am concerned that we might have a good local school that is very socially inclusive and follows the values of Every Child Matters, which might find itself beginning to perform poorly in educational results because it happens to be taking on the more challenging pupils. Then it dips down: parents opt to go to another area and the school does not get the support that it needs. I should like some reassurance on that point. That feeds back to what the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, said about different playing fields. It seems unfair that a school that is being inclusive and working hard in that area, struggling for a long time and working as best as it can, should lose out because another school that opens nearby has more money and more flexibility to benefit it. That is my concern.