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'(6A) The Secretary of State may by order prescribe the proportion of pupils entering city academies each year who may be selected on the basis of their aptitude; and (notwithstanding section 139(2) of this Act) an order made under this subsection shall be subject to approval by a resolution of each House of Parliament.'.

Amendment No. 80, in clause 125, page 59, line 40, at end add--

(3) The Secretary of State shall make a report to Parliament each year on the operation of the provisions contained in Schedule 8'.

Amendment No. 81, in clause 126, page 60, line 4, leave out--

'if the condition in subsection (3) is satisfied'.

Amendment No. 82, in page 60, leave out lines 12 to 16.

Government amendment No. 107.

Amendment No. 72, in schedule 8, page 94, line 31, at end insert--

'(d) before making the scheme the Secretary of State consulted the authority.'.

Government amendments Nos. 108 to 123 and 106.

Mr. Blunkett: I shall try to set an example by being brief, because hon. Members want to raise substantive points relating to the new clause and we have a long day ahead of us.

The Government amendments relate to land transfer and are technical amendments arising from debate in Standing Committee. They provide a fallback position. Land may be transferred out of an education function, thereby triggering a land value that would have to be paid on purchase, rather than being an education transfer which would allow the land to continue to be used for education purposes if it was transferred back to the local authority. The amendments also require the requisite sum to be raised and provided to the authority should the city academy no longer continue to provide the function for which it was intended.

Amendment No. 106 is consequential. It relates to the relationship of authorities with the new Connexions service and will ensure that we have the necessary authority and powers.

Mr. James Clappison (Hertsmere): I shall endeavour to follow the Secretary of State's example and be brief. There are important provisions to come and I know that some hon. Members will want to speak about city academies.

The Secretary of State will be aware from proceedings in Standing Committee that the provisions relating to city academies were introduced at the last minute, long after the Bill had passed through the House of Lords--indeed, when the Standing Committee was on the last lap of parliamentary consideration. It was agreed in all parts of

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the Committee that the way in which the new policy was introduced was, to say the least, far from ideal. We have already commented on that.

Nevertheless, we share the objective of tackling the problem of underachieving schools, and we are not opposed in principle to city academies. Indeed, it would be difficult to oppose the provision in principle, because its legislative basis is a Conservative Act of Parliament--the Education Act 1996--as the Secretary of State is no doubt aware. There is little difference between city academies and city technology colleges, and they share some of the characteristics of grant-maintained schools as well.

Anyone who is inclined to try to see a difference between city academies and city technology colleges should consult clause 124, which makes it clear that the legislative basis of city academies is a bolt-on to the city technology college provisions of a Conservative Education Act. We are, therefore, waiting for Ministers to say a big thank you to the Conservative Secretary of State who pioneered city technology colleges--[Interruption.] However, given the reaction from the Secretary of State, we are not holding our breath for that. We are tempted to observe, though, that after three years of efforts by the Government to tackle underachieving schools, they have gone back to a policy first unveiled by Kenneth Baker in 1986.

Where does all that leave the Government's fresh start policy? We were told in Committee by the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for North Swindon (Mr. Wills), that city academies were not a replacement for fresh start, but he went on to say:

The academies are to be seen as one of the fresh start options.--[Official Report, Standing Committee F, 6 June 2000; c. 747.]

That sounds very much as though city academies will supersede fresh start.

There are three Opposition amendments in the group, reflecting our belief that a number of questions relating to city academies remain to be resolved. Amendment No. 79 deals with selection, which we apprehend will be of interest to the Secretary of State. City academies, let it be said, are selective schools. They may select 10 per cent. of each new intake on the basis of aptitude, and they may use banding by ability to admit the remaining 90 per cent.

We have no problem with that extension of selection. Where it leaves the Secretary of State is another matter, but that is a matter for him. Amendment No. 79 would allow the Secretary of State to prescribe the proportion of pupils selected on the basis of aptitude, and ensure that there was an opportunity for that decision to be scrutinised under the affirmative resolution procedure.

One issue that has not been considered at length--not surprisingly, given the rushed way in which the provision was introduced--is what happens to the pupils of an existing school when it is replaced by a city academy? The city academy prospectus is relevant, as is the revised prospectus, I think, although we received it only today, very shortly before the debate was due to begin, which is in keeping with the way in which everything about the Bill has been produced so far--in a last-minute and disorderly way.

The city academy prospectus tells us:

Where an Academy replaces an existing school, suitable arrangements will have been made to provide for the education of all pupils from the school being replaced.

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That is rather vague. It hardly tells us anything at all. Of course, the education of pupils at the existing school must continue. There is a duty for them to continue to be educated. The issue is where are they to be educated?

We should be most grateful if the Secretary of State could now tell us whether the pupils of the existing school that is to be replaced by the city academy--it is in the nature of the city academies that they will replace existing schools--have the right to continue their education at that school. That is far from clear from the prospectus. If the answer is that not all the pupils of the existing school will have the right to continue their education at the city academy, which is what their old school has become, on what basis will pupils of the existing school be admitted to the new city academy?

I turn briefly to amendment No. 80, relating to schedule 8, which contains the power for the Secretary of State to transfer existing schools to the promoters of city academies. I pause--and do no more than that--to consider what the then Opposition would have said if the previous Government had brought forward such a measure. It was evident from hon. Members on both sides in Committee that there were a number of questions about how such schemes would operate. The amendment would simply require the Secretary of State to make an annual report on the matter.

Amendments Nos. 81 and 82 concern the question of children with special educational needs attending city academies, a matter that we were keen to raise in Committee. We note that the revised prospectus for city academies now states that city academies will be expected to admit pupils with special educational needs and with disabilities. There remains the question whether city academies will be regarded as maintained or independent schools for these purposes. This may be of some significance. In Committee, the Minister told us that this would be subject to consultation. Perhaps the Secretary of State will take this opportunity to tell us the timetable for that consultation.

Finally, I return to the revised prospectus, where the deadline of 7 July for written expressions of interest by promoters of the pathfinder projects for city academies no longer appears. It was in the previous prospectus, and has now been dropped. What is the significance of the Government's dropping their deadline of 7 July? We note in the revised prospectus that the Government still hope to agree the first pathfinder projects by the end of this summer, and presumably they still intend to start them in September 2001. The Government are now working on a tight schedule. They got off to what I have already said, with some justification, was a far from ideal start as regards this policy, and it now appears that the deadline for expressions of interest in the pathfinder projects has been shunted back. Will the Secretary of State explain why?

Mr. Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale, West): I am very pleased to be able to speak on this first group of amendments, relating to city academies, because the topic takes us back to a number of debates in which I have participated over the past three years or so when I have tried to understand the real, fundamental meaning of the education policies that the Government have been trying

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to implement. The more I look, the more I have become involved in the debates, and the longer the Secretary of State and his colleagues proceed, the more opaque the Government's destination seems to become.

One of the first things the Government did in this Parliament was to abolish the assisted places scheme, thereby removing from many children, particularly in inner-city areas, access to some of the better schools, often selective schools, which provided great opportunities that were frequently lacking elsewhere. I think of schools in Manchester in particular, which provided opportunities for Manchester's high proportion of inner-city children with very low-income backgrounds.

One of the big priorities in the next year of the Government's term of office was, through what became the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, to look at a number of proposals that dealt--although they said "standards", not "structures"--entirely with structures; that was particularly relevant to their views on grammar schools. We shall hear more of that later.

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