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Education and Inspections Bill

I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for his prompt action in providing for Lords amendment No. 42, which is essentially the amendment I moved on Report, but put into what I hope is foolproof draftsman’s language. As he says, the amendment would close a loophole in the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 that allowed adjudicators to increase, as well as decrease, levels of selection at partially selected schools, provided that they did not increase them over the 1998 level. He is right to say that that was never the Government’s intention in that Act, which was confirmed to me by his predecessor, Stephen Twigg. The Act was intended to allow adjudicators to reduce selection, but not increase it again. The amendment would amend a ruling by Mr. Justice Collins in the High Court in 2004 that the wording of the 1998 Act would actually allow an adjudicator to raise selection at a school back to the level at which it had been in 1998. When I say that I hope that the amendment is foolproof draftsman’s language, I am aware that this precise wording will be examined in the courts. The words in the amendment"““lowest proportion…at any time since the…1997-1998 school year””" leave very little room for doubt. They establish that we are talking about a ratchet, not a seesaw. Once selection has been reduced, it stays reduced. I know that no adjudicator has yet used the loophole to raise the level of selection at a partially selected school, but an adjudicator in my borough certainly considered an application from parents who wanted to raise the proportion of selected pupils and said that she had the power to do so. In the event, she did not, but there is no need to wait for a loophole to be used before it is closed. Once it has been identified by the courts it is best to close it before it is used, and I congratulate my hon. Friend on doing just that.