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On Question, amendments agreed to.
Clause 46 [Co-ordination of admission arrangements]:
Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 88:
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, the amendment would change the word "arrangements" for "dates". As I said in Committee, the arrangements for admissions and actual admissions of pupils are one of the most important functions that any school carries out. A school that is its own admissions authority must act within the law. Once the criteria are set they must be fairly applied. If they are not, the procedures can be challenged. The most vexed aspect of the arrangements is the setting of dates by which parents know whether their child has been accepted for a school place. Different dates operating in an area
I want to make a point about the response that I received from the noble Baroness in Committee. She said:
I return to my original point. It is important for those schools that are their own admissions authority what arrangements they can make. If there were a co-ordination of dates, that would make their position much more simple. What happens at the moment is that one school will have a date at one stage and parents will receive one set of information while still hoping for information from another school of their choice. There is a great deal of playing one school off against another, which causes confusion. It would be helpful to have some explanation of what the noble Baroness said at cols. 271 and 272. I beg to move.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I apologise if I was less than helpful in my previous remarks. Perhaps it was late.
Let me spend a moment explaining the effect of the amendment and addressing the points, I hope more succinctly, raised by the noble Baroness. The whole purpose of the clause is to provide a co-ordinated and simplified admissions process that will result in all local parents in the local education authority's area being offered a single school place at the same time. We know that this is what many parents want. The amendment will not achieve it.
As drafted, the amendment will not achieve what the noble Baroness seeks to achieve—that is, that parents should know by a single date whether or not their child has been accepted for admission. All that the amendment would effectively do would be to co-ordinate the date within a local education authority's area on which children are physically admitted to school.
Under current legislation, parents often apply to several admission authorities for their child to be admitted to a school and may receive a number of offers, or sometimes no offer at all. Simply co-ordinating the date on which children are admitted to school would not prevent the situation, which often arises at the moment, where some parents receive and hold onto several offers of a school place for their child while others do not receive any.
However, under the new provision the published co-ordination scheme for an area will give the date on which parents will be offered a school place for their child, either at a preferred school or, if that is not possible, at an alternative available school. This will be an improvement on the current situation, which causes unnecessary distress and uncertainty for many parents and children. I am sure that, like me, noble Lords would not wish that to continue. We want to build on the existing framework because we believe that it will provide a smoother process. Co-ordinating the date of admission but not the arrangements for admission will not achieve that.
I gave an assurance in Committee—I reiterate it—that foundation and voluntary-aided schools should not and need not be concerned about our proposals to co-ordinate admission arrangements. Under any agreed scheme, the governors of such schools will continue to be the admission authority, receiving all applications from parents and applying their own published over-subscription criteria before deciding which applicants are eligible for a place.
The local education authority will send out the letters on their behalf—that is the role that the local education authority will play. Where parents have more than one potential offer, the local education authority will simply apply the co-ordinated scheme agreed by all the admission authorities in the area to decide which single offer of a school place will be made to all the parents in its area. The most obvious example will be where parents put down preferences. If a child is eligible to be admitted to more than one school and there is a place, in such cases it will be parental preference. But it will be for all the admission authorities to decide the specifics of that.
I hope that that puts more succinctly the situation of those schools. They will continue to decide which children are admitted. If there are more children than places, the local education authority will apply the co-ordinated scheme and send out letters. It does not affect in any way the admission arrangements for those schools. I hope that on that basis the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I accept the Minister's point that my amendment reads "arrange dates for admission". That is certainly not what I intended. I intended that there should be a date by which the preferences were responded to by all schools in an area. That would get over the problems of multiple applications and multiple offers. I shall have another look at that issue between now and the next stage.
I also accept the Minister's explanation about schools which are their own admission authorities. But I took the words on the page to mean that the main difference that a co-ordinated scheme will make to foundation and voluntary-aided schools is that, rather than the schools putting forward the offer themselves, the schools will notify the relevant education authority as to which schools are eligible. That is not what the Minister has just said. I understand her now to be saying that the schools will notify the LEA that, for example, Mr Jones's daughter, Alison, has been offered a place under the criteria that apply; and a letter goes out to Mrs Jones saying, "Your daughter, Alison, has been offered a place". That is not what this says. It says that the school will notify the relevant education authority as to which schools are eligible—it is probably "which children are eligible" rather than which schools. So it was confusing.
However, I understand that my amendment is defective. I shall look at it again between now and Third Reading. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland moved Amendment No. 89:
"(1A) Such a determination under section 89 may also, if the school is one at which boarding accommodation is provided for pupils, include—
(a) a determination of the number of pupils in each relevant age group that it is intended to admit to the school in that year as boarders, and
(b) a determination of the number of pupils in each relevant age group that it is intended to admit to the school in that year otherwise than as boarders."
Page 30, leave out lines 13 to 16.
Page 30, line 22, at end insert—
"(4) References in this section to the determination of any number include references to the determination of zero as that number.""
Page 30, line 30, leave out "arrangements" and insert "dates"
"The main difference a co-ordinated scheme will make to foundation and voluntary-aided schools is that, rather than put forward the offer themselves, they"—
I assume that "they" means the schools themselves—
"will notify the relevant education authority as to which schools are eligible".
How can a school say which schools are eligible? I do not understand what that means. She continued:
"Each local education authority will then check in relation to all pupils resident in its area the potential offers to be made".
I am not sure what that means. How do they check the potential offers to be made to all pupils resident in the area—unless in plain English that means that parents will make their bid for a place and the local education authority will consider those bids and try to reconcile them with the places available? But what is stated there simply does not make sense.
"Applying the rules applicable to the co-ordinated scheme in question".
So I think that what the noble Baroness is saying is that schools may be their own admissions authority but, nevertheless, the rules must be applied according to the scheme in question. So I do not agree that schools will not be much affected on the basis of what the Minister herself said. She continued:
"the education authority will then decide what offer will be made to those who would otherwise receive multiple offers, or none, and then the local education authority will transmit the single offer of a school place to residents in their area".—[Official Report, 14/5/02; cols. 271-2]
Again, I am not sure what that means. Will a "guesstimate" be made of those who would otherwise receive multiple offers? No parent will have received a multiple offer because, under that system, offers will not have been made. How are LEAs to assume which parents would otherwise have received multiple offers or none? I received a confusing response from the Minister and clarification would be helpful.
9.45 p.m.
After Clause 46, insert the following new clause—
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