---

Education and Skills Bill

moved Amendment No. 205: 205: Clause 136, page 78, line 29, at end insert— ““( ) For the purpose of this section and section 86A, the expression of a preference for a school includes a particular course of study provided by the school.”””” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, this is a probing amendment to find out whether the Government are aware that the current law on post-16 admissions in schools needs to be updated to take account of the current and future patterns of provision and young people’s choices. Young people currently have a statutory right to state a preference for the school or college of their post-16 education. However, today they do not really distinguish between educational provision made by a school or college. They decide what they want to do, then look around for institutions providing the right courses. The law has not completely caught up with that fact. Most schools set out to admit external candidates to their sixth forms. They advertise information meetings and have application forms to complete. Schools welcome those external applicants, although admission numbers are rarely set for new entrants unless the school is designated to provide sixth-form education for young people from a number of schools. Schools set relatively low admission requirements for academic achievement, but they must of course be the same for both internal and external candidates. That is because schools now provide a wide range of courses for all abilities, some being more popular than others. However, schools operate course oversubscription criteria. The first criterion, for those who can get onto courses, is often to admit internal applicants first. That is not generally published. Thus, a school may be prepared to give external candidates three out of their four A-level choices, and thus offer them a place, but not to give them their fourth—on the basis that all the places available have been filled by internal candidates. A place is often offered on a less popular A-level course to fill it up. However, it may have been that fourth course that the young person particularly wanted, but there is no appeal to the schools’ adjudicator, as there is no refusal to admit the student. In other words, it is relatively easy to be offered a school place, thus ruling out the chance of appealing against refusal to admit the applicant, who therefore has no rights of appeal despite not being admitted onto the course that he or she wants. Indeed the only recourse for a young person in these circumstances would be to accept the place, complain to the governors and then, if the governors do not yield, go to the Secretary of State to intervene on the grounds that the governors’ refusal has been unreasonable to meet the person’s curricular needs. This goes to show that as the country moves, with the development of diplomas, towards a de facto tertiary post-16 system where a majority of young people at 16 access part of their option courses at different institutions, the law on post-16 school admissions needs to be reformed. Has this registered with the DCSF or DIUS—I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Young, on the Front Bench at the moment—as the only change in the Bill is found in Clause 136, which introduces weak, meaningless appeal rights. If all young people were able to have equal access to the post-16 provision that they wanted to follow and not be dependent on where they studied previously, it would be a very good thing even if it was somewhat difficult to deliver. An anomaly has crept in here and, as we move to a post-16 education system where we are expecting young people perhaps to opt for courses and be at one institution or another institution, there is inequality. As I say, if they change institutions and opt for courses that are already filled with internal candidates, they are put on the bottom of the list and cannot get on to the courses they require. I beg to move.