Sarah
Teather: I would like to place on record the fact we think
that the clause is helpful, for precisely the reasons to which the hon.
Gentleman alluded. He was trying to imply that an interview process
would be like a job interview, but we are not talking about a job
interview. Such interviews are not necessary because there is no need
for an interview to meet the criteria that are allowed under the
admissions code. It is perfectly possible to meet those criteria
without having an interview. The only reason one would want an
interview would be to obtain information that is not allowed under the
admissions code. Having interviews therefore seems to make no
sense.
Annette
Brooke: Does my hon. Friend agree that jobs
interviews are used to choose future employees, whereas most of us are
very much against schools choosing
pupils?
Sarah
Teather: My hon. Friend makes a good
point. The hon. Member
for South Holland and The Deepings makes a reasonable point when he
notes the apparent disparity between auditioning for musical ability
and testing for an aptitude for languages, and the other rulings on
interviewing. However, I have already placed on record my view about
the difference between aptitude and ability and the fact that it is
difficult to test, so I shall not repeat it.
We tabled amendment No. 436
before seeing the draft code, so I shall make some brief remarks about
it and we will not press it to a Division. It is intended to probe some
of the definitions relating to interviewing. I shall also make brief
remarks on the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Bury, North,
and the Conservatives’ amendment No.
429. The term
“interview” is generally thought to mean a formal
appointment, but most of the concerns that hon. Members have raised
have been about more informal contact. The hon. Member for Bury, North
went through the admissions policies for a London school, which
displayed clearly the extent of informal contact that can take place
between a school and a family prior to the admissions process. Such
issues cause particular concern.
Our aim in tabling the
amendment is not to monitor every phone call between a school and a
family. We simply want to place on record the fact that informal
contact can be obtained just as easily on the telephone as in person.
As we have seen from the example raised earlier, there could be many
telephone conversations between a school and a parent to check that
every stage of the admission application process is in place. During
those conversations, all sorts of other information could be
gained. I have raised
my concerns about interviewing to test religious commitment, and it is
not clear to me how or why we would want to do that. What will we be
trying to test? The hon. Member for Gainsborough talked about
questioning a child on their knowledge of Easter and holy week, but the
test is not for a celibate vocation to the priesthood or to tell
whether a child understands the catechism well enough to take their
first communion. It is simply about going to a school, and such an
interview seems entirely inappropriate. I cannot see why it is not
possible simply to append a certificate to say that a child has been
baptised, or an indication from the local priest that a child seeking
to go into a secondary school has taken his first communion. If a
school is greatly oversubscribed, just how committed will we ask
families to be? How will we test that commitment? Will there be a
requirement to be entirely dogmatic about all aspects of the catechism,
or will we allow the more liberal approach to faith to
which most practising Catholics in this country adhere? That is probably
as much as I can say without being
excommunicated. I
support amendment No. 215 and the sentiments expressed by the hon.
Member for Bury, North on written tests. As I stated earlier, we are
unhappy with amendment No. 49 and the requirement suggested by the
Conservatives that schools should use home-school contracts as part of
the admissions process. Such contracts should be used as a tool to work
with families, not as a blanket policy. I can see that there may be
some situations in which, for instance, a child has been excluded from
a number of schools, and a contract prior to admittance to another
school would be useful. However, it should always be used on an
individual basis. Using it as a blanket policy would be highly
discriminatory, often against the very young people who most need
support, and is likely to be extremely unhelpful. We have a right of
access to free education for all, and making that conditional upon
behaviour that has not even occurred would be totally contrary to our
principles.
Mr.
Gibb: Will the hon. Lady give
way?
Sarah
Teather: No, I have finished, so I shall sit
down.
The
Chairman: I call the Minister. [ Hon.
Members: “Hear,
hear.”] 9.15
pm
Jacqui
Smith: Thank you. I assure hon. Members that this is going
to be
good. Jonathan
Shaw (Chatham and Aylesford) (Lab): You always say
that.
Jacqui
Smith: And I always
deliver. As we have
heard, the clause prohibits schools from interviewing parents or
children as a means of determining admissions. I do not intend to go
into detail on why we believe that that is right, except in response to
some of the amendments. We have discussed the need to ensure an
objective, transparent admissions framework under which there is fair
access; that is in itself a sufficient argument against a process of
interviewing that is none of those things and that can be conflated
very easily into admitting children to school on the basis of their
ability, their family background, their articulacy, or a range of other
factors that really should not be part of a school’s admissions
criteria. Amendments
Nos. 204, 48, 208, 205, 369 and 406 would make exceptions to clause 40,
most notably in the case of faith schools but also for entry to sixth
form and to determine applicants’ aptitude for particular
subjects. New clause 9 proposes that there be no restrictions whatever
on the processes used to admit children to a school. It is the old
free-for-all proposed by the hon. Member for Gainsborough. He can be as
nice as he likes to me, but I am afraid that he will not
persuade me that that is a good way to ensure fair access to schools for
our
children. Permitting
faith schools or others to conduct admission interviews, as a small
minority still do, is something that the Government and the main faith
groups oppose as potentially unfair to parents and children. Most faith
schools undoubtedly adopt transparent admission criteria and practices
that are easy for parents to understand, but there is clear evidence
that some do not and that interviews have been used as a justification
for a complex set of admission criteria that can be difficult for some
parents to understand. Not only do those interviews discriminate in
terms of the children admitted once they have applied to a school, but
they are also likely to impact on who is willing to apply in the first
place. I do not agree
with the argument that it is necessary for schools to interview in
order to determine faith adherence, and neither do the faith groups.
They agree that a priest, a rabbi or an imam’s reference should
be sufficient to determine whether an applicant should have any
priority under its faith criteria; a Christian school might, say, look
at baptismal records as an alternative. Furthermore, our experience has
shown that a number of faith schools that use interviews do so to
determine who, in their judgment, is the most religious among the
applicants or has the greatest degree of faith. It is difficult to make
a tangible and objective assessment of such things. Interviews fail
that test of transparency and objectivity and we therefore think that
they have no place. We are supported in that view by the Church of
England Board of Education and the Catholic Education Service, both of
which support us in outlawing interviews. We are also supported by the
Education and Skills Committee on that point.
I must say that the case that
the hon. Member for Gainsborough was making—that somehow or
other the Government had browbeaten the Churches into giving that
support—was frankly ludicrous. It was not the Government who, on
7 February 2006, persuaded the Church of England Board of Education and
the Catholic Education Service to write an open letter to the BBC,
which stated:
“Both the Church of
England and the Catholic Church have pressed government over the past
few years to outlaw interviews for the selection of pupils for Church
schools.” That could not
be much
clearer. Amendment No.
406 calls for an exception to the ban on interviewing so that admission
authorities can interview candidates who are applying for admission on
the basis of their aptitude for a particular subject. Like the hon.
Gentleman, I do not intend to reiterate the distinction between ability
and aptitude, which I believe I clarified this morning, but it is clear
that interviews tend to rely on the ability of the child to articulate,
rather demonstrate their aptitude in an objective way. They are more a
test of ability than of aptitude. If a school has a specialism in a
particular subject and is selecting on the basis of an aptitude for
that subject, it is reasonable to expect it to have an objective way of
assessing applicants’ aptitude. I do not believe that subjective
interviews would fulfil that purpose. Such an assessment would, of
course, have to be related to aptitude, which is why we allow auditions
or other oral and practical tests. Extending that to allow more general
interviewing would lead inevitably to selection by ability or other
factors unrelated to
aptitude. In
response to one of the points made by the hon. Member for South Holland
and The Deepings, of course there would be discussion during the course
of an audition, but it is clear that that discussion should not go
beyond the aptitude that is being tested. Similarly, we do not think
that it is necessary for schools to interview prospective candidates
for entry to sixth form, as proposed by amendment No. 208. The school
admissions code states clearly that pupils should not be interviewed
for entry to year 12, and the use of minimum attainment requirements at
GCSE level and ordinary oversubscription criteria should be more than
adequate to allocate sixth-form
places.
Mr.
Hayes: Would the right hon. Lady regard an audition or an
oral test as subjective? I am interested to know where she sees an oral
test
applying.
Jacqui
Smith: No, as I suggested earlier, there is evidence to
support the ability to test aptitude for modern languages through an
oral test that might involve a child recognising principles in a
language other than his or her own. Those tests tend not only to be
more objective, but are based specifically on aptitude within the
limited number of subjects for which selection on that basis is
allowed. They do not veer into areas of ability, such as the ability of
the child to articulate, and the range of other issues that can be
brought into an
interview. Amendment
No. 215 seeks to prevent academies from interviewing candidates for
admission. I must reiterate that academies are required by law to cater
for children of all abilities. As with other maintained schools, they
are required to act in accordance with the school admissions code and
to comply with admissions laws by virtue of their funding agreements.
This is a contract between the Secretary of State and the academies
trust. They are not allowed to interview parents or pupils, even if it
is described as a structured discussion or otherwise, or to introduce
selection by ability, other than by fair banding. This is consistent
with other types of
schools. City
technical colleges have used some of the structured discussions that
the hon. Gentleman described. However, we are now in the position where
all but two CTCs are becoming academies and will be covered, therefore,
by the need to comply with admissions arrangements in the way that I
have described for
academies. Amendments
Nos. 213 and 214 seek to prohibit the setting of written tests in
addition to the outlawing of interviews. The first problem is that as
we discussed earlier, the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 means
that existing fully or partially selective arrangements remain in
place. Those grammar and other selective schools that remain have to
have an objective means of allocating their places, and the setting of
written tests is, at least, a fair and equal way of doing so in those
circumstances. However, I recognise, particularly given the example
that my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North gave, that despite
the fact that the amendment would impact on that, he was not referring
to those particular circumstances. I hope that I will reassure him in a
minute. Mr.
Hayes: I am sorry to interrupt the right hon. Lady again
but I want to be absolutely clear. Why is a written test or an
interview more subjective than an audition? Let us for a moment buy the
right hon. Lady’s argument that there is an innate propensity in
children: an inner capacity to learn languages. Why is an audition more
or less subjective in her terms than an interview or a written
test?
Jacqui
Smith: Actually, my argument was that an audition is an
appropriate way to test aptitude for the ability to gain from a musical
education in a specialist school. The hon. Gentleman is arguing that he
wants to extend selection on the basis of ability and he wants to be
able to test and interview for that. That is where we
disagree. I was about
to address the case mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury,
North concerning use of a written assessment test that did not fulfil
those criteria. My view is very clear, as is the view taken in the
code: unless such a written test is for banding arrangements it is not
appropriate to use it in the way that he described. I can assure my
hon. Friend that although such use is not mentioned by the existing
code, the new code will make it clear that it is prohibited. Given what
he said about the other types of activities that he described, I am
keen to ensure that they too are ruled out by the new code. We shall
cover that as the code develops from a skeleton to a fully-fleshed body
of provisions. I also
share the concern that the hon. Member for Brent, East has expressed by
tabling amendment No. 436. Any form of interviewing—face to face
or by telephone—should be ruled out. I believe that in fact the
clause already prevents admissions arrangements from including the use
of interviews, but I am willing to clarify the wording of the code so
that any form of interview, including those conducted by phone, is
caught by the provisions in the
clause. Amendment No.
49 seeks to make the signing of a home-school agreement a part of
school admissions arrangements. The Government are extremely positive,
as is the skeleton code, about the contribution that home-school
agreements can make—it was the School Standards and Framework
Act that made home-school agreements compulsory for all schools. As the
hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings said, we have undertaken
to revitalise and review their use, and we shall do that, but we do not
believe that the willingness of parents to sign a home-school agreement
should determine whether a child gets a place at a school. That would
be a fundamentally different purpose for home-school agreements. They
are not contracts in a legal sense; they are statements of shared
objectives between home and school, setting out the expectations and
responsibilities of each
party. I do not think
that school admission should be contingent on promises of good
behaviour or on judgments about past behaviour, although that is not to
say that parents do not have a fundamental and important responsibility
to ensure their children’s good
behaviour at school, and we shall have an opportunity when we reach part
7 of the Bill to discuss our proposed strengthening of provisions
relating to parenting contracts and parenting orders to ensure that
that responsibility is absolutely
clear. | 
