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Education and Inspections Bill

I shall speak briefly to amendment No. 112, but I do not advise hon. Members to reach for the amendment paper to see what it says because it is gobbledegook. What is does, however, is to close an unintended loophole in the Schools Standards and Framework Act 1998, under which an adjudicator could increase the level of selection at a partially selective school back up to the 1998 level. Thus, if a school selected 50 per cent. of its pupils in 1998 and has since been instructed by the adjudicator to decrease it to 25 per cent., it would be open to the adjudicator to increase it back up to 50 per cent. If anyone thinks that that is not what Parliament intended, I would agree, but Parliament only passes the law and the judges decide what it means. In this case, Mr. Justice Collins decided in the High Court a couple of years ago that the true meaning of section 100 of the 1998 Act was not that there could be no increase in selection, which is what we thought that it meant, but that there could be no increase above the level that obtained in 1998. A group of parents in my borough asked the adjudicator to increase selection at two partially selective schools in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Mr. Khan) from 25 to 50 per cent. I am glad to say that, on this occasion, the adjudicator did not accede to the request, but she stated in her determination of September 2004 thatit would be within her power to agree an increase to50 per cent. I put it to my hon. Friends that, if there were such an increase from 25 to 50 per cent. in a partially selective school, we could hardly view it as agreeing with our election promise to have no new selection. Indeed, we could hardly justify it by saying that it is not an increase in comparison with 1998.