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Cambridgeshire Local Education Authority
Mrs. Anne Campbell: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if he will estimate the revenue resources allocated to Cambridgeshire local education authority for 1999-2000 and the percentage increase this represents over the previous year in (a) real terms and (b) cash terms. [102696]
Ms Estelle Morris: The information requested is shown in the table.
| Cash | 1999-2000 prices | |
|---|---|---|
| 1998-1999 (£ million) | 186.733 | 190.935 |
| 1999-2000 (£ million) | 199.463 | 199.463 |
| Percentage increase | 6.8 | 4.5 |
Grammar Schools (Barnet)
Mr. Dismore: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment in relation to a petition needed to trigger a ballot on the future of grammar schools in Barnet, (a) what is the total number of signatures required for a petition, (b) what methods exist (i) for the parents seeking change, to validate the total required and (ii) for independent validation of the total required and (c) who has provided the data on which the number of signatures required is based. [102757]
Ms Estelle Morris: The School Standards and Framework Act 1998 and the Education (Grammar School Ballots) Regulations 1998 define the number of signatures required to trigger a ballot on the future of selective admissions to grammar schools (the petition threshold) as 20 per cent. of the total number of eligible parents. The Secretary of State has appointed an independent ballot administration company, Electoral Reform (Ballot Services) Ltd. (ERBS), to receive and check petitions and run any ballots. The ERBS has calculated that in Barnet the petition threshold is 7,209. The legislation does not require the ERBS to submit the number of eligible parents to scrutiny by (i) parents or (ii) any other body.
In order to calculate the petition threshold, the ERBS required the three grammar schools in Barnet to provide details of all schools from which pupils came in the last three years. Those schools where a total of five or more children had transferred, over the last three years, to a grammar school in Barnet qualified as feeder schools and had to provide the ERBS with lists of eligible parents. From this information, the ERBS calculated the total number of parents entitled to sign a petition or vote in a ballot, and subsequently the petition threshold.
Mr. Dismore:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if he will list, in relation to petitions needed to trigger ballots on the future of grammar schools in Barnet, (a) the names of the schools in respect of which parents are eligible to be balloted and (b) the number of parents eligible to be balloted in each of these schools; and how many children transferred to each of the Barnet grammar schools from each of the primary schools in each of the last three years. [102755]
Ms Estelle Morris:
The information requested is shown in the following table. The number of parents eligible to ballot entered at column two, is that provided
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by the schools themselves and includes some duplication where parents have more than one child attending feeder schools. After entering all the names onto a single computer database, Electoral Reform (Ballot Services)
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Ltd have carried out checks and have removed those names entered more than once. The total number of eligible parents from the 'cleared' database was 36,045 which resulted in a petition threshold of 7,209.
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