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The noble Baroness said: My Lords, when the Bill was considered in Committee, I said in response to a proposed amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that we would be bringing forward an amendment on Report to repeal Section 91 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998.
Special arrangements under Section 91 of the 1998 Act permit aided and foundation schools with a religious character to preserve that religious character by rejecting applications from families not of their particular faith or denomination, even where they
Where it makes a difference in practice is where, for example, fewer Roman Catholics apply for a Catholic school than there are places available. If that happens, a Section 91 arrangement would allow the school to keep places it cannot fill with Catholic pupils empty—even though there may be a demand for those places from non-Catholic families. In our view, keeping places empty when there is a demand for them is incompatible with parental preference and wasteful of resources.
We have discussed this proposal to end Section 91 agreements with the Roman Catholic authorities, whose schools it is that make use of Section 91 agreements, and the Catholic Church is happy for the benefits of Catholic schooling to be extended to other families who appreciate and want those benefits, as long as demand from Roman Catholics can continue to be met. I beg to move.
The Lord Bishop of Blackburn: My Lords, I support the amendment. I do so with the full backing of the Catholic Education Service, as the Minister has said. I pay tribute to the way in which the Minister and her officials have dealt with this issue. It is a matter of making schools more inclusive where possible, and that is very much in the spirit of what we have been talking about in earlier debates. I greatly welcome the amendment and hope that it will be accepted.
Lord Lucas: My Lords, this was a bit of good news when the Minister announced it in Committee and I am delighted to see the amendment now.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I thank noble Lords. I hope that the amendment will be accepted.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Schedule 4 [Admission arrangements]:
Baroness Ashton of Upholland moved Amendment No. 90:
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Walmsley moved Amendment No. 91:
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, the purpose of this amendment, as in its previous incarnation, is to amend the School Standards and Framework Act to establish the right of heads to refer pupils for assessment prior to entry to the school if they have reasonable grounds to believe that they have significant emotional and behavioural difficulties, and to encourage the provision of adequate resources to support schools in meeting the needs of these pupils.
During discussion on this amendment in Committee, we were gratified by the support from the Minister and from the noble Lords, Lord Northbourne and Lord Alton. However, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, had a problem with it, since he felt that it might lead to "playing ping-pong" with a child. Perhaps I can set the noble Lord's mind at rest. The game of ping-pong only begins when a child is placed in a school without any thought at to what is required to meet his needs. This amendment seeks to prevent that by ensuring that the child's needs are properly identified and catered for, so that three or four months down the line the school does not find itself having to exclude the child. The child would then be placed in another school without a proper assessment of his needs. He is then expelled, and so the tragic human ping-pong game goes on.
As the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, said in Committee, it is very often an issue of adequate resources. Additionally, teachers and heads can be frustrated by a lack of support from the LEA for one reason or another. This amendment seeks to ensure that there is a professional assessment of need followed by an impartial judgment on what resources are necessary to meet those needs. As the Minister has rightly pointed out on several occasions, the Government are providing more resources to support pupil behaviour in mainstream schools. On 25th April, the Secretary of State announced a new package of £66 million. This amendment would ensure fair and impartial deployment of those resources according to the needs of the pupil and the school. I hope that the Minister will look favourably on it. I beg to move.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I am a little surprised that this amendment has been tabled again. As I said in Committee, the thrust of this amendment is that some decision would be made about a child's suitability before he or she had even obtained a school place. That is not the direction in which we want to see education move in this country. We do not want schools to have grounds for refusing admittance to this group of children with special needs. We think that this could be abused, to the detriment of these children.
The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has quite rightly talked about the ping-pong situation facing some children in school, and acknowledged that we are very concerned about children with challenging behaviour. We have put £178 million into schools specifically to cover issues arising from behavioural problems. I acknowledge that more needs to be done. However, we want to achieve that within a context of
We already have in place a system for assessing and supporting children with emotional and behavioural difficulties through the special educational needs framework. The SEN code of practice sets out a systematic process for schools to identify and provide for children's special educational needs in school.
It is not clear from the amendment how head teachers could identify which children seeking admission to the school should be assessed for any emotional and behavioural difficulties they may have. There is also a real danger that any such assessments could be somewhat subjective. If a school is approached about taking a child, either by the child's parents or the LEA, head teachers cannot possibly know what that individual child is like. It is therefore entirely conceivable that their initial conclusions about the child would be unfair, being based on nothing more than perhaps word of mouth, family reputation, or worse, simply where they live—by postcode. Furthermore, if a child's apparent behavioural difficulties were related to a disability, "screening" the child for admissions purposes could be unlawful under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.
We also consider that if the LEA were to be required to undertake the additional assessments that this amendment requires, it would significantly increase the burdens on their child psychology services. In a normal admission round, such assessment could delay the whole process and would be unfair to other children, particularly if a place had to be kept open for a particular child until an assessment were completed. Of course, a school can always request a statutory assessment of a child's special educational needs once that child has been admitted to school.
Accepting this amendment could lead to significant numbers of such children being out of school needlessly, for an indefinite period. I do not believe that that is what the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, wishes to achieve. I agree with her that we can do much more. However, this is not the amendment that would achieve what I believe she is searching for. In the light of that, I hope that she will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response. She makes two particular points to which I respond as follows. First, if there were a right to an impartial assessment and an entitlement to the resources to meet that assessment, there could be no grounds for refusing admittance to the school. So I believe that the consequences which the Minister fears would not occur.
Secondly, the Minister said that the information received about the child might well be wrong. Every secondary school receives information from the previous school. We have no reason to believe that that information is incorrect or has not been compiled after
Frankly, the lack of child psychiatry resources is no reason to refuse an amendment of this kind which is aimed at ensuring that children with special needs have the appropriate resources based on a proper assessment of their needs. However, I shall read carefully what the Minister said and consider whether we need to bring the measure back. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 91A not moved.]
"REPEAL OF POWER TO MAKE CERTAIN SPECIAL ARRANGEMENTS FOR PRESERVING RELIGIOUS CHARACTER
Section 91 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 (c. 31) (special arrangements to preserve religious character of foundation or voluntary aided school) shall cease to have effect."
Page 134, line 28, at end insert—
"(3A) In subsection (3)—
(a) at the end of paragraph (a) there is inserted "or", and
(b) paragraph (b) is omitted."
Page 134, line 28, at end insert—
"( ) After subsection (3)(c) there is inserted "; or
(d) if the child has been identified upon an assessment requested by the head teacher of the school as having significant emotional and behavioural difficulties and the local education authority responsible for maintaining the school is unwilling or unable to provide to the school such resources as may reasonably be considered appropriate to meet the needs of the child""
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