Mr.
Gibb: This has been an interesting debate. There has been
a lot of common ground and some differences. I was interested in the
views of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough, who said that if
prescription gets rid of discrimination, she stands guilty. Who can
disagree with that? My point is that we all stand guilty of
prescription in certain aspects of education policy, and policy
generally. The Bill is packed with prescriptive measures of all kinds,
with a great deal of prescription on some minor things. We should hear
nothing more from Labour Members
about Conservatives being over-prescriptive. Even the Liberals have been
prescriptive in their views on the code and how they would like it to
be enforced. There
has been considerable agreement about the code and the approach to
admissions, particularly between the Minister and Conservative Members.
We agree, for instance, on first preference first. Parents need to be
able to express a preference and not have to engage in gaming or risk
assessment in determining to which school their children go. The people
who are most discriminated against by that kind of approach to
admissions are those who are not familiar with the complexity of the
system and who have not sat on the Select Committee on Education and
Skills for several years, as the hon. Member for Bury, North has, and
who therefore cannot understand the nuances and the differences between
systems in different local authorities and schools. The people who
suffer most from such schemes are the very people who should benefit
from education and from being given the fairest chances, and we want to
ensure that they receive
them. 5.45
pm The Minister is
right that those who can gamble and take a risk are those who can
afford to have a plan B, whereby they opt out of the system if the
gamble does not pay off, so I agree that the system in force under the
current code is wrong, because it is wrong for parents to have to
submit their preferences for a secondary school before receiving their
children’s 11-plus results. That is a mean-spirited approach to
the admissions process, which that was clearly designed to undermine
the grammar school system, and I was surprised by the hon.
Gentleman’s view that parents who submitted their children for
the 11-plus test were somehow less worthy to send their children to the
best-performing non-grammar school in the area, because they had
committed the unpardonable sin of trying to get their children into a
grammar
school. Nevertheless,
there has been considerable agreement. The Opposition are relaxed about
the existence of a code, and contrary to what the Minister implied we
do not want to see any unfair practices—it is not the our
intention to encourage schools to manipulate the admissions system to
improve their results. Publication of league tables is the policy of
the Labour party in government, and it would be the policy of the
Conservatives in government too. League tables exist solely to improve
results, so we want them to be used to improve standards of education.
They are not a type of football league table that should be manipulated
by hook or by crook to get a school further up the table; they exist
solely to encourage a high quality of education in schools, and head
teachers should behave, and do behave,
accordingly. We do not
believe that head teachers are engaged in unethical conduct. We believe
in the professionalism of this country’s head teachers, so there
is no need to be too prescriptive in the drafting of clause 37. The
judgment of the Prime Minister and of the Secretary of State should be
unclouded by the problems of managing the Labour party, which is why we
believe that the clause should revert to its form before the
concessions of 6 February—the day on which the Government
published their response to the Education and Skills
Committee.
I admit that the point is a
political one, but it is politics that have led the Government down
this path. Until all the pressure from the hon. Gentleman and other
hon. Members, the Government had no intention of changing the law to
make admissions authorities act “in accordance with”,
because they were perfectly relaxed, as are we, with the phrase
“to have regard to”. Wherever there has been a concession
as a result of that pressure, we want to restore to the Bill the vision
that the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State had before
concessions were made, and we shall press amendment No. 407 to a
vote.
Mr.
Chaytor: I should like to continue the debate briefly on
the question of the first-past-the-post system—sorry, I mean
first preference first; I was thinking of my ten-minute Bill that will
come before the House in
June. As I see it, it
is not possible for any parent or group of parents to avoid what the
hon. Gentleman described as gaming and risk assessment. The difficulty
of supporting first preference first in those areas that select is that
it gives protection to a certain group of parents against gaming and
risk assessment—protection that is not provided to other
parents. The fact of the matter is that the protection given to the
parents of the most academically able children is not extended to the
parents of the less academically able. That is the heart of the matter.
All parents should be treated equally, should be in the same position,
and should have to do the same amount of gaming and risk assessment,
given the situation in which we find
ourselves. I was
grateful for clarification on the status of the Wirral judgment, but of
course there is supreme irony in the Government defending the fact that
they have not incorporated it into the legislation or the code on the
grounds that they merely had to have regard to it and were not required
to act in accordance with it. I am sure that many admission authorities
will spot that irony as the weeks and months go
by. I want to comment
briefly on intake, and whether it is relevant. I believe it is. I do
not feel that I have an obsession with intake, nor do I believe that it
is the overriding factor in the success or otherwise of individual
schools; it is one of a number of factors. I reiterate the
point—I am glad that the Opposition are taking it up as the
debate moves on—that management, leadership, quality of teaching
and flexibility of the curriculum are the key factors. However, intake
is important, too, and the overwhelming body of evidence in this
country and abroad is that education systems comprising schools with
more balanced intakes deliver higher levels of achievement overall and
are most likely to fulfil the potential of each
child. In the United
Kingdom, and particularly in England, we do not fare well in terms of
the objective of delivering the potential of each child. The gap
between the highest and lowest achievers is too big. There is still a
long tail of under-achievement. The chances of a child developing his
or her potential is closely related to which school they attend. In
other countries, the impact of the individual school on the
child’s performance is far smaller. That is why intake is
important. Also, it remains a complete contradiction in
the Opposition’s argument for them to deny that intake is
relevant while forcefully arguing that schools should retain control
over their own intake. We cannot have it both ways. Either intake is
not relevant, and so it does not matter whether schools control their
own intake, or intake is relevant, and so it is absolutely right that
the Government should publish a stringent code, along with efficient
compliance
mechanisms. On the
Conservative party’s position on selective admissions
procedures, both overt and covert, it always strikes me that the degree
of fervour with which individuals support those selective procedures is
absolutely related to the likelihood of their having been selected, or
of their children having being selected. We have to consider the impact
of selective procedures on all children, and not just speak from our
own
experience. Finally,
the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton said that the code
and its new mandatory status are to do with the difficulties of
managing the Labour party. I do not deny that there are difficulties in
managing our party from time to time, but the issue is not about
politics; it is about logic and reason. The Government listened to the
rational arguments made about the importance of the mandatory status of
the code and responded to them, and that is how a Government should
proceed. I am delighted that they have taken that view, and I am very
grateful for the Minister’s response to my amendments. I beg to
ask leave to withdraw the
amendment. Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn. Amendment
proposed: No. 407, in clause 37, page 26, leave out line
40.—[Mr.
Gibb.] Question
put, That the amendment be
made:— The
Committee divided: Ayes 5, Noes
14.
Division
No.
19] Blackman-Woods,
Dr.
Roberta Smith,
Ms Angela C. (Sheffield,
Hillsborough)Question
accordingly negatived.
5.56
pm Sitting
suspended for a Division in the
House. 6.10
pm On
resuming— Amendment
made: No. 427, in clause 37, page 27, line 11, at end
insert— ‘(9) In relation to
a code for school admissions issued under section 84(1) of SSFA 1998
after the passing of this Act, the requirement to consult which is
imposed by section 85(2) of
SSFA 1998 may be satisfied by consultation undertaken before the passing
of this Act, even though the code takes account(to any
extent) of any provision made by this
Act.'.— [Jacqui
Smith.]Clause
37, as amended, ordered to stand part of the
Bill. Clause
38Role
of admission
forums
Mr.
Chaytor: I beg to move amendment No. 212, in clause 38,
page 27, line 24, leave out from ‘England' to end of line 26 and
insert ‘shall consider the report
published by the local education authority under section 85C
(admissions report by local education authority) and prepare and
publish its response to this report, which may include rejection, as
may be
prescribed.'.
The
Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the
following: New clause 16— Admissions report by local education
authority— ‘After
section 85B of SSFA 1998
insert— “85C
Admissions report by local education
authority (1) A local education
authority shall once in every school year make a report to the
admission forum containing the following
information— (a) the
proposed admission arrangements for every school, including academies
and city colleges, in the local education authority
area, (b) the number of
applications for each year group admitting pupils for each
school, (c) the number
of pupils accepted for each year group and, if oversubscription
criteria are used, the number of pupils selected using each
oversubscription criterion,
and (d) the area which the
school recruits pupils compared to the area in which the school is
situated. (2) The opinion of
the local education authority shall be included in the report as
to— (a) whether the
proposed admission arrangements for each school comply with the Code
for School Admissions, (b) what
changes, if any, each admission authority, or as the case may be the
governing body or each academy or city college, should make to their
admission arrangements to comply with the Code for School
Admissions, (c) the accuracy
and appropriateness of information given to parents seeking admission
to the school, and (d) whether
the totality of the admission arrangements for the area produces fair
access to schools for all pupils, and if not what further action the
authority intends to take to ensure fair access to maintained schools
and academies and city
colleges.”'. New
clause 53—Reports on school
admissions— ‘(1) A local
education authority in England may prepare and publish reports on such
matters connected with the admission of pupils to maintained schools,
Academies or City Technology Colleges in that area as may be
prescribed. (2) For the
purposes of the preparation of a report under section (1), a local
education authority may request any of the following bodies to provide
the authority with any information held by them which falls within a
prescribed description and is specified by the authority in its
request— (a) the
governing body of any maintained school, Academy or City Technology
College in the area for
which the local education authority has responsibility or whose
catchments area falls into that
area; (b) any local
education authority in England for an area which adjoins the area of
the authority requesting the
information. (3) A body
mentioned in paragraph (a) or (b) of subsection (2) must comply with a
request made by a local education authority in pursuance of that
subsection.'.
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