Education and Inspections Bill

I hear the call. The amendment which I shall advocate states: "““In discharging its role a schools admissions forum shall have particular regard to the actual and potential contribution of schools in areas of economic and social disadvantage to the well being of the communities in those areas””." The issue is very much the same as that which we discussed on the first day in Committee, when I argued the same point in relation to local authorities’ decisions about schools. The Minister gave a very helpful reply in which he said that when new schools are under consideration, regulations will state that the criteria should include promoting community cohesion, the aims of inclusiveness and partnership working, and the delivery of the Every Child Matters agenda. That went a long way towards meeting my concerns and I might have shut up altogether if he had gone on to say that a clause would be included which stated that this matter would be on their minds in relation particularly to communities with social and economic disadvantage. I hope that he will feel able to go that far. At the centre of my concerns is well-being in the round for those communities, which goes further than the specifics to which the Minister referred. These communities are likely to experience a greater degree of social and health problems than most, and a greater experience of overcrowding of accommodation, family tensions and debt than most. Truancy may be more prevalent, as well as all that goes with stress, poverty and parental inability to help their children either educationally or as effective advocates of their needs and providers for material needs. To deliver for those families and children, schools and social and basic medical services need to be collocated in the community. We need a holistic approach. I admit that that is what every community would like, but to the well heeled, who can look after themselves, it matters less to have those schools and services collocated in their community. They will see to it much more effectively than parents in areas of economic and social disadvantage that their children get what they need. They know how to work the system and, if need be, can afford doctors and lawyers—for example, in statementing—to get their rights. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, who happens not to be in his place, said when we were debating my earlier amendment that politics is about priorities and that Governments have to make choices. He said that the priority should be getting resources to the most deprived. The Government have fully accepted this in their policy for city academies, which represent a huge commitment to areas of greatest need. I am arguing for an extension of that thinking. If we are to do our best to see that the socially and economically deprived get the resources which we all want them to have, we need to accept that we shall do this best if we can deliver these services in an integrated way in the community where they live, through a community capability that is centred on the school, and make sure that the school is a good school. I recall well the comment by the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, in the previous debate, to which I made a brief response, that communities are not really like this and are changing all the time. I acknowledge that there are communities—for example, the great local authority-funded estates created in the 1930s—which by their nature are not bubbling with energy and change. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, referred to the community in west Cumberland which he knows well, and I know such communities in my home city of Hull and its vicinity. I hope that we can carry forward the Government’s thinking on academies, which is a very powerful statement of their commitment to those communities. We should say to admissions forums, ““At a time of declining rolls through demographic features, which we can do nothing about, there is a danger that these schools will die through attrition. You should have in mind that danger in particular in discharging your responsibilities””.