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Dr. Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab): We see in the Bill a requirement that local authorities must abide by the code of admission, but we do not have a code of admission because the previous one was withdrawn. Is it my right hon. Friend's intention that a new code will be published before the end of the debates in Committee, so that a code can be compared with what is in the Bill?
Ruth Kelly:
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. It is right that hon. Members should have the opportunity to scrutinise the contents of a new code. In actual fact, there is a full consultation process that a new code has to go through before becoming legislation. Of course, that process will have to take place, but I can
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give him the guarantee that the main contents of the admissions code will be there to be scrutinised by hon. Members during the Committee stage.
Dr. Desmond Turner (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab): I have a particularly serious allocation problem in my constituency. I am certainly given no confidence by the code that has just died, because that was in complete conformity to the allocation code and did not address the problems in any way whatever. Given that there will be different criteria in different schools as they so choose, does my right hon. Friend think that there is the potential for considerable chaos in allocations?
Ruth Kelly: No, I have to say that I completely disagree with my hon. Friend on this point. I think that the system will be more robust after the Bill than it was before it. There will be less academic selection in our schools and we will have a tougher code that will make existing practices—which he may or may not disagree with—more difficult after the Bill than before it. I can give the House that assurance.
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): The admissions policy for most of the secondary schools in my patch is based on catchment area followed by siblings. How is it going to differ in any way if they become trust schools? There is a particular problem in that very popular schools sometimes find it very difficult just fulfilling the demand from the catchment area. Many people in the catchment area want their children to go to those schools, so will they be able to expand? How will the admissions policy change after the Bill? Will popular schools be allowed to expand?
Ruth Kelly: On the first point, if the policy changes, it will be tougher rather than the status quo. Issues such as catchment areas and siblings will, of course, be the issues that schools take into account, but where a school is deliberately manipulating its catchment area to avoid taking certain challenging pupils into the school, that will not be tolerated in future. Admissions forums will scrutinise what is happening at a local level and will, on a yearly basis, produce a report examining what is happening and whether schools are, indeed, following the code of practice on admissions. The forums will examine how special needs children, children on free school meals and ethnic minority groups are faring. They will submit their report to the schools commissioner, who will review the impact on social segregation in a full report that will be available to Members of the House, so that we can show that we are reducing social segregation through the Bill and not increasing it.
The hon. Gentleman also made a point about whether successful schools should be able to expand. I have to disappoint him because there is nothing in the Bill on school expansions. There already is a presumption in legislation to expand. However, the decision maker will change from being the school organisation committee to the local authority—something, again, that local
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authorities have been calling for for years. There will be a stronger, more robust framework for admissions under this Bill than before it.
Ruth Kelly: I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) who, I know, has strong feelings on this point, before I come on to parents.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab): Have I interpreted what my right hon. Friend has just said correctly? Does that mean that selective schools will not be able to expand?
Ruth Kelly: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I can tell him something else that he may not have noticed. Under the Bill and for the first time, partially selective schools will not be able to expand either.
Children achieve more when their parents are engaged in their learning. This Bill will build on the excellent work of schools across the country by giving parents more information about how their child is doing at school—termly reports and regular dialogue with teachers. There will be more information about choosing the right school for their child and we will introduce better, cheaper school transport.
Parents are also concerned about behaviour at school. Most schools have good behaviour most of the time, but this Bill makes tackling bad behaviour a major priority. This Bill will create, for the first time, a clear statutory right for school staff to discipline pupils, putting an end to the "You can't tell me what to do" culture. This is exactly what teachers and teaching unions have asked for for years—reforms first proposed by the Elton committee in 1988, but rejected by the Conservative party when it was in government.
This Bill will transform the quality of the food that is served in our schools. Healthy food will not only help to halt the rise of child obesity, but many teachers believe that it will also improve pupil behaviour, motivation, readiness to learn and attainment.
Lastly, I have always said that, as a country, we need to place the same emphasis on vocational education as we currently do on academic education. This Bill will ensure that every young person, wherever they live, can take any of the 14 lines of the specialised diploma that we are developing as part of our radical reforms of the 14 to19 curriculum—first-class vocational education for the first time, as a right for every child.
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab): I am afraid that I am a little behind my right hon. Friend's words, because I am still trying to fathom out why she is insisting on retaining the veto against new community schools. If the veto is going to be at the discretion of the Secretary of State, what thought has she given to its possible use in the future by a Secretary of State not as reasonable as her?
Ruth Kelly:
I have given commitments to Members that any local authority with a good track record that proposes a new community school should be able to have that proposal considered. I have also said that the criteria should be objective, to establish whether a local
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authority has a good track record. We will have a discussion in Committee about how we establish objective criteria and what those criteria will be, but that is the right place for that discussion. The issues involved are, indeed, technical and complex, and we have got to get them right.
Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab): On the very point about community schools and the Secretary of State's veto, is it not a fact that clause 2 builds in a presumption against community schools, because it clearly says that LEAs will be obliged to secure diversity of provision and
That being the case, is it not obvious that councils will be obliged to create non-community schools in order to provide the very diversity that will be a statutory duty if the Bill becomes an Act?
Ruth Kelly: I do not agree with my hon. Friend. The introduction of the duty on diversity was made to meet a very specific point. It has been introduced because local authorities need to be proactive in talking to parents, rather than reactive to poor education and poor education provision. Just as children's trusts in the area of children's services actively go out to map demand and talk to parents about what is required and provide a service that meets the needs of parents, so too should they do that for schools. That is the purpose of the duty; not the one that my hon. Friend infers.
Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab): I welcome what my right hon. Friend has said about the improvement to school meals, minimum nutritional standards and removing junk food from school vending machines. However, could she go further and perhaps consider introducing, at a later stage, a duty on schools to teach children about healthy eating, and also allow Ofsted to inspect school meals and report on the school food?
Ruth Kelly: My hon. Friend makes a very important point about school food. It is about time that we brought back tough new nutritional standards to our schools and improved the diet of our young people. It is right that they should learn about healthy eating and how to cook healthy food. In fact, the personal, social and health education part of the curriculum does that up to a point at the moment, but I also know that the new schools food trust sees this as an important part of its agenda going forward.
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