Sarah Teather (Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Education & Skills; Brent East, Liberal Democrat)

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

In our previous sitting, we discussed the new skeletal code for admissions and admission forums. I said that the code is in many ways a welcome advance, in that it touches on many of the points of concern relating to covert selection—for example, it highlights the fact  that it is totally unacceptable to use information gleaned about a family from open evenings or other meetings with the family held because brothers or sisters are at the school in question. The right hon. Member for Redditch indicated that she would look into whether the use of telephone information could be included in the code. The problem is ensuring that the code is put into practice and enforced adequately. A challenge based on many of the code’s provisions would require a subjective judgment, given that they deal with soft information gained through informal meetings.

We know from surveys that as many as one in four head teachers admit to bending the rules in order to cherry-pick pupils, and so artificially to improve their results and league table position and appear a better school. The problem is that when one head teacher or school cheats, it breaks everybody’s trust in the system—parents and students. Such practices undermine the system and the work that the Government are trying to do by introducing the code.

It seems to us that best way to remove the danger of cheating would be to allow local authorities to administer the criteria. The new clause would not prevent schools from setting their own criteria, but if it is not accepted we shall press an amendment that would do so. The new clause suggests that if the criteria are objective, as the code says they should be, they could be administered by anybody—they do not need to be administered by the school in question. The best body to administer the process is the local authority. The local authority has no incentive to cheat. It does not favour one school in its area over another or wish artificially to inflate the league table position of one school rather than another. It is disinterested and impartial; it wishes only to raise the standards of all of the schools in its area.

That would be particularly helpful in ironing out problems such as knowledge of a family gained through brothers and sisters being at a school or through open evenings or telephone conversations. It is unreasonable to expect a school not to have knowledge, sometimes quite considerable, of a family prior to the admissions process. In our previous sitting, the hon. Member for Bury, North, highlighted the case of a Church of England school in London where there was considerable contact between parents and the school some weeks before the commencement of the admissions process. It would be entirely unreasonable to expect a school not to have knowledge of a family, and it would be difficult to test whether that knowledge was used in the admissions process.

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

Is the Liberal notion of localism that it should extend as far the local authority, but not to the local school?

Sarah Teather (Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Education & Skills; Brent East, Liberal Democrat)

The new clause is about accountability. The local authority is the directly elected, accountable body. On localism, we have always said that devolving power down without ensuring that the bodies that receive it are elected and accountable simply results in tyranny on a local scale and does not improve the situation.

Annette Brooke (Children & the Family, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

Does my hon. Friend agree that under the new clause schools will set out their own admissions policies, which will give them freedom within the guidelines and the code, and local authorities will merely administer what schools have set out?

Sarah Teather (Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Education & Skills; Brent East, Liberal Democrat)

Precisely. As I said, if the criteria are objective, as the code clearly states that they should be, it should not matter who administers them. The new clause would not remove schools’ ability to set their own criteria; it would simply ensure that they do not bend those criteria to cherry-pick.

Under the new clause, schools or the local authority—depending on who the admission authority is—would set admissions policies in line with the code. All schools would then submit their policies to, say, a local authority officer, who would administer the admissions. That would allow a layer of scrutiny so that the local authority could see whether the admissions policies were in line with the code, although we have not explicitly included provision for that in the new clause; the matter could be considered later.

Parents would then apply to the local authority with their school preferences, and the authority would sort the applications, matching children against the school’s stated criteria. Names could be kept from schools, especially if an electronic system were used; many local authorities now use such systems. The process could therefore be entirely anonymised, with a code, tag or number attached to the application so that even the officer would not know who the families on the system were. The local authority would then send out acceptance letters to parents and inform schools of their intake. Under that system, head teachers and governors would never see the list of names, so they could not pick out families with difficult parents or the children who they know are always in trouble with the police.

The Local Government Association thinks that the new clause would improve transparency, and individual councils to which we have spoken have also been enthusiastic about the idea of improving transparency and preventing cheating. Teachers’ unions have expressed considerable concern about allowing schools more freedom to set their own admissions and say that they would favour a more co-ordinated system. That can be achieved only by making the local authority the co-ordinator.

Let me reiterate. The new clause does not remove schools’ power to set their own criteria, but prevents them from cheating. That would be a helpful amendment to the Bill, and I strongly encourage the Government to accept it.

Jim Knight (Minister of State, Department for Education and Skills; South Dorset, Labour)

The Education Act 2002 gave local authorities responsibility for co-ordinating the annual school admissions process in England, but the process works on the basis of a balance of responsibilities between schools and local authorities, with own-admission authority schools setting and applying their own admission arrangements, and local authorities managing the flow of information on applications and potential offers and making the best offer available to parents at the end of the process.

As individual admission authorities are accountable for decisions to grant or refuse admission to their schools, we do not agree that we should transfer statutory responsibility to local authorities—despite my instinctive cultural sympathy for anything called new clause 4. Where schools admit pupils by reference to aptitude, ability or commitment to faith, it could be asking too much of local authorities to expect them to assess applicants properly against a broad spectrum of criteria. In particular, assessments of religious commitments are best made by the governing bodies of the schools concerned, using objective evidence provided by their religious leaders.

Sarah Teather (Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Education & Skills; Brent East, Liberal Democrat)

We discussed this at the previous sitting, and I very much agreed with the right hon. Member for Redditch that we should not try to assess the level of religious commitment. A letter from a priest is perfectly adequate. Why could that not be appended to an admission application so that a box could be ticked to say that the applicant agreed and met the criteria?

Jim Knight (Minister of State, Department for Education and Skills; South Dorset, Labour)

There may be circumstances in which schools will want to come together and, if they can, work out a simple way to remove some of the bureaucracy, but I am concerned that a complex series of criteria could be involved and it would be too bureaucratic to impose the responsibility on local authorities. As I said, there may be some merit in permitting such arrangements if they are practical and as long as the local authority, the admission forum and individual admission authorities in an area are in agreement with them, but other aspects of the new clause are unworkable.

Through funding agreements, the Secretary of State requires academies to participate in co-ordination, but city technology colleges are not bound by similar arrangements.

The suggestion that applications should be anonymised is presumably based on the perception that inclusion of personal details could lead to abuse of the system or covert selection, but the Department has no evidence of such abuse, and even if there were, costs would be incurred in altering the administrative systems. There are practical reasons why the process could not be operated as effectively if forms were anonymised. Many schools use a sibling connection as one of their over-subscription criteria, but they would not be able to assess whether applicants had a sibling at the school if names were removed. Furthermore, removing names alone would not be sufficient to anonymise an applicant. Some could be disadvantaged by their address, for example, but removing that clearly would not be feasible in respect of catchment area criteria.

There are good reasons why the Government resist the new clause, although I understand the good intent behind it. I hope that the hon. Lady will agree to withdraw it.

Sarah Teather (Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Education & Skills; Brent East, Liberal Democrat)

I am extremely disappointed that the Government are not willing to accept the new clause. It was offered with constructive intentions, and I believe  that it would considerably improve the Bill. I do not accept that there is no evidence of abuse of the system. We have heard that one in four head teachers admit to bending the system in order to cherry-pick. That is not acceptable, and, as the hon. Member for Bury, North said when he referred to that survey in a previous sitting, if one in four admit to it, goodness only knows how many people are doing it without being willing to admit to it.

I do not accept the Minister’s arguments. Most of the criteria could be perfectly well dealt with in the forms that are sent out, by ticking a box. If certain aspects cannot be anonymised in respect of the local authority, they should surely still be anonymised in respect of the school, which is our point. The local authority is a more disinterested and impartial adviser on such matters, and it would be far better to leave administration of the admissions process with it rather than with the schools in question, which have admitted to bending the system.

I am extremely disappointed that the Government have not accepted the new clause. We will press it to a vote, because we believe that it would improve the Bill considerably, put many safeguards in place and increase trust in the system.