Education and Inspections Bill

We have three amendments in this grouping—Amendments Nos. 162, 162A and 171B. Before I speak to them, I want to make one or two remarks about the proposals put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. He is right that what parents find very disconcerting about the current arrangements are the uncertainties that they face. There have been occasions when children have been left completely in limbo, which is a most disturbing and traumatising experience for them and their parents. They need some certainty about where they are likely to be going. I very much like the noble Lord’s idea of being guaranteed a place at a local school for which you have exerted your parental preference by going into a ballot. I can see that that is attractive but, if certain places are guaranteed for those of particular faiths, we might have even more parents rushing into a faith in order to get a place for their children without necessarily having true allegiance to that faith. Nevertheless, I understand what the noble Lord is saying and I find some attractions in it. I turn to our amendments in this group. Amendment No. 162A would insert a new clause suggesting that, rather than the admission forum writing the report on what goes on within its area, that role should be taken over by the local education authority—or, as we shall be calling it in future, the local authority. It mirrors very much the series of amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Leigh, for which he has not been arguing. The Minister sent a letter to the noble Lord, Lord Smith, explaining why he thought the amendments were unnecessary, and I have to say that I find the letter persuasive. In my view, the admission forum has very close links with the local education authority. It does not mirror it exactly because the admission forum includes the representatives of local head teachers and so on. Although when initially proposed—I think before the 2002 Education Act—we had some doubts about admission forums, I think that they have worked relatively well. We are happy that they remain in being; it is obviously sensible that they should monitor what goes on and make reports. Therefore, we are happy to leave things as they are. The Bill clearly states that the admission forums will do the monitoring and will write regular reports on what they find within their local area. Amendment No. 162, rather than looking at what is happening in the local area, looks at what happens at national level and calls for a national review of admissions procedures two to three years down the line after all these new measures have been introduced and this Bill has come into effect. The aim is to have an independent review, which would take evidence and commission research; its focus would be on how far the new procedures introduced by this Bill had helped to promote social cohesion. That independent review would report to the Secretary of State and, in the light of that report and its recommendations, the Secretary of State would, within six months, report back to Parliament on how he intended to implement the recommendations. The case for having some kind of review of admissions procedures somewhere down the line after this Bill comes into effect is that this Bill proposes very substantial changes in current admissions procedures. Major concern has been expressed about finding procedures that help children from disadvantaged homes to access better-performing schools, which are often middle-class schools. To date, research has shown that many of those schools—the better-performing schools—have tended to be socially relatively exclusive and we need to assess how far this new legislation succeeds in changing that and meeting what is one of its aims. That is even more important given that many oppose the notion of trust schools because they fear that the fact that those schools will have some control over their own admissions—that control is now very limited, but initially it was to be far greater—will exacerbate the trend of social exclusiveness, especially as the trust schools might be their own admissions authority and so be able to set their own admissions criteria, admittedly within the constraints of the admissions code. There has been cause for concern. Various people have undertaken extensive research in this area. I quote from a study produced by Professor John Micklewright of the Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute at the University of Southampton. He said: "““There has long been a debate about social segregation in schools. Many people are concerned that the changes proposed in the current White Paper””—" and now in this Bill— "““on education—more choice for parents and greater independence for schools—will increase the already uneven spread of children from different family backgrounds in secondary schools. Our research suggests that greater selectivity in admissions by state schools—which the Government claims will not happen—would be likely to increase social segregation, especially if this was coupled with any move towards separate academic and vocational school tracks””." Why are we worried about that? The Commission for Racial Equality has recently been giving evidence to the Education and Skills Committee about segregation in schools. I shall quote from the evidence that Nick Johnson gave on 7 June. He said that, "““schools will reflect the communities that they are in, where we can see increasing patterns of segregation. We are pretty firm, in terms of the evidence that we look at, when we think that there is this increase in segregation residentially, but also, perhaps more ""important, socially, and people are just not getting a chance to interact with people from different backgrounds, with one another””." If that is happening in schools, it sets people up to be segregated for life. I am sure that the Minister will refute those suggestions and tell us that that will not happen. However, I suggest that the best way of judging whether it will happen or not, or the best way to monitor the effects of the new legislation, is to set up an independent inquiry—