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We are keen to explore next week the question of whether we can go further, but I shall not disguise the fact that we have encountered difficulties on further statutory protection, not least in the read-across to other public servants and others who quite legitimately expect similar protection. We are wrestling with these issues, and I hope that we will have more information to make available to noble Lords in the meeting next week so that we can at least have a stronger shared understanding of how to proceed satisfactorily on this issue.
Baroness Buscombe: I thank the Minister for his reply. I also thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Williams, Lady Walmsley and Lady Howe, and others who have supported the amendment. I do not know whether other noble Lords would agree, but I must say straight away that, although I hear what the Minister is saying about guidance and arrangements, sadly I do not believe that those arrangements would and could be effective in today’s culture. I am afraid that we have gone too far down the road of blame and accusation. Human nature is now such that, sadly, we need a stronger deterrent to deflect this growth in the culture of accusation and blame.
I speak as a lawyer. I am always loath to legislate in these areas unless absolutely necessary, but we have to think about the numbers. The numbers speak for themselves. Teachers, particularly male teachers, are genuinely being put off the profession by this culture of blame. That is hugely unfortunate. I never thought that I would find myself saying this—maybe it is because of the late hour—but perhaps it is something to do with the media. Whatever is going on out there, people are finding themselves deterred from doing a hugely important job as a teacher because of this culture.
I urge the Minister to ensure that, when we meet next Tuesday with his colleague from another place, their thoughts and proposals will extend much further than guidance and arrangements. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
11.30 pm
Clause 37 [General restriction on selection by ability]:
Baroness Sharp of Guildford moved Amendment No. 143A:
- Page 27, line
7, at end insert “or Academy, city technology college or city
college for the technology of the
arts”
The
noble Baroness said: In moving this amendment, I shall speak also to
AmendmentsNos. 143B, 143C, 145, 145A and 166A. This is part of
a large portfolio of amendments that cover selection procedures of one
sort or another in relation to
18 July 2006 : Column 1267
Amendment No. 143A adds to the schools that come within the bounds of these restrictions academies, city technology colleges and city colleges for the technology of the arts, which at present fall outside the restrictions suggested by Clause 37. The Government will tell us that academies and city technology colleges are required by their funding agreements to select broadly from across the local community. We accept that this may be the case—it is written into their funding agreements—but we would argue that if this is so and that means that they will not select by ability, then why can that not be in the Bill? Why can they not be added to the maintained schools in the Bill? Why should they always fall outside the general provisions that apply to other schools?
Amendment No. 143B adds no selection by aptitude to no selection by ability. This issue takes us back to the old arguments about the difference between aptitude and ability. In general, our Benches are sceptical about selection by aptitude, with perhaps two exceptions: sport and music. Otherwise we can see little case for any element of selection by aptitude where secondary schools have various specialisms. How many of these specialist schools select by aptitude? How many have needed to have these provisions? Is it a necessary provision for them to retain in the Bill?
Amendment No. 143C takes us forward toClause 49 and the issue of pupil banding. In effect, it reinforces Amendment No. 143B—on selection by aptitude—by suggesting that selection should be permitted only for the purposes of pupil banding. At this stage, I ask the Minister a question that might be better asked when we reach Clause 49: how feasible is it to apply banding systems to just one school? Surely, if banding is to be applied, it has to run across all the schools within a community served by those schools. Does banding applied to a single school make any sense at all?
Amendment No. 145 relates to an issue that we on these Benches feel rather strongly about. If we are to try to get to a needs-blind application system for places at popular secondary schools, just as with examinations, applications should be anonymous, judged on their own merits, the names being attached only after the decisions have been made. That was one of the suggestions put forward by the Select Committee when it considered the White Paper that preceded the Bill. We would have liked to have seen the Select Committee’s suggestion incorporated in the Bill. The purpose of the amendment is to achieve precisely that.
I turn to Amendment No.
145A, which relates to Clause 38 and the code of practice for
admissions. The main purpose of this amendment is very similar to that
of Amendment No. 146; namely, that the code
18 July 2006 : Column 1268
Finally, I turn to Amendment No. 166A, yet another amendment that seeks to extend the application of the admissions code not just to maintained schools, which are defined in the Bill as community, voluntary aided, voluntary controlled and foundation schools and, in future, trust schools)—but also to academies, city technology colleges and city colleges for technology for the arts. In this case, it is a question of banning interviews. In our view, if interviews are regarded as bad practice for one kind of school, the code should be applied equally to all other schools funded from the public purse, whether so-called independent state schools or not. I beg to move.
Baroness Buscombe: I rise to speak to Amendment No. 144, regarding the use of home school agreements and admissions, and to AmendmentNo. 146. I also give notice of my intention to oppose the Question that Clause 38, regarding the admissions code, stand part of the Bill. I will also speak to Amendment No. 169, regarding interviews allowed for children over compulsory school age and Amendments Nos. 176 to 178, regarding banding.
Amendment No. 144 introduces home-school contracts as part of the admissions code. It offers an incentive and a positive relationship between the family and the school from the outset of a child’s education. We agree with the Government’s sentiments outlined in the White Paper regarding the reinforcement of parental responsibility for discipline. At Second Reading, I voiced my concerns about parenting orders. They are reactive measures to poor discipline, offering little more than enforcement, and they fail to create overall results.
The child impact statement issued by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children points out:
- “The extension of
parenting orders raises questions about due process in terms of
resorting to enforcement measures where no offence has been
committed”.
A constructive approach
is required. By introducing a contract at the start of a child’s
education, schools and parents will work in a constructive partnership
by actively practising an ethos of discipline. Agreeing to an informal
contract between school and home, both teachers and parents send a
message to children that behaviour in the home and at school are
considered to
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I turn to Amendment No. 146 and the Question whether Clause 38 should stand part of the Bill. These concern the admissions code. Amendment No. 146 would ensure that the code for school admissions would have to be approved by both Houses of Parliament before it could come into force. That reflects the change in the nature of the new code for school admissions compared to its predecessor, the code of practice for school admissions. The code of practice is made under Section 94 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, which Clause 38 amends. It required bodies and persons exercising functions under that chapter of the 1998 Act only,
The new code is far more prescriptive. As envisaged under Clause 38, the code for school admissions will,
rather than the less constricting Clause 84(2) of the old arrangement whereby:- “The code may
include guidelines setting out aims, objectives and other matters in
relation to the discharge of their functions under this Chapter by
local education authorities and such governing
bodies”.
Bodies and persons exercising functions under the relevant chapter of the 1998 Act will be expected to “act in accordance” with the code rather than “have regard to it”. The skeleton admissions code makes clear at paragraph 2 that it,
- “sets out
statutory (i.e. imposed by primary or secondary legislation) and other
mandatory requirements imposed by this
Code”.
- “admission
practices and oversubscription criteria that must not be used in the
allocation of school places and provides guidelines and requirements
for fair admission arrangements”.
It was not a proposal contained within the White Paper. Paragraph 3.22 on page 46 of the White Paper states:
- “No
one approach towards admissions will work in all circumstances. This is
why we want to ensure that all self-governing schools ... are free
to use the approach to fair admissions that they think will best meet
their local circumstances, as long as it is compatible with the
Admissions Code”.
18 July 2006 : Column 1270
The public face of government was consistent with the White Paper. All radio, television and newspaper interviews given by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State between the publication of the White Paper in October 2005 and the concession letter of 6 February this year categorically ruled out the code of practice having any more statutory compulsion than it had already. On 24 November, the Secretary of State, Ruth Kelly, said in another place that:
- “The code is
established on a statutory basis, but there is discretion and
flexibility in it to adapt admissions to meet the specific ends of a
school and the pupils in the
area”.
Asked by the then shadow Education Secretary, David Cameron, if she would rule out making the code of practice a statutory code, the Secretary of State replied:
- “I can
tell the hon. Gentleman that the code achieves its ends of ruling out
selection by ability on its current statutory basis. He is
confused—the code already operates on a statutory basis. Schools
take it into account, and then the adjudicator, which is also
statutory, can use its discretion to say whether the school has
interpreted it correctly. Interpretation of the code, however, is very
important for schools that want to create their own distinctive
ethos”.—[Official Report, Commons,
24/11/05;col.
1644.]
The Prime Minister said at his press conference on 23 January:
The Government retreated in their 6 February letter to the Education and Skills Committee in which the then Minister said:- “As you know it
has always been our intention that the Code of Practice on admissions
should have real force”.
- “Let me first
consider the statutory effect of the Code. Section 84(3) of the 1998
Act imposes an obligation, first on the Governors of the Oratory School
and then on the Adjudicator ‘to have regard to any relevant
provisions of the Code’. The phrase ‘to have regard
to’ means to take into account. It does not connote slavish
obedience or deference on every
occasion”,
The code could evidently be incredibly restrictive. Indeed, the Bill’s powers could be used to impose a single admissions criterion across the country. That is why we feel that if there must be a strengthened code, accompanying it should be a high level of parliamentary control embodied in the affirmative resolution procedure. However, our preferred solution would be to remove Clause 38 altogether. It is unnecessary.
First, to impose the code with that additional strength requires us to anticipate all the varied decisions in which a school might find itself. We need to ensure that schools have sufficient flexibility to respond to local needs when setting up their arrangements. In relation to guidance for Clause 3 the Minister in another place stated:
- “When we are
recommending good practice, it goes into guidance and it is for local
bodies to take it into account sensibly in their local
situations.”—[Official Report, Commons Standing
Committee E, 30/3/06; cols. 152-153.]
18 July 2006 : Column 1271
Why should schools not have the power to tailor their admissions arrangements to local circumstances? I suspect that the furore surrounding admissions reflects a left-wing preoccupation with admissions rather than with standards. The Government rationale for the alteration has not been consistent. The letter of6 February to the Education and Skills Select Committee stated that the change was prompted by “recent legal judgments” that,
But that legal judgment had occurred before the publication of the White Paper. In fact, the London Oratory School case was decided in December 2004, some 10 months before the publication of the White Paper. Had the Government truly intended to strengthen the code, they had months in which to make their intentions clear. The fact that they did so only when threatened with a rebellion inside their own party is extremely telling. The words in the White Paper belie the Government’s real stance:
- “We recognise
that no form of admissions arrangements can increase the number of
places at an oversubscribed school. This is why we are continuing to
increase the number of good schools and the number of places in good
schools”.
Our preoccupation should be with the creation of more good school places, not the shifting of one set of children out of a good school and replacing them with another. That merely substitutes one injustice with another. The disparity in our education system is caused by a lack of good school places, not in the fact that one school might have slightly different admissions policies.
I turn to the skeleton code. It is a pity that we were not presented with a more detailed example. However, we are satisfied that it goes no further than the draft code that was withdrawn last year. The code recognises that first preference first is poor practice. That is welcome, as first preference first schemes often lead to parents choosing schools tactically rather than on the basis of genuine preference, particularly where there are grammar schools in an area. If specialist schools decide to select 10 per cent of their intake by aptitude, it will be even more important that the decision is taken on the basis of the fairer equal preferences system.
I have concerns with some aspects of the code. It continues to outlaw making admission conditional on signing a home school contract, an issue on which I hope to speak later. I am concerned also about the less technical wording of the part of the skeleton code concerning social fairness. The code states at paragraph 1.27:
- “Admission
authorities should analyse information about their intakes, and where
possible their applicants, to find out whether they attract a wide
range of families or whether their school fails to attract all sections
of local communities”.
18 July 2006 : Column 1272
I turn to Amendments Nos. 176, 177 and 178 on banding. I will return briefly to an issue raised by my honourable friend Nick Gibb MP in another place. I will not go into it again in great detail as I hope that having returned with a slightly altered amendment the Government will be minded to accept this one in your Lordships' House, having been sympathetic to the principle in another place.
I set out the position from these Benches at Second Reading. I firmly believe that banding is nothing more than streaming outside the school gates. I believe that in its purest form it leads to social engineering and can seriously fetter parents’ choice of schools. As such, it goes in principle against the driving forces of this Bill. However, that is the principle of banding in its purest form. While in principle it poses serious problems, in practice it can be shown to work. CTCs, especially the Thomas Telford school, benefit hugely from using banding in conjunction and, as such, I would not wish to fetter the choice of schools to use banding as a method of selection.
These amendments make it necessary for local education authorities that are admission authorities to get the consent of governing bodies when introducing all forms of banding. As currently drafted, Clause 49 provides for governing body consent only to the new form of banding that is introduced by new Section 101(1A) of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. Amendment No. 176 is a technical amendment that ensures that banding can be introduced only with the consent of governing bodies when they are not their own admissions authorities. Amendment No. 177 is a clarificatory amendment to ensure that consent to banding is necessary only when first introduced rather than every year that the admission arrangements are determined. I beg to move.
Lord Adonis: I begin on a consensual note, as I always seek to do. We are happy to accept Amendments Nos. 176 to 178 moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe. I am glad that she has moved somewhat in her analysis of banding to see that it can be a beneficial system over subscription criteria in certain circumstances when schools want to ensure a genuinely comprehensive intake. We agree that it should be done with the consent of governing bodies and the amendments that she moved would give it that effect, and we are happy to accept them.
Amendments Nos. 175 and
263 stand in my name and relate to partial selection. We do not think
that we can go so far as the Liberal Democrat amendments, which would
ban partial selection entirely without a process of adjudication, but
we believe that when the adjudicator has already decided to reduce the
proportion of people selected or to remove selective arrangements, it
should not be
18 July 2006 : Column 1273
On Amendment No. 143A proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, we do not believe that it is necessary to amend legislation to prevent academies or CTCs from introducing selection by ability. Academies are already required to be fully inclusive schools and to comply with the school admissions code and admissions law, which is a more stringent set of obligations than currently apply to maintained schools. They are obliged to do so by the funding agreements that are approved by the Secretary of State. CTCs were established on the basis that they must admit children of all abilities, and they achieve that by pupil banding. Similarly, academies are not allowed to conduct interviews and the remaining CTCs, most of which are moving to academy status, will comply with that requirement by consensual change to their funding agreements.
On the vexed issue of selection by aptitude, which the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, would also affect, I shall answer in two parts. At the moment, the prescribed subjects for selection of up to 10 per cent of intake by aptitude are PE or sports, the performing arts, visual arts, modern foreign languages, design and technology and information technology. When the Select Committee looked at that issue, it recommended that we removed design and technology and information technology from that list. We have agreed that we will do so on the grounds that we now believe that these subjects are areas of expertise which ought to be available in all schools. It is crucial to understand that the reason why we permit selection by aptitude is not simply because it is possible to do so—one could select by aptitude in a wide range of subjects—but also because of the access this gives to a wide range of provision in schools that will be particularly tailored or enhanced for that area. The three areas in which we still intend to allow it—PE and sport, performing and visual arts and modern foreign languages—are those where specialist schools are expected to make enhanced provision as a part of being a specialist institution. For example, modern foreign language specialist schools will typically offer a wider range of languages, including minority languages and sometimes Mandarin Chinese and Russian. These are languages which, with the best will in the world, are not going to be generally available. To have a truly comprehensive system, it is right that where schools can offer an enhanced provision which could not be part of the normal expectation of what a school can provide, parents and pupils should have access to it where the school thinks it is desirable.
18 July 2006 : Column 1274
The noble Baroness asked me for the number of schools using the 10 per cent selection provision. While I do not have the precise figure because I am not sure that we are aware of it, it is not a large number. But it is of immense value to some schools for the reasons I have given. Again, we intend that design and technology and information technology should not be included in the list for schools seeking to use the 10 per cent selection in the future, and we will consult on and revise the regulations in respect of aptitude selection at the same time as we consult on the school admissions code.
Turning to interviews for entry into sixth forms and to assess religious commitment covered by Amendments Nos. 169 and 170 spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, I think that we have rehearsed our position on interviews so often that I hesitate to go through it again at just before midnight. Perhaps I may make two brief points. First, I should stress that the faith communities themselves—the last area in which interviewing was allowed—had reached a position where they wished to end interviewing as an admissions criterion. Only a very small number of schools were still doing it by the time we announced that we would seek to end this practice in primary legislation, and the faith communities have supported us. Secondly, we do not believe it should be any more necessary for schools to interview prospective candidates for entry to the sixth form than it is for entry into any other form. The use of, for example, minimum attainment requirements at GCSE level, as many schools now providing sixth form education currently use, or of other over-subscription criteria should be more than adequate to offer year 12 places in an objective and impartial way rather than relying on subjective interviewing.
In response to Amendments Nos. 144 and 145A moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, requiring an affirmative resolution of each House rather than the more usual negative procedure, we have already laid a skeleton school admissions code before your Lordships and we will publish a draft of the full code in September, allowing for full consultation and debate in the education community and with noble Lords.
Home-school agreements are specifically prohibited from being linked to school admissions processes and we do not believe it is right to change that, even though we think that the agreements can have value. Given that, we do not support Amendment No. 144. We believe that admission to a school should not be contingent on promises of good behaviour or any other judgments about past behaviour, and while we encourage schools to meet with parents to discuss home-school agreements, this must not be an interview to determine whether a child should be admitted to a school, but an opportunity to discuss the school’s policies and the role of parents in supporting their child as a member of the school.
Finally, on the
interesting point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, about the
anonymisation of admission applications covered by
AmendmentNo. 145, we believe that over time the issues around
this should be considered. Looking at IT systems in
18 July 2006 : Column 1275
Midnight
Lord Lucas: I hope from what the noble Lord said that we are about to be showered with some good news that this might be the sort of time that we are heading home. Before that, I ask him for some further good news, that it will also under the school admissions code become illegal for a school to take into account the position in the ranking of parental preferences in which that school has been placed. As he knows, I very much feel that schools that say, “We will not let you in unless you place us first on the list”, are causing a serious problem. My noble friend referred to that. I do not see it in the existing draft of the code; perhaps I am just missing it. Secondly, will the criteria in paragraph 133 of the draft code apply to Church schools? They are the main offenders under the criteria for socially selective systems. I would be delighted if they were no longer able to operate as they have been.
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