---

Education and Inspections Bill

I have not met such a head teacher when I have been going round. I ask head teachers, ““Are you on principle and deliberately manipulating your intake?”” and they always tell me no. [Laughter.] The point that I am making is a more serious one. Even if head teachers are unprincipled and are manipulating their intakes to boost their results and those do not reflect the quality of the school generally, my argument is that the intake is largely irrelevant to the quality of the school. It is the teachers, the leadership, the ethos and the behavioural policies that make for a good school, not the intake, whether that is manipulatedor not.