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Lord Monkswell: Before my noble friend withdraws her amendment, I wonder whether I may press the Minister for some fairly urgent information about whether any primary schools in England and Wales practise selection for up to 20 per cent. of their intake. I do not know how quickly the department can get that information, but I think that it would be significant in our deliberations. I do not expect to receive that information tonight, but perhaps we could have it by tomorrow or before the final stage of the Bill.
Lord Henley: There are something of the order of 24,000 schools in England alone, of which I imagine that something of the order of between 20,000 and 21,000 are primary schools. It would not be practical for the department to write to every single one. Such
schools are run either by themselves (if they are grant-maintained) or by the local education authority. If the noble Lord wishes to write to them all, he is perfectly free to do so.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: As I have said, we look forward with interest to reading in great detail the Minister's words in Hansard. Perhaps in return the Minister will consider whether it might be helpful to exclude primary schools in exactly the same way as nursery schools are excluded. With the leave of the Committee, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood moved Amendment No. 11:
The noble Baroness said: We now come to a group of amendments, Amendments Nos. 11, 18, 13 and 14, which are all connected--
Lord Henley: For the convenience of the Committee, I wonder whether the noble Baroness will give way--
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: If the Committee prefers to take them separately--
Lord Henley: If the noble Baroness would give way, my understanding was that she was to speak to Amendments Nos. 11, 18 and 51. Does she also wish to include the other two? I am happy either way. If she wishes to speak to Amendments Nos. 11, 18 and 51, so be it.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: For the ease of the Committee, I shall speak to those amendments that are grouped on the list.
The purpose of Amendment No. 11 and the subsequent provisions which are scattered throughout the Bill is to enable local authorities to have limited powers of intervention in certain circumstances when their own schools (county and voluntary schools) seek, under the provisions of the Bill, to increase their proportion of selected pupils.
As the Bill is now drafted, a school is not required to go through a publication procedure nor are the proposals to be regarded as constituting a significant change in the character of the school. Therefore, paragraph 2(2) creates a loophole in the planning arrangements for school admissions, replacing a system in which parents and local interests can at least voice their opinion through the publication procedure and consultative arrangements with a system which Ministers clearly expect to be less rigorous. This amendment brings the LEA into the picture. It does not necessarily prevent the expansion of selection. The LEA may take the view that an increase in selection, perhaps in the context of the overall number of places available in the area, will
Amendment No. 18 provides that where there are proposals for a county or voluntary school to select up to the threshold, there should be consultation with the LEA or the body that appoints its foundation governors. The amendment seeks to ensure that if there is to be greater competition between schools to select pupils, without public consultation, there should at least be a proper discussion between the various interested parties so that duplication and waste can be avoided. I do not repeat all of the arguments rehearsed earlier about the importance of the Audit Commission report.
I stop at this point; otherwise, I believe that I shall become involved in a complicated argument about two groups of amendments. I believe that I have gone as far as Amendment No. 18. I beg to move.
Lord Henley: The amendments before the Committee deal with the admission authorities for county and voluntary schools. Paragraph 2 of Schedule 1 enables those admission authorities to introduce various selective admissions within certain thresholds without publication of statutory proposals. Amendment No. 11 seeks to make any such decision for a county school subject to a resolution of the LEA. But as in virtually every single case the LEAs are the admission authorities for those county schools, I have no doubt that the LEA will take the relevant factors into consideration in deciding how to use the new freedom offered by paragraph 2. The amendment is therefore unnecessary. I do not believe that it would take matters any further. It would be asking the LEA to resolve a matter on two different occasions.
I believe that Amendment No. 18 is also unnecessary. First, as I have already argued, as the LEAs are nearly always the admission authorities for county and controlled schools, in the great majority of cases the admission arrangements for such schools cannot be changed without the co-operation of the LEAs. Therefore, the LEAs would have to decide something twice, quite unnecessarily. Secondly, the bodies that appoint foundation governors appoint the majority of governors at voluntary aided schools and a substantial proportion of the governors at voluntary controlled schools. That gives the bodies that appoint foundation governors a powerful channel of influence over voluntary school governing bodies. Thirdly, paragraph 6 of Schedule 1 requires admission authorities proposing variations in admission arrangements, to which the requirement to publish statutory proposals no longer applies, to consult interested parties and, in so doing, to have regard to guidance issued by the Secretary of State. I can give the noble Baroness an assurance that the guidance will
For similar reasons, Amendment No. 51 is also unnecessary. Diocesan and other bodies that appoint foundation governors appoint the majority of governors at former voluntary grant-maintained schools. Clause 5 of the Bill imposes consultation requirements on grant-maintained governing bodies identical to those in paragraph 6 of Schedule 1. With those assurances, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: I thank the Minister for his reply, which I shall read carefully. It was quite complicated. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood moved Amendment No. 13:
The noble Baroness said: I beg to move Amendment No. 13. The purpose of the amendment is to prevent reductions below a school's selection threshold, once it has been exceeded, from being subject to the control of the Secretary of State. One of the main purposes of the Bill is to restrict the occasions on which an expansion of selection requires the approval of the Secretary of State. It does this by creating thresholds below which an increase in selection is not to be treated as a significant change, with the result that the process of public consultation and thereafter approval by the Government is no longer required.
The amendment proposes that only a change to exceed the relevant threshold should require the approval of the Secretary of State. The converse case, where a school which previously selected more than the threshold changed its admission arrangements to reduce its selective intake, would no longer require the approval of the Secretary of State. The first case is reasonable. The purpose of the Bill is to extend the ability of schools to become more selective, but it sets definite limits to the extent to which that can happen. However, there is little justification for the mechanism to prevent schools from becoming less selective, which, after all, has the effect of increasing choice for the majority of parents.
The circumstances in which such a case may arise illustrate why the amendment is desirable. Any degree of selection depends on there being a greater number of potential pupils seeking a place for whom a lesser number can be selected. The proportion of pupils who can be selected will therefore depend upon the school being over-subscribed. If the number of pupils seeking admission under the selective criteria falls below the appropriate percentage, the selective percentage must also fall, unless the number of pupils admitted under the non-selective admissions procedure is reduced to a balancing level.
If applications under the non-selective criteria are buoyant, pupils can be turned away while there are surplus places in the school. Plainly, that would be nonsense and a denial of parental choice. It would also be unlawful under open enrolment rules. In these circumstances the Secretary of State would be constrained to grant the necessary permission; that is, to make unnecessary and wasteful constraints, which the amendment seeks to remove.
It may be said that the circumstances outlined would be unlikely to come about in practice. However, the provisions of this Bill make it all the more likely that this could happen. If a number of formerly comprehensive schools in an area began to select part of their intake, a formerly selective school could easily find that there was an insufficient pool of pupils from which to select. The Government are aware of this danger. They do not propose a completely selective system and they retain reserve powers in Clause 11 to limit selection where they consider that the situation warrants it. In effect, by allowing Ministers to impose a common 20 per cent. limit, Clause 11 would cut down selection in GM schools to the same level as that in county schools. The amendment will help the natural process by which schools can adjust to the circumstances that face them.
Page 54, line 37, at end insert ("and in the case of a county school the local education authority resolves that the proposals would not reduce the range of choice as to admissions available to parents of pupils (including pupils who are less likely to be admitted by reference to ability or aptitude) in the relevant age group in its area").
Page 54, line 47, leave out ("either").
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