Clause 1 - School travel schemes
School Transport Bill
9:25 am
Mr Mark Hoban (Shadow Minister, Education; Fareham, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 45, in page 3, line 4, at end insert
', or
'(f) who attends a specialist school having passed an aptitude test for admission to that school.'.
I welcome you back to the Chair, Mr. O'Brien.
There must be common ground between the Government and the Opposition on amendment No. 45, because we both support the concepts of choice and specialist schools. It would be useful to allow a child who lives on the wrong side of town and who has a particular interest in attending a specialist school, because of the nature of its speciality, to attend that school and it would be useful to provide some support for their transport costs to it.
That raises the question of how one assesses whether the child ought to go to such a school and whether the school is a suitable one for the child. The Government have made some suggestions as to how we might determine what is a suitable school for a child and how we might introduce an objective test to measure it. In their response to the report by the Select Committee on Education and Skills on school admissions, they accepted the need for aptitude tests for certain types of school. The examples of that were special sports schools, and schools that specialise in visual and performing arts, and that specialise in languages. Those schools will be able to continue to set an aptitude test and select up to 10 per cent. of their pupils on the basis of their aptitude in sport, visual and performing arts or languages. If we are to go down the route of trying to encourage more pupils to attend a school that will meet their particular needs, in this case one that will give that specialist support, we ought to provide free school transport to the pupils who pass that aptitude test; it is an objective measure of whether that school is suitable for them.