Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will provide a detailed timetable for the legislative changes required to amend the School Admission Code in respect of children adopted from care overseas.

In December of last year the department announced that when the opportunity arises, we intend to amend the School Admissions Code to require admission authorities to give children adopted from state care outside of England, highest priority for admission into school.

Any changes to the School Admissions Code will require a full statutory process, including a public consultation and parliamentary scrutiny. They must be considered in the context of competing pressures on the parliamentary timetable.

Until such time as we are able to make the relevant changes to the Code, we have asked admission authorities to use their current flexibilities in setting their own admission arrangements, to grant internationally adopted children second highest admissions priority in their oversubscription criteria.

School admission arrangements are agreed locally and we do not collect information on them. Consequently, the information requested on which admission authorities have adopted these changes, is not held centrally and we have not made an assessment of the changes.