Education Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 10:15 pm on 19 June 2002.

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Photo of Baroness Sharp of Guildford Baroness Sharp of Guildford Liberal Democrat 10:15, 19 June 2002

My Lords, I have tabled Amendment No. 93 because on re-reading the Minister's answer to me in Committee I did not consider that she had given due weight to the equity issues involved. Groups of 10 parents already have the right to appeal to the adjudicator in cases where admission arrangements allow for partial selection and where that selection was enforced prior to the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. The Minister said on 23rd May:

"We gave parents that right because we believe that they should have the opportunity to make their views known when such partially selective arrangements are an issue".—[Official Report, 23/5/02; col. 922.]

That right has now been extended to allow parents to object over admission numbers, where the admissions number, determined by the admissions authority, is lower than the one indicated using the new capacity assessment formula. However, it does not allow parents to appeal when the admission procedure—the original right of appeal was all about procedures—is de facto partial. The case of Prendergast School to which I referred in Committee involved a foundation school that supposedly did not have a partial selection procedure and yet was pursuing practices that overtly flouted the code of practice and could de facto have resulted in partial selection.

The Minister's argument against change was that it was predicated on three strands of argument. First, she said that consultations had not indicated that there was any strong feeling among parents for such an extension, but there was a low rate of response to the consultation document. I believe from the Government's report about the consultation that there were only 416 responses in total of which only 13 can be said to have come from parents. In other words, 3 per cent of the responses were from parents. Most parents were unaware that that consultation had taken place. As the report says,

"the majority of responses were received from those with a professional interest in education".

In the foreword to the report, the Secretary of State acknowledged that she knows how important school admissions are to parents and to children and yet parents did not participate much in the consultation. The strongest objections in fact came from the voluntary- aided and foundation schools and the professionals involved there precisely because these are the categories of schools in which some of the less desirable admissions arrangements occur and to which there might be objections.

The second strand of argument that the Minister used was that the Prendergast case was one of maladministration and that the decision in that case would, it was hoped, send out a very clear signal to local authorities. In that case Lewisham Borough Council were found guilty of maladministration, but as the ombudsman pointed out, the case had been brought there and to the attention of the DfES as early as 1998 and nothing was done in spite of the fact that the governors continued to flout the objections raised by the LEA and the DfES.

As the ombudsman said:

"Given the Council's failure over a protracted period to change the School's position, the Council's failure to refer the matter to the Adjudicator ... was in my view maladministration. It also seems likely that had a referral been made then the Adjudicator would have determined that at least some of the admissions criteria should be changed. Had this happened, the outcome may have been very different for the children of these complainants".

That indicates that it affected the children. The ombudsman then went on to say:

"I believe the policy should have been reviewed at least in time to govern admissions for September 2001. The failure to do so was maladministration".

The report came out in April of this year. The governors have now reviewed it. The ombudsman continued:

"I welcome the Governors' recent review of the School's admissions arrangements in the light of these objections and also their decision to stop using interviews. However, the School's new policy will not come into effect until children are admitted in September 2003".

In other words, the children were unnecessarily affected by delays, which the ombudsman condemned as,

"further maladministration by the admissions authority".

The point I make to the Minister is this. It took four years for the parents to register these quite fair complaints, even though both the LEA and the DfES knew about them, and only then through the lengthy procedures via the ombudsman. The adjudicator procedures are there in order to deal with unresolved issues. The checks and balances already written into the Act prevent abuse by any over-litigious individual parent, but if a group of 10 or more parents have the right to appeal a case of pre-existing partial entry arrangements, then surely the backstop of allowing parents to go directly to the adjudicator ought to be there in a case such as this when there is de facto partial selection.

Finally, the Minister seemed to misunderstand the effect of the amendment. She referred to the possibility that one group of parents might object to criteria that others found acceptable, such as a priority for siblings. But that was not the issue. The amendment affects only who is able to refer objections to the adjudicator in order that he or she may determine whether arrangements breach the code of practice. Sibling priority plainly does not. It would not affect at all the grounds on which the adjudicator made his determination. That is determined by the contents of the code which is a matter for the Secretary of State.

In the light of these three objections it seems to me that the Minister should reconsider her answer. I beg to move.