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Education and Skills Bill

moved Amendment No. 228C: 228C: Clause 138, page 90, line 37, after ““persons”” insert ““including the pupil or the prescribed representative or friend of the pupil to whom the requirement applies”” The noble Lord said: We are still debating Clause 138, which gives governing bodies the power to require a pupil to attend and receive his education at a place other than the school, and we have discussed at some length what sort of other place that might be. In moving Amendment No. 228C, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 228D, both of which are intended to enable the voice of the child, or pupil, to be heard or represented in the process leading up to such a requirement being made. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has already explicitly directed the attention of the Committee to Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, paragraph 1 of which states: "““State parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child””." The Committee will see that new subsection (1B) in Clause 139 has provisions with a somewhat similar intention, involving the pupils’ parents. However, an amendment along the lines of mine is needed for four reasons. First, the effect of those provisions is set aside by new subsection (1C) if the place where the child or pupil is required to attend is another school at which he will become a registered pupil. That is what raised my query under the last amendment. Secondly, the last four lines of new subsection (1B) appear to mean that almost all cases will be treated as if they fell under that definition. Thirdly, Clause 138 needs in any case to be more specific. Finally, it is a great deal simpler for the consumer—that is the user of the legislation—if as much as possible of the provisions relating to a requirement can be maintained in a single clause. New Section 29A(3)(a) is a welcome mandatory duty for the Secretary of State to decide and rule who shall be given what information relating to the use of this new power in individual cases. Amendment No. 228C simply makes it clear that included among the recipients must be the pupil or someone responsible for or representing him, regardless of what has happened as a result of the next clause. While the effect of the words inserted into the Act by new subsection (1B)(b) in Clause 139 would at first glance make it mandatory to inform the parent, though not, it seems, the pupil—and I hope that the Minister will tell us whether it is intended that the pupil shall be among those informed—this requirement is set aside in what appear the great majority of cases. My Amendment No. 228C would simply put it back in place. I suspect that to be fully effective it will need to be sheltered in some way from the effects of new subsection (1C) by an amendment to that section—and I look to the Minister for guidance on that. The second amendment, Amendment No. 228D, is simpler. Subsections (3) and (4) of new Section 29A that the Bill will insert into the 2002 Act provide for the Secretary of State to make regulations governing the use by governing bodies of the power to make requirements which they are to be given by new subsection (1). New subsection (4) is the second tranche of regulation-making powers given to the Secretary of State; sadly, unlike in new subsection (3), the use of them is not mandatory—and we may need to address that later. For the present, I only note that while there is a sensible suggestion that he should require the governing body to invite people of his choice—and again I ask whether that will include the pupil—to participate in the important review of any requirement on a pupil to attend elsewhere after it has been in place for a time, there is no such suggestion regarding the much more important decision to impose it in the first place. That I find extraordinary and this is merely meant to change that situation. I beg to move.