Clause 43
Education and Inspections Bill
10:45 am
John Hayes (Shadow Minister (Vocational Education), Education; South Holland and The Deepings, Conservative)
The hon. Gentleman misses my first point. The banding arrangements in the clause, which he describes as better than the 1998 Act, link banding to applications, so the school is making a judgment about applicants and people who have already expressed a choice. What the hon. Gentleman is describing, as I understand it, is banding that is dissociated from such choice. That might lead to an extraordinary situation in which a school was obliged to band before it knew who wanted to go to the school, and it might not be able to draw people from the relevant bands if they did not exercise the choice that the school hoped they would.