Baroness Hughes of Stretford
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Education Bill
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Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, under Clause 43, the Secretary of State will be given new powers to intervene directly and to move quickly—much more swiftly than hitherto—to close schools. In response to that proposed new power, I shall move Amendment 122ZC.
Currently, the Secretary of State can direct the closure of a school only if it has already been categorised by Ofsted in its independent inspection as requiring special measures. Clause 43 will allow the Secretary of State to step in and close schools on the basis not of an independent, standardised assessment but of any judgment that he comes to that that route of closure is required. Under subsection (3), he will be able also to direct a local authority to issue a performance standards and safety warning notice where it has decided against it. Then, when a warning notice has been given for whatever reason, and the school has not complied, the school will automatically become eligible for intervention and it will be open for the Secretary of State to close it.
Closures of schools could therefore be triggered in this way by the Secretary of State, and not on the basis of an independent assessment by Ofsted. That is a serious extension of power. Closing a school is a nuclear option and has serious implications for parents and an area. The provision would also mean a transferring of schools into academy status by diktat of the Secretary of State without the normal processes having been gone through. I shall explain shortly what I mean by that.
Will the Minister set out his thinking on how closures allowed under the clause would take place and how they would contribute to increasing standards and meeting parents’ and pupils’ needs? Under what circumstances would the Secretary of State step in to close a school that was not in special measures rather than, as is the case at the moment, help drive improvements in the school as a first option? How would such closures that the Secretary of State could simply enforce enable a local authority, for instance, to plan strategically to meet pupil place needs?
As noble Lords may gather from our amendment, which is different from those that will be moved by Liberal Democrats, we do not have a particular problem with the power contained in the clause giving the Secretary of State the power to direct a local authority as there may be circumstances in which local authorities are or have been slow to act in relation to schools where improvements are required. However, we do have a problem with the uncircumscribed and unfettered power of the Secretary of State himself to close a school, and there are two reasons for that. First, there is an issue of principle relating to such a serious option in an area; that if a school is not in special measures, it is right that parents, teachers and locally interested parties are able to play a part in determining what happens to it. There ought also to be an independent assessment by Ofsted on the need for that option. Secondly, I question whether the clause is something of a Trojan horse to accelerate the establishment of academies. The clause, coupled with Clause 36 on the establishment of new schools and the presumption in the Bill that any new school will be an academy, will mean that where, outside an Ofsted inspection and the conclusion of special measures, the Secretary of State decides to close a school—he can do so for a whole variety of reasons—the new school that takes its place will, by default, be an academy. It will not have to go through the normal processes that schools are now required to go through to become academies. It is conceivable that even some relatively well-performing schools could be required to close by the Secretary of State.
I would therefore be grateful if, in addition to dealing with the points I raised earlier, the Minister could reassure us on this point. Will he set out the vision for the future education system and say whether the Government see a place for maintained schools in that? Is it the case that this provision and Clause 36, and the presumption that all new schools will be academies, are designed to ensure that the Secretary of State can accelerate the establishment of academies, irrespective of the views of parents and teachers, by closing schools directly himself and then reopening them as academies?
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, I, too, want to speak to Amendments 122A and 122B. Clause 43 gives the Secretary of State powers to intervene and close schools that are in special measures. That widens the powers of intervention to schools causing concern. Subsection (3) strengthens the Secretary of State’s powers so that where a local authority, having been directed to consider set performance standards and to issue a safety warning notice, has decided not to do so, the Secretary of State may direct the local authority to give such a warning notice. If such a warning notice is issued to a school and it fails to comply, it immediately makes itself eligible for intervention. As the noble Baroness explained, that may well mean that it is closed and an academy is opened in its place. Under the Education and Inspections Act 2006, the warning notice gives the school the right to ask the chief inspector whether the warning notice is justified and the chief inspector may confirm it or otherwise.
Our problem with the subsection is the degree to which it removes all discretion from local authorities. The problem is that a local authority is asked to consider whether to give a warning notice and to set performance standards. If, having looked at the school, it decides that other measures might be more appropriate and it therefore does not issue a warning notice or the appropriate performance standard, the Secretary of State may now just peremptorily intervene. At a time when the Government are anxious to try to devolve responsibilities—the Localism Bill is going through the main Chamber today—it is against the whole spirit of localism that the Secretary of State should be given these somewhat draconian powers.
Amendment 122B is to some extent a probing amendment. It suggests that we want to know, if academies fail in the same way as some schools fail, whether they have to obey the same rules as maintained schools have to. Is it appropriate that there should be intervention in exactly the same way and that they might be closed down? If they are closed down, the obvious solution would be for the local authority to have the power to step in and open a maintained school in its place—a sort of quid pro quo for the shutting down of a maintained school and the opening of an academy. Here we would have the equal and opposite effect. We would like to know a little more about what happens if an academy fails.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s response. I certainly recognise the concerns about failing schools that have continued to fail children over long periods. However, I am reminded of something that a young man who grew up in a non-functioning family said to me a little while ago. He said, “I have issues of trust”. It is very hard for families who are struggling to trust individuals or institutions. Their relationship with their school can become very important. I can imagine that it might be enormously disruptive to such families to find that their school is being turned upside down. Therefore, I will listen to the response of the noble Baroness. I am reassured to a large degree by what the Minister said, but I say to him and his colleagues that when you bring about these changes, it can be very upsetting for those vulnerable families.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
I thank the Minister for his response and I thank Members of the Committee who have spoken on this subject for their contributions. I absolutely agree with the Minister that underperforming schools cannot be allowed to continue underperforming indefinitely. I feel as passionately about that as he does. So do many Members of the Committee, I suspect. However, the key question is: how effectively can we drive that improvement in performance, particularly when underperformance has been persistent over a period? Sadly, it is also generally the case that underperforming schools are not distributed evenly around the country. They tend to be concentrated in areas where local authorities are weak or where there are endemic problems and so on. There is often a concentration of underperforming schools. That issue needs to be grappled with. The route that the Government are taking is different in some respects from the one that we were proposing. The previous Government wanted powers to direct a local authority to act, but not necessarily the sweeping powers that this Government are taking to allow the Secretary of State to make the judgment directly about closing the school. That is a key difference. I can entertain the possibility that there may be a place for the Secretary of State to have that power but, in deciding this in Committee and on Report, we ought to have a much clearer idea of the criteria that the Secretary of State would use to make the decision for direct closure and the kind of circumstances in which those powers would be used.
There are other powers that it may be more constructive to use. For instance, there are powers to intervene directly with the local authority. As a Minister, I did that in a number of local authority areas in setting up performance management boards. Sometimes it was with representation from a Minister, chaired by a Minister with Department for Education officials with independent representation, with experts, with the chief executive of the local authority, with the director children’s services and with head teachers, charged with driving up performance, not in 10 years but demonstrably in one or two years. That method might not be suitable everywhere, but where it is appropriate it drives up performance in schools without the nuclear option of closing local schools with the uncertainty that that creates for parents.
In that system, if maintained schools improve, they will stay as maintained schools. That is another key difference between our vision and that of the Government; we saw a place for diversity in having schools of high standards both in the maintained sector and, where this was necessary to drive up standards, as academies, with the freedoms that academies have. I do not think that is the case here, and my concern, as I have voiced before, is that the different measures taken together in the Bill will actually enable an acceleration of academies simply by diktat when the Secretary of State closes schools. The schools that will replace those schools will by definition be academies, not maintained schools, so I still have concerns.
I saw the Minister and his officials nodding. It would be helpful if it were possible for him to write to me before Report with some idea of criteria and the circumstances in which these powers to close schools and reopen them as academies would be used, so that we could make a judgment on what is on the Government’s mind on this issue. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Low, has articulated clear and comprehensive arguments for Clause 42 not standing part of the Bill. I shall make three brief points in support of those arguments.
First, as the noble Lord said, the power of the Secretary of State to intervene in complaints is currently very limited. He is able to address only a very small number of complaints. The 2008 consultation document on complaints made this clear, stating:
“In practice, this means that except where there is a clear breach of a specific duty (for example, a school failing to have a complaints policy or a behaviour policy) there are few occasions when the Secretary of State is empowered to intervene”.
It does not seem very constructive to argue that parents can appeal to the Secretary of State. Let us be clear, we are talking about unresolved complaints. We all agree that complaints should ideally be resolved at the lowest level, with the school, the head teacher or the governors, but where they remain unresolved after going through those processes, it does not seem reasonable to argue that parents can go to the Secretary of State when, in practice, the number and nature of complaints that the Secretary of State can hear in law is very limited. Where would parents with complaints outside that limited ambit go?
Secondly, the Secretary of State does not in practice investigate those complaints in person; they are investigated by civil servants in the department. There is an unhappy record of civil servants making decisions on individual cases whatever their nature. That is understandable because they neither know the detail nor have the local knowledge. We do not see consistency of decision-making across cases which are similar with such a system. It is not good practice for civil servants to make decisions on individual cases, but that is what happens in practice. A recommendation is then made to the Secretary of State, who also lacks any detailed knowledge with which to approve it or not. It is not a very satisfactory system from a parent’s point of view.
Thirdly, because of those deficiencies, an attempt was made, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, outlined, to see whether there was a better way. A pilot was launched whereby parents were able to take unresolved complaints to the Local Government Ombudsman. This started only a little more than a year ago—in April last year. We may well hear from the Government that take-up has been low. The scheme has not been very well publicised and, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, we have had little information on its impact—anecdotal evidence shows that it has been rather positive. We need clearer and more reliable information about the impact of the system, particularly parents’ and schools’ views. It seems premature to abandon that new method before we are clear whether it offers a more effective, more efficient and more satisfactory way forward.
If Clause 44 were to stand part of the Bill, we would be left with a very unsatisfactory situation. It was because of the problems with the system of parents going to the Secretary of State that there was an attempt to find another route. We should surely see whether the other system can be made to work more effectively from parents’ and schools’ point of view before we abandon it.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I found the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, immensely persuasive. Bullying in schools has been a problem without a solution for a long time, as I am sure my noble friend Lord Elton would agree. It is very hard for a parent who has gone through the procedures outlined by my noble friend in his response to the noble Lord, Lord Low, and not achieved any success to be stuck in a position where their child continues to be bullied and there is nothing more that they can do about it. There is, in effect, nowhere else for them to turn. The experiment started by the previous Government of giving this responsibility to the Local Government Ombudsman must be worth pursuing and evaluating.
I have recent experience of trying out both the department and the ombudsman with a complaint, although not in this area. Someone who lived in Lambeth was referred to me because he had been unable to find a school place for his child. Lambeth had failed in its duty to the extent that, when this man went to the appeal tribunal for places at a couple of schools, Lambeth said, “You don’t need to bother. We’ve found him somewhere”, which turned out not to be true. Not only had Lambeth not found him somewhere but it destroyed the chance that he had of getting his child into a school. I have talked to the department about that. It has been perfectly courteous but ineffective. When I discovered that this was something that the Local Government Ombudsman could take up, I referred my contact to it and it has been wonderful. It immediately put someone on the case and gave him someone to talk to day to day. He feels totally cared for and supported. It is a completely different experience from dealing with a government department. That is no surprise; government departments are not set up to do this. I did not know that the Local Government Ombudsman was as good as this but it has clearly developed an extremely good service.
The other difficulty that I have come across recently is rather from the other side of the fence. I shall read something that was written to me by a local authority that was trying to deal with academies in its area:
“I am concerned that academies may not be complying in full with the provisions of the Pupil Registration Regulations. Some academies have withdrawn from Education Welfare Services, rather preferring to address matters of non attendance ‘in house’, however in certain circumstances they should, in accordance with the Pupil Registration Regulations, inform the Local Authority. For example, when a child has had 10 days or more continuous absence, and in other matters that are of concern to those in the Local Authority charged with safeguarding the welfare of children.
In addition, I would like to seek some clarity with regard to Free Schools and their obligations in keeping pupil registers, publishing attendance policies and advising other agencies when there appear to be concerns”.
Communication between schools and the welfare authorities is vital. If a local authority feels that a school may not be complying with its obligations, what is it supposed to do? Is it supposed to write to the Secretary of State, who is then supposed to chase individual academies? This is not the business of a government department, particularly when there is an agency that apparently does these things so well.
Home education is the other area in which I come across this. There are many people for whom home education is a choice. They prefer to look after their own children and educate them in their own way. However, there is also a large number of people who have been forced into it and have, particularly if their child has SEN, come to the end of their tether with the non-compliance of schools and local authorities in dealing with their children’s problems. To date there has been no good place for them to go. If the Local Government Ombudsman is to offer that sort of resource, it will be enormously appreciated. I could understand abandoning it because it had proved ineffective but to abandon it now is a great mistake.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I hope that we can deal with this quickly. This clause amends Section 456 of the Education Act 1996, on the regulation of permitted charges, to achieve two objectives—first, to allow a charge for the cost of buildings and accommodation when a school provides an optional extra, and, secondly, to make an exception for early years provision whereby a charge can be made only for teaching staff engaged under contracts for services and allow a charge to be made for employed staff. It is a rather technical issue.
I have a number of concerns about the way in which these provisions might operate. I am very grateful to the Minister for two letters that he sent me, on 21 June and 20 July this year, clarifying the way in which the Government envisage these measures operating. The assurances depend to a large extent on the regulations behind the provisions, which cannot be made totally clear to me today, but I should be grateful if the Minister could put the position on record in her reply, which would at least give me and other Members some assurance about the operation of these measures.
Without delaying the Committee further I ask the Minister, first, to confirm that through regulations the measures will not enable schools to delay entry into the reception class, keep children in nursery classes longer, and therefore charge. Secondly, can she confirm that the measures will not enable schools to charge for any child in reception class, even if they are still aged four? Thirdly, will the measures enable charging only for teaching staff over and above the free entitlement? Fourthly, can the Minister also assure me that there will be some protection for the additional free hours that many local authorities currently provide for disadvantaged and vulnerable children; and, fifthly, that there will be some attempt to specify some concept of reasonableness in the charges that schools can make and how the regulations might define how the charges to parents may be made up so that they are reasonable? If we can get those assurances on record today, I am sure that it will take us forward.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, many schools provide high-quality early education provided by parents that is good for getting children ready for school. However, schools can currently effectively offer only the free entitlement—the 15 hours a week, 38 weeks a year—that all three and four year-old children are entitled to. This is because they cannot charge for extra early years education that they provide during school hours for three and four year-old pupils over and above the 15-hours’ free entitlement.
The previous Government took a power in the Childcare Act 2006 to make regulations enabling schools to charge for additional hours that they might wish to offer parents. The Bill, therefore, does not seek a power for schools to charge. It enables schools to reflect the costs of their provision in that charge. It is, in effect, a technical clause. It is about ensuring that charges for optional extras can include a proportion of building and accommodation costs and, for early years provision, the time of qualified teachers.
Why are we proposing this change? Because making school-based early years provision sustainable will create greater choice for parents about the type, quality and flexibility of early years provision that they can take up for their child. We want to enable parents to take up provision above their free entitlement in the maintained sector, if they wish to, as they already can in private, voluntary and independent providers.
Enabling schools to charge appropriately will help them to remain financially viable, but I stress that schools will not be permitted to make a profit from charging and will be able to charge only up to the costs of delivering the provision. I reassure the noble Baroness that that will of course be a reasonable charge and it must be within boundaries.
Furthermore, it will not be permissible in any way for schools to charge for early education that is part of the free entitlement, including—I reassure the noble Baroness on this point, too—the new entitlement for disadvantaged two year-olds, or for reception provision. The Government remain committed to reception classes being free, with full-time provision of 25 hours a week from the September after the child turns four. The noble Baroness referred to the letters from my noble friend the Minister of 21 June and 20 July, which we hope will have given her further reassurances on those points.
There is no ability for schools to charge for education during school hours for pupils of compulsory school age, and there is no ability for them to charge for hours provided to parents for free under the early years entitlement—a measure which the noble Baroness introduced and which we have extended in this Bill. We are committed to ensuring that reception provision is free, and there will be no ability to hold children up in nursery classes, as she feared. Through the Bill, we want to ensure that schools can charge for additional, optional provision in a way that enables them to cover their costs and provides greater choice of provision for the parent and a consistent and high-quality early education for the child.
If the noble Baroness raised other points which I have not covered, I will of course write to her, but I hope that, with those reassurances, she will feel happy to withdraw her objection to the clause standing part of the Bill.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I support the amendment and pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, and the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for their longstanding advocacy for Gypsy and Roma children. I recall the noble Lord tabling a debate on the education of Gypsy and Traveller children 10 years ago.
I am also reminded by this debate that I once taught a nine year-old Traveller boy. What really comes back to me is how enthusiastic and keen he was to be a part of the group and one of the boys. I imagine that many of these young boys and girls want to be a part of a group, and it is tragic that this opportunity to bring them into society is so often lost.
If I understood correctly what the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said, I was concerned to hear that specialist services for these children may be being lost. Trust is very important. If these services have developed trust with those communities, it is very important to maintain that relationship.
There are also things that schools, if they are well informed, can do. For example, the special experience of Gypsy and Traveller children can be a bonus for the pupils generally. A boy from a Traveller community can talk about the involvement with animals or other activities that his community has and celebrate that with the other children. Alternatively, for example, a head teacher can involve the mother—it would usually be the mother—of a Gypsy or Traveller child. Even if she cannot write, she can help the child with his homework. The head teacher can ask the mother to put a sign by her son’s work to say that that boy sat quietly for half an hour to do his homework. That is her job and she can communicate that to the head teacher. Therefore, it is possible to engage with those parents. It is possible to think about these things in a very constructive way, and I hope that the Minister can give a positive response to the amendment.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
Before the Minister speaks, perhaps I may ask whether he will address a particular point in his summing up. The point raised by my noble friend is very important in the light of the education system—or lack of an education system, if I may put it like that—that will arise if all the Government’s changes go through. The very important question is: who will be responsible for looking after the very small groups of children who are, by definition, not very visible because they are small in number but are none the less, for all kinds of reasons that noble Lords have identified, very disadvantaged when it comes to taking up opportunities for education? Given that local authorities will not have any locus in local areas if the Government’s objective of the majority of schools being academies and free schools comes to fruition, I should be grateful if, in responding, the Minister could say where responsibility will lie for looking at the achievement, or lack of it, of these small groups of children, working with schools in some way but without the power and leverage to do so. Who will ensure that schools do better by these very small groups of children? In the new world that the Government will take us into where academies are going to be everywhere and will not be focused on disadvantaged children, I cannot see where that responsibility will lie and where the leverage with individual schools to do better by these children will come from.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, it is clear from this debate—as has often been the case—that promoting the highest possible quality of education for the most vulnerable children in society is a subject dear to the heart of the Committee. We have set out in our schools White Paper, published last year, and more recently in our Green Paper on special educational needs and disability, our overall plans on how we want to achieve this,. These include the pupil premium, which will deliver an extra £2.5 billion a year by 2014 to support the education of the most disadvantaged children. My letter to my noble friend Lord Avebury on 25 August set out the overall the statutory framework and range of measures in place to support vulnerable children. In response to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, the White Paper was absolutely clear that the local authority retains its responsibilities for vulnerable children, and the Bill does not affect its statutory duties in any way.
However, the nub of this debate is around Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children, who are of particular concern to the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, and to my noble friend Lord Avebury. He is absolutely right that Gypsy, Roma and Traveller pupils continue to underachieve significantly relative to their peers and are still much more likely to leave school without completing their formal education. This year, under one-quarter of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller pupils achieved level 4 in English and maths at the end of key stage 2, compared with 73 per cent of all pupils. At key stage 4, just 10.8 per cent of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller pupils achieved five or more good GCSEs, including English and mathematics, compared with about 55 per cent of all pupils. These are stark differences. Gypsy, Roma and Traveller pupils have the worst attendance of any minority ethnic group and there is a marked decline in enrolment between primary and secondary school level, a point that has been made. They have the highest levels of permanent and fixed-term exclusions.
Local authorities have a key role to play in addressing this issue. They are under a statutory duty to ensure that education is available for all children of compulsory school age that is appropriate to their age, ability, aptitudes and any special educational needs they may have. This duty applies regardless of a child’s ethnicity, immigration status, mother tongue or rights of residence in a particular area.
Along with schools and colleges, local authorities have a range of safeguarding duties for vulnerable pupils, as well as duties to establish as far as possible the identities of those children of compulsory school age who are missing education. We are currently revising statutory guidance to clarify how local authorities can best carry out their duties to identify children who are missing education. I say to my noble friend that we expect to strengthen current references to Gypsy, Roma and Traveller pupils in the revised guidance and I should be happy in due course to share that in draft form with him, the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, and anyone else who is interested.
It is also the case that Ministers in my department are working, under the chairmanship of the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, with a range of government departments to ensure that the range of inequalities faced by the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities are properly addressed. That working group expects to publish before the end of the year a report on how the Government will tackle the issue, including a package of measures designed specifically to raise educational aspirations, attainment and attendance. We are grateful to the work carried out by the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller education stakeholder group, chaired by my noble friend Lord Avebury, for the contributions that it has made so far, and I look forward to working with the group over the coming weeks to develop further plans in that area.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I am sure that all Members of the Committee are considering these issues because they share with me a desire to improve the opportunity of outcomes for all children, including high-ability children. However, there may well be—I think there is—a difference between some Members of the Committee about the most effective ways of doing that. In this sense, Amendment 124D, to which I am speaking, takes the opposite view to that just expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Blackwell.
Under the Academies Act 2010, a selective school converting to academy status can maintain its selective admissions policies. Amendment 124D would remove the ability for selective schools to maintain selective policies on conversion. It would require any schools converting to academy status in future to have a comprehensive admissions policy upon that conversion.
I shall to cite three arguments in favour of our amendment. The first is on the basis of some of the evidence from international countries that are performing better than we are in education. Secondly, I wish to raise a point of principle and, thirdly, to look at the practical implications of the Government’s proposals on the issue—and whether as a result of the Bill the current ability of schools to retain selection in moving to academy status would lead to an extension of schools with selection policies. I question whether that is what the Government want.
First, in terms of the evidence, particularly from Finland—one of the highest performing countries on the educational spectrum in the western world—it is interesting that the Minister, following a previous debate, sent me a letter talking about the evidence for reform at some length. He cited Finland and some of the attributes of its system, particularly school autonomy and accountability for performance. However, that letter did not in particular mention the important context of the Finnish system, as well as some other systems—for autonomy and accountability. It is a system that the Finnish Government and people take very seriously, whereby schools are comprehensive and that you can achieve improvements in the context of a system in which schools take from a broad spectrum of pupils and overlay on that system powerful mechanisms for autonomy and accountability. That is what produces the substantial improvements that have been seen in Finland. Therefore, if we are going to use evidence—and I support an evidence-based approach to policy—we ought to take all the evidence we have, including that evidence from Finland.
The second point is one of principle. The idea of a selective academy—not just what the previous Government were trying to achieve but what the current Government profess to want to achieve—is something of a contradiction in terms. Under Labour, academies could select only 10 per cent of their pupils—not on the basis of ability but of aptitude if the academy had a particular specialism. We believe—and in terms of what the Government have said to date, I cannot believe that they would not share this view; but I would welcome any contradiction to that effect—that academies should be comprehensive. If a selective school is to have the freedoms of an academy, it should by definition make a commitment to all the children in the local area and not simply cream off those whom it thinks are the most able. It should be committed to driving up the levels of attainment of all students, which means admitting those children whose backgrounds are such that they have further to go in reaching their potential because of some of the barriers that they face. That is a principle with which some Members of the Committee may not agree, but I put it forward to the Minister as a principle that I thought the Government shared.
The third issue is one of practical implication. Academies are their own admissions authorities. Research in this country has already suggested that, without checks and balances, academies have a greater opportunity covertly to select than perhaps we all would wish. Leaving that point aside, however, there must be concern under the Bill that if selective schools become academies it will lead in practice to an extension of selection. Clause 58 will allow selective schools becoming academies to widen the age range of their intake. This could lead to a state education system which allowed selection at primary as well as secondary level. Under the Government’s draft admissions code, popular selective academies can expand without agreement from the local authority or the Secretary of State. I should like the Minister to comment on whether that means that a selective academy could not only expand in size but also, as has been commented on, establish a cluster school elsewhere which would be managed by the head teacher and senior management team and thereby extend selection to a larger number of pupils.
That is the reason for my amendment. I should be grateful if the Minister could respond to the points that I have raised. First, do the Government want to see an extension of selection, or are they neutral about it? Secondly, do they believe that academies should serve the whole community and, if so, why are selective schools which become academies being allowed to retain selection? Thirdly, does not the Minister share my concern that that provision, together with the two elements of the Bill which I have identified, could—however inadvertently on the Government’s part—lead to an extension of selection? Would the Government be happy if that were the case?
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 126A. The previous Government made a good deal of progress in closing the gap between state and independent schools, to the extent that two or three independent schools crossed back into the state sector. This Government have made considerable further progress in that direction. It is clear that the institution of free schools and the freeing-up of obligations on academies generally will reduce the demand for independent education and bring children back into the state sector. The pressures now imposed by the Office for Fair Access will have a similar effect.
There is a question to be asked of the Opposition. Do they share my ambition to see over time some of the independent sector reabsorbed back into the state sector? If so, how far are they prepared to go to achieve that? It does not seem to be going very far to allow a selective independent school to come back into the state sector as a selective state school.