Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I want to support for the most part my noble friend’s amendments. On Amendment 285, concerning the published rules of the school, it is important that any arrangement upholds the school rules, but I do not think it is necessarily fair that a pupil has to be bound by rules that are introduced after they have joined the school. Changes to the dress code in particular may be imposed arbitrarily by the head of the school after a pupil has made the decision to join so that he or she is faced with no choice but to obey that rule. It is reasonable under those circumstances that the right of appeal can be exercised against it because that pupil did not have the choice of avoiding it by going to a different school. I would put a time limit on this and say that school rules cannot be appealed against if they were in force when the pupil applied to join the school, when it would have been the decision of the pupil or his or her parents to accept them. With regard to discipline, again it is important that this mechanism should not be able to reopen disciplinary decisions. I would not go along with the exact wording of my noble friend’s Amendment 284 where it states "relating to" because these problems often involve some kind of disciplinary procedure, although often the nub of the problem is elsewhere, such as the failure of the school to deal, for example, with bullying or recognise a special educational need. So I support the spirit of the amendment, but not the exact wording. As the Minister is the person to whom these complaints are sent, can she tell us what the two or three most frequent reasons for complaint are?