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Schools White Paper

My hon. Friend makes a reasonable point. The first thing to say is that local authorities will have a clear duty, for the first time, to ensure fair access to schools for all pupils living in that community, so they will have to go out and find out what parents want. They will have to talk to parents when their children are in year 1, year 2 or year 3 of primary school to find out what sort of secondary school they want to go to and to ensure that they have access to schools of the sort that they want to attend. Authorities will have to build that into their school transport plans and ensure that there is fair access. Financial help will be given to them to overcome that barrier, but underpinning all that is, first and foremost, a requirement for every school to be a good school. Choice is not real choice unless standards are driven up across the system, but fair access to the schools that are on offer is at the heart of our proposals in the White Paper.