Education and Skills Bill

We have had an interesting and wide-ranging debate, which you acknowledged in your remark, Madam Deputy Speaker. I would like to place it on record that we certainly want all schools to be good schools. That is the aim of the Government. However, we also want a fair admissions code. Indeed, we are amending the admissions code in the Bill to protect looked-after children. I would hope that the objections to revising the admissions code, which the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) raised, do not extend to not helping looked-after children. We all acknowledge that they have a tough time and that we should do all we can to ensure that they have decent school provision. We have been consulting on our draft admissions code, and it is our ambition to be able to put it into practice from September 2010 to ensure at the earliest possible opportunity that the revisions to ensure a fair code come into place. If we did not agree to the amendment, the admissions code would not come into being until September 2011. The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton referred to the exchange of information and his concerns about safeguarding. We believe that there are sufficient safeguards in the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Human Rights Act 1998. I am sure he will remember that that was set out in a letter from my right hon. Friend the Minister for Schools and Learners to the Committee in January this year. If we did not agree to the amendment, the current data sharing would not be able to continue. I am sure that we all value the service that Connexions provides on behalf of young people. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) does not accept, as I do not, that we should be able to excuse ourselves by saying that the type of intake determines the outcome of a school. We certainly recognised that in our London Challenge programme, in which we put together families of schools with similar intakes, levels of ethnic variation, attainments and free school meals provision. We measure those against each other so that, to use a phrase that I have probably overused today, we can share examples of best practice—a phrase to which the hon. Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) objected. I repeat that we want fair access, which is why our admissions code often relates to over-subscription, and I certainly agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) on that point. I said right at the beginning that this Government want all schools to be good schools. With that, I hope that the amendments will be agreed to. Lords amendment agreed to. Lords amendments Nos. 180, 185,186, 188, 190, 207 and 213 agreed to.