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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I hope that I can give the reassurance that noble Lords seek on these amendments. I very much agree with the comments that noble Lords have made about the needs of schools in more deprived areas and the objectives that the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, seeks to achieve through Amendment No. 80, which have been supported so widely on all sides of the House. In respect of Amendment No. 80, on the allocation of funding by disadvantage, Section 47 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 makes provision for regulations to be made that set out how a local authority must determine the amount of funding each maintained school receives in its budget share. Existing regulations made under Section 47 of that Act make provisions similar to those envisaged by the noble Baroness. In particular, Regulation 17(2) of the School Finance (England) Regulations 2006 states that local authorities must ensure—I stress the word ““must””—that their funding formula reflects the incidence of social deprivation among the pupils registered at the schools that they maintain. We have also recently required local authorities and their schools forums to review their local funding formulae to ensure that they are, first, delivering the level of resources we have identified in their overall allocations for tackling the impact of deprivation and, secondly, that such resources are distributed in a way that sufficiently differentiates need among their schools. I hope that we have met the points that noble Lords have reasonably raised in respect of the funding of disadvantage. On Amendment No. 70, we discussed in Committee whether there should be a requirement on admission forums to have regard to the contribution their schools have to the well-being of communities in disadvantaged areas when providing advice on admission arrangements. I explained then that the illustrative regulations we provided on the operation of admission forums stipulate that their reports shall include, "““the ethnic and social mix of pupils attending schools in the area of the authority and the factors that affect this””" and, "““the extent to which existing and proposed admission arrangements serve the interests of looked after children, children with disabilities and children with special educational needs””." I believe that goes a long way to meet the objectives of Amendment No. 70. Since we published the illustrative regulations on the operation of admission forums we have issued the draft School Admissions Code, which I have circulated widely in the House and which is available in the Library. This makes clear that admission forums should assess how well admission arrangements serve the interests of local parents and children, and that they should do so in their reports. Paragraph 4.10 at page 53 of the draft School Admissions Code states: "““Admission forums have a key role in ensuring a fair admission system that promotes social equity””." The document further states: "““Admission forums must act in accordance with the provisions of this code and they should amongst the activities that they carry out assess how well the admission arrangements serve the interests of local parents and children collectively””—" I stress ““collectively””— "““and try to promote agreement on admission issues””." I believe that the objectives of the noble Baroness’s amendment are now fully met in the regulations for the admission forums and the draft School Admissions Code. On Amendment No. 6, all categories of maintained schools have a duty to operate within the same framework of admissions and local responsibilities. Irrespective of their category, whether it be community, foundation or voluntary aided, they are all subject to explicit duties under the Race Relations Act 1976 to eliminate unlawful discrimination and to promote equality of opportunity and good relations between persons of different ethnic groups. Furthermore, under the Bill it is a requirement on proposers of new schools to show how their proposals will contribute to community cohesion and the trusts of trust schools will be under a specific duty under Clause 33 to promote community cohesion as part of fulfilling their charitable object of advancing education. The Bill also places explicit new duties on local authorities. They will have to ensure fair access to educational opportunity and to promote the fulfilment of every child’s potential in addition to the existing duty to promote high standards. Local authorities are also subject to explicit duties under the Race Relations Act 1976. Moreover, local authorities will be required specifically to consider the impact of proposed new schools on community cohesion when carrying out their commissioning role under Part 2 of the Bill. Local authorities will be under a duty to have regard to guidance from the Secretary of State when considering proposals. They will need to consider the extent to which, and how satisfactorily in the circumstances of the community, proposals for new schools promote community cohesion. In all those ways I believe that the objectives of Amendment No. 6 are met by the Bill. I hope that the noble Baroness is satisfied.