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Lord Addington: I believe what most of us are worried about are the children who are not spotted and who do not have a statement.
4.30 p.m.
Lord Henley: I cannot provide evidence about those who are not spotted, but if one looks at those with statements, one can see--as the evidence that I have put before the Committee shows--that they are being treated well. Therefore I do not believe that those without statements are likely to suffer as much as is claimed.
If I may, I shall continue. Where an individual school has an unusually high proportion of pupils with special educational needs, parental choice is almost certainly involved. Parents of children with SEN are likely to choose a school which has a good reputation for providing effectively for such children integrated into the mainstream. I believe that giving schools a little more freedom to select--which is all we are talking about--does not reduce safeguards for children with special educational needs in any way. All of these
remain in force including the safeguards preventing admission authorities from discriminating against such children, the right of parents of children with a statement to specify their preferred school, and the requirement to publish clear information about admission arrangements for disabled pupils under the DDA.There was also the suggestion--I think it was made by the noble Lord, Lord Tope--that more selection would mean extra costs for LEAs. I think he particularly referred to transport. There is no reason to assume that more selection would necessarily lead to additional school costs. Parents may choose to send their children to a partially selective school further away from their home; but nothing in the Bill changes the existing rules on transport--rules that can be operated by LEAs--if pupils live beyond the statutory walking distance from their nearest suitable school. That means that such parents may forgo free school transport to send their children to a non-selective school further away. That may well set off additional costs for transporting pupils who may have to attend a school further away but who are still entitled to free school transport.
We on this side of the Chamber want to give schools more flexibility to serve their communities. That is why the Bill offers freedoms to schools throughout the country. I think Members of the Committee opposite are paying mere lip service to school autonomy, diversity and choice, and I do not believe they believe in that. They want to ration that freedom so far as they possibly can, and underneath their fine words that is exactly what these amendments are all about. Therefore if the noble Lord is not prepared to withdraw them, I encourage those on this side of the Committee to vote against them.
Baroness Warnock: Before the Minister sits down, I hope he will address the question of co-operation with local education authorities, because I do not think he said anything about that. This is at the heart of my support, at any rate, for this amendment; namely, that it should be made clear on the face of the Bill that changes must be made only if there has been collaboration with local policy makers, if I can put it that way.
Lord Henley: We shall come to these points later on. The simple fact is that we would expect schools that wish to make changes to their admission procedures, or whatever, to do so. In the case of the LEA county schools, it is the LEAs themselves who would do this because as often as not they are the admission authorities. In virtually all cases they are the admission authorities and therefore the point we have discussed does not apply. In the case of other schools, for example, voluntary schools with their own governors, we would expect them to consult the local education authority and others as appropriate. Later, we shall set out guidance on how that consultation should take place. What I am saying is we do not like this prescriptive attitude as suggested by this amendment that the Secretary of State herself has to designate areas where this can take place before it can take place. We believe the schools are the right people to do this and they will know how to do it.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: I was, I must confess, amazed and saddened to realise that there was
at one point a university which felt it might get along perfectly well without the Minister. I can only say that had I been in the position of the admission authorities at that university, I should not have made that decision.The point about selection that we are concerned with is that it deals with people up to the end of the statutory school age. At some point life will require that there is selection of one sort or another. I should not like to think that when I competed for a chair of English literature at the University of Sheffield at the age of 39 that should have been invalidated because everyone else did not get a professorship at exactly the same time. We are concerned with selection in schools; what happens in tertiary education, in higher education and in the rest of life is not at the moment our concern.
I was impressed with the way the right revered Prelate the Bishop of Ripon put his difficulty of how choice and diversity are to be maintained in the present system. I do not feel that anything that has been said after his speech has done a great deal to deliver him from his dilemma. We believe that the Secretary of State should not act without consultation and without consideration of the criteria to be involved. Nothing can be lost by the Secretary of State doing that. The criteria are clearly laid out. They have been enunciated by me and by the noble Lord, Lord Tope. I notice that the Minister in his reply drew attention to the non-statemented children in some of our schools and how they are dealt with. We on this side of the Chamber would be grateful if he could provide--probably not now, but at some later point--figures on the non-statemented children because the figures are extremely difficult to come by as they are not easily recognised.
The issue to us is that the Government seem not to have any faith in a local community to decide whether it wants selection. These amendments simply permit the citizens of every town in which the Government want to see a grammar school set up publicly to say whether they want four out of five of their schools to be secondary modern schools. The Minister has not been convinced by our arguments. We shall, however, leave them in his mind like eggs in a nest in the hope that they may hatch at a later stage of this Bill. In the meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 3, 4 and 5 not moved.]
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Viscount Allenby of Megiddo): Before I call Amendment No. 6 I should point out to the Committee there is an error on the Marshalled List. Amendment No. 6 seeks to amend Clause 1 and not Clause 73 as printed on the Marshalled List.
Clause 1 [Relaxation of controls on changes relating to selective admissions]:
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton moved Amendment No. 6:
The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 6, I wish to speak also to Amendment No. 7. These amendments deal with the issues of surplus places and the proper planning of resources.
Lord Henley: Is the noble Baroness also speaking to Amendments Nos. 200, 219 and 222? Amendments Nos. 219 and 222 seek to amend Clause 73, which might be where the confusion comes from.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: Yes, I am. I apologise to the Committee. These amendments deal with the issues of surplus places, the management of resources and the important issue that every pound that is spent on providing education for children in our communities ought to be spent most effectively.
The amendments would require the Secretary of State to establish an independent inquiry into the effect of the Bill as regards the creation of surplus places, and require that the Government lay the results before Parliament before various plans to increase selection and to increase provision can be undertaken as a result of this Bill.
During the Commons Committee stage, MPs asked when the report, Trading Places, would be available from the Audit Commission. At one point the Minister claimed not to have seen the report; and it was published the morning after the Commons Committee had completed its consideration of the relevant provision in the Bill. These amendments seek to ensure that proper weight is given to that report.
The report identifies a direct conflict between promoting grant-maintained schools and ensuring the economic and efficient supply of school places. Since GM status was introduced, 40 per cent. of the schools that LEAs wish to close have remained open by opting out. Secondly, the cost of promoting choice is undermining the need to control public expenditure, with no clear indication of the Government's priority. There is a breakdown in the system of capital allocation to schools which has prevented LEAs and diocesan authorities maintaining, let alone improving, many of the currently needed school buildings.
The problem has been that the Government have top-sliced the money that is available for school buildings, and made the money unfairly and disproportionately available to the GM sector and the city technology sector at the expense of county and voluntary-aided schools in all parts of the country.
We are calling on the Government to revise their policy in line with the findings of the Audit Commission for schools facing reorganisation. We are calling on them to re-examine the issues of capital; the definition of school capacity; parental choice; balancing parental choice; and tackling surplus places. We need to give more effective powers to local agencies, both to LEAs and to the FAS, to plan provision and to give local agencies more power to manage the market.
I noted that during debate on a previous amendment the Minister referred rather scathingly to, "those who would seek to plan centrally". Previous debates have referred to education for pupils of statutory school age as though somehow the market alone would provide that
In the light of the Audit Commission report, it is vitally important that Parliament fully understands the implications of the Government's contradictory policy before the selection provisions are given effect to under Clauses 73 and 69. A negative order is required before provision can come into effect along these lines. Delaying the report would thus fit well into the process of further scrutiny within Parliament. A call for a full inquiry is in no way intended to demean the significance of the commission's findings or its independent stance. On the contrary, the report is of such importance that it forms an essential starting-point. Ministers might even wish the commission to undertake the inquiry and gear it directly to the policy implications of Part I of the Bill.
It is a pretty strong indictment of the Government's policy--or rather, the lack of coherence between two aspects of government policy in the field of education--that the list of recommendations in the Audit Commission report contains the following. Under the heading,
the report recommends that the Government:
That is a list against which no government should turn their face.
I have no doubt that the Government, the Minister and speakers from the Government Benches will say that the Audit Commission has been "captured" by people from the Opposition Benches in this House and presumably by the diocesan authorities in different parts of the country. Nothing could be further from the truth. These concerns were set out after a professional detailed analysis of the results of government policy. They should be taken most seriously.
The Audit Commission identified a conflict of interest between two government policies--a large black hole of the Government's making. The Audit Commission is warning the Government not to keep digging without stopping to consider who is falling into the hole. On these Benches we know that into that black hole of wasted resources are falling the interests of children in
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: In rising to support the amendments proposed by the noble Baroness, I wish to make a couple of brief points. First, if it is the case--and the Audit Commission, for which I believe everybody in local government has a very deep respect, suggests that it is--that £100 million is being wasted every year on empty school places and the creation and expansion of grant-maintained schools contributes to that, it is a very serious matter indeed, and one which I should have thought it would be in the very best interests of the Government to assist us in resolving. For that reason we agree with the suggestion that it would be beneficial to allow a further investigation into the apparent conflict of two different strands of government policy and the cost that it imposes to be carried out before we pass the relevant parts of this Bill. In addition, Amendments Nos. 219 to 222, as it were, permit this process to have a meaningful conclusion by insisting that the enactment of this part of the Bill shall be by affirmative procedure in both Houses.
The justification for that is that selection is a deeply divisive issue. I am not talking about what happens on your Lordships' Benches. I am talking about the divisiveness of this issue outside these walls. Had the Government said that they intended to pass an Act which increased the level of selection by a certain proportion, the proposal would have met with very wide opposition among the general public. There is no evidence that parents are particularly keen to ensure that there is an increased amount of selection in their areas. Many parents quite understandably fear what would happen to their child under a selective system, so it is a divisive issue.
The Audit Commission's report has also indicated that it is controversial within the terms of the framework of the Government's policy initiatives. Those are the educational arguments for putting forward the suggestion for the affirmative mode when enacting the Bill.
In parliamentary terms one might question the wisdom of introducing the controversial sections of the Bill at the end of a Parliament. I make no comment as to what will be the result of the forthcoming election, whenever it is called, but that there will be an election is beyond dispute. One must ask oneself whether this is the right moment to introduce extremely controversial issues without having gone as far as one can to prove or disprove the important criticisms with which the Audit Commission dealt in its report.
Page 2, line 5, at end insert--
("(4) Subsection (3) above shall come into force after the making of an order, and no such order may be made unless a draft of the instrument containing the order has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.").
"(a) To make the current approach work better",
"Encourage and support effective working relationships".
"(b) To change the current approach",
"Reconsider the existing policy framework by reviewing the consistency between existing policies and procedures on: GM status for schools facing reorganisation; capital; the definition of school capacity and the setting of admission limits; the entitlement of parents to choose; and the balance between promoting choice and tackling surplus places ... Consider options to give more effective powers to local agencies ... to plan provision ... Consider options to give local agencies more powers to manage the market in their area ... Consider options for the introduction of an improved set of incentives and trigger mechanisms to promote value for money".
4.45 p.m.
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