Education and Inspections Bill

I shall seek to justify Amendment No. 16 as well as Amendment No. 18. In fact, Amendment No. 16 was tabled before Amendment No. 18, and the Committee will see that my name and that of my noble friend Lady Walmsley were added to Amendment No. 18, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, because we very much agreed with it. It is probably the better of the two amendments. Amendment No. 16 derives from the Select Committee on Education and Skills. One of its recommendations was: "““We propose that a new duty be placed on all schools to promote social inclusion and community cohesion through all of their institutional policies and procedures, including their admissions policies””." Later, in Clause 32, there is a commitment for foundation schools to promote social cohesion, but not for local authorities to do so. The amendment concerns a duty placed on local authorities. When the provision in Amendment No. 16 was discussed in the Commons, the Minister, Jacqui Smith, responded: "““Moreover, local authorities will be required specifically to consider the impact of proposed new schools on community cohesion when carrying out their new commissioning role. Local authorities will also be under a duty to have regard to guidance from the Secretary of State when considering proposals. That will make it clear that they must consider the extent to which, ""and how satisfactorily in terms of the circumstances of the community, proposals for new schools promote community cohesion””.—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee E; 30/03/06, col. 117.]" The idea of the amendment is to carry that forward. It is not sufficient that that is in guidance; we want it written in the Bill. Recently, we put through this House the Childcare Bill. There is a commitment at the beginning of that Bill to reduce inequalities. We all agree that that was a good commitment because those early years are so important, but the later years are also very important. As we have described, in those later years the quality of education that children receive plays a vital part in their life chances. We know that, to date, for one reason or another, those who come from the most disadvantaged homes have generally experienced the least good education, not least because society has not sought to put effort and resources into that sector of education. If we want to improve the educational performance of this country, and do something about the shocking statistic of one in five leaving primary school unable to read and write properly, it is vital that those who come from those disadvantaged homes, many of whom have special educational needs of one sort or another, get a disproportionate share of the resources to counter the imbalance in educational provision.