Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Bousted Excerpts

Tuesday 16th September 2025 Lords Chamber

I removed my proposal to oppose Clause 55 standing part of the Bill as a matter of good process, but Amendment 454 builds on Amendment 452 as it would give scope for schools to appeal against arbitrary decisions on admissions. What really matters is that the admissions authority—in most cases, the school—is a good centre of learning. Any decision to tamper with the judgment being made by those running that good school should be required to keep this principle at the centre of thinking.

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

My Lords, I oppose Amendment 452, which has just been put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, which would limit local authorities’ interventions in admissions to situations where the admissions authority had failed to meet its admissions obligations or had behaved improperly.

Local authorities have a statutory responsibility under Section 14 of the Education Act 1996 to ensure that enough school places are available in their area for every child of compulsory school age. The provision in the Bill to create a duty on schools to co-operate with local authorities to enable them to carry out their place-planning duties as required by law and to co-operate on SEND inclusion and school admissions is entirely necessary and reasonable. It ends the nonsense of academies being allowed to set their own pupil numbers without regard to the number of pupils in the catchment area.

Multi-academy trusts are no longer outliers; they run over 46% of primary schools and 83% of secondary schools. The Government have a duty to ensure that local authorities, on which the legal requirement to provide school places falls, are able to do so. This must require local authorities and multi-academy trusts to work together to ensure that place planning is done effectively and cost-effectively. That is particularly important now, as we are experiencing a decline in the birth rate which is affecting primary places and will affect secondary places. The sustained rise we have seen in pupil numbers since the early 2010s has now been reversed. The number of pupils in England’s school system overall decreased in January, dropping by more than 59,000. Primary numbers have been falling for several years now, but secondary numbers are due to peak in 2027 before falling as the population bulge moves out of compulsory education.

These pupil demographics require co-ordinated place planning. We cannot have a situation where local authorities are legally responsible for providing places for pupils but have no powers to direct the majority of schools in their area, which are academies, to co-operate on place planning, admissions and exclusions. We cannot leave local authorities with the responsibility, but without the authority, to require co-operation on these legal duties.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, it is a delight to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted. She may be pleased to hear that I have advised my noble friend on the correct pronunciation of her name.

I did not hear very well when we were here last week, but the word “devil” was mentioned. Having checked Hansard, I see that the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, seemed to think that when we had some dealings in the Department for Education, I thought she was doing the devil’s work in working for unions. I could not possibly think that—I always found her the most charming person to deal with—and, as opposed to the devil’s work, I commend the unions on doing what seems to me the Lord’s work in their campaign on smartphones. I look forward to talking to them about that. I welcome the noble Baroness back from her sojourn in the Arctic this summer, and I hope she is finding the atmosphere in the Labour Party at the moment somewhat less glacial than she found it there—although in the current circumstances, maybe not very much so.

I rise to support the amendments in the names of my noble friends Lady Barran and Lord Agnew. Life in the real world teaches one that the benefits of competition are that strong organisations survive and expand, and weak ones demise. While I accept that there may be remote communities where the availability of these schools is essential, as an overriding policy in schools, allowing competition has been proven to be a good thing. Take for instance the London Academy of Excellence in Stratford, which resulted in a rising tide lifting all boats. Apart from its own excellent performance, it has had a dramatic effect on the performance of the other sixth forms in the area. Good schools must be allowed to expand. To not allow this is to deprive children of their benefits, and they certainly should not be forced to shrink.

Turning to my noble friend Lord Agnew’s amendment, local authorities clearly have a conflict of interest under the proposed admission provisions. Surely there must be a right of appeal, as set out in his amendment. I also support my noble friend Lady Barran’s Amendment 502YC, as highly performing schools should be given the freedom her amendment asks for.