Education and Inspections Bill

moved Amendment No. 143A: Page 27, line 7, at end insert ““or Academy, city technology college or city college for the technology of the arts”” The noble Baroness said: In moving this amendment, I shall speak also to AmendmentsNos. 143B, 143C, 145, 145A and 166A. This is part of a large portfolio of amendments that cover selection procedures of one sort or another in relation to admissions. Amendments Nos. 143A, 143B, 143C and 145 relate to Clauses 37 and 38. Clause 37 deals with selection by ability and Clause 38 with the code of admissions. On selection by ability, we on these Benches support the government policy of restricting selection by ability. The aim of the amendments is to strengthen the provisions of Clause 37 in this respect. Amendment No. 143A adds to the schools that come within the bounds of these restrictions academies, city technology colleges and city colleges for the technology of the arts, which at present fall outside the restrictions suggested by Clause 37. The Government will tell us that academies and city technology colleges are required by their funding agreements to select broadly from across the local community. We accept that this may be the case—it is written into their funding agreements—but we would argue that if this is so and that means that they will not select by ability, then why can that not be in the Bill? Why can they not be added to the maintained schools in the Bill? Why should they always fall outside the general provisions that apply to other schools? Amendment No. 143B adds no selection by aptitude to no selection by ability. This issue takes us back to the old arguments about the difference between aptitude and ability. In general, our Benches are sceptical about selection by aptitude, with perhaps two exceptions: sport and music. Otherwise we can see little case for any element of selection by aptitude where secondary schools have various specialisms. How many of these specialist schools select by aptitude? How many have needed to have these provisions? Is it a necessary provision for them to retain in the Bill? Amendment No. 143C takes us forward toClause 49 and the issue of pupil banding. In effect, it reinforces Amendment No. 143B—on selection by aptitude—by suggesting that selection should be permitted only for the purposes of pupil banding. At this stage, I ask the Minister a question that might be better asked when we reach Clause 49: how feasible is it to apply banding systems to just one school? Surely, if banding is to be applied, it has to run across all the schools within a community served by those schools. Does banding applied to a single school make any sense at all? Amendment No. 145 relates to an issue that we on these Benches feel rather strongly about. If we are to try to get to a needs-blind application system for places at popular secondary schools, just as with examinations, applications should be anonymous, judged on their own merits, the names being attached only after the decisions have been made. That was one of the suggestions put forward by the Select Committee when it considered the White Paper that preceded the Bill. We would have liked to have seen the Select Committee’s suggestion incorporated in the Bill. The purpose of the amendment is to achieve precisely that. I turn to Amendment No. 145A, which relates to Clause 38 and the code of practice for admissions. The main purpose of this amendment is very similar to that of Amendment No. 146; namely, that the code of practice for admissions should be subject to positive resolution by both Houses of Parliament. In its briefing for the Second Reading debate, the Association of School and College Leaders argued that if the code is to become mandatory, it is reasonable to require it to pass through proper parliamentary scrutiny. We are very sympathetic to that point and have therefore tabled this amendment. The difference between our amendment and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, is that under the procedures that we propose, if the code is not approved, it is open to the Secretary of State to amend and re-table it before both Houses; whereas our reading of the Conservative amendment is that once the code has been rejected, the Secretary of State can never lay a further proposed code. Finally, I turn to Amendment No. 166A, yet another amendment that seeks to extend the application of the admissions code not just to maintained schools, which are defined in the Bill as community, voluntary aided, voluntary controlled and foundation schools and, in future, trust schools)—but also to academies, city technology colleges and city colleges for technology for the arts. In this case, it is a question of banning interviews. In our view, if interviews are regarded as bad practice for one kind of school, the code should be applied equally to all other schools funded from the public purse, whether so-called independent state schools or not. I beg to move.