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In the end, when one looks at banding arrangements that have been running for some while, as in some of the CTCs, one finds that the middle classes can work them just as well as they can any other kind of admission arrangements. They notice where the wider bands are; they get tutors to tell their children how to score within those bands, which they do; and the proportion of the middle class that gets into the good CTCs starts to creep up. Not surprisingly, the middle class is a very resourceful and determined group. However, I should like to see an admissions arrangement that genuinely offered all children a chance to access all schools.
The only sensible way of doing that is through a completely unconditional ballot, although I am not saying that that ballot would by any means be applied to anything like a whole school population. When we were discussing religion, the right reverend Prelate said that he would like to reserve a part of a religious school’s intake for people of that religion. There is a very good argument for allowing schools to have a strong bias towards people who live close to them because, in many cases, schools are part of the community.
Those who run grammar
schools would doubtless argue that they have to select at least a
proportion of their pupils, although that is not an argument that the
Government have accepted in the case of Northern Ireland. There, they
have said that, although a school can have an academic character and
say that it will be run on academic lines, all parents should be
allowed to choose it as the school to which they would like their child
to be admitted. I think that that is reasonable: schools operate in
that way. If you look at, for example, the sixth-form colleges in
Cambridge—Hills Road and Long Road—you will see that
there is no substantial difference in admission criteria between the
two. One
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Schools will move and change in that direction and, by establishing an academic character for a school, as in Hills Road, you can create an academic school without having to select. You can certainly have academic schools that do not select a proportion of their children on academic criteria but, rather, rely on parents to apply and still end up with an academic school. Parents, being mildly sensible, will not generally pitch their ordinary kid into the high-flown world of a top academic grammar; they will take advice on subjects and decide to choose another school.
I think that there is scope for opening up every school in England on the basis that a proportion of the children—I would start at 25 per cent—should be admitted, or be capable of admission, by unconditional ballot. It would also be possible to combine that with giving parents an unconditional right to have access to an individual school on the old catchment area basis. Parents would be faced with a form that said that, if they put Holland Park Comprehensive as one of their chosen schools, they would be guaranteed a place there if none of their higher preferences accepted them. But they could also go in for the ballot at any number of other schools and they might well find that they were successful. They would then be guaranteed a place at a school that was sensibly close to them and, although that school might not be acceptable to them, they would at least have certainty. Quite a large proportion of the population want the certainty of getting their children into a neighbourhood school or one that is convenient for them. At the same time, that system would open up the possibility of their applying to any school and getting into what have previously been closed geographical or religious ghettos, where only the rich kids go because their parents have bought the right house or have been to mass every weekend for the past five years and have contributed to Church funds—or whatever the admission criteria might be. Obviously you cannot do that immediately, but you can work in that way.
If you find a school that, in practice, is not admitting 25 per cent of its children by ballot because its admissions are taken up by those who have a right to be in that school, then you allow that school to expand or, if it will not expand, you adjust the catchment area. So, over time, it should be possible to work to a position where any good school is admitting children roughly in the proportion of 75 per cent who are there by right and 25 per cent by ballot. Therefore, any child, within the possible constraints of transport, would have a right to apply to, and have a decent chance of getting into, any school, which is not the case at the moment. That would put us in a position where we could say that we were genuinely opening up access to our best schools to all pupils, which is what I would like to aim at as an objective.
I appreciate that the Government are
heading in the right direction, and I hope that, over time, our Front
Benches will reach agreement on what we
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Baroness Sharp of Guildford: We have three amendments in this grouping—Amendments Nos. 162, 162A and 171B. Before I speak to them, I want to make one or two remarks about the proposals put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. He is right that what parents find very disconcerting about the current arrangements are the uncertainties that they face. There have been occasions when children have been left completely in limbo, which is a most disturbing and traumatising experience for them and their parents. They need some certainty about where they are likely to be going.
I very much like the noble Lord’s idea of being guaranteed a place at a local school for which you have exerted your parental preference by going into a ballot. I can see that that is attractive but, if certain places are guaranteed for those of particular faiths, we might have even more parents rushing into a faith in order to get a place for their children without necessarily having true allegiance to that faith. Nevertheless, I understand what the noble Lord is saying and I find some attractions in it.
I turn to our amendments in this group. Amendment No. 162A would insert a new clause suggesting that, rather than the admission forum writing the report on what goes on within its area, that role should be taken over by the local education authority—or, as we shall be calling it in future, the local authority. It mirrors very much the series of amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Leigh, for which he has not been arguing. The Minister sent a letter to the noble Lord, Lord Smith, explaining why he thought the amendments were unnecessary, and I have to say that I find the letter persuasive.
In my view, the admission forum has very close links with the local education authority. It does not mirror it exactly because the admission forum includes the representatives of local head teachers and so on. Although when initially proposed—I think before the 2002 Education Act—we had some doubts about admission forums, I think that they have worked relatively well. We are happy that they remain in being; it is obviously sensible that they should monitor what goes on and make reports. Therefore, we are happy to leave things as they are. The Bill clearly states that the admission forums will do the monitoring and will write regular reports on what they find within their local area.
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Amendment No. 162, rather than looking at what is happening in the local area, looks at what happens at national level and calls for a national review of admissions procedures two to three years down the line after all these new measures have been introduced and this Bill has come into effect. The aim is to have an independent review, which would take evidence and commission research; its focus would be on how far the new procedures introduced by this Bill had helped to promote social cohesion. That independent review would report to the Secretary of State and, in the light of that report and its recommendations, the Secretary of State would, within six months, report back to Parliament on how he intended to implement the recommendations.
The case for having some kind of review of admissions procedures somewhere down the line after this Bill comes into effect is that this Bill proposes very substantial changes in current admissions procedures. Major concern has been expressed about finding procedures that help children from disadvantaged homes to access better-performing schools, which are often middle-class schools. To date, research has shown that many of those schools—the better-performing schools—have tended to be socially relatively exclusive and we need to assess how far this new legislation succeeds in changing that and meeting what is one of its aims.
That is even more important given that many oppose the notion of trust schools because they fear that the fact that those schools will have some control over their own admissions—that control is now very limited, but initially it was to be far greater—will exacerbate the trend of social exclusiveness, especially as the trust schools might be their own admissions authority and so be able to set their own admissions criteria, admittedly within the constraints of the admissions code.
There has been cause for concern. Various people have undertaken extensive research in this area. I quote from a study produced by Professor John Micklewright of the Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute at the University of Southampton. He said:
- “There has long
been a debate about social segregation in schools. Many people are
concerned that the changes proposed in the current White
Paper”—
- “on
education—more choice for parents and greater independence for
schools—will increase the already uneven spread of children from
different family backgrounds in secondary schools. Our research
suggests that greater selectivity in admissions by state
schools—which the Government claims will not happen—would
be likely to increase social segregation, especially if this was
coupled with any move towards separate academic and vocational school
tracks”.
Why are we worried about that? The Commission for Racial Equality has recently been giving evidence to the Education and Skills Committee about segregation in schools. I shall quote from the evidence that Nick Johnson gave on 7 June. He said that,
- “schools will
reflect the communities that they are in, where we can see increasing
patterns of segregation. We are pretty firm, in terms of the evidence
that we look at, when we think that there is this increase in
segregation residentially, but also, perhaps more
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12.45 pm
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood: I thank the noble Baroness for giving way. Perhaps she could clarify the intentions of the amendment in regard to timing. I think that she used two expressions in her remarks: one was “in two or three years’ time” and another was “somewhere down the line”. The amendment is very specific and suggests that a body be set up within a year and that the report should come back to Parliament within less than two parliamentary years from now. I can see the point of a review after some time, but the timescale in the amendment would allow, at best, an interim year for the new admissions system. If she could be clear on the timing, that would be very helpful.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: I thank the noble Lord for his intervention. I was just coming to the timing. In the amendment, we have specifically suggested that the arrangements should begin in October 2008, which would allow, at best, only two years for the working through of the current procedures. That was suggested to us by Comprehensive Future, which had suggested the original amendment, although we amended it somewhat. We on these Benches feel that, if one were to undertake such a review, one would probably need a somewhat longer period and at least three years for the procedures to work their way through. The key issue is whether the Government are prepared to set up an independent review of these procedures within a reasonable period. Three years would probably be reasonable; leaving it very much longer would be less so. However, we would not necessarily adhere to the specific date in the amendment.
Amendment No. 171B also stands in my name. Its aim is to prevent schools from complying with the new arrangements for a year or so and then reverting back to former practices. That has happened on occasions. Schools have been taken to the adjudicator, who has given a ruling; for a year or so, the school adheres to the adjudicator's ruling but then goes back to the old practices of selection. The aim of this amendment is to ensure that schools comply with the terms of admissions procedures and with the code of admissions as required by the Bill and are not able to revert back.
Baroness
Buscombe: I wish to speak to
Amendments Nos. 172, 173 and 174 concerning our objections to some
aspects of the role of the adjudicator. First, on banding, I would like
to remind the House that we have already made some difference to the
Bill. We are grateful that the other evening the Minister accepted our
amendment to require decisions on banding to be
20 July 2006 : Column 1430
Amendment No. 172 probes the thinking behind the broad powers granted to the adjudicator under Clause 43. The amendment leaves out the key words,
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