New
Clause
31Provision
of advice by adjudicator ‘In
section 25 of SSFA 1998 (adjudicators) after subsection (3)
insert— “(3A)
When asked to do so by the Secretary of State, an adjudicator must give
advice to the Secretary of State on such matters relating to the
admission of pupils to relevant schools as the Secretary of State may
specify. (3B) The adjudicator
may, for the purposes of providing such advice to the Secretary of
State, request any of the following persons to provide him with such
information held by them as the adjudicator may
specify— (a) the
admission authority (within the meaning of Chapter 1 of Part 3) of a
community, foundation or voluntary
school; (b) the proprietor of
any other relevant school. (3C)
A person so requested by the adjudicator to provide information must
comply with the request. (3D)
In subsections (3A) and (3B), “relevant school” means a
school in England falling within any of paragraphs (a) to (f) of
section 5(2) of the Education Act 2005.” '.—[Jim
Knight.] Brought
up, read the First and Second time, and added to the
Bill.
New
Clause
33Power
of Assembly to make regulations about admission of looked after
children ‘(1) After section
97C of SSFA 1998 (inserted by section (Directions to admit child to
specified school: supplementary provisions))
insert—
“Looked after children in
Wales97D Power of
Assembly to make regulations about admission of looked after
children (1) The Assembly
may by regulations make provision about the admission of children
looked after by local authorities in Wales (“looked after
children”) to maintained schools in
Wales. (2) Regulations under
subsection (1) may include provision requiring the admission
authorities for such
schools— (a) to include
in their admission arrangements such provision relating to the
admission of looked after children as may be prescribed, which may in
particular include provision for securing that, subject to prescribed
exceptions, such children are to be offered admission in preference to
other children; (b) to admit
looked after children in prescribed circumstances, subject to
prescribed exceptions. (3)
Regulations under subsection (1) may provide that any of the preceding
provisions of this
Chapter— (a) shall not
apply in relation to looked after
children; (b) shall apply in
relation to such children with prescribed
modifications.” (2) In
section 89 of that Act, in subsection
(1A)— (a) after
“maintained schools” insert “in England”,
and (b) after “a local
authority” insert “in England”.'. —[Jim
Knight.] Brought
up, read the First and Second time, and added to the
Bill.
New
Clause
4Admissions
administration ‘(1) Chapter 1
of Part III of SSFA 1998 (schools admissions) is amended as
follows. (2) After section 89
insert the following
section— “89A
Admissions
administration (1)
Admissions administration will receive all applications for places made
on behalf of pupils seeking admission to maintained schools, academies,
city technology colleges and city colleges for the technology of the
arts within its local education authority's
area. (2) Admission
administration will anonymise these applications so that the identity
of individual applicants cannot be identified by the schools for which
they have applied or indicated a
preference. (3) Admission
administration will determine the awarding of places at maintained
schools within its local education authority's area having regard to
the arrangements which are to apply for that year, established by any
admission authority within that area, including special arrangements
provided for in section 91. (4)
The person responsible for admissions administration within a local
education authority must be employed or commissioned by the local
education authority. (5) In
this Chapter “admissions administration” means the person
responsible for the administration of arrangements for the admissions
of pupils to any school within a local education authority's
area.”'.—[Sarah
Teather.] Brought
up, and read the First
time.
Sarah
Teather: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second
time. In our previous
sitting, we discussed the new skeletal code for admissions and
admission forums. I said that the code is in many ways a welcome
advance, in that it touches on many of the points of concern relating
to covert selection—for example, it highlights the fact
that it is totally unacceptable to use information gleaned about a
family from open evenings or other meetings with the family held
because brothers or sisters are at the school in question. The right
hon. Member for Redditch indicated that she would look into whether the
use of telephone information could be included in the code. The problem
is ensuring that the code is put into practice and enforced adequately.
A challenge based on many of the code’s provisions would require
a subjective judgment, given that they deal with soft information
gained through informal meetings. We know from surveys that as
many as one in four head teachers admit to bending the rules in order
to cherry-pick pupils, and so artificially to improve their results and
league table position and appear a better school. The problem is that
when one head teacher or school cheats, it breaks everybody’s
trust in the system—parents and students. Such practices
undermine the system and the work that the Government are trying to do
by introducing the code.
It seems to us that best way to
remove the danger of cheating would be to allow local authorities to
administer the criteria. The new clause would not prevent schools from
setting their own criteria, but if it is not accepted we shall press an
amendment that would do so. The new clause suggests that if the
criteria are objective, as the code says they should be, they could be
administered by anybody—they do not need to be administered by
the school in question. The best body to administer the process is the
local authority. The local authority has no incentive to cheat. It does
not favour one school in its area over another or wish artificially to
inflate the league table position of one school rather than another. It
is disinterested and impartial; it wishes only to raise the standards
of all of the schools in its area.
That would be particularly
helpful in ironing out problems such as knowledge of a family gained
through brothers and sisters being at a school or through open evenings
or telephone conversations. It is unreasonable to expect a school not
to have knowledge, sometimes quite considerable, of a family prior to
the admissions process. In our previous sitting, the hon. Member for
Bury, North, highlighted the case of a Church of England school in
London where there was considerable contact between parents and the
school some weeks before the commencement of the admissions process. It
would be entirely unreasonable to expect a school not to have knowledge
of a family, and it would be difficult to test whether that knowledge
was used in the admissions process.
Mr.
Gibb: Is the Liberal notion of localism that it should
extend as far the local authority, but not to the local
school?
Sarah
Teather: The new clause is about accountability. The local
authority is the directly elected, accountable body. On localism, we
have always said that devolving power down without ensuring that the
bodies that receive it are elected and accountable simply results in
tyranny on a local scale and does not improve the
situation.
Annette
Brooke: Does my hon. Friend agree that under the new
clause schools will set out their own admissions policies, which will
give them freedom within the guidelines and the code, and local
authorities will merely administer what schools have set
out?
Sarah
Teather: Precisely. As I said, if the criteria are
objective, as the code clearly states that they should be, it should
not matter who administers them. The new clause would not remove
schools’ ability to set their own criteria; it would simply
ensure that they do not bend those criteria to
cherry-pick. Under the
new clause, schools or the local authority—depending on who the
admission authority is—would set admissions policies in line
with the code. All schools would then submit their policies to, say, a
local authority officer, who would administer the admissions. That
would allow a layer of scrutiny so that the local authority could see
whether the admissions policies were in line with the code, although we
have not explicitly included provision for that in the new clause; the
matter could be considered later.
Parents would then apply to the
local authority with their school preferences, and the authority would
sort the applications, matching children against the school’s
stated criteria. Names could be kept from schools, especially if an
electronic system were used; many local authorities now use such
systems. The process could therefore be entirely anonymised, with a
code, tag or number attached to the application so that even the
officer would not know who the families on the system were. The local
authority would then send out acceptance letters to parents and inform
schools of their intake. Under that system, head teachers and governors
would never see the list of names, so they could not pick out families
with difficult parents or the children who they know are always in
trouble with the police.
The Local Government
Association thinks that the new clause would improve transparency, and
individual councils to which we have spoken have also been enthusiastic
about the idea of improving transparency and preventing cheating.
Teachers’ unions have expressed considerable concern about
allowing schools more freedom to set their own admissions and say that
they would favour a more co-ordinated system. That can be achieved only
by making the local authority the
co-ordinator. Let me
reiterate. The new clause does not remove schools’ power to set
their own criteria, but prevents them from cheating. That would be a
helpful amendment to the Bill, and I strongly encourage the Government
to accept it.
Jim
Knight: The Education Act 2002 gave local authorities
responsibility for co-ordinating the annual school admissions process
in England, but the process works on the basis of a balance of
responsibilities between schools and local authorities, with
own-admission authority schools setting and applying their own
admission arrangements, and local authorities managing the flow of
information on applications and potential offers and making the best
offer available to parents at the end of the process.
As individual admission
authorities are accountable for decisions to grant or refuse admission
to their schools, we do not agree that we should transfer statutory
responsibility to local authorities—despite my instinctive
cultural sympathy for anything called new clause 4. Where schools admit
pupils by reference to aptitude, ability or commitment to faith, it
could be asking too much of local authorities to expect them to assess
applicants properly against a broad spectrum of criteria. In
particular, assessments of religious commitments are best made by the
governing bodies of the schools concerned, using objective evidence
provided by their religious leaders.
Sarah
Teather: We discussed this at the previous sitting, and I
very much agreed with the right hon. Member for Redditch that we should
not try to assess the level of religious commitment. A letter from a
priest is perfectly adequate. Why could that not be appended to an
admission application so that a box could be ticked to say that the
applicant agreed and met the
criteria? 12
noon
Jim
Knight: There may be circumstances in which schools will
want to come together and, if they can, work out a simple way to remove
some of the bureaucracy, but I am concerned that a complex series of
criteria could be involved and it would be too bureaucratic to impose
the responsibility on local authorities. As I said, there may be some
merit in permitting such arrangements if they are practical and as long
as the local authority, the admission forum and individual admission
authorities in an area are in agreement with them, but other aspects of
the new clause are
unworkable. Through
funding agreements, the Secretary of State requires academies to
participate in co-ordination, but city technology colleges are not
bound by similar arrangements.
The suggestion that
applications should be anonymised is presumably based on the perception
that inclusion of personal details could lead to abuse of the system or
covert selection, but the Department has no evidence of such abuse, and
even if there were, costs would be incurred in altering the
administrative systems. There are practical reasons why the process
could not be operated as effectively if forms were anonymised. Many
schools use a sibling connection as one of their over-subscription
criteria, but they would not be able to assess whether applicants had a
sibling at the school if names were removed. Furthermore, removing
names alone would not be sufficient to anonymise an applicant. Some
could be disadvantaged by their address, for example, but removing that
clearly would not be feasible in respect of catchment area
criteria. There are
good reasons why the Government resist the new clause, although I
understand the good intent behind it. I hope that the hon. Lady will
agree to withdraw
it.
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