Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Tuesday 16th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, my hope is that this amendment has been rendered unnecessary by the Government’s plan for school profiles, so I will speak to the principles of it rather than the details. For parents, admissions information is of great importance. If they are looking around for a school for their child, they need an understanding of which schools they have a chance of getting them into. The admission rules and outcomes from those rules are vital information for parents.

Local authorities used to publish a booklet every year setting out exactly that—what the rules were and what the outcomes had been—but the more that academy schools have grown, the less that has become the practice. I ran off the booklet for East Sussex—where I live—senior schools. Out of the 20 or so schools available at secondary level, full admissions information is available only for four of them. The others just say, “Contact school”. Although there is supposed to be a system whereby schools provide local authorities with the information they can put in their schools booklets, this is no longer happening.

East Sussex is by no means an outlier. This is common. The system for providing parents with easily accessible schools admissions information has broken down. If, as part of the forthcoming school profiles, we are to have proper school information available on the government website and if, as with the other excellent information that they provide on that website, it will be available in electronic form in bulk, then we have solved this problem. I hope that is the answer. If not, we must do something to get back to the position we all thought we were in. I beg to move.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I have not had much input into the Bill, which colleagues with much greater knowledge of the issues than me have covered so ably, but I have tabled two amendments in this group, Amendments 452A and 452B. Refugee and asylum-seeking children and those on resettlement schemes may be among the most disadvantaged in our society. They may be accompanied, but the adult or adults with them may be as traumatised as the children. I should like any child in the asylum process or with refugee status, irrespective of whether they fall under the category of unaccompanied asylum-seeking child, to be treated as worthy of special treatment. This is unlikely to open the floodgates, but it would help some very needy children who otherwise would fall outside the criteria. I hope the Minister will be able to look kindly on these modest amendments.