Education Bill

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response and I also thank other noble Lords who contributed to the debate. As everyone has said, the issue of admissions and how schools make decisions when they are oversubscribed is incredibly important. We all share aspirations regarding fair access, particularly so that children from poorer backgrounds have the opportunity to get the best chances by going to good schools. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, raised the question of the reports that will still be required by the local authority and the adjudicator. They are important and she raises a significant question about who will look at those reports in the round across the country and come to a view about any further changes that may be necessary in the light of how schools behave. It is very important to have that perspective across a whole range of areas. However, the reports will not help parents at the time. They will be too late for parents who want to complain about the way in which a school conducts itself, necessary though they will be for that broader perspective. The noble Lord, Lord Rix, alerted us to the possible consequences for disabled children, and that remains a concern for us. The contribution of my noble friend Lady Morris was characteristically powerful and crisp. Her question about what the Government would put in place of the school adjudicator and admissions forums has not really been answered, other than the Minister saying that he does not feel that these changes are as significant as some of us believe. There are three principles embedded in this issue, as there are in other parts of the Bill. The first is: what are the Government doing in relation to the balance between the opportunity for parents to constructively challenge the system and the power of schools to make determinations across a whole range of issues? As elsewhere in the Bill, what we are seeing here is a shift in the balance away from parents and local communities towards individual schools. That balance will be tipped further as many more schools become academies with the power to determine their own arrangements. Several noble Lords have raised the point, but we have to keep coming back to it because we are not talking about the system as it is now but how it will be in the future. That shift in the balance of power, if you like, is significant and reflects what we are also seeing in relation to exclusions policies and the power to complain to the local commissioner, which we shall talk about later. The Bill shifts the balance in a number of important respects, and that is a matter of great concern. Secondly, I need to ask if the following is a reasonable principle. A situation can arise in which the schools adjudicator may have decided that a particular school is operating its admissions contrary to the admissions code. The school is doing what my noble friend Lady Morris said schools often do: it is behaving badly for reasons we understand. In those circumstances, the school adjudicator decides that the school has not complied with the admissions code, but what the Government want to institute is that it will be for the admissions authority to decide what action needs to be taken in order to implement the adjudicator’s decision. I want to raise the question of whether it is reasonable, when an admissions authority is found to be knowingly contravening the admissions code, that it is for the school to decide what action it needs to take in order to comply. I cannot think of another situation where, if an organisation is doing the wrong thing in terms of lack of compliance, it is for the organisation itself to decide what it needs to do to put it right. It is a principle I cannot relate to. Thirdly, I think I got the Minister’s words correct when he said in his summing up that the schools adjudicator will be looking, as he does now, at all school admissions arrangements and following them up. I wonder who will do that in the future, particularly when many more schools become academies and thus their own admissions authorities. Is it to be the Secretary of State? Are we really being told that the Secretary of State will have the capacity to look closely at the admissions arrangements of tens of thousands of academies across the country; that if they have been admonished by the schools adjudicator, the Secretary of State will check that their admissions practices comply with the code and follow up in detail that they have done what they said they would do? Are we really saying that without the schools adjudicators—it is not just one, but teams covering the whole country—the Secretary of State will be able to ensure that schools are complying with the code? I do not think so. Despite the Minister’s genuine attempt to reassure us, I am afraid that we may well return to this issue on Report, but for the moment I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 100A withdrawn. Amendments 101 to 102 not moved. Amendment 103 Moved by