Schools: Admissions Code

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

My Lords—

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, the Fair Admissions Campaign—

[Noble Lords]

O’Shaughnessy!

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

Your Lordships are very generous to a newcomer; thank you. As we have heard, church schools have been the subject of many vexatious attempts to take them to the admissions adjudicator. I ask the Minister to condemn those who abuse the school admissions code to make political and ideological points. I declare an interest as a parent with a son at a Catholic school. I also invite the Minister to pay tribute to the many excellent church schools, which not only are more ethnically diverse than average schools but are more likely to have a good or outstanding judgment from Ofsted.

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, following the noble Lord—

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The noble Baroness can answer the question for me if she likes. As I said, we want to ensure that parents are at the heart of this process, which is why we want to ensure that adjudications are not held up by the need to consider large numbers of objections referred by interest groups. Unfortunately, because of some campaigns, parents now have to wait longer for the outcome of their appeals, and that cannot be right.