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Education and Skills Bill

The hon. Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes) and my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman) spoke powerfully on the issue of selective admissions policies, which is at the heart of some of the amendments that I have tabled in this group. I wish to speak specifically in support of new clause 14, the other Government proposals and my amendments to new clause 14—amendments (a) to (n)—which would strengthen it. Since he started in his post, the Secretary of State's record on tackling the difficult issue of school admission policies is exemplary. It was necessary to take a tough line with some schools that may have been abusing the system to ensure that the issue remained at the forefront of public concern. Every parent and head teacher in the country knows that for many years most schools have done their utmost to manipulate the existing admissions system to their advantage. I do not believe that most head teachers want to do that, and I certainly do not think that most parents want to have to lie, cheat and deceive to get their children into the school of their choice, but those are responses to the situation in which they find themselves. The House owes a debt of gratitude to the Secretary of State for taking the line that he did on this issue. The Secretary of State will also recall that the code of practice on school admissions was central to the debate on the Education and Inspections Bill in 2006. The House eventually agreed that if there was to be a freeing-up of the supply of schools and of the power of individual schools to run their own affairs, that had to be balanced by a tougher school admissions code of practice. One of the key issues was the legal responsibility of schools to comply with the code of practice. Under the old code, schools merely had to have regard to the code's requirements, but we were able to change that arrangement in the 2006 Bill and make it clear that schools had to comply with the code's requirements. However, there was always a question mark over the freedom of academies. I am completely in favour of schools having the capacity to innovate, and I support, and am enthusiastic about, the academy programme. If that programme is to continue to thrive, flourish and maintain public support, it must be based on a level playing field. Any hint or suggestion that academies receive special treatment on admissions policies must be dealt with; such is the purpose of my amendments (a) to (m), which would amend new clause 14. They would ensure that the provisions that apply to all maintained schools should also apply to academies, so that there is a level playing field on admissions. Amendment (n) is slightly different from those provisions, because it seeks to deal with the welcome new requirement in new clause 14 for local education authorities to report to the adjudicator. That requirement returns the role of LEAs to the position in which they should always have been, because they will have this important co-ordinating function on school admissions. The amendment picks up on the other important development in the 2006 Bill, which gave admissions forums the power to prepare a report to the schools commissioner. Interestingly, the Department's website contains guidance to admissions forums as to how they should prepare their annual report to the schools commissioner. The wording of the amendment would require the report to include"““the number and percentages of first, second and third preferences…the number of appeals…the ethnic and social mix…the extent to which existing and proposed admission arrangements serve the interests of looked after children””." All those requirements are now on the admissions forum. The purpose of my amendment is to ensure that those criteria are also included in the report that must be made by the LEA to the schools adjudicator. I apologise if that is complex, but it is complex because two bodies are being required to make two separate reports. The admissions forum is required to make a report to the schools commissioner and the local authority must make one to the adjudicator. Perhaps, in time, those two separate reports should be merged into one, but if that is done, it is important that the criteria listed in the amendment relating to the ethnic and social mix of pupils attending schools, the number of appeals made and the number of first, second and third preferences are included in that report. I turn specifically to new clauses 19, 20, 21 and 22, because they deal with the issue of selection by ability. I do not want to go over the ground and the arguments that have been well covered by the hon. Member for Chesterfield and my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet. I simply wish to say that the evidence on the effect of selection by ability at too early a stage in an education system has been well documented, not just this past year, the previous one or during the past decade, but for 50 years. The evidence from the United Kingdom and across the world shows that systems that select at too early a stage have the lower level of achievement overall and the biggest gap between higher achieving students and lower achieving students. There is no shortage of evidence on the matter, and last year, we almost reached the position of having all-party agreement in this House. Significantly, today's debate takes place almost 12 months to the day that the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) made his speech to the CBI, and I was delighted that the hon. Member for Chesterfield quoted that speech. I was intending to cite it again, despite the fact that I have read it into the record on at least one previous occasion in this House, because it was a most important speech. On 16 May 2007, we were on the edge of having all-party consensus and recognition of what the evidence from half a century's educational research in this country and in countries across the world said: that academic selection at too early a stage destroys the opportunities of large numbers of young people and holds back overall levels of achievement.